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.

 

[Nareth]

I was actually a Local Coordinator for AL, and was running games for the 5e playtest before that started. I loved being able to teach new players how the game worked, and seeing table after table come in the door for a few years. We had our ups and downs, but the experience I had with the program was a great one.

 

[darjr]

Cons: Limits DM creativity severely and doesn't play nice with new ideas. There is no craftsmanship for the individual DM, you just take the plug and play modules and run them and if you step out of line some AL rules lawyer reports you. Kind of like the industrial revolution, in a bad way.

This is almost completely wrong. I have often run mods completely off the rails, and for a bit had a player who kinda took it as a challenge to do just that while I was running, in a fun way. In fact the admins have talked about adding story beats to adventures so that DM's know the story points that should be brought to the players attention, somehow, for when it does happen. Granted you CAN run the adventures on a rail but you never have to and in all my time running I've never been 'turned in' for going off of the rails, as far as I know. If I have it was never brought to my attention and it was probably dismissed out right, as it should be.

In fact if you want to hear it directly Shawn Merwin @smerwin29 (author of every seasons intro adventure for AL) reiterates it in the Down with D&D podcast http://misdirectedmark.com/dwdd79-getting-into-al-and-clerics/

 

[Greg K]

No, I have not. I would give up playing rpgs before joining an organized play event.

 

[Nareth]

I have to ask, why?

 

[G0DL1K3D3V1L]

I have, and I thoroughly enjoy it. It gives me opportunities to play or DM adventures that I may not have been able to due to scarcity of players or conflicts in time or whatever else that prevents a person from being able to play or DM D&D regularly. I like the portability of the characters, and the uniformity of rules, because it tends to ensure everyone is on a level playing field, you tend to know what to expect with the rules, you have a community of players sharing your hobby among whom you can play with, and you still get to create or experience memorable stories or experiences at the table.

Of course I understand the appeal of Homebrew games, and AL is not for everyone. But given my circumstances, it's the only way I can get my D&D fix.

 

[Lucas Blackstone]

I did a bunch of home games in Adventurer's League. Those were fine because we felt better about going off the rail so to speak. In actual store games I feel like the content is a bit more narrow. For what it is AL is pretty cool. But a standardized game isn't the most fun way to play D&D in my opinion. I think homebrew is much better because of the unlimited freedom in story and rules.

 

[pogre]

I would like to, but just have not had the opportunity. It seems like a rich ground for recruiting players, which would be my primary motivation.

 

[Pablo D. Alpízar]

yeah, i went and ventured with my chars to participate in organized play stores in the US. Where I attended, and used characters leveled in organized play from stores in my country (2500 miles away) Costa Rica. It was cool, I also went to cons, and there received specific content that you only get at cons (certs), content that is impossible to obtain where i come from.

There's also organized play Onnline via roll20, FG, or just Hangouts.

Organized play is a great tool to meet new people from a rpg-community.

 

[osyrus68]

I have, and for the most part my experiences haven't been the greatest.

For "organized play" nothing seems organized. To many voices. Especially on their facebook pages. Arguments are allowed to ensue over the dumbest of things and how many times something is asked or talked about (when there's NO good way to search for anything amongst the AL program) but yet a DM asking for notes from others is told "if that exists you better not distribute that".

Second I noticed no real desire for it here in a fairly large metropolitan area of Phoenix. That's not D&D's fault (though it might be from previous years) but whenever you walk into a store and here .... "Wizards sucks"...."this is edition was better"...bad taste in my mouth to have the stupid edition wars constantly.

Third, this goes back to the organized bit again, but aren't they supposed to be the same set of rules from table to table?? yeah not in ANY experience I had unless it was the same DM.

I know organized play isn't really a thing for me as I have come to cringe whenever I hear one of the previous LC/RC say "the community..."...wrong....organized play to me means top down structure. Not bottom up. The miscommunication and flat out wrong answers being distributed and told over and over again is why the community should sometimes be shut up.

I also do not like that it encourages playing a character until about level 5 (sometimes 10) and then...NEW character! what if I really liked this one??? "then you can take him to a home brew!!" "well then he's not AL legal anymore for when they DO have higher adventures!! so shut your pie hole!"

Factions!!!! WOO HOO!!! oh wait nope. factions were a complete waste. Had some play in the first season. what a wasted opportunity.

I wanted to very much enjoy AL. Heck even wanted to become a LC at one time....then it seemed like the old nerd rules started to apply..... "nerd gets some power, everyone suffers because he/she wants his/her way" instead of buying into what the whole organized thing was supposed to be about. Plus it seemed like there was no real support from Wizards officially. everything seemed to come with the little legaleze at the bottom and that was in speak. If you have to say "I don't want to speak for someone else..." okay than don't. Unless you are authorized to.

I really hope there is a future for AL.....

 

[rooneg]

Third, this goes back to the organized bit again, but aren't they supposed to be the same set of rules from table to table?? yeah not in ANY experience I had unless it was the same DM.

Just out of curiosity, what sort of variation are you actually seeing in practice? In my experience, things seem to work about the same from table to table.

I also do not like that it encourages playing a character until about level 5 (sometimes 10) and then...NEW character! what if I really liked this one??? "then you can take him to a home brew!!" "well then he's not AL legal anymore for when they DO have higher adventures!! so shut your pie hole!"

Umm, there seem to be plenty of Tier 3 adventures running at the cons I've been to lately. Tier 4 ones are starting to show up now. Not saying this stuff is super common, but if you look for it then it's there.

Factions!!!! WOO HOO!!! oh wait nope. factions were a complete waste. Had some play in the first season. what a wasted opportunity.

Honestly, I don't get the complaint here either. The factions serve a baseline purpose in basically all games (i.e. "here's some justification for why these random PCs are here for this adventure"), and sometimes there's a bit more. Heck, now they're starting to branch out into per-faction downtime activities (which they also had in one previous season). What more are you hoping to do with factions that isn't already being done?