Admittedly, I have never played AL as I have always either been a DM, or playing in my DMs own world. I recently thought about joining the an AL group and so looked at the players guide, and after reading it, I didn't want to play AL.
Everything fun about d&d has been taken out, and a load of extra rules have been added in that strips away what ever little amount of fun is left.
Also, from reading the players guide, AL looks really hard to play, but why? Why does it have to be so hard?
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I am an online author and sci-fi lover who plays table too roleplaying games in his free time. See all my character concepts at: Character Bios – Jays Blog (jaytelford.me)
The idea of AL is to standardize D&D, allowing you to take your character to any AL game and play it. On a practical level, AL is a decent way to find people to play non-AL games with.
The idea of AL is to standardize D&D, allowing you to take your character to any AL game and play it. On a practical level, AL is a decent way to find people to play non-AL games with.
I can understand standardisation. Its the changes to core mechanics that I don't understand.
Why the experience checkpoints instead of XP advancement, and why treasure points, instead of just given out gold or standard item rewards?
As someone who has only ever played normal D&D, I don't understand. Standardisation, yes, I can understand that but they seem to have gone about it confusingly. I am not even new to D&D and still find it perplexing, haven only knows how hard it would be for someone who has never played before to wrap their head around it, and what they must think of the game, after playing an overly complicated, none standard, standardised version of it.
I am an online author and sci-fi lover who plays table too roleplaying games in his free time. See all my character concepts at: Character Bios – Jays Blog (jaytelford.me)
The idea of AL is to standardize D&D, allowing you to take your character to any AL game and play it. On a practical level, AL is a decent way to find people to play non-AL games with.
I can understand standardisation. Its the changes to core mechanics that I don't understand.
Why the experience checkpoints instead of XP advancement, and why treasure points, instead of just given out gold or standard item rewards?
As someone who has only ever played normal D&D, I don't understand. Standardisation, yes, I can understand that but they seem to have gone about it confusingly. I am not even new to D&D and still find it perplexing, haven only knows how hard it would be for someone who has never played before to wrap their head around it, and what they must think of the game, after playing an overly complicated, none standard, standardised version of it.
The difference between AL and hanging around with friends in a home game is that AL is played everywhere and not everyone is nice (though I would say that 99% of the people are great). In addition, AL is setup to be able to adapt to the schedules of busy people, people with work, families, other commitments and other recreational activities. When I first started D&D, I was in high school, it was easy to get together with friends for a whole day, evening, weekend, all nighter and just play games, chill and have fun.
Fast forward a few decades with work, kids, etc and AL allows you to schedule/book a slot to play AND usually allows you to be able to cancel when something comes up without disrupting the game for eveyone else. The game will usually go on regardless whereas with a home group and a campaign plot line this often causes issues.
So this is the environment of AL. It is still fun but different from playing at home. Now why did AL move away from XP, gold and treasure rewards?
1) Easier and more fun game play. Earning "Adventure Check Points"/hour of play means that if you play the game for 4 hours then you will get 4ACP. If you are making progress towards the goals of the module and having fun then you earn them. It is actually much simpler than XP for both the players and the DM. You need 4ACP/level up to level 5 and 8ACP/Level after that. If you don't think that is easier than XP and needing 300, 900, 2700, 6500 ... XP to reach the next level and each different monster rewarding different amounts then I am not sure what I can say.
However, AL used XP for seven seasons - why switch? The main reason is the kind of game play that results when module advancement is driven by XP. In theory, players should receive XP for solving problems, this can mean fighting things ... but it should also mean being able to sneak by things, talk creatures out of attacking, convince creatures to help instead of remaining neutral ...essentially, ANY sort of creative solution to a problem SHOULD reward the SAME XP since the players solved the problem. Unfortunately, a LOT of DMs don't see it that way. Many would reward full XP for killing all the creatures but only a fraction of XP for avoiding the encounter. What do you think happens when players are faced with a situation in which the character rewards in terms of experience are dominated by what they kill when playing a module? That's right, some decide to kill as much as possible. NPCs? Just moar XP.
