D&D 5E What's the rush? Has the "here and now" been replaced by the "next level" attitude?

[ForeverSlayer]

I don't mind 'dead' levels because I balance my interests between the mechanical aspect of my character, and the campaign itself. I like for my character to evolve on it's own through the campaign. I come up with a general concept for my character, but sometimes that could change depending on what happened during the course of the campaign.

 

[ForeverSlayer]

How much of this is changing perceptions, rather than changing inclinations? Perhaps people were just as inclined to focus on the next level before, and you simply weren't as observant back then.

Perhaps there were just as many people who preferred a fast pace back then, and for whatever reason none of them happened to interact with your groups.

If it is in fact a change, then there could be any number of reasons, and there's probably nearly as many reasons as there are individuals.

In the end, though, this is something that's both a matter of personal preference (there's nothing wrong with preferring a slow pace to a fast pace, or vice versa, or even no levelling at all, as long as everyone at the table is happy) and something that is trivially easy for every campaign to adjust to suit.

Many of us no longer pay any attention to the written rules regarding levelling pace, as covered in various topics about XP over the years. Some people level based on hours of play, or number of sessions, or (like myself) when they feel the events of the campaign justify it. There's any number of approaches that can work. If you insist on using hard numbers, you can easily multiply the base values by whatever factor you want to slow the pace, or do the opposite to speed things up. Or add more XP-granting opportunities, or take them away. Whatever suits your needs best.

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As a player ... I like having mechanical options. D&D tends to parcel these out over several levels. If I'm playing a class that starts with a low number of mechanical options, then sure, I'd prefer a fairly fast pace to get to the point where I have a sufficient number of viable options to suit my tastes. Once we've reached that point, though, I'm in no particular hurry at all.

Which leads me to the conclusion that were a campaign to start at a level where I had sufficient mechanical options to suit my tastes (or if the system itself were to provide such from the first level), then I'd probably not really care if we never levelled at all, absent other reasons for levelling.

No, I'm pretty confident the attitude has changed and no lack of being observant played a part.

 

[Balesir]

I guess we now know what types of games you run.

Yep - the badwrong fun sort, just like I do. We should be ashamed of ourselves, at our age...

But I think the point of the thread is about people never having fun at any level per se, but only getting gratification from the levelling up process itself.

I have seen a lot of players not using most of their PC's abilities, because they are so focused on "what's next", and then play their PC in a very repetitive way at every level.

That's not been my experience at all; when players level up in both 3.x and 4E I have generally seen them be very keen to try out the new schtick. Once they have done so is generally when the "OK, what's at next level?" chat starts.

In general terms, I welcome this, up to a point.

If I want a game where levelling up isn't a thing, I have plenty of options to choose. I actually think that Traveller, which had no mechanism for "advancing" (i.e. making more powerful) a character after play had begun had a really good point. There is a place for play where characters develop and change without getting "more powerful" or going from noob to leet.

D&D, specifically, though, has levelling. It's part of D&D's schtick, to me - part of what I expect to get when I select D&D, as opposed to some other RPG, to play. As such, I relish the effects that levelling up has on the geist - the buzz and the expectations - of those around the table. Together with classes and hit points, it's a big part of what makes D&D what it is, as opposed to some other type of RPG.

 

[Minigiant]

I think it goes to one what the player focuses on in their character.

If you see your wizard as a fire mage, until you get fireballl you dont care about his class features.

If you see you ranger as a grumpy hermit, until he can self heal and kill all the orcs in his forest he isnt complete.

I think the look at the future come from characterization. in the older editions, people developed PCs as they went. More often now, people envision the character before play and until they get that PC, there is little investment into its current postion.

 

[ExploderWizard]

If players aren't enjoying the adventures they're participating in, that might suggest bad adventure design and/or adjudication.

As far as wanting to gain levels is concerned, that has been inherent in D&D from its beginnings. Particularly for magic-users, who (i) have always gained a new ability every level, and (ii) were desgined for many editions as requiring a significant amount of level gains in order to be fully viable characters.

Based on personal experiences I don't think it has anything to do with the adventures or what is happening in the campaign. There has been an increasing focus on the mechanical capabilities of PCs and the improvement rate at such things since 3E. The contributing factors to this are (as have been pointed out) the number of decision points for mechanical development that impact play and are made outside of actual play have increased. Also the mechanical performance of the PC construct has a much larger impact on in-game success than it used to. Player decisions thus become more valuable during character building and level-up than they do during actual adventures.

