Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
I'd be into that for sure.
D&D 5E Point Buy vs Rolling for Stats
I'd be into that for sure.
FarBeyondC
Explorer
Just wanted to note that the ability to transfer characters from one table to another is the most important part of AL, and organized play in general.
Shh...don't spoil it for them.
Tony Vargas
Legend
Which AL is not. I don't think organized play has been competitive in any sense since it shifted from tournament modules to RPGA back...whenever that was, late 80s?
Tournaments used pregens, yeah. Though, what I recall seeing of the pregens that came with the tournament modules I saw hardly seemed balanced for a fair competition. It also seemed like tournament modules were particularly arbitrary and nonsensical, even by the standards of the day. (Though, I suppose, they might have constituted the standards of the day...)
It's certainly more important than any vestige of 'competitive' play that might be left over from organized play's history of tournaments. But, there's other aspects that are very important. The casual aspect of not necessarily having to show up to every session. The theoretically shared experience of playing the same APs. There's a unifying/belonging side to it, I suppose.
AL does have room for that sort of thing. I think it's reported up the WPN chain as 'freeplay' or something like that. It doesn't count towards any AL anything, but it happens.
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Flexor the Mighty!
18/100 Strength!
Old school AD&D tourneys were totally designed to challenge the players rather than the characters so you would see puzzles, traps, and whatnot that didn't make a lot of game world sense in a normal game. A test of player skill with scoring and all that. I miss that at cons.
Marandahir
Crown-Forester (he/him)
I think it's perfectly reasonable to have a Session 0 where everyone rolls up their stats in front of everyone else, or otherwise prepares with a standard array or point-buy.
It's not policing. It's just part of human nature to want to fudge the rolls and get (even slightly) better scores. But it's an impulse we have to resist as a collective group, because it makes the game less fun for everyone is the party are all literal gods walking around at 1st level because of their perfect stats.
This isn't about enforcement of the rules. It's about allowing fun. And the fun comes in part from rolling the abilities out. We can support each other by having fun together as we roll our ability scores. There's no need to rush; playing D&D means prepping for a long-haul of many weeks, if not months or years, of play. One more week in the front doesn't hurt.
It's not policing. It's just part of human nature to want to fudge the rolls and get (even slightly) better scores. But it's an impulse we have to resist as a collective group, because it makes the game less fun for everyone is the party are all literal gods walking around at 1st level because of their perfect stats.
This isn't about enforcement of the rules. It's about allowing fun. And the fun comes in part from rolling the abilities out. We can support each other by having fun together as we roll our ability scores. There's no need to rush; playing D&D means prepping for a long-haul of many weeks, if not months or years, of play. One more week in the front doesn't hurt.
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
And rolling up characters shouldn't even take the whole session unless all of you are brand new to the game. By evening's end you can have the party met up, introduced to each other, and in the field; and if you're really efficient you might even get their first combat in.
Marandahir
Crown-Forester (he/him)
Definitely. I usually also use the session also to work out what sort of game we want to play together; where in my world setting we want to explore, what themes we want to delve into. It's hard to make those decisions as a DM before knowing (A) who the players for this game will be and (B) what the characters they're playing are like! I'm not really in favour of AL-style "bring your character and jump on in" style gaming. But I respect it for what it is.
Ideally, those in-story introductions can happen at the end of the night for me, but sometimes we can't even get to the game proper in Session 0. And that's okay.
Ideally, those in-story introductions can happen at the end of the night for me, but sometimes we can't even get to the game proper in Session 0. And that's okay.
Arial Black
Adventurer
Yeah, it usually takes me around two weeks to turn my rolls into a fully-fledged crunch + fluff character.
That is one advantage of point-buy: you can turn stats into a PC ahead of time, so that even if it takes two weeks you can already have done that before the first session.
That is not enough for me to prefer point-buy over rolling though.
That is one advantage of point-buy: you can turn stats into a PC ahead of time, so that even if it takes two weeks you can already have done that before the first session.
That is not enough for me to prefer point-buy over rolling though.
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