Whence level titles?

[kesher]

I'd be surprised if this hasn't been discussed before, so please link me if you know of something, but I'm wondering about why level titles were ever introduced. I imagine it had something to do, once levels were conceived of, with filling in the gaps around Hero, Super Hero, and Wizard (and I seem to remember some other magic user designations in Chainmail...), but that's only a guess.

Also, I'm interested to know who uses them. Frex, I just, horribly belatedly, bought Geoffrey McKinney's superb Carcosa supplement. In it, he uses ONLY level titles. I found this to be surprisingly evocative.

[coffee]

If you read the dungeon encounter tables, such as in Greyhawk, you'll see "Footpads" on the level one monster list, and "Warriors" and "Conjurers" on the level two list. It's a bit irritating when you only know numbers, but like you said it is evocative.

So, I'm guessing Gary used them. Don't know of too many people today who still do.

Although my older friends, who started with OD&D, used the Name Level titles -- they would always talk about how somebody was a 12th level Lord (instead of Fighter). It was kinda cool.

[philotomy]

I tend to use certain titles and ignore the others. For example, for Fighting Men, I use Veteran, Hero, Superhero, and Lord. I'm not a big fan of forcing a title for every level because I think it comes out…well…forced. I don't see any reason the titles couldn't indicate minimums. Thus a "Veteran" is a 1st level FM and a "Hero" is a 4th level FM, but you might also talk about a "2nd level Veteran" or a "6th level Hero" and it would make sense, to me.

[coffee]

I could go along with that. They'd still be evocative, but there'd be less to remember.

[waysoftheearth]

As a referee, I like the extra flavour that level titles add. I enjoy adding race- and culture-specific level titles for even the base classes. This can add an extra dimension to each class without the need for rules or statistics, and enables me (and my players) to discriminate between, say, fighting-men of different cultures simply by their titles. I especially like using level titles to describe NPCs. "Errego the Reaver" is (to me) a more evocative NPC than "Errego the Nth level fighter". In fact, I would never tell the players that they were faced with a "9th level magic-user" -- it simply gives too much away.

As a player, I'm somewhat less interested in level titles. This is possibly because many mechanical parts of the game are based on my PC's level, and I need to look up his level on various tables of figures, or perform calculations based on level. All this is made easier by thinking of levels as numbers.

But the biggest influence on me as a player is surely the referee. As a player, I will tend to adopt the language that the referee uses, and most referees (at least, those whose games I have played) tend not to use level titles.

[Brunomac]

I'm not sure why, but even as a kid I thought the level titles in most cases were of no real use and didn't always apply the right descripton to the character. For example, someone who is a "veteran" generally speaking has been at "it" for a long time, usually years. 4 or 5 trips to the first two levels of the dungeon does not a veteran make IMO.

As waysoftheearth sez, they add flavor. But it might not be a flavor that the player wants applied to his character. Suddenly my high level cleric goes from Bishop to Lama? Those two flavors are several thousand miles away from each other.

[philotomy]

Jan 6, 2010 16:49:59 GMT -6 Brunomac said:

For example, someone who is a "veteran" generally speaking has been at "it" for a long time, usually years. 4 or 5 trips to the first two levels of the dungeon does not a veteran make IMO.

This is one of the reasons that I love the title of "Veteran" for a 1st level Fighting Man. I think it highlights the intended place of the 1st level FM in the campaign world. The vast majority of warriors and soldiers in the game are 0-level "normal men" who do not gain XP, et cetera. A 1st level FM is only slightly better than a 0-level FM, by the numbers. But he's supposed to be an experienced veteran who knows how to fight, and who has the potential to advance to something truly special: a warrior of heroic, superheroic, or even lordly status.

This is also one of the reasons I love the rule for multiple attacks vs. 1HD or lower opponents. The Veteran, with 1+1 HD, is just beyond this threshold. Unlike his 0-level "normal" brethren, he can prevent an ogre from getting 4 attacks on a group of men-at-arms, just by his presence.

He's not a veteran hero, or a veteran adventurer, but he *is* a veteran fighting man, not just run of the mill cannon fodder.

[Finarvyn]

Jan 6, 2010 13:44:19 GMT -6 coffee said:

If you read the dungeon encounter tables, such as in Greyhawk, you'll see "Footpads" on the level one monster list, and "Warriors" and "Conjurers" on the level two list.quote]
I think that's the key -- the level titles were used less by players and more by DMs as they keyed their dungeons and created encouter tables.

Rather than give HD, attacks, and so forth, a DM could just note "Sorcerer" and look up the correct information as needed.

Dave's Blackmoor dungeon is keyed in this manner, and the "Monster & Treasure Assortment" encounter booklet does the same thing.