90% of D&D Games Stop By Level 10; Wizards More Popular At Higher Levels

Paul Farquhar said:

I've heard a couple of people saying stuff along the lines of "well, a high level game should involve things like building a stronghold, running a kingdom, etc". I would suggest that this is exactly what players don't want to do. Why do people play D&D? - to escape their everyday lives, mostly. What do my player's everyday lives entail? Responsibility, organisation, management, homemaking. They don't want a fantasy where they do the things they are trying to escape from (with the stakes ramped up to 11)! They want a fantasy where they go out and bash a few naughty monsters.

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If those are the desires of your players, yup. 5e allows that.

But for others, the building something that lasts aspect may be equally as rewarding.

The key is I believe to be able to do what your objectives are and picking the campaign style forbit.

It may well be that starting st 5th, running thru 10th thrn reboot is the ideal campaign style for a group.

5ekyu said:

"She's not a gamer gearhead - she's an artist. She liked some aspects of the game, but the crunch and sheer detail was too much."

This requires DMing in a way that doesn't result in a "read all this and learn it" experience.

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Well, if that is what is required, then it'd be great if the STARTER SET wasn't presented in that way. If the character sheet only had like six numbers on it, a box for HP and AC, and a line to write your name, then the required light-touch would be obvious. As it stood, we were all trying to figure out the rules and make heads-and-tails of these densely worded character sheets at the same time. It took us like a half hour at least to read through the pregen character sheets.

"Ok so you get the basic idea - what kind of hero-to-be would you like to play?" comes **after** some discussions of genre related bits they like.

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But all we had was the Starter Set - there are no character creation rules. I did start with questions: which of these class/backgrounds would you like to play? And what is the name of your noble fighter?

You build some early character for them and hand them a basic summary easy-to-go guide of a character.

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I don't know how to build a character. I got Starter Set, and for the second session, printed off some spell list from the Basic Rules.

not just dumping an official DDB print-out.

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It's not a DDB print out. It's the Starter Set character sheet!

Then you hook them with the play, not the rules, not the system.

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Okay, but I am learning how to play too. That's why I bought the Starter Set.

They say "run across the room, jump the table and grab them..." and as they move the figure you start slipping in "so you jump the table make an athletics check" and "roll d20 plus athletics for the grapple attack to grab."

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That sounds great, but even after reading the Starter rule book a couple times, that capacity for rules mastery did not sink in.

There is a lot of skill needed to bring folks into a game that they are unfamilar with. You don't just sit someone down to play poker and hand them the Roger's Rules and start dealing

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Okay, true - yet *I* am learning how to play/DM 5E for the first time too. Are you speaking to me, or to whoever wrote the Starter Set?

I do appreciate your tips, yet I am speaking as a Novice DM who invited two Novice Players to try to learn how to play D&D with the STARTER SET. And that was my experience and observations. I can only imagine the level of complexity at 10th level+.

The good news is that the other player is really digging it, and we have been playing one-on-one feverishly now. Into our sixth session - cleared Crawmaw Hideout and Redbrand Hideout. The basics are starting to become intuitive.

And yet...really, I'm not looking forward to mastering more and more rules and info. I like the D&D world - the adventure sites. And I like the basic D&D "vibe."

Basically, I want a D&D that is still a RPG, and still looks and feels like D&D, and is set in the D&D Multiverse...but which has only one new power/character ability per level. Including only one spell per level.

This "Simply D&D" outline gives some good parameters: https://sites.google.com/site/dndphilmont/simple-rpg

Wiseblood said:

If you’re all new to it don’t beat yourself up. A few key points is all you need. You need hit points, Armor Class ( or target number) and dice to roll and a modifier if any. That’s it. All the other rules are superfluous. They’re just there to create a more clear shared picture or experience. If everyone at the table can pretend, you’re on your way. If they can’t, it still can work and frequently does.

The rules are abundant and dense. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea. I even play with people that don’t even like D&D. They just couldn’t stay away from a table full of friends that were chatting and having a good time.

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Thanks Wiseblood.

D&D with just 6 ability scores, hp, and AC...plus one power per level. That's what I'd like.

