Major Changes Coming to D&D Encounters: DMs to Pay for Adventures

I have been DMing Encounters for our FLGS since Lost Crown of Neverwinter and I agree that the main incentive to do that was so that I’d have some cool free stuff. I don’t see me buying my own public play stuff for WOTC’s benefit, the store’s benefit and the customer’s benefit. Lose a DM; lose (in our case) about 18 players.

It’s what we can expect from the whole 5E idea: a money-grabbing scheme for Wizards of the Coast. That Pathfinder set looks prettier every time I look at it while reading news from WotC.

First off, I’m guessing that this came about when they saw how many folks who didn’t live near gaming stores wanted to buy copies of the Encounters adventures. Somebody at Hasbro said “Hey look, we can monetize this. How about we do that right from the get-go!”

As for the multiple editions, I like the theory of that. However, if that means they provide less support for all editions, or do something silly like not including edition-specific stats for each monster & challenge, I’ll be upset. I don’t mind pulling up the 4e Adventure Tools online to get monster stats for a 4e game, but if I have to buy the reprinted 3.5 Monster Manual or slog through those awful playtest documents to find the NEXT monster stats… I will not be a happy camper.

The one hope I have for this, though, is that WOTC has realized that NEXT is nowhere near as appealing as they want it to be (nor will it be, if they keep up with the current basic system), and that maybe they’re accepting the idea that 3.5 and 4e are pretty solid systems that still deserve support.

It appears that the store bus the materials, not DMs. Store managers/owners might pass this cost onto the people that okay on the season. Or, they might not. it did not seem to explicitly say DMs must pay for this material.

I think it’s about time Wizards of the Coast charged money for this content. Thirty-five dollars is a small price to pay for content that brings people into the store.

I like this new approach to the program. And I especially like the adventure being presented in three rules iterations. Great idea.

Meh. Our FLGS has mostly switched over to playing LFR instead of Encounters. Some will buy in, but this will only further encourage such trends. We have enough experience and skill in the Madison gaming community that if WotC vanished off the face of the Earth tomorrow, people could easily step forward to produce their own quality content to run for our fellow gamers. Many of us have been sorely dissapointed at the lack of originality in the Encounters campaigns over the years.

I’ve never run or played any of the public organized play/RPGA events because I don’t know of any shops nearby that run them. I’ve always been interested in seeing the materials for these events, and wouldn’t mind paying for them. I might actually buy these books if they’re made available where I can get them. I guess it’ll be an adjustment for those who have been participating for free, but it sounds like the material they have planned is pretty substantial.

I guess it could be construed as a moneymaking plan, but I have a hard time making that rationale. That’s because they’ve released what is essentially a complete game, hundreds of pages, in the Next playtest materials, which are updated regularly. So I don’t begrudge them.

You guys are crazy overreacting and I think this article is incorrectly reporting how much the adventure is going to cost each time. This INITIAL adventure is packaged with the 64 page campaign guide and the new Dungeon Master’s screen. In 4e, both of those would have cost you $35 easily. You won’t need those materials every time a new season rolls around. Wizard’s has to look out for the retailer’s as well as promote their new products. I would bet that this is a one time deal for the launch of 5e and that future adventures will go back to free or at least much cheaper.

As far as I am aware the Campaign Guide is specific just to the Murder in Baldur’s Gate adventure/season as having sanctioned the following season (Legacy of the Crystal Shard) and its Games Day event it appears that each subsequent season will follow suit.
As a huge Forgotten Realms fan I will most likely buy the products anyway but as our FLGS is more wargame and MtG orientated they struggle to order in D&D stock, so I may have to rely on Amazon and such.
Even though we were late to the Encounters party (joining with season 8 – Elder Elemental Eye) and this has introduced over a dozen new customers to the store itself, I do think that this may well be the final nail in the coffin that sees the program die in our store, which will be a real shame.
If the adventures are going to be on general sale there will be no incentive for players or dm’s to attend anything other than the Games Day events and then just run games at home whenever they wanted rather than the regular Wednesday sessions.

