D&D Adventurer’s League
I’m new to the Dungeons and Dragons Adventurer’s League, and guess what? I’m having fun. In my hometown of Spokane, WA, there are AL games all over the area. Most Sunday afternoons you can find me at Merlyn’s Comics Games and Books.
Gaming in the RAW
There are some rules to make organized play work. If you are the DM you must run the game using Fifth Edition Rules As Written (RAW) and run the adventure pretty much as written. While you are encouraged to improvise a bit to make the game fun for everyone, you must run AL adventures from the DM’s Guild or adventures from the hardback books from Wizards.
You can use third party materials that stick to the SRD, such as 5E Condition Cards and Fantasy Backpack Cards.
If you are a player you must use point-buy for attributes, stick to official material (the list of books does not include new material presented in Unearthed Arcana), and keep yourself within the gold and magic limits of the season you’re playing in.
Roll for Surprise
When you walk into a game store, library, or wherever your local AL adventures are hosted, expect to be surprised. You won’t know who you are playing with, what adventure you will play in, or even what character you will play (most players have more than one AL characters). For Dungeon Masters, you might have an adventure ready to run, but there might not be enough players to run it. Most Dungeon Masters also have AL characters they can play, so they walk in not knowing if they will DM or play.
AL adventures are based on the tiers of play from Dungeons and Dragons, so you may hear “Tier two table has room for three more!” Players with higher tier characters often create lower tier ones in case all the adventures that day are lower tier.
Hardback Difficulties
Running a long running adventure from a hardback book from Wizards presents some interesting problems you don’t run into when using the AL one-shots from the DM’s Guild. Since you have random players each game, you can’t count on anyone knowing what happened before. You need to end a session at a place you can start with a new group of players next week. Mid-battle cliff hangers probably should be avoided.
Walk Right In
With all the standardization, organized play makes it easy to walk in, sit down, and play with people you may never have met before. It’s the D&D equivalent of bridge night at the Lion’s Club for a previous generation. Everyone I’ve encountered have been quite welcoming, and more than willing to help new players.
From the Dragon’s Mouth
Find out more from the official Adventurers League site.
More Fun
It’s not just D&D. You can play Numenera and other Cypher System games through Cypher Play. The Pathfinder Society is organized play for Pathfinder. For Call of Cthulhu and other Chaosium games we have the Cult of Chaos. 13th Age has the 13th Age Organized Play program. Vampire and other Modiphius games have the Modiphius Organized Play program.
I’m sure there’s a lot of other organized play options out there. Know a good one you’d like to recommend? Leave a link in the comments.
Best of All
It’s great fun. I’ve been surprised at how enjoyable it is. If you’ve ever played games at a convention, it’s like that, every week. For me, it doesn’t hit all the bases of a long running home brewed campaign with a close group, but I know it’s fun because I keep going back.
A 13th Age Tarsiss
Lightning rod (cursed champion tier wand) Always: +2 (champion). Recharge 11+: When you use this wand, you can cast the wizard’s lightning bolt spell, with a level no higher than your level. Curse: When you use a spell attack against an aberration, the damage you deal heals the target. The curse takes effect whenever the lightning rod is on your person. Quirk: Assume tarsi are your friends.
Remember when we created a new monster partly inspired by the mind flayer? A 13th Age fan asked for a version with 13th Age stats. So here it is! This creature has a 5 tentacle head on top of a humanoid body.
Tarsiss
Double-strength 8th level caster [ABERRATION]
Initiative: +15
Hungry tentacles +12 vs. AC—50 damage.
Natural even hit: The target also takes 20 ongoing psychic damage.
C: Psychic blast +14 vs. MD (1d3+1 nearby enemies in a group)—50 psychic damage and 10 ongoing psychic damage.
Natural even hit: The target is dazed until the end of its next turn.
R: Lightning rod +13 vs. PD—75 lightning damage.
Miss: 25 lightning damage.
Resist lightning and psychic 16+: When a lightning or psychic attack targets this creature, the attacker must roll a natural 16+ on the attack roll or it only deals half damage.
Nastier Specials
When the tarsiss is brought to 0 hit points or less, the tentacled head pops off. It has half its original hit points, all its defenses drop by 2, and can only use the hungry tentacles attack.
AC 24
PD 18 HP 260
MD 22
Mutating the Mind Flayer
Fun Fact
The term Mind Flayer is not in the SRD, it is the intellectual property of Wizards of the Coast. Which means nothing unless you want to publish your version professionally outside of the Dungeon Master's Guild.
