State of the League 2020

A number of players in our Adventurers League group have been asking us what our plans are for the group recently. In an effort to be more transparent, we have decided to present the first annual State of the League, wherein we share what services we are offering, what we are planning, what goals we have, and what are our roadblocks.

Current Features

As of right now, we are running open tables on Sundays, Mondays, and Wednesdays. On Sundays, we have 5-6 tables being run each week at Wild Things Games. On Mondays, we have one table being run each week, with a second one starting up, also at Wild Things. On Wednesdays, we have one table being run each week at Ticket to Play. We are also offering private tables specifically for our dungeon masters to be able to play on Fridays.

We have a website, as well as a Twitter, Instagram, a Facebook Page, a Facebook Group, and a Discord server. On each of these platforms, we share information about Adventurers League information as a whole, and update information relevant to the community specifically. These platforms, especially the Discord server and the Facebook Group, also act as tools for the community to grow and come together.

We have begun offering fundraising opportunities in order to help support our growing community. We currently have a storefront on Threadless and a Patreon page. While we have some modest offerings now, the goal is to continue to expand them. We also offer Advantage Tokens at the table, which feeds back into the group, as well as provides an additional DM inspiration that is valid during that one session.

Finally, we offer a DM Mentorship program, whose design is to help give aspiring dungeon masters a safer space to hone their skills while being guided by a Mentor DM. The mentor works with the mentee to provide tips, answer questions, and be their first player (along with other selected DMs). Mentorship doesn't end there, as the mentor takes on the important responsibility to continue their mentorship long into their career as a DM, and to help foster their development over time.

Planned Services

As many have no doubt noticed, our community is growing fast. While the bulk of it is happening on Sundays, we're aware that we are missing out on expanding even further on other days, but right now we are limited in what we can do. Even on Sundays, we are limited by the number of DMs and free space we have. We are discussing a number of solutions, most of which require more space, more time, more DMs, or asking our current DMs to take on more burden. While we don't have any answers right now, fundraising is likely to be a necessary component.

Starting in the very near future, we will be purchasing modules for the DMs to use, especially tier 1 modules, so we can accommodate the increased influx of new players that are playing in AL for the first time. This will also help things when a DM can't make it for a reason, and a backup DM is needed to fill the gap. This will be especially important if a table needs a backup DM last minute. They'll be able to access any of the modules that we'll have available and run a session, hopefully with as few hiccups as possible.

It's no secret that we're working on an Adventurers League legal Actual Play game of Descent into Avernus, which will be DM'd by Brandon, with the PCs being played by Michael, Roshaan, Corza, Joshua, and introducing Bri. It will be a prerecorded game, which will be uploaded/streamed on Twitch and/or YouTube. We've been working hard to bring this together, and we hope you will enjoy watching us make fools of ourselves, too.
   If it's a success, maybe we'll do more adventures. If there's enough support, we can look into what else we can offer.

We have on deck some ideas to do some events for our group. First up is the brain child of Roshaan: a MOBA-style multiplayer 3v3 competitive tournament using your AL characters. We have a lot of details to work out, and there will be a lot more to come, but we want to kick off our events with a bang. We'll also start working on putting together epics and more traditional Adventurers League fare. We would also like to have a presence at local gaming and comic conventions.

The Salem Adventurers League group has the potential to be more than a weekly game. We would like to make it into a full community. To that end, we would like to host Outside Adventures. These could be things like watch parties, barbecues, midnight movie releases, or field trips. Basically anything that would allow us to get to know each other outside the confines of D&D.

Finally, we would like to register as a charitable organization, if we can qualify. As it stands, there are many missed opportunities we could be capitalizing on that we have to leave on the table because we aren't an official organization at all, much less a charitable one. If we don't qualify to be a charitable organization, we would still like to incorporate, because that would allow us to operate with a bit more official standing. If nothing else, it would allow us to take the tax burden off of anyone's back.

Future Goals

Beyond just traditional events, we would like to offer more. When Jeff ran our first epic, he did so for the benefit of ARCHES. We would like to follow his lead in the future to support more charitable organizations either simply directly or through various events. We would also like to conduct workshops for writing adventures, especially since the process for writing CCCs has opened up more. In that vein, we would also like to do workshops for personal development, such as role play DMing, and improv.

As long as we continue on this trend of community growth, at some point in the future it's going to be more economical to move into a space of our own. While we want to always maintain some presence there, Wild Things is only so big. Renting space elsewhere isn't cheap, and a majority of it is conference rooms and banquette halls, most of which aren't set up to accommodate several tables of D&D. As long as we try to ensure that everyone can have a chance to play at one of our public tables, we will always be looking forward in terms of space.

Right now we have a Google Sites webpage and a Blogger. In the future, we would like to be able to upgrade to a fully featured website with a real webmaster. We would like to be able to make things easier to navigate, and have better design. At minimum, we may need to look into a table reservation system. Given our grandest pipe dreams, we would like to have a AL logsheet system for our group that would make logging and verifying characters much easier.

Finally, it's a long term goal to expand our public play offerings. We'd like to integrate Pathfinder and Starfinder Societies into our mix. We would also like to find ways of bringing in or creating public play systems for other popular RPG systems, such as World of Darkness or Star Trek Adventures. We have no intention of stepping into other genres, such as CCGs or Wargaming, but it's not a large step to bring in the larger TTRPG community as a whole.

Roadblocks

This is no secret. The reason why we're fundraising is because money is easily the biggest roadblock. Right now, we've been operating under a system where Joshua has been buying tools and supplies for the needs of the group (such as the advantage tokens and filming tools for the actual play), and the group has been reimbursing him as the money is raised. This is an untenable system that is stymying our ability to grow. Our goal is to create a large enough fundraising platform that will allow us to move faster than what's in his bank account at the moment.

The second biggest roadblock is a lack of DMs. We do have a cadre of DMs, as well as a number who have stepped up to be backups when the needs arise, but we're in a constant state of need for DMs. Not only could we alleviate the needs of any one time or day by offering more opportunities on other days or times, but having more DMs would also help reduce the risk of DM burnout. The bigger the group is, the more important having more DMs is.

As should be obvious, space is a significant factor, too. While we are working hard to stay ahead of the oncoming storm, from our perspective it looks to stretch far beyond the horizon. While fundraising is the easiest solution to that problem, finding space, and being able to stay ahead of how much space we'll need as time goes on is important. It's a waste of funds to rent too large of a space, too.

Finally, man hours. In just prep work and running games alone, our DMs are putting in 6-10 hours per session. On top of that, we all spend time after the Sunday games and in chat throughout the week, coordinating with each other to make sure everything works as well as it does, for better or for worse. This isn't to say that we aren't happy to do it, and aren't excited to bring so much more to the group, but we are bringing it up to point this is a roadblock we have to consider as we continue to grow the community.

In the End

We've had a very impressive start to the group. We've started offering some services more than just running D&D, we have more on the horizon, and some long term goals to look forward to. The state of play for our group is good.