20 levels in 3 months? NOT THIS TIME!

the Jester · Jan 27, 2009

I've always found one of the biggest strains that dnd puts on my credulity is the whole "I was a peasant a couple of months ago, and now I'm the Most Powerful Wizard Alive!!!" thing.

Well, I'm very pleased to announce that I've beaten that problem, at least for my current 4e campaign. Last night we finished playing out a siege that had been going on for about five sessions or so. I used a 'victory points' system to determine, in the end, how much time passed during the siege- if the pcs had gotten the highest level of victory, it could have been only months. (See the 3e Heroes of Battle book for the base that I used for the VP system in play.) The length of the siege was determined by how much ass the pcs kicked, in other words.

We passed just under six years in the last few sessions!

I'm very happy at how it is working out- the events of the siege that we played out were representative of the party's overall ability to hold the wall for the entire siege, or representative of how effective they were at defending the approach to the city, etc. They were abstracted and then stretched to fit the length of the siege once the victory point tally was compiled at the end.

It was awesome, and it means that even if the rest of the campaign flashes by in a few months, my pcs will have a background that makes them believeable kick-ass stud heroes.

Instead of being, you know, a 19-year-old archmage.

Moon_Goddess · Jan 27, 2009

LOL

My players were complaining sunday,

"God how much longer till 2nd level.."

"Your about half way there."

"Halfway!! We've been playing for 6 hours."

Of course that's due to the fact the guy who dm's for our 3.5 game awards a level after each encounter. We once went up 3 levels in one game session.

Byronic · Jan 27, 2009

Tell your players not to complain. My old DM gave out a level every 15 sessions on average. Thank God that campaigns over with.

OnlytheStrong · Jan 27, 2009

If you wanna talk to your players about something, talk to them. If it bothers you alot, talk to me. I will get your point across.

I know that personally, I don't give a rats ass if I level. I'm happy where I am in our 3.5 game and don't know much about 4e, so i can't say anything about leveling. We leveled quickly in the 3.5 game because of the things we managed to pull off.

The Jester---- I love that idea.

Mortellan · Jan 27, 2009

Excellent idea Jester. I do wonder now, maybe the solution is to not make base starting ages for PCs so young but instead have the range extend out into maturity-old age from the get go since you never know when a heroic career will really start in one's life. This becomes especially true for demihumans.

Crothian · Jan 27, 2009

Good idea. I usually just use travel time. I had one group on the road for 4 months campaign time before they even got to the first dungeon exploration. I also encourage down time. I've had groups take a year off and we just sum up what everyone did that year and move on from there.

DayTripper · Jan 27, 2009

I agree with the downtime concept. In previous campigns I have used an "over wintering" idea where the weather generally means people don't move around much thus players end up staying in one place for at least a season until trade and transport gets moving again. My players seemed to appreciate the time too as it gave them the opportunity to spend their money, get items made, make enquiries, garner contacts, get spells cast and generally advance their own plot lines. It got to the stage when they looked forward to winter to get these things done.

Of course, it gave me as DM the opportunity to run short encounters of importance, introduce information, people and new plot lines too.

Appleseeth · Jan 27, 2009

Thanks for the idea Jester. My players and I were going to take a few weeks break from my campaign when we hit paragon, just to freshen up. I think I'll use the old "6 months later" time advancement.It should fit in with what I'm planning. I never really considered it until now.

Dausuul · Jan 27, 2009

My current approach is to divide up my campaign by tier. So we have a couple arcs in the Heroic tier, concluding when the PCs hit 11th level. Then there's a break, during which 5-10 years pass in the game world. During this time, the PCs begin their paragon paths, learn, mature, et cetera.

Then we have a couple more arcs in Paragon, followed by another years-long break when they hit 21st; then we start Epic.

fanboy2000 · Jan 27, 2009

Crothian said:
Good idea. I usually just use travel time. I had one group on the road for 4 months campaign time before they even got to the first dungeon exploration. I also encourage down time. I've had groups take a year off and we just sum up what everyone did that year and move on from there.

I've used downtime quite a bit, but not travel time. It's a joke among my friends that it takes three days to get anywhere in my world.