You make your way out of the banquet hall, to the entrance, and out of the graveyard with no incident. Cassyt quickly takes you to Doomguide Glandon, who appears pleasantly surprised to see you return so quickly, but turns somber at the sight of Destin. He looks to Cassyt, as well as to the party, and asks, more than demands "what did you find?"
Someone - the necromancer I suppose - fled from us and still lives, Marrow adds. Perhaps he went down the tunnel and escaped? We didn't follow; we wanted to tend to our fallen, and Cassyt felt it more important to return to tell you what happened. He looks over to Cassyt. We owe her our lives - more than once.
"Pshaw," says Cassyt. "They underestimate their contributions. They found and slew all manner of creatures -- ghasts, skeletons, zombies...all animated by, it appears, an agent of Thay. At first sight, the necromancer himself fled through a teleportation circle, but his lieutenant remained, and slew one of our number." She points to the body of Destin, being tended by Casmenos. "Heedless of his own safety, he rushed, headlong against a more powerful foe. I used your gift to bring him back, once...but the brave fool would charged straight back into the fray, rather than retreat to safety. These companions were able to stop the rest of the Thayans, but I fear they will return. This was no quick operation; it was well planned, and long in duration. The undead were digging a tunnel towards the city, for purposes I can only guess. WIth the amount of undead we saw just in the upper reaches, I can only imagine how many are in the City of Rest. We did not scour the city, knowing our first duty was to warn the Order of the Thayan menace."
"A tunnel towards the city," begins the Doomguide, slowly. "With a Thayan wizard present, it may be pointing towards Valjievo Keep, and the magics dormant within. I thank you for bringing Cassyt back safely to us, and for uncovering this plot. No doubt, there are some small remnants of reanimated wretches still present in the necropolis, but the Order can put them to rest. The Thayan menace may have their arcane secrets, but we stand with Kelemvor, and, were that not enough, your evidence will doubtless convince the city itself to lend aid in scouring these wizards from our midst. You have done a great service to the Kelmvor, to Phlan, indeed to the entire Moonsea, this day.
This concludes DDEX-01-04, Dues for the Dead. Adventurer's League modules, unlike the larger hardcover books, are intended to be one-shot events that loosely tie together, or loosely tie with that season's overall storyline. In the larger story for this season, the tunnel was searching for something significant, and your efforts have brought an end to that line of attack from the antagonists. If you would like, either in character here on thread, or in the OOC thread on PMs, to talk more about the story, or to have some post-mortem discussion of the happenings or how this was handled, I would be all for it. I am still getting my feet wet on PbP play, and I would welcome any feedback or criticism, harsh or otherwise.
In terms of rewards for this adventure, Season 8 rules of AL preclude the taking of any non-magical treasure; treasure is now allocated upon increasing in level. To that end, since you completed the objectives of this adventure, all survivors are awarded 4 Advancement Points towards the next level, as well as 4 Tier 1 Treasure Points, which can be used to purchase gold, or any magic item you have unlocked, either by encountering it in the adventure or by virtue of it being on the always unlocked "evergreen" list. In Dues for the Dead, the Doomguide lent you Goggles of Night. Add this to your log sheets as an unlocked item. Any of you can now purchase this with Treasure Points when you have enough. If you plan on continuing with AL play, and are not sure how to work with log sheets, please feel free to ask.
As for Destin, who sadly fell, he cannot receive the points, or the unlock. There is a path to resurrection in AL even at first level, but it involves going into Treasure Point debt -- essentially, paying the resurrection cost now, and paying with Treasure Points you would earn in later modules. If you very much enjoy this character and backstory, that is an option, though it may be easier just to start another level 1 AL character.
Thanks very much to the GM for seeing this through to the end, and thanks to everyone for a good game. It's only my second experience of PbP, so still very new for me too. I enjoyed it, and felt you (GM) did everything you could to keep the thread lively and the pace reasonable, and I appreciate your hard work.
You mentioned in the beginning that you wanted to see how AL games would work in PbP, in terms of practicalities and the time needed to complete a single module. How did it compare with your expectations? I'm trying to think how much the game was impacted by being AL, and I suppose the thing I liked best was sticking at Level 1 the whole way though; I don't really like jumping quickly up the levels, and found that the limited range of options and vulnerability here enhanced the experience for me.
Thanks very much DM for the fun adventure. Yes, unfortunately Destin got carved in half in the finale, but that happens from time to time (especially with crits from greatswords vs. level 1 scrub ranger).
