New Organized Play Program (D&D Adventurer's League

[Majoru Oakheart]

Re: Certs for home play. How is that to be enforced? If only cons and gamedays can give out certs, how does a WotC know I'm not a game day? Is WotC verifying who is signing up for gamedays to make sure it's just vendors? Can a vendor delegate to a local GM to run things who then takes the certs back to his home game? What will the reporting be for a game? In the past the RPGA kept track of which adventures you played and in some case with which character. A lot of it is on the honor system because its not really worth policing. So can WotC really police no certs in home games?

It's likely that the process will be similar to ordering D&D Encounters right now. You need to order the event using a retailer account. The events get given to the store and they likely print them out and hand physical copies of the certs to the DM. The results will likely have to be reported by the store itself. Or not reported at all, using the physical certs as the only way of verifying.

As for enforcing that....well, none of the rules in LFR or LG were actually enforceable at all either. That didn't stop them from being rules. In LG, you could literally order copies of every adventure, print out the certs and fill them out in a way that looked pretty legal and would hold up under anything but the most intense scrutiny(which no one wanted to do because going through 100 certs with a fine tooth comb took a LONG time). So, I'm sure there were people breaking the rules all over the place.

Though, a large number of people followed the rules because they don't like breaking rules. I'd include myself amongst them.

It might be possible to break the rules, but not easy. If they do it the same way as Encounters, it means getting a hold of the certs will be kind of difficult. I've been trying to find copies of the Launch Weekend PDFs so that I can run them as part of my home game of the same adventures, but it's very difficult to find them as they were ONLY given to DMs running Encounters. Most were just given the printouts so they don't even have the PDFs.

 

[DerekSTheRed]

It's likely that the process will be similar to ordering D&D Encounters right now. You need to order the event using a retailer account. The events get given to the store and they likely print them out and hand physical copies of the certs to the DM. The results will likely have to be reported by the store itself. Or not reported at all, using the physical certs as the only way of verifying.

As for enforcing that....well, none of the rules in LFR or LG were actually enforceable at all either. That didn't stop them from being rules. In LG, you could literally order copies of every adventure, print out the certs and fill them out in a way that looked pretty legal and would hold up under anything but the most intense scrutiny(which no one wanted to do because going through 100 certs with a fine tooth comb took a LONG time). So, I'm sure there were people breaking the rules all over the place.

Though, a large number of people followed the rules because they don't like breaking rules. I'd include myself amongst them.

It might be possible to break the rules, but not easy. If they do it the same way as Encounters, it means getting a hold of the certs will be kind of difficult. I've been trying to find copies of the Launch Weekend PDFs so that I can run them as part of my home game of the same adventures, but it's very difficult to find them as they were ONLY given to DMs running Encounters. Most were just given the printouts so they don't even have the PDFs.

Thanks for the info. My organizing experience was with LG where I GMd a lot and ran a gameday. I only played LFR and encounters so I wasn't sure how it worked. It seems like the retailers are acting as gate keepers which should mostly work.

 

[pedr]

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There's some extra info here: http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/28680.html notably the suggestion that stores will be asked/expected to be the source of Expeditions support packs for local conventions - which makes sense as WotC have done a great deal to turn the WPN into a network of stores, rather than a network of event organisers - and the promise that reporting will only need a list of players, not each table separately.

 

[Spykes]

Most of this information you have seen, but you may want to look at the last paragraph.

Reporting moving to monthly model like Magic. Also, there is going to be a new reporting tool to make it easier to enter. Stores schedule games every month when they report.

Kits inclues materials for 20 players and 4 DMs. Kits don't come monthly, just at the start of a season.

Scheduling for August Encounters, Tyranny of Dragons opens on June 8th
Scheduling for Sept. Encounters as well as Sept. Expeditions opens on July 8th.

This info from the WPN site