What happens when you take a group of 7 people, some who want to role play and have fun and others who want to maximize the rewards their character receives? Usually the one type of player tries to have a conversation and the others just attack after a few rounds using XP as the justification since "Doesn't everyone want to get the maximum XP from the module?".
I played a lot of AL modules where the party received close to the minimum XP since we didn't solve every encounter by fighting.
Switching to ACP has markedly changed the dynamic. Most players are far more interested in coming up with fun and creative solutions where they won't die since they know that there will still usually be some combat encounters for those who like to fight but there is no requirement to turn every encounter into combat to maximize returns.
In my experience ACP has been a massively positive change for AL - and it is simpler than XP - and I started playing with first edition so I've played D&D with XP since the beginning.
2) So lets turn to treasure points. Surely this is unrealistic and too complicated? It is a bit, but the problems it solved were worse. In the past, each module would typically drop one magic item. Only ONE character could walk away with it. Distribution was based on which characters wanted the item and had the least magic items. If one person had the least and wanted it, it was theirs. Otherwise the ones with the least count of magic items could roll off for it. Relatively fair but the problems were how it could be "abused".
- everyone was eligible for the magic item drop whether they could use it or not. Trading is something that can happen outside of the game. So, you would get players rolling for items that YOUR character could really use (and this might be your ONE chance to get it without trading since some items only drop in one module and you can only ever play a module once/character) when they couldn't use it at all because "They needed a rare to trade". Trading is something that some players have more access to than others depending on the local store, access to facebook groups and convention attendance. Trading was not something everyone had access to. As a result, this could be very frustrating to some folks when a player took an item they couldn't use so they could trade it (or sometimes just because they could take it and irritate another player).
- since the character with the least magic items had first dibs, people would create characters, play them and then choose not to take any items until higher levels, these characters would then cherry pick the drops in tier 2, 3 or 4 by having the least number. In the meantime, they contributed less since they had none, but when they picked up that girdle of fire giant strength at level 12 on their wizard because they had the least magic items and though it would be fun ... it tended to irritate the paladin/fighter/barbarian at the table who would have really liked it.
Basically, on paper the drop treasure and split with the party mechanic which works great with a bunch of friends breaks when you have a random group of folks playing together. So they introduced "unclocks" and "treasure check points". Once your character becomes aware of the existence of a magic item they are then able to commission someone to make one for them or otherwise acquire it by spending treasure check points which you have earned on your adventures. These represent the acquired disposable treasure that you expend to acquire the item you want whether by commission, purchase or trade. This also avoids all of the player conflict, everyone who wants the item can obtain one copy of the item for their own use whether to use or to trade. Coming up with some reasonable way to cost these items gets a bit challenging but the earning of TCP is as easy as ACP.
For tier 1 and 2 you earn 1 TCP for each ACP.
For tier 3 and 4 (level 11+) you earn 2 TCP for each ACP.
That is pretty simple. The hardest part is figuring out how much TCP you need to pay for a magic item you have unlocked. It is pretty easy once you have figured it out but the easiest approach is to ask the DM since you do need access to the DMG to figure out costs.
3) Gold is probably the most controversial. Some classes NEED gold and some don't need it as much or at all. AL has a history of characters accumulating vast sums of gold from various modules but AL provides very little to spend it on except potions. As a result, a high level character could end up with a bag of holding with 1000 superior healing potions (vast overkill). However, this is more of an aesthetic than practical problem since how much gold my character has doesn't affect any other character except perhaps in terms of bragging rights. The fix was to give each character a salary represented by the net gold earned/level based on assumed income from modules and assumed expenses. Tier 1 is 75gp/level and it scales up. However, it is fine for limiting the number of potions characters can buy but it severely impacts classes like wizards and clerics who need to buy spells or have significant component costs.
In any case, it is pretty simple since instead of some random amount of gold you just get a certain amount depending on level and the DM can easily tell you that number as they could whatever might have been looted.
