Jake Hamilton
First Post
I've never been 20, hell I've never been a double digit. Seems like most games I've been in, they end it at 8-9 and make us re-roll new characters. Is this normal for most games?
Yes.I've never been 20, hell I've never been a double digit. Seems like most games I've been in, they end it at 8-9 and make us re-roll new characters. Is this normal for most games?
IMX, campaigns petering out was a thing back in the day ('80s), too, often before 'name level' (below 9th). Long before I heard 'sweet spot' on line, I felt D&D was at it's best in the 3rd-7th level range. (In retrospect, I have no idea why I thought '7th' rather than 8th, nothing terrible happened at 8th that I recall, maybe it was just a common level range back in the day.)This is a new thing. And by new I mean last 10 or 20 years.
IMX, campaigns petering out was a thing back in the day ('80s), too, often before 'name level' (as low as 9th).
When WotC was developing 3.0, they did their surveys and market research and concluded most campaigns quit by 10th level. For 3.x, that became a self-fulfilling prophesy, as they didn't bother to do a lot of playtesting beyond 10th. At least, that's the common oft-repeated wisdom. Not sure what insider said it originally...
Oh, you mean new with WotC, on the producer side. Sure. They did their research, determined the game wasn't played a lot at higher levels, and made their design decisions on the assumption* that wouldn't change. Un-amazingly, it didn't* change.Sure, not all campaigns lasted to high levels in AD&D, but they didn't just assume that you wouldn't.
Sure, there are always exceptions. It took the entire run of 3.x, but my old group did get to 14th in two campaigns. And some groups think, well, there's Epic, we must need to play through epic. I'm currently running and playing in campaigns that are over 20, but they're "not really D&D."*In more "modern" games I had a 3.0 game that went to level 17 and a 3.5 game that went all the way to 20.