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.

 

[Gecko85]

I had never played organized play until a little over a year ago, and now it's all I play. I played with friend back in the day, but hadn't played for a long time. Just prior to 5e, I got invited to an online (Roll20) Pathfinder campaign, which I played for about a year. Then 5e came out, and a group of co-workers organized a once-a-week game after work. We played off and on for about a year, but slowly but surely it died. One person had a conflict pop up on either of the evenings that worked for everyone else, two others moved away...so it ended.

I saw someone post something about a convention many miles away, in Wisconsin, not far from where this hobby began. Looking at the list of attendees, I saw that many of the originals from back in the day were going to be there (Mentzer, Greenwood, the Gygax boys, and more)...so I went. That weekend was my first introduction to organized play/Adventurer's League. I loved it. After three full days of play my character had reached 5th level. I didn't jump in back at home right away, but eventually found an AL game at a local game shop. They play every Weds and Fri evenings, and sometimes have special events on Saturdays. I've been splitting my time between playing and DMing, and now have three characters (my original AL character who is now 11th level, a 7th level character, and a newer 3rd level character).

AL has allowed me to keep playing when my in-person group folded. Since I'm long past being in school, finding a new in-person group isn't nearly as easy. (I tried - our group posted on several message boards, Craigslist, etc. for replacement players, but none stuck. They all wanted to play, and liked playing, but it seems like just about everything else was a higher priority...it's hard to have a regular game when half the people don't show up on a regular basis.) I've met several new people playing AL...there's a core group of regulars, with new people coming all the time. We usually have 2 to 3 tables each session.

 

[smerwin29]

Thanks for helping clear up the misconceptions, [MENTION=52905]darjr[/MENTION]. There are just so many out there. Most are just a lack of information, with people going on totally incorrect hearsay or taking an experience from 10 years ago and assuming nothing has changed. Some of it is willful ignorance, knowing better but needing to make an irrelevant point.

AL is more than just an Organized Play campaign: it is a tool that can be used in different ways to create some fun gaming experiences and opportunities--and that tool can be used in different ways. You don't need to play in public. You don't need to play with strangers (although I am so glad that I have, as many of my closest gaming friends began as strangers met through public play). You don't have to run adventures exactly as written. You can even buy the adventures and run them as part of your homebrew campaign, without following any AL-specific rules.

AL (and other OP campaigns) aren't for everyone. I've got great gaming friends who wouldn't touch AL or other OP stuff with the proverbial 10-foot pole, because it doesn't meet their needs, and that's OK. There are, by necessity, limits to what AL can be. If your gaming needs are met other ways, rock on!

All I can add is that OP over the years, and AL most recently, has absolutely been a blessing for me. From becoming a better DM by running games for a variety of players, to (hopefully) improving my adventure-writing and game-design skills by contributing to campaigns, to getting to work with many of the great D&D minds of our generation: I wouldn't trade those parts of my gaming life and career for anything.

 

[arieste]

I only got into RPGs this year. The first few times, I played in various "homebrew" things, with mixed results. It always seemed that every DM or game had certain quirks that I wasn't liking . For example, one DM running 5e was using alternate sneak attack rules which resulted in two rogues getting a total of zero sneak attacks in a 4hr session. Another DM decided one day that we'd all get +8 STR because he said so... "so what about my dex-based character?" ...

Eventually, I discovered adventurer's league. I was immediately drawn to the idea of being able to transport my character and play anywhere and to the idea of the same character building and DMing rules.

Since then I've played for 3 months in a regular HC AL game and have played AL in about 10 different locations across 4 cities. It's great! Anywhere - travel for work, I now look up the local game!

Sure, there some restrictions, but for the most part, I find they add more to the gameplay than they take away. Go AL!

Some people complain about AL "stifling creativity" but I find that the really creative people thrive off the challenge of having to be creative within limit.

 

[bottomlessblue]

So, I've played AL on a weekly basis for about the last two years, give or take, and DMed for the last year. Mostly the hardcover campaigns, as I seldom have time on the weekends to make it out for my area's events for the one-shot adventures. I used to have a lot more problems with it than I do now, mostly as a matter of adjusting from a very free-wheeling college gaming group to a group where there are far more rules and regulations than I'm used to. Some of them I find actually useful, if only because we're playing with a bunch of random people who don't know each other, that I would be more comfortable removing in a group of friends (for example, the restrictions on evil alignments - I don't need chaotic evil randos at my table, but I can trust some of my friends to play it well).

