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D&D Adventurers League Player & DM Pack |
This product is no longer available from DriveThruRPG.com |
Average Rating:3.6 / 5 |
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This product somehow continuously gets worse with more and more guidance that removes any possibility of making hardcovers make more sense. It took several workarounds for Dragon heist that people were already enjoying under AL and made them illegal a week after the fact.
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For the most part, there is a great deal of good intentions in the S8 rules, and the kernel of some great ideas. The Simplifacation of Experience rules is actually a blessing, and once folks get used to the Fast/Slow options and format change, it should be fine.
The switch out to Treasure points for magic items, based on different tiers of magic items, and the requirement for unlocking is less elegant, and basically adds back in the complexity that was taken out due to experience points, and magnifies it a bit. However, in public play, being able to manage that effectively and on a broad scale is critical. With time, this will be fine.
My main concern with the Treasure Tables is that they reflect a Developers Idea for what items belong on what table, and the agenda of that developer. It does not relfect the playstyle of the players who use the game, and the desire to have AL reflect the developers playstyle is a poor choice.
Finally, the move to dramatically reduce gold by the use of automatic gold alotments on leveling is....well, frankly, Stalinesque. It smacks of Central State Planning, and at the same time takes folks out of the game. It commits the cardinal sin of breaking the fantasy of the game itself - "I will be well rewarded" and removes some of the cool, non-magical items one could get via the use of that gold, from the Dragon headed stick pin to the silver walking cane.
The real problem of the game was players being able to keep 500 points of healing in their portable hole- a move that was necessitated by Mod writers putting constant pressure to not have Short or Long Rests in a mod (Sense of Urgency, desire to waste resources) as an attempt to deal with the ever escalating power creep OP will introduce. So, while AL did remove many of the problematic items, it also simultaniously reduced gold, availablity of plate, and made trading of items based on Rarity and Table location.
Turns out, that level of dramatic change caused a great deal of discontent in Organized Play, and not just from the typical power gamer. Fewer changes, more gradual, over time, would have given them a similar result, and frankly a chance to not commit the "Sin against Gold" which has been the biggest problem with the S8 rules.
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“I have an idea. Hear me out: Let’s take an organized play system that is dedicated for playing the rules as written—a deliberate choice to preserve the feel of a true Dungeons & Dragons game—and let’s go and apply a bunch of rules that are not part of the core game and do not in any way, shape, or form preserve that ‘D&D feel’. Oh, and let’s add insult to injury by making a great many legitimately earned, balanced items suddenly illegal for play. And let’s make a draft of these rules up a month before release to give people the illusion that their outrage matters to us in the least, since we won’t change a single thing they demand.”
“Great idea!”
— the minutes for the meeting where they decided on these changes, probably
What an absolute travesty. I’m trying to think of a worse way they could have tried to fix some of the persistent problems with Adventurers League play, and I can only come up with, “Literally go to every table playing AL rules and bludgeon the players with rocks until they willingly agree to consign 99% of their characters’ gold and magic items to the aether”.
Let us review the problems which prompted these drastic and ill-advised changes, and what a more reasonable solution would have been:
Players Have Too Much Gold
Frankly, this has been a problem since day 1 of Adventurers League, and the solution has never changed. To solve the issue of players having too much money, there must be things they can use money to buy. Ironically, they finally did something about this by instituting the largest expansion to the purchaseable items list in the history of AL. Of course, all that means now is that there is a dearth of cash and an abundance of things that characters can no longer afford.
A better solution. Keep your hands off the gold the characters are justly earning and expand the list of things that can be bought. I’m not just talking about magic items, but while we’re on the subject: Don’t pretend you don’t allow the purchase of magic items when that’s exactly what the new treasure points are.
