This is my second season playing AL and many of the S8 changes are great. The one change that I feel needs to be reverted to S7 rules is gold and mundane items. The removal of non-magical rewards is very off putting for new and old players alike.

New rules are killing my club and hurting the cons. These DM rewards won't help either.

Thanks to the S8 changes I am now able to focus on Homebrew. ..... It's something?

I demoed the new rules at my store. The players really enjoyed focusing on RP and not the combat. We're especially grateful for the rules pertaining towards dragon heist.

These new rules have resulted in my entire local store group to go away from AL, which we have been playing for over 3 years now. While it is claimed these new rules were made to enforce RP as a more legitimate style of organized play (which it sort of does in a few areas), it takes away a lot of immersion and forces character building "choices" on players who want to have their characters in a faction. Some of this I could be ok with, but I am highly disappointed with this system on the whole.

I have tried to give these new rules a chance, but there is no avoiding it. These rules are ruining AL play. Our game store used to have 50 players, two nights per week. The last three weeks we have been lucky to hit 18. The main problems with the rules are: Treasure

• The GP rewards are far too low; they are only received on levelling up; they are inadequate for spellcasting characters that need to buy components. Receiving the equivalent of coupons at the end of an adventure is nowhere near as rewarding as writing some actual gold or items on the character sheet.
• The GP rewards for Tier 1 and Tier 2 are equivalent. You get 75gp for levelling up in Tier 1. You get 150gp for levelling up in Tier 2. However, Tier 1 only requires 4 checkpoints to level up and Tier 2 requires 8. So basically you are stuck at the same gp reward level per hour of adventuring from level 1 until you get to level 10 inclusively.
• The magic item unlocks will receive mixed reviews. Some people will love them. These are the types that are desperate to get their uber powerful special item and are happy to shop in a store to get it. The people (like me) who hate the unlocks feel like a) the game is becoming generic as people are all generally choosing to save their points for +3 weapons etc. This means we are losing the fun and imaginative opportunities that arise from the quirky minor magic items; b) the game will be flooded with the same items as instead of one player taking the item, now each player can 'unlock' it to purchase later; c) immersion in the game is lost. (It is not the same to say "I bought this +3 longsword from the generic items list" when previously we would say "I got this +3 longsword by defeating the ancient green dragon in ____ adventure").

Advancement

• Gone is XP. (I personally continue to track my XP alongside the APs. In my opinion D&D is not D&D without XP). The problem here is that I play 1 night per week for 4 hours. This means I level up every second adventure. If I choose 'slow progression' I am quickly left behind by my peers.
• Having bought the awful "Dragonheist" HC I realise now why AL brought this advancement rule in. It is so that players who love putting on silly voices and blathering on to boring NPCs from merchant guilds get the same rewards as people who go out on actual adventures. See below for a fix.

Overall, AL Season 8 has become very boring to play. Adventure hooks are pretty much absent. Any time an NPCs talks about gold rewards the entire table either sneers in derision or pretends they haven't heard to keep the game going. Every single 4 hour session I know I will get 4 checkpoints, 4 treasure points and 1 renown. This is regardless of what we do. (yes, yes, I know it has to be 'active participation in achieving the goals of the adventure... it is still 4/4/1... so the excitement of 'what might be' is never there now).

This has been such a serious mis step on the part of AL.

The problems that the rules were designed to overcome included:

• Powerful magic items in the hands of low level players (Usually players from HCs - simple fix would be for players to have to permanently designate their character as EITHER a HC character or a module character - locked in to playing only HCs OR modules - that way similar levels of power would have been achieved by similar characters)
• Tantrums from players who felt they had magic items taken by casual players with lower item counts (This is mainly an artefact of magic item trading - a simple fix would be to prevent players taking items that were not able to be used by their characters, or, perhaps controversially, banning item trading altogether...)
• Legends of players turning up at tables with bags of holding with thousands of healing potions (I've never seen this in reality but a simple fix would be for there to be a limit on max number of pots able to be purchased as a time)
• Too much gold in the game (Usually players from HCs - see my point above for a fix. Another solution would be to create a list of non-mechanical flavour items that players can purchase. Even using an algorithm would be better eg AL characters receive 10% of the reward specified so if the necklace is worth 2000gp then they get 200gp etc - a lot better than zip!)
• A perceived lack of reward for role play or exploration (Easy fix would have been to specify XP rewards for these activities within the modules. Note though that the solution of filling up modules with a cast of a thousand NPCs is not the way to encourage role playing. Most of the best role play situations come through the actions of the characters interacting spontaneously - not forced ramblings of NPCs with complicated back stories and unpronounceable names. Another easy fix would be to simply write adventures that are CLEARLY DESIGNATED as role play heavy, exploration heavy, and combat heavy. That way DMs could choose modules to match the preferred play style of their tables. This is not as crazy as it sounds - it has been done effectively for the mini components of the Epics for a while now, using the social / exploration / combat symbols to identify the various options).

I've played under these new rules since they took affect and it is KILLING AL. I really hope they realize how miserable of a game system this is compared tot the old rules.

The "updates" break any immersion in the game.

1. Money "vanishes"
2. Magic Items that are used/found in the adventure turn into "magical I.O.U.'s" you can later turn in once you "build up your cred/credit"

The new rules conflict heavily with all the content themes of the current season:

1. You're on a "treasure quest" in an AL game where "treasure doesn't matter"
2. You're in an advenutre where parts of the story expect/are written assuming factions when they've tried their hardest to stomp out all faction members from AL. (Yes, you can still play one however the rules clearly discourage it.)

I know that some people will enjoy the new leveling system - it sucks though. In the XP system, you could easily get from 1 to 3, now it goes much slower, and some classes don't really become their class until 3rd. Additionally, at higher levels it takes more time to level; which has all been accelerated. The true problem is not on an individual scale; it's on a party scale. We're in ToA and the party level range is currently 7-12. We all started together but some people missed multiple sessions and the level 12's never missed. (The lowest guy missed about 2 months). On the XP system, he could/would have caught up more quickly as the XP would have launched him through levels faster than the rest of us. Now, we all level up after 8 hours.... he's ALWAYS going to be 5 levels behind everyone else unless he can find the time to play in pick up games......and even then he'd need (5*8) 40 hours of pick up games to catch up!

I don't want to start with the way if screws with DM's..........

I understand the XP rules but the treasure rules are just bizzare and make no sen

This package breaks AL in a way that almost cannot be properly expressed. At it's core, the issue is that gold no longer exists, which accounted for player motivations and engagement with certain storylines in a fundemental way; however, there are other issues.

Primary issues related to gold

1. The removal of gold breaks any situation where the party is expected to use gold to purchase anything story related, such as purchasing a building or paying a bribe, to the degree that the only way to DM these encounters is to ignore the rules and treat all story related gold purchases as free-this comes into play particularly with dragon heist, but applies universally.
2. The removal of gold makes anything that fines the players the small pittance they earn per level a massive extended middle finger to them, and cripples the character subjected to them. While this fascinatingly models the cycle of poverty many people face, this is not suitable to most DnD games, in particular organized play.
3. It is impossible to motivate many characters. This is crippling and unavoidable. If you are motivated by money, your character canot play AL anymore.

This list is short, because it is extremely simple. But every single problem there is crippling to adventures so afflicted.

Primary issues related to checkpoints and hardcovers

1. The elephant in the room; it is absolutely impossible for a character to catch up to other characters later in their tier, or in rare situations where they you are playing out of tier. If you brought a level 1 character to a group with a level 3 party, you would level directly to 3 by the time they are 4. With the new system, you gain levels at exactly the same rate, unless they slow their progression, a decision you are not in any way in control of. Even as a DM, you cannot force slow progression. This means that the main draw of AL-accessibility-is no longer there. You cannot drop by a table and play. You virtually have to have played through the entire thing. I really want checkpoints to work, and there were ways to fix this, but they didn't impliment any of them. The problem is crippling if you are trying to bring in new players.