I do aspire to perhaps build it into a social venue which "non-gamers" might warm to. We'll see. First I gotta figure out how to play! haha

5ekyu said:

If those are the desires of your players, yup. 5e allows that.

But for others, the building something that lasts aspect may be equally as rewarding.

The key is I believe to be able to do what your objectives are and picking the campaign style forbit.

It may well be that starting st 5th, running thru 10th thrn reboot is the ideal campaign style for a group.

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Yeah, and we actually liked the stronghold building part of the game. I think Paul is mistaken to assume players don't want that. Maybe he doesn't. But fortress building and all that is NOT like real life, so I'm not sure why he would compare the two as being similar. I don't own a castle or an army, do you? Does he? Building castles and raising armies is still very much a game, especially when your stronghold gets attacked, or you expand your area of control. People still love to play Settlers of Cataan even though building farms is pretty common.

*Edit* And I'd posit that if his players want "to bash monsters", then what better way to do that than to use an entire army? You can bash lots of heads that way

Travis Henry said:

Well, if that is what is required, then it'd be great if the STARTER SET wasn't presented in that way. If the character sheet only had like six numbers on it, a box for HP and AC, and a line to write your name, then the required light-touch would be obvious. As it stood, we were all trying to figure out the rules and make heads-and-tails of these densely worded character sheets at the same time. It took us like a half hour at least to read through the pregen character sheets.



But all we had was the Starter Set - there are no character creation rules. I did start with questions: which of these class/backgrounds would you like to play? And what is the name of your noble fighter?



I don't know how to build a character. I got Starter Set, and for the second session, printed off some spell list from the Basic Rules.



It's not a DDB print out. It's the Starter Set character sheet!



Okay, but I am learning how to play too. That's why I bought the Starter Set.



That sounds great, but even after reading the Starter rule book a couple times, that capacity for rules mastery did not sink in.



Okay, true - yet *I* am learning how to play/DM 5E for the first time too. Are you speaking to me, or to whoever wrote the Starter Set?

I do appreciate your tips, yet I am speaking as a Novice DM who invited two Novice Players to try to learn how to play D&D with the STARTER SET. And that was my experience and observations. I can only imagine the level of complexity at 10th level+.

The good news is that the other player is really digging it, and we have been playing one-on-one feverishly now. Into our sixth session - cleared Crawmaw Hideout and Redbrand Hideout. The basics are starting to become intuitive.

And yet...really, I'm not looking forward to mastering more and more rules and info. I like the D&D world - the adventure sites. And I like the basic D&D "vibe."

Basically, I want a D&D that is still a RPG, and still looks and feels like D&D, and is set in the D&D Multiverse...but which has only one new power/character ability per level. Including only one spell per level.

This "Simply D&D" outline gives some good parameters: https://sites.google.com/site/dndphilmont/simple-rpg

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I have not seen or read or purchased the starter set so i cannot make any comments on whether or not it is good.

But, to me, an RPG is not like a board game or a deck of cards that can be unboxed and played without one player having good knowledge ahead of time of how to play - that person being the GM.

Almost every RPG product i have ever seen said outright that the Gm **should** read thru completely and get familiar with that product before running it. Even the most basic mudles did that - though likely some of the straight-to-pdf dollar mods dont.

If starter set told you you did not need to do that prep as GM, then hey, that could be a very flawed product.

i am glad whatever that other game you keep posting to is meeting your group's needs. But its not for me and i certainly hope DnD 5e does not go that way myself.

Sacrosanct said:

Yeah, and we actually liked the stronghold building part of the game. I think Paul is mistaken to assume players don't want that. Maybe he doesn't. But fortress building and all that is NOT like real life, so I'm not sure why he would compare the two as being similar. I don't own a castle or an army, do you? Does he? Building castles and raising armies is still very much a game, especially when your stronghold gets attacked, or you expand your area of control. People still love to play Settlers of Cataan even though building farms is pretty common.

*Edit* And I'd posit that if his players want "to bash monsters", then what better way to do that than to use an entire army? You can bash lots of heads that way

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Yeah - for my current game, i introduced a "lair development potential benefit" at 3rd level and now the bard player (one of the bard players) is now thinking about and wanting to look into establishing a "base" for a potential lair. He knows its a long way off, but that seed of interest has already been planted by showing one benefit hint to them. More will follow.

