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<blockquote data-quote="Jay Verkuilen" data-source="post: 7724892" data-attributes="member: 6873517"><p>Absolutely agree. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>It really depends highly on the gaming group. Slow advancement really fits some groups very, very well. </p><p></p><p>For example, I am still running a heavily house ruled 2E game that was started in 1999. The main PCs started as level 4 and are now about level 10. We haven't run go go guns the whole time, but it's seen a lot of play. However, I've given them lots of opportunities for growth separate from pure level advancement. For instance, one character has as his background being a trader. So he has founded a business, lost one, and founded another. This doesn't really make him more personally powerful but gives the player a sense of satisfaction and character development. </p><p></p><p>I've also been in a Greyhawk game (with mostly the same players as the campaign I just mentioned) that adopted an "ensemble cast" model, where there is an interlocking group of characters that mix-and-match depending on the adventure. A variant on this approach is to have interesting henchmen in the party that the players can control. In fact, this is how the "ensemble cast" approach got started. We had some players leave and rather than find new players (it just didn't work out for whatever reason) we continued with the smaller group and just had the ensemble cast develop. In that game we had characters at the high and mid levels (2E that is, so between about levels 5 and 12). It's like the idea in <em>Ars Magica</em>, actually, where players might play a magus or grogs as the game needed in the adventure. </p><p></p><p>One big advantage of the ensemble cast approach is that you get a chance to play different characters with different abilities and personalities. In that game I played a fighter/mage, a paladin, a cleric, a fighter, another fighter, and a ranger, all of which got a chance to feel quite different and who didn't all get along. The other main player played a mage, a cleric/mage, a fighter/thief, and a few other characters I can't recall. For instance, our mage or mage multiclass characters were involved in various degrees with the Greyhawk Mage Guild and there were sessions that involved Guild politics things or times when those characters were busy doing things like learning spells or taking mastery tests and couldn't do something else, providing a reason for one of the other PCs to show up. Another decided to retire for in game reasons (after seeing one of his friends in the party one shot killed by a demon). His wedding ended up being an event at which other characters got introduced. These characters didn't really advance all that much but we were able to have high level and more mid level adventures in various configurations. I think the "ensemble cast" mode is actually how the old Lake Geneva guys did things.</p><p></p><p>With other groups, especially larger ones, this kind of format really doesn't work though, and people expect more level advancement in the whole "zero to hero" mode, having no other real idea of how to run things.</p><p></p><p>White Wolf offered some really interesting "no" or "limited advancement" options in the last book that got released to stores, <em>Mirrors</em>. It's hard to summarize all of the things in there but if you have access to it, check them out.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Jay Verkuilen, post: 7724892, member: 6873517"] Absolutely agree. It really depends highly on the gaming group. Slow advancement really fits some groups very, very well. For example, I am still running a heavily house ruled 2E game that was started in 1999. The main PCs started as level 4 and are now about level 10. We haven't run go go guns the whole time, but it's seen a lot of play. However, I've given them lots of opportunities for growth separate from pure level advancement. For instance, one character has as his background being a trader. So he has founded a business, lost one, and founded another. This doesn't really make him more personally powerful but gives the player a sense of satisfaction and character development. I've also been in a Greyhawk game (with mostly the same players as the campaign I just mentioned) that adopted an "ensemble cast" model, where there is an interlocking group of characters that mix-and-match depending on the adventure. A variant on this approach is to have interesting henchmen in the party that the players can control. In fact, this is how the "ensemble cast" approach got started. We had some players leave and rather than find new players (it just didn't work out for whatever reason) we continued with the smaller group and just had the ensemble cast develop. In that game we had characters at the high and mid levels (2E that is, so between about levels 5 and 12). It's like the idea in [I]Ars Magica[/I], actually, where players might play a magus or grogs as the game needed in the adventure. One big advantage of the ensemble cast approach is that you get a chance to play different characters with different abilities and personalities. In that game I played a fighter/mage, a paladin, a cleric, a fighter, another fighter, and a ranger, all of which got a chance to feel quite different and who didn't all get along. The other main player played a mage, a cleric/mage, a fighter/thief, and a few other characters I can't recall. For instance, our mage or mage multiclass characters were involved in various degrees with the Greyhawk Mage Guild and there were sessions that involved Guild politics things or times when those characters were busy doing things like learning spells or taking mastery tests and couldn't do something else, providing a reason for one of the other PCs to show up. Another decided to retire for in game reasons (after seeing one of his friends in the party one shot killed by a demon). His wedding ended up being an event at which other characters got introduced. These characters didn't really advance all that much but we were able to have high level and more mid level adventures in various configurations. I think the "ensemble cast" mode is actually how the old Lake Geneva guys did things. With other groups, especially larger ones, this kind of format really doesn't work though, and people expect more level advancement in the whole "zero to hero" mode, having no other real idea of how to run things. White Wolf offered some really interesting "no" or "limited advancement" options in the last book that got released to stores, [I]Mirrors[/I]. It's hard to summarize all of the things in there but if you have access to it, check them out. [/QUOTE]
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