2. You out level several hardcovers. I'd go as far as to say all hardcovers. If the group roleplays out encounters, they will rapidly accumulate far in excess of the checkpoints needed to be on level with the enemies; I've seen parties at level 4 when they should be at level 2 for the encounters they are facing, and this was a lesser example. The issue is that you get checkpoints for time spent doing a mission in hardcovers, which is fine and dandy, except you don't need to actually accomplish anything. So you can faff about for 16 hours and are now level 5. This is a problem for the DM to solve, theoretically, as they are in charge of what is "accomplishing objectives" so far as getting checkpoints-except that roleplaying must be included in "faffing about" in order to get the correct number of hours in many adventures. This, de facto, means that the to run several advenures the DM must basically institute "you level when you're supposed to", which, as checkpoints are awarded at the end of a session and people are supposed to be able to drop in and out, requires precognition to see when the players are actually going to finish a chapter objective in real time versus the level they are supposed to be for the next one.

3. DMs don't have the freedom to modify encounters sufficiently to create relevant challenges for the party. All the above would be managable, if, as a DM, I could simply make the challenges appropriatly harder where it was reasonable for them to be more difficult. However, due to a variety of rules on facebook, when DMing AL adventures, you are not allowed to change the difficulty of tasks, according to the Admins. There are some things you can modify-but with the insane restrictions added to DM creativity, it's hard to tell if you are playing an AL legal table when fixing the adventure.
4. Even if I could fix the adventure, I am re-writing everything anyway. I should just run as homebrew.

Conclusion; If you play any hardcover, including Dragon Heist, Run as homebrew. They are unplayable, and they should simply not include them as an option for AL play anymore; they broke them too severely.

Primary issues related to Treasure Points, Magic Items, and Misc. rules

1. The rules should be compacted. Facebook rulings are "official", for gods sake. More of a general complaint with AL, but it's becoming untenable now.
2. Not all banned magic items were problematic. Furthermore, several added evergreen magic items are. This is a minor complaint.
3. The entire idea of using magic item tables to determine price was, to be frank, and with no offense meant, retarded, and incomprehensibly stupid. Those tables are broken. They were not designed for this.
4. The new system rewards players who go looking for certain magic item unlocks, in particular +3 armor, as it is strictly superior to lesser armors; it is on the same table, has the same cost, and is merely not "evergreen" for unlocking. This means that players who save up and spend their points as such are purely benfited over players who play normally, rewarding loot runs.
5. It is impossible to sell outdated magic weapons, shields, and armor, incentivising waiting to buy items for when they are most benefical, and negatively affecting classes that use weapons and armor. You can trade items, but the only way to "game" this system is to have some sort of rotating band of items that you trade to low level characters when your higher level characters outgrow them, in exchange for useful items off the same tables...It's a mess.
6. Where are my DM quests?
7. They removed rewards for Storm Kings Thunder after chapter 5 or so, which cripples rewards for the adventure. You no longer roll on the tables, which used to be most of the rewards in the adventure.
8. I keep finding new problems, but I have to stop.

My thoughts on fixes I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this could be fixed. The checkpoint system in particular is salvagable, as are treasure points.

1. Add gold back. If this cannot be done, make gold in an adventure a story reward-the only gold that translates out of an adventure is leveling gold, but the rest can be used to accomplish story related tasks.
2. When DMing hardcover adventures, the DM awards checkpoints as needed, within range of the tier of the content or recommended level of the adventure if this is lower, for each character.
3. Characters should be able to train lower level characters that adventure with them, in exchange for downtime and some unspecified penalty-like the trained character doesen't receive gold or downtime, for instance, or even treasure points. This will enable parties to bring new players into the fold.
4. Use the tables in Xanathars guide for magic item prices.

