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 Has the "here and now" been replaced by the "next level" attitude?

[pemerton]

TI was sitting in on a game where the party had just beaten the dungeon boss, the players said "OK, we loot him", and the DM - who as both player and DM has little patience for anything that doesn't directly move to the next encounter - said, "OK, you loot him (lists off what was found) and now a few days later you're back in town." Because the DM wanted to just get on with it he didn't give the characters any chance to explore the now-empty dungeon or to do anything during travel or to go somewhere else entirely. I asked the players later whether this was normal for that campaign; turns out it was, and the campaign didn't last much longer.

The way you write this implies that cutting to the chase is the explanation for why the campaign didn't last much longer. But even if that's true in this particular case, it can't be generalised. I very much preer to cut to the chase, and have zero interest in Gygax-style "looting as a further element of play", but my current campaign is in its 6th year and two of the players in my group have been in the group for 17 years.

So there is nothing about a fairly hard scene-framing approach per se that is inimical to serious and long-term play.

what's the rush? Are you terminally ill? Are you required to stop playing at a certain age?

<snip>

Personally, I would rather "stop and smell the roses" and it take 2 years, than to run by those roses and finish the game in 6 months time.

I can't speak for [MENTION=177]Umbran[/MENTION], but in my case I want the game to be engaging. For me, mapping dungeons, or spending play time working out whether or not a Hammer of Thunderbolts is hidden in a secret compartment, is not engaging. I personally find it a bit tedious. If a conflict has been resolved, I prefer to frame the ingame situation into the next conflict.

the adventures are still THE game together at the table.

Sure. But this is not a reason to avoid reasonably hard scene-framing. Nor is it a reason to avoid levelling. If part of the campaign conceit is that the scope and consequences of play will expand (heroic > paragon > epic) then levelling is inherent to enjoying and experiencing the game together at the table.

 

[Celebrim]

My problem Lanefan is that if it takes two years to be "just getting going" I want to blow my brains out.

I have zero interest in a campaign where the presumption of play is that long. [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] mentioned being three years into a bi-weekly game and the players still don't know what the big bad is doing.

I'm just not interested in that game.

Well, in my defense, they have at this point figured out and thwarted the plans of multiple sub-bosses, and we are on our third (related) story arc. Broken down in another way we are on what amounts to at least our seventh major adventure, six of which have already been brought to a triumphant and victorious resolution in some fashion (although one might be counted as a draw, in that the villain was not fully vanquished), along with I don't know how many other smaller story arcs and side encounters (some player driven, some not, some triumphant and some not - I think they are still miffed that they couldn't thwart the Nautians political mechanations). For example, last session they learned of and resolved a murder mystery related to the current major story arc in the same session (thanks to some quick thinking and judicious and appropriate spell use by the Shaman). Some groups would count that as getting a lot done. That we aren't 20th level or indeed nth level I consider irrelevant. What's important is we've had tons of story, and the fact that we are lowish level means that I've plenty of room for both tons more while still allowing for mechanical character development (and we are starting to see some personality development as well).

At this point they know the big bad has had his minions collecting various magical items, they just don't know why although they have various clues (among many, the stolen hymnal, the organ maker, the lust for orichalcum, the vivamancy experiment they discovered in the tomb of Menes III, the desire for dark fire, the involvement of the keltern heretics, and the interest in restoring the age of the art mages) and they have drawings now of the device in what they assume is its completed state. If I'd felt that the game was not going to run this long, then each of the individual sub-arcs could have been used as a stopping point. If I felt the game was going to be even shorter than that, each of the seven 'modules' or 'chapters' could have been a stand alone adventure.

Frankly though, on the basis of how you'd judge good literature, it wouldn't be a very good story if the protagonists figure out what is going on long before we reach a climax. Since we all want to keep playing, I consider it a sign of the strength of my creation, rather than a flaw in it, that it hasn't been simple to lift the veil of mystery from the story despite figuring out many smaller puzzles along the way. Nothing is worse that getting into a story and figuring out how it is going to end only 30 pages into it.

 

[Umbran]

So I ask you this, what's the rush?

It isn't rushing. It is merely prioritizing. When you have time in excess, you don't mind so much if you use some of it on things that are less than stellar. When you're down to spending less than a quarter of the time you used to on your favorite hobby, you're naturally going to pick your favorite parts of it to do. If I spend my three hours of gaming doing stuff that doesn't really jazz me, it is going to be two whole weeks before I will get another shot at it.

Simply put - when you have less time, you edit.

Are you terminally ill? Are you required to stop playing at a certain age?

Neither*. You keep framing this as if it is a long-haul issue, when it isn't. Much of the value of entertainment and play is *short* term.

Maybe, it's because you want to play that next concept you had your mind on?

Not in the least. It takes me a long, long time to get bored with a character. Most campaigns die due to changes in player's lives and situations before I get bored.

I'm not even talking specifically about leveling now - I play some games (like FATE) which don't have leveling and power growth as a major part of the game. I'm talking about concentrating about what matters to the players. For some, that will be leveling, for others, it will be other aspects of the game. If I were feeding my players a meal, and nobody really liked mushrooms, I'd leave mushrooms of the menu. Same concept applies here - you generally edit down to the stuff your people like best.



*I am not terminally ill. But one of my players is. He has had to drop out of my game, because chemotherapy means he can't make it to game, or concentrate much if he did come. And I wish we'd been able to finish some character arc for him before he had to drop. But there wasn't time. Thanks for asking.

This is important - you won't live forever. So, don't spend time doing crap you don't like that doesn't give you value in some other way.

 

[Hussar]

[MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] That was in no ways meant to be a knock on your game. I always stand in awe of your style of games.

