All the sessions I've played of Dungeons and Dragons have been home brew house games,
where you have someone hosting your group who's really nice and very generous and makes space for everyone.
(hi Erik!)
Even though I've been playing D&D for years
I've never gone to D&D's Adventure League, which if you don't know,
is Wizards of the Coast's officially licensed series of games that they run.
If you have friends who don't play D&D or are too busy,
You can pop into one of these locations, sit down with a group of strangers
They'll teach you the rules and play through a session.
Also it's free, which is really nice.
They have pre-generated characters and extra stuff, so all you really need is dice.
But even then most other players are running around with enough dice to outfit a small army.
First off, I was taken aback by just how short the session was,
which is a compliment coming from me, though it just depends what kind of game you ike
The sessions were just under three hours running from 6 p.m to 9.
In most home groups I've been in
they won't even meet up for less than four hours, and average about six.
Let me tell you, whipper snappers something
When I played fourth edition games, believe it or not those ran from 12:00 to 12:00
Noon to midnight!
And it was a federal case on the days that I had to leave at 10:00 making my getaway sprinting to the door.
Sometimes if I wasn't pushy or we got caught up in something
they would play even later til 4:00 in the morning
4:00 in the morning!
What is wrong with you people!?
In case you're wondering how you get 16-hour sessions,
It's by having combat encounters last two to five hours. That's how.
Don't even get me started on the boss fights.
The second thing which struck me about Adventure League was how streamlined and clean everything was.
We were playing Tomb of Annihilation and there were a few sessions in trekking through the forest.
I'm asking them, "Man, it looks like you guys are gonna have a field day
trying to work my character into this story"
and the GM goes,
"No. You're- you're just there now. You just showed up and now you're with the group."
"Huh. That was easy.
So the GM doesn't have to like work my backstory in there or anything?"
He's just like "There you are. You're with the group. Now get going.
If you want to figure out why you're there, that's on you."
Like, you can just do that?
And it really sped up the pace of the game. They didn't feel the need to have to invent something
like a reality rift that keeps pulling characters in and out of the story. You mean
I don't have to wait around for two hours until they find my character in jail and break him out?
Plus if I had to listen to five other players' backstories, we'd be there all day.
Especially when you consider that this is a week-to-week group,
and if they had to reintroduce everyone every week nothing would get done.
It also gives this nice drop-in drop-out mechanic where players can easily switch characters between session
Or if they have work or something, they can not show up for a few weeks and then jump right back in.
As for the other players this group was very quiet and more focused on the game elements of the game
than the role-playing, which made it slightly less awkward
But would probably kill the fun for a lot of people I know.
A few players role played, but not everyone and not as much as a home game
Also, while in home games everyone is friends and that carries over to the characters' actions,
We were mostly guys who came together to get job done and that carried over as well.
Everyone was really absorbed in what was happening
so we didn't keep having to give them a summary of the fight so far after every turn.
There also wasn't as many rules complications.
I'll give people some leniency (after all D&D is really complicated, so it's understandable)
But there was none of those situations where they have the book open up to the spell they want to cast
and they hand it to the GM and ask them to read it
because they're too lazy to look down and read five words!
It's five! words! on the text! that's right in front of their noses!
I use the spell Bless a lot when I play
which gives players a bonus to their attack roles and saves in most games.
Normally, I constantly have to remind people about it.
"Remember to add your bonus!
Did you add your bonus?
Remember to add your bonus.
Have fun at school to day, you little scamps! Don't forget to take your bonuses!
Or else I'm gonna have to drive down there and MU̗̪͚̜͇̪̱R̢̞̰͇͎D͚͚̰̘̲E̸͓̻̻̪͕̳ͅR͉͖͠ ̧̖̞͉ͅA̡̰̺L҉͈̙̪̯͖͠L̶̵̘͕ ̢̮͕̭͚̀͝O̠̠̠͉̺̞F̸̢̛̭̻͙͙͖ ̟̪̺̻̜̖̘̠̠͞͝Y̴̮͎̙̲͇͎͉̬͠O̷҉̹̥͈̙̪͘U͈!̵̸̛̤̫̫̮͎̱̜̩
Heeheehee!
No there was none of that. They remembered; I didn't keep having to mention it.
Protip: something I learned from those guys, which really speeds up the combat in big groups
Roll your d20 and damage dice at the same time. Saves a lot of time.
Everyone in the group does it. Overall it was a very different experience for me.
Fun, very fun, but different.
although I should mention that I mostly play RPGs to hang out with friends and secondly to play a game.
I'll be playing with them again sometime,
but I do get why when I talk to people about playing in Adventure League they're like,
"Ugh Adventure League what you play in that?"
"Well I don't know maybe because they actually read the rules and finish their games in under 16 hours!"
I'm still not over this. Who has that kind of time to sink into a game?
I am a busy person! I have stuff to do!
Lots of...
Stuff... that I do... that's cool and interesting...
They don't know that I make videos on YouTube, so they might believe me.
Eh?
Thanks for watching and I'll see you guys next time
[acoustic guitar outro]
