This is really interesting. You're kind of locked in a cycle of control.
Question about cheating
This is really interesting. You're kind of locked in a cycle of control.
The weird thing about this is that because of the way in-store AL games can be so fluid, the difference between a "loot run" and a weekly game can be really really low. Let's say there's a table playing chapter 6 of PotA at your local store. On week 1 they play one dungeon. Then on week 2 4 out of 5 players fail to show up, but are replaced by other players. The DM also can't make it, so someone volunteers to DM. How in the name of all that's reasonable is that any different than that single player doing a one-of game that happens to run the next dungeon in that chapter? For that single player it's just showing up to your regular game night, right? By a strict reading of the rules maybe that game isn't actually legal, but it's not terribly far from what I've seen at various weekly AL games where the players and DMs are really really fluid from week to week and you're just struggling to get a table together.
Trying to satisfy both the "no loot runs" and the "let people actually play their regular in-store games" while sticking to the weirdly arbitrary "each chapter is a stand alone thing that you have to run all as a unit, even though in practice the chapters are often not written that way and contain many completely separate adventure sized chunks of content within them" restriction is a fool's errand.
Warmaster Horus
Explorer
I'm not sure what that means. I'm just trying to find content options for my group as an AL DM in a group that has been playing AL HC adventures since HotDQ.
You are not allowed to take XP and not use it -- if you take XP, you have to apply it immediately. You can't 'bank' XP and wait until after, say, the next adventure to level up. (See "Do I Have To Apply XP When I Get It?" in the FAQ.)
Though there's no official rule on refusing awards, the implication seems to be that if you refuse to take an award, you refuse all awards associated with that session -- you can't take the Renown and refuse the XP, for example. This is consonant with other rulings related to rewards, such as the ruling that you can't 'part out' DM rewards by only taking part of the XP, or only taking the gold and not the XP. (See "How Do I Apply DM Rewards to my Character?" in the FAQ.)
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Pauper
There's part of your challenge right there -- neither WotC nor AL has been very forthcoming with high level content in 5th Edition, so you don't have a lot of options once you start nearing Tier 4, unless you feel like rolling up some new characters (which seems to be both AL's and WotC's default assumption when a new season/hardcover is released).
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Pauper
Absolutely true. In fact, I don't know that I've ever met a group that finished any hardcover in a single session, so I'd say this is not just allowed, but required.
Also true, precisely because each session has to be considered to be able to stand on its own. This does make for some awkward situations, such as the wizard not being able to play at the session where the spellbook is awarded as treasure, but for a significant number of treasures, there are workarounds -- for instance, trading permanent items, allowing the wizard to use downtime to copy the spells from the spellbook, etc.
Here's the problem -- say you weren't running a hardcover adventure, but a DDEX/DDAL module. Refusing to complete the module effectively locks out the players who played it the previous week, but now won't get a chance to finish the module, because they can't go back and start the same adventure over again. Because of this, most locations that allow session-based DDEX/AL play run the same modules until they are completed, even if players miss sessions.
Don't screw over your committed, consistent players in favor of transients who don't necessarily bother to show up week to week. Commit to completing the adventures you run, even when it's inconvenient for new players, because hopefully those new players will find themselves in the position where they will be the committed, consistent players rewarded by your DM style.
Regardless, though, the 'no loot runs' rule has to be enforced by the DM or it doesn't effectively exist. If the DM clearly isn't enforcing the rule, then you should have the option to do so by not claiming the rewards from that session, if you choose to.
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Pauper
I don't know that it's a fool's errand, but it does help point up that the hardcover adventures, though legal for Adventurers League, clearly aren't written with it in mind.
The real problem is that a simple, "don't farm the hardcovers for loot" rule should be sufficient, but it isn't -- some people want a more detailed, explicit definition of what constitutes 'looting' or some other aspect of the ruling, so that they can game their way around it and justify it as 'totally legal, dude'. In this situation, trying to over-legislate the Organized Play system is the real fool's errand.
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Pauper
Honestly, I agree with both the "Hardcovers aren't written with Organized Play in mind" point and the "Trying to over-legislate is a fool's erand" point.
The HCs are super far from being balanced relative to the AL modules, and most of the really OP stuff comes out of them. It'll probably never happen, but separating them from the HCs entirely would be a welcome change in my book. Plus, trying to over-legislate in an honor system based Organized Play system is always a bit of a fool's errand, since anyone who's got half a brain can just falsify themselves a legitimate looking log sheet anyway.
Yeah, I don't think the officially sanctioned WotC version of DnD is going to say "Oh the books we actually make money on twice a year are illegal for play". End of the day, the reason AL is endorsed by Wizards is to promote dnd and make more money.
Also quite frankly, I would rank a well run hard cover as an order of magnitude better than the AL modules. If for no other reason than there is a sense of continuity and progression. Even the CoS season the adventures were really only loosely tied together. HC, even with AL restrictions, are much closer to what I consider "real" dnd, you have many options of how to proceed, where to go. And if you are playing with the same group have the chance for character development between party members. (The group that has almost finished CoS started as hopeful heroes and has slowly began to distrust everything and value themselves over risking for others)
Granted, Yawning portal loses some of those benefits as its really just several non-directly connected dungeon crawls (and really the best yet that makes sense to run chapters as one-offs).
No argument there, I think if you've got a consistent week to week play group the HCs are a great experience. My only objection is that they're often unbalanced compared to the non-HC adventures, and historically they've been written in ways that make translating them to an Organized Play setting awkward.
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