The only restriction that really still chafes me is giving out magic items within the story that there are no certs for. I've had players save up gold for a magic weapon and then realize they couldn't take it to any other table in our area because they wouldn't have a cert, for example. And, with Volo's guide, the restriction on flying races, which is only moderately vexing. I understand why these rules are in place, but understanding doesn't mean I have to like it. I have one or two players at my regular table who point out if something I'm about to do as a DM is not AL-legal, and for the most part, my players don't have a problem with me going ahead with it anyway. I enjoy the stories as written, and I don't feel much need to go off-track with them, and when we do, there's always ways to bring it back to the core story beats.

My bigger problem, which is almost certainly tied to my specific region (and my region seems to be something of a rare thing based on reading this thread), is that AL has to some extent taken over all other D&D play. My area is blessed with quite a few friendly local game stores, many of which run multiple tables of AL every week (sometimes multiple times a week). We have a lot of very active participants, which is awesome (I'm guaranteed a full table when I show up to run every week, basically). They're enthusiastic and knowledgeable and I'm glad they get more from the AL experience than I do. But if you try to put together any kind of non-AL D&D event, things kind of fall apart. You'll get a little bit of interest, but someone will ask "Is this AL-legal? Can I bring my AL character?" and you reply that it's homebrew, you will get an alarmingly high number of people who say "Sorry, I only play AL these days". Like I said, I'm glad that they enjoy it so much, but as someone who writes and sells adventures on the DM's Guild, it can be really discouraging to know that 1) you can't get playtesters for this, 2) your friends won't ever play your stuff even if they buy it because it's not AL-legal.

Basically, AL meets my needs to regularity and consistency (I've showed up to DM nearly every Tuesday night for over a year and I've only once not had enough players to run a game (and then we ran a game anyway)). It's easy to run, since the pre-written campaigns require next to no prep work compared to a homebrew. And I've made a lot of really wonderful, fun friends through AL. But for other things - homebrew games, my own stories, etc - I end up turning more to other game systems (which also have very active local followings). Savage Worlds, FATE, and Pathfinder all have active regular games that scratch my itch for homebrew, but I'd love to be able to do more of that with D&D, because I LOVE D&D 5e as a system.

 

[rooneg]

The only restriction that really still chafes me is giving out magic items within the story that there are no certs for. I've had players save up gold for a magic weapon and then realize they couldn't take it to any other table in our area because they wouldn't have a cert, for example.

Umm, certs aren't required for magic items anymore, so anything you're giving out that's actually specified in the adventure you're running should be just fine at other tables, even if there's no cert at all. As long as it's logged on their log sheet it's all good.

That said, "save up gold for a magic weapon" is kind of a red flag. Up until very recently (with the faction downtime activities they just released) there haven't been any legal ways to buy a magic item at all. If you're letting players buy magic items in general that's not a "there's no cert so they can't take it to another table" problem, that's a "you're just not following the rules of AL, so it can't be taken to another table" problem.

 

[Morrus]

Huh. Well this thread turned into an organised campaign. It was a survey, not an election!

 

[Larry Dauber]

NO but would like to try.

 

[bottomlessblue]

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.

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).

 

[Gardens & Goblins]

Once, online - I was in Taiwan at the time. It was 3 am. Good times!

 

[discosoc]

I haven't played in one, but I've sat in while some other people did. I can see the value in getting new people into the game, especially with how much better it is to learn by playing than trying to learn by reading a whole book. It can also help ease people into the local community who might otherwise not know how to find groups.

That said, I can't imagine it's a very good long-term experience for most people. The first 30 minutes of the game I watched was kind of awkward with the complete lack of friend-chemistry that comes with rotating players. One guy was disappointed that he couldn't play the same character as last week (something about being the wrong level -- maybe a level too low or something), so he had to roll a new one. He basically just rerolled the same character at a level higher, but without the earned gear of the last one. I could totally feel his frustration. Anyway, the game itself went well enough, although the lack of table chemistry really felt weird. I'm also pretty sure the GM didn't really want to be the GM, because he only seemed to get excited when a few people would comment about a previous session that his character was included in.

To me, the number one motivator for playing rpg's with friends is the long-term shared experiences with friends. I just didn't get that vibe from the session. I never sat in on another one the whole way through, but I sometimes do catch 10 or 15 minutes of play here and there, and I still get the same overall awkward vibes.