Interesting read. I think most DMs run Encounters to keep the maps moreso than the adventure. I doubt anyone ever runs them twice. So to see a ‘season’ cost 35 bucks and not even have any battlemaps is kind of crappy. In the end it doesn’t matter much to me; nobody will pay to run this at my FLGS. It isnt really organized play at this point, its a 35-dollar 5e playtest.

Honestly, this decision leaves me scratching my head.

I thought the primary purpose of Encounters was to bring new gamers into the fold. I, for one, was brought back into the DND fold via Encounters after a very long lapsed period of playing other RPG’s. I started with Season 4 (Phantom Brigade) and I continue to play or DM every season since then. I even got my Brother in Law and my 14 year old neice into the action, they both play every week now as well. We all patronize our sponsoring FLGS for books and dice and such, and we all wave our own DND insider acccount subscriptions.

Paying to play discourages casual gamers, it appeals more to certain groups who will pony up the cash and play within their own group only, rather then welcoming newcomers.

I also see little point, from Wizards POV, in supporting 3.5 (or even 4e for much longer). If a new player did come in and get hooked, but it was with a group playing under the 3.5 rules, the new player is out of look as far as buying the core books, with the exception maybe of the revent reprints but that only goes so far. It’s not making a new customer who would support the product going forward.

I also dislike the idea of losing the excellent poster maps. Keeping the maps was a big reason I continued to DM the majority of the seasons. It also made running each session a breeze. I see losing the maps as dropping one of the major incentives for experienced DM’s to run games, as well as make it harder to run each session (and therefore could also lead to each session being less fun for the players, leading to less player retention from week to week, and less newbies becoming new customers for WotC).

I have no issue with WotC making money off of Encounters by selling the adventures. We have all seen the modules being sold online for big bucks. I would just prefer to keep the current format and let Wizards sell the advbentures to others after the current season ended. I also think including poster maps would generate more sales either way.

As Moe Tousignant pointed out – this is not the next D&D Encounters module, it is the first of the planned adventures. Of course you’ll have to buy it as you would any of the modules that WotC released.

This module starts “The Sundering” adventures and will be followed up by Legacy of the Crystal Shard in November.

I don’t know if the Encounters is changing or not, but this adventure at least isn’t part of the Encounters program.

i agree with a lot of the points raised. but without some more details it’ll be hard to know the impacts. IF they are treating this as some kind of a “adventure setting” type of thing like VorRukoth/Gardmore Abbey/ Menzoberranzan where it can serve as a jumping off/home for the PC’s to be used beyond the encounters season, then the cost seems reasonable imho. but i really like going to my FLGS on wed nights versus someone’s basement on a saturday afternoon.

I don’t understand why they are even bothering to call it Encounters. Its really just buying a module and running it at your game shop. There should be something to make it exclusive in some way. At least a discount to DMs running it at a store or some kind of freebie. Sheesh they cant give a few of these away? I am sure they are going to sell a lot of these FR retcon playtest modules, as many people seem more than willing to pay to playtest 5e. People are already hot and heavy for that Ghostpear Castle Gencon adventure, whining that they cant buy it. And a lot of FR fans I am sure will buy the adventures that erase the 4e Realms.

I don’t play encounters but really like accessibility of the adventures. I would enjoy all the Lair Assault adventures packaged together as well. I can understand that DMs who run the game at the FLGS was at least somewhat attracted to the opportunity because of the free adventure. Seems like something that could have been worked out both ways with a little thought. Wizards could have used the goodwill from the gaming community, but this isn’t the way to get it.

I suspect there are a few things in play here. WotC has promoted Encounters to the stores as a way to get customers in to buy D&D products. The Encounters kits cost money, both for WotC to produce and retailers to order.

I suspect that WotC has had some push-back from retailers. Encounters may be bringing people into the stores, but there has not been any new (actually new, not reprints) D&D products to sell. Outside of brand-new players getting into D&D, whatever edition players may prefer, they’ve had plenty of opportunity at this point to pick up whatever books they choose. This change means there’s a new product – edition-neutral, even – on the shelves that retailers can point customers towards.