This past fall AL changed the rules regarding experience points; the short answer is no, there is no longer a concept of experience points. You still can level, but there is a different mechanism now. Rewards follow this basic structure:
Advancement checkpoints (ACP) are awarded instead of traditional XP. These checkpoints are awarded based on the length of the adventure and fulfilling its objectives. This module awards 4 ACP for those who successfully complete the adventure and meet all of its objectives - here, stopping the Necromancer's plans and making it out to alert the Kelemvorites of the danger. ACPs advance you in level as follows:
Levels 1-4: 4 ACP advance one level
Level 5-20: 8 ACP advance one level
By this measurement, all surviving characters have earned enough ACP to advance to be Level 2 at the start of their next adventure. However, some players feel this pace is too quick, and want to stay and enjoy certain levels for a longer period of time.
Treasure Points (TP) are awarded equivalent to the number of ACP, plus any specific modification by the adventure. In AL, no treasure is immediately awarded, and any magic items found last only through that particular adventure. Instead, you acquire TP, which can be used later to purchase any item you have "unlocked" once you have enough points. This adventure awards you 4 "Tier 1" TP, which can be used to buy primarily uncommon items. This adventure, you unlocked the Goggles of Night, which means you can now purchase this, once you have enough (8) Tier 1 or higher TP. There are lists of other items available for download in the players guide linked at the outset of this campaign, but, for example, if you wanted to purchase a +1 Weapon, you could, once you saved 16 TP.
Downtime. This adventure awards 10 Downtime days. Downtime days are used to do things that would normally occur between adventures; for example, a wizard copying spells into her book. They are also necessary to trade items between two characters.
Renown. This adventure (I believe, the rules are still in flux) awards 1 renown point. Renown is how well your character is known in the realm, and can provide you with small boosts at the beginnings of some adventures.
Some players opt for "slow progression," intentionally taking half of all their rewards for a given adventure, in order to stay at the same level a while longer. If one of you opted for slow progression here, all the rewards would be halved - instead of 4 ACP, 4 TP, 10 Downtime, and 1 Renown, you would receive 2 ACP, 2 TP, 5 Downtime, 0.5 renown. Players do that if they want to enjoy their character at a certain level range a while longer, or if they want to see and unlock more magic items of a certain level range. (In AL, levels are divided into Tiers -- Tier 1 1-4, Tier 2 5-10, Tier 3 11-16, Tier 4 17-20 - and, in most situations, characters cannot play out of Tier.
If this seems strange (it is at least different from standard rules), it is in the name of table portability. If you keep up proper log sheets, you can take Casmenos or Marrow to any AL table, either online or in your local game store, and play in a proper level of adventure. It can be a fun way to develop and play your character through the entire level progression from neophyte to near-god even if time/life commitments do not allow you a regular group. Stores and online outlets that run AL also have fairly frequent "Epic" adventures, where several tables of various Tiers play at the same time through different aspects of the same quest to accomplish a singular goal.
In terms of running AL games via PbP, this has been a learning experience. Dues for the Dead was written several years ago, when AL still used things like Experience Points, and there are still a few mismatches for content written with the traditional system in mind. It is also a pretty straightforward old-school dungeon crawl, primarily focused on combat and avoiding traps. This module is intended to last 4 hours in face-to-face time, and we took roughly 3-4 weeks per intended hour.
As counterpoints, I am also running as PbP two instances of the introductory Season 8 module, which are almost the opposite in the way they are written - much less combat, much more roleplay, and far less direct instructions to help out the DM. I hope to learn some lessons from that experience as well, and will likely try to run it again.
Overall, I do not think the AL modules suffer much more than non-AL content from the PbP format, though fitting the characters into the AL infrastructure does, a little bit, in that if a character wants to finish the "Season" - this 1/2 season, Waterdeep; Dragon Heist - what might take 6 face-to-face or Roll20 sessions might take 6-8 months via PbP, at which point the "season" would likely be over. Not really a problem for those who just want to play, but those players who want to advance characters along the typical season curve will probably get frustrated unless the post frequency is upped to several dozen posts per day. Perhaps the two we lost in this module were because the posts were too infrequent for their tastes, but it does not seem likely to me that many PbP games will get a full table of people posting that often. Real life has a nasty tendency to intervene.
I am glad you all stuck with me through this module and any DM shortcomings/growing pains. If you do plan on playing your character again in an AL form, I would encourage you to dowload the players pack from dmsguild.com and keep an official log sheet tracking the points you earned from this adventure, and the Goggles of Night unlock. (I myself use https://adventurersleaguelog.com to keep my log sheets online, instead. It is free.) If you have questions about how to keep a log sheet, I am happy to help if I can.
