Over the past few months I noticed 3 bits of information that made me wonder:
1- LC and RC roles no longer supported
2- DCI number overhaul on the backend (this came out as a MtG notice, but technically we use DCI as well for AL)
3- D&D Beyond
So is it safe to say that there is going to be more mainstream support for AL being played online and that D&D Beyond is going to be the official Adventure Log Sheet for it as well? Would be nice to have more organization and "officialness" like PFS with reporting/logging adventures.
It kind of seems like it, but as far as I can tell stores are still the only place you can report participation in games. But, then again, maybe that's just so that they can monitor participation just at stores.
It sounds like DnDB will support it! They're really pushing using this as an internal application for hosting and playing games, if I understood some of their marketing materials lately.
Having a centralized, standardized means of recording information from games all over the world is likely the the first step towards some official D&D league. D&D has the market penetration, but the thing it really lacks is some standard by which every player/dungeon master/game can be rated or compared. That this doesn't currently exist may be a good thing or a bad thing depending on your point of view, but it's coming because there's money in being the sole arbiter of a popular competitive game.
What D&D is missing in the above model is the competition. I'm not sure what the powers that be are planning on using as the metric for said competition, but this product is almost certainly going to be the tool that measures it.
It would be really neat if this project eventually adds log sheets (even fillable by DM), that way then it would be a great step towards the online direction.
That would add some needed convenience. I played a few games at PAX East this weekend, and the log sheets worked out okay except that we never got any DCI information from our second DM. This is the first time we've played at an AL event, so I want to register everything, but now it feels incomplete. Having it all be digital from the get-go would be a nice way to streamline everything.
I've never played AL, but from what I've seen in this and other posts, it sounds like this would be a great fix for a problem lots of people are having.
I think AL will continue to grow at its current rate. However I don't think the first three points are necessarily targeting at banishing the offline community to the nine hells. Because.... conventions.
When I ran D&D Encounters I did not use RC or LC at all. However I live in the UK so it might be a different story in the USA. To be honest I never needed them. When I ran AL on roll20 I just found that the DM facebook group would answer most my questions. So I think likely that LC and RC were replaced by the convenience of Facebook. (Sorry if I am mistaken though and that's not entirely true)
As for the DCI overhaul. I am in the dark about this. I have heard nothing. Last I heard some MtG Judges were annoyed because of unpaid work.
I really am talking from my personal experience, because I can never really guess what WotC want to achieve. As far as I know, they react to how well certain material is received and act quickly upon that. At times 5e has been a little slow, buts it's growing quite large and its always nice to have figures on how big their fan base is, right?
I am neither here or there on D&D Beyond implementing Adventurers League. I've used altoolsonline and adventurersleaguelog, and have just started trying out using my own spread sheet in excel as I have full control over it and can export as a PDF to print. I was having a few issues with my characters on altoolsonline not generating the right level for my XP input. I also found sharing the information not as easy on adveturersleaguelog, yet the latter does not have a LFG section.
Adventurers League is still as far as I know, a separate entity from the main D&D core. Yet like you say I believe too they are trying to get this changed because they have seen it has been a success. I am actually just about to start a new game this week Friday with brand new players to AL and a new DM to AL. Its pretty fun !
I don't think there should be an online only focus, but i would like to see it become a primary one. I don't think its a secret a lot of FLGS can't effectively monetize DDAL like it can something else like MtG, so in some areas its near impossible to find a game. And convention play is great for the few that people can attend. Online play really just opens the floodgates for being able to experience what is offered, and it has been doing well in that arena.
That being said, I would like to see DDB become the "official" platform for DDAL adventure logging just because it feels more "vetted" than a spreadsheet, a 3rd party site (no offense to those sites, they are really well done), or a few scraps of paper carried around. In a perfect would, the character creation in DDB could make sure creation rules are followed, and magic items can't be added to the inventory unless the appropriate module was "credited" to that character. Don't get me wrong, its not really an issue of making sure everyone is legit, I think it would be a nice formal form of recognition of accomplishments given by the people that run the brand. The elephant in the room for me is how Paizo handles PFS. Its nothing amazing, nor is it perfect, but it works well enough.
