Adding Diabolical Dive to Descent into Avernus

I can't tell if there's a bug, or if I just don't understand what's happening, but I just bought  D&D Adventurers League Season 9 - 07 Diabolical Dive  to add content to my Descent into Avernus campaign, and I can't see a way to do it. I don't see it listed under the Game Addons on the game's main page. Nor do I see it listed as one of the compendium options in the Game Settings. If the only way to use this adventure content is by making an entirely separate game, this is something I do not want.

Hi, to confirm it is  this marketplace adventure ? If that is the case, according to the information on the adventure it states it is a module. It does not state that it is an add-on.  " Installation:   1 module" and  " Module To create a new game based off of the module, click on the  Start New Game  option from the site menu. The column on the right hand side of the page is titled Optional: Choose a Module. Underneath this are thumbnail tiles for all the various Roll20 modules that are available. For the ones you have purchased, mousing over the thumbnail will make a check mark icon appear over the thumbnail tile. Clicking on the tile will select this module to be used as the base for this new game." So you have several options (in no particular order).  1) You can migrate the PC's characters from your current adventure into the Diabolical Dive adventure via the Character Vault.  2) You can upgrade to Pro then transmogrify the various parts of the adventure over to your current adventure.  3) You can refund the purchase if it is was purchased within the last 15 days as per Roll20's refund policy .  Roll20's stated reason for doing things this way is to keep adventure size down, as adventures that get too big can become unwieldy and slow.  If option #1 is an issue for some reason, if you state the reason I may be able to help you with a workaround. 

Yes, it's that marketplace adventure. Looks like I'll be getting the purchased refunded. I gotta say, I'm pretty upset that they're deliberately keeping me from using this tiny AL adventure with my campaign. It's not just a matter of having my PCs there (we use D&D Beyond and Beyond 20 anyways), but NPCs and macros. What a colossally stupid limitation. Furthermore, the dynamic lighting set up doesn't take advantage of the door functionality. I've already bought this adventure on the DMs Guild and was perfectly willing to buy it again, but they just won't let me use it in a convenient way? What trash.

As I stated earlier, part of the limitation on modules (as has been explained to us) is to keep game size manageable. If your game grows to be too large it can cause issues.  With that said, you made a comment about macros. If you use a Macro Mule they can be migrated with the characters. I almost always recommend ability macros over collection tab macros. There is nearly no downside and it solves several issues with collection tab macros.  Regarding seeking a refund, I would reach out to the Devs via the Help Center to see if there is any way they can merge the adventure with your existing adventure before doing a refund. Make sure you do not exceed your refund window just in case.  

I don't buy that explanation. It won't stop me from manually upload any map I make and making a scene from it. It won't stop me from adding content from all the various compendiums I own. If it slows down my game, then I'll deal with the issue then. I was low-key hoping that I was just being a blockhead and missing the obvious way to move macros between games. I'm further angered to learn that people need to hack the system with a macro mule. Absolute nonsense. Still, I suppose I'll reach out the Help Center, if you think there's some chance it'll make a difference. Thanks for your help.

I can give some insight into why the AL adventures are designed the way they are. They were originally built to be used in official Adventurer's League play. The intended use was for one-shots, almost always with different characters, like the AL experience you would get from running in a game shop or convention. Some of the NPCs change as the adventure progresses, so it would be difficult to manage these if they were produced as addons. Roll20 abandoned AL adventures after that season. I'm not positive, but my impression was there were reasons that made them difficult to produce, unprofitable, or of limited "shelf life".

Thanks for your insight. Seems like terribly poor foresight to not think DMs would like to hack pieces of adventures and use them in other situations. And if they did have the foresight to anticipate this, but went ahead with this format anyways, that seems straight up hostile to the consumer. And if I'm inferring correctly, these AL modules weren't recently added to the Roll 20 marketplace with the resent collaboration of the DMs Guild, but have been here much longer, that would partially explain why it doesn't use the doors feature. I'm still annoyed that they'll let their products be obsolete.