List of hardcovers, by season, particularly affected by the new rules

1. Season 2, princes of the apocolypse, due to leveling concerns. The Sandbox of the adventure is already iffy with that, but character can easily break the hardcover leveling wise.
2. Season 4, Curse of Strahd, due to leveling concerns. It is very possible to roleplay through curse taking drastically longer than one is supposed to, which would result in massively overleveled characters.
3. Season 5, Storm Kings Thunder. There are virtually no rewards for the players in later chapters. SKT was a great hardcover too.
4. Season 7, Tomb of Annahilation. Again, sandbox adventure, easy for players to roleplay and end up level 16 by the end and break the encounters.
5. Season 8, Dragon Heist. Yes, the s8 hardcover is maybe the worst off. Leveling isn't the problem; it's that players are expected to spend gold on story related tasks, repetadly. In fact, the entire adventure is about gold. The entire point is a heist. It was such a spectacularly poorly timed disaster to introduce these rules that there is no suitable words for it. There are work arounds, to a degree, but they are completely unworkable in practice. Heist is the worst affected of all hardcovers, and it virtually unplayable.

I have no idea where to start to explain how poorly this content has been presented. I feel like it is still in a beta test and rule changes are going to be constantly forth coming because the alpha was so poorly tested.

WotC has really bonked AL play for season 8. I don't blame the admins since it seems they are being directed by WotC to implement such a bassackwards way of playing D&D.

Get ready for the generic power character since everyone can, for the most part, unlock the same magic items. In fact, it will only take 3 4 hour hard cover sessions at tier 3 to get a Staff of the Magi or a Cloak of Invisibility. This system has completely vanillafied characters.

The new ruleset is deeply incompatible with the season 8 hardcover as well as most older content. These rules break immersion and will likely lead to seriously overpowered characters at T3 - why do T3 characters have access to legendary purchases? The presence of the staff of the magi on the season 8 unlock list means we're going to end up with lots of level 12 characters with this powerful legendary item. That is going to be a nightmare to DM for.

Just started the Dragon Heist hardcover with the new season 8 rules and there are numerous problems. First, the gold issue. It is unbelievable that the new gold rules coincide with the release of the Waterdeep book. The whole premise of the adventure is finding a vault full of GOLD! Not to mention that the biggest incentive for most missions is based on gold rewards. Does the AL Admin expect me to rewrite the entire hardcover on the fly? Seriously, this was a terrible decision.

Our table talked about the problem and decided to implement a party gold rule to try and remain AL legal. Party gold will be received and tracked by the DM and used for hardcover purchases, but cannot be logged on character sheets or used in other mods. Is this legal? I don't know, but at this point I don't care.

Second, the magic item problem. Congratulations, you found a magic paper bird on a desk. The party says, "Great, let's use it to message the Zhent boss." Errr no sorry you can't. You just unlocked the bird, you'll have to wait until the end of next session and spend 8 treasure points to use one. The party says, "Don't bother, it's not worth it." This is a problem. With the new rules, weaker magic items will rarely be used. Thanks for killing diversity.

This entire overhaul should have been play tested. The new rules combined with the incompetent release has me questioning whether to continue with AL.

I just wanted a list with prices to use for shopping with my tresure points. After skimming this pac and looking for the information that I want... I want to stop playing AL

After reading Dragon Heist, removing the gold reward was a bad idea. Just make the gold in Dragon heist (the final treasure) non optainable or just a small percentage of it. Just with the tavern and estate, no one in AL can afford it with this season system. Would of work perfectly with gold loot still in.

I have been playing D&D since the early 80's. Migrated from 1st, to 1.5 (Unearthed Arcana), 2, (skipped 3.), 3.5, 4, and now 5 - to say Old gamers do not like change is doing us all a disserivce. I normally go all in on changes (yes even 4e).

I am more dissapointed by lac of supporting/missing support material than the debacle that is 'YOU MUST ROLE PLAY AND LIKE IT' - Where is the DM Quest, DM Starting Item, instead we have 3 sets of PH/DMGDDAL material 8.0/8.01/8.02 still waiting for 8.03 btw, Primer - which maybe that is Rewards Announcement is supposed to aspire to be? DDAL08-00 has come and gone more times than I know - and the Store was send an electronic copy that claims to be v2 but still shows 8.0 on the sheets- what a mess