The issue I see of course is in order to really get traction for something like DDB becoming the "gateway" for DDAL adventure logging is you pretty much have to give it away for free. At least enough of it to get people hooked in. And being that we really don't have solid info on the base product itself, its hard to assume how to convert that over to a DDAL model.
Either way, I enjoy waiting to see what happens next.
I agree that there should be online and offline compatibility.
On a sidenote:
When MtG first launched, Alpha, it was all about going into the store and trading your rares. That was like 1991? Go forward twenty one years. The collectable card game is still popular because it basically still follows the fact that if you go in on FnM then your likely to get a good trade, sit down and play a few games, and increase/decrease your ranking.
D&D doesn't work like this. We all know, its why I play D&D, because its not competitive. (maybe a little sometimes eh, if we admit it or not) However with Magic Item Trading, and the speed of AL games we start seeing this more frequently. How many AL games in a higher tier where someone not only min/maxed but optimised every part of their character? Personally I was hoping AL would steer away from this and towards melding the story of the Realms, with player decisions, epic events, and much like the recent votes for government in Phlan.
Anyway I agree with everything you just said. Much too the point and well said Player2Up. I'd love to see a break from this spreadsheet malarkey which is my best option currently to something more stable and solid and official.
A few months ago, prior to the tapering off, my buddy texted me saying he 'ended up' at our local gaming shop and was sitting down to play adventure league. Afterwords he said the experience wasn't great, mostly because the GM was irritated that a new player show up, unregistered, and without a character made.
Incorporating DDAL tracking to the character creator would be a really fantastic way to solve the aforementioned issue with stragglers showing up to play last minute. Let the app guide you through creating your character, explaining the options as you go. Click the DDAL box, register your account, and BOOM! you're ready to roll. \m/
Weather it's playable online or not, I hope the character creator can ease the curve for new players getting started with Adventure League. Let's pack those tables full of heroes!
That sucks for your friend, I hope it didn't tarnish his view on it (that is if it was his first go at it).
My experience with AL has mostly been online play. I have a group that provides regular games for around 20-30 of us and its really awesome. However, outside of that group my experiences have been not as good. Its never been a bad DM or bad players, its just how "synthetic" it feels. One game I played in, the other players I was with had already ran the module with other characters, and one of them even DMed it. Now that's fine, and they did a good job not spoiling the storyline, but it really put the game on rails. And I wondered why they bothered to play instead of just cheesing it and say that they did. It felt like someone in an MMO speed leveling an alt, which is really what it was. I guess I am happy they at least show up to fill (virtual) seats so the game can launch, but its not the experience I think most people would get a good vibe from.
Another game I played in was a T1 Epic. This was the 3rd time the DMs had ran it that weekend so you could tell it was starting to become a chore. The pacing was just the whitebox speech and "ok, roll initiative" right afterwards. And of the 6 other players at my table, I was the only player that had not ran the adventure before. During the waiting period for other tables to catch up, I mentioned how I thought we could have avoided combat to some extent and still would have been successful, but everyone quickly mentioned how there was no way to avoid the combat. Seemed odd. Maybe its true, but again, the experience was a bad vibe.
Just seems odd to me that I find a fair amount of AL games where people are just going through the motions to get XP and items, but the reality is there isn't a hard-line reason to. I get the "honor system" of it all, but if its just a mediocre experience, is it worthwhile?
I'm actually surprised your DCI number is not part of your beyond account in some way
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Roll the dice and play the game, I’m not here to listen to your politics.
“But this isn’t right. You’re meant to charge in, sword drawn, banner flying-that’s what all the other knights did!” “Yeah, right before they burst into flame.”
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Over the past few months I noticed 3 bits of information that made me wonder:
1- LC and RC roles no longer supported
2- DCI number overhaul on the backend (this came out as a MtG notice, but technically we use DCI as well for AL)
3- D&D Beyond
So is it safe to say that there is going to be more mainstream support for AL being played online and that D&D Beyond is going to be the official Adventure Log Sheet for it as well? Would be nice to have more organization and "officialness" like PFS with reporting/logging adventures.
It kind of seems like it, but as far as I can tell stores are still the only place you can report participation in games. But, then again, maybe that's just so that they can monitor participation just at stores.
