Are stores dropping D&D Encounters for Lair Assault?

[lostingeneral]

At an Encounters session a long time ago - before I had even heard Wizards announce Lair Assault - the guys running it at my FLGS gave a quick rundown of it and passed around a sheet to see if there was any interest. If you were interested, you wrote down what days you would prefer it to be on (Wednesday being, naturally, the only non-option) and your name.

It is now set to run on Thursdays here. While I'd imagine some stores might replace one with the other (or perhaps run them in an alternating fashion? Who knows), the one I attend is not, and from what I've heard the other major store in my city is doing something similar.

 

[Samurai]

It might be a case of not having DMs to run both. I run Encounters at my FLGS, and a PF game with my friends on Fridays, and that's all the time I have to spare. If he's going to run Lair Assaults, he'll need to find another DM, and there are none. Have you considered that your store's DM may not have the time to do both, and thus a choice needs to be made?

 

[Matt James]

Our area is running both. It's up to the constraints of the FLGS I believe. Maybe go down and talk with them? In most cases it comes down to the amount of available DMs.

 

[OnlineDM]

It might be a case of not having DMs to run both. I run Encounters at my FLGS, and a PF game with my friends on Fridays, and that's all the time I have to spare. If he's going to run Lair Assaults, he'll need to find another DM, and there are none. Have you considered that your store's DM may not have the time to do both, and thus a choice needs to be made?

Well, my particular store has a bunch of people who DM (including me). Between Encounters and LFR, I know of at least 10 different people who DM regularly. I think it was more of a scheduling question; the organizer has a lot of different events going at the store and perhaps was worried that he wouldn't have enough tables on various nights to run everything.

Still, as a DM who has really enjoyed running Encounters and who isn't excited (at least not at this point) by Lair Assault, I thought dropping Encounters seemed like a bad idea (especially if you want to attract new players). I'm glad he's changed his mind on this.

 

[Pour]

Lair Assault is HIGHLY anticipated at my nearest shop just on the merits of its competitive potential, as you can imagine from checking out my trials and tribulations in the other thread (they've made Encounters competitive between groups).

I'd love to tackle it with a group of friends, though, and might try if I can find a party willing. Then again, I've had no luck there with DMs. Bah, maybe I'll make and run my own. PCs are level 5, but they said to 'work out the kinks' you should practice run through stuff level 8 and up.

 

[Tony Vargas]

There are 3 tables of Encounters at my FLGS. Only three other players have expressed an interesst in Lair Assualt. Looks like Encounters will be staying and Lair Assualt will be a non-starter, for that one venue, anyway.

 

[Taed]

I REALLY wish I had a FLGS running Lair Assault. Never really minded missing Encounters. Unfortunately my nearest FLGS is 8,000 miles away at least.

Where are you? Your tag says "Nagoya, Japan", and on the Wizards site (Store & Event Locator - Wizards of the Coast), Japan has 106 game stores (mostly Magic), 6 of whom run Encounders (closest 75 miles), and 2 with Lair Assault (closest 130 miles). I doubt that there's anyplace on Earth without a FLGS within 8,000 miles, even Antartica (who could "pop over" to New Zealand or Argentina).

You could talk to your FLGS to provide them the information on how to request Lair Assault. You could try some of the Magic stores in/near Nagoya (if that's where you are) since they're already set up with Wizards to request that sort of stuff.

 

[Taed]

There are 3 tables of Encounters at my FLGS. Only three other players have expressed an interesst in Lair Assualt. Looks like Encounters will be staying and Lair Assualt will be a non-starter, for that one venue, anyway.

I play at Tony's store (Illusive Comics & Games in Santa Clara, CA), and actually, Lair Assault has turned out fine. The first week, we ran two tables with 5 players each. Second week had 5 players. Third was 7 players (which actually went OK). Fourth was 5 players. [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] DMed all 4 weeks, and only on the first week was there another DM.

It's certainly not the draw that Encounters is (I think that we had 35 players at its height last year), but it's also at a very different time. Instead of 7 PM on Wednesday, Lair Assault is 2 PM on Sunday. That works out great for me since I only typically game on the weekend due to the whole family going to bed early on school nights.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Thanks for posting Taed, I'd forgotten about this thread.

Yep, we finally did get Lair Assault together. We started a couple weeks late because of other events going on at the store. I've been running, and it can be pretty fun. Very different from Encounters, a nice change of pace, apeals in a different way. I'm pretty sure all the Lair Assault players also play Encounters (at least some of the time), but it's nice to get out of the 1-3 level rut.

It's funny how coming back to the same Encounter week after week distorts character generation, though. Last week, the entire party were Void Genasi. Seriously, how wierd is that?

(Oh, and I killed 'em all - finally!)

 

[Dice4Hire]

Yeah, they should call it optimizer assault.