D&D Encounters Season 3 - Keep on the Borderlands

[thalmin]

Yes, it does. This is a program to promote play of D&D in stores. (The Living Forgotten Realms allows play out-of-store). Mind you, if the store is renting the space, does that make it an extension of the store? It may well!

And yes, D&D Encounters are running in Australia. Your local store has to sign up in advance, though: you can't do so once the season has started. I don't think sign-ups for season 3 are live yet, but I'll check.

Cheers!

Sign-ups for stores just went live.

 

[surfarcher]

If small stores aren't allowed to temporarily extend their space by renting additional space nearby it could be a showstopper for some of them. We are talking things like the game shop owner forking out $50 to use the empty shop two doors down for one weekend.

Thanks for chekcing if it's gone live... I'm waiting to hear back on my email to the guys now

 

[pedr]

I don't expect anyone will check or notice if stores use off-site venues to host the events they create. Whether it's 'allowed' or not is something I'm not sure about. There's similar hush-hush wiggle-room on the Wednesday thing, though I think most venues are trying their best to at least run some tables on Wednesdays, even if they run others at other points in the week.

There are a couple of threads on the WotC forums suggesting problems with the sanctioning system at the moment (and when I checked earlier UK-based sanctioning wasn't live) so it might be worth waiting, and checking those forums before sanctioning the event. No harm getting the WPN Organiser sign-up ball rolling, though, if you think you might be the organiser. If the store runs sanctioned Magic events, though, they'll have someone who can do that.

 

[Insight]

I was very, very dissatisfied with the poor job that was done with the Dark Sun Encounters. I may try this, but I'm I don't have a whole lot of faith in this program at this point. I know in my area the Dark Sun Encounters turned a lot of people off to D&D.

I was turned off by Season One and never played Season Two, despite the fact that I really like Dark Sun. It doesn't hurt that I heard bad things about Season Two once it got going.

Due to my foolish nostalgia, I may have to try Season Three, but I will quickly abandon it if it sucks. I'm not really in their target marketing demo, anyway.

 

[Aegeri]

I was very, very dissatisfied with the poor job that was done with the Dark Sun Encounters. I may try this, but I'm I don't have a whole lot of faith in this program at this point. I know in my area the Dark Sun Encounters turned a lot of people off to D&D.

I think it was done too early, with poor pregens and horrific encounter design it was just not ideal. They should have waited until the books came out and maybe gave it more of a look through encounter design wise. I was pretty disappointed with how sadistic the Dark Sun DDE was - especially given this was something for *new* players.

 

[Festivus]

Dark Sun was also more brutal because they used the MM3 monster rules. Chapter 2 seemed easier to me, and Chapter 3, well, just got it tonight so I am reading

 

[MerricB]

My FLGS store in Australia just sanctioned Season 3, so it's live for Australians.

"Season 3 of D&D Encounters is likely to be something pretty spectacular, not only because it will showcase the D&D Essentials Characters, but Players will be allowed to create their own Essentials Characters. Pre-generated Characters will still be included in DM kits to help new Players get quickly into the game, but it is also hoped that after a few weeks, new Players will consider making up Essentials Characters of their own. Season 3 is also going to be a long season – 20 weeks/encounters – and will showcase iconic monsters from the Essentials Monster Vault in this adventure. “Season of the Serpent” will run from September 22nd to February 11th, which was written by Chris Sims, and will be set at the Keep on the Borderlands along the Chaos Scar in the Nentir Vale." -- Neuroglyph Games, GenCon Report part 2

Cheers!

 

[pedr]

The GenCon WotC seminar where Chris Tulach (& Greg Bilsland and Jennifer Clark Wilkes) talk about Encounters is now available as a D&D podcast, though at the moment I can only find it via iTunes and I don't know how to link to that. There's not a huge amount said that isn't in some printed form, though there's some interesting discussion about the reasoning behind some choices they've made. One notable thing: it doesn't sound as if players will have free reign to create whatever character they like for Encounters. Chris described the rules as 'Essentials plus', i.e. make an Essentials character and/or use a few specified rules elements from other books, rather than the free-for-all that was season 1 of Encounters and which is largely the rule for LFR. (Also bonus information about the plans for Game Days this year and next).

Also, since this might as well be the 'Encounters' thread, WotC announced yesterday that when chapter 3 of season 2 starts next Wednesday, you'll be able to create Dark Sun characters for that chapter rather than having to use the pregens. Details (and character creation restrictions) details here.

 

[Peraion Graufalke]

The GenCon WotC seminar where Chris Tulach (& Greg Bilsland and Jennifer Clark Wilkes) talk about Encounters is now available as a D&D podcast, though at the moment I can only find it via iTunes and I don't know how to link to that.

http://media.wizards.com/podcasts/DNDPodcast_Encounters.mp3

 

[josha]

I'm going to DM this, anything retro is probably awesome and I love essentials!