D&D Adventurers League

[Lokiare]

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.a...enturersleague

Starting this August, the face of D&D public play changes with the launch of the fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons. Today, we’d like to share some information about those changes and what you can expect from our future public play programs.

[Kurald Galain]

"For the first time, we’ll have our entire public play taking place in the same ongoing D&D campaign."

Wait, what? They've had Living Greyhawk back in the second edition days, for crying out loud.

[Lokiare]

"For the first time, we’ll have our entire public play taking place in the same ongoing D&D campaign."

Wait, what? They've had Living Greyhawk back in the second edition days, for crying out loud.

I like how they are going to have one person writing all the adventures without having a crew to play test them.

[da_chicken]

Personally, I'd rather have Dungeon back.

[1337 b4k4]

I like how they are going to have one person writing all the adventures without having a crew to play test them.

Where in the heck did you get that?

[Felhammer]

"For the first time, we’ll have our entire public play taking place in the same ongoing D&D campaign."

Wait, what? They've had Living Greyhawk back in the second edition days, for crying out loud.

The modules for Living Greyhawk were not made by WotC, merely sanctioned by them. Presumably by saying everyone will be in the same world, the adventures will be 100% official and affect the world.

[Kurald Galain]

The modules for Living Greyhawk were not made by WotC, merely sanctioned by them. Presumably by saying everyone will be in the same world, the adventures will be 100% official and affect the world.

You mean, exactly how Living Forgotten Realms, and D&D Encounters, and Pathfinder Society already work? Yup, that's a very novel idea that has never been tried before!

[Chaosvii7]

You mean, exactly how Living Forgotten Realms, and D&D Encounters, and Pathfinder Society already work? Yup, that's a very novel idea that has never been tried before!

Yes and no? You may forget that D&D has used surveys and social media to poll player outcomes of story events and bring the story to a unifying canonical end; Murder in Baldur's Gate, specifically, where the final boss of that season was determined by which "factions" you worked for(factions simply being particular NPCs). After the season ended, DMs were asked to submit a survey that told them what final boss we faced, and the most common one was the decided interpretation of the final boss. Done without making the exploits of the characters moot, but they could use this system to plan ahead for future seasons with the things the players do across the season.

[Felhammer]

You mean, exactly how Living Forgotten Realms, and D&D Encounters, and Pathfinder Society already work? Yup, that's a very novel idea that has never been tried before!

The quote also means they will be pushing all three of their public play programs into one world and one campaign. No longer will we see Dark Sun adventures or adventures set in a generic world. Everything will be housed in FR and everything will feed into generating new canon.

[Lokiare]

Where in the heck did you get that?

We have a community manager who’s talks with the public and gathers feedback, a content manager that develops and edits our adventures, and a resource manager that does a lot of the organization around schedules and provides support to our designers.

Note the 'a' meaning one, and the 'develops and edits our adventures' meaning they make the adventures.

[1337 b4k4]

Note the 'a' meaning one, and the 'develops and edits our adventures' meaning they make the adventures.

Perhaps you missed the line before it:

The D&D Adventurers League is maintained not only by Wizards of the Coast, but also by a group of representatives we’ve chosen as administrators to help out players, Dungeon Masters, and organizers.

You'll also note the title of "manager". What do you suppose a "manager" might be "managing"? Maybe other people? Sure, if you're the sort of person to read everything WotC says in the most negative light possible, including twisting the meanings of various idioms to mean things that they don't, I suppose you could interpret what was said as "There will only be one person ever who writes, edits and publishes adventures, and they will have no oversight and no play testing will ever occur". I tend to be the sort of person that assumes that a professional gaming company with the world's most successful CCG, the worlds most successful TTRPG and various other extremely successful games under their belts might know a thing or two about producing products, including the need for testing before a product is released.

I mean are you also assuming that since they talk about "a community manager" that there will only be one person at WotC who will ever deal with or hear customer feedback and act on that? When they talk about "a resource manager" are you assuming that there will only be one WotC employee in the entire company who will be somehow magically coordinating all organization, setup and running of all organized play everywhere around the world? Also, who are " our designers " that the resource manager will be supporting if there's only going to be one person writing all the adventures?

[Lokiare]

Perhaps you missed the line before it:



You'll also note the title of "manager". What do you suppose a "manager" might be "managing"? Maybe other people? Sure, if you're the sort of person to read everything WotC says in the most negative light possible, including twisting the meanings of various idioms to mean things that they don't, I suppose you could interpret what was said as "There will only be one person ever who writes, edits and publishes adventures, and they will have no oversight and no play testing will ever occur". I tend to be the sort of person that assumes that a professional gaming company with the world's most successful CCG, the worlds most successful TTRPG and various other extremely successful games under their belts might know a thing or two about producing products, including the need for testing before a product is released.

