Posted in: Movies, Video Games | Tagged: D&D Fifth Edition, dungeons & dragons, entertainment, gaming, Mike Mearls, rpg, wizards of the coast

D&D Fifth Edition: Now With Organized Play

By Christopher Helton

Of course, D&D has had organized play since the early days, but now they are launching something that they say is new and different. The D&D people are taking to Twitter to announce new information now. Earlier today, Wizards of the Coast's head of R&D for D&D Mike Mearls took to Twitter:

Here's the big news about organized play and D&D fifth – http://t.co/OOEKJHYm2e

— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) May 21, 2014

Organized Play, for those not familiar, is programmed adventures that are used in stores or gaming conventions. This can mean anything from a demo in a game store, to a weekly adventure path to games at local and national conventions. This isn't really anything new, as there has been organized play for D&D since there started being gaming conventions. This looks different in a couple of ways. First off, this looks to be organized in conjunction with the regular publishing schedule to support and weave through the published adventures that people will play in their home games. The other thing is that it looks as if they are saying that characters will be able to move between games in stores and conventions. The system of certificates talked about will likely support this and keep players honest in what their characters can and cannot do, as they move them from one game to another.

The other interesting thing is that they seem to be saying that the organized play will impact the overall story. This is more common in collectible card games, as the Legends of the Five Rings CCG tournaments would impact the direction of the story in the card game and the RPG. The D&D Epics events for the Adventure League will focus on these big, story-changing events and will take place at large conventions like Gen Con and probably PAX and Origins as well.

The weekly D&D Encounters will continue to be the store-run events. The new Encounters will kick off with a special version of the Hoard of the Dragon Queen adventure and work into the new universes for D&D from there.

And then the D&D Expeditions is a "convention-style" experience. This probably means longer sessions than the D&D Encounters, but it really isn't clear what they are getting at. Again they talk about players shaping the story of the ongoing campaign and world. I've never played in a D&D Encounters game, and it's been years since I've played an official D&D convention game, so I am not sure what the standards are going to be for all of this.

All of this fits together with information that I got from D&D author Erin Evans in an interview on my blog from last winter. In the interview she talked about a tighter integration between the novel writers and the game designers in the development of the setting, and how one would impact the other in an ongoing manner. Now, apparently, organized play events will figure into this equation as well, with all three molding the ongoing story of the setting. Will this be for everyone? Probably not. Yes, it is easy enough to ignore a game's metaplot in your home game, but it does cause problems with the integration of official materials into home games. We will see what happens.

More as it develops.

Christopher Helton is a blogger, podcaster and tabletop RPG publisher who talks about games and other forms of geekery at the long-running Dorkland! blog. He is also the co-publisher at the ENnie Award winning Battlefield Press, Inc.  You can find him on Twitter at @dorkland and on G+ at https://plus.google.com/+ChristopherHelton/ where he will talk your ear off about gaming and comics.

Christopher has a crowdfunding page to help raise money to defray the costs for going to the Gen Con gaming convention and cover it for his Dorkland! blog and Bleeding Cool. Please click here to go to the page and help out.

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