Update- AL removed the PHB + 1 rule recently. Obviously this sort of thing can change, but basically be sure to check their official online rules to verify this stuff since the video may be out of date.

Puffin: Adventure's league is for new players. My Experience: Players who have been playing for years testing out their theory-crafted multiclass builds.

I think i might start using down time in my games... that sounds like a neat idea

Since there are SO MANY things you can do with renown, maybe you could make a video all about it?! I'd love to hear it :D

Me: Maybe I should find a local adventure's league. This sounds fun and I've been wanting to get into DnD for a while. My Social Anxiety: Bitch, you thought!

AL is great for getting started when your circle of friends wants nothing to do with D&D. i then crafted my own campaign and stole all the people i enjoyed from AL to my home game where we have ultimate freedom.

I watched this video last night, and played in my first Adventurer's League game today in a gaming convention. Its definitely a different experience than the homebrew campaign I am used to playing in. The story felt more 'on rails' and the world wasn't quite as 'alive' as I am used to in the home game. But the brevity (only two hours) was a treat, it was fun to play D&D on speed and really focus on the mechanical aspects of the game; and I still got to have some funny role playing moments. Quite a few laughs on a table of six strangers! It was also fun to try a class outside the home game. I have been playing a Warlock for nearly a year in the home game, and getting to play a fighter for two hours in AL was a great chance to experience something new and out of the comfort zone I have gotten into with my main character. That 1d6+5 attack for my sword with the duelist bonus was awesome for just a first level character, and it was great dishing out lots of damage so early in the game. I am not exactly dying to try it again anytime soon, but if I have the opportunity to play another D&D AL game I'd take it. It seems like it would be a good idea for any player looking to grasp the mechanics of D&D to try out Adventurer's League; and a good place for veteran players to hone their skills and try out new ideas.

Once you have 10 renown, are 5th+ level, and have 1 SECRET MISSION, you can purchase some faction magic items with downtime and gold. This is one way to make +1 weapons available in Adventure's League.

Puffin Forest Adventurer's League does more than teach new players how to play though. Because Adventurer's League is a shared campaign that runs across all states and regions in the world. So if you move from one city to another, as long as you can find an Adventurer's League night at the new location you can bring your whole character to the new game. Not only that, but because of the scope of the campaign it's one of the only ways you can reliably play a character from level 1 all the way to level 20.

I've basically had one group ruin AL for me. First time playing DnD, only basic idea of rules and what I'm doing right? Okay so a table is set up for a handful of us to play at, most of them vets and me and another newbie, seems like things are going well, even got some very basics of character creation done until the room next door tells a few members that they HAVE to go join our table and we All MUST create a level 6 character. Of course I'm like, how the hell do I do that, I literally just figured out basic stats and got some equipment and stuff listed. Then they proceed to tell me that I'm "building my character all wrong" I need to min/max or gtfo, now remember I'm a new player at that point, I don't even know what that means, the people that were forced over to us get disgusted with us newbies, saying how we are holding things up for them and they hate dealing with this crap, all the while my friend and the other vets that originally set up the table to help us newbies learn are trying their best to help us muddle through and throwing dirty looks at the ducks that have steamrolled our group. I doubt I'll play AL again, but I still love DnD, it's just a shame that basically one guy and his trolls ruined my first attempt to play DnD or AL.

Not going to lie, as a GM who has had several hand crafted campaign settings (as in original, as opposed to TSR or WotC published), Adventurers league just sounds like taking a fun hobby where you gather with friends and have great bonding adventures, where you fight monsters and solve puzzles for experience points and loot... and strip it down to fighting monsters for experience points and loot. May as well play Warhammer 40k or spin up Final Fantasy 7, for the Nth replay.

AL is certainly not for everybody, but if you want to play 5e and you can't find a group, it's a good intro. I've played in two sessions, one of which was kind of a mess and the other which was fun, but a bit by the numbers. It will never be a replacement for a good homebrew campaign, nor is it meant to be. Nevertheless, I'm excited my teifling warlock is now 3rd level!

so Basically D&D: AL is 50/50... On one hand it's great for teaching players how to play D&D straight up and getting them up to speed on how things work, but it's extremely rigid and has no flexibility outside of time due to life and work, etc. For me this would be an extreme 70/30, I would probably most likely lean towards an experienced D&D player whom I know more than actually go to an officially sanctioned AL.