Though I have been playing on DDB (my only D&D experience) in I don't know how many campaigns (a lot!), this is the first campaign I've been in that actually finished. So, you can be commended for that, gludington!
Though I have been playing on DDB (my only D&D experience) in I don't know how many campaigns (a lot!), this is the first campaign I've been in that actually finished. So, you can be commended for that, gludington!
Same for me!
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Liarin: Against the Cult of the Reptile God Adewild: Shadows and Light 2 Brother Thaddeus: Rime of the Frostmaiden.
I am going to disband the campaign itself tonight, to free up some content sharing capabilities for another module run, but feel free to speak here, in the OOC thread, or DM me directly. Criticisms welcomed! Thank you all for playing, and I hope it (and AL) was a good experience!
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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You make your way out of the banquet hall, to the entrance, and out of the graveyard with no incident. Cassyt quickly takes you to Doomguide Glandon, who appears pleasantly surprised to see you return so quickly, but turns somber at the sight of Destin. He looks to Cassyt, as well as to the party, and asks, more than demands "what did you find?"
Casmenos volunteers, "A necromancer with some allies. A tunnel being dug. Cassyt seems to know what is going on."
Someone - the necromancer I suppose - fled from us and still lives, Marrow adds. Perhaps he went down the tunnel and escaped? We didn't follow; we wanted to tend to our fallen, and Cassyt felt it more important to return to tell you what happened. He looks over to Cassyt. We owe her our lives - more than once.
"Pshaw," says Cassyt. "They underestimate their contributions. They found and slew all manner of creatures -- ghasts, skeletons, zombies...all animated by, it appears, an agent of Thay. At first sight, the necromancer himself fled through a teleportation circle, but his lieutenant remained, and slew one of our number." She points to the body of Destin, being tended by Casmenos. "Heedless of his own safety, he rushed, headlong against a more powerful foe. I used your gift to bring him back, once...but the brave fool would charged straight back into the fray, rather than retreat to safety. These companions were able to stop the rest of the Thayans, but I fear they will return. This was no quick operation; it was well planned, and long in duration. The undead were digging a tunnel towards the city, for purposes I can only guess. WIth the amount of undead we saw just in the upper reaches, I can only imagine how many are in the City of Rest. We did not scour the city, knowing our first duty was to warn the Order of the Thayan menace."
"A tunnel towards the city," begins the Doomguide, slowly. "With a Thayan wizard present, it may be pointing towards Valjievo Keep, and the magics dormant within. I thank you for bringing Cassyt back safely to us, and for uncovering this plot. No doubt, there are some small remnants of reanimated wretches still present in the necropolis, but the Order can put them to rest. The Thayan menace may have their arcane secrets, but we stand with Kelemvor, and, were that not enough, your evidence will doubtless convince the city itself to lend aid in scouring these wizards from our midst. You have done a great service to the Kelmvor, to Phlan, indeed to the entire Moonsea, this day.
This concludes DDEX-01-04, Dues for the Dead. Adventurer's League modules, unlike the larger hardcover books, are intended to be one-shot events that loosely tie together, or loosely tie with that season's overall storyline. In the larger story for this season, the tunnel was searching for something significant, and your efforts have brought an end to that line of attack from the antagonists. If you would like, either in character here on thread, or in the OOC thread on PMs, to talk more about the story, or to have some post-mortem discussion of the happenings or how this was handled, I would be all for it. I am still getting my feet wet on PbP play, and I would welcome any feedback or criticism, harsh or otherwise.
In terms of rewards for this adventure, Season 8 rules of AL preclude the taking of any non-magical treasure; treasure is now allocated upon increasing in level. To that end, since you completed the objectives of this adventure, all survivors are awarded 4 Advancement Points towards the next level, as well as 4 Tier 1 Treasure Points, which can be used to purchase gold, or any magic item you have unlocked, either by encountering it in the adventure or by virtue of it being on the always unlocked "evergreen" list. In Dues for the Dead, the Doomguide lent you Goggles of Night. Add this to your log sheets as an unlocked item. Any of you can now purchase this with Treasure Points when you have enough. If you plan on continuing with AL play, and are not sure how to work with log sheets, please feel free to ask.
As for Destin, who sadly fell, he cannot receive the points, or the unlock. There is a path to resurrection in AL even at first level, but it involves going into Treasure Point debt -- essentially, paying the resurrection cost now, and paying with Treasure Points you would earn in later modules. If you very much enjoy this character and backstory, that is an option, though it may be easier just to start another level 1 AL character.
Thank you all for playing,
Greg
Is there no XP allocation in AL? You do characters level up?
