Eyes of Nine
Everything's Fine
Note, invoking the Forge in some RPG circles can elicit hard feelings, especially from folks who were active in the RPG community back in the aughts, so sorry if I trigger anyone...
New Level-less RPG
ThorinTeague
Creative/Father/Professor
I've been reading all homework assigned in this thread as much as possible. Thank you for your input again.
So some of my favorite games don't use levels. Most BRP games (CoC, Mythras) don't use levels, neither do PbtA games, nor FitD games. So really, it's a D&D and adjacent thing. Nothign wrong with it mind. If you want an example of a D&D adjacent game that doesn't use levels I could recommend Vagabonds of Dyfed (an OSR slash PbtA game) or Mythras Classic Fantasy, which is essentially 1E AD&D done for BRP.
I now have an itch to write a game called "Fantasy Heartbreaker".
It would be a dating sim set in a D&D style world.
ThorinTeague
Creative/Father/Professor
ThorinTeague
Creative/Father/Professor
I had actually already come across this and read it, while searching around for "fantasy heartbreaker rpg..." I wasn't getting it at first, now I get it.
Eyes of Nine
Everything's Fine
Minor quibble, Dungeon World and some of its descendants use levels
aco175
Legend
I'm not sure how you can have a true level-less system if you gain power and stuff. The XP amount or HP or +to hit would be the default level. There would still be PCs of low power and PCs of high power that cannot play in the same game without problems. It might be worse than Adventure League (AL) where only each tier shows up to play.
It's pretty rare for RPGs not to have any sort of power increase over time. The closest ones I've seen to avoiding that have been Dresden Files (I'm unsure about FATE in general) and Star Trek Adventures, where most "advancement" is horizontal (lower one stat to increase another, exchange ability X for ability Y) rather than vertical. But even in those games there are some genuine stat increases, even if they're rare.
But it's also pretty rare outside of the D&D family to have the kind of meteoric rise D&D characters do. In a game like the Troubleshooters for example, an experienced character has probably gone from having five skills at 65 to 75%, six at 45%, and two Abilities (about the same as feats) to maybe having one or two at 80%+, a handful at 70%+, quite a few at 60%+, and a whole bunch of Abilities (because once you're good at a skill, you probably get more bang for your buck by getting an associated Ability than trying to increase the skill). Definitely more competent than a starting character, but still not punching out dinosaurs with a single punch.
Similar Threads