Anyway .. the only other AL restriction is that you can only build your character using the Players Handbook and ONE other source book. So you can't combine features from the PHB, SCAG and XGTE. The reasoning behind this is that WotC might introduce spells/classes/archetypes in each expansion that might create combinations that are more effective than others (some monstrous races plus XgtE for example would be exceptional). This limits power creep in AL a little and means that folks have to make some choices in character creation but you can freely rebuild characters until level 5 so if you don't like it ... change it.
The idea of AL is to standardize D&D, allowing you to take your character to any AL game and play it. On a practical level, AL is a decent way to find people to play non-AL games with.
I can understand standardisation. Its the changes to core mechanics that I don't understand.
Why the experience checkpoints instead of XP advancement, and why treasure points, instead of just given out gold or standard item rewards?
As someone who has only ever played normal D&D, I don't understand. Standardisation, yes, I can understand that but they seem to have gone about it confusingly. I am not even new to D&D and still find it perplexing, haven only knows how hard it would be for someone who has never played before to wrap their head around it, and what they must think of the game, after playing an overly complicated, none standard, standardised version of it.
The difference between AL and hanging around with friends in a home game is that AL is played everywhere and not everyone is nice (though I would say that 99% of the people are great). In addition, AL is setup to be able to adapt to the schedules of busy people, people with work, families, other commitments and other recreational activities. When I first started D&D, I was in high school, it was easy to get together with friends for a whole day, evening, weekend, all nighter and just play games, chill and have fun.
Fast forward a few decades with work, kids, etc and AL allows you to schedule/book a slot to play AND usually allows you to be able to cancel when something comes up without disrupting the game for eveyone else. The game will usually go on regardless whereas with a home group and a campaign plot line this often causes issues.
So this is the environment of AL. It is still fun but different from playing at home. Now why did AL move away from XP, gold and treasure rewards?
1) Easier and more fun game play. Earning "Adventure Check Points"/hour of play means that if you play the game for 4 hours then you will get 4ACP. If you are making progress towards the goals of the module and having fun then you earn them. It is actually much simpler than XP for both the players and the DM. You need 4ACP/level up to level 5 and 8ACP/Level after that. If you don't think that is easier than XP and needing 300, 900, 2700, 6500 ... XP to reach the next level and each different monster rewarding different amounts then I am not sure what I can say.
However, AL used XP for seven seasons - why switch? The main reason is the kind of game play that results when module advancement is driven by XP. In theory, players should receive XP for solving problems, this can mean fighting things ... but it should also mean being able to sneak by things, talk creatures out of attacking, convince creatures to help instead of remaining neutral ...essentially, ANY sort of creative solution to a problem SHOULD reward the SAME XP since the players solved the problem. Unfortunately, a LOT of DMs don't see it that way. Many would reward full XP for killing all the creatures but only a fraction of XP for avoiding the encounter. What do you think happens when players are faced with a situation in which the character rewards in terms of experience are dominated by what they kill when playing a module? That's right, some decide to kill as much as possible. NPCs? Just moar XP.
What happens when you take a group of 7 people, some who want to role play and have fun and others who want to maximize the rewards their character receives? Usually the one type of player tries to have a conversation and the others just attack after a few rounds using XP as the justification since "Doesn't everyone want to get the maximum XP from the module?".
I played a lot of AL modules where the party received close to the minimum XP since we didn't solve every encounter by fighting.
Switching to ACP has markedly changed the dynamic. Most players are far more interested in coming up with fun and creative solutions where they won't die since they know that there will still usually be some combat encounters for those who like to fight but there is no requirement to turn every encounter into combat to maximize returns.
In my experience ACP has been a massively positive change for AL - and it is simpler than XP - and I started playing with first edition so I've played D&D with XP since the beginning.
2) So lets turn to treasure points. Surely this is unrealistic and too complicated? It is a bit, but the problems it solved were worse. In the past, each module would typically drop one magic item. Only ONE character could walk away with it. Distribution was based on which characters wanted the item and had the least magic items. If one person had the least and wanted it, it was theirs. Otherwise the ones with the least count of magic items could roll off for it. Relatively fair but the problems were how it could be "abused".
