Hardcover tough love in Season 8

Over on Facebook in the DM Discussion Group for Adventurers League I made a comment to people upset that it looked like players would advance way too fast in Season 8 when playing Hardcovers.

My Post:

"So one of the things DMs of Hardcovers are going to need to do is do some proper DM Prep and not plan the entire hardcover. Those chapters of exploration need to be parsed down some. You need to make any combats quicker in random encounters.

Work on your set piece encounters that are part of the story progression and still make some fights in some of those chapters less of a slog and more of a speed-bump.

You will most likely need to use the slow progression, that is what it is there for.

The worry that Hardcovers will go fast should be tempered with the fact that you do not have to run the whole adventure to get things done. You can add a lot of roleplaying where they might not earn a checkpoint for that hour but they got to roleplay.

As DM you will need to manage the rewards. Not every hour in a Hardcover is going to give the players a checkpoint. You need to learn when and if they accomplished enough of the adventures goals to earn one. More likely than not they will earn one, but that is now your job. Do you reward it or not? You control the pace at which they earn it."

Needless to say, and I called it to some as I posted it, I would get resistance. I did in fact get a lot and some of it was like a smack in the face. I was told I was telling people to skip portions of the adventure. Or that the designers of the product should make the adventure work for them and do all of that work for them.

Some of these comments made me think that people who were commenting never ran a hardcover.

The authors of these hardcovers have no idea what your group looks like when they design the adventure and all of the encounters that go into it. That is what it is to prep the adventure. As the DM it is our job to take what we are given and make it work for the groups we have.

Right now, prior to season 8 you had to read that entire sandbox portion of the adventure to add in all of those random encounters and locations just to get the XP your group needs. You can now run the adventure as it was intended and focus on the story, add in some random encounters to enhance the story you are telling and not have to have your group explore the entire land of Chult or the Sword Coast just so they can be high enough level to not get a TPK

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