Players Can Just Bribe Their Way Through The Missions
This technically is still part of “Players Have Too Much Gold”, but even if you gave players a way to spend every last gp they would still probably hold on to 500 gp in pocket change if they could, partly for situations where they would like to lubricate a situation with coin. There are two solutions to this, as I see it:
Greedy NPCs. In my home games, my players have learned the hard way that when they start dropping hundreds of gold pieces to bribe someone, that someone gets it in their head that they can have even more if they just kill the party and take their stuff. You can’t casually drop a lifetime of wealth and not have consequences. At a certain point, you just sign your own death warrant.
Magic. I know this is going to seem far-fetched in a world with dragons, unicorns, and sea monsters, but a villain with significant resources can probably afford to have enchantments placed on their underlings to prevent this kind of treachery. Or at least be known to be powerful enough to track you down wherever you go to hide with that kind of money. If magic were properly leveraged in AL missions, we wouldn’t have the problems we have.
Players Can Buy Infinite Potions of Healing
There are many horror stories of someone buying 100 potions of healing to distribute at epics. I also wanted to put this one in with “Players Have Too Much Gold”, but the solution here is actually the opposite of that section, so here we are.
Potions of healing are pretty much the only magic item that can be purchased, but that doesn’t mean they should be infinitely available. Even a city like Waterdeep shouldn’t have more than one alchemist per 25,000 residents (or about 80 people who can create potions). As well, given that the price of potions of healing is commensurate to 250 days’ labour for the common person, few alchemists are likely to keep armloads of them stocked. These two factors together mean that hunting down healing potions should take time. It is by no means unacceptable to have a player roll to determine whether they find a potion for sale in any given day of downtime spent searching. To spare DMs and players having to roll before each session, a handy table could be made that players could defer to in lieu of rolling. Of course, it would have to be pretty close to average results in order to entice people to use it.
Sniping Items
This is certainly a major problem in AL and I really do agree with allowing every player to theoretically obtain a magic item by buying it. What I don’t agree with is having the currency of such trade be treasure points. Substitute this for gold that is “paid” to the “party” (in other words, it disappears forever) and you’ve solved every problem outlined above in one single move. Where does the money go? Where would it go if you paid it to a merchant you commissioned to craft soemthing? Out of your pocket, and that’s what’s important. Don’t have enough money at the time you play the adventure? Not to worry, the item is unlocked for you now forever.
Problem Items
I can say that I honestly have no idea where Wizards got the idea that these items are problematic. Any problems that have arisen in games that include them are problems that can be properly attributed to the fact that the game is simply not balanced at high-level play. The removal of these items is just simply insulting.
Conclusion
All of these solutions offered by the new rules merely cause more problems, and it’s driving people away. Entire regions are losing their AL base because players feel cheated by these new rules. And I don’t blame them! There are far better solutions that could have been (and should have been) implemented, but now I worry for AL’s future because this stunt will have cost Wizards the trust of their player base. Who wants to put hours and hours of work into getting a new item that’s going to be arbitrarily banned next season? Even if next season all these changes are reversed, the problem items are brought back as gifts to players who had them, and every player gets 25,000 gp to divide amongst their characters as a conciliatory gesture to replace the lost earnings from this season, I have trouble believing that it will be enough to restore the dedication that previously existed in AL’s player base. Once you burn a bridge, its original foundations will haunt whatever gilded contraption you build in its place. And these new rules are a flimsy contraption if ever I have seen one.
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i saw many people complaining about this new set of rules, we played the Epic Red War on Sundey 9/9/2018 in Bologna, Italy and we were about 100 AL Players.. everyone was very satisfied even without gold .. even without a certified item at the end of the event.. they were very happy to unlock them instead for later purchese if needed..
these new rules dont have a high impact on the play. They are quite good and simple. You can have fun the same way you did for the last 30 years of D&D.
i'm still waiting for the new DM quest sheet..i hope there will be one with new season graphic.
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Everything about these rules is poorly written. Too many words, too vague. They're rules written by somebody who doesn't know how to write rules.
