Admins are planning further player guidance and will share with you in time for Gen Con preparations.
LoG seeks to find a balance between meaningful advancement and affording more time for character mastery and growth. We are looking for advancement that allows players to enjoy playing their character for longer at specific levels (especially levels 3-10), based on community feedback on how progression has functioned from other play programs. Each of the options listed in the above poll allow a player to keep their character's current level instead of advancing.
Please make your choice before the morning of Monday, April 28th, 2025 (PT).
POLL CLOSED! THANK YOU!
Thank you! Ma’at Crook D&D Adventurers League Community Manager
Maybe this is just crazy talk, but D&D 2024 still includes advancement by XP, so why not fully embrace the system and just use that?
AL used XP for the first half of its existence, so it's not a new concept and players managed their log sheets and advancement just fine. Couple that with appropriate DM rewards so that DMs can keep up with their friends when they get a chance to play, and you're good to go.
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I oppose ersatz Vietnamese soup. I am a faux Pho foe! .ca in CA
Checking the numbers (assuming a full 20 level campaign), LoG will need a ton of adventures. 90 for choice 1. Minimum 68 for choice 2. 82 for choice 3. 60 for choice 4. Is Wotc & Baldman's committed to writing the adventures needed to support these structures?
As for the current AL status quo, choice 6, my problem is that I find myself making a mad dash to the level cap due to being uncertain the number of adventures in a campaign. Sure, I can use downtime to catch up but that feels like a cheat. I like the structure of Dragonlance VOTU where each adventure was for a particular level. It could have gone slower but someone would have to write those adventures.
I think one level per adventure is a fair speed. Most players here don't/can't average evn one game a week, so even using the one level per adventure format, most players would still need 3 to 4 months just to level to 10, and that's assuming they use the same character all the way and the local game tiers match up.
The 'too fast' issue that I feel needs to be addressed is the starting downtime. A fresh level 5 with 40 down time days means I can start essentially as a level 9, play one adventure, and be in tier 3 for my second session.
Note that the program is focused on convention play (so playing say three or four adventures in a weekend), and the majority of adventures will be tier 1 and tier 2. Higher tier play will probably be somewhat rare.
@ renumar IIRC because AL-creator content had an xp and treasure budget per tier. This worked fine for the mods, but then wotc would just drop another book into the mix that didn't take any of that into account. SKT had the "1 level per chapter" fast advancement advice up to level 5 and then dropped you into a hex crawl that could level you 2-3 times in a single adventure or just be an xp wasteland.
They patched it with xp per hour played in TOA, but it was still inconsistent with the XP you could get from a 2 hour toa mod.
While this doesn't necessarily matter to most players operating in the dark, the issue long term was that there was a noticable impact from players and dms who started optimizing the mods they wanted to play and run so they could power level, along w mods that gave certain types of treasure that was good for their builds.
This resulted in certain mods and books seeing a ton of play purely because of what the rewards were, which isn't fair to content creators who got assigned less rewarding mods.
Honestly, I don't like the idea of any extra levelling restrictions at all. As players already have the option "to enjoy playing their character for longer at specific levels (especially levels 3-10)" - refusing the level up when offered.
But I'm all for giving optional guidance and recommendations on 'best' advancement rate. Make it clear, if needed, that while a character may level up, they don't have to, and for this particular campaign (or any set of circumstances) that it would be preferred not to. Give DMs explicit permission to run 'LoG official advancement' campaigns (they already had the option to deny players for any reason of course, including for bringing characters outside their preferred level range, but any support for DMs might help, and could be handy to have something to point to when a level 10 char rocks up to join the level 5 party).
Sure, some players may abuse this. But as soon as it becomes a requirement, that removes the freedom for all others. Those working FIFO, those with kids that can't guarantee they'll make it each week, the DM who wants to join the one-shot with his group that a player has offered to run - I can think of any number of options that someone couldn't make it regularly each week but still wants to join with their friends whenever possible.
Level per adventure, declining level advancement if they want to, seems the most fair to players. Not everyone will be able to play in each mod at a con or be able to attend each con.
I have played PF Organized Play which is 3 scenarios per level and AL in its current format. I prefer the simpler version but feel it can go too fast in general. Downtime days allow flexibility to move up but once you are up, you are up. I envision a system that allows you to play your character up or down from the tier you are at, adjusting magic items accordingly. From a story standpoint, maybe the adventures happen at different points in a character’s lifetime. It might get way too messy but I have definitely enjoyed playing a character concept at different tiers in home games. Considering a character can be completely revamped between sessions if the player chooses in current AL rules, the idea of moving up or down is not too outside the realm of possibility.
