Play Your Way to 20: More Changes Announced for AL

[rooneg]

DDAO-01 is hitting that shop next week, and I will not be running it anymore at local conventions. After 13 conventions, numerous gamedays, and 99 tables of it, I'm pretty much done running it.

Really, you couldn't hit a nice round 100 tables?

 

[RulesJD]

When an author deploys a new AO adventure, we have been directed to retire the previous one. We may, if the material is appropriate and we wish to do so, put the adventure up on dmsguild.

DDAO-01 is hitting that shop next week, and I will not be running it anymore at local conventions. After 13 conventions, numerous gamedays, and 99 tables of it, I'm pretty much done running it.

Shaweeeeet. Thanks man. Been looking forward to seeing if I can do it justice.

 

[CapnZapp]

but higher level content is scarce to non-existent.

Amen to that.

If nothing else, this will hopefully bring up the level of experience of D&D writers in crafting adventures that are truly high-level

 

[Pauper]

If nothing else, this will hopefully bring up the level of experience of D&D writers in crafting adventures that are truly high-level

Maybe -- or maybe it'll point out that, just like in previous editions, high level play is broken and can only be enjoyed narratively.

Time will tell.

--
Pauper

 

[RulesJD]

Maybe -- or maybe it'll point out that, just like in previous editions, high level play is broken and can only be enjoyed narratively.

Time will tell.

--
Pauper

From personal experience, high level play requires a DM that can say "No".

For example, when the BBEG appears it forces players to make a Wisdom save. If you fail, you're stunned. If you succeed, you're frightened.

What if you have a Paladin in the party who is immune to Frightened? Tough nuggets, this is a god appearing on the battlefield, you're still frightened for one round.

etc.

 

[rczarnec]

From personal experience, high level play requires a DM that can say "No".

For example, when the BBEG appears it forces players to make a Wisdom save. If you fail, you're stunned. If you succeed, you're frightened.

What if you have a Paladin in the party who is immune to Frightened? Tough nuggets, this is a god appearing on the battlefield, you're still frightened for one round.

etc.

You can make a case that it is a god that is saying that the Paladin can't be frightened.

 

[Pauper]

What if you have a Paladin in the party who is immune to Frightened? Tough nuggets, this is a god appearing on the battlefield, you're still frightened for one round.

The problem is that the players are generally interested in using the abilities on their character sheets, so if the DM is going to tell them that they can't, the story has to be good enough for them to let the offense slide.

Even most adventure paths aren't consistent enough to bring the story strongly enough to overcome the players' desire to use their cool powers, so to say that AL adventures generally don't do this isn't so much a knock on the AL authors and admins as it is a recognition that good story is difficult to do well, and takes a solid-to-good DM at a minimum to present that story to the players and let them fall in love with it.

--
Pauper

 

[warfteiner]

From personal experience, high level play requires a DM that can say "No".

For example, when the BBEG appears it forces players to make a Wisdom save. If you fail, you're stunned. If you succeed, you're frightened.

What if you have a Paladin in the party who is immune to Frightened? Tough nuggets, this is a god appearing on the battlefield, you're still frightened for one round.

etc.

Characters being immune to fright is a pretty cool thing, but yeah - if a deity appears, there may sometimes be completely valid reasons for that immunity to slough off. After all, a very small handful of gods were sliced up into shards and locked away when the other deities realized that they didn't have the tools to permanently kill another one.

As with several other posts above, high-level play will REALLY require a great DM - and of course, well-written and well-executed adventures. Playtesting becomes a significant hurdle here; playtest and beta test input across industries typically gets about an 8% - 10% return on delivery. The AL playtests are a bit higher, with something around a 20% return... but this still isn't super high. We are looking at wrapping up story arcs (and perhaps even starting new ones!) in the T3 & T4 adventures, and in order to be successful we will definitely need some help in that arena. Anyone interested in joining the ranks of the AL playtesters can drop us a line at community@dndadventurersleague.org

As for not hitting 100 tables, well, all of my internal story beats were hit (though not all were successful). These were kind like mini 'achievements' in the development path, and those combined with the elapsed time indicated that it was time for me to deploy DDAO-11!

 

[NeverLucky]

From personal experience, high level play requires a DM that can say "No".

For example, when the BBEG appears it forces players to make a Wisdom save. If you fail, you're stunned. If you succeed, you're frightened.

What if you have a Paladin in the party who is immune to Frightened? Tough nuggets, this is a god appearing on the battlefield, you're still frightened for one round.

etc.

One of the major selling points of playing high level is that you get to use all these awesome abilities that you spent so long building up on your character. It's just awful to have a DM arbitrarily negate those hard-earned features. DMs who say "no" to clear-cut character abilities like that are usually power-tripping DMs who try to control everything.

 

[warfteiner]

NeverLucky, I think you're going with a pretty broad generalization about those DMs being on a power-trip. It's great that characters gain access to awesome things at high levels, but at that point they're not going to be fighting basic goblins, kobolds, and cut-throats - instead, they're going to face-to-face with world-ending powers, terrible enchantments, and all sorts of unknowable horrors.

The enemy will know the heroes, almost certainly.

Saying 'no' to everything is bad form, yes, but saying 'no' to specific situations is totally within acceptable limits. After all, this is a complex story to tell and a little conflict goes a long way towards weaving an enjoyable narrative!