Examples:
1. "Alignment. Evil characters aren’t allowed in D&D Adventurers League play unless your character is a member of either the Lords’ Alliance or Zhentarim faction. These characters may be lawful evil."
Functionally, the rule is, "Chaotic Evil and Neutral Evil are not allowed. Lawful Evil is allowed if, and only if, the character is a member of the Lords' Alliance or Zhentarim." But that's not what was written. Instead, it starts from a false general statement ("Evil characters aren't allowed...") and then qualifies it incompletely - being a member of the LA or Zhentarim isn't enough to allow your character to be evil. Thus we get the next sentence ("These characters may be lawful evil") that merely implies that Chaotic Evil and Neutral Evil aren't allowed. This is bad rule drafting. Make your exlucsions explicit, not implicit, and don't write imprecise qualifications.
Almost daily I talk to players who think Lawful Evil isn't an allowed alignment, because people naturally read the first part of the rule ("Evil characters aren't allowed...") and then they ignore the poorly-constructed exceptions after the clear-but-wrong statement at the start of the rule.
2. "Sometimes characters fall behind the adventure’s expected level. Aside from Catching Up (see ALPG) and DM Rewards, there are two suggested methods of accelerating character advancement:
Random Encounters. You can’t grant players advancement checkpoints to make up the deficit, but you may add random encounters as needed if the adventure provides a list of random encounters."
What is this rule trying to say? Is the idea that you'd have the players spend time on random encounter appropriate to their level before advancing them to the adventure's expected level? Because starting the example with "You can’t grant players advancement checkpoints to make up the deficit" implies that Random Encounters CAN'T be used to advance the characters. This is bad writing.
3. "Magic Items. Unless stated otherwise in the ALCC, magic items specifically mentioned in an encounter become available for the characters in some fashion, depending on its type."
This is another badly-written rule - even ignoring the numerosity disagreement. Are there no requirements besides that a magic item be "specifically mentioned in an encounter"? Do the characters not have to obtain the item in some way? If there's an encounter with an evil lich wielding a magic staff, and the lich teleports away with his staff, then these rules seem to say the staff is unlocked for purchase.
4. "If you choose armor or a weapon, its type is either leather, scale, or chainmail."
Lazy writing and editing.
I could go on with more examples. The AL admins don't have enough time to fulfill their roles properly, and it's WOTC's fault for failing to support AL.
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I was never a fan of AL to start with, but living in an AL strong city I've had to adapt if I wanted to play or even consider DMing on a regular base. I like the short modules and season thematic, but I hate the rule restrictions on home brewing. Now with this increased dumbing down of the AL, I feel like it this should be called the CAL (Communist Adventurers League) where people don't play D&D but where D&D plays you...
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too many separate documents for what should be one set of rules
also season 8 rules stink
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Pros
- ACP - I don't mind this change; the simplification of experience isn't really problematic though it does make this feel lees like D&D in my opinion
- TCP - Giving all players the ability to purchase magic items allows a more homebrew-esque feel although a possible con is that everyone will focus on getting the same overpowered items now that it's just a matter of unlocking and purchasing. Also, having the found item poof out of existence (and become an unlock) seems rather silly.
- Downtime Days - The changes are nice from a player perspective though due to the reasoning behind the change I'd rather have kept my living expenses and continued being able to pick up gold when I found it.
- Problematic Items - I think removal of some items that were causing issues in play was a good decision. I do question some of the decisions, however.
Cons
- Factions - The changes seem punitive and unnecessary in my opinion but aren't really a huge problem for anyone unless they are actually roleplaying their involvement with their factions and now have to alter fundamental parts of their being to remain members of their factions. And, of course, lawful evil characters' choices are change or become unplayable. Out of seven players in my ToA campaign, six of them dropped their factions like a bad habit. And, of course, removing the prominence of factions makes story hooks much more difficult.