And for those who are thinking that it’s only for this particular season, indications are that future seasons are following the same parameters. Legacy of the Crystal Shard has the same format and price ( http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Product.aspx?x=dnd/products/dndacc/sundering2 ) and as mentioned above by Vobeskhan, it’s the following Encounters season.

I’ve been DM’ing Encounters since the middle of season 2 (Dark Sun), acting as coordinator for the past couple years, and I don’t see myself continuing under those terms. I’m not enough of a fan of FR to want to repeatedly spend money on these adventure+sourcebook releases.

Well, not surprised but in the end I can’t say much all they really put out for 4e was more and more mechanical stuff. There was little setting information and most of that was under subscription anyways. I’m not sure how many people showed up in stores and such, but the pack seems like its aimed for multiple groups which what little experience I have shows is really limited to one group generally.
I would have suggested limiting them to PDFs and then offered maps at a much lower cost. Personally, I got surprised when I as told GM was charging a dollar per session. Not so much of a problem, but I wasn’t actually very interested and was just joining to fill out group, ended up new person (who the GM let make a HYBRID for very FIRST character!!! arrg!), wasn’t told until after 1st session, and finally it conflicted with a game that I already was in. So having to shell out 5-6 to play for a module doesn’t interest me. Sorry, kinda got off topic.

Anyways, unless they learned their lesson from 4e and Hasbro listens, I doubt things will really improve in DnD Next. I guess we’ll see.

There have been many changes to organized play programs over the years, and running the programs is expensive. At various times the RPGA charged for adventures, including in 2000, when it went from free to $10/scenario (and a $30/year membership). Around that time the RPGA was reportedly only covering half its costs through membership, had only half the budget it was requesting ($1M instead of $2M), and had 76,000 members.

The closest parallel program is Pathfinder Society, which does charge (less) for its (much smaller) adventures. Many organized play programs (Shadowrun, etc.) charge for their adventures (often providing a discount for DMs running in a certain setting, such as conventions).

No doubt the cost will be an issue for some. But, there have also been many wondering why Wizards didn’t charge for the adventures and many asking to be able to run the adventures at homes or other public spaces. We will have to see how this pans out. Across the years the emphasis has shifted between store, convention, and home play. This seems less to hurt gamers and more likely to be insufficient incentive to focus on the store. You bought the adventure… why come to the store every week?

As for the cost, I can only say that it should be well worth the cost. I wish I could share more as a playtester, but I can’t. From the publicly available information it seems to be like a combination adventure and also a sourcebook similar to the excellent Neverwinter campaign guide. It should be useful not just for this season but for use in many adventures and campaigns across the years.

Alphastream makes some good points. I DM’d multiple seasons of Encounters and enjoyed the swag. The store enjoyed customers. Not sure how much WotC got out of it.

Making the material available to the general public answers the problem of players without an FLGS. It expands the user base (in theory.)

That said, DMs are the key to the growth of the game and a program without some incentive is a problem, I think.

I see a lot of ruffled feathers here, and I think with a change like this, that is to be expected. However, after marinating on this the last couple days, I’m looking forward to this.

My main reason is due to the assumed quality upgrade. Although I have really enjoyed encounters to date, I think this will bring the program closer to something we had with “Against the Cult of Chaos” which was excellent. I myself had intended to purchase this module since they announced it last year at Gen Con, so I’m happy to see I can get right into using it. The added setting book is also quite beneficial.

I also think it will be good for those that can’t access Encounters elsewhere.

In terms of drawbacks, I can certainly see where the worries come from, and I don’t think we will know for sure how this will ultimately affect things for the program going forward. However, imo, I’m happy to see what it brings to the table.

For those saying that Pathfinder Society is free, it most certainly is not. A single session of PFS is about a $4 PDF, and on top of that, no maps provided, you either have to make your own or buy their flip mats (or other compatible map). I’m not knocking PFS at all, just pointing out that there is most definitely a comparable cost associated.