This seems a reasonable approach that addresses the lack of T4 content. Perhaps T2 -> 4 adventures and T3 -> 2 adventures. There doesn't seem to be a lot of adventures for T3 heroes either.
Something neat about the early days of AL was that you could gauge a a player's investment by their character. Meeting someone with a Tier 3 character felt like a pretty big deal, you could assume that they had been on a great many adventures, and were intimately familiar with the AL program, and would be a good source of guidance when needed. The specialty character options that were tied to time spent DMing fostered similar feelings. Meeting a character and knowing that this character was a Big Deal. It led to a lot of strength in the community, at the LGS level as well as convention scale.
Also made those high tier Epics even more... epic. Added gravity to the fact that your T2 team was taking on challenges far beyond the scope of what you could do at T1, and increased the feeling of how important it was to support the T3 and T4 tables, the heroes moving in to cut out the heart of the threat.
It's okay for LoG to be slower than the warp speed of modern AL. And it's okay for modern AL to have the breakneck pace it does. It all means having more ways to play D&D.
It's my hope that the administrator's from the Previous Living Greyhawk Campaign will come out and support Legends of Greyhawk. This would certainly grant more module options to a wider audience, since the previous campaign was based of a Regional Concept (IE Ohio was the Archclericy of Veluna, Florida was the Principality of Ulek, etc.) and a player could only play those Region's modules in the real world associated region or at very limited special events. Rewriting preexisting modules and converting them to 5E (2024) could get the amount of playable modules available up in a fairly short time (possibly). I have just recently returned to the world of Open Gaming/Adventure League due to the resurgence of Greyhawk and I'd like to convert some of the stuff I had written for 3.5E...As far as the poll question goes...the more play the better and more opportunities to get play rewards to maximize the gear you'd like to have for your characters(s). So for me it'd be option 1.
Note that the LoG campaign happens ~20 years before living Greyhawk in the timeline so that would make a lot of the adventures not work (for example there is no war against Iuz), and also more importantly the ownership of those adventures is very murky and legally makes reusing them impossible.
I noticed that...can't have the Wasting Disease in Veluna either...Hopefully the Admin of LoG can come out with guidelines about previously published material for the original authors of the old modules...something to consider anyway. (got my fingers crossed)
Having seen the MagicCon Chicago LoG treasure selection, I have an idea: Make downtime part of treasure options, and then downtime spend for levelling.
So, I could get the good magic item and X downtime days, or a random pick and X+Y downtime days, or just the gold and X+y+Z downtime days.
With the 2024 rules, crafting done during downtime is the only use for it. So if more downtime was given, but some of it was required to level, then it gives the characters greater flexibility. Do I do crafting to help the party and/or make money for better gear? Or do I spend my time training to get more powerful?
That would make it easy to balance adventure length and Tier to downtime given.
My current understanding, is that LoG is separate from Living Greyhawk, in that they will not necessarily overlap. There is information out there that explains the differences and expectations (pretty sure it's in the original post on D&D Beyond). That said, they have stated that content in LoG will not be region specific to the real world. The Primer Organizers (PO) got to take specific regions on the Greyhawk map from the 2024 DMG and will create content in those regions.
With the new PHB not allowing any subclasses before lvl3, I expect levels 1 and 2 to be VERY boring generic play, certainly for experienced players. In AL I believe Tier2 5-10 always had the best play. I would suggest that you start all players at level 3, and have an option to start at level 5 with Tier 2 play like AL had. If you are going to start everyone at 1, I think you should level up at one adventure per level until 3 before you slow down a little, to minimize time spent at levels 1-2.
another issue is that with this only being available at conventions, many people who attend only GenCon will never reach higher tiers, or will be locked into a single character if they want to advance and perhaps they may find they are bored of its concept by the time next GenCon rolls around.
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POLL CLOSED! THANK YOU!
Legends of Greyhawk (LoG) is a classic D&D setting which portrays heroes struggling to beat back the tide of evil (https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1892-legends-of-greyhawk-characters-advancement-and). MagicCon hosted its debut and its official launch will be at Gen Con 2025.
Admins are planning further player guidance and will share with you in time for Gen Con preparations.
