Everyone starts at 1st level

[Mallus]

As Mallus observed, by the second half of the '80s, one might never encounter anything but the kind of setup...

I feel I should point out I was introduced to the game by a high school friend and his father. His father's group had been playing for several years and stories of their campaigns don't sound like yours, either.

I wonder if a better indicator would be how a person came to D&D/RPG's: more from wargames or genre fiction?

My wargaming experience is limited to Risk and a few games of Axis and Allies (does chess count??). However, I've been reading SF/F for as long as I could read.

One cannot really lose one's virginity more than once, and the tendency to recycle now-familiar elements and situations can lead to the game's becoming very stereotyped.

This assumes all like-level experiences are essentially the same. Have you ever read more than one book in the same genre? More than one Shakespeare comedy?

 

[Mallus]

More properly (to my thinking), it is the player's responsibility to cultivate henchmen as backups.

I'd rather figure out how to stab a giant in the eye or wrap by brain around the Riddle of the Sphinx than deal with staffing problems.

 

[Ariosto]

I'd rather figure out how to stab a giant in the eye or wrap by brain around the Riddle of the Sphinx than deal with staffing problems.

That's nice.

My observation was (I thought obviously) pertinent to the old-style game in which henchmen are in fact and by design "greatly desired by the discerning players, for they usually spell the difference between failure and success in the long term view."

It would not be germane to certain other games, any more than would an observation concerning the Lawful Goodness of paladins, or the development of magic-users from relative weakness as prestidigitators to the most powerful figures as wizards, or any one of many other alien aspects.

 

[Ariosto]

This assumes all like-level experiences are essentially the same.

No; it reflects the observation that, having rung the standard changes, most 1st-level D&D experiences are notably similar in terms of game elements deployed.

 

[Ariosto]

I wonder if a better indicator would be how a person came to D&D/RPG's: more from wargames or genre fiction?

"Better than what?" is the obvious question. Even without knowing the answer, I think you're probably right. The game was originally designed and presented with wargamers in mind, and 1st ed. AD&D continued in that vein. The Basic sets were aimed at a much wider audience, and quite successfully so.

 

[Korgoth]

You probably shouldn't imply that play styles that differ from your lack 'intellectual challenge'.

I didn't. I try to choose my words carefully; I don't always succeed, for various reasons. But what I said was that in the style of play I favor, exploration and intellectual challenge are the point of the game (challenge the player vs. challenge the character, etc.).

There is no permutation of logic I'm aware of where that implies that other styles "lack" intellectual challenge; my point was conerning the "point" or focus of play.

See, in [(p -> q)] and if you've got (p), (q) is implied. Also, (~q) implies (~p). But (~p) doesn't imply anything in that equation. Let (p) be Old School play and (q) be intellectual challenge... Old School implies intellectual challenge because it's integral to the point of play ("challenge the player"). So if you're not challenging the player, you're not playing Old School. But if you are challenging the player ("intellectual challenge"), that doesn't imply you're playing Old School and if you're not playing Old School that doesn't imply that you're not challenging the player.

Anyway, that's how you parse the word "implication". So don't get insulted, because all I was saying was that the essence of my style of play concerns exploration and intellectual challenge. I'm not dissing your style, whatever that is; I'm saying that mine is valid and these are the things that are integral to it.

 

[Barastrondo]

The continuity of characters from campaign to campaign seems another custom that has declined, introducing in the long run more occasions for generating new ones (at whatever level the host campaign rules stipulate). More rapid level advancement might contribute to that. It used to be par for the course (from what I saw) for folks with 2 years plus of experience to have at least one character in the 10th to 14th level range, regardless of the spread in a whole "stable". (Rarely, one might have nothing closer than 8th or 9th, or a multi-class equivalent, but that was usually workable; I don't remember anyone with only 7th or less and 15th+.)

Probably a number of factors here.

