With Ballarat moving towards restarting public play of Dungeons & Dragons in our local store, Guf Ballarat, once again it has fallen to me to organise the events.

More correctly, I volunteered to do it, because I much prefer organising an event to just participating in one.

We are in an odd space where the store is still getting going again. Well, it always was going throughout the lockdown, but public events stopped. As we try to schedule things, it is not always open on the same nights. And some things are on different nights. As a result, it is a brave new world of scheduling.

To begin with, we will run two tables on Tuesday nights (6:30 pm to 10 pm). It is an awkward time, but earlier is bad for people who work, and later means we don’t have enough time for the session (as the store closes at 10 pm). I am hoping that the store opens on Saturday evenings again, because that was always our busiest time.

Season 10 Adventurers League – Plague of Ancients

When we stopped running public D&D last year, we were a little way into Season 9 of the D&D Adventurers League. Between then and now, the program has changed. Again.

It is not very secret that I have disliked recent seasons of the DDAL. To my mind, Season 5 was the last truly great season. And while there have been exceptional adventures released for the program, I have found the overall structures of seasons 7 through 9 problematic.

Why do I still run DDAL games? The main reasons are portability and accessibility: a player can come to any session with a (legal) character and know they can get a game. Public play of D&D must cater to dedicated, casual, and new players. You want to offer a chance for players, no matter their level of experience or dedication, to play D&D, especially when they have no other chances to play.

Running a homebrew game in store is fine, but they tend to end up catering only to dedicated players who turn up every week and shut out new players looking for a game.

The challenge of an Organised Play program is to offer something that allows new people to start playing while also rewarding dedicated players.

The Drawbacks of Storyline Seasons

Every season of the DDAL has a theme related to whatever hardcover adventure was new at the time. However, how it presents the adventures varies from season to season.

In early seasons, each tier had its own little storyline, and the adventures were presented in a mixed fashion – a couple of Tier 1 adventures, then a couple of Tier 2, then back to Tier 1, etc.

In more recent seasons, the storyline becomes something that exists over the entire length of the season, and adventures are meant to be played in order: starting with #1 and ending at #20 or however many there are.

What is good about this is that it really rewards dedicated players that turn up to every adventure. They get to take their characters from 1^st level to 20^th level and play an entire campaign in store.

What is bad about this is that it does not offer an on-ramp for new players. And because it is all one storyline, if a player cannot make a few sessions, they can feel they have missed too much and drop out.

This is partly ameliorated by the division of the adventures into smaller arcs – usually three or four adventures long. So, even if a player does not have all the backstory, they can still understand the current arc.

And, at least, the store can run other low-level adventures and the new players can jump into the storyline at a later point if they desire.

Problems with Seasonality

Except, with Season 10, the players cannot.

Season 10 implements a concept called “Seasonality”. The idea is that characters playing Season 10 adventures play only Season 10 adventures, and no non-Season 10 character can join in. This allows a better coherence of story, stops some of the broken combinations of older characters playing with newer characters, and allows some tweaking of the character creation rules that work within the context of the season but would not work so well in a larger environment.

The drawback is that a player cannot join in half-way through the season. The only adventures they can play to get to later tier Season 10 adventures are other Season 10 adventures. It is the same problem that the Oracle of War campaign has. Now, I think the Oracle of War campaign is brilliant. But it is a campaign that will suffer attrition, and once play has progressed to higher tier adventures, it is unlikely a player can catch up.

You might wonder why a store cannot run the low-level Seasonality adventures again when they get new players. And the answer is, they can. However, I am pretty sure in Ballarat we are not regularly going to get a full table of new players when someone wants to join. No, they will come in ones and twos – and not all at once. So, when we get new players and we are scheduling Tier 2 adventures, we then have to run four Tier 1 adventures to get that player up to the right level. That might work for one group of players, but after several occasions of getting a single new player for that week’s games, it falls apart. It is not supportable in smaller environments.

If only existing players can play the later Seasonality adventures, then it becomes harder and harder to do so. Player attrition is real. A group of 12 players at the start may be down to 5 or fewer at the end of a big campaign like Oracle of War – if you are lucky!

What does Seasonality have problems with? Portability – the one aspect that I think is tremendously important for in-store play.

Ameliorating the Problems

The advantage that Season 10 has over Oracle of War is that it is primarily at Tier 1 and 2. Only 11 adventures- five Tier 1, five Tier 2, and one Tier 3. (Oracle of War is 20 adventures to level 20.)

Immediately that makes a difference. Instead of having fifteen adventures that new players are locked out of, there are only six. And it is much easier to reach Tier 2 instead of Tier 3 or 4.

The other aspect of Season 10 that helps with bringing in newer players is that you can create or purchase Dungeoncraft adventures. These are two or four-hour adventures at Tiers 1 & 2, which must be created using a set of guidelines available on the D&D Adventurers League site. (“Plague of Ancients” are for the current season). They are limited as to their concept, rewards, and monsters, but there is still a significant amount of freedom.

As I check the DMs Guild, I see there are currently 92 Dungeoncraft adventures available! The DDAL admins do not check the quality of these adventures, but I expect the good ones will get good reviews and the bad ones will not. At least, that is what I hope!

And so, new players might not be able to play the higher-level adventures at first, but there is a lot of new content that the other players can accompany them in.

This is aided by the slow rate of release of official adventures. At present, it is about one per month. (I wonder how much of that was intentional? Covid has affected the DDAL program as well).

A Plethora of Campaigns

Seasonality is not the only way of playing DDAL in the Forgotten Realms. There are two other ways.

The three ways are:

• Seasonal, as discussed above, is the current run of adventures,
• Masters is a campaign for higher-level characters, and
• Historic consists of the older adventures from previous seasons.

Every character is in ONE of the campaigns.

A Seasonal character can migrate to either the Historic or Masters campaigns. No character can migrate to Seasonal.

A Masters character can migrate to the Historic campaign. Only Seasonal characters can migrate to Masters.

A Historic character cannot migrate out. Both Seasonal and Masters characters can migrate to History.

The basic path for new characters is Seasonal moving to Masters. At present, there is a lack of Masters content. (Eight adventures, two epics, and the adventures in Candlekeep Mysteries). This will grow over time, but at present there is a lot more Tier 3 content in Historic – and still more Tier 4 likewise.

As I understand it, a character from one of the other campaigns can play in any of them, but will not gain rewards (treasure, magic items, advancement) for playing out-of-campaign. I do not know how attractive that option is. You regain some portability, but – especially for a casual player – being told that you do not get anything from the adventure is not great.

Existing characters (created before Season 10) can choose to belong to the Masters or Historic campaign, but then follow the regular migration rules thereafter.

Concluding Thoughts

Although I have reservations about Seasonality, the limited scope of the adventure levels plus the Dungeoncraft adventures open up the options available for players and organisers.

Our play at Guf Ballarat will begin with DDAL10-00 Ice Road Trackers on Tuesday 18^th May, 2021, and continue onto the next adventure after then.

I hope to discuss how we find it in play – as well as other issues related to how progression and rewards work in the newest season of the D&D Adventurers League