Thanks very much to the GM for seeing this through to the end, and thanks to everyone for a good game. It's only my second experience of PbP, so still very new for me too. I enjoyed it, and felt you (GM) did everything you could to keep the thread lively and the pace reasonable, and I appreciate your hard work.
You mentioned in the beginning that you wanted to see how AL games would work in PbP, in terms of practicalities and the time needed to complete a single module. How did it compare with your expectations? I'm trying to think how much the game was impacted by being AL, and I suppose the thing I liked best was sticking at Level 1 the whole way though; I don't really like jumping quickly up the levels, and found that the limited range of options and vulnerability here enhanced the experience for me.
RIP Destin.
Thanks very much DM for the fun adventure. Yes, unfortunately Destin got carved in half in the finale, but that happens from time to time (especially with crits from greatswords vs. level 1 scrub ranger).
Current Player In: The Guild as Elsara Deepmoon
This past fall AL changed the rules regarding experience points; the short answer is no, there is no longer a concept of experience points. You still can level, but there is a different mechanism now. Rewards follow this basic structure:
By this measurement, all surviving characters have earned enough ACP to advance to be Level 2 at the start of their next adventure. However, some players feel this pace is too quick, and want to stay and enjoy certain levels for a longer period of time.
Some players opt for "slow progression," intentionally taking half of all their rewards for a given adventure, in order to stay at the same level a while longer. If one of you opted for slow progression here, all the rewards would be halved - instead of 4 ACP, 4 TP, 10 Downtime, and 1 Renown, you would receive 2 ACP, 2 TP, 5 Downtime, 0.5 renown. Players do that if they want to enjoy their character at a certain level range a while longer, or if they want to see and unlock more magic items of a certain level range. (In AL, levels are divided into Tiers -- Tier 1 1-4, Tier 2 5-10, Tier 3 11-16, Tier 4 17-20 - and, in most situations, characters cannot play out of Tier.
If this seems strange (it is at least different from standard rules), it is in the name of table portability. If you keep up proper log sheets, you can take Casmenos or Marrow to any AL table, either online or in your local game store, and play in a proper level of adventure. It can be a fun way to develop and play your character through the entire level progression from neophyte to near-god even if time/life commitments do not allow you a regular group. Stores and online outlets that run AL also have fairly frequent "Epic" adventures, where several tables of various Tiers play at the same time through different aspects of the same quest to accomplish a singular goal.
In terms of running AL games via PbP, this has been a learning experience. Dues for the Dead was written several years ago, when AL still used things like Experience Points, and there are still a few mismatches for content written with the traditional system in mind. It is also a pretty straightforward old-school dungeon crawl, primarily focused on combat and avoiding traps. This module is intended to last 4 hours in face-to-face time, and we took roughly 3-4 weeks per intended hour.
As counterpoints, I am also running as PbP two instances of the introductory Season 8 module, which are almost the opposite in the way they are written - much less combat, much more roleplay, and far less direct instructions to help out the DM. I hope to learn some lessons from that experience as well, and will likely try to run it again.
Overall, I do not think the AL modules suffer much more than non-AL content from the PbP format, though fitting the characters into the AL infrastructure does, a little bit, in that if a character wants to finish the "Season" - this 1/2 season, Waterdeep; Dragon Heist - what might take 6 face-to-face or Roll20 sessions might take 6-8 months via PbP, at which point the "season" would likely be over. Not really a problem for those who just want to play, but those players who want to advance characters along the typical season curve will probably get frustrated unless the post frequency is upped to several dozen posts per day. Perhaps the two we lost in this module were because the posts were too infrequent for their tastes, but it does not seem likely to me that many PbP games will get a full table of people posting that often. Real life has a nasty tendency to intervene.
I am glad you all stuck with me through this module and any DM shortcomings/growing pains. If you do plan on playing your character again in an AL form, I would encourage you to dowload the players pack from dmsguild.com and keep an official log sheet tracking the points you earned from this adventure, and the Goggles of Night unlock. (I myself use https://adventurersleaguelog.com to keep my log sheets online, instead. It is free.) If you have questions about how to keep a log sheet, I am happy to help if I can.
Though I have been playing on DDB (my only D&D experience) in I don't know how many campaigns (a lot!), this is the first campaign I've been in that actually finished. So, you can be commended for that, gludington!
Same for me!
Liarin: Against the Cult of the Reptile God
Adewild: Shadows and Light 2
Brother Thaddeus: Rime of the Frostmaiden.
I am going to disband the campaign itself tonight, to free up some content sharing capabilities for another module run, but feel free to speak here, in the OOC thread, or DM me directly. Criticisms welcomed! Thank you all for playing, and I hope it (and AL) was a good experience!