- everyone was eligible for the magic item drop whether they could use it or not. Trading is something that can happen outside of the game. So, you would get players rolling for items that YOUR character could really use (and this might be your ONE chance to get it without trading since some items only drop in one module and you can only ever play a module once/character) when they couldn't use it at all because "They needed a rare to trade". Trading is something that some players have more access to than others depending on the local store, access to facebook groups and convention attendance. Trading was not something everyone had access to. As a result, this could be very frustrating to some folks when a player took an item they couldn't use so they could trade it (or sometimes just because they could take it and irritate another player).
- since the character with the least magic items had first dibs, people would create characters, play them and then choose not to take any items until higher levels, these characters would then cherry pick the drops in tier 2, 3 or 4 by having the least number. In the meantime, they contributed less since they had none, but when they picked up that girdle of fire giant strength at level 12 on their wizard because they had the least magic items and though it would be fun ... it tended to irritate the paladin/fighter/barbarian at the table who would have really liked it.
Basically, on paper the drop treasure and split with the party mechanic which works great with a bunch of friends breaks when you have a random group of folks playing together. So they introduced "unclocks" and "treasure check points". Once your character becomes aware of the existence of a magic item they are then able to commission someone to make one for them or otherwise acquire it by spending treasure check points which you have earned on your adventures. These represent the acquired disposable treasure that you expend to acquire the item you want whether by commission, purchase or trade. This also avoids all of the player conflict, everyone who wants the item can obtain one copy of the item for their own use whether to use or to trade. Coming up with some reasonable way to cost these items gets a bit challenging but the earning of TCP is as easy as ACP.
For tier 1 and 2 you earn 1 TCP for each ACP.
For tier 3 and 4 (level 11+) you earn 2 TCP for each ACP.
That is pretty simple. The hardest part is figuring out how much TCP you need to pay for a magic item you have unlocked. It is pretty easy once you have figured it out but the easiest approach is to ask the DM since you do need access to the DMG to figure out costs.
3) Gold is probably the most controversial. Some classes NEED gold and some don't need it as much or at all. AL has a history of characters accumulating vast sums of gold from various modules but AL provides very little to spend it on except potions. As a result, a high level character could end up with a bag of holding with 1000 superior healing potions (vast overkill). However, this is more of an aesthetic than practical problem since how much gold my character has doesn't affect any other character except perhaps in terms of bragging rights. The fix was to give each character a salary represented by the net gold earned/level based on assumed income from modules and assumed expenses. Tier 1 is 75gp/level and it scales up. However, it is fine for limiting the number of potions characters can buy but it severely impacts classes like wizards and clerics who need to buy spells or have significant component costs.
In any case, it is pretty simple since instead of some random amount of gold you just get a certain amount depending on level and the DM can easily tell you that number as they could whatever might have been looted.
Anyway .. the only other AL restriction is that you can only build your character using the Players Handbook and ONE other source book. So you can't combine features from the PHB, SCAG and XGTE. The reasoning behind this is that WotC might introduce spells/classes/archetypes in each expansion that might create combinations that are more effective than others (some monstrous races plus XgtE for example would be exceptional). This limits power creep in AL a little and means that folks have to make some choices in character creation but you can freely rebuild characters until level 5 so if you don't like it ... change it.
This actually explains the reasoning for the most of the things I didn't like. Maybe I should.still make a character and play an AL game to see what it's actually like in practice.
I am an online author and sci-fi lover who plays table too roleplaying games in his free time. See all my character concepts at: Character Bios – Jays Blog (jaytelford.me)
AL is fun with the right group. I understand that rules are weird but they are made so that if someone doesn't show up the group isn't crippled by the lost.
Try it out. It may not be for you but find that out the hard way.
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Admittedly, I have never played AL as I have always either been a DM, or playing in my DMs own world. I recently thought about joining the an AL group and so looked at the players guide, and after reading it, I didn't want to play AL.
