I'm here to work out the kinks in your Adventures League.
Within this thread will be help for those that have some of the many questions left unanswered or hard to find about the Adventures League and how to run it as a DM.
As background I've been running the new 5e for some time now and have found these solutions, links, and custom tools adequate to perform the Adventures League campaign. The Break down will be as show below,
i. Introduction
ii. Things you should have
iii. Homework for a DM
iiii. Advantage/Disadvantage
v. Downtime
vi. How to for interesting treasure
vii. Order of adventures
viii. Three dragon ante
viiii. everything else.
i. Intro
Let me start by saying Fifth Edition is arguably one of the heavier role playing editions. Unlike 3.5 or 4.0 where number crunchers and rule kings thrive fifth edition takes a different route. Background flaws, ideals, bonds, and personality traits become spark notes for role playing. Advantage and disadvantage streamline play sequence and entice creativity where it otherwise might become stale. Character classes have been turned into character trees that simplify early character mechanics. Furthermore, a bulk of magical items are replaced by unique items that do away with generic +1's bonuses and instead are replaced by some of the most unique experiences your characters have ever encountered. My DM style is role playing heavy, that is to say bogging down experiences with nit picking stats, ability rolls, or number crunching isn't my thing. Please be aware that each edition accounts for different play styles. Some are stat heavy, others are rule heavy, and many mix role playing techniques. That being said within this post are my tips and tools to make the most out of your 5e expeience with the least amount of bogs or hiccups. Too many players. Your shop is most likely going to want to give you a bunch of players and expect you to handle it. In my experience a part of at least 3 to a maximum(and i mean very maximum) of 6 is a solid range. If your play style is simply go in and kill the monster you could probably handle more players. But if you're into taking the time to dissect your players characters keep the size of your party at a number your can pay the proper attention too. No one likes to feel left out. SO, within my party are two dragonborns, a crockity old warlock(Torinn), a proud cleric emmisary for his dragon clan(Balasar Brightscale), a cocky half-elf ranger always getting into trouble(Arobol) , and lastly a Dwarf fighter with a drinking problem supposedly raised by wolves(Barnabus Khan). Needless to say the players didn't come to these interesting character descriptions on their own. In fact what i'll be explaining here is that rounding out and creating interesting adventures is a craft that takes work and imagination. Taking your players to distinctive creative levels and crafting encounters unlike the ones before is what I love about DND and specifically what I love about Adventures League and hope to give these tools to whoever wants to bring these elements into their game.ii. What I would have wished was given to me in the beginning and what you should start with.
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A good map of Phlan with a base description, the city your characters will be in for the next couple months.
City of Phlan.pdf
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The Factions. These are paramount to the campaign because so much interaction is done within each respective faction. Additionally, working within these factions has it's advantages and networking. It's not only very important but the factions are very cool and very different. The links to the descriptions are below but i later found out I should have gotten a package from my store to get the players involved, i did not get that, so here is my custom made page below for quick player reference. I strongly urge you to put pressure on your store to get the package, it is very cool.
http://dnd.wizards.com/dungeons-and-dragons/story/factions
http://dungeonsmaster.com/2014/07/dd-encounters-tyranny-of-dragons-kit-preview/
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Adventure Logsheets/character sheets/players guide. Adventure Logsheets are not just for the store to log all of the advancement but also for your characters to keep track of earned xp, gold, RENOWN, and important info. Character sheets and players guides are also in this link towards the bottom of the page. As well as the 5e spellcasting sheet, an elusive addition to the character sheets.
http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/events/adventurers-league-resources
- PDF's of the encounters given to you in advance. Unless your play style is on the fly all the time please get these encounters before playing them. Lots of things will only be possible by having the encounters, reading through them, and editing them based on your players party, how they play, how fast you run the campaign, how many extras are added, and reminders for yourself because they are PDF's(WOO!). In fact I obtained all the enounters because of how many questions are unanswered but ill get to that later.
- Basic DM things such as extra pencils, extra dice(because people will forget theirs), some way of keeping track of monsters and characters when they start fighting, DM screen, snacks, and enthusiasm(no one wants a lethargic DM).
- Believe it or not but the Tyranny of Dragons arc can be done completely with just the Adventures League. If you keep running the adventures every week eventually they turn from level 1-4 to level 5-10 adventures. Under a similar umbrella the adventures have quick reference tools to make the encounters harder or easier on the fly. Know this, you do not need to incorporate the Hoard of the Dragon Queen or Rise of Tiamat books if you do not want to. But if you haven't found out already about 5e, difficulty has increased. Tips below will make sure your players are utilizing advantage and disadvantage properly in order to overcome seemingly impossible encounters.
iii. Homework for a DM.
So, you've gone through character creation with your new players. Explaining the importance of ideals, bonds, flaws and personality traits may have been a little rough. Understanding inspiration and explaining the new death save mechanic could have gone better. And well the whole proficiency bonus got blank stares for about ten entire minutes. But you got through it! Before I go further I'm going to highlight a couple of areas that might not seem important at first but can be very useful in the future. Alignment. Take a look at base character alignments for each race. They are specific for a reason and are a step in the right direction for understanding gods and planes of existence. Some races have a hard time being certain alignments because the gods that created them are either good or evil. Age can be pretty cool to deal with. With one of the dragonborns being very old his persona as the crickity dragon grandpa warlock became quite fun to deal with. Same applies to height and weight. Every time a character levels its not a bad idea to have the characters explain what changes were made with the character. Not only has time passed but maybe the wizard becomes more cliche wizard like with pointy hat and cloak or decides to be a pirate looking wizard because really no one has any idea. A little flair for characters is never a bad thing. This becomes very prevalent when certain characters such as Balagor Brightscale the clan emmisary needs to counsel with the mayor. The more respectful he presents himself in both attire and demeanor the better his chances of accomplishing his talks with the mayor.
I know it's not the best to stop here in between a main section point but I gotta DM tomorrow and need to finish my own homework. Will update soon and regularly to finish. For now a DM should have the essential tools above to kick off their campaign. Later I will include useful tables, tips, and things to keep in mind when working on characters before every session.