Thanks for making this, it's an adventurers league DM and it's always great when people know the rules before they come to my table. Thanks.

Thank you so much for everything you do, you're channel is so amazing and I look forward to each new video as they come out, all of your content is informative and entertaining, keep up the good work man and never stop being you!!! 👍👍👍

Thank you sir, I’m looking to get back and I figure doing this will get me back into circles. Your videos are awesomeness in a pill and I have enjoyed your story vids based your RPG’s you have experienced and provided.

If you enjoy being that Roleplayer but not as much for combat, you're gonna have a bad time.

I just started playing in Adventure league so I can relate. I’m new to DnD so thanks for the link and great videos!

Just found your channel and i totally love it. Thanks for making all these great content.

Hey Puffin, thanks for doing this. I run a regular adventurer's league and this info vid you've done up has proven to be incredibly useful for my players coming into AL for the first time! Thanks a bunch man and make gr8 content

Hey, awesome video! I'm asked to GM for the nearby library to set up a group. So this has been very helpful and looking forward to seeing the video about GM'ing at the adventurer's league!

This was timed perfectly. Going to my first Adventure league this upcoming weekend.

Love the video, thank you for making it! Renown deals with the player's faction in Adventurer's League, where renown is similar to the xp for the faction. in the faction guide it talks about how you can level up in your faction and get rewards for doing so after getting a certain amount of renown. These rewards include free magic items and the ability to use less downtime to gain skill proficiency and languages.

I played my first session of DnD last Thursday. It was an AL game, but I had a lot of fun playing. Gonna have to go again sometime.

Hey Ben, I love this guide video style! I think if you make video stories of your experiences playing adventurers league sessions that correspond with these guides - It would be really engaging to watch. And the link to the material is a great touch too :)

Glad you made this vid. I tried to learn about it a year and a half ago when i picked the hobby up again but didn't get far. Basically, i tried to join a D&D group on facebook to try and find other players. The only thing i could find was an Adventurer's League group: so i joined - but i soon wished i hadn't. None of the questions i asked about groups near me were even entertained let alone answered, and i soon got the impression that this was something that wasn't quite D&D. Any other questions i asked about rules and adventures, playing online with folk, etc. were met with some quite rude answers - basically this wasn't an area to find people or discuss the hobby, and if i didn't know what AL was then i shouldn't even be there! I fortunately managed to rustle some people round to my house from a local "40k/MtG/& board game" club and we've had a blast since. And before that i also found some very patient people on Roll20 to teach me the virtual tabletop interface and macros and stuff. But if it wasn't for that the kind people i that facebook group would have destroyed the dreams of a paying customer looking to get back into the hobby. Anyone else have any fun AL stories to share?

Thanks Ben! I actually use your videos in my Meetup event descriptions to have new players watch so they know the diff between homebrew and AL.

These videos always make me smile even this one not about a story or a funny thing

The downtime stuff was actually really helpful!

You are the only youtuber i have the Bell Icon turned ON! Thanks man! Nice videos!!!!!!

Cool explanation. I play AL and this sums up what you need to know about AL very smoothly. There are other details, but you need the document to understand it and a DM to explain some of the other quirks.

Great timing as I'm starting my first go at AL. Not only is it my first time playing organized games, I'm also the DM and only DM! So I'll be looking forward to that DM video in the future heh. Also loving the live gameplay over on nerdarchy. Doug was my home group's DM before I moved!

Adventurer's league actually looks pretty legit. I'm an experienced D&D player and DM and I would definitely be into this

Speaking as someone who's been playing, DMing, and organizing AL games for a while, this video will be really useful for new players, so thanks for making it! I won't get into the nit-picky stuff, since plenty of other comments already have, tho' I will mention that renown is used for improving your ranking within your faction, which can provide mechanical benefits down the line. That would really best be saved for a separate video about the factions, anyways, which I'd love to see your take on. Keep up the good work!