I anticipate that they will look at every partially ruined "site" they clear out (and the other types of location-based hooks they play thru) with an added layer of interest for "maybe after we clear it we could...".

The beauty is, if they don't, they don't. The game proceeds and the stories occur and that bit drops away - except for when they see others in the world using it.

But if i had not presented it into the game in a way that showed them its possible - for them - i would not have given them the chance to show me what they want and don't want.

5ekyu said:

I have not seen or read or purchased the starter set so i cannot make any comments on whether or not it is good.

But, to me, an RPG is not like a board game or a deck of cards that can be unboxed and played without one player having good knowledge ahead of time of how to play - that person being the GM.

Almost every RPG product i have ever seen said outright that the Gm **should** read thru completely and get familiar with that product before running it. Even the most basic mudles did that - though likely some of the straight-to-pdf dollar mods dont.

If starter set told you you did not need to do that prep as GM, then hey, that could be a very flawed product.

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Whoa whoa there. I read the Starter Rules twice, and the Phandevler Adventure twice. Before starting.
While I'm sure there are people who are quicker than me, I'm not going to feel ashamed for not being a paragon of system mastery from the start.

And there's lots of stuff in the Starter Set which is either not clear or *too detailed*.

For example, not clear for Novice DM: The first encounter is basically like: Here's four goblins. See stats on page such-and-such. But doesn't remind/explain to use the Goblin's Bonus Hide and Bonus Disengage. Sure, the rules for Hide and Disengage and Bonus Action are somewhere in the Rulebook, but geez, for the first encounter, let's give a sentence or two explaining and reminding exactly how this will look in the goblin encounter!

And the pages-and-pages of write-ups for the various townspeople could've really been distilled into a few bullet points. Name, key info (preferably written out as a sample quote), and adventure seed. Voila.

But this thread is not about that.

I'm just saying that, having played 5E at 1st level, it's no wonder people give up by 10th level. It's fun, but would be more fun (for me) if further streamlined.

Travis Henry said:

Whoa whoa there. I read the Starter Rules twice, and the Phandevler Adventure twice. Before starting.
While I'm sure there are people who are quicker than me, I'm not going to feel ashamed for not being a paragon of system mastery from the start.

And there's lots of stuff in the Starter Set which is either not clear or *too detailed*.

For example, not clear for Novice DM: The first encounter is basically like: Here's four goblins. See stats on page such-and-such. But doesn't remind/explain to use the Goblin's Bonus Hide and Bonus Disengage. Sure, the rules for Hide and Disengage and Bonus Action are somewhere in the Rulebook, but geez, for the first encounter, let's give a sentence or two explaining and reminding exactly how this will look in the goblin encounter!

And the pages-and-pages of write-ups for the various townspeople could've really been distilled into a few bullet points. Name, key info (preferably written out as a sample quote), and adventure seed. Voila.

But this thread is not about that.

I'm just saying that, having played 5E at 1st level, it's no wonder people give up by 10th level. It's fun, but would be more fun (for me) if further streamlined.

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Again, cannot comment on the merits and flaws of the starter kit. but if folks new to the game made it to 10th, i woulda thought they had a grasp on it by then. (Excepting of course a recent example where someone started at 5th, sped thru 5-10 and then an encounter hit what was basically an inexperienced party wrong.)

Like i said, if you found a system that does better for you and yours, thats fantastic. long long ago i realized not every game will suit every playstyle, preference or need. There have been a friggin' ton of games i bought, read and dismissed as "not for me" or "not for us" even if they had very good stuff in them.

ad_hoc said:

I'm not really sure how Beyond works, is it possible that people are creating level 20 characters as character building exercises? Maybe that plays into why classes are differently popular at different tiers.

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I also wondered this....

Sacrosanct said:

I know they are very cautious about book bloat in this edition, but after 5 years, even I can agree there needs to be a high level campaign book. Ideally, one that references all the other campaigns in how you can continue and incorporate them (STK, ToA, etc) into a high level campaign. I mean, there's so much there from each that can easily be put into a high level campaign, it's just begging for it.

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Dungeon of the Mad Mage.

It's good too.