Why PCs should be competent, or "I got a lot of past in my past"

[Celebrim]

But what I want is not just backstory. I also want characters that are competent. If I'm running or playing in a space campaign, I don't want PCs who don't know that the engines are supposed to point toward the ground and if they don't they won't be going to space today. If I'm doing heists, I don't want PCs ripping off old doddering grandmothers. I don't want to spend a year of playing to get to something approaching adequate competency.

And again, I'm not talking just in D&D terms here – D&D is perhaps a bad example because there everyone is supposed to be good at various means of kicking butt and only moderately good at anything else. If you're doing Star Trek TNG, you don't expect Geordi LaForge to be particularly good at fisticuffs – but he's going to be really good at engineering, because that's his job. And he's good at that job from the very first episode of the show, just like I want my characters to be good at their jobs from the very first session.

I get that. And there is nothing at all wrong with wanting to skip what is in typical D&D levels 0-4 where you are competent TV police show competent ("You're Crocket and Tubbs"), but not yet up to action movie hero competency ("You're John McClain, John Rambo, and Indiana Jones"). Some systems start you out at "action movie hero" and if you want to do that in D&D you can start at level 5 or level 7 and that's fine and a valid way to play. That's the aesthetic of "Fantasy" as I describe in this essay: https://www.enworld.org/threads/towards-a-functional-taxonomy-of-role-playing-gamers.693886/.

But I reject the notion that a 1st level D&D PC is incompetent or deserves to be described as "don't know that the engines are supposed to point toward the ground". My 1st level D&D PCs are expected to do heroic service and accomplish dramatic things. It's just that their competency is at the scale of big fish in a small pond. Whatever they are good at, they are one of the best people in their village at. If they are archers, they'll finish in the top 3 at the festival archery competition when all the yeoman come in from the surrounding hamlets. People remark on them and are like, "So much talent for someone so young." A typical 1st level PC in my game is as competent as a 3rd level NPC, and much more dangerous than most 3rd level NPCs. They can kick butt. They are good at their jobs from the very first session. Maybe they took that away in 5e as the default I don't know, or maybe you played with GMs that prefer to kick the players around and exercise dysfunctional power fantasies of their own; I don't know. I just don't get the idea that you can't have backstory and can't be competent at as a 1st level D&D character.

What 1st level character isn't yet is competent on a national scale or international scale. There are NPCs out there that stand head and shoulders above them - already existing famous heroes. What is true though at least how I play is that they have just as much potential as any NPC in the setting. I try to avoid creating NPCs with as much point by as a PC. I won't cheat like in Forgotten Realms or Dragon Lance and stat up NPCs with much higher potential than the PCs merely to make strong antagonists, much less omnipotent forces to force the PCs to behave. And that problem isn't solved by merely starting at higher level, as if a GM doesn't restraint themselves, they always have the resources to make NPCs cooler than PCs. You don't solve that problem by "starting at 5th level". I've been at tables where you started at 5th level and then all the NPCs were 10th level.

There is a problem with comparing your character to Geordie La Forge. Geordie isn't merely competent at a local or national scale. He's one of the most competent engineers in the galaxy; the intellectual peer of Einstein and Newton. If you're Geordie La Forge at the start of the game then you are already at the pinnacle of competency. You don't get more competent. You're playing an 8th level character in a system that caps at 8th level. You're playing a system that doesn't level up or else you are making choices that amount to indulging fantasy to the extent and to the exclusion of other aesthetics of play that it's fair to label that style Monte Haul.

And for a lot of us, starting with a hypercompetent character doesn't even engage Fantasy all that well because it feels unearned. It feels like playing Diablo with a gear trainer that gives you all the goodies to start with, at which point, why are we still playing?

 

[Celebrim]

Yeah, but the question is, is that that way for any reason other than 50 years of habit?

Leveling up your character to Geordie Laforge levels feels a lot more earned and a lot more satisfying to a lot of us, especially if it was obvious that it wasn't the inevitable outcome, than just by fiat writing up a "9th level character" to start without any real struggle and any real lived story how we got there.

There is a very big difference between passively consumed and actively consumed media. There is a very big difference of experience in watching a hero do his thing and being the hero.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Leveling up your character to Geordie Laforge levels feels a lot more earned and a lot more satisfying to a lot of us, especially if it was obvious that it wasn't the inevitable outcome, than just by fiat writing up a "9th level character" to start without any real struggle and any real lived story how we got there.

There is a very big difference between passively consumed and actively consumed media. There is a very big difference of experience in watching a hero do his thing and being the hero.

But is there for most people, or is that just what D&D and its kin have taught them there is? That's my point; that's just an assumption, but its essentially impossible to determine after decades of people being taught as a given that's how you do it whether that's how most people actually roll naturally or not.

 

[Celebrim]

But is there for most people, or is that just what D&D and its kin have taught them there is? That's my point; that's just an assumption, but its essentially impossible to determine after decades of people being taught as a given that's how you do it whether that's how most people actually roll naturally or not.

Don't you think that in 40 years of gaming I've done it both ways? I've started characters at 7th level and 10th level and even 18th level. And I've played in CoC, D6, Gamma World, GURPS, Aliens, Chill, Boot Hill, Paranoia, RIFTS, etc. etc. and I'm familiar with many more rule sets. I think I've gone out of my way to repeatedly say that if you want to start out as high-level characters where high-level means "relative to setting" that that's a perfectly valid way to play.

But I'm getting really tired of the assumption that if people don't agree with you and have different subjective preferences that they are doing so out of ignorance.

