The RPGA initially focused on a tournament style of play with competitive events for TSR games such as Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D), Gamma World and Top Secret.

The Living City (1987–2004) campaign set in the Forgotten Realms was considered one of the most successful and by 1993, events for it surpassed the RPGA tournament style.

The D&D Adventurers League has since released various other organized play programs themed around different campaign settings and ongoing storylines.

Many of these programs featured seasonal storylines which corresponded thematically with the hardcover adventure modules published by Wizards of the Coast.

In 1979, Mike Carr, the general manager of TSR, Inc., the original publishers of the Dungeons & Dragons game, conceived the idea of a role-playing gamers club.

[4][7]: 152  In the early years, membership was largely limited to North America, but in 1989, the RPGA Network branched out into Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the U.K., Israel, Australia,[5][8] and briefly in Italy.

[10][12] In order to have an effect on the overall storyline, at the end of each adventure, the players would send the result of their play to RPGA headquarters for compilation.

[22] Shannon Appelcline, author of Designers & Dragons, wrote, "by running Encounters simultaneously across the nation, Wizards hoped to take advantage of social media; they envisioned people talking about the games on Facebook and Twitter on Wednesday night and Thursday morning, comparing their experiences with those of other players across the nation.

[22] The transition between editions of Dungeons & Dragons was called The Sundering and it included multiple structural changes to the D&D Encounters program.

[33][34][35] As of February 2024[update], there are three Premier Organizers for the Adventurers League – Baldman Games and Gamehole Con in the United States and the Greasy Snitches in the Philippines.

[37] In October 2020, Wizards of the Coast announced the ticketed D&D Virtual Play Weekends series organized by Baldman Games.

This included an official weekly actual play titled Legacy of Worlds which is produced by the D&D Adventurers League and Six Sides of Gaming.

It premiered in February 2024 and features Devin Wilson as the Dungeon Master with Luke Gygax, Ed Greenwood, Keith Baker, Elise Von Brandthofen, and Tommy Gofton playing as various official D&D characters.

[41] In the same month, Wizards of the Coast shifted anyway from the official Adventurers League website, the Yawning Portal, to a hub hosted on D&D Beyond with some material migrating.

Participating stores had access to a "digital edition of an existing for-sale adventure product for the entirety of the storyline season".

[18][30][43] Additionally, there was a convention program called the D&D Adventurers League Epic; this was a "massive D&D session in which multiple tables work towards the same goals".

[31][32] Additionally, licensee Baldman Games was authorized to create connected adventures set in the Moonsea region of the Forgotten Realms.

[34] In March 2022, Baldman Games began running a ticketed Adapted Campaign featuring Critical Role: Call of the Netherdeep (2022) as part of the D&D Virtual Play series.

[59] As part of the D&D 50th anniversary celebration in 2024, the Adventurers League Epic Proxy Hunt premiered at Gary Con (March 2024).

This is a higher tier multiverse-themed adventure run at multiple gaming tables simultaneously and allows players to use characters from the Dragonlance, Eberron, Forgotten Realms, and Ravenloft settings.

[61] In December 2024, Wizards of the Coast announced Legends of Greyhawk as a new convention campaign which will debut at MagicCon: Chicago in February 2025.

[65] In 2018, "the admins of the Adventurers League announced a sweeping overhaul of the rules, designed to change how players earn XP and treasure".

[81] All players are required to update to the 2024 5th Edition revision; this change is being implemented with a sixty day grace period after the release of each new core rulebook.

[81] Jennifer Grouling Cover, in the book The Creation of Narrative in Tabletop Role-Playing Games, highlighted the constraints of RPGA weekend conventions.

She wrote, "Because members of the RPGA move from one adventure to another, often with different players, there must be some attempts to maintain consistency in the world and the plotlines experienced.

[...] The constraints of the RPGA convention meant that the DM needed to convey certain information about the world and the story for these players to move on to other games during the course of that weekend that would build on this adventure.

[15]: 82–83 Shannon Appelcline, author of the book Designers & Dragons, wrote, "the ultimate success of the Living City can probably be attributed to its close attention to characters and continuity.

By Gen Con '93 Living City characters and their stuff had become important enough that the RPGA started logging what people had earned, to prevent cheating.

[...] A bad D&D experience can really sully a person's opinion of the game, and conventions can have a higher risk because you'll likely be playing with people you've never met before.

Quite a few people who go to AL view it as a more competitive version of D&D, though happy to play with first time players, the emphasis is definitely on the mechanics of the game.