D&D Organized Play: From the RPGA to the D&D Adventurers League

The Adventurers League (AL) is the organized play program for the popular roleplaying game, Dungeons & Dragons. The program offers a structured and cohesive gaming experience for both players and Dungeon Masters, and provides opportunities to connect with other players and DMs locally, at conventions, and online.

The Adventurers League (AL) is the organized play program for the popular roleplaying game, Dungeons & Dragons. The program offers a structured and cohesive gaming experience for both players and Dungeon Masters (DMs), and provides opportunities to connect with other players and DMs locally, at conventions, and online.

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The D&D AL is the latest iteration of a long line of organized play programs for D&D, with roots dating back to the creation of the Role Playing Game Association (RPGA) in 1980. The RPGA played a key role in promoting role-playing games and bringing players from various locations together for tournaments and conventions. Its focus on TSR's most popular games, such as AD&D, provided players with unique experiences that could only be found at RPGA events.

Living Campaigns​

One of the organization's most innovative concepts was the introduction of "living campaigns" with Living City in 1987. This allowed players to create persistent characters and advance them through a series of events at conventions, fostering a sense of community and shared experience among players.

Due to its popularity, the living campaigns concept eventually overshadowed traditional RPGA tournaments and conventions. One of the most well-known living campaigns was the Living Greyhawk campaign, which ran from 2000 to 2008 using 3rd edition D&D rules. In 2008, Wizards of the Coast launched the last official living campaign, Living Forgotten Realms, which used 4th edition D&D and ran until 2014.

While some living campaigns allowed organized play in stores Wizard's launched the D&D Delve Night program in 2008, which eventually became D&D Encounters, aimed at friendly local game stores for 4th edition D&D.

D&D Encounters​

This weekly program was designed to provide players with a casual and consistent way to play D&D in a local game store. Each session of D&D Encounters featured a portion of an adventure that was intended to be completed in a single session. These adventures were designed to be easy to learn and fun to play, making them a great introduction to the game for new players.

At the end of 4th edition's publishing run D&D Encounters would feature content for both 4th edition and D&D Next (5th edition), both sharing the same storyline. This continued from Season 11: War of Everlasting Darkness through Season 16: Legacy of the Crystal Shard. It's also interesting to note that seasons 14-16 featured D&D 3.5 conversions as well, in an attempt to lure back 3rd edition players, many of whom skipped 4th edition due to its drastic changes. D&D Encounters lasted for 20 seasons with the last two falling under Wizards of the Coasts new organized play program the D&D Adventurers League.

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D&D Adventurers League​

The D&D Adventurers League was announced in 2014 and along with it the six admins that would run it with Chris Tulach from Wizards of the Coast as their main point of contact. Full Disclosure: I was one of the admins for the first four years of the D&D Adventurers League. The first campaign season the AL had a hand in was Season 19: Hoard of the Dragon Queen. The early years of the AL were focused on creating a coherent and consistent experience for players with the same theme as the concurrently released hardcover adventure for D&D. The first season of adventures, called the "Tyranny of Dragons," was primarily set in the Moonsea region of the Forgotten Realms and featured a series of interconnected quests that players could playthrough, called D&D Expeditions.

In addition to D&D Encounters & D&D Expeditions there was also D&D Epics, made specifically to be played at conventions, these were adventures that were so large in scale that it took numerous tables of players to complete it. Over the years these adventures scaled with the level of characters in AL and some were spread across all 4 tiers of play, level 1-4, 6-10, 11-16, and 17+ to make some truly Epic adventures. All three of these adventure types together might sound like a living campaign and the AL was almost was called the Living Moonsea, but the program was setup to span more than a single campaign and more than one campaign world.

Most of these programs and adventure types are still around today although how they are presented may have changed. Over the years many smaller initiatives have come and gone within the league, such as the Facebook and G+ groups, the local coordinators program, DM Rewards, Fai Chen’s Fantastical Faire, Convention Creation Content, factions, and the AL’s own website, but some have stayed, such as at-home play, on-line play, Liar’s Night, Dungeoncraft, and the increasing role of some convention organizers (AKA Baldman Games and Gameholecon) plus the D&D Virtual Weekends all of which will be touched on in future articles. The addition of new initiatives as others fall away is also seen in the comings and goings of AL admins and Wizards liaisons as different people have different views and desires for the program over the intervening years which we’ll discuss in future columns.

In addition to the living campaign style organized play TSR and Wizards of the Coast offered also offered additional organized play events over the years such as D&D Open Championship, Free RPG Day, Dungeons & Dragons gamedays, monthly Lair Assaults, and others.

The Future of Organized Play​

Organized play has always been an ever-shifting part of D&D, sometimes TSR or Wizards is very hands on, while other times they barely seemed to realize it was there. Regardless of where they are, we’ll be covering up to the minute changes, delves into the history of D&D organized play, and reviewing current or old organized play rules and content in this column.