 

[Staffan]

Yes, but, in D&D, you don't start with Geordi LaForge. You start with engineering ensign fresh from Academy. Your class IS your profession, your job if you will. LV1 characters are meant to be novices, green and inexperienced. Experienced characters are presumed to be higher level than 1.

And that's one of my big problems with D&D. That's the whole point of this thread. I don't want to play someone fresh out of the Academy. Been there, done that. I want to play someone who knows what they're doing, and I'm not interested in spending months or years of game time before getting to the good part.

And more notably, it becomes a more interesting mix if there are several characters who all are competent in their own ways and come from different backgrounds. Amos Burton, Naomi Nagata, James Holden, and Alex Kamal might all be working for Pur'n'kleen right now when they're picking up a distress call, but they are all highly competent in their fields and come from very different backgrounds. I mean, I guess it's possible to run multiple campaigns starting as nobodies and, once competent, funnel one character from each into the real campaign, but that sounds like a whole lot of unnecessary effort.

 

[GrimCo]

Yeah, but the question is, is that that way for any reason other than 50 years of habit?

I would say that's cause D&D tends to go for that "Zero to Hero" trope. To be honest, although i didn't try bunch of game systems, most of them that i did try, starting characters aren't really that experienced. And those that let you start really competent in some areas, FE WoD if you start with 3-4 dots and specialization in skill, it's hard to get better trough the game at those things that you already start very good at. It just costs too much for marginal benefit. So if you start with 4 dots in Computers, to raise it to 5, it costs 15xp points + 3xp for new specialty. 18xp is couple of sessions worth of exp.

In classed systems, where class=job, competence level=levels in your class.

And to be honest, i do think that lv1 PC are competent enough. I'll use real world analogy. Background in engineering is like having bacc degree in engineering, but no work experience. LV1 engineer would be someone with around 1 year of work experience. That's somebody in their early to mid 20s, they do have enough past in their past, but not all from that past is relevant to their job, lots of it is based on social interactions, connections with other people etc. They are competent enough to work unsupervised, you can count on them to do task appropriate to their experience level successfully on day to day basis. I also expect them to fail sometimes if they need to do it under stressful conditions ( short deadlines, multiple tasks that need to be handled simultaneously, bad communication inside the project team etc). On the other hand, even very experienced engineers fail sometimes at complex problems under stressful conditions.

If you don't want to play fresh out of academy character, then you need to start at higher level. It's that simple. I'm not familiar with you example, sorry. LV 5 is good place to start with if you want to play decently experienced and established character in D&D. Or maybe try classless system like GURPS or WoD.

 

[Wolfpack48]

HeroQuest had an interesting concept called Mastery. Each level of Mastery (assigned per skill) allowed you to bump the level of success on any test by one. So one level of Mastery bumped a failure to success, or a special success to a critical success. Be interesting to see how that might scale with different levels as a professional.

 

[GrimCo]

One good example of lv1 character who has lots of past in his past is from the tv show "Rookie".

Nolan is 40 something rookie police officer. Yes, he has lot's of past in his background. He is competent in home renovations ( tool proficiency). He has decent amount of life experience so he can better navigate social dynamics (lets say he has proficiency in Insight and Persuasion). In 3ed, middle aged characters got bonuses to mental stats but penalties to physical. So he would have decent wisdom and charisma. But when it comes to his new job, police officer, he is just lv1. Rookie. He handles himself better in social conflicts since he has more life knowledge, but in strictly cop stuff he is not really that good. And we see him trough seasons how he gets better and better at being cop, so he effectively gets class levels in Cop class.

 

[Celebrim]

And that's one of my big problems with D&D. That's the whole point of this thread. I don't want to play someone fresh out of the Academy. Been there, done that. I want to play someone who knows what they're doing, and I'm not interested in spending months or years of game time before getting to the good part.

I really don't understand this sentiment. At what point does it become "the good part"? How do you know you've reached the good part?

And more notably, it becomes a more interesting mix if there are several characters who all are competent in their own ways and come from different backgrounds. Amos Burton, Naomi Nagata, James Holden, and Alex Kamal might all be working for Pur'n'kleen right now when they're picking up a distress call, but they are all highly competent in their fields and come from very different backgrounds. I mean, I guess it's possible to run multiple campaigns starting as nobodies and, once competent, funnel one character from each into the real campaign, but that sounds like a whole lot of unnecessary effort.

What's really baffling to me about this claim is that Amos Burton or James Holden is each equivalent to like a 100 point GURPS character, starting Traveller character, or 1st to 3rd level D&D character. He's certainly not at the start of the story more than about 3rd level. In fact, in setting there might not be anyone who is equivalent to more than about 6th level in D&D terms. And this is probably verifiable by the author, because Expanse began life as a homebrew GURPS Transhuman Space game before it was a novel and so somewhere back there James Holden probably was a PC before he was a character in a novel. They are each about 25-30, have had a few hard life experiences, but are in no way at the start of the story high level characters in the setting. Rather, they are obvious RPG protagonists, because despite clearly being low level characters the high level NPCs are like - "Yes, we want to give you a job to save the human race." They are obviously Ta'veren, and the smarter NPCs can tell.

 

[Corinnguard]

At what point does it become "the good part"? How do you know you've reached the good part?

This is something that can only be learned in hindsight. You won't know if you reached a level of competency without doing a lot of personal introspection well after the fact. And even then there will always that something extra that tells you that you still you need to learn. A new bit of knowledge that you didn't know before. A new piece of tech that is on it's way to becoming commonplace. And so forth.

It's a Tantalus thing.