The 13th Age RPG calls its squid-head the Soul Flenser. I'll call my version the Tarsiss, in case this ends up in a future project.
Inspirations
Besides the mind flayer, the khepri: bugs that lived on human bodies from Perdido Street Station and of course, Mi-go brain cylinders.
Mind Flayer
Everyone, from D&D players to Stranger Things fans, loves a mind flayer. Here's the first mind flayer I ever saw, from the original Dungeons and Dragons white box supplement II Blackmoor by Dave Arneson. 1975!
Mutation Station
Let's mix it up, creating a new creature, inspired by the mind flayer -- one that players won't know all about. For this example, let's use the Cypher System, as stat blocks are easy. If we like it we can make a 5th Edition or a 13th Age version. (Edit: the 13th Age version is here.)
What do I like about mind flayers I want to keep?
- Squid head, humanoid body
- Super smart
- Mental attack
- Eats brains
The Tarsiss
I love the fact that these creatures have humanoid bodies and squid heads. My creatures (the Tarsiss) are squidlings that take a human body, cut off the useless head, and replace the head with their own squid like body. They are super smart, use bizarre technology, and are practiced in dimensional travel. When not using weird tech weapons, they have a psychic attack.
And of course, they eat brains. They don't mind canned food, so they keep humanoid brains alive in weird devices that look like fat thermoses with ports for connecting to other weird devices. Captives in these brain-jars can be made to run machinery. Imagine the fun when the players find a Tarsiss outpost staffed by human brains in jars!
Tarsiss
Level 7 (21)
Armor 2 (force field, works against Intellect attacks as well)
Lightning gun: 7 damage, long range, (depletion 1 in 1d6) level 7 artifact
Psychic blast: Short range Intellect attack that does 7 damage (ignores armor) and causes target to make a Might Defense roll or take 5 Speed damage.
GM Intrusion: The tarsiss attacks up to five targets within short range with its psychic blast attack.
Danger: This creature is more dangerous than a typical 7th level creature. That's the way we like it. Tone it down if you and your players prefer easy fights.
Piggybacking Part II
Before we steal Piggybacking from GUMSHOE, check out how it works there in Piggybacking Part I.
The Noisy Cleric Problem
The problem piggybacking solves can be found in all sorts of roleplaying games with all sorts of skills, but the example that comes to mind is sneaking into a castle in a fantasy game like Dungeons and Dragons. In fantasy books and movies, the heroes sneaking into places is a staple of the genre. In D&D games, sneaking is left to the rogue and the ranger for scouting. Once the GM tells the entire table to roll dice to see if they sneak into the castle, somebody always misses, and the exciting infiltration turns into a frontal assault.
GUMSHOE Roots
In games like TimeWatch, Nights Black Agents, or Trail of Cthulhu, the whole spend resources to piggyback fits perfectly, since they are all GUMSHOE games. Most of my players have points to spend in Infiltration, but some have zeros. Every general skill is like that. You aren't giving the party something for free, they are spending resources they might need later to succeed now.
Let's look at other systems. I haven't tested these, but I will.
Cypher System Piggybacking
In games like Numenera, Predation, and The Strange, GUMSHOE style piggybacking is easy, since you're already spending the resources of Might, Speed, and Intellect to do anything.
The expert spends from their pool as normal, but the difficulty is harder because they are pulling the rest of the party with them. For a sneak into the castle test, the expert has their difficulty raised (+2 sounds good, +1 for less than 3 followers) and uses Speed. While the expert can use their Edge to lower their costs, the followers can not. They each spend one point, no discount.
If the expert succeeds, everyone sneaks in. Move on with the adventure.
Nothing to Spend Piggybacking
In games as varied as Call of Cthulhu, 13th Age, and Dungeons and Dragons, you don't have resources to spend to sneak into castles or climb up icy cliffs. You've got hit points, and while spending those might make sense in a few cases, usually not. Same with Sanity, Recoveries, or Spell Slots. These games are not about spending resources on skill tests, so it seems wrong to try and force them do that just for piggybacking.
In these games I'd boost the difficulty for the expert (+5 for d20, +25% for Call of Cthulhu), but then I'd require the rest of the party to roll just to assist. And if someone fumbles, well then, we're right back where we started from. That's the cost right there, the more players rolling, the greater the chance of a fumble. :)