Learn about D&D organized play options

If you are running Lost Mines of Phandelver, make sure you see the FAQ here that clarifies Downtime/Renown. While it may be confusing at first because it is a new mechanic, Downtime is a core mechanic and can provide some neat benefits for characters (learn a language, gain gold, etc.). Because of that, it needs to be logged correctly on your Log Sheet. Phandelver uses the Parts as Episodes (as defined in the AL Player's Guide).

New post from Mike Mearls provides a nice overview of the benefits of the Adventurers League plus this news:

"To make things even more interesting, at Gen Con we’re distributing special cards that allow you to track your achievements over the course of the convention. You can turn in your card to reap special rewards that range from useful items for your character to other stuff guaranteed to make everyone in your D&D group jealous."

Of course, those that can't attend won't like that too much, but that is a tried-and-true method to encourage convention attendance. My general preference is for rewards to be cool but not break anything. If you can sit at a table with someone that has a reward and it isn't a big deal, cool. Even better, if the reward is something that helps the party (such as a magic item that allows you to give another PC a bonus), that's super-excellent. But, you can't do the same trick all the time. Varying rewards over time makes sense and any reward is bound to please some but not others.

A couple of convention updates:

Gen Con finished last week and was a tremendous success. All events other than the 1-hour Defiance adventure were sold out, and most of the Defiance slots were filled. Generics were taken, but the hall was usually filled to DM capacity. The EPIC was beyond capacity, using the 7-person table rule for many tables. The EPIC was overall a great success, with some very interesting implications for the future based on faction accomplishments, PC actions, and some deals some PCs made with a particular NPC.

PAX Prime takes place August 29 - Sep 1. This page provides the events. Chris Tulach clarified on Twitter that the D&D play events are running on the 4th floor of the convention center - not at the other locations named on that page. This is a different location than in previous years (and with fewer tables this year). The content includes one new adventure not featured at Gen Con, plus some of the Gen Con content (including the EPIC).

A pretty fun read over on Geek Dads regarding rolling up a character for Adventurers League.

This was the first week of stores officially running AL, and reports are very positive. Several in my feeds report 40+ people, and my local store in Portland, OR reports more than 60 players! That's a record across all of the years they have run Encounters!

I've been running at a store in Houston when I travel there and have had a fair bit of attention - at a store that has never run the program before. The edition and the AL campaign seem to be off to a very strong start!

Playing Experience

Having read the thread, I think I’m finally able to articulate what’s bugging me about the current Adventurer's League experience.

A bit of context—I stopped playing D&D in 2005, skipping 4.0 and PFS entirely. My last experience with any organized play was Living Greyhawk and Living Kingdoms of Kalamar. I am excited about the 5E version of the game, and decided to try it out again.

My experience of the Adventurer’s League was this: an overwhelmed game store with barely enough room for participants (and a dawning awareness that attendance would probably increase as the game catches on). I loved it, but it was a bit crowded, very loud, and in the end I sorta felt like <sad sigh> a cow…

While I love playing with strangers (and that was a big part of the charm of LG), what kept me coming back to LG was playing with familiar friends over and over again. The game store provided those initial connections, but that same venue and situational context worked against continual play experiences of any depth. I grew to love Round Zeros (games played to prepare DMs so they could then run the same game for more players later on) because of the intimacy of actually being with my friends in someone’s private home, not the game store. Being in the “hub” of neighborhood activity was problematic sometimes when that hub wasn’t big enough to accommodate the neighborhood all at once.

And that’s what I found frustrating about my two initial AL experiences. It seems the structure of the experience clearly favors stepping out of the home play environment in favor of playing with strangers—potentially a rotating cast of characters with varying play styles, experience, ages, and expectations—in a venue that may or may not actually be able to handle the potential number of players (or with organizers that--based on the horror stories I've read--may or may not know what their doing, or even store owners that sadly may or may not actually care, none of which were my experience). This does have an impact on the flavor of play. And the AL is literally saying, by throttling the availability of the adventures it offers mainly through stores, that there are limited alternatives and taking advantage of them is an exception to the norm.

I’m not saying AL should offer whatever resources and adventures they have for free to home play. But I am saying that it needs to look carefully at what the very nature of the game itself creates for its players, and consider ways of optimally generating a player base that will, naturally through play, begin to be inclined toward more insular groupings once the initial benefit of the OP mechanism is exploited: connecting with other players.

The benefit of playing in an Organized Play experience is that there are rules norms, consistencies, and a clearly delineated hierarchy of benefits that add up to a structure that facilitates a playing style that most strangers can comprehend and work within in order to play with each other. That same structure creates an inherent connection to other groups of players so the participants don’t feel they’re “playing in a vacuum”--there's a national context to their endeavors. It also enables participation in larger events when desired.

It is disheartening to feel that those larger events are somehow required (or even favored). It is disenfranchising to feel that the intimacy of a continuing group of friends in one’s basement should be translated to a public venue, or made public by invitation to (ironically) enable a less complex gaming environment. The game itself bends the players toward personal connections and small groups. AL is going to have to figure out how to make those players want to experience the game in a different way. Without unfortunately feeling like a cow somehow... <sad sigh>

I'm going to continue my AL experiences. I’m going to even DM some games. I like most of the people I’ve met thus far. I’d just rather not play trapped in or tethered to a store to experience the available content. And I worry that without some depth and accommodation to the AL experience, the mechanism may come across to a lot of players as a blatant marketing ploy to get gamers into stores to buy product instead of an effort by a game company to endear people to their game and therefore buy product. The industry has changed, and I would venture that the central hub of the game store is no longer the primary access point for product purchases, and hasn’t been the “heart” of the game for a long time. It’s the play table that’s the heart. It’s awesome to support stores, but funneling game experiences through them might not be the best approach in the long run…

My 2¢.

I hear you, Coreyartus. For what it is worth, I think the amount of same-group-togetherness versus disparate players really varies by store. I travel a lot, and some stores see the same group play together every week. Others rotate slowly, a few dropping out and some staying for even years. At other stores it's a crazy melee of shifting players. At the store where I run I have a mix: 3-4 that really try hard to make it every week and then I can get another 3 that are completely different. However, I expect this will normalize over time, with maybe just 1-2 shifting... and that's because we can only have one table. We have enough interest for at least two tables, which would allow us to choose to have a "regulars" and a "new" table. (Not that I think that's necessarily superior).

AL will adjust. All campaigns shift over time, and I'm sure AL admins are already discussing how the model is working and considering options.

Merric posted a very cool post taking a look at the various AL program on-ramps and play levels and seeing how they weave together. Absolutely worth a read, and this chart is a nice summary.

Morrus interviewed me at Gen Con on D&D Organized Play. Getting to meet him was a lot of fun!

I'm afraid to click on that link. Somebody hold my hand!!!!!

This link is even safer!

The AL site has an excellent article delineating the Encounters program's recent changes and the various options for Encounters vs casual play.