Everything fun about d&d has been taken out, and a load of extra rules have been added in that strips away what ever little amount of fun is left.
Also, from reading the players guide, AL looks really hard to play, but why? Why does it have to be so hard?
I am an online author and sci-fi lover who plays table too roleplaying games in his free time. See all my character concepts at: Character Bios – Jays Blog (jaytelford.me)
The idea of AL is to standardize D&D, allowing you to take your character to any AL game and play it. On a practical level, AL is a decent way to find people to play non-AL games with.
I can understand standardisation. Its the changes to core mechanics that I don't understand.
Why the experience checkpoints instead of XP advancement, and why treasure points, instead of just given out gold or standard item rewards?
As someone who has only ever played normal D&D, I don't understand. Standardisation, yes, I can understand that but they seem to have gone about it confusingly. I am not even new to D&D and still find it perplexing, haven only knows how hard it would be for someone who has never played before to wrap their head around it, and what they must think of the game, after playing an overly complicated, none standard, standardised version of it.
I am an online author and sci-fi lover who plays table too roleplaying games in his free time. See all my character concepts at: Character Bios – Jays Blog (jaytelford.me)
Yes AL has become needlessly over complicated in the past year. Rules seem to keep compounding, which is taking players and games out of AL.
The difference between AL and hanging around with friends in a home game is that AL is played everywhere and not everyone is nice (though I would say that 99% of the people are great). In addition, AL is setup to be able to adapt to the schedules of busy people, people with work, families, other commitments and other recreational activities. When I first started D&D, I was in high school, it was easy to get together with friends for a whole day, evening, weekend, all nighter and just play games, chill and have fun.
Fast forward a few decades with work, kids, etc and AL allows you to schedule/book a slot to play AND usually allows you to be able to cancel when something comes up without disrupting the game for eveyone else. The game will usually go on regardless whereas with a home group and a campaign plot line this often causes issues.
So this is the environment of AL. It is still fun but different from playing at home. Now why did AL move away from XP, gold and treasure rewards?
1) Easier and more fun game play. Earning "Adventure Check Points"/hour of play means that if you play the game for 4 hours then you will get 4ACP. If you are making progress towards the goals of the module and having fun then you earn them. It is actually much simpler than XP for both the players and the DM. You need 4ACP/level up to level 5 and 8ACP/Level after that. If you don't think that is easier than XP and needing 300, 900, 2700, 6500 ... XP to reach the next level and each different monster rewarding different amounts then I am not sure what I can say.
However, AL used XP for seven seasons - why switch? The main reason is the kind of game play that results when module advancement is driven by XP. In theory, players should receive XP for solving problems, this can mean fighting things ... but it should also mean being able to sneak by things, talk creatures out of attacking, convince creatures to help instead of remaining neutral ...essentially, ANY sort of creative solution to a problem SHOULD reward the SAME XP since the players solved the problem. Unfortunately, a LOT of DMs don't see it that way. Many would reward full XP for killing all the creatures but only a fraction of XP for avoiding the encounter. What do you think happens when players are faced with a situation in which the character rewards in terms of experience are dominated by what they kill when playing a module? That's right, some decide to kill as much as possible. NPCs? Just moar XP.
What happens when you take a group of 7 people, some who want to role play and have fun and others who want to maximize the rewards their character receives? Usually the one type of player tries to have a conversation and the others just attack after a few rounds using XP as the justification since "Doesn't everyone want to get the maximum XP from the module?".
I played a lot of AL modules where the party received close to the minimum XP since we didn't solve every encounter by fighting.
Switching to ACP has markedly changed the dynamic. Most players are far more interested in coming up with fun and creative solutions where they won't die since they know that there will still usually be some combat encounters for those who like to fight but there is no requirement to turn every encounter into combat to maximize returns.
In my experience ACP has been a massively positive change for AL - and it is simpler than XP - and I started playing with first edition so I've played D&D with XP since the beginning.