It is perfectly natural for players to focus on the parts of the activity in which their personal input matters most. In modern D&D these activities are building the character and making choices at level-up time. During an actual adventure its just a matter of pushing the buttons that you selected at your last decision point. That's old news. The interesting bit is the NEXT decision point.

The cure is to simply put the decision points that matter back where they belong- during actual play. That is why I run OD&D.

 

[Balesir]

Based on personal experiences I don't think it has anything to do with the adventures or what is happening in the campaign. There has been an increasing focus on the mechanical capabilities of PCs and the improvement rate at such things since 3E. The contributing factors to this are (as have been pointed out) the number of decision points for mechanical development that impact play and are made outside of actual play have increased. Also the mechanical performance of the PC construct has a much larger impact on in-game success than it used to. Player decisions thus become more valuable during character building and level-up than they do during actual adventures.

While I agree with the broad point, here, that players will focus where the interesting decisions are, my experience is that 4E goes some way to altering this balance by making sure there are a lot more interesting decisions to be made during play by all players. I think the exploration and social "pillars" (which 4E does via Skill Challenges) were the weakest, here, with few inherently interesting choices in the SCs (so DMs had to add them in).

My memories of very early D&D play are that decisions in play were important, too, but in a very different way. Those decisions all amounted to guessing how the DM thought the world works, and thus getting your "brilliant idea" past the DM's "does it work?" censorship. This sort of play was entertaining for a while, but I have long since grown tired of it with those I know well and it doesn't really work very satisfactorily with those I hardly know at all (which is why it doesn't work well for organised play).

I so far detect a bias towards returning to this sort of play in DDN. If it remains a core feature, then I doubt that DDN will be of much interest to me or those I play with.

 

[Celebrim]

as for the whole "them young'uns" attitude, there's nothing wrong with wanting a bit more gratification "right now". i'm 28 going on 29. i don't always have the time to dedicate to a game that i used to 15+ years ago, when i was whiling away the weekend-long sessions at my buddy's place and my biggest worry was "is my homework done?". getting a 4 hour session once a week going on regularly is VERY hard, when you need to coordinate 5-6 adults with different obligations.

I'm 40 so I sympathize, and no there is nothing wrong with wanting your gratification "right now". It's just that I think that leveling in a PnP game is not the way to be doing it. Leveling up in a PnP game carries a cost with it, and the cost IMO often offsets the gains. Besides, if leveling up is what the game is going to be about, then there is no way its ever going to be as gratifying as a cRPG which can deliver that experience without cost and with a lot more excitement. PnPs have to play to their strengths; they can't be just inferior, slower, clunkier cRPGs.

My advice to anyone who no longer felt like a 'young'un' and was getting to be a grognard and grumbling about lack of time to play and feeling like you never get anywhere is to give up on the adventure path concept. Adventure Paths are hugely about delayed gratification. You don't need big world spanning metaplots to play an enjoyable fantasy RPG. A full adventure of some scale with a tightly constructed dungeon (or even two or three) can be played out in 6-16 hours. Instead of measuring your game by the number of levels you pass, measure it by the number of adventures you've had. Supposing you only meet 40 times in a year before the group falls apart, you still might be able to get in 6-8 adventures. They don't have to be all connected to some big save the world plot. It can be enough to be big heroes in 6-8 villages. What's important isn't the levels you have, but the stories you have to tell. You can level up 10 or 12 times, but if you never had any sense of completion, so what? Conversely, you can level up 4-5 times, but if you've got stories to remember and retell no one is going to freaking care what level anyone was at the time. All those numbers on the character sheet aren't going to have any meaning after the group stops playing, but the stories of those times together will.

the overall experience i've gotten with D&D hasn't changed since i started, but my videogames have become much, much better at giving me a good experience for my time and money.

