Season 4 Curse of Strahd and Adventurers League

[Byakugan]

I'm not worried about season 4, but I think this reaction is a bit unfair. @Steve_MND is reacting to the information as it's been presented to him; he sees gaps that he has every reason to believe may not have been considered. It's not a vote of no-confidence in the admins; it's working with incomplete information.

If these sorts of reactions chafe, the answer's pretty clear: publish draft rules for public comment. It doesn't have to be all the rules. It doesn't have to be polished, or final; I don't even thing you need to act on the feedback, but give players a chance to react and think about it, maybe fiddle with it in their home games, and it'll be a lot less scary.

There's a reason video games have public betas. Right now, we're just stuck with whatever gets published on release day, and so I don't think players reacting with fear that the admins may have missed something should be all that surprising.

It's not even that broad of an issue. It's not a question of whether or not the admins will miss stuff. So far the admins have said they have basically 0 control over the content of the modules. They are not even designed with AL rules in mind...For example...Death House(and so presumably the rest of the campaign) uses milestone XP...go figure. Season 3 only kinda used milestone XP, it just mainly had bad design issues where there was almost no guidance on how strong PCs were supposed to be at any given point. Don't get me wrong, I was very skeptical about season 3, but I have enjoyed everything I've played through other than chapter 1. The other thing is probably half of the magic item rewards in the entire book are supposed to be rolled randomly, which AL prohibits. Our DMs instead just using magic items that appear in other places in the book and handed out the appropriate certs...technically MOVING treasure around is not the same thing as adding it. The table that didn't do this had multiple 5th level characters rolling off on who got to have the Keoghtoms ointment as their first magic item on their 22nd+ log entry. I can relate, since my 7th level wizard from S1 has 40 sessions and 0 magic items still.

Our group just escaped from the Underdark a full 3 levels behind where the book finally mentions in chapter 8 that the PCs should be level 8 by now. Our group went to Neverlight grove and then Blingdenstone, while another table went to Grakelstugh instead...but they are planning on going right to Mantol-Dereth next(poor guys). Another table spent like 5 weeks at 1st level getting TPKed over and over again in chapter 1. Most of them dropped out, and now the new people get sat there. think they just hit level 3 average now.

 

[RCanine]

For example...Death House(and so presumably the rest of the campaign) uses milestone XP...go figure.

To be honest, I think milestone-based XP in AL adventures would be a huge win. It's really annoying to be 5% XP away from leveling. Especially when you're around a tier boundary.

 

[skerritthegreen]

I am happy to hear there is going to be several ways to escape. But if going back and forth is going to be 'trivial' then why make it a point to showcase the restriction in the very beginning,

No one said they would be trivial, or that if you choose to leave early that you could ever go back.

 

[KahlessNestor]

To be honest, I think milestone-based XP in AL adventures would be a huge win. It's really annoying to be 5% XP away from leveling. Especially when you're around a tier boundary.

You can use downtime days at a tier boundary to level up.

 

[RCanine]

You can use downtime days at a tier boundary to level up.

And? How is this related to the comment you quoted?

 

[KahlessNestor]

And? How is this related to the comment you quoted?

It means that you don't need some new milestone rule to do what you want.

 

[RCanine]

It means that you don't need some new milestone rule to do what you want.

I'm not convinced you actually read my post. I didn't say there was something you couldn't do, I said that it's frustrating to do the math after an adventure and say, "dang, I'm 10 XP from leveling!"

I know the rules, I just think the milestone approach is more elegant.

 

[Eltab]

... expect to see Rogue and Bard stock to go up in price this season ....

HA ha ! Good thing I got in early (see the "What Character Will You Make" thread), now I can watch the money keep rolling in. (to quote a song) ;-)

 

[CapnZapp]

You said:

To be honest, I think milestone-based XP in AL adventures would be a huge win. It's really annoying to be 5% XP away from leveling. Especially when you're around a tier boundary.

Kalani, me and others interpreted that as you feeling stuck when 5% away from levelling up to the next tier.

In that light, the answer "don't forget you can use downtime days to reach the next level" is completely reasonable.

 

[Steve_MND]

I'm not worried about season 4, but I think this reaction is a bit unfair. @Steve_MND is reacting to the information as it's been presented to him; he sees gaps that he has every reason to believe may not have been considered. It's not a vote of no-confidence in the admins; it's working with incomplete information.

Yep; As mentioned in another thread, the Admins have now reassured us that there will indeed be more than just the one way out, which, until then, was just speculation. I don't know if this was the plan all along and they just didn't want to mention it, or it was a more recent adjustment based on the concerns presented here and elsewhere, but regardless, that's all I was seriously worried about, and am now much less concerned about the playability of Season 4 within the larger scope of the campaign.

But as I tried to make clear in all my posts in the subject, my arguments were based off of what was known to us at the time, and with the hope that the Admins would take the presented concerns of myself and other into consideration when working on upcoming rules and regulations. They appear to have done so, so I am feeling better about the campaign again.