Man you're truly growing one of the best channels i've ever subscribed!man i started a project about a game we could implement D&D in it! you could help with some unique art of yours and animation and i do the rest

After watching your adventurer’s league videos I’m considering joining a league. It seems really interesting!!!

Played my first adventures league game this past Saturday. Lots of fun

This is a really nifty video for those who wants to have a crash course of AL. I show this to people who ask me intros about D&D AL I hope you make a new one with the season 8 changes :)

Love your videos, your art and humour please keep it up

Love you man! Keep up the amazing work.

ive played and DM'd a bit for a while, but hadnt heard of Adventurer League till your channel. it sounds really fascinating tbh

Wow,Another video already? Sweet!

Loves these vids bro hilarious illustration keep it up

I adore your channel ive been watching since you talked about hiw you played as an evil girl in the pokemon ttrpg and for some odd reason I'm JUST NOW getting super in to it

Never played D&D but would totaly love to play with you.

I started playing in an adventure league after this video and have had nothing but fun ^==^

I'm absoluty not interessted in D&D but I love you style

So after watching this video, I looked up some local game shops and found one that was hosting an Adventurer's league night. I'd never played D&D before, but we got there a little bit early and a GM walked us through creating our first characters, the basic mechanics, etc. We were asked what kind of group we wanted (lots of combat or more story/roleplay), and the group we ended up with was an absolute riot. Playing in a friend's basement might be the 'right' way to get into D&D, but as someone who doesn't have a friend with a basement, joining up with some rando's for a four hour mission that only had two combat encounters was a blast.

Fuckin' *THANK YOU!* for defining just what the hell Adventurer's League actually *is* in an accurate succinct description within the first ten seconds of the video. Not even the Adventurer's League's own website is capable of doing that, and it was genuinely pissing me off when I was trying to find out more info about what the organization actually does.

Hey man you may not see this but if you do I just want to let you know your videos are great and you are the reason why I am pushing my friends to play dnd. So I have have amazing stories like this. They want to play there just last LUL

thanks for explaining renown, now had i to look it up.

Nice. I didn't know anything about Adventurer's League.

On another note, renown is only useful if you want it's benefits. Renown + secret missions (to be explained in the document) allows you to rank up in your faction and ranks are important for getting True Resurrection cast upon you with a discount (on the off chance you get disintegrated on one of your missions, it does not happen often), having a high rank also allows your PC to take on a protege (which is cool and has some mechanical boons but nothing too crucial for an adventurer) . You could live your PC's whole life with 0 renown and there are very few things you will be lacking.

Renown is for your faction. It's how you level up in your faction. It also helps with how you unlock items to buy in your faction.

Useful. Thank Mr. Forest.

way to make my day: see a new puffin vid

I only just started like a week ago so thank you!

And now you've peaked my interest in trying out some adventure league. Most of my friends who we try and play dnd with don't always get our schedules to align and then there's dm burn out so this might be what we need? Granted homebrews are great to fix problems tiny things anyone finds with the game and to fundamentally change certain rules but for AL to work it requires certain base line rules everyone uses for AL and that I can live with if it let's me get my dice rolling itch scratched

Extremely helpful

Renown is something you get while serving in a faction. Say your a member of the Harper’s your renown is point you get every secession some have faction assignment where you do something special for that mod. When you have a certain amount of renown and are in T2 and second Rank of the faction you are able to do secrete mission which you do a special thing in the mod where the DM May pull you aside to tell you what your faction want you to do in the mod. This can range from if your a Harper is to find or save someone of importance like a side quest or in the case of Zhents who are a evil self serving faction assassinate someone who stands in their way or steal something or destroy something or kidnap someone. When you do 3 secret missions and have 25 renown you a promoted to the next Rank of your faction which at that point you can take on a Mother player’s character like a apprentice or like a Jedi’s padawn under your wing.

Renown is really only used to advance in your Alliance. When you are higher levels, you can use your renown (and gold) to have someone find you a magical item. I recently used it to get a +1 shield for my 6th level character.

I dont play an adventures league game but downtime activities are always a great way to stir up your sessions. We did an a whole episode on Garage Quest about carousing. It costs some money but you also might gain a lot from it too!

Been Listening to some of your Stories... Yep, Have a Sub.

