Advice on campaign/experience points structure

[Rydac]

As a break from long adventure paths our group is going to experiment with giving the GMs a break by running mostly one shot adventures (with the occasional two or three shot perhaps).

The setting is a generic D&D points of light adventuring on the borderlands of civilization and the wild. I'll be the primary GM, but two or three others have said they'd like to run now and then in this shared setting.

Taking a page from original Dark Sun and the idea of a character tree. Each player will have three characters (maybe more?)

The goal is to have the other characters in your stable gain ep while the main one is playing so that not too big a gap develops between high and low.Main character is also meant to switch some, but people will of course have favorites I'm sure. Shooting for no character being more than two levels ahead of the lowest character played by anybody. Some players live out of town and aren't there every week. We don't want them arriving in town finding that everyone is playing 5th level characters while they are still at 2nd.

The other reason to have a bit of level separation is for a GM that might have a great 3rd level adventure, and we don't want everyone to go..."sorry all my characters are 5th level dude"

Idea off the top of my head is that whatever character you play on a night gets the ep earned at that session, and that every time a session is run all non-active characters earn 10% of what it would take them to get to their next level.

There would also be a rule that the character must play at least once each level to avoid having characters sit in the closet then pop out at high level having never seen the light of day. We also want to encourage the shift of characters played so that different mixes of character personalities mix in parties on a given adventure run.

Does this sound like it will accomplish my goal? I'm also very open to other ideas on how to manage this.....which is why I'm asking the group wisdom of ENworld naturally!

Thanks,
Rydac

 

[Eldragon]

My group did something very similar a couple years ago where we did a rotating DM, with each DM doing a short story/adventure. I'll share a few notes and a short description of our set up, hope it helps you formulate your plans.

The party had a ship, which was used to transport the players from one DM's setting to another. That way each DM could run a world on an 'island' independent from each other. (Can't have a DM acidentally kill off another DM's plot character after all).

Everyone had multiple characters, in a variety of levels. Characters not being played on a particular campaign would just be part of the ships crew. Usually the DM would drop the party off, and the ship would sail on without them to do some other adventure. After all, its kind of game breaking if a party of level 5 adventures have a group of level 15 allies just waiting for them at the docks. When the high level characters were in play, the ship stuck around, and the low level PCs not in use made great NPCs (and sometimes cannon fodder).

Players were free to play with whatever character they wanted, and were free to level up a character to fit the scope of the adventure. On one occasion a player was having so much fun playing his character he leveled the character down in order to play him for the next adventure.

We found the different DMs gave out such wildly different XP rewards, and people switched PCs so much, that level ceased to matter. The DM of the day simply said 'everyone should be level X for this" and thats what we played with. For us, its not the XP thats fun, its the adventure.

 

[OnlineDM]

The question is, how much does a sense of an ongoing campaign matter for this group? Honestly, what you're describing sounds like a group of friends playing a series of Living Forgotten Realms adventures, which is fine. When I play in LFR games, I'm with a varying group of characters every time (sometimes my character has adventured with some of them before, sometimes we're all strangers). The adventure of the day is for characters of level X through level Y, and everyone brings out a character of the appropriate level from among the collection of characters that they have with them. And away we go!

This works fine for us, though it requires a big suspension of disbelief. How did we all meet? How did we get where we are? Well, we hand-wave those questions so that we can start gaming.

If this approach works for your group, then I suggest that you suspend the disbelief and roll with it. Everyone can roll up a trio of characters of whatever levels you deem appropriate (1, 5, 8, whatever). When a DM is running an adventure of the right level, players bring out the appropriate characters. Those characters gain XP and treasure and level up as appropriate.

If a player only comes occasionally, they should make sure that they've brought a character of the right level for the day's adventure.

Now, if your group wants some semblance of an ongoing storyline and a group of PCs who form a regular party, this probably won't work. But if you want unconnected one-shots and you don't care about the overarching storyline, the approach I outlined might be worth a try.

 

[Lanefan]

What edition are you using?

I ask because in older editions (2e RAW, 1e if you dropped the xp for treasure rule) the PCs didn't bump very often at all; which might help solve your level variance issue.

And if you really want to go gonzo sometime, play 'em all at once! The lower-level types could be henches to the high-levels, and you could attack some poor dungeon with a party of 20!

Lan-"that's more like a village with feet"-efan

 

[Haltherrion]

I can understand your desire for an XP spread but if you are going to allow the players to mix their PCs at will, it might be best to keep them all in lock step. THe worry I would have is that while the lock-step feels a little artificial, it also avoids the problem where some players swap their PCs around a lot and others always run the same PC. You can get to a point where the latter player has a PC noticably higher level than the other player's PCs and either that player with the higher level PC can't play his PC or dominates the group.

If you keep them in lock step, then swapping PCs around doesn't cause too much grief. Usually, the fact that the off-scene PCs aren't getting magic items will allow for sufficient distinction between the group.

As for your desire to allow lower level adventures, you aren't talking too great a level spread. It seems that within that spread (couple levels or so) it should be possible to get the same feel adventure targetted at the somewhat higher level group. That is, do you really need the level 4 adventure and the level 2 adventure?

If you really want to force a level spread, you can keep the PCs segregated but that seems to defeat your purpose.

In my current campaign, I'd originally thought to track XP separately for the PCs and alt-PCs but the bookkeeping is a headache and I didn't want barriers to people swapping characters around as needed. Plus, there are some players who love their PC and would switch to the alt if I asked but why knock their obvious enjoyment? And there are others who are extremely flexible. Why have a system where flexibility (which helps the ref) causes them to drift lower in level than the more focused ones?

Character swapping isn't just for the players fun. By being flexible with swapping PCs and keeping them all the same level, it is fairly easy to pull a party together regardless of who shows. Moreover, it doesn't penalize the flexible players who are allowing you to field the group. In some systems, swapping PCs frequently will dock the advancement of the PCs, docking the very player who is willing to provide a healer one session and a tank the next.

Just a thought. Other methods work but I'd give the simple, flat, everyone is the same method a shot. If you do go that route, you might as well award session XP or simply "N sessions per level." It works just fine and solves a lot of problems with PCs coming and going.

 

[MatthewJHanson]

I'm tend to agree with marcq. I think that keeping the characters all at the same level will keep a better balance so that some players can switch frequently, while others might keep the same character.

Plus, from a purely bookkeeping perspective it is a lot easier to manage, which I would appreciate if I were a player.

If find and adventure you really wanted to run but its too low a level, you could always adjust it upwards. (And if you are ever looking for more adventures, you can check out my sig).

 

[Rydac]

Guys thanks for all the replies. I really appreciate them.

[MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]: We are using 4e, that's even part of the reason for having alt characters, so people can try out the game system more extensively

[MENTION=3962]Eldragon[/MENTION]: Love the guy who leveled down his character....folks must have been having some good fun in that campaign.

[MENTION=90804]OnlineDM[/MENTION]: My idea does sound like just getting together for a RPGA one-shot, but while a little suspension of disbelief is possible this group will want some rationale as to why they are getting together. There will be continuing NPCs, places and events that will provide some unity to the adventuring. My hope is that after a bit there will be case of A knows B &C so easily hooks up with them to go out adventuring and that B knows D and C know E, etc. so forming a group is easy with characters able to vouch for others in a sense.

[MENTION=18253]marcq[/MENTION] (& MatthewJHanson)....thanks for the insights from your own experience. I may be over thinking things. The lockstep approach may work best both for bookkeeping, predictability for the DMs and most importantly as you point out letting people play their favorite character but at same time letting others switch out. Thanks