Have You played In An Official D&D Adventurer's League Event?

Never have. The WotC locator tool is useless - it shows over a dozen stores in my area that participate in Adventurer's League, but most of them actually don't. When I call to check, half of them haven't heard of it before, and the other half said they used to, but stopped a year ago or more. There is one store in the next town over that has an active running game, but it's a 45 minute drive away, and happens right in the middle of my workday. My normal gaming group once tried to run a home AL game, but we found the restrictions too restricting for no benefit.

 

[rooneg]

What's contradictory about this to me is that there were certs printed and given out for this most recent campaign, Storm King's Thunder. There's certs for some magic items and not for others, which is not helpful. For example, there's a cert for the tressym familiar, which raised questions at my table if more than one character could acquire a tressym familiar. And there's some sections of the book which say, for example, "Roll on Magic Item Table B in the DMG", which is fine, but my (I suppose now former) Local Coordinator seemed to think that this was not AL-legal.

The Tressym cert was part of the A Great Upheaval launch event adventure, it was intended to be something special for in-store play only, as I understand it. Other than that, WotC appears to have been moving away from certs for stuff in the hardcover adventures. They still exist for the one-shot AL adventures you can get from DM's Guild, but they're not required. You can give them out to your players if you want, but if you don't they can still do basically everything with them that they used to with certs (the one exception being that you can't currently trade non-certed items to Fai Chen at conventions, but that may change next season).

As for the magic weapon thing, yes, I will say that's one of the scenarios where I asked my players if they were okay with us breaking AL rules and they agreed to it. This was our compromise after 12 weeks of whining about not being able to buy magic items. I don't like to enforce rules I don't agree with in the first place when it's making my players have less fun. But yes, perhaps I wasn't clear in my first post. That issue wasn't necessarily that there wasn't a cert, but that you couldn't buy magic items in general (and I assumed that rule existed in part due to the lack of certs).

The "you can't buy magic items in general" thing has nothing to do with certs, it's just that 5e in general leans away from there being an on-demand magic item shop available to characters. Then new faction downtime activity that lets you get items if you're a level 3 faction member is the first time anything like that has been allowed, and it's quite limited in the specifics.

 

[AlphaDean]

Let me be perfectly honest. I personally hate the Adventures League. Organized play in D&D is way to restrictive in my opinion. I understand the limitation set forth to make it cohesive and fair for all. Yet there are a ton of cool options in the DMG and PHB that are not legal for organized play. I've actually started running Cypher System organized for Numenera and its so much better. The adventures are built in a manner that they can be dropped right in the middle of your campaign with out ever missing a beat. Also all options are available and the game doesn't grind to a boring tunnel of all the same.

 

[AlphaDean]

Also I run AL games. I don't like to, but sometimes its the only way to get my gaming fix

 

[Motorskills]

I've played at two Cons this year, I'll be at GaryCon, GenCon, Dave's Con of the Vale, and GameholeCon again in 2017 to specifically play AL sessions.

How would you rate these Cons (and what is their approx cost)? I get up to Wisconsin fairly often and might decide to hang over for a weekend or two.

 

[Warmaster Horus]

I play a lot of AL. Mainly because we have a great gaming community here and in the region and it fits my schedule. Unlike a home game I don't have to wrangle who can make it when and who's running and all those things that adult life makes so arduous. That said, you need to know going in that it is what it is. It can be a lot of fun, especially if you have a steady group and time to roleplay. But your game, the story and character, will be confined by the league in ways that they wouldn't be in a home campaign. But the essential D&D experiences are still there - you're still sitting down with other gamers, exploring and fighting, winning and losing, just like any other game.

 

[AlphaDean]

How would you rate these Cons (and what is their approx cost)? I get up to Wisconsin fairly often and might decide to hang over for a weekend or two.

Cons are normally pretty good. They cost are normally negligible. 50 to 75 dollars for the weekend, which is normally 3 to 4 days. AL is really a good gateway into gaming. After. One gets into the game, I really believe that's when the fun begins

 

[Motorskills]

I've done a bunch of AL sessions, mostly at Cons, but three or four drop-ins at random stores, a couple of short home campaigns (I DM'd), and a few sessions at my hometown FLGS.

The last was fine, but my life schedule meant I wouldn't ever be a regular. That was okay, since the place was a bit crowded for my tastes, but decent folks to play with nonetheless.

The home campaigns were fine, I mostly kept logs for the other players, so that they could take their PCs elsewhere. (I now run a SKT campaign which is AL-legal, more or less, and I would fill in logs for my players if they asked for such).

Cons have been a mixed bag, but overwhelmingly positive. I like playing with different folks, shakes things up for me. The highest and lowest points were at the same Con.


The drop-ins at local stores were an unmitigated disaster. Urgh, will never repeat that experiment....

 

[Motorskills]

Cons are normally pretty good. They cost are normally negligible. 50 to 75 dollars for the weekend, which is normally 3 to 4 days. AL is really a good gateway into gaming. After. One gets into the game, I really believe that's when the fun begins

Sure, I just wondered if the WI events were similar.

It might be the Baldman events that skew things. I'm not complaining since what they offer is professional for the most part.

(That said I don't like the randomness of sign-up when there is so much money involved).

 

[Olive]

I played in a one hour session at PAX Aus this year. I was with my sister (big gamer), my wife (played about 6 months in a 3e campaign over a decade ago) and my 8 and 10 year old boys (lots of board games and two previous D&D sessions). We had a fun DM and had a good time. I can't see myself ever playing AL regularly at a shop though.

Whooot: 4,000 posts!

 

[MerricB]

I played in a one hour session at PAX Aus this year. I was with my sister (big gamer), my wife (played about 6 months in a 3e campaign over a decade ago) and my 8 and 10 year old boys (lots of board games and two previous D&D sessions). We had a fun DM and had a good time. I can't see myself ever playing AL regularly at a shop though.

I glad you had a good time! The D&D at PAX Aus was fun to organise.

I run a homebrew game on Fridays, and run D&D AL games on Wednesdays and Saturdays. We typically get 20-30 people each day here in Ballarat, and running DDAL content helps greatly with the portability of characters, and also allows players to choose the style of game they want - we have both hardcover campaigns and the shorter one-shot adventures running (and a bunch of the players then have formed their own homebrew groups... whilst still coming to the group DDAL activities).

Whooot: 4,000 posts!

Congratulations!