As a DM, can I use the honor mechanic in Adventurers League?

[FabulousFizban]

what about insanity? gritty realism?

[Unoriginal]

Pretty sure you can't.

[Zuras]

You can’t use the honor mechanic in AL.

There are lots of places (especially Season 3 and Season 4 material) where you can hand out insanity like candy, but it is not a general rule.

As a DM, you are empowered, so you can give players short term insanity any time you feel like it, but don’t give them anything that will last beyond the session unless the module specifically allows it.

As far as the spirit of the rules goes, as long as the insanity is related to aberrations /extraplanar creatures /undead or other horror movie stuff you are good.

Gritty Realism (as far as rests go) is fine in a hard cover adventure. In a module you should provide rests when specified. I have only seen gritty realism in adventures with lots of overland travel, like ToA and SKT.

[OverLordOcelot]

On paper, no. In practice, there's no AL police to check up on you. As long as you're sticking to the advancement rules and not handing out tons of bonus treasure and unlocks or penalizing the players enough that no one is interested in playing with you, you can really do whatever you want at your table. If you're screwing around and giving out too much stuff then someone might decide to look at log sheets and disallow characters boosted up by you, but if the PCs aren't out of line when they go to other tables no one is really going to care what you do in your game.

[Keravath]

what about insanity? gritty realism?

Short answer is no to any optional rules unless they are specifically called out in the module/HC you are running.

There are some modules/HC which can give some form of madness as a result of certain actions by the PCs for example. Some monsters can also have negative effects like that if they are in the module.

However, honor system or gritty realism aren't AL options. Here is the quote from the ALFAQ

"Can I use the Variant and Optional Rules in the PHB/DMG?
The only optional or variant rules available for use are:
• Variant: Customizing Ability Scores (PHB)
• Variant Human Traits (PHB)
• Half-Elf Variants (SCAG)
• Option: Human Languages (SCAG)
• Tiefling Variants (SCAG)
• Variant: Playing on a Grid (PBR)
• Variant: Skills with Different Abilities (PHB)
Without specific campaign documentation, any other variant or optional rules, such as Variant: Quasit Familiar (MM) are not available for use."

If you are using other rules you aren't playing AL.

Why does this matter? AL is a shared game system. People play the same module run by thousands of different DMs at different locations. If a DM chooses to use optional rules then characters may have a more difficult or easier time with the same content. They will also have a different experience playing the content likely outside the scope envisaged by the authors when the content was created for AL play with the ruleset in mind.

In a home game, none of this matters. You do what you like and you and your players have fun with it. In AL, it makes a difference since the characters can be taken from one table to another, from one venue to another (game stores, to cons, to home games run using AL rules), and from one country to another. An AL character can be played anywhere in the world.

At most AL venues I have played, you never know who might turn up. You might get different players every session with different characters. Even when playing through a hard cover in AL there can be turn over of players. AL gives the DM quite a bit of flexibility in terms of balancing the module to the set of characters that they are running through the content. However, changing the underlying rules, using optional or homebrew content is not one of the options.

Finally, another poster said "In practice, there's no AL police to check up on you.". Which is more or less true, there is no central authority that vets how DMs run their tables or how individual characters are created or leveled up. Simply put, if DMs and players what to cheat then there is very little to stop them though another DM can look at a character sheet and log if they wish and if there are inconsistencies then they can bar the character from play.

The only real policing is by the folks playing the game and the game store operator. Players can express concerns about DMs running non-AL games at a game store that claims to be running AL (I know of at least one case where a DM was running AL with homebrew critical miss rules and a few other things they liked ... the players didn't like it and after a while that DM didn't run games there anymore .. mostly due to the complaints and the general consensus that he wasn't a good DM to play with).

In addition, depending on the seriousness of the issues (though this isn't rules primarily), players can complain to the AL organizers which can result in game stores or other organizations being denied epics and other content that can attract customers.

For example, as far as I know, these days the venue has to have a published code of conduct that DMs and players are expected to abide by before WOTC will allow them to run an epic or events directly associated with the company (since WOTC can't enforce behaviour the best they can do is insist that the venue has a written code that they have committed to enforcing). This is aimed at serious issues like harassement and the acceptance of a wide variety of people at D&D events rather than rules but it does emphasize that AL is a lot more than just the one table being run at a game store which is why AL tries to make the gaming experience similar wherever it is played by using a common ruleset.

[ChildofLuthic]

I feel like the honor mechanic is fine to use in your own game, and even gritty realism is alright at your table. Insanity I'd be more wary of, if it's permanent. Like another poster said, there's no AL police that's going to come to your game and tell you to play another way, but if the PCs progress in a way that doesn't fit with AL's rules, those characters can't go to other games.

[Keravath]

I feel like the honor mechanic is fine to use in your own game, and even gritty realism is alright at your table. Insanity I'd be more wary of, if it's permanent. Like another poster said, there's no AL police that's going to come to your game and tell you to play another way, but if the PCs progress in a way that doesn't fit with AL's rules, those characters can't go to other games.

You're right. You can use any rules you like at your table.

However, using either of those is explicitly not allowed in Adventurers League play. You can use those rules if you like but if anyone ever objects then, strictly speaking, none of the characters that have been played under those rules are actually AL legal.

[NaughtyTiger]

most of the optional rules are okay.

insanity and gritty realism will get a lot of pushback at the table (especially if you are doing oneshots.)
no effects really carries over between oneshot modules, so those 2 effects are pretty limited in scope.

the AL police are the players, and if you stray too far from the rules, they will throw a **** fit. and that ruins the experience for everyone.