D&D 5E Adventurers League. Advice?

[ritt]

I'm going to be running a couple (Maybe more) Adventurers League events at an upcoming local con. I've never ran any kind of organized play or "Official" game before. It seemed like it would be an interesting challenge.

Any advice? Pitfalls to watch out for? Thanks in advance for any guidance.

[Finarvyn]

A few thoughts:

(1) Be sure to read enough of the adventure to know where the story is headed. You can read some of the flavor text as you read it to the players, but watch for things that you were supposed to know but miss if you skim too quickly.

(2) I like to prepare a monster sheet for a given scenario. I use OD&D as my model, although a little more complex. I need to know initiative, attack bonus, damage, hit points, special attacks, and any damage resistances. Usually you can "wing it" from there.

(3) Be aware that characters are hard to kill, so give them your best shot. You will discover that they have all sorts of little min-max powers that you hadn't expected, so be willing to adapt as you find out what the players can do.

(4) If the characters seem too strong for the module, feel free to limit rests for the party. Once those wizards start eating up spells, monks use ki (and so forth) they will want to rest to power up again and use hit dice. Don't give them a lot of chance to rest.

[kesher]

That seems like some awesome advice, especially:

(3) Be aware that characters are hard to kill, so give them your best shot. You will discover that they have all sorts of little min-max powers that you hadn't expected, so be willing to adapt as you find out what the players can do.

[Finarvyn]

Jun 22, 2016 13:53:19 GMT -6 kesher said:

That seems like some awesome advice, especially:

(3) Be aware that characters are hard to kill, so give them your best shot. You will discover that they have all sorts of little min-max powers that you hadn't expected, so be willing to adapt as you find out what the players can do.

When I was running an Adventurer's League encounter I managed to catch most of the party with a breath attack before they could spread out. I started to feel sorry for the group because I really felt like it would be a fast TPK and they would be bummed out and/or feel cheated that they were taken down so quickly, but as time passed the healer started to get folks back on their feet and the paladin started hitting with his smite attacks and pretty soon the tide of the battle had totally changed.

In the end they killed the thing without losing a single character. Totally messed with my intuition on how tough it is to kill characters.

[ritt]

Thank you very much, very solid advice.

One of the adventures has a two-hour time limit. I've never ran an RPG session that brief before. Should be interesting.