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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pauper" data-source="post: 6742882" data-attributes="member: 17607">Well, I doubt this will be the last time a product either slips in the regular release schedule or doesn't get released at the same time as a new published hardback module, which is the trigger to the start of a new AL season. "We will release all our products either in February or September" is a pretty restrictive publication schedule; not to mention a great explanation for why WotC probably shouldn't cater all its releases to the Adventurers League schedule, even if it could.Absolutely agree, and accept that it's smarter to be silent than to be contradicted.Still, that doesn't satisfy those folks who will argue that, since WotC has an AL team, there should be some sharing of info between the folks publishing the shiny new material and that AL team so that *some* degree of advance warning -- rather than *none* -- is possible. Even if the sharing is simply 'here's the final PDF we're sending to the printer; take a day this week and figure out what you need to share with the volunteer admins to give them an idea of what's coming. (There may be reasons not to do this, such as fear of leaking info prior to publication, so there may well be factors I'm not taking into consideration that affect the ability to do this kind of sharing. It'd be nice to know what those factors are, though, so we can excuse them.)*glances at the bulletin board behind him at the portrait of JFK, the photo of his Rav 4 mini-van, and the flyer publicizing the Douglas Preston signing at the local Barnes & Noble*I got a bad feeling about this one...Many people aren't making that distinction. In fact, there are folks who are volunteer coordinators who will quite vigorously argue that DMs do not have the ability to make rulings (i.e.: "house rules") that don't exist either in the printed game rules or the Adventurers League Players Guide. There are people who will argue that a ruling that doesn't abide by what Jeremy Crawford has published in Sage Advice is illegitimate, despite Crawford himself tweeting just yesterday:"What's the 1st rule of Sage Advice? The DM--not the rulebook or the sage--is the game's adjudicator. The 2nd rule? Don't forget the 1st."Granted, you're not going to solve these problems by either appointing an AL sage or simply re-affirming that DMs are the Sages of their tables, but it would be nice to at least see some consistent messaging from different levels of the AL hierarchy. Though based on this comment...Perhaps it's just a variation of the 'better to remain silent than to be contradicted' guideline discussed above.Don't get me wrong -- I am in favor of this, as it does trend toward the goal of having a consistent play experience across the many different tables that play AL. On the whole, I think it ended up being a good thing. The problem comes from a perception that some parts of the organization seem to be saying that if you don't follow that list, you're not playing AL, while others are saying that, if the DM wants to go outside the list, that's not going to break the program. I realize that consistency of messaging is challenging in a program with literally hundreds of volunteers, all of whom have some sanction to go into public fora and represent the program, but that would be less of an issue in either a world where AL has designated 'sages' that are authorized to speak on rules issues, or alternately, where anything not listed in the Player's Guide is left to the DM to resolve and anything published by AL on the Organizer's site (for example) is meant as a guideline to help DMs who aren't sure how to rule.Absolutely true -- being a DM is hard enough without having to be a middle-manager at the same time. And I agree, you never get 100% agreement on anything, so someone is always going to be unhappy no matter how things go down.And it's good to see that the folks in the admin roles are willing to engage in these sorts of conversations and help hash things out, even if it seems like it sometimes requires a crisis-level of outrage to attract the attention of the Mayor's Office (which may be why some folks go into crisis mode over what seem to some of us like trivial decisions).Folks like myself and Tia have our hearts in the right place, I think, even if we don't have a complete understanding of how the process works, as opposed to how we think it should work.--Pauper</blockquote>

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