D&D Adventures League: Goodbye Experience Points for Season 8

In this mornings (2018/06/022) post “In Which We Discuss Experience Points” from Adventures League (DDAL) by Community Manager Alan Patrick, Season 8 – which is about BaldersGate and Undermountain – DDAL will no longer use Experience Points (XP).

Yes, one of the changes that is coming soon is that we’re doing away with experience points for Adventurers League. This will be starting with season 8. We want to make the gaming experience simpler for people of all exposure levels and walks of life (gaming or otherwise).

Tracking and reporting experience gains are never on the list of “things that people like”. However, these things are on the “things that people don’t like” lists time and time again.

Dungeons & Dragons has a story-first mentality, and if we’re being honest… experience points break that, ahem, experience for new players.

So the system they will moving to is a checkmark system

The checkmark system for experience simplifies all of that and helps to keep us focused on the things that matter: story and player experience. These elements combine to create the epic experiences that will live for years to come!

And, to make a couple things clear:

• if a character shows up but does not participate, they won’t get the reward
• we’re still using rewards for objectives (“break into that place!”, “destroy the lich!”, etc)
• the systems we’re going to be adopting are inspired by but not directly from XGE

I have mixed feelings about this. My first thoughts are – how lazy and bad are people at math these days that the VERY simple math used is to difficult. Those player’s would really hate earlier editions when you could get 15% more XP for certain options, and lost XP (or levels) from creatures.

Is it a sign of the education system? In peoples reluctance to think? Math is embedded in the creative realm, and I’ve found great role-players all have one thing in common – adding things together isn’t a challenge.

The other thought is that it does make sense to be getting rewarded for role-playing your character and meeting objectives.

My home game (EPT5e) the characters are awarded XP for challenges faced, and they get Renown for how well the challenge was handled (how good a story). Renown brings up an individuals social rank, career position,  and the privileges those entail.

Sometimes the XP comes with consequences, and my party has a healthy respect for rituals as: a) if they don’t interrupt and stop some rituals the world suffers; b) disrupting a ritual ALWAYS causes something bad to happen (commonly some insanity if it’s a demon summoning ritual).

I’m curious how it will work out with with rewards for completing DDAL Expeditions and chapters in Hardcovers versus Convention Created Content (CCC) and EPICs (DDEP). Complete X hours of missions, gain a level? Just a switch creating checkbox’s for XP…

We’ll find out by September!

[Edit] Wizards.com: Changes to D&D Adventures League Rewards