Because of my schedule (and because I'm old and need 8 hours of sleep 
) I can't run or play games on Wednesday nights. I believe I remember reading that we can run encounters on the weekends similar to any other published WOTC campaign. Legal, but no certed items.
My question is, how do I get the pdfs? We aren't running them as officially sanctioned Wednesday night games, but I don't want to just search the interwebz for copies.
Also, if we run this as more standard game day 4 hour sessions, how do we record them?
As I understand it, "Encounters" is always on Wednesday, but you could run the HotDQ module as 'casual play' on any day. Just sign up the store as normal, and you will get access to the modules.
As you are not running 'Encounters' on a Saturday then your store would just record this as Casual play and one of you would need to buy the Hoard Hardcover and go from there.
You can reun EXPEDITION adventures any time you want, though you'll need 4 horus instead of 2 hours. Your store can order the PDFs from WotC for free.
(Legal, and with certed items.)
I was under the impression that the expeditions followed the HOTDQ but encounters was a separate story line. 
I am planning on running the expeditions as well, I was just trying to understand what content is currently available for play. I'd rather not repeat games while still having content available for low level players since the next published mod will be for higher level PCs.
OoftaMeg wrote:
I see you are as confused as I was. Hope this helps:
Horde of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Tiamat are the published 'public' adventures in the Tyranny of Dragons storyline. (If there's a third module in this series, I'm not aware of it.) The first three chapters of Horde of the Dragon Queen have been approved for Adventurers League Encounters play; all play after that (including all the chapters of Rise of Tiamat) is considered Casual Play with respect to Adventurers League. These adventures are set mainly in the Sword Coast region.
Adventurers League Expeditions adventures are the PDF-based adventures written by DDAL volunteers and released through WotC -- you need to have a relationship with a store to be able to get access to download these adventures. These adventures are all AL-legal, but the stories are only related to the storyline in Horde of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Tiamat -- no exposure or even knowledge of Horde or Rise is required for play. The Expeditions adventures are set mainly in the Moonsea area, well to the east of the Sword Coast, and the early adventures all start out in the city of Phlan.
While it is technically legal for a character to play in both Horde/Rise and in Expeditions adventures, as a practical matter, the Horde/Rise series is self-contained and doesn't really assume that characters will gain XP outside of the series. (In fact, the chapters of Horde that are available for Encounters play specifically have an XP cap so that characters don't over-level the module -- this means that characters who do both Encounters and Expeditions will not get 'full credit' for their Encounters play, since they'll hit the cap more quickly.)
So if you plan on running Horde/Rise as Casual Play as well as Expeditions modules, the recommendation would be to have your players create a different character for each set of adventures. Again, it's not required, but there are fewer headaches that way.
--
Pauper
The story arc is: TYRRANY OF DRAGONS
Characters playing in the story arc following the Adventurer's League rules are legal for all AL play.
The adventures related to the Tyrrany of Dragons arc which can be played by Adventurer's League PCs are:
Hoard of the Dragon Queen Levels 1-7 (Casual Play, although the first 3 episodes of which are available as Encounters)
Rise of Tiamat Levels 8-15 (Casual Play only)
Lost Mines of Phalander Levels 1-5 (Casual Play only)
Encounters Adventures (the first three episodes of HotDQ, broken into 2-hour weekly sessions to be played on Wednesday only)
Expeditions Adventures Levels 1-4 and 5-10 (four-hour adventures available through store-order or conventions only)
Epic Adventure (available at GenCon and a couple of other summer/fall conventions; no longer available)
I guess I haven't heard a really good reason why encounters has to be Wednesday. Why does encounters have to be Wednesday? I know its new comics day, but it also fights with so many other events I see run on Wednesdays.
Thanks for the updates.
I do wish we coud run the "official" encounters on something other than Wednesday night so that my players could bet certed items, but I know the issue has been raised before.
OoftaMeg wrote:
Uthrac is correct -- there aren't any permanent magic items in the Encounters portion of Horde. Those don't come into play until the Casual Play portion, and don't have certs.
That's another reason why I say, even though WotC wants to consider Encounters and Expeditions two different parts of the same program (which they can certainly do, as AL is their program), it is less confusing from a player perspective to think of them as two different programs, for which you'll want two different characters.
--
Pauper
Pauper wrote:
But you only need the certs if you plan on trading the magic items. And really, only if you plan on trading them with people outside of your local group.