So, our FLGS is a premier store that runs 8+ tables a week… one kid’s table at 4pm, 3-4 adult tables at 6:30pm, and 3-4 adult tables at 8:30pm. In the last six months, the 8:30 slot has shifted toward a weekly LFR (one sessions split across two weeks) rather than encounters, just because people have been so dissapointed with starting at level one over and over, the storylines have been weak, and as a beginner’s event, the combats are generally not tactically interesting. With this change, I imagine even more tables will shift over to LFR. However, I do like the idea of WotC monetizing more adventures. For example, I know a lot of people would like to buy Lair Assault materials, and as others have noted, it would be nice for people with no FLGS to be able to buy Encounters materials… hell … I’d buy materials from a couple seasons I wasn’t able to run. There are some hardcore fans who buy everything who will buy this too, and may choose to run encounters, but this will stress our DM base… running games is a lot of work, and people volunteered their time in exchange for the swag. If the swag isn’t coming from WotC, I doubt our FLGS will spring for it… the shop is surviving, but they’re certainly not made out of money… so if DMs aren’t “getting” anything out of it, then they will run the content that THEY want to run, not the content WotC wants folks to run… and if Wotc’s new release strategy is ignored in this way, they may have fewer sales. I don’t know… I guess we’ll have to see what value Wotc is going to provide for the cost that will be imposed. If it’s not worth it, people won’t buy it, and a lot more tables will run something else.

Total fail on WOTC’s part but anyone who knows much about them should have seen this coming, eventually. The makers of the greatest money sink ever devised, aka Magic: The Rip-off-ening, finds another way to put the financial burden for their marketing program onto the consumers.

If you purchase these packs, you’re deserving of getting ripped off. All you’re doing is enabling this type of BS behavior from WotC.

Alphastream hits the nail on the head vigorously and often. For some reason, those without a firm grasp of reality, or who are deliberately trolling, do not give WotC the same right to make money that other companies get. WotC goes out of its way to provide game stores with a way to make money also–sometimes to the point that it is unwise: the stories of stores taking free content and selling it on ebay instead of actually running it are well-established. I have seen multiple stores in my area do exactly this.

D&D (and most other RPGs) are unique because there needs to be a GM facilitator for the game to happen. So the tightrope to walk for RPG companies is treating those gamemasters as both valuable resources and consumers at the same time. No other OP program on the same scale as Encounters just gives away content.

Other OP programs also don’t act as a gateway into competitors’ offerings like Encounters does. The percentage of gamers who start with D&D and move on to other games is so much higher than those who start with another RPG game and then move to D&D. WotC has not shied away from this reality, to their credit, even though few cut them any slack for taking on that role.

well i learned on the encounter program and hope is does not go away. its a steady game to play in the middle of the week. show or no show their is still an encounters game. but a lot of people already wouldn’t dm when they thought they had to pay and it was free. i guess now the guy no one wonted to DM has his day, he will buy the material so he can finally be DM and get revenge on the better players. thank good for home games and other systems…who i wont name here….p a t h……………….

As a store owner who hosted D&D Encounters for nearly 2 years, I can absolutely say that THIS IS GREAT! For every comment above mentioning that they’re “done”, “finished”, and “out” I can only congratulate you all. The thought of running a mid-week event which conflicts with new comic book releases (a ridiculous portion of the entire setting to begin with), makes me cringe at this point. Not only did the “dedicated” players not have a concern with getting everything handed to them for “free”, but they could care less about the overhead which goes into hosting something as intrusive as encounters for “free” (again, I reiterate “free” – if any tournament organizer can constitute their time in sanctioning and arranging these events equal to “free” then they’re full of it).