I mean are you also assuming that since they talk about "a community manager" that there will only be one person at WotC who will ever deal with or hear customer feedback and act on that? When they talk about "a resource manager" are you assuming that there will only be one WotC employee in the entire company who will be somehow magically coordinating all organization, setup and running of all organized play everywhere around the world? Also, who are " our designers " that the resource manager will be supporting if there's only going to be one person writing all the adventures?

Well there's your mistake then. Paizo is the world most successful TTRPG company (or if you're counting defunct companies it would be TSR), and Manager could mean managing adventures or products and doesn't necessarily mean people. They say "representatives we’ve chosen as administrators" right before the part where they talk about 3 different people with 3 completely different jobs.

I only view WotC in the worst light possible because they've proven over and over that the worst light possible is what they are.

Assuming can lead to trouble. In the case of WotC they pulled the testing phase out right when they needed it most, right when they were going to adjust the math which the underlying feel of the game is built on.

Not to mention how there are only a handful of people working on D&D at the moment, but they are going to suddenly hire an army writers and editors to produce adventures for a free event that costs them money when they aren't even willing to hire the same for the actual development of the game.

I think some people don't know the realities of business or how corporations work.

[1337 b4k4]

Assuming can lead to trouble. In the case of WotC they pulled the testing phase out right when they needed it most, right when they were going to adjust the math which the underlying feel of the game is built on.

Assumption 1: The purpose of the public playtest was to test the math of the game
Assumption 2: The company that produced 3e, 4e, MtG and a host of other perfectly successful games can't do math
Assumption 3: You can do math better than WotC
Assumption 4: You know what WotC's customers want better than WotC

About those assumptions leading to trouble ... you might want to check yours.

Not to mention how there are only a handful of people working on D&D at the moment, but they are going to suddenly hire an army writers and editors to produce adventures for a free event that costs them money when they aren't even willing to hire the same for the actual development of the game.

Yeah, if you could quote me saying that WotC will "hire an army of writers and editors" that would be great. Otherwise, like I've asked you before, please stop putting words into my mouth and please stop repeating things that aren't true.

[Envyus]

Lokiare. They almost never edited the math for the play test as it would be a ton of work to change every monster and stuff by each playtest. The math was stated by them to be one of the things they would going to mainly work on.

[Lokiare]

Assumption 1: The purpose of the public playtest was to test the math of the game
Assumption 2: The company that produced 3e, 4e, MtG and a host of other perfectly successful games can't do math
Assumption 3: You can do math better than WotC
Assumption 4: You know what WotC's customers want better than WotC

About those assumptions leading to trouble ... you might want to check yours.



Yeah, if you could quote me saying that WotC will "hire an army of writers and editors" that would be great. Otherwise, like I've asked you before, please stop putting words into my mouth and please stop repeating things that aren't true.

Nope sorry. I don't assume any of that.

1. It wasn't, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't have been. Their intentions were to get a 'feel' for what people liked, unfortunately the underlying math plays a big part in that. So they basically did their play test for nothing. For instance try finding the best feeling temperature for warm water without every looking at a number or using any math and then try to replicate that at various sinks around your house. You'll see the problem WotC put themselves in pretty fast.

2. The company has different people working on those other projects, not to mention they use different math if they use math at all (from my understanding they don't crunch numbers for MTG, they do extensive play testing with thousands of testers testing every combination of card that comes up). Regardless the math is very different. I'm demonstrating where they don't understand the math by doing it for them and showing them where their own assumptions don't match the math of the game for instance they keep claiming that the default game is low or now magic but then include charts that will give 100+ magic items out on average. I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt. Either they don't understand the math or they are being intentionally malicious.

3. There is no assumption here. I've shown over and over that my math skills are superior to theirs. Every time I do a math algorithm and show a flaw in their game, I actually prove it.

4. WotC failed out to Pathfinder because of their failure to understand the market which values quality over quantity and keeping promises over failing to do so. We are talking about facts here. Not assumptions.

See there is a difference between facts and logic and faulty assumptions. Wotc doesn't seem to understand the difference.

Lokiare. They almost never edited the math for the play test as it would be a ton of work to change every monster and stuff by each playtest. The math was stated by them to be one of the things they would going to mainly work on.

Actually if everything was based on an algorithm they could do it with a few edits of a spreadsheet. Instead they basically admitted to pulling the monster numbers from where the sun doesn't shine.