I love the adventure league that i play in, I've made tons of close friends that have translated new variety of home games that i can now attend

I am a 33 year old lady, I live in the middle of nowhere, I've played D&D once for about 2 hours with people I didn't like, but I'm really hoping to actually learn how to play and have fun doing it so I'm going to take your advice and try to get involved with my local Adventurer's League games. Cross your fingers for me and thanks for sharing this info!

I played AL (oddly online. I know it is actually a thing), and I found it is great if wanted a game that really streamlined. No gold, ammo, supplies and such to keep track of and worry about. And access to magical item given you right amount of treasure point accumulated and item unlocked. So can be deep in dungeon, and get needed stuff before and after sessions. What I did not like was AL using modules, and said module have a lot loot that useless with AL rules. So you slay the dragon and search to find no magic item to unlock/keep just massive hoard of gold, jewels, art, and such enough for the party to buy collectively a castle. An awesome reward for home-brew players, but useless for AL making the dragon's exp the only true reward. Also, when people said it is rigid. They are not joking. My AL's DM had my fire breath work normal into water and another person's lighting be unaffected by water as in my fire breath went into water in still cone area not stop by said water, and lighting went in a straight line into the water. I know makes it streamlined for the DM,but that destroys immersion when spells and rules do not bend to maintain a sense of reality. So it kills a lot of creative solutions, and promote some really unrealistic solutions. That really killed a lot of fun for me. Would I play AL again? Sure to try out some modules and character ideas before trying them in a home-brew. And by the way, I love home-brew modified modules.

Also some adventures give you access to unique downtime activities, and even repeatable ones. Renown helps you move up in your factions ranking system, and there are perks for being higher ranks in your faction. There is a guide on the DMs guild that explains everything you can do with it, and it's part of the DMs and Players packs on the DM's guild. For example you can spend downtime to get +1 Weapons and Armor, as well as faction ring (which is a magic item dependent on the faction), and a faction cloak/cape (which is also a magic item dependent on the faction). For example the Lord's Alliance faction ring is a ring of mind shielding, and their faction cape is a Cape of the Montebank.

good video love your channel

Wait, so Adventurer's League ACTUALLY USES THE RULES IN THE PHB?! I thought those 20+ pages about lifestyle was just filler so they could make the book bigger by the way no one uses them. That sounds like my kind of group.

I need to study for some Tests soo i missed my weekly grupe fanks for making my day better

At the time you made this, there's a bunch of stuff you can do with renown. Like buy 5 different magic items. Once you hit a certain rank in your faction. Renown is for faction ranking, by the way. So let's say you're a part of the Harpers, and you've done enough adventuring to have 10 renown and *also* participated in specific adventures that have "secret missions" for the Harpers, then you will reach rank 3. At rank 3 of any faction you can buy +1 weapons, shield, and armor. You can also buy, being with the Harpers, A Cloak of Elvenkind or a Ring of Resistance. You buy these things with money and downtime... and the money for downtime. But that's just rank 3. At rank 2 of any faction you can train proficiencies linked to those factions faster. You also can't get credit for secret missions unless you're rank 2. You can also apprentice to other players who have reached rank 4... which comes with additional benefits for both. At rank 4 you can also pay from the high level character to raise other characters, from the same faction, who've died. Rank 5 is really underpowered; just give one inspiration once at the start of an adventure to someone from the same faction in the adventure. But see, look at all the stuff renown is useful for... mostly unlocking new abilities or some benefits to old abilities.

Great video. Have some reknown!

I've been playing with the same DM and one of the same people for like 4 years now and I started in Adventurers League. But we changed to just being home because of the store we were in and also we wanted to be more bendy with the rules

You can spend renown on faction benefits as you rank up within your faction. If you create a character without a faction, you do not earn any renown because there’s nothing you can use it for. Also, if you choose to switch factions, you loose all previously earned renown , cannot rejoin your previous faction and must start your new faction from the ground up. The biggest thing any of this boils down to is gaining spell scrolls and items from your faction rank when playing in conventions and locally held epic events.