An official online adventurer's log would be great.
I guess we have to wait for phase 3 and see...
AL Pisa: Comunità di gioco organizzato per Adventurers League in area Pisa centro
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Proud creator of Martos' seedy alley, Martos' cold fusion, Freezing coffing of the Nadus, Swarm of toads and Oppressive weight of the batrachian
It sounds like DnDB will support it! They're really pushing using this as an internal application for hosting and playing games, if I understood some of their marketing materials lately.
I would be interested in hosting my characters online for AL, and having a central database for stuff would be neat.
It really sounds like a better way to manage AL to me.
Having a centralized, standardized means of recording information from games all over the world is likely the the first step towards some official D&D league. D&D has the market penetration, but the thing it really lacks is some standard by which every player/dungeon master/game can be rated or compared. That this doesn't currently exist may be a good thing or a bad thing depending on your point of view, but it's coming because there's money in being the sole arbiter of a popular competitive game.
What D&D is missing in the above model is the competition. I'm not sure what the powers that be are planning on using as the metric for said competition, but this product is almost certainly going to be the tool that measures it.
It would be really neat if this project eventually adds log sheets (even fillable by DM), that way then it would be a great step towards the online direction.
Bad advice Beholder gives the best advices!
That would add some needed convenience. I played a few games at PAX East this weekend, and the log sheets worked out okay except that we never got any DCI information from our second DM. This is the first time we've played at an AL event, so I want to register everything, but now it feels incomplete. Having it all be digital from the get-go would be a nice way to streamline everything.
A couple bits of info-
1) You can play AL at home, in a store, on-line, at a convention. We want folks to play, if on-line is easiest for them, right on.
2) I like the idea of a logsheet through this platform, I'll be contacting the devs forthwith.
3) Suggestions for how to streamline the AL experience via D&D Beyond or otherwise are always welcome.
Bill Benham, D&D AL Resource Administrator, resource@dndadventurersleague.org
This would be revolutionary! And at a perfect time as more and more folks become interested...
In the meantime, if your looking for an online logsheet adventurersleaguelog.com works really well.
I've never played AL, but from what I've seen in this and other posts, it sounds like this would be a great fix for a problem lots of people are having.
Attacking the Darkness- Since 2015
I think AL will continue to grow at its current rate. However I don't think the first three points are necessarily targeting at banishing the offline community to the nine hells. Because.... conventions.
When I ran D&D Encounters I did not use RC or LC at all. However I live in the UK so it might be a different story in the USA. To be honest I never needed them. When I ran AL on roll20 I just found that the DM facebook group would answer most my questions. So I think likely that LC and RC were replaced by the convenience of Facebook. (Sorry if I am mistaken though and that's not entirely true)
As for the DCI overhaul. I am in the dark about this. I have heard nothing. Last I heard some MtG Judges were annoyed because of unpaid work.
I really am talking from my personal experience, because I can never really guess what WotC want to achieve. As far as I know, they react to how well certain material is received and act quickly upon that. At times 5e has been a little slow, buts it's growing quite large and its always nice to have figures on how big their fan base is, right?
I am neither here or there on D&D Beyond implementing Adventurers League. I've used altoolsonline and adventurersleaguelog, and have just started trying out using my own spread sheet in excel as I have full control over it and can export as a PDF to print. I was having a few issues with my characters on altoolsonline not generating the right level for my XP input. I also found sharing the information not as easy on adveturersleaguelog, yet the latter does not have a LFG section.
Adventurers League is still as far as I know, a separate entity from the main D&D core. Yet like you say I believe too they are trying to get this changed because they have seen it has been a success. I am actually just about to start a new game this week Friday with brand new players to AL and a new DM to AL. Its pretty fun !
I don't think there should be an online only focus, but i would like to see it become a primary one. I don't think its a secret a lot of FLGS can't effectively monetize DDAL like it can something else like MtG, so in some areas its near impossible to find a game. And convention play is great for the few that people can attend. Online play really just opens the floodgates for being able to experience what is offered, and it has been doing well in that arena.
