korgoth
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
Posts: 323
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Post by korgoth on Mar 25, 2008 0:36:02 GMT -6
Assuming a large/mega dungeon (that is, adventures contained entirely therein, at least at first), how often do you expect characters, especially beginning characters, to level up?
For example, do you expect that 1st level characters will reach 2nd level by the time they get to the 2nd level of the dungeon (assuming no accidents with chutes, etc.)?
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Post by philotomy on Mar 25, 2008 0:53:52 GMT -6
I place enough XP for that to happen (see this Megadungeon Filling thread at DF), but in practice I find that my players don't stick with one dungeon level and "finish" it before going deeper. Instead, they're often dipping down a level or two deeper than their average party level, coming back up for a while, et cetera. |
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Post by makofan on Mar 25, 2008 7:06:52 GMT -6
What philotomy said. I give them the opportunity, but not the necessity, of gaining enough experience
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Post by Finarvyn on Mar 26, 2008 7:06:05 GMT -6
In the old days, I used to encourage my group to enter a dungeon and then get back out in the same weekend-long session. Then they could level-up. Of course, back then my life was D&D and my friends and I played all of the time. That was when we were in high school and didn't have jobs, wives and children.
More recently, when I was running the G-D-Q mega-module sequence for my current gaming group, my initial plan was to hand out a level each time they emerged from one module and before they entered the next. I figured that gaining 7 levels over 7 modules would work out just fine. After a while it became evident that often the party would spend many game sessions on each module, and since we weren't playing often (once each 2 weeks or so) there were too many months on the calendar between level advancements. I decided that if there were some significant encounters (with rest thereafter) that I would level them up in the middle of a module as needed.
So, I guess my answer would be based upon frequency of play as much as actual dungeon time. Players like to have occasional advancement and that should be taken into account along the way.
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Post by howandwhy99 on Apr 9, 2008 7:36:49 GMT -6
They can level up as fast as the group desires. Altering XP awards is just about the dead easiest thing to do in every rpg ever.
I think it's better to focus on what the players want as rewarded challenges then to worry too much about the world. They can play out of their depth as often as they want. But in my games that's just the base assumption. No one leads the PCs, but themselves.
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Post by Mordorandor on Oct 17, 2022 11:54:57 GMT -6
Did I read somewhere in an old game journal from the 1970s that a player claimed advancing 5 levels in five months of play, playing two sessions a week, was fairly quick but not unreasonable?
That would entail, on average, XP to be enough for a new level after eight sessions, though there's no clear understanding if a session is 1 hour, 4 hours, 6 hours ...?
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Post by dicebro on Oct 18, 2022 9:05:40 GMT -6
No more than one level per session. It’s the old way.
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Post by Mordorandor on Oct 18, 2022 12:54:04 GMT -6
No more than one level per session. It’s the old way. , what do you think of the velocity of 1 level earned per month per 8 sessions of 4 hours each? So with 32 hours of dedicated play in a month, players can earn a level, thus advancing to 12th level in a 12-month time frame, with consistent, dedicated play? I wonder if Gary thought that was too fast. (I remember someone mentioning an article in one of the 'zines, in which the author argued that the above velocity wasn't crazy or monty haul-ish. I'll see if I can find it.) |
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Post by hamurai on Oct 18, 2022 13:22:20 GMT -6
what do you think of the velocity of 1 level earned per month per 8 sessions of 4 hours each? So with 32 hours of dedicated play in a month, players can earn a level, thus advancing to 12th level in a 12-month time frame, with consistent, dedicated play? Sounds like a realistic pace, judging from how we play. We have played with quicker and slower pace, depending on what we wanted to achieve. A quick-play mini-campaign will probably have a quicker pace. |
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Post by dicebro on Oct 19, 2022 1:27:12 GMT -6
No more than one level per session. It’s the old way. , what do you think of the velocity of 1 level earned per month per 8 sessions of 4 hours each? So with 32 hours of dedicated play in a month, players can earn a level, thus advancing to 12th level in a 12-month time frame, with consistent, dedicated play? I wonder if Gary thought that was too fast. (I remember someone mentioning an article in one of the 'zines, in which the author argued that the above velocity wasn't crazy or monty haul-ish. I'll see if I can find it.) I don’t think I would enjoy constraining myself ahead of time so much. But as long as it wasn’t more than one level per session. My games can get deadly if the player resorts to combat and that happens quite a bit. Heh. |
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Post by Mordorandor on Oct 19, 2022 10:35:08 GMT -6
dicebro , what do you think of the velocity of 1 level earned per month per 8 sessions of 4 hours each? .... I don’t think I would enjoy constraining myself ahead of time so much. But as long as it wasn’t more than one level per session. My games can get deadly if the player resorts to combat and that happens quite a bit. Heh. So if it happened organically, you're ok with game play where players might happen to advance eight levels over eight sessions in a month? 0-60 in two seconds vs 10 seconds, if you will. ...just seeing what the bell curve of advancement-velocity looks like in our (admittedly selective) population of board participants. |
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Post by howandwhy99 on Oct 19, 2022 21:32:14 GMT -6
I think advancement rate really matters on a group to group or even campaign to campaign level. D&D's a board game at heart, it takes as long as the players can perform successfully to beat the game.
But it also matters upon the design. Some DMs are going to run very complicated and difficult campaign rule sets which means it takes longer, generally speaking, for players to discover all of it and become proficient for each level. Any DM should keep that in mind when judging how much to make their XP Awards for their challenges.
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Post by dicebro on Oct 20, 2022 9:32:18 GMT -6
I don’t think I would enjoy constraining myself ahead of time so much. But as long as it wasn’t more than one level per session. My games can get deadly if the player resorts to combat and that happens quite a bit. Heh. So if it happened organically, you're ok with game play where players might happen to advance eight levels over eight sessions in a month? 0-60 in two seconds vs 10 seconds, if you will. ...just seeing what the bell curve of advancement-velocity looks like in our (admittedly selective) population of board participants. Yes. In my opinion the original game is not built from concrete. Ever play with a block of concrete? It gets boring. So The rules Must be organic. They should be invisible to the players. And transparent to the Referee. I think that if the character risked his life, then that’s a pretty good reason for going up a level. But it’s a case by case, session per session, decision I make when the characters get back to town. Also, the advancement of levels in such a game might not follow a bell curve at all. That would remain to be seen I guess. |
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Post by scottyg on Oct 20, 2022 11:21:40 GMT -6
In an old Greyhawk style campaign dungeon, I don't think finishing a level was ever a priority. Usually the players went down steps as soon as they found them, and only stopped after the had an encounter that was too dangerous. Players tended to avoid most encounters and saved their resources for the ones they thought had a good chance for a nice treasure, so a party would go down a few levels and then blow all their resources on a single tough encounter and run back to town. There were also high level encounters set on the levels closer to the surface that low level parties would have to avoid initially, and then remember to come back later after they gained a few levels. There's also restocking and possibly map changes/additions depending on the nature of the dungeon.
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Post by Mordorandor on Oct 20, 2022 18:05:26 GMT -6
I think advancement rate really matters on a group to group or even campaign to campaign level. D&D's a board game at heart, it takes as long as the players can perform successfully to beat the game. But it also matters upon the design. Some DMs are going to run very complicated and difficult campaign rule sets which means it takes longer, generally speaking, for players to discover all of it and become proficient for each level. Any DM should keep that in mind when judging how much to make their XP Awards for their challenges. As a referee, I've certainly seen erratic advancement, depending on whether players decide to turn left vs right, search for secret doors here vs there, charge the Owlbear they stumbled across on the first level or flee, and so on. |
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