New Organized Play Program (D&D Adventurer's League

[MerricB]

I've gathered together a few tweets about the Adventurers League (no apostrophe) on my site, if anyone is interested:
D&D Adventurers League Announced

Cheers!

 

[bogmad]

Can't say for sure, obviously, but it looks to me like they'll be encouraging home games that want to participate in the Adventurers League to buy the published adventures, and from there you can earn certificates for items and such, and then take those characters to other Epics or Expeditions at stores or conventions. -As long as the character matches with organized play rules.

A nice way to help encourage adventure module sales.
A little frustrating that there's no other way to access Epics or Expeditions, but it's better than nothing I guess. Will older Expeditions start showing up in other areas once they're out of date?

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Can't say for sure, obviously, but it looks to me like they'll be encouraging home games that want to participate in the Adventurers League to buy the published adventures, and from there you can earn certificates for items and such, and then take those characters to other Epics or Expeditions at stores or conventions. -As long as the character matches with organized play rules.

Except the direct response to a couple of questions about that kind of thing amounted to "You can't play any of the currently announced things at home, only at stores and cons" and "You don't get certs if you play the adventures at home". Which implies your character isn't official and cannot be brought into Expeditions or Epics if you've played them at home.

 

[bogmad]

Except the direct response to a couple of questions about that kind of thing amounted to "You can't play any of the currently announced things at home, only at stores and cons" and "You don't get certs if you play the adventures at home". Which implies your character isn't official and cannot be brought into Expeditions or Epics if you've played them at home.

Well, you can play the adventures that make up the encounters program at home, and earn items that was actually mentioned, you just can't "trade it [certs or "items" presumably] to another player."
The degree you could port a player from Tyranny of Dragons to a convention "Epic" is up in the air I'll admit. That was must me trying to interpret a Mearls tweet, so who knows how it'll play out officially. https://twitter.com/mikemearls/status/469170641560535041

Also agreed, not being able to do epics or Expeditions at home is frustrating.

 

[smerwin29]

Except the direct response to a couple of questions about that kind of thing amounted to "You can't play any of the currently announced things at home, only at stores and cons" and "You don't get certs if you play the adventures at home". Which implies your character isn't official and cannot be brought into Expeditions or Epics if you've played them at home.

Only if the definition of a "cert" carries over from what it was in previous campaigns. We have not yet heard what "cert" means in the context of this new system.

 

[Mistwell]

Except the direct response to a couple of questions about that kind of thing amounted to "You can't play any of the currently announced things at home, only at stores and cons"

Not true at all. In fact it was the opposite of that direct response - you CAN play them at home.

and "You don't get certs if you play the adventures at home". Which implies your character isn't official and cannot be brought into Expeditions or Epics if you've played them at home.

No, you DO get certs at home, but you cannot TRADE those certs to move the items BETWEEN different characters if they were gained at home.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

No, you DO get certs at home, but you cannot TRADE those certs to move the items BETWEEN different characters if they were gained at home.

No, the response was:
Whorak: Am I correct in understanding there is no support for groups playing at home? Requires a participating FLGS or a Convntn?

Home groups can run the Tyranny of Dragons adventure.

Whorak: Right, but are there rewards (maps, certificates, etc) for home participation, or does all of that require FLGS/con?

Not for home play – certs are used for trading items, so you can earn it in home play but can’t trade it to another player ading items, so you can earn it in home play but can’t trade it to another player

The question was "can you get rewards, like certs for home play?" and the answer was "not for home play". The answer is difficult to interpret precisely but this reads to me "You don't get certs for home play but you do get rewards. You get the items but can't trade it to another players due to the lack of certs."

This really reads to me like diplomatically saying no to the entire concept. It says "Sure, anyone can buy the Tyranny of Dragons adventure and run it at home! We won't stop you!" But if the question is "Can I take my character who finished the Tyranny of Dragons adventure as a home play adventure and keep his level and equipment and play in D&D Expeditions?" I believe the answer would be no. You'd need the official certs which you can only get by playing Tyranny of Dragons at a store.

This is partially my interpretation of that answer and partially my experience with LG and LFR in the past. Both of them had certs too. You needed a cert from every adventure you played in or your character wasn't legal. From time to time, WOTC would release one of their published adventures as an "adapted" and would basically say "Go, buy an adventure and run it. Here are the changes you need to make for LG. Also, here are the official certs."

Plus this was said: "We’ll have more information coming about how homeplay interacts with OP in the weeks ahead. It’s something we’re aware of." and "For those asking about home play and the #dnd Adventurers League – we’ll have more information on that soon. "

This implies to me that they've specifically ruled out home play of the adventures in their current plan but are trying to/already have come up with something else for home play.

 

[Plaguescarred]

RE Organized Play Online

I've run lots of LFR online and met a ton of great people and look forward to run 5E D&D games online through the Adventurer's League!

 

[DerekSTheRed]

This tracks pretty well with my predictions last year. I'm glad they're doing Expeditions. I'm just sad to see it won't have the region system. Setting it only the Moonsea does have its advantages however.

Epics seems like the old LG interactive except they will start a new story arc instead of being an epic conclusion. Encounters seem like it's supposed to be a first taste is free kind of thing. That sounds good in theory but I'm curious to see if it works in practice. That leaves Expeditions as the living sandbox. Presumably this means the novel line won't set any stories in the Moonsea to prevent canonical conflict. Having one region instead of many like LG or LFR is decidedly less epic, but probably much easier to maintain.

I can see how this setup will be used to promote splat books. If you want to get your high level character the cool new magic item in the latest splat book, play that character in the Epic adventure story arc that is used to highlight it. Conversely, start a new character in the Epic and you can play a new race or class from the latest splat book. The Epic kicks off a story arc that continues in published adventures that you can buy after trying them with Encounters, or in the Moonsea adventure from Expedition.

The trade offs seem to be canon writing vs. play location vs. setting vs. adventure cost. You have to play Expeditions and Epics at conventions if you want affect the story but can play Expeditions and possibly Epics at game days or home games later (cert issue not withstanding). Whereas Encounters won't affect the story. Expeditions are only set in the Moonsea while the others can be set anywhere but probably won't be set in the Moonsea in deference to Expeditions. Encounters are a free trial to a paid adventure while Expeditions are free. Con play has its own costs but the modules would probably be free to the player (con organizers might get charged though who knows at this point).

The fact that it will be a cert based magic item system is probably due more to how 5th edition does magic items than any lesson learned from LG or LFR. The cert system worked great for Living City during the 2nd edition days of rare magic items. LG and LFR had to contend with the slotted christmas trees of magic items which led to hard to maintain (from an oganized play perspective) guidelines on character wealth at a specific level.

The open question I have is how does D&D Adventures League work with D&D Insider? If Expeditions gives away adventures, will that draw sales away from DM's who look to D&D Insider for adventures? Does limiting the Expeditions setting to the Moonsea make it attractive enough for players to play them while not too attractive that DMs don't cancel the Insider subscriptions. Or is there no overlap at all? I'm not sure on any of those questions so we'll have to see.

 

[DerekSTheRed]

Re: Certs for home play. How is that to be enforced? If only cons and gamedays can give out certs, how does a WotC know I'm not a game day? Is WotC verifying who is signing up for gamedays to make sure it's just vendors? Can a vendor delegate to a local GM to run things who then takes the certs back to his home game? What will the reporting be for a game? In the past the RPGA kept track of which adventures you played and in some case with which character. A lot of it is on the honor system because its not really worth policing. So can WotC really police no certs in home games?