LoG seeks to find a balance between meaningful advancement and affording more time for character mastery and growth. We are looking for advancement that allows players to enjoy playing their character for longer at specific levels (especially levels 3-10), based on community feedback on how progression has functioned from other play programs. Each of the options listed in the above poll allow a player to keep their character's current level instead of advancing.
Please make your choice before the morning of Monday, April 28th, 2025 (PT).
POLL CLOSED! THANK YOU!
Thank you!
Ma’at Crook
D&D Adventurers League
Community Manager
Maybe this is just crazy talk, but D&D 2024 still includes advancement by XP, so why not fully embrace the system and just use that?
AL used XP for the first half of its existence, so it's not a new concept and players managed their log sheets and advancement just fine. Couple that with appropriate DM rewards so that DMs can keep up with their friends when they get a chance to play, and you're good to go.
I oppose ersatz Vietnamese soup. I am a faux Pho foe! .ca in CA
Checking the numbers (assuming a full 20 level campaign), LoG will need a ton of adventures. 90 for choice 1. Minimum 68 for choice 2. 82 for choice 3. 60 for choice 4. Is Wotc & Baldman's committed to writing the adventures needed to support these structures?
As for the current AL status quo, choice 6, my problem is that I find myself making a mad dash to the level cap due to being uncertain the number of adventures in a campaign. Sure, I can use downtime to catch up but that feels like a cheat. I like the structure of Dragonlance VOTU where each adventure was for a particular level. It could have gone slower but someone would have to write those adventures.
I think one level per adventure is a fair speed. Most players here don't/can't average evn one game a week, so even using the one level per adventure format, most players would still need 3 to 4 months just to level to 10, and that's assuming they use the same character all the way and the local game tiers match up.
The 'too fast' issue that I feel needs to be addressed is the starting downtime. A fresh level 5 with 40 down time days means I can start essentially as a level 9, play one adventure, and be in tier 3 for my second session.
Note that the program is focused on convention play (so playing say three or four adventures in a weekend), and the majority of adventures will be tier 1 and tier 2. Higher tier play will probably be somewhat rare.
@ renumar IIRC because AL-creator content had an xp and treasure budget per tier. This worked fine for the mods, but then wotc would just drop another book into the mix that didn't take any of that into account. SKT had the "1 level per chapter" fast advancement advice up to level 5 and then dropped you into a hex crawl that could level you 2-3 times in a single adventure or just be an xp wasteland.
They patched it with xp per hour played in TOA, but it was still inconsistent with the XP you could get from a 2 hour toa mod.
While this doesn't necessarily matter to most players operating in the dark, the issue long term was that there was a noticable impact from players and dms who started optimizing the mods they wanted to play and run so they could power level, along w mods that gave certain types of treasure that was good for their builds.
This resulted in certain mods and books seeing a ton of play purely because of what the rewards were, which isn't fair to content creators who got assigned less rewarding mods.
Honestly, I don't like the idea of any extra levelling restrictions at all. As players already have the option "to enjoy playing their character for longer at specific levels (especially levels 3-10)" - refusing the level up when offered.
But I'm all for giving optional guidance and recommendations on 'best' advancement rate. Make it clear, if needed, that while a character may level up, they don't have to, and for this particular campaign (or any set of circumstances) that it would be preferred not to. Give DMs explicit permission to run 'LoG official advancement' campaigns (they already had the option to deny players for any reason of course, including for bringing characters outside their preferred level range, but any support for DMs might help, and could be handy to have something to point to when a level 10 char rocks up to join the level 5 party).
Sure, some players may abuse this. But as soon as it becomes a requirement, that removes the freedom for all others. Those working FIFO, those with kids that can't guarantee they'll make it each week, the DM who wants to join the one-shot with his group that a player has offered to run - I can think of any number of options that someone couldn't make it regularly each week but still wants to join with their friends whenever possible.
Consider using Proficiency Bonus as the guidance for how many adventures it requires to advance.
Nah, XP should die a fiery death.
Level per adventure, declining level advancement if they want to, seems the most fair to players. Not everyone will be able to play in each mod at a con or be able to attend each con.