- Gold - Abstraction of earning gold into part of leveling up is ridiculous. Why would any adventurer put himself in harm's way when he can't even keep the spoils of his work? As a DM running a Tomb of Annihilation campaign I'm watching my players get disheartened because every room they explore tries to kill them and they don't get to keep anything they find.
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Commentary ranked in (my personal) order of importance.
Pros:
1) Advancement checkpoints. I actually like this. As a DM since 1st edition D&D, I like focusing on the narrative and role play more than a party hack-and-slashing anything they can for experience. Pick a slow or fast progression. That’s nice.
2) Some magical items were a bit overpowered and problematic. A lot that they nixed, however, were not.
Cons:
1) My primary concern is that WoTC staff didn’t listen to their player base regarding these new rules. They didn’t ask if we wanted them. They didn’t ask our opinion on them. They didn’t ask us to playtest them or review them. Here’s what’s even worse: when the community overwhelmingly responded in a vastly negative manner to these (poorly thought-out) changes, they ignored nearly every major concern that was addressed. A few insubstantial tweaks were made, and the D&D Admins proclaimed, “You spoke, we listened!” No. No you didn’t. And this is my number one issue with the new season eight rules. WoTC is going to make a massive overhaul to the entire landscape of D&D AL without any input from thousands upon thousands of players? I’m truly dumbfounded how they missed this.
2) These rules are not fun. Fun? Who cares about fun?! Everyone. Everyone plays D&D because D&D is fun to play. The season eight rules kill the number one reason people play D&D. Which is? That’s right! Fun.
3) Everything is now overly complicated. You now need more pdfs, more books, and more documentation to play D&D. Want to trade that magical item? It will require cross-referencing. Is this magical item unlocked in this hardcover? That’s something we’ll have to look up. Can I use this magical item in an adventure? Sorry, it was only for that book. Oh, treasure points! Yes, but only those treasure points can be used to unlock those items (but not that one) from that tier (but not that tier).
4) Most of the rules make little to no sense. Killed a villain in half-plate? You can’t loot it. Found a dragon horde after fighting your way through volcano and defeating a powerful wyrm? Here’s your 150 gold and treasure points.
5) I feel the other specific issues have been properly addressed by the community (issues with gold, imbalance of classes that rely on heavy armor, prior season complications, etc.).
That all being said, many D&D AL players & DMs are leaving AL retreating to their homebrew games.
For the love of all things good, WoTC, listen to your community before you dismantle it.
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I don't mind the changes to the XP system, I think that it really does help take into account all aspects of roleplaying a tabletop game. My issue is with the other rewards, the Treasure Points and the buying of magic items. Before, with the rolling system, it certainly wasn't perfect, but now those players who wish to min/max there characters are guaranteed to do so, so if this was for balance it really does nothing to help with it. Also including gold in this system really screws with it, The exchange rate is weird and wonky, and having a little gold on leveling up really doesn't do anything to balance it. It also makes hardcover and other financial rewards from previously published modules entirely meaningless, and especially for the new Hardcover Waterdeep Heist. The magic item table is beyond screwy, and it's been twisted in odd ways to make different things fit. Why is basic, non magical plate 24 points and only available to tiers 3 and 4 (which, by the way, with the current exchange rate comes out to 1200gp, and half plate is the same price)? Why is each point only worth 50gp?
And not to mention even navigating through all of this require multiple documents, there is definitely more bookkeeping than before, not less, players are more generic than ever (why do games that insist that the character playing are these saviors of the realm and then go out of the way to make them realize they're weak and just like everyone else, for the conventions and the large-scale games to make sense?)
I'm also not super happy with them essentially getting rid of the guild associations. That was a really cool idea that I wish they'd expanded on, why did we bother saving up all that reknown for absolutely nothing? What is reknown even for now? What was it ever for?
Edit: So I've been reading through some of the other reviews and several articles talking about how broken the gold system was before. Apparently, a lot of people who have played in all of the seasons of Adventure League thus far have accumulated vast sums of wealth that they can't spend on anything. Most of the things in the game that require money are things that wizards have to spend it on, and once other players have their stuff (like platemail) the money just piles up with nowhere to go. Castles and expensive stuff don't necessarily make sense in a campaign setting, that kind of thing.