Yes, but PnP will never beat cRPGs on their own ground. You won't out Diablo Diablo or its clones. But PnP can produce experiences video games can't even come close to. Having a GM that can invent and respond intelligently changes things a lot. It's that experience that is core to what makes a PnP game fun. Ironically, PnP designs have increasingly been trying to depricate GMs, focus on tactical positions, characters powers, and so forth. It's never going to work, because as you note, videogames are already pretty good at giving that experience and are a lot easier to play.

it's fine that some people want D&D, and RPGs as a whole, to remain as it was in the 70's but when it takes months to see progress in your campaign and your character has seen little growth (or worse: having to start over because the campaign died for whatever reason), it can be frustrating. especially when i can get us 5 guys in the same room, each on our laptops/desktops, and get multiple 30-40 minute games of League of Legends on in one evening.

Those of us advocating 'old school', whatever game we have in mind when we use that term, are advocating it precisely because modern games seem to be trying to compete with League of Legends strength for strength - trying to match League of Legends accessible tactical depth, its huge array of options, and its quick play. I see modern games trying to be something equivalent to getting in multiple 30-40 minute tactical skirmish games in an evening, as if that's ever really going to draw in players from League of Legends, World of Tanks, World of Warcraft, Diablo X, or any of the other myriad options for getting your viceral fighting kicks.

It's not going to work.

which is frustrating for me since i like the idea, the concept of the TTRPG. the execution does not seem to be getting better with age.

You are right. It hasn't. If anything, it's got worse. Tracy Hickman represents pretty much the high point in adventure design, and no one has looked at what something like Dragon Lance did right and did wrong and managed to fully better that. Instead 2e (and White Wolf) took what Dragon Lance did wrong and ran with it in to a morass of lazy bad adventure design. A lot of the rest refuse to trust GMs and spend more and more time trying to communicate exactly what they want the GM to do with every situation in finer and finer details, resulting in less and less actual content. The Indy games have some good ideas, but the sort of people who write Indy games seem to be angsty and angry and it comes out in their designs in ways that don't help their games. I'm sure there are some gems out there, but they aren't getting more consistant, but rather harder and harder to find.

 

[Celebrim]

I think it goes to one what the player focuses on in their character.

If you see your wizard as a fire mage, until you get fireballl you dont care about his class features.

This is why the E6 people are on to something. You could have just as easily said, "Until you get your meteor swarm, you don't care about his class features." What if 'Fireball' was something you looked at as being as over the top (and hense as unnecessary) as Meteor Swarm? What if you saw it as not the baseline, but the capstone? If it was enough to throw fire, send spreads of flame, and so for to feel like you were a 'Fire Mage', Fireball would be exciting to obtaining but wouldn't be an end unto itself nor would it be something which - by anticipating it - you were ruining your game until you had it.

If you see you ranger as a grumpy hermit, until he can self heal and kill all the orcs in his forest he isnt complete.

Yeah, but that's like 2nd or 3rd level if 'all the orcs in his forest' are 1st level warriors.

More often now, people envision the character before play and until they get that PC, there is little investment into its current postion.

I feel that's a terrible terrible mistake foredoomed to make you miserable in the game, alway looking forward to what is going to happen and never enjoying what you have. "All his life has he looked away... to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing." That's a gaurantee that you'll become bitter about the games you play.

 

[TerraDave]

No, it hasn't.

Thats a good summary.

If anything, in olden D&D, there was a good chance you where at a lowish level, either as you had started a newish campaign, or replaced a character. And then, you wanted to level. So could have a chance to have a character you did not need to replace so soon.

And the spells you got from leveling and the treasure that coincided could be pretty nifty.

And game changing. AD&D has a steep power curve.

 

[billd91]

My advice to anyone who no longer felt like a 'young'un' and was getting to be a grognard and grumbling about lack of time to play and feeling like you never get anywhere is to give up on the adventure path concept. Adventure Paths are hugely about delayed gratification. You don't need big world spanning metaplots to play an enjoyable fantasy RPG. A full adventure of some scale with a tightly constructed dungeon (or even two or three) can be played out in 6-16 hours.

I don't find the adventure path concept to be about delayed gratification at all. As I age, in fact, I actually prefer the concept because I'm interacting with a story, NPCs, and locations with ultimately greater significance rather than a disjointed set of adventures with no appreciable thread running through them all.

That said, I can see a good argument away from the adventure path concept if you game more sporadically. If you're not playing with it regularly, it's harder to get into the unfolding story, remember the NPCs, remember all of the irons you might have in the fire, so to speak. Episodic adventures may be the better campaign model for the sporadic game.