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

Upper_Krust · Jun 11, 2019

Hey there Sacrosanct!

Sacrosanct said:
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).

AD&D by the rules ultimately ended up as Monty Haul by default, its completely unavoidable...and there was no Level cap (in certain classes), though the benefits of individual levels beyond a certain point becomes miniscule.

AD&D also granted 1XP per GP gained in an adventure. As I recall we had a rule in place whereby you couldn't gain more XP from treasure than you had gained from defeating enemies.

That said, when you reach a point where adventures are culminating in the permanent destruction of Demon Princes or even Gods on their Home Plane the XP gained was generally over a million which was typically good for 3-4 levels in a system where the Levels hit their XP required max. at around Level 10 (or whatever, depending on Class).

Gwaihir · Jun 12, 2019

The core of the guys I D&D with have been together since the early 90s. I missed about 3 years there when I was out of state for work. We played 1 per week until I got married in 2000 and since have been doing 1 or 2 per month. But No campaign has lasted more than 2 or 2 and a half years. I wish there were some characters still in play from 1992. That would be cool.

Myrhdraak · Jun 15, 2019

Well, we started back in 1985 and have been running the same campaign since then. However, we took a break during 2008-2015. When 4th edition came out I realized I could not really recreate the same characters that we had had in the old game. There was also a need to do something new that felt different and fresh. So we started running the Keep of the Shadowfell and the Thunderspire labyrinth with the 4th Edition rules. However, I did not feel we managed to create the same kind of affection/connection to the new characters as the old ones, where we had a long story with them and a complex campaign setting.

So, in 2015 we therefore went back to the old game. At that time the full 4th Edition character sets were out so we could recreate the old characters much better. I also did some rule tweaks by merging the best of 4th and 5th Edition into our own 4.5 edition rule set. This restarted was well worth the effort as we had much more depth in that campaign.

During the years I have kept logs on what happened in the games, logs that we have turned into books, retelling the story of the characters adventures. So far we are now at 3 books (covering 1985-2008), a new to soon be added covering the last 4 years of gaming. As can be seen on the covers below, book one included "When a Star Falls", while book 2 and book 3 covered much of the Planescape gaming we did during the nineties.

We are now going to celebrate 35 years of gaming next year. Already looking forward to it

/Myrhdraak

Myrhdraak · Jun 15, 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, @Upper_Krust's Thrin PC ended up with around 117 levels!

Back in 1st and 2nd Edition level progress could be quite slow, at least if you did not follow the 1 GP = 1 XP rules, and only rewarded xp for monsters. I think we spent years just to get to level 5. In 4th edition and later editions, the level progress got very much faster. When we started back in the 80ties the game was much more focused on exploration, travel, discover the world, etc. Combat was something you tried to avoid at low level, just in order to survive. I do not think that kind of gameplay would work today when people are used to fast level progress in video games, etc. At least not for mainstream. I also think that once you start working and people move to different locations, it is much harder to meet often to play. Back in the 80ties we used to play every or every second week. These days we maybe manage to play live 2 times a year, and over Internet 2-4 times a year. This of course have a massive impact on how fast you level up. Currently our party just made it to 10th level, and we maybe level up every second year with the pace we have today.

pogre · Jun 15, 2019

Myrhdraak said:
During the years I have kept logs on what happened in the games, logs that we have turned into books, retelling the story of the characters adventures. So far we are now at 3 books (covering 1985-2008), a new to soon be added covering the last 4 years of gaming. As can be seen on the covers below, book one included "When a Star Falls", while book 2 and book 3 covered much of the Planescape gaming we did during the nineties.
View attachment 107076
We are now going to celebrate 35 years of gaming next year. Already looking forward to it

/Myrhdraak

Really fun idea with the books!

I have been gaming with some guys for 40+ years, but none of our PCs are very old. We have bounced around on systems quite a bit too.