Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Coreyartus" data-source="post: 6731578" data-attributes="member: 5399">Do your players play a lot of Expeditions, or played in previous OPs?  I've discovered that my players had some of the same problems recording leads in the beginning, and I think that might be a habit "learned" from Organized Play by virtue of how it is normally played--adventures that are completed within 4 hours with a beginning, middle, and end...  I'm not sure a lot of players were expecting to remember a lot of the details, as they didn't expect them to come back and be important so many weeks later down the line.  I sometimes had to lead my players by the nose because they didn't ask the big questions that might normally be asked in a big over-arching campaign.  They've become better and more attentive as they've played on.I've also read that some of the Episodes don't contain enough XP to level up a full table, so some of those Random Encounters might be very necessary to accommodate leveling.  I've "composed" Episodes and planted seeds that led the party to the next steps in their journey that way. Alternatively, embracing the Sandbox nature of the adventure and having the party get in over their heads (requiring retreat from upper level dungeons they're not ready for) is also an option if you don't want to lead them too pointedly. To be honest, balancing out the visiting player/random levels thing makes Encounters really really challenging.  I, personally, couldn't do it.  Theory and practicality don't really mesh in reality for Encounters...  My table decided they didn't want to be open to that much "churn" nor spending time filling new players in on storyline elements that weren't ultimately relevant to too many guest players who didn't really care... We ended up shifting to a closed homeplay game once we hit Tier 2 and we were out of the Encounters program. It was a tough decision to make, but even some other players and DMs were jealous we'd made the decision to actually finish the story, so we didn't get much flak.  It opened up another table for different players and a new DM at my store, so everyone won in the end.I'm not saying you should do that at all.  And perhaps your store will be open to allowing you to continue as a Casual Play/Homegame-using-AL-rules table played at their store (unlike mine that didn't have the space).  But it is my belief that as you get deeper and deeper into the adventure, the less sense it's going to make to visiting players to your table.  Paradoxically, the more you need your players to record leads the less "guest friendly" your table may become.The truth of the matter is that the Encounters material works best when you've got a continual group of people who aren't porting in and out very much at all, who are interested in playing it from beginning to end.  I couldn't make the Encounters requirements work, and the vast majority of tables that have tried (that I know of) also ended up dropping out because they couldn't make it work either.  This is a REAL problem for AL Encounters, I think, and you're getting hit with it smack dab in the face.  I don't envy you.  But fight the good fight before you make big decisions.  Your situation may be entirely different from the one's I've seen and heard about as well as my own.</blockquote>

Verification