It's just not for me. I look at something like Paizo's AP's which would last about two years of weekly play for me as just about ideal. For me that is.

 

[Celebrim]

[MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION]It's just not for me. I look at something like Paizo's AP's which would last about two years of weekly play for me as just about ideal. For me that is.

So what's the difference between a weekly game lasting 2 years and a biweekly game lasting 4, beyond the fervor and intensity of playing every week?

 

[Incenjucar]

Basically what Umbran said.

We have this one life of an essentially random number of hours (because you could just get a blood clot in your brain one day for no particular reason), and many people now have the resources to do a billion different enjoyable things, so stretching the fun out over a long time doesn't make sense unless that is itself specifically a thing you enjoy.

I can process too much enjoyment and have too many sources of enjoyment to slog through just a handful of them. Carpe diem is a saying I take to heart. This is especially so since, partly thanks to spending so much time with RPGs and other kinds of story-based experiences, I can process story information faster than any DM or player can talk, so even rapid-pace gaming is a slow, relaxing experience for me compared to my maximum rate of pleasure input.

For me, a slow, long game is like a 56K modem. I don't get anything out of it being slow except being anxious because I could be doing something else. The world is full of fun things like baking in the kitchen, going dancing, watching burlesque, sailing, playing with pets, hiking in forests, dating, cosplaying, learning new skills or information, making or enjoying art, massage circles, knitting, swimming, fishing....

There is nothing wrong with taking it slow, but, for me, I have too many joys and too few hours to spend so many on just one.

 

[Celebrim]

There is nothing wrong with taking it slow, but, for me, I have too many joys and too few hours to spend so many on just one.

This is reaching the point that I'm not really understanding the difference between taking it slow and taking it fast.

The original question I understood. The question had to do with the speed of leveling relative to people's enjoyment, and the OP's impression that people expected faster leveling now than he's used to.

But we seem to have moved passed that. Now we seem to be talking about speed of story, and I'm increasingly not sure what exactly that means. I thought it meant something like, "We focus on things that advance the story and we only spend time on things that are relevant to determining how the story goes and what the story is.", which I could largely agree with though we'd probably quibble about the exact ways to artfully do that.

But when you start going, "This is especially so since, partly thanks to spending so much time with RPGs and other kinds of story-based experiences, I can process story information faster than any DM or player can talk", now I'm confused. Because I really haven't yet met the RPG that fits story into the game at faster than conversational speed. Novels of course manage story at faster than conversational speed depending on how fast you can read silently, but that's not an interactive experience. Most cRPGs are going to be 30-40 hours of experience for what amounts to 3-5 PnP short adventure modules worth of story and generally most of them deliver their story at conversational speed through dialogue and cut scenes. If you are playing them at a faster rate, you certainly aren't getting immersive story out of them.

The story pacing at my table is generally considerably faster than Robert Jordan or GRR Martin, and a lot less leisurely than fishing tends to be. I could speed up the pace of leveling by dumping story in order to focus on non-story related activity - like combats and gaining levels - or by arbitrarily dumping XP infusions on the characters, but I'm not sure what that gets me other than NPCs with bigger numbers in order to be a challenge. If leveling up was the measure of a story, then surely Diablo has some of the finest stories in all of cRPGs. The players could speed up the pace of the story, but only by always knowing what to do to resolve the current conflicts in the story, which would certainly be a linear experience devoid of mystery and probably excitement. Likewise, I could move the players toward faster play by in some way facilitating telling them what to do next, but again - linear, devoid of mystery, and probably excitement to say nothing of player agency.

So if we are no longer talking about the velocity of the leveling, but rather the velocity of the story - how are we going to even define what a stories pacing is? We can say that a story is shorter or longer, but we can't necessarily say that because a story has 10 or 100 or 1000 that one story moved more slowly than the other. It's likely rather that fewer things are happening in the shorter story, and that the longer story had more to say. I'm not saying that is always or necessarily true, but how to do we go about tallying meaningful events and compare rate of story?

 

[Umbran]

So what's the difference between a weekly game lasting 2 years and a biweekly game lasting 4, beyond the fervor and intensity of playing every week?

Consider how many pages you read of EN World over a day. Now, read the same number of pages, but do that over the course of two days instead. Then do it over the course of one week. What's the difference?

There's what I think to be a false assumption here, that what really matters is starting at point A, and getting to point B, and how you go about it doesn't really matter. This seems to me to be missing the fact that the journey is undertaken not for the sake of journeying, but for the sake of generating enjoyment for the person on the journey! Then, for each person, how the journey is conducted certainly does matter!

 

[Elf Witch]

I have noticed that I am now in the camp of can we hurry up and level. My reason is I am deathly sick of the lower grind levels. I have been playing the game for years now and it sometimes gets frustrating to wait to truly be able to play your concept. And many times games have fizzled before you get to do what you really want.

I have noticed that when I play Shadowrun or other non level type games this is not a problem mainly because you start with a more effective character and usually can play your character concept right away.

We are second level right now and I hate my character. I am playing a necromancer and it will be several levels before I can truly be a necromancer instead of just the wizard with ray of enfeeblement.

I enjoy the world I am playing in and the RP is fun but combat is so boring I can do it in my sleep.

There are so many issues say you want to multiclass as part of your concept but at first level you can only be one of your classes.

I am not sure how to fix this as long as we have a game where your character improves through gaining levels.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I am not sure how to fix this as long as we have a game where your character improves through gaining levels.

Gaining levels is an option. There's no reason you can't have, say, a level 10 campaign where you create level 10 characters and just stay level 10 the whole time.