I have played PF Organized Play which is 3 scenarios per level and AL in its current format. I prefer the simpler version but feel it can go too fast in general. Downtime days allow flexibility to move up but once you are up, you are up. I envision a system that allows you to play your character up or down from the tier you are at, adjusting magic items accordingly. From a story standpoint, maybe the adventures happen at different points in a character’s lifetime. It might get way too messy but I have definitely enjoyed playing a character concept at different tiers in home games. Considering a character can be completely revamped between sessions if the player chooses in current AL rules, the idea of moving up or down is not too outside the realm of possibility.
T1 -> 1-2 adventures per level
T2 & T3 -> 3-4 adventures per level
T4 -> 1 adventure per level
Assuming there will be very little T4 content, don't give me a campaign where I have no prayer of ever getting to 20.
I like the speed restrictions in mid-tiers as it prevents games from being flooded with top of tier characters.
This seems a reasonable approach that addresses the lack of T4 content. Perhaps T2 -> 4 adventures and T3 -> 2 adventures. There doesn't seem to be a lot of adventures for T3 heroes either.
Something neat about the early days of AL was that you could gauge a a player's investment by their character. Meeting someone with a Tier 3 character felt like a pretty big deal, you could assume that they had been on a great many adventures, and were intimately familiar with the AL program, and would be a good source of guidance when needed. The specialty character options that were tied to time spent DMing fostered similar feelings. Meeting a character and knowing that this character was a Big Deal. It led to a lot of strength in the community, at the LGS level as well as convention scale.
Also made those high tier Epics even more... epic. Added gravity to the fact that your T2 team was taking on challenges far beyond the scope of what you could do at T1, and increased the feeling of how important it was to support the T3 and T4 tables, the heroes moving in to cut out the heart of the threat.
It's okay for LoG to be slower than the warp speed of modern AL. And it's okay for modern AL to have the breakneck pace it does. It all means having more ways to play D&D.
It's my hope that the administrator's from the Previous Living Greyhawk Campaign will come out and support Legends of Greyhawk. This would certainly grant more module options to a wider audience, since the previous campaign was based of a Regional Concept (IE Ohio was the Archclericy of Veluna, Florida was the Principality of Ulek, etc.) and a player could only play those Region's modules in the real world associated region or at very limited special events. Rewriting preexisting modules and converting them to 5E (2024) could get the amount of playable modules available up in a fairly short time (possibly). I have just recently returned to the world of Open Gaming/Adventure League due to the resurgence of Greyhawk and I'd like to convert some of the stuff I had written for 3.5E...As far as the poll question goes...the more play the better and more opportunities to get play rewards to maximize the gear you'd like to have for your characters(s). So for me it'd be option 1.
Note that the LoG campaign happens ~20 years before living Greyhawk in the timeline so that would make a lot of the adventures not work (for example there is no war against Iuz), and also more importantly the ownership of those adventures is very murky and legally makes reusing them impossible.
I noticed that...can't have the Wasting Disease in Veluna either...Hopefully the Admin of LoG can come out with guidelines about previously published material for the original authors of the old modules...something to consider anyway. (got my fingers crossed)
Having seen the MagicCon Chicago LoG treasure selection, I have an idea:
Make downtime part of treasure options, and then downtime spend for levelling.
So, I could get the good magic item and X downtime days, or a random pick and X+Y downtime days, or just the gold and X+y+Z downtime days.
With the 2024 rules, crafting done during downtime is the only use for it. So if more downtime was given, but some of it was required to level, then it gives the characters greater flexibility. Do I do crafting to help the party and/or make money for better gear? Or do I spend my time training to get more powerful?
That would make it easy to balance adventure length and Tier to downtime given.
My current understanding, is that LoG is separate from Living Greyhawk, in that they will not necessarily overlap. There is information out there that explains the differences and expectations (pretty sure it's in the original post on D&D Beyond). That said, they have stated that content in LoG will not be region specific to the real world. The Primer Organizers (PO) got to take specific regions on the Greyhawk map from the 2024 DMG and will create content in those regions.
With the new PHB not allowing any subclasses before lvl3, I expect levels 1 and 2 to be VERY boring generic play, certainly for experienced players. In AL I believe Tier2 5-10 always had the best play. I would suggest that you start all players at level 3, and have an option to start at level 5 with Tier 2 play like AL had. If you are going to start everyone at 1, I think you should level up at one adventure per level until 3 before you slow down a little, to minimize time spent at levels 1-2.
another issue is that with this only being available at conventions, many people who attend only GenCon will never reach higher tiers, or will be locked into a single character if they want to advance and perhaps they may find they are bored of its concept by the time next GenCon rolls around.