2) So lets turn to treasure points. Surely this is unrealistic and too complicated? It is a bit, but the problems it solved were worse. In the past, each module would typically drop one magic item. Only ONE character could walk away with it. Distribution was based on which characters wanted the item and had the least magic items. If one person had the least and wanted it, it was theirs. Otherwise the ones with the least count of magic items could roll off for it. Relatively fair but the problems were how it could be "abused".
- everyone was eligible for the magic item drop whether they could use it or not. Trading is something that can happen outside of the game. So, you would get players rolling for items that YOUR character could really use (and this might be your ONE chance to get it without trading since some items only drop in one module and you can only ever play a module once/character) when they couldn't use it at all because "They needed a rare to trade". Trading is something that some players have more access to than others depending on the local store, access to facebook groups and convention attendance. Trading was not something everyone had access to. As a result, this could be very frustrating to some folks when a player took an item they couldn't use so they could trade it (or sometimes just because they could take it and irritate another player).
- since the character with the least magic items had first dibs, people would create characters, play them and then choose not to take any items until higher levels, these characters would then cherry pick the drops in tier 2, 3 or 4 by having the least number. In the meantime, they contributed less since they had none, but when they picked up that girdle of fire giant strength at level 12 on their wizard because they had the least magic items and though it would be fun ... it tended to irritate the paladin/fighter/barbarian at the table who would have really liked it.
Basically, on paper the drop treasure and split with the party mechanic which works great with a bunch of friends breaks when you have a random group of folks playing together. So they introduced "unclocks" and "treasure check points". Once your character becomes aware of the existence of a magic item they are then able to commission someone to make one for them or otherwise acquire it by spending treasure check points which you have earned on your adventures. These represent the acquired disposable treasure that you expend to acquire the item you want whether by commission, purchase or trade. This also avoids all of the player conflict, everyone who wants the item can obtain one copy of the item for their own use whether to use or to trade. Coming up with some reasonable way to cost these items gets a bit challenging but the earning of TCP is as easy as ACP.
For tier 1 and 2 you earn 1 TCP for each ACP.
For tier 3 and 4 (level 11+) you earn 2 TCP for each ACP.
That is pretty simple. The hardest part is figuring out how much TCP you need to pay for a magic item you have unlocked. It is pretty easy once you have figured it out but the easiest approach is to ask the DM since you do need access to the DMG to figure out costs.
3) Gold is probably the most controversial. Some classes NEED gold and some don't need it as much or at all. AL has a history of characters accumulating vast sums of gold from various modules but AL provides very little to spend it on except potions. As a result, a high level character could end up with a bag of holding with 1000 superior healing potions (vast overkill). However, this is more of an aesthetic than practical problem since how much gold my character has doesn't affect any other character except perhaps in terms of bragging rights. The fix was to give each character a salary represented by the net gold earned/level based on assumed income from modules and assumed expenses. Tier 1 is 75gp/level and it scales up. However, it is fine for limiting the number of potions characters can buy but it severely impacts classes like wizards and clerics who need to buy spells or have significant component costs.
In any case, it is pretty simple since instead of some random amount of gold you just get a certain amount depending on level and the DM can easily tell you that number as they could whatever might have been looted.
Anyway .. the only other AL restriction is that you can only build your character using the Players Handbook and ONE other source book. So you can't combine features from the PHB, SCAG and XGTE. The reasoning behind this is that WotC might introduce spells/classes/archetypes in each expansion that might create combinations that are more effective than others (some monstrous races plus XgtE for example would be exceptional). This limits power creep in AL a little and means that folks have to make some choices in character creation but you can freely rebuild characters until level 5 so if you don't like it ... change it.
This actually explains the reasoning for the most of the things I didn't like. Maybe I should.still make a character and play an AL game to see what it's actually like in practice.
I am an online author and sci-fi lover who plays table too roleplaying games in his free time. See all my character concepts at: Character Bios – Jays Blog (jaytelford.me)
AL is fun with the right group. I understand that rules are weird but they are made so that if someone doesn't show up the group isn't crippled by the lost.
Try it out. It may not be for you but find that out the hard way.