To keep up with the D&D Adventurers League they have a blog at that Yawning Portal subdomain of the D&D site: Blog | Wizards of the Coast
 

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aarduini

Explorer
Great detailed history of dnd organized play by someone who's been behind the scenes. Personally, i'm bored with AL. I want an organized play model that allows us to play independant games. Perhaps those behind ORC can make one. I think there are a couple out there already. Living Arcanis has one, and i think Esper Genesis does as well. All it takes is marketing and acceptance from the community. Personally, I think the adventures written by Wizards really fall short of good. There are better ones out there. Lets make it happen!
 

payn

I don't believe in the no-win scenario
Great detailed history of dnd organized play by someone who's been behind the scenes. Personally, i'm bored with AL. I want an organized play model that allows us to play independant games. Perhaps those behind ORC can make one. I think there are a couple out there already. Living Arcanis has one, and i think Esper Genesis does as well. All it takes is marketing and acceptance from the community. Personally, I think the adventures written by Wizards really fall short of good. There are better ones out there. Lets make it happen!
Is PFS an independent game? Im not following what exactly you mean by that.
 


jasper

Rotten DM
The cheerleader for my FLGS used to be the state's coordinator. And his contacts occasionally talk to us about running AL at cons. The DM rewards are still in affect but it mainly just count the # of hours you DM and pull x from column B.
The Discord Channel is the "official" information channel. Join the Dungeons & Dragons Discord Server! And the Wotc AL page Adventurers League | Organized Play | Dungeons & Dragons is mostly out dated. AL player and DM guide are on their Verion 13 currently.
 

aco175

Legend
I see the adventures mostly at the conventions. I guess they would be ok if I played at the my LFGS with a more random group of players.
 

MGibster

Legend
I ran a lot of Living Greyhawk games from 2001-2003. I eventually got a bit tired of it because I felt like a rubber stamp. i.e. People just playing the adventures and expecting me to hand out all the treasure and experience with little effort on their part. With the release of 3.5, my Living Greyhawk days came to an end.
 

DerekSTheRed

Explorer
I really liked the Living Grayhawk era of Organized Play. The most interesting part was dividing up specific countries in Grayhawk and mapping them to real world regions. The regionality gave the players ownership of the story. And since Grayhawk was basically a sandbox for players while all the official stories happened in Forgotten Realms, you didn't have to worry about some main story getting shoe horned in.

The quality of play however was inconsistent from region to region. I played in the Texas/Oklahoma region which was the Bandit Kingdoms in Grayhawk. The Band Kingdoms region and the IUZ meta-region I thought had an excellent mix of writing and players. I enjoyed going to conventions to be the first to play a module. The "results" of the adventures of the tables at the con affected the regional story line. You would see the same folks at conventions and reconnect with friends you made at these tables.

I wish that 4E didn't kill Living Greyhawk and WotC had found a way to keep it going in 4E. The Living Forgotten Realms just wasn't the same feeling even if you were (like me) more than happy to play 4E. Most of the friends I made playing Living Grayhawk moved on to Pathfinder and Living Arcanis. I ended up drifting away from Organized play to get married and have kids. I got back into AL with 5E and starting going to an FLGS regularly but it wasn't the same.

Once the pandemic shut everything down I haven't gone back to any store. This messes up the old ecosystem. It used to be I would go to a convention and play the modules. Then I would come back to a weekly game at an FLGS and run the same modules for those that couldn't make the local con. I would also play LG modules online so I could DM them on Saturday at a store. There used to be a rule that you couldn't play a module if you DM'd it. They sort of allowed ways around that now, but I do wonder how much Organized Play relies on in store gaming, versus convention gaming, versus online gaming.
 

Davinshe

Explorer
I have played a fair bit of AL, but I feel the system really needs to be reworked from the ground up. It definitely feels very low stakes because there's very little chance for players to affect the course of the adventure by their actions. The overwhelming number of players treat it as just an MMO played via tabletop, without even an attempt at roleplay. And the overwhelming majority of adventures it produces are
just. so. bland.
Organized play was actually quite a bit better in 4e, because if you're going to make combat the main draw of the adventure, 4e did it better.
Alright, down off my soapbox...
 

jasper

Rotten DM
I have played a fair bit of AL, but I feel the system really needs to be reworked from the ground up. It definitely feels very low stakes because there's very little chance for players to affect the course of the adventure by their actions. The overwhelming number of players treat it as just an MMO played via tabletop, without even an attempt at roleplay. And the overwhelming majority of adventures it produces are
just. so. bland.
Organized play was actually quite a bit better in 4e, because if you're going to make combat the main draw of the adventure, 4e did it better.
Alright, down off my soapbox...
Expand on how you will change it. One thing I would do is have Story Awards if you failed or ticked off the wrong people. And bring back some faction story awards.
 

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