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Wandering Monsters 01/29/2014:Level Advancement...
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6254964" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>As [MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION] has said, I think they'll be using market research, not just making it up.</p><p></p><p>If I am planning to walk from A to B, and ask someone who has already done the walk how long it took them, that is helpful information. It's not a guideline, though: it's not a normative rule for conduct. It's information about someone else's experience which can help me make predictions about my own likely experiences.</p><p></p><p>For instance, if the rulebooks say that the typical group games once a week for 4 hours, and that such a group is likely to progess to 20th level in a year-and-a-half of play, then I can work some things out straight away: eg if I game every fortnight, and I'm only planning to run the game for a year, and I want to get to 20th level, I might need either to start the game around 10th level or to double the rate of advancement from whatever the default is. That's useful information.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Two responses.</p><p></p><p>First, and hoping not to be too blunt (or rude) I think to some extent you're splitting hairs here. In a game intended to be played in a somewhat open-ended fashion, with the participants expected to make significant real-time commitments over an extended period of play, the more ways the rules find of communicating those expectations the better: so tell us encouters per hour, <em>and</em> some idea about typical level gain per year (to save me doing the maths and giving me another perspective on the overall issue), etc. As in my example above (and [MENTION=413]Uller[/MENTION] gives an example from actual play experience) I can use the model of play in the rulebook to make predications and adjustments for my own play if I want to.</p><p></p><p>But second (and related, and probably more important) I think having the designers tell me how long they expect a campaign to last overall, in real time, can be helpful. It tells me how the designers expected their game to be played. For instance, if they expect encounters to last for an hour, and I find at my table that they're lasting more than that, I know that I might have to take steps either (i) to speed things up, or (ii) to find ways to make encounters more interesting than the designers are defaulting to, because they have to hold the interest of the group for longer.</p><p></p><p>Or if, looking at the desinger's numbers and description, I learn that they expect the typical published module to last one month, so you'll get through 10 to 12 per year; but I can work out that for my group we'll probalby be spending half the year in the same module; then I know that I better choose the most interesting, varied module out there because my group won't be getting the novelty of changing modules regularly that the designers assumed would be the case.</p><p></p><p>This is some of the stuff that I think can be helpful if the designers tell me about the default assumptions around which they've designed. (A contrast: Gygax built his time rules around the assumptions (i) that the players would have a stable of PCs, though this was no where spelled out except with some hints in the intro to the PHB, and (ii) that the GM would be running the campaign <em>every day</em>, with those able to play turning up and doing so, although this was not spelled out at all. Being ignorant of these assumptions for my first 20 or so years of playing, I simply could never make sense of Gygax's rules on the passage of time, nor other aspects of his advice on campaign design. D&Dnext shouldn't be making these sorts of rookie mistakes.)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 6254964, member: 42582"] As [MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION] has said, I think they'll be using market research, not just making it up. If I am planning to walk from A to B, and ask someone who has already done the walk how long it took them, that is helpful information. It's not a guideline, though: it's not a normative rule for conduct. It's information about someone else's experience which can help me make predictions about my own likely experiences. For instance, if the rulebooks say that the typical group games once a week for 4 hours, and that such a group is likely to progess to 20th level in a year-and-a-half of play, then I can work some things out straight away: eg if I game every fortnight, and I'm only planning to run the game for a year, and I want to get to 20th level, I might need either to start the game around 10th level or to double the rate of advancement from whatever the default is. That's useful information. Two responses. First, and hoping not to be too blunt (or rude) I think to some extent you're splitting hairs here. In a game intended to be played in a somewhat open-ended fashion, with the participants expected to make significant real-time commitments over an extended period of play, the more ways the rules find of communicating those expectations the better: so tell us encouters per hour, [I]and[/I] some idea about typical level gain per year (to save me doing the maths and giving me another perspective on the overall issue), etc. As in my example above (and [MENTION=413]Uller[/MENTION] gives an example from actual play experience) I can use the model of play in the rulebook to make predications and adjustments for my own play if I want to. But second (and related, and probably more important) I think having the designers tell me how long they expect a campaign to last overall, in real time, can be helpful. It tells me how the designers expected their game to be played. For instance, if they expect encounters to last for an hour, and I find at my table that they're lasting more than that, I know that I might have to take steps either (i) to speed things up, or (ii) to find ways to make encounters more interesting than the designers are defaulting to, because they have to hold the interest of the group for longer. Or if, looking at the desinger's numbers and description, I learn that they expect the typical published module to last one month, so you'll get through 10 to 12 per year; but I can work out that for my group we'll probalby be spending half the year in the same module; then I know that I better choose the most interesting, varied module out there because my group won't be getting the novelty of changing modules regularly that the designers assumed would be the case. This is some of the stuff that I think can be helpful if the designers tell me about the default assumptions around which they've designed. (A contrast: Gygax built his time rules around the assumptions (i) that the players would have a stable of PCs, though this was no where spelled out except with some hints in the intro to the PHB, and (ii) that the GM would be running the campaign [I]every day[/I], with those able to play turning up and doing so, although this was not spelled out at all. Being ignorant of these assumptions for my first 20 or so years of playing, I simply could never make sense of Gygax's rules on the passage of time, nor other aspects of his advice on campaign design. D&Dnext shouldn't be making these sorts of rookie mistakes.) [/QUOTE]
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