I had played in game stores during the transition from D&D 4E to Next/5E for the “playtesting” sessions, which was part of the evolution of D&D Encounters; it was mostly fun, especially the “big event” sessions. Eventually I stopped going because, as inevitably happens in various communities, there were some toxic people and I decided it wasn’t worth my time and gas money when I already had people that I knew I could play RPGs with in a home game environment. After all, many people use the game store sessions as a way to get to know others to invite to their home games. And I do despise sitting in traffic to get somewhere.
I had seen an ad for a local gaming convention taking place (in person) during the summer, which made me look into D&D’s current organized play system (now called Adventurer’s League, which was in Season 7 at that point). Along with other gaming sessions, the convention had two “epic” adventures, which are big events with lots of tables playing and the story combining all of their efforts. I wanted in on that experience, but I didn’t want to show up with a level one character so I looked online to see if I could start playing some sessions and get leveled up some before going to the convention. And – oh boy – could I do that!
With the explosion of online gaming options, I realized I could play Adventurer’s League with an almost “at demand” option. There were so many Discord groups and Roll20.net campaigns available that I could literally go online, find a game posting, and be part of a session within a few hours. If you were willing to DM, you could have a game session going within the hour – and I was willing to DM. People were online and just sharking to get accepted into slots for game sessions. It was heaven for anyone comfortable with using voice chat and Roll20.net (or Fantasy Grounds or Tabletop Simulator, etc.).
There were YouTube tutorial videos to explain how to use Roll20.net; Roll20 offered upgrades for cheap or free membership if you wanted the basics. It was easy to learn and, after joining in a couple of sessions as a player, I was happy to start giving back to the community as a DM. The AL Season 7 DM Rewards were really great too, so I was able to reward my characters for the time I spent running online games.
The in-person convention experience was amazing and, quite frankly, much better than the online gaming experiences. Maybe I just lucked out and the con was both ran by and attended by great gamers – but I am happy to acknowledge that I prefer to play D&D in person. Despite that, I pretty much spent all of my summer free time either DMing or playing in games via Discord and Roll20.net. It was truly a “Gamer’s Paradise” heavenly experience to be able to wake up any day, decide I wanted to play D&D, post a message online and game. I recruited several friends to join in on the online fun.
I think Wizards of the Coast should create their own “D&D On Demand” website to capitalize on this possibility. Unfortunately, they did the opposite; when they announced the upcoming changes for Season 8, they de-motivated a lot of the Adventurer’s League community. The Season 8 rules for Adventurer’s League killed my desire to continue with organized play. In my opinion, their attempt to deal with some negative aspects of the gaming community went too far and destroyed any sense of immersion, turning the organized play experience into something more akin to video game mechanics. They removed gold/treasure from the modules (despite the fact that the modules were written with the gold and treasure as part of the hooks/motivations for play).
Imagine you’re an adventurer and you slay a bunch of monsters and find a pile of treasure, but you’re told you can’t keep any of it or spend it on anything. It has to just be left there – for no reason. But there is one magic item, unfortunately, no one can keep it. Instead, you unlock the ability to “purchase” it later (with your out of game meta-currency) for video-gamey mechanic reasons. It’s just sad that the admins had to so drastically change the rules; they also removed a lot of the incentives for people to DM when they changed up the DM Reward options.
I stopped playing AL at the end of August, which means it’s been five months. I’ve got serious withdrawal, with no AL play in September, October, November, December, or January. I want to re-join the AL community enough that I may be willing to go along with the changed rules; I miss the people and the experience and ease of online, on-demand gaming. Unfortunately, when I spent the last few days looking back at the Discord groups and online gaming posts I realized there are a lot less people playing now. Instead of five to ten gaming sessions happening each day in the most popular group I am in, it’s more like one session a day. And on some days, I don’t see any sessions posted for AL at all.
How sad. Season 8 is supposed to last at least until August, with some online talk that it will be an extended season that could last even longer. There are daily complaints, via not only Discord but also Reddit with hopes that Season 9 will bring about rules to bring the community back together. But who knows what will happen?
In the meantime, I think I will try to mentally resolve the immersion-breaking by considering that my characters are actually part of an organization called “The Adventurer’s League” that requires them to hand over all treasure that they find and that allows them to use the organization to purchase magic items, but only after they have encountered it. It’s a bit meta-gamey, but it’s how the new rules work and – most importantly - I want to play again (if there are sessions available)…
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