Having read the guildmaster's guide, renown let's you acquire guild power, which leads to npc assistance on some missions

Gonna be joining my first AL game soon, so this vid helps. Mind you, by no means good to RPGs in general, just my first organised play game. (Heck, I even write my own systems)

The AL FAQ lists several allowed variants you missed, including feats, variant humans, the SCAG variant half-elves and tieflings (albeit only if SCAG is your +1), and also specifies that the variant for multiple human languages is used regardless of your +1, and you can use ANY source when generating your background.

Love that you're making a video on AL, but there's a lot of misinformation here: 1. Variant Human, as seen on the bottom of the Human section in the Player's Handbook, is allowed and very common. 2. Feats are also allowed, in spite of them being Variant rules. 3. The Downtime section is kinda wrong, most Downtime is spent on Story Rewards, Leveling at the gaps between tiers like you said, and receiving Magic Items from your faction once you're sufficiently ranked. Speaking of which... 4. Renown actually is quite useful, but only after a while, usually sometime around levels 6~7. Your Renown earns you Faction Ranks, the idea being that as you do more stuff for your Faction, they promote you. Once you have 10 Renown, are at least Level 5 and have done 1 Secret Mission, you achieve the Rank of Stalwart, which allows you to spend Gold and Downtime on various faction-specific Magic Items. There's a lot of stuff dealing with Renown, just google "AL Faction Guide" and a .PDF will turn up with everything you need to know. 5. You CAN give away Magic Items, so long as you receive an item of similar rarity in return (Uncommon for Uncommon, Rare for Rare, etc). You kinda glossed over this but I feel like mentioning it since you specifically said that "you can't give away items". If you're at the same table as another player and you both want to trade, you can just trade straight up without expending any Downtime. If you want to trade elsewhere, say with someone online or a friend who isn't playing, you can spend 15 Downtime and trade the items. Oh and 6. You can't just give away a Magic Item for nothing, even if you spend downtime.

I run a adventurers league & I feel it is so much better for people who have never played D & D before. People who have played D & D before usually end up in my non-league home game were the DM, not the players have doesn't have is hands tied to the Well of Souls. It would be great to play in a game were you are the DM.

I really need to look into the Downtime mechanics for my games

Yayyy new vid

Renown shouldn't be shafted like it is in this video. Renown is actually extremely useful when paired with the factions system, which is what renown is, y'know, _for._ Although a lot of the functions of factions seem almost completely worthless, what's really important is the _Item Procurement._ (Look up "factions 5e pdf" and you should find what I'm looking at) Item Procurement is a system by which you can spend your gold and downtime for certain magical items, _but,_ you have to have 10 Renown with your faction first. What's specifically useful about this is that depending on how fast you get Renown, you can get a +1 Weapon, Shield, or Armor earlier than you normally would.

I've only played in adventurers league once,And it was alright,Im looking to set up one in my neighborhood game shop

Great video. I highly recommend you do one for AL gming.

Like number 667, great video and I wish there were more

About renown, my GM has decided that the more renown you have, the easier social interactions are. Everytime we talk to someone, we roll to see if they recognise us, then we get advantage in a social interaction if we succeed. The more renown you have, the more chance you have to succeed in the role. Pretty cool.

4:12 ... RENOWN is not something many would find useful, especially those characters that operate as freeloaders, but there is a very good reason why it's officially tracked. Renown is mainly used to track the character's progression within a certain faction, for example my Paladin is a member of the Order of the Gauntlet, and the amount of Renown he has determines his standing in the faction, his influence within the faction and the benefits he gains from the faction's services. Pretty much all official factions treat Renown the same way, gaining it for completing specific missions during the campaign.

THANK YOU for making this; I wasn't sure about Adventure leagues and now may even try them now (I've only been playing homebrew)

For renown you can use it for your faction and once you hit level III in your faction you can buy magic items from them. And there's other benefits later on but to hit that level III in your faction you need a lot of renown( I forget the number right now ) and one secret mission

I like the idea of collecting and spending downtime. Since my sessions follow a stricter story (RP fun over mechanics), doing things like research and crafting (that can take days/weeks in game time) feels really awkward to squeeze in. Being able to spend downtime + money to do it in the background seems like a simple way to streamline it!

