

Players who play evil characters in D&D no longer have the motivation of gold (more on this later) so there may be cases in which they let innocent people die. However some could take this implication that if a player lets innocent people die, they do not deserve experience points. Now will most parties sleep in and let the world burn? No. The example given for a reason to not get experience is this, “your party might complete an epic quest and save all the land, receiving a bonus check, or they might choose to let all the innocents burn in favor of sleeping in” (D&D Wizards). This is especially concerning for players who play evil adventurers. Some DMs will just choose to not give out advancement points if a player makes them angry or they are unhappy with the choices made. In most cases this will not be a problem, however when playing at things like conventions with new DMs, there will be a lot of variety in what progress is.

Second, the DM deems whether players have made progress. This means players are encouraged to railroad through campaigns, not taking the time to roll play or interact beyond the bare minimum. This gets worse when you factor the gold rules I will discuss in a minute. If Adventurers League determines that the chapter should only take a set number of time, and we take two-three times that time we could potentially make absolutely no progress on our characters for weeks. We enjoy roll playing with the NPCs, exploring the land and doing side quests. First, you will always have parties that enjoy taking their time in adventures, especially in hardcover campaigns. Instead players will be able to get 1 advancement point towards their leveling progression per hour that AL deems the module should be played, if the DM deems it acceptable based on the progress made. Players no longer will gain experience for their character to level up. This is the change that I am most accepting of, but not necessarily happy about. The first major change that this season brings around is a brand new experience point system. I will dive more into the changes here, but my conclusion is that they have taken role play out of D&D and turned it more into an exercise of book keeping. Yesterday the official rules for season eight were rolled out for AL, and they change the entire focus of game play, essentially making an entirely new game for players to play. Have you ever been a low level adventurer nervous about the possibility of a chest being a mimic? Wizards of the Coast and the Adventurers League team want to ensure that is no longer a concern in season 8 game play.