For one, play style has an effect on your character sheet. Even back in the olden times I remember discussions in Dragon about what to do if somebody brings a new character to your group who's higher-level than all the other PCs and has twice the number of magic items, most of which are also twice as powerful. 3e and 4e standardized "magic by level" and to some extent point buy systems specifically to fight against this process, so that people didn't get the idea that their characters were good only for one particular group. They wanted more cross-pollination. Of course, that's also a reason that there are systems to make characters in line with any given group's level, and that they encourage using them. If being 5th level is a bar to playing with a new group at 11th, they don't want you to be discouraged, they want you to be encouraged to jump right in, and the other group to be encouraged to take you. Hence, systems that make generating higher-level characters "fair."

I also think setting has come to matter more. With the advent of things like Forgotten Realms, it became more interesting to a lot of gamers to develop their own settings. I can't remember where I read it, but I remember someone discussing the shift from GMs who make their own dungeons to GMs who make their own worlds. As more and more inspiration and published settings emerged, more people became interested in finding the world that fit their particular sensibilities beyond the dungeon. Consider the split between groups that loved Dragonlance and enjoyed having kender in their adventuring parties, and groups who didn't.

It's an interesting situation. In order to encourage cross-pollination of gamers, you need a core set of expected sensibilities. But I think in order to encourage a lot of people to stay with gaming, you absolutely need to give them the ability to customize characters and worlds to suit their preferences. Right now the solution would be that it's easy to use expected mechanics to generate a character to fit a customized group.

 

[Sunderstone]

Start a side game for the level one folks to get them at least caught up to just a few levels difference than your higher level party.
Alternately, maybe get the high level players to pick up temporary alts to run with the new folks until they get within reasonable range.

 

[Remathilis]

It's an interesting situation. In order to encourage cross-pollination of gamers, you need a core set of expected sensibilities. But I think in order to encourage a lot of people to stay with gaming, you absolutely need to give them the ability to customize characters and worlds to suit their preferences. Right now the solution would be that it's easy to use expected mechanics to generate a character to fit a customized group.

An interesting point to all of the "standardization" vs. "rules-lite" debate. D&D moreso than most RPGS are governed by two principles; what material the campaign is allows (something all RPGs suffer) and how the DM has chosen to build his world.

If I was bringing my Jedi over from my friends SAGA game to yours, as long as the levels were comparable and we all used the same source books, no one would care. Heck, in RIFTS your encouraged to find as many weird outliers in the Palladium system and go with it! But D&D, after its initial explosion of interest, became very difficult to move PCs from. There was no set standards, and as "alternate worlds" began to spring up (each with its own alternate takes and new options) shifting became very hard. I can't play my hobbit-thief in a Dragonlance party, I certainly can't in a Dark Sun game, and I don't think I'd want to in Ravenloft.

Yet its the diversity (and ease of customization) that attracts us. My halflings CAN be different than yours. My gnomes are 20 feet tall and eat nothing but tar! There are dozens of published campaign worlds (lord knows now thanks to the OGL) and each has its own unique spin on Chargen. While it might be a hindrance for cross-germination, its a bounty to world-builders.

But for sure, its not something common to other RPG systems I know.

 

[Ariosto]

I would not have expected the standardization of 3E/4E to make transfers less common. That's a good point, though, regarding the tendency on one hand for players to get into "exotic" types (the more so for proliferation of game-mechanical oddities, and greater importance placed on them) -- and on the other for DMs to get strongly attached to the consistency of equally peculiar settings.

In the old days, one might in my circle encounter "transplants" from Gamma World, Starships & Spacemen, Villains and Vigilantes, Gangbusters, and so on. However, 90%+ of characters were of AD&D Players Handbook types (perhaps slightly different from standard, or subject to reincarnation or other effects commonly encountered in the course of an adventuring career). Spells, magic items, etc., were of course subject to careful scrutiny and potential revision and deletion. There was rarely a barrier, though, to continued play of characters developed over years in other "worlds".