D&D 5E How many gamers ACTUALLY play in AL?

[CapnZapp]

No. They're not available generally.

They're not available officially or legitimately, leaving players with no affiliated stores or outside the states with few options.

(A more complete answer)

 

[CapnZapp]

It's worth noting that the passwords generally wind up on the internet - and they are NOT that hard. And the DDEX series are quite well pirated, too.

Plus, you can ask your FLGS if they will let you know the download password - some stores do.

I wish they'd put them up for legit use outside the league use.

Yes. As always, this restriction hurts people with morals only, and adding more adventures to the general 5e playing public would probably be better for building the customer base anyway.

But what do I know, I don't work at WotC...

 

[aramis erak]

That's... impressive. Is the Mom a (former?) gamer, or is it the kid who's keen to experience different GMs?

His mom plays in one game the Kid DM's... that's his home game. She may have been playing last session; they weren't at my table this time. (They were two months ago.)

Now, in Corvallis... of the regular 5, only 2 have a regular game outside. However, a LOT of the semi-regulars (That store varied from 3 people to 24 people based upon what was happening at OSU) had outside games - in fact, except for the full time five, almost all of them mentioned outside games. Since I returned to Anchorage, I'm aware of two people running games besides D&D in Corvallis... they play D&D at the store, and non-D&D home games. Those are just the folk I'm still in touch with.

At JustAGameCon (a local game con for the greater Corvallis/Albany area), there were 4 tables running at one point, and only 10 of the people playing did I recognize from Matts' Comics. Several came south from Portland... And that's not counting the 20-something Pathfinder players.

 

[mflayermonk]

I would guess there are around 5,000 AL Players in the US.

 

[Coredump]

I understand that AL players want official material.

I hope they in return understand how that want is incompatible with WotC's strategy for 5e, i.e. a massive decrease in official material, options and alternatives, compared to previous editions and Pathfinder.

Your assertion makes no sense. It is WotC that has been making the AL Official material.... 30 adventures a year, plus 4 Epic adventures a year.

Sure seems to be compatible with their strategy....

 

[delericho]

I would guess there are around 5,000 AL Players in the US.

That seems awfully low. I think WotC are still estimating about a million regular D&D players (it may well have gone up again), and I'd expect AL to represent a non-trivial percentage of that. So we're talking tens of thousands, if not in the low hundred thousands.

That would be my guess, anyway.

 

[greylurk]

What good reason could there be for not making them available for free to the community...

I believe they're written by AL members, not the WotC staff writers and contractors like the published modules, so there might be a quality gradient that they're concerned about.

I haven't actually read any of them so I could be entirely wrong though.

Also, if you want access to them without running a game at a store, you can set up an online game that broadcasts it's actual play sessions on You Tube or Twitch, and they'll give you access to Expeditions modules.

 

[mflayermonk]

That seems awfully low. I think WotC are still estimating about a million regular D&D players (it may well have gone up again), and I'd expect AL to represent a non-trivial percentage of that. So we're talking tens of thousands, if not in the low hundred thousands.

That would be my guess, anyway.

The Facebook group has 7,831 members.

We have about 50 players in my region of 3 million people. How about your local region?

 

[delericho]

The Facebook group has 7,831 members.

We have about 50 players in my region of 3 million people. How about your local region?

As I said up-thread, it effectively doesn't exist in my world.

I'm not saying your estimate is wrong, since I don't know the actual numbers. It just seems that 5,000 is really low. But then, maybe that's because AL is really small.

 

[MerricB]

I'm not saying your estimate is wrong, since I don't know the actual numbers. It just seems that 5,000 is really low. But then, maybe that's because AL is really small.

To give you an idea of how little penetration that Facebook group has, there are about 35 players I would class as fairly regular players here in Ballarat. Four of them are in the Facebook group. One ninth.



Cheers!