Thanks to you, I finally started playing Adventures League. It certainly was an interesting experience for me to say the least. My first character was REALLY unlucky, he a dragonborn fighter who lost a leg in the first session, then it was revealed that he was forced to join a cannibalistic cult (we did a prequel session due to a lack of players), then later on, got insta killed after being struck with a high level lightning bolt spell only for one of our players made me a ghoul by doing some necromancy shit by putting soul into the rotting corpse of a half-orc they found in the streets and later on I got turned into a plant like zombie thing, and then I was killed again because Talona, the goddess of poison saw me and just killed me on the spot.

My most brutal death in dnd was in an AL game... Throat Leeches!

I've been going to an Adventurer's League for about 3 weeks now, it's actually my first campaign. I've actually been having a lot of fun, but I think a lot of that comes down to my group and gm. For one thing, I've been going with both of my brothers, so we actually do have friendship that carries over in to the game. On top of that, the other 3 people that have shown up more than once all seem to know each other, so it's like having two groups of friends joining in to one. I'm having a lot of fun with my character, though maybe not the best or most original. He's Arvhec Xalathor, A True Neutral Black Dragonborn Pirate Captain Fighter who I'm probably going to make an Eldritch Knight. His personality isn't anything too special, but I've started giving people nick names after they do something weird. One of the two kids at the table has a character named Dench, A Half-Orc Barbarian. The only thing is, he doesn't even use his weapons to attack most of the time. At first he would just punch goblins in the face, and he ended up strangling one even though it wasn't the most efficient thing to do. So we were heading to a keep that was attacked by rock Giants, and as we were travelling through it, he asks, "Are there any weapons?" As in for us to take. So I snidely reply, " 'Are there any weapons?' Asks the strangler," and the name just kinda stuck after that. The kid even wrote "The Strangler" on his character sheet next to his name afterwards. So I just sorta call him strangler now. My older brother on the other hand brought "Rowan Liadon," a Wood Elf Rogue that literally just steals everything he sees. He puts my pirate to shame in terms of pillaging. My character has ironically become the voice of reason in the group. Anyway, when we got to the keep, the guards told us the lady had died, so Rowan said that he was going to "investigate" the Lady's room for clues. Knowing he was up to no good, I followed him in and he was picking the lock on the chest. It was at that moment a Magic Sword almost killed him. I then said, "Nice going, Investigator." Besides them, there's my twin brother who's playing a human Druid, a girl playing a Half-Elf bard, and Strangler's friend who is playing a High Elf Ranger. I dunno, it's been a pretty good time so far. I just look forward to seeing what Strangler does each week.

One thing you forgot to mention. If you clear certain modules or DM certain modules, you get 'prestige' unlocks such as being able to make a fly speed character at level 1, an extra ASI boost that goes beyond 20, keeping some of the OP artifacts from main modules, ext...

In our home game, we've been trying out different forms of Renown, breaking it down into different aspects. Word Fame - a list of deeds (ie milestones within adventures) that will impact how well known the characters are and their reputation. Influence - More specific to factions; do some missions for a faction, gain in influence and what you can get out of the faction. Influence doesn't always affect word fame but there is some overlap (not all missions are known to the public). Then just plain old Favors for when the party does something at the request of a non-faction individual. Is it more complicated? maybe, but it made more sense in the campaign world to split up Renown this way as far as I was concerned. Still enjoying hearing the experiences of another gamer. So many of these stories have me cringe for having been through similar disasters.

i love the music

That was so cool I love his video's!!!!!😃😇😀😁😘😝😜😋

i dont even play D&D but i love ur videos please moar! xD

I think a way for AL to allow character with a Fly speed at level 1 is to change it a bit. 1) At level 1 races that can Fly can only Glide 5ft/1ft drop and only glide as far per turn as their full Fly speed. So if a race has a Fly speed of 50 they would have to fall 10ft to glide the full 50. 2) At level 7 races with a Fly speed can Fly 30ft 3) At level 14 races with a Fly speed above 30 gain their full speed 4) Races that can fly can not use their Fly speed inside unless the ceiling is 2.5 times higher than their height

I looked up D&D adventures league and found one that's like 15 mins away. So that's nice...