The Adventurers League is the newest incarnation of Wizard’s Organized Play campaign for D&D. It uses the 5th edition of the D&D rules, and is set in their Forgotten Realms setting.
The earlier Organized Play games were D&D Encounters for 4th edition D&D, and several different “Living” campaigns run by the RPGA (owned by Wizards of the Coast) utilizing the 3rd edition of D&D. The most popular of these was Living Greyhaw.
D&D Adventurer’s League campaign started in 2014 Summer, at the Gen Con game convention, kicking off Season 1. So far, each season has a theme and revolves around a hardcover adventure that is released about twice a year. In general, each season gives optional rules that players may use when building their characters and playing. This has evolved to what is now referred to as the “1+1 rule” – players may use character options and rules from the Player’s Handbook, and one other supplemental book.
Official D&D AL website: This is the official website where one can find the basic rules of participating in the shared campaign. The specific files are located here.
Of particular note, the campaign has given a lot more leeway in character’s being able to be played in “home games” as compared to prior (and other) Organized Play shared campaigns.
D&D System Reference Document: The basic introductory rules for D&D 5e have been made freely available by Wizards. This website has most of those formatted for easy web browsing.
General Timeline of the various seasons are listed here.
- 2014 August: Season 1 – Tyranny of Dragons (Hoard of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Tiamat)
- 2015 March: Season 2 – Elemental Evil (Princes of the Apocalypse)
- 2015 July: Season 3 – Rage of Demons (Out of the Abyss)
- 2016 Mar: Season 4 – Curse of Strahd
- 2016 Aug: Season 5 – Storm King’s Thunder
- 2017 Mar: Season 6 – Tales from the Yawning Portal
- 2017 Aug: Season 7 – Tomb of Annihilation