In a home campaign, of course, the PCs are expected to change the world. In Organized Play, maybe not so much. But here's the kind of things I'm talking about.
Every day my friend's character Dexter takes all the remaining spell slots he has and casts Goodberry with them around dinner time. Then he takes them to the Lyceum ("a makeshift place for the displaced and injured" according to DDEX1-1) where he donates them to the homeless and needy. Since a single Goodberry provides enough nourishment for a whole day, he is able to feed generally 40-70 people per day this way. He does this every day that he's in Phlan. Sometimes he convinces other PCs to do the same. You'd think the word would get around. 
On the opposite end of the narcissim scale, my PC casts a couple of Magic Mouth spells per day. They are activated any time someone who looks like an adventurer (wears any armor, carries any weapon openly, is not a member of the Black Fist) walks within 5' and has not heard that particular Magic Mouth before. The exact speech varies (otherwise it would get boring!), but the spells all exhort adventurers to join the Broken Tooth adventuring company. (He carries a piece of bone he swears is a broken dragon's tooth.) At a couple of locations per day, after a few months you'd think everyone would have heard of them. At 10gp per casting, he's basically adventuring for seed money. :-)
Back in the olden days (RPGA Living City), things like this got around. Players would go to conventions where they'd play with people from other towns who would carry the word about some funny or interesting thing a PC was doing. Over time, word sometimes got to the ears of the campaign staff and those things got written into adventures. Eventually, these even led to PC-run in-game organizations.
AL is a lot different from Living City, so stuff like this will probably never spread. But if it did, what stuff is your PC doing (in addition to the regular adventures) that might change his/her corner of the world? What tales would you want players take back to their other towns after playing with you?
This made me think. My Wizard is the post encounters game, Varon Cadorna is a Necromancer. He is also a Cloak from Mulmaster who has decided to distance himself from that organisation (as they were cramping his style a bit). His interest is well.. the accumulation of power and he dosnt like the idea of these Purple cloaked buffons cutting in on the existing power bases. He likes control, he wants to direct other party members in what they should do and he dosnt suffer fools very much.
In one encounter he met a fair maiden who was trying to 'seduce' him on the long road to Waterdeep. Taken to a small nearby lake , this maiden attempted to massahe Varons shoulders and then tried to STRANGLE him. He wasnt happy. THe Doppleganger maid and her/its sister turned on the party and he had great pleasure in killing them, but he made sure their bodies were in relatively good condition.
You see Varon was not far off being able to cast Animate Dead, and he wanted to remind the others around him (to offset the fact he let himself be attacked whilst alone) that he was still the Alpha Wizard. So when 5th level came around, the Doppleganger became Varon's first Zombie. I felt it kinda poetic in a way and as a player I did like the fact that it had to be the doppleganger. The joke around the table is , you better watch out, if you die Varon is bringing you back.
Thats unlikely unless of course the Doppleganger is utterly destroyed. 
In the party he has built up a reputation of being devious, .. somewhat arrogant but somebody you want on your side (and it helps that the majority of the players at the table are all playing martial characters)
While going through Defiance in Phlan, my character picked up some of the "coins" in the "dragon lair".
I'm just waiting until I get my pocket picked, and can hand over a note and my Adventure Log to the DM... 
I wound up making the map for Drums in the Marsh. (I am proficient with Cartographers Tools.) I kept it. Maybe I can make copies and sell them as souveniers?
I try to create one mundane item per adventure that I take with me for future use.
I met a Druid named Flower, who is INT 8. He began most encounters by casting Animal Friendship on the meanest snarliest-looking wolf we met, then spent most of the fight scratching it on the tummy.
(Not completely bad tactics; it took one tough enemy out of the fight.)
I do really miss things like this, though I would note that they caused all sorts of work and management problems for admins/Triads.
It may be that AL could learn from 13th Age's program (just as all programs learn from each other). In 13th Age players are encouraged to state the truth at their table, and to pass that on as they play. For example, a half-orc player might say that their orc tribe never rides horses, and that becomes a defacto thing for the table. The DM and players, should they remember it, can weave it into future play. Along comes a player with a half-orc riding a horse, which now tells everyone that the use of horses varries by orc tribe.
In terms of AL events, the casting of goodberry and magic mouth can be fairly easily implemented by mentioning it when it seems pertinent. "Hi DM, as I approach the member of the Black Fist I try to conceal my feelings, because...<insert brief explanation>" Fun then ensues.
Using the 13th Age system, that might be mentioned by players at more tables, and even by the same DM. Now it has a bit more permanence and impact.
To go back to something like Living Greyhawk had we would need forums where we actively shared what we do, conversed in character, and had a small army of admis to respond to what is shared. I don't think we will see that, so we would need to come up with alternate ways to make the impact felt. Other thoughts?
I'm very curious about this topic, as it is something we wrestled with during Ashes of Athas. (Due to a lack of time, we focused on surveys and wrote adventures to have very pivotal endings - what players did as a majority affected our writing very strongly. However, I don't think players could really feel that tangibly, and most are probably very unaware of how drastically they impacted the campaign's plot direction.)
Alphastream wrote:
Thanks, BRJN! You made me smile today, big time!
This is an interesting idea, and one that a suitably motivated group of players could take under their wing and develop. (Don't be intimidated by being 'mere' players; everyone in the AL organization who isn't a WotC employee is volunteering their time and energy to the campaign, why not you?)
Clearly there would need to be stated restrictions: nothing that violates known canon regarding the Realms in general or the story seasons specifically, nothing that violates the AL Code of Conduct or that might be seen as encouraging violations of the Code, etc.
I kinda get the impression that Adventuring Companies were intended to do something like this during LFR, but most players simply made use of them for the mechanical benefits (Adventuring Company action point!) and ignored them otherwise.
--
Pauper
Pauper wrote:
TheBreen wrote:
Because it is not unheard of that players in Organized Play have an effect on the setting it takes place in. Just very tricky to accomplish. As such the questions are totally valid and do not really deserve a barely veiled "you should go elsewhere".
Oraibi wrote:
It is possible to affect the campaign world in three ways:
1) Do something during the first run of an Epic: We definately watch these interactives and its the easiest way to have your actions directly affect the story.
2) Report Critical Events: Obviously not just one PC, but your "vote" counts towards what the official outcome is.
3) Report anecdotes in Critical Events: We do read the other things reported when you report your critical events and if something happens at your table that is especially awesome, sometimes we incorporate into the storyline. For example, if your table has the same generic outcome as the official outcome (as tallied by critical event reports), but you report an especially creative way of getting to that outcome, sometimes that becomes the way the campaign solved it.
In short PLEASE REPORT YOUR CRITICAL EVENTS!
Greg Marks
Associate Resource Manager, DnDAL
Skerrit wrote:
When you play an expeditions adventure, at the end is a QR code that leads to an online reporting form. There players get a chance to report on their play experience and critical events.. And add anecdotes
As Krishna said above, if you play during the premier period (usually about a month after the adventure first runs), the adventure has a page with a link to the critical events survey. Log in (both players and DMs) and say how the table went.