I've been running D&D Encounters since it started in early 2010. Not continuously; I missed most of seasons 4 and 5, but we've just finished running season 13 so I've run 11 of the 13 seasons. So, I'm somewhat experienced with the format.

In my opinion, D&D Encounters doesn't substitute for a normal campaign. I particularly feel that Encounters has worked well due to 4E's handling of set-piece combats; although in my regular campaign I can get frustrated at over-long combats, their very length and significance makes them work as the centre-point of Encounters. As a result, there are many sessions that dispense with any attempts at role-playing or problem-solving and go right to the combat. These can be fun; they work much less well in D&D Next.

As you might imagine from single-encounter sessions, railroading has been a feature of most of the seasons. This is not necessarily a problem; let's face it, the general trend in modern adventures is to railroad. As long as the story underlying the season makes sense (and thus you can see why your characters are progressing along the path they are), it works well. When the underlying story starts getting heavy-handed, things fall apart. (This is one of the reasons that I think the most recent season, Storm over Neverwinter, was so poor).

The better Encounters seasons have allowed more freedom for the players. At times they've been quite experimental. Season 11, "War of Everlasting Darkness", dispensed with the one encounter per session format, and tried to pack a mini-adventure into each session – you'd explore multiple rooms, fight several battles, and have problems and role-playing. All in a 1-2 hour slot using 4E rules! It worked really well for some sessions, and really badly in others, generally depending on the level of railroading (and the quality of story-telling: some plot points weren't expressed well).

The best Encounters season so far – and by a country mile – was Against the Cult of Chaos, which was ingenious in construction: the DM had a lot of information about the village, and the players spent the early part of the season investigating. As a result of their investigations, they could enter one of the three main encounter areas, which would then take 2-3 sessions to complete. After that, they went back to investigating until everything came together with the final session. So, for an eight-week season, it was Session 1: Introduction, Session 8: Finale, and Sessions 2-7 were taken up by a 1-part, 2-part and 3-part mini-adventures. Due to the background information, investigating and role-playing were incredibly good during this season. I'm very much hoping that Murder in Baldur's Gate follows that template (I'm somewhat hopeful due to the 64 pages of setting material!)

Now, as to the change in charging for Encounters… I'm fairly sure this is due to Encounters having run into a problem. You see, Encounters is meant to promote D&D: it provides a place for people to play the game who can't do it otherwise, or for people to meet up with other players in a more casual type of environment. This is incredibly useful for D&D players, especially as the format of Encounters tends to keep it casual and less for just a small clique of players. As an aside, one of the biggest problems I had when running Living Greyhawk was that I was the only game in town. If a new player wanted to play with my 7th level party, they couldn't. They couldn't create a higher-level character; everyone else had to play down to accommodate them. And it was difficult to start up new groups. My impression of Encounters after the three years is that it's a lot, lot easier to integrate new players.

However, D&D Encounters is a store-based program. What's in it for the store? They get to sell D&D product. Many of the Encounters seasons are directly related to a new D&D book. (I'm particularly fond of The Lost Crown of Neverwinter, which gave PCs really great backgrounds which enriched the story). You can probably see where this is going: there aren't any new D&D books, and there haven't been for some time. The rationale behind why the store wants to run Encounters is dropping away. And, let's face it, D&D sees a *lot* of competition for gaming space. At my store, there's Warhammer (Fantasy and 40K) players, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Pokemon, Vanguard and Magic CCG players, a few of us Fantasy Flight LCG players, HeroClix players, War Machine players, and so on and so forth. All of which are buying a heap more product than D&D. Especially now that there isn't any D&D to buy!

So, we finally get new D&D product. Stores get to sell it, so they're happier. However, this isn't just any product: it's part one of the Sundering, a big, months-long event which will change the face of the Realms. And Wizards are inviting player feedback: based on what happens in everyone's games, the new Realms will be changed.

The trouble with this is that now the DMs need to pay for the adventure they run in Encounters. This is fine for completists like me: I would have bought it anyway. It's not so good for those who have less money or have been just running it to help out. I really don't know how this will pan out.

My store is looking at providing the books for the DMs and then selling them at a discount afterwards. We'll see how that goes.

As for the content of this season of Encounters: I hope that Murder at Baldur's Gate will work a lot more like Against the Cult of Chaos and have a lot of open-ended investigation which then brings the group to major encounter areas. I also hope that it works well in the home/regular-campaign setting (which, if it is like Against the Cult of Chaos, it should be).

So, those are my views on the matter.