I've only been playing for two seasons now. I only play once a week, usually hardcovers, and I pretty much just go to the local convention. I only have a few AL characters so far, and I've got somewhere in the realm of about 10,000 gold between them. The disconnect here seems to be between casual players and new players and hardened veterans and their binders full of characters. How does this system fix that, however? Old players still have all their gold and the magic items their characters already had, the changes just affect new characters and players.
This is related to another question, why do Downtime days exist? The downtime system seems horribly underutilized, and enormously expensive for certain things? Why can't this be combined with gold? Why does it cost both, resulting in not that much gold spent but a hilariously large number of downtime days for specific tasks? Why not get rid of downtime and just use gold? Why not add a gold tax for trading magic items? Why not be more creative and actually find more things to do with gold, instead of nuking it almost entirely out of the system, which seems a far more lazy option (and one, that once again, forces more paperwork on the player, something that devs have said they're trying to reduce?) Why do we need multiple forms of currency like that? And then to have all this cool stuff in XGE that didn't really get implemented further or worked into the game, when you had tools that you created to do some really interesting things with? SMH
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I understand why some of the more drastic changes were made. Things like TP and the item unlock list have their uses. Advancement points also facilitate a less combat heavy approach. But, seeing as these rules were developed going into season 8, and the team presumably having some advanced preview of Dragonheist, I have to say...these rules do not mesh well with the new hardcover! I suppose AL rule design is more focused on the modules, but damn, it's as if they read Dragonheist and said to themselves, "How can we ruin this book?" I won't drop spoilers, but there is a pretty cool story feature that the new gold rules just obliterate. It also screws with the greed/scheming/dealing vibe of the story. I also have no idea how new faction and renown rules tie into the faction and renown mechanics in Dragonheist. I don't see why anyone would want to play Dragonheist at an AL table under this ruleset.
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Requiring extra documents to replace working mechanics is just silly. The changes are not conducive to less paper work or more fun and seem to invalidate previous products I've purchased.
In terms of "feel bad moments" here's one htat happened in the first week of these rules going live:
I picked up my Storm King's Thunder AL campaign that I've been running for months. My players did some great roleplay and then picked up a hook (based on in game character motivations) that led them to the hill giant lord's fortress. In a daring assault they dropped flaming oil and air landed inside the walls. After a tense melee they were victorious. They attempt to loot the place and ... there is nothing. Stone cold nothing. No treasure, magic items or anyhting. All of it was removed and replaced by out of game currency by the season 8 rules. As DM I'm powerless to fix it by the same rules. However, by the same rules I could penalize my characters if they had not taken that hook (yes really, apparently being the adversarial dm is a thing under these rules). It was a major feel bad moment for my players and myself to realize that if they had simply kept walking to Mirabar for the entire session they would have received the exact same rewards.
What I would like to see is proper support for previous WoTC products and removal of silly thing like Treasure Points for items and gold. Calcluating experience and gold collected was never a problem. Any reasonable person could be expected to do the required math. I also would have liked to see more interaction with the players about the issues that this rules updated is attempting to address.
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I understand what the adventurer's league admins were trying to acomplish, but they have fundamentally failed at doing so.The changes to the loot rules have no real impact on limiting the way people can abuse the system in order to make unstopable characters, and punish certain players far more than others. The increased amount of documentation a player or DM has to review is daunting, and makes it harder for new people to enter into the hobby, as well as learn a completely different system for advancement than they have been using for years. The complete removal of any randomness in progression detracts from the very spirit of the game and the blanket removal of anything that isn't a generic reward removes any sense of investment in story or even the enviroment. The changes to the rules have left both of the LGS's I frequently DM for unmotivated to play AL, and my players have no further interest in going to convention or even buying the offical products.
