In my quest to explore more Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) gaming, I went to Kublacon last weekend for the first time!
What is Kublacon?
Kublacon is a convention for games, specifically board games, table-top, and role-playing games (so basically everything except the digital games). It’s held annually in the SF Bay Area and has 2 splinter events every year as well: Kublacon Fall and Kublacon Cruise.
Kublacon does not host any official Dungeons & Dragons games (as of 2025 anyways), but they have a reserved section dedicated to the Adventurer’s League, who run games for the whole 4 days of the con.
What’s Adventurer’s League?
Adventurer’s League (AL) is an officially sanctioned fan-run organized play system (also called a “shared campaign”) in the D&D franchise and offers a type of campaign gameplay that allows you to play pick-up 1-shot style games with a continuous character. You start at level 1, play a session (or a “module” as they call it), then at the end you get your loot, log your adventure, and level up. Next game, you’re level 2 and you play a new 1-shot session and do it again. There are Tier groups to keep it fair amongst players with different-leveled characters (you’ll never get paired with a Level 11 character if yours is level 2, for instance) and rules about item purchasing, character class selection, and others meant to even the playing ground so everyone has a good time. It’s honestly a clever way to allow people to have some of that character immersion you’d get from a long-form campaign without dedicating the regular time.
However, learning about Adventurer’s League was like learning about another dragon head on an ancient multi-headed hydra. It’s a beast in itself, and TBH… a bit difficult to research given the multiple resources trying to explain it with different answers to what it is and how to play (Wikipedia, Fandom Wiki, D&D Beyond, TheAdventurersLeague.com, and AdventurersLeague.info to name a few). Adventurer’s League has a long legacy, starting in the 1980s, and like anything legacy, there’s a lot of assumed knowledge, changing rules, and a history of unsolved debate. As of 2025, AL plays on the D&D 5e 2024 rules (used be called “D&D One” but now everyone just says “2024 rules”) and has its own addendum rules to keep gameplay fair, as well as fill some of the more common gaps left by the incomplete upgrade of the official rules provided by Wizards of the Coast (WoTC – the current publisher of D&D). AL’s rules will update when that updates I’m sure.
Playing AL D&D at Kublacon 2025
In my goal to experience more D&D games and different styles of DMing and play, I signed my husband and I up for 5 games over the course of 4 days, picking somewhat at random, but also sticking to Tier 1 modules after recommendations from some online contacts who had played AL games before (new players start at level 1, so you can only play Tier 1 games). We ended up playing 4 games (5th one I cancelled but we also didn’t have a DM scheduled for it so I’m sure they didn’t mind) and they all were very different gaming experiences, colored by DM preferences, player demographics, modules, and luck.
I actually ended up giving them category names… XD
Session 1 – “Collaborative Rails”
This was honestly my favorite game of the weekend. It was ran by a DM who was super attentive to newbie players, going as far as to give out free dice sets to those of us new to AL. He had minis, maps, and paper handouts to support the game. The module was a seemingly simple escort mission (help a caravan cross a desert to bring supplies to town) that had a mix of role play, battles, morality choices (a natural disaster approached us and we had to choose what we would save in the limited time we had), and the beginnings of a continuous story in the works. More on that later.
Session 2 – “Puzzle Crawler”
Lots of lore, lore-based puzzles, and an unforgiving dungeon. Trial and error would be punished and the chance of dying was high. Honestly, this was my least favorite. I enjoy a good dungeon crawl but I didn’t understand these puzzles (partly because it was difficult to hear in the conference room) and many of them only gave us 1 chance to succeed. We didn’t even start rolling dice until 2.5 hrs into play (the DM only rolled dice for battle scenarios, not puzzle solving) and ended up running long and I think we did not truly complete the module in time. (The DM rushed the final battle and handed out the rewards in the end).
Session 3 – “Battle Marathon”
Session 3 was an AL-specific Epic, meaning the entire room was playing towards the same objective, broken down into separate 1-event modules led by a DM. When you completed your module, you’d get a new one from the room coordinator until you completed all 5 modules, with a time limit restricting how long it would go. There was a kind of “winning table”, which was the one that got through all 5 modules. But overall it was more just 4 hours of high energy stakes and a good time.
Session 4 – “Collaborative Problem Solving”
This one was interesting because it actually connected story-wise to Session 1. We were in the same town (bigger now) and met with the same quest giver and I was even able to RP my experience in Session 1 as part of the problem solving in this game. We had a town in danger, a bunch of options for actions, and not enough time to do them all. By this point my character was a level 4 rogue with a sniper-y build so I wanted to go take down the enemy leader, but the rest of the table were more interested in political negotiations. Somehow despite having one of the lowest charisma stats, I ended up having to convince not only the mayor but the villagers to defend their town. Things didn’t go the way I wanted, but it still made for an interesting game and story. That’s honestly the fun of collaborative TTRPGs.
Would I go again?
Honestly? Probably not…. I think.
Don’t get me wrong. I liked the games and I’m very glad I took the effort to prep and went, but the randomness factor of pick-up D&D during the chaos of a convention was a bit too much for me to want to repeat. For instance, it’s hard to be enthusiastic about a game when 2 pre-teen boys are plopped down at your table ready to troll the DM for the next 4 hours for their own entertainment (some of the parents at the con definitely treated the sessions like 4-hour free babysitting). You really can’t control what you get. Sometimes it’s great and everyone’s collaborating and feeding off each others’ energy. Other times… well, you try to ignore it and keep going but the game gets exponentially harder to feel good about as a result.
The DMs, regardless of how the game went, deserve applause for 1) being willing to donate their time to this 4-day marathon and 2) being so patient with what landed in their sessions. I don’t think I’d ever DM a game at a convention simply because I KNOW I would not react with the level of patience I witnessed from the DMs, especially when getting harassed by kids looking to cause chaos. That alone deserves eternal respect for what they do for the love of this game.
Personally though… I think I now understand Matt Mercer’s statement of DM-ing as an “act of love”. It’s a lot of work to prep and run a game and I think at this point, I’d only want to do it for people I know and care about.
But who knows for the future. A better controlled environment, a more predictable set of players, I could change my mind if I found that.