That being said, I would like to see DDB become the "official" platform for DDAL adventure logging just because it feels more "vetted" than a spreadsheet, a 3rd party site (no offense to those sites, they are really well done), or a few scraps of paper carried around. In a perfect would, the character creation in DDB could make sure creation rules are followed, and magic items can't be added to the inventory unless the appropriate module was "credited" to that character. Don't get me wrong, its not really an issue of making sure everyone is legit, I think it would be a nice formal form of recognition of accomplishments given by the people that run the brand. The elephant in the room for me is how Paizo handles PFS. Its nothing amazing, nor is it perfect, but it works well enough.
The issue I see of course is in order to really get traction for something like DDB becoming the "gateway" for DDAL adventure logging is you pretty much have to give it away for free. At least enough of it to get people hooked in. And being that we really don't have solid info on the base product itself, its hard to assume how to convert that over to a DDAL model.
Either way, I enjoy waiting to see what happens next.
I agree that there should be online and offline compatibility.
On a sidenote:
When MtG first launched, Alpha, it was all about going into the store and trading your rares. That was like 1991? Go forward twenty one years. The collectable card game is still popular because it basically still follows the fact that if you go in on FnM then your likely to get a good trade, sit down and play a few games, and increase/decrease your ranking.
D&D doesn't work like this. We all know, its why I play D&D, because its not competitive. (maybe a little sometimes eh, if we admit it or not) However with Magic Item Trading, and the speed of AL games we start seeing this more frequently. How many AL games in a higher tier where someone not only min/maxed but optimised every part of their character? Personally I was hoping AL would steer away from this and towards melding the story of the Realms, with player decisions, epic events, and much like the recent votes for government in Phlan.
Anyway I agree with everything you just said. Much too the point and well said Player2Up. I'd love to see a break from this spreadsheet malarkey which is my best option currently to something more stable and solid and official.
I have a funny story to share about DDAL
A few months ago, prior to the tapering off, my buddy texted me saying he 'ended up' at our local gaming shop and was sitting down to play adventure league. Afterwords he said the experience wasn't great, mostly because the GM was irritated that a new player show up, unregistered, and without a character made.
Incorporating DDAL tracking to the character creator would be a really fantastic way to solve the aforementioned issue with stragglers showing up to play last minute. Let the app guide you through creating your character, explaining the options as you go. Click the DDAL box, register your account, and BOOM! you're ready to roll. \m/
Weather it's playable online or not, I hope the character creator can ease the curve for new players getting started with Adventure League. Let's pack those tables full of heroes!
That sucks for your friend, I hope it didn't tarnish his view on it (that is if it was his first go at it).
My experience with AL has mostly been online play. I have a group that provides regular games for around 20-30 of us and its really awesome. However, outside of that group my experiences have been not as good. Its never been a bad DM or bad players, its just how "synthetic" it feels. One game I played in, the other players I was with had already ran the module with other characters, and one of them even DMed it. Now that's fine, and they did a good job not spoiling the storyline, but it really put the game on rails. And I wondered why they bothered to play instead of just cheesing it and say that they did. It felt like someone in an MMO speed leveling an alt, which is really what it was. I guess I am happy they at least show up to fill (virtual) seats so the game can launch, but its not the experience I think most people would get a good vibe from.
Another game I played in was a T1 Epic. This was the 3rd time the DMs had ran it that weekend so you could tell it was starting to become a chore. The pacing was just the whitebox speech and "ok, roll initiative" right afterwards. And of the 6 other players at my table, I was the only player that had not ran the adventure before. During the waiting period for other tables to catch up, I mentioned how I thought we could have avoided combat to some extent and still would have been successful, but everyone quickly mentioned how there was no way to avoid the combat. Seemed odd. Maybe its true, but again, the experience was a bad vibe.
Just seems odd to me that I find a fair amount of AL games where people are just going through the motions to get XP and items, but the reality is there isn't a hard-line reason to. I get the "honor system" of it all, but if its just a mediocre experience, is it worthwhile?
I guess for some people D&D is like pizza...
I'm actually surprised your DCI number is not part of your beyond account in some way
Roll the dice and play the game, I’m not here to listen to your politics.
“But this isn’t right. You’re meant to charge in, sword drawn, banner flying-that’s what all the other knights did!”
“Yeah, right before they burst into flame.”