So I conclude with this:
If you want to engage in any activity which has product support backing it, then do everyone involved a favor and make a purchase. If you can’t constitute that simplicity, then stay home and don’t waste the time of TO’s or store owner’s. We don’t need it. Wotc has handed you “free play” for a very long time, so get over it. If you have a minimal group of 4-6 players then divide the DM book among everyone (you really can’t afford $5.80 – $8.75 each?!?). Sound fair? No? Then move along to Pathfinder or something else and let us know how the “freebies” are with any company besides WotC.

Goodbye and farewell.

@Blast you all
Wow.. I have to wonder if the Friendly in FLGS applies to your shop. It sounds like all the D&D Encounters players in your comic store are treated as bad customers and you certainly made it clear they are not welcome in your store.

I think Blast is just being honest. Gaming stores do value the relationship with gamers and do care about them (they are themselves gamers, that’s why they ended up in this usually-not-very-lucrative-business). But, imagine how frustrating it is for them to run a program every week, giving table space to D&D when the Encounters players purchase so little? Near them are likely CCG or minis wargamers that are the store’s lifeblood.

Many stores don’t support encounters because the profit on D&D is so low. This change may be, in part, to help change that relationship. I really can’t fault any store for being honest about wanting that change.

I will note that for a new group, Pathfinder is equally expensive. Once the adventures are purchased, then they can be re-run at no cost (but that is true of any program). For something like D&D’s 4E Living Forgotten Realms or Ashes of Athas, there is no cost at all.

It always makes me laugh when people get so angry that a company is trying to make money. How dare they! I guess Wizards could have just let TSR go bankrupt and let D&D die off instead. Those greedy bastards.

I’ve DMed since about the start of Encounter, and this just sucks.

Wizards has slapped me in the face for the last time. I’m going to advise all of my current players (24) and anyone else that comes into my store to move to Pathfinder. At least Paizo is honest with its fans and isn’t dropping support for its current edition any time soon.

I look forward to watching DnD Next fail due to gross-incompetence from Wizards.

Matt, there is no great evil company nor any great white knight gaming company. The staff of Paizo is largely made up of people who worked at Wizards and really liked their time there. The staff of both companies hang out together and are friends. At some point in time Paizo will need a new edition. And everything we can blame one company about, we either can or someday likely will be able to blame the other about. For example, look at the forthcoming Paizo Adventure Path card game. Isn’t it pretty much an RPG played with cards? You buy sets of cards and to keep playing (and level up) you have to buy new sets of cards. And, honestly, I bet that game is a ton of fun. I know the designers and they are great people who love great games.

There just really aren’t evil entities at work here. Both Wizards and Paizo are fantastic companies with great people. Both companies have the necessity (in a tough market) to try new things. Paizo isn’t evil for charging for its Pathfinder adventures and neither is Wizards.

Ok, let’s make this clear: a company is supposed to make money. So far, so good.

But while there are no evil shrouded villains and white knights in tabletop gaming, WotC has a reputation of treating their customers like crap. We are never forgetting nor forgiving that they made PAYING DDI suscribers almost beg for weeks before giving word on the status of Builder updates. WotC lost all respect from me since that moment. Paizo on the other hand, seems to understand the basic principles of PR.

Scott –

I know a gaming store near me and they have given the D&D players the cold shoulder. They (the store) wouldn’t obtain the FREE encounters modules (and when they did they kept it for themselves.) The word is that the store didn’t like the fact that D&D players took up space and played for free. As opposed to the seemingly endless amounts of people playing Magic the Gathering/Pokémon,etc….i.e…$$$$. I said – Well if you want to buy stuff…HAVE SOMETHING we can buy. Other than dice and maybe a copy or 2 of the PHB…there’s nothing to buy. Sure if your into warhammer your good to go. Or Hordes/warmachine. Where are the miniatures (like -REAPER?) So when I used to go there….soda and chips were my only purchases (well other than the occasional brush or citadel paint.)

As for – Murder on Baldurs Gate – My DM purchased a copy. He’s not too keen on the lack of battlemaps so we’ll see what happens. We’re currently playing under DnD 5 rules…seems a bit weird to me. I prefer 3.5 or 4. But then again I’m out socializing and rolling dice. 🙂