[captpike]

Actually if everything was based on an algorithm they could do it with a few edits of a spreadsheet.

if they were serious about testing the math, you have have to do it this way, any other way would be impractical.

its not a good sign if they did just pull the numbers out of thin air

[SoC175]

Assumption 2: The company that produced [...] 4e, [...] can't do math

Well, this one is pretty obvious, given how 4e was released with the math for both the combat part and the non-combat part was totally screwed. Skill challenge math was redone twice before they got it right and combat math on the monster side took them until MM3 to fix and on the player side we got the awful patch-feats aka expertise.

Yeah, since 4e the trust in WotC to get the math right is very low on every forum I am aware of

And it's not as if these were some obscure problems that could not have been noticed until receiving feedback from thousands of gamers, the very problem were spotted within days of the leaked printer PDFs, thus the community called them out before 4e was officially released

[captpike]

Well, this one is pretty obvious, given how 4e was released with both the math for both the combat part and the non-combat part was totally screwed. Skill challenge math was redone twice before they got it right and combat math on the monster side took them until MM3 to fix and on the player side we got the awful patch-feats aka expertise.

Yeah, since 4e the trust in WotC to get the math right is very low on every forum I am aware of

given there is like one guy left from when they even made 4e, its even worse.

4e's math was close enough when it was published it could be patched, I doubt 5e will even be that good

[nyjastul69]

Note the 'a' meaning one, and the 'develops and edits our adventures' meaning they make the adventures.

Design and Development are different jobs.

[Lokiare]

Design and Development are different jobs.

Ok, so its possible they will have two people doing the job. Same problem.

[Envyus]

Ok, so its possible they will have two people doing the job. Same problem.

I can't believe you can honestly call this realism it's pessimism plain and simple. You always interpret stuff in the worst negative light for this.

[Lokiare]

I can't believe you can honestly call this realism it's pessimism plain and simple. You always interpret stuff in the worst negative light for this.

I always interpret things in the worst negative light when it comes from the same group of people that have proven over and over that my interpretations were correct. Its simple pattern recognition at this point.

[Joe the Rat]

Yes and no? You may forget that D&D has used surveys and social media to poll player outcomes of story events and bring the story to a unifying canonical end; Murder in Baldur's Gate, specifically, where the final boss of that season was determined by which "factions" you worked for(factions simply being particular NPCs). After the season ended, DMs were asked to submit a survey that told them what final boss we faced, and the most common one was the decided interpretation of the final boss. Done without making the exploits of the characters moot, but they could use this system to plan ahead for future seasons with the things the players do across the season.

So like what the L5R CCG did for tourney results influencing the storyline? That would make things a bit more 'Living' than simply having Many Tables, One Ruleset, One Module Series.

[1337 b4k4]

Interesting bit of news today (at least to me, not sure if this worked the same way in previous organized play). If you start playing and decide you don't like your character, you can change anything (and everything) each time you level until 5th level, with no penalties..

[da_chicken]

I always interpret things in the worst negative light when it comes from the same group of people that have proven over and over that my interpretations were correct. Its simple pattern recognition at this point.

That's not realism, dude. That's the definition of pessimism.

[Envyus]

I always interpret things in the worst negative light when it comes from the same group of people that have proven over and over that my interpretations were correct. Its simple pattern recognition at this point.

Still have not told me what they did to earn this distrust and I have asked several times.

[Kurald Galain]

Interesting bit of news today (at least to me, not sure if this worked the same way in previous organized play). If you start playing and decide you don't like your character, you can change anything (and everything) each time you level until 5th level, with no penalties..

Yes, that's exactly how it ended up working in Living Forgotten Realms, after the organization finally caved to years of people complaining on the forum that their character wasn't as powerful as it could be. I'm not a fan of this, I've seen it lead to some very ridiculous character building.

PFS allows one free remodeling as you level up to two, and nothing after that.

[captpike]

Yes, that's exactly how it ended up working in Living Forgotten Realms, after the organization finally caved to years of people complaining on the forum that their character wasn't as powerful as it could be. I'm not a fan of this, I've seen it lead to some very ridiculous character building.

PFS allows one free remodeling as you level up to two, and nothing after that.

you need to have this in a living campaign, otherwise you get people with stats in the wrong place, because they did not know better at the time, stuck with a character that sucks to the point of uselessness. or have characters take 180's because a feat or class feature was changed.

this is more true if you can't make a character past level 1 (a big reason I don't play PFS) you can be stuck with having to either play a worthless character who did not work out how you wanted, or not playing with your friends.

[Kurald Galain]

you need to have this in a living campaign,

No, you absolutely don't. This is proven by the fact that the most successful and popular living campaign doesn't do that.

[captpike]

No, you absolutely don't. This is proven by the fact that the most successful and popular living campaign doesn't do that.

there are an insufficient number of living campaigns to make judgements based on that.