Chhanges....to Organized Play

D&D Adventurers League Player's Guide: a review

Today Wizards of the Coast released the new 21 page guide to organized play: D&D Adventurers League Player's Guide. . The new guide is designed to be the starting point for new Wizards of the Coast organized play campaigns. Earlier this year Wizards announced that they were doing away with their traditional organized play structure namely the RPGA, which stood for the Role Playing Game Association which was started in 1980 by Frank Mentzer. Going forward Wizards has broken down organized play into three parts, Encounters (their traditional weekly store based games) D&D Expeditions (convention based scenario play) and D&D Epics (large multi table events exclusive to large conventions such as GenCon) The guide outlines in three parts, Characters, the campaign and other information for game play. Part one - characters contains the biggest surprise. Evil characters are now allowed to be played. This might come as a shock to some long time members of the organized play community. Since the first organized play campaign Living City was started in 1987, evil characters have not been allowed. This was continued in Wizards 3rd edition campaign Living Greyhawk, D&D Campaigns like Xen'drik Expeditions and the Pazio Pathfinder supported campaign Pathfinder Society. Both of which are/were highly popular campaigns. Some might say that evil characters can be disruptive to game play. In the rules for the campaign Wizards has included some of the rules for infractions which used to exist under the old RPGA. It allows for the DM to control problem players at the table. The Forgotten Realms and the area of the Moonsea in particular, is the focus of the campaign. The guide also outlines the new faction system borrowed from Pathfinder Society. Joining factions such as the Zhentarim and the Harpers allow players to have additional in game motivations apart from successful conclusion of the adventure. But with evil characters allowed I imagine that Wizards has decided to take a bold, and some might say controversial step in Organized Play.

EDIT: Apparently evil PCs were allowed at some point during Encounters. But I have never played Encounters.

If you want to continue the discussion my Twitter ID is qstor2. Thanks!