As a reminder, marketplace products are not "Roll20's" generally. They belong to the company that publishes them. That company may have paid Roll20 to produce the module but that may not extend to future changes of that product.  Would you blame Amazon for a product that isn't Amazons? Same concept.  (Note: this may or may not apply to the Adventure League modules, I do not possess that information.)

Gauss: Obviously WotC owns the copyrighted stuff, but Roll 20 is in complete control of the packaging. I refuse to believe that WotC would have a problem with Roll 20 updating the dynamic lighting settings, or rearranging monster tokens, or whatever. Is WotC the one refusing to let Roll 20 purchases from using the content with other modules? Maybe, but I'm extremely skeptical about that. I don't have an issue with the copyrighted material (well, except that P3c isn't keyed on the map, but I'm not blaming Roll 20 for that). I have a problem with how Roll 20 is packaging it. If Amazon was shipping me items wrapped in paper, so they would be inevitably damaged in shipping, I would very much blame Amazon.

Ogre J. said: Gauss: Obviously WotC owns the copyrighted stuff, but Roll 20 is in complete control of the packaging. I refuse to believe that WotC would have a problem with Roll 20 updating the dynamic lighting settings, or rearranging monster tokens, or whatever. Is WotC the one refusing to let Roll 20 purchases from using the content with other modules? Maybe, but I'm extremely skeptical about that. I don't have an issue with the copyrighted material (well, except that P3c isn't keyed on the map, but I'm not blaming Roll 20 for that). I have a problem with how Roll 20 is packaging it. If Amazon was shipping me items wrapped in paper, so they would be inevitably damaged in shipping, I would very much blame Amazon. I was addressing the doors and obsolete comment rather than the Addons vs Modules issue.  I agree that the addons vs modules problem is a relatively common one and I can only hope it is on the Devs radar to someday resolve.  But regarding updating products, unless the publisher paid someone to update it, it probably wouldn't be. I *think* the Devs mentioned they are looking into a way to update all published modules with DL to include doors, but I don't know where they are in that since Doors are a pretty new feature (assuming I am remembering correctly in any case).  Anyhow, good luck with messaging the Devs on this. :)

At the moment, doors and windows are extremely time consuming to convert. Also, patches this invasive would likely lead to unintended consequences and unwanted over-writes. It is likely (as was done with lighting, which was much less time consuming, but still took months of dedicated extra work to accomplish) that some older modules and addons will be converted. I haven't seen any announcement about this. It's highly unlikely the entire library of modules and addons would be revamped every time a new feature became available. There would be no time left to continue innovating. An analogy would be the redoing some old movies and TV shows have gotten with modern visual effects, such as the revamped Star Trek the Original Series, or the Star Wars special editions. Highly profitable or popular shows might that treatment, while others (say Land of the Giants, a ST: TOS contemporary) might just remain in their original state.

Then they should mark the products as obsolete or something. They don't even have a rating system or even comments on the products so others can warn potential consumers of issues with what they're buying. I'm generally incredibly disappointed with their dynamic lighting settings anyways, and I find myself essentially redoing all the walls and lights for each map. It's frustrating to me that Roll 20 doesn't care about this. It's too time consuming to correct this thing we're selling to people? Fine . Then let people like me upload corrections.

If you don't like the way a module is set up, it is relatively easy to customize to your liking.  Create a game with the module and make your changes.  Keep that altered game as a reference, meaning that you never actually use that one to run anything. Any time you want to run that module, make a copy of that altered module game and the copy will be just as you prefer. If you come up with any further changes in an actively run game, then alter the base game as well to keep up with your changing preferences. I can't imagine any world where random people would be allowed to upload changes to modules.  If you are interested in seeing if something like that is possible, it might be worth contacting the publisher to see if they would be interested in subcontracting out updates to older products.  That would be a possible avenue to gaining authority to make changes, though that probably depends on the exact agreements between Roll20 and the involved publisher.

Roll 20 removed it from my account and said they're refunding me the money. Thanks for the help, everyone.