Interview in "The Atlantic" with a D&D group that has been together for over 30 years

Siriak · Jun 8, 2019

Here is an interview in "The Atlantic" that is a discussion with a group that has been playing D&D together for over 30 years:

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/...ng-dungeons-dragons-together-30-years/591085/

Zardnaar · Jun 8, 2019

I have heard stories like this on other forums. Hard core grognards not only playing 1E and BECMI but the same campaigns from the 80's.

digitalelf · Jun 9, 2019

Father Matallica indeed! :erm:

Guest 6801328 · Jun 9, 2019

Good read.

S'mon · Jun 9, 2019

I always wonder how people playing D&D with the same characters for many years can avoid out-levelling the game. My longest campaign was 4e Loudwater, 103 sessions over 5.5 years, with the one PC who lasted the whole campaign going from 1 to 30. 3e and 5e seem a fair bit quicker; my long running 5e games reach 20th level after a few years. Back when I ran 1e in the 80s/90s we ended up with god PCs, [MENTION=326]Upper_Krust[/MENTION]'s Thrin PC ended up with around 117 levels!

Dannyalcatraz · Jun 10, 2019

I’m a member of a trio that has been gaming together since the mid 1980s. In that time, we’ve had other players come and go- still friends, just not gaming anymore- and the original core campaign was active all the way from AD&D into PC conversion to 3Ed/3.5.

Two of us joined another group in the late-1990s while the third was pursuing advanced degrees out of the state. That group gamed from @1998-2016, albeit in various campaigns covering a handful of systems and genres, not just D&D.

Simultaneously with that group, the two of us were also part of a group in which I ran one single D&D campaign for @3 years.

Our third friend had long since come back, and was briefly part of that secondary campaign, but left after a year to attend Oxford. By the time he got back- diplomas in hand- the secondary group had imploded and there were people in the initial group with whom he didn’t wish to associate. And the second guy in our triad finally revealed he didn’t want to convert his 2Ed PCs into 3ED or 3.5Ed, so that marked the end of that campaign as being active.

Ralif Redhammer · Jun 10, 2019

As much as I respect groups that have kept the same campaign going for multiple decades, I think that that’s not always a good thing. This struck me particularly with the other ongoing group in Canada that was profiled a while back. I think that sometimes you need to start over, to finish a game. Otherwise, you don’t have as much of chance to try new things, to develop. You just start to get this kludged-on thing that doesn’t really change or improve.

But yeah, Pierce the Protector, Wylo the Traveler, Anthriathorn the Awe-Inspiring, and then Jonathan Wolf and Father Metallica! That’s some GRRM Jon, Ned, and Robb level naming.

Sacrosanct · Jun 10, 2019

S'mon said:
I always wonder how people playing D&D with the same characters for many years can avoid out-levelling the game. My longest campaign was 4e Loudwater, 103 sessions over 5.5 years, with the one PC who lasted the whole campaign going from 1 to 30. 3e and 5e seem a fair bit quicker; my long running 5e games reach 20th level after a few years. Back when I ran 1e in the 80s/90s we ended up with god PCs, [MENTION=326]Upper_Krust[/MENTION]'s Thrin PC ended up with around 117 levels!

Some of the people I game with, we have been gaming together since 1986. Not all of course, as some new players joined, etc. To give context, we played AD&D 1e until 2012 when we started the 5e playtest. To answer your question, we played high level PCs like AD&D designed for them to be played. I.e., when they got high level, they started strongholds, did land management, and the game shifted from a dungeon crawl to more of a resource/land/conquer type of game. They also got retired and just made cameos every once in a while. Not counting one offs where we played a super high level PC, the highest level PC I ever had in over 30 years of gaming with natural XP progression was level 16. Most of the time, when our PCs manage to live long enough to get to level 10 or so, we do the above and semi-retire them. If anyone tells me they have a PC higher than level 30 or so (let alone 117!), that tells me they probably played MOnty Haul with super fast level progression outside of how the game was designed (remember, in AD&D, you couldn't gain levels without training, and you were capped at how many levels you could go up regardless of XP gained, and it costs a lot of money to do so. Many people didn't play this way, but that's how the game was designed to be).

Upper_Krust · Jun 10, 2019

S'mon said:
I always wonder how people playing D&D with the same characters for many years can avoid out-levelling the game. My longest campaign was 4e Loudwater, 103 sessions over 5.5 years, with the one PC who lasted the whole campaign going from 1 to 30. 3e and 5e seem a fair bit quicker; my long running 5e games reach 20th level after a few years. Back when I ran 1e in the 80s/90s we ended up with god PCs, [MENTION=326]Upper_Krust[/MENTION]'s Thrin PC ended up with around 117 levels!

Yes I'd be interested to know how they didn't 'max out' their characters myself.

The bigger problem I always had with roleplaying a long established character was the extreme amount of tension involved in encounters where you could die (which was basically every combat encounter S'mon ran). When you have put 1000 gaming hours into a specific character that's a lot of personal investment on the line. I suspect its akin to high stakes poker tournaments.

Dannyalcatraz · Jun 10, 2019

If anyone tells me they have a PC higher than level 30 or so (let alone 117!), that tells me they probably played MOnty Haul with super fast level progression outside of how the game was designed...

The highest level PC in our long campaign was our second player’s 31 or so level Wizard, with others in the high 20s. But it took a decade+ to get there.

In fact, we actually slowed things down a bit by not awarding XP for treasure or walkover opponents.