How does one infuse an AL campaign with a sense of time elapsing?

Question

In 5e character levels tick off at a pretty predictable pace: given level-appropriate encounters it's usually 10-15 hours of table-time for each level. Particularly in Adventurers League, where so much is prescribed to the GM.

As such I've often run into the scenario where during a few in-game weeks the party has gone from nobodys to saving the world. This feels... ludicrous.

How, within the strictures of Adventurers League, can one infuse a campaign with a sense that things take time, that there's a rhythm and pace to the world around the party?

Answer 1

Use the downtime they give you.

AL awards downtime by rule: the general rule is 5 downtime days per two hours of play (ALDMG p.5), though individual modules may vary.

At one of my sites we've created a strong culture of "spend your downtime before leveling up." It's not a rule, since we can't do that, but it's a norm. And in doing so we spend table time discussing who spent some days looking for clues to the next adventure's location, who went back to their farm and dug potatos, who spent two weeks studying Draconic. The players log these expenditures, interact briefly with recurring NPCs... in short, they're "playing world."

And this gives GMs a chance to insert signifiers that time's passing. "Johnny's not at the stables anymore: he went off and found a merchant ship to work, should be back for the winter." "After two weeks visiting outlying farms and plying wares, you've got a lead on where that trade delegation was last seen..." &c.

Answer 2

I am trying, in my current campaign, to incorporate changes in the weather in a predictable (but accelerated) rate. They started in autumn as first level characters. By they time I'm describing snow on the road they will probably be 4th level. By the time it's hot and humid out again, they will probably be 6th level or so.

I'm not playing Adventurers League but I wonder if similar changes in the seasons can be described without (which I assume is important) changing the mechanics of the scenario. Even something as simple starting each session with a new description of the season might be enough to give the feeling that "time elapsed" since the last session.

Answer 3

You cannot. That's not what AL is for

The problem is that you are not hitting the right format. Adventurers League (AL) and other organized play (OP) are not meant to replace your home campaign. They are an avenue to play more and meet new and different people than your regular group.

I assume that you are talking about playing the adventure books, such as Storm King's Thunder, Curse of Strahd and the like. When run and played within the confines of AL, what you want is not really possible. Heck, I don't know many adventurers who live in Barovia for too long without simply turning into a local...

The thing I found in most OP is that time is relatively irrelevant. You travel from point A to point B "off-camera".

I run and operate the Legacies OP campaign (FOELegacies.com) and I move time forward through a series of methods:

1. I write adventures that follow each other, time-wise. Adventure 1–2 are in the spring, 3–5 in the summer and 6–8 in the fall and winter (I have few winter adventures).

2. The setting advances with the time and season. So children are born, marriages made and broken, wars started, etc.

Legacies takes these things into account. However, Adventurers League is not concerned with those things. They have seasons and I find the word very appropriate.

So, to answer your question, I do not think it is possible, as a pure AL game, to do what you want. There is no need for it.

AL, Pathfinder Society (PFS) and even Legacies are not home games where you can worry about whatever detail you like. Would it be great if they did? Perhaps. However, the format of "play anytime, join when you can" does not lend itself to a linear time-determined game.

So, no.