As a DM who has volunteered thier time at stores and conventions for the sake of other people's enjoyment, I feel that these changes have completely robbed me of any enthusiasm for the game and have angered me knowing what will be taken from people who unfortunately have no were to play but in the offical format.
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The Season 8 changes introduce checkpoints for XP and treasure, and removes the most powerful items from the campaign, as well as stat bumps and some other special rewards from hardcovers.
Rather than harping on the negatives, I will post positives and changes that should be made.
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Bring back gold. Nobody was confused by having to do math adding gold pieces together, but everyone now has to hit the reference books every time they level up to see how much gold they get. While the system was designed to simplify things, it is actually more complicated now. People will have to haul around with them cheat sheets with numbers on them to help them play.
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Mix TP and Certs There, I said it. A lot of games had players deliberately tanking their magic item count to get all the best items in Tier 4. It is actually nice to be able to eventually purchase a staff of the magi, or whatever, if one drops from a game. However the current system does nothing to fix the problem. We will have haves and have-nots forever in AL, because nothing was done to equalize the treasure among players. So my 16th level wizard, who passed up taking treasure he didn't need, is permanently at a deficit against new players, and new players will be at a permanent deficit against old players with binders full of certs. How should TP work? If you get a magic item from a game, great. That's your reward. If you don't, you get TP instead as a consolation prize. (Give half as much as now, to keep magic item creep in check.) It's a simple solution that gives feels-good moments to everyone at the table - you either get a cert, or you get TP which you can use to buy something later.
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TP should be equalized Players who have less than the recommended TP for their level should be able to convert into the new system with level-appropriate TP with items from any games they've played. Players who have more than their level-appropriate TP can either discard items or go into a TP deficit. Simple problem, and it solves the power imbalance. We really don't want a system where Tier 4 tables will permanently disciminate against any players that started after Aug 30, 2018.
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Each hardcover chapter should have fixed loot in it. Make a single page PDF for each chapter, DMs can run off copies for their players, and it details how much gold, checkpoints, and magic items they get for completing it. While this will take some work, it's far better than the current system, where a person plays Storm King's Thunder and gets absolutely nothing for it (since random magic items were removed).
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Eliminate the rule that trading needs to be done on the same magic item table. This is ridiculously overcomplicated, and ties back into what I said in #1 - that players are going to have to haul around additional paperwork just to be able to play the game now. It's counterproductive to the stated aims of the Season 8 changes. It makes playing Adventures League far more complicated and paperwork heavy, for no benefit. Instead, institute a simpler rule: all trades have to be for tier-appropriate items. There. Problem solved. That rule is already in there already, and it's all we need.
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Eliminate different tiers of TP. It doesn't make the slightest bloody sense from a "we're simplifying the system" perspective to have to have players track four different pools of treasure points. Just have one pool of TP, and if someone really wants to save up all their T1 points and wait for T3 to spend them, more power to them.
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The evergreen chart needs to be fixed. At a minimum, it should have all basic, vanilla gear, such as armors, shields, wands of the war mage, cloaks of protection, etc., that are the basic, essential, staples of an adventurer's career. All items should be offered in +1 to +3 versions. The current table in incredibly random and ad-hoc, and favors certain classes over others. It should just be the basics for everyone.
- Checkpoint advancedment should be modified. I think three four-hour games per level is fine at Tier 1, but it feels wrong for advancement to be so fast in high level play. Traditionally, it took years to level up once you got into the teens. I think the right number of four-hour games per level should be 3 @ Tier 1, 4 @ Tier 2, 5 @ Tier 3 and 6 @ Tier 4. (And even six games feels fast, honestly. It should be a lot of hard work to hit level 20.)
I love AL, and hope to see the S8 rules get fixed.
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Reviewed on 6 Sept 2018:
Some parts of the rules are inconsistent and/or not detailed enough. Documents are incomplete as well.
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