D&D General 70% Of Games End At Lvl 7?

cbwjm said:

You sound more organised than me, I'll often start a campaign with little to no idea as to where it will lead. The last one I ran (quite some time ago now) had events that would unfold that players could get into or ignore as they wished. First few adventures led into something that was more of a story arc with the big bad being some throwaway character that was there, in the background, then suddenly he ended up with a grand scheme to thwart.

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The way I see it, a campaign comes in two basic forms. The first type of campaign is a series of scenarios whose only real connection is the PCs running through them. This is basically how I grew up playing AD&D. Some modules were connected, like The Secret of Bone Hill and Assassins Knot, but for the most part we'd just bounce around from scenario to scenario. The second type of campaign is pretty much the self-contained story like you find in Curse of Strahd.

Both have their advantages and disadvantages, but I favor the self-contained story campaign because I find it's easier to complete in a satisfactory manner.

I've played 1-19 once circle 95/96.

Level 1-13 2015

Random one shots/short games 20-30.

Most of my games run into low to mid teens but I have very little doubt about that 7th level stat being reasonably accurate based on that experience.

Level 7 is late in tier 2 of play, that's where the excess of over insulating tier1 of play without usefully supporting the kinds of gm stress relief/sanity support features of past editions starts combining horribly with the failure of many areas of play failing to rebalance their power curves.

Take the warlock as an easy example, it has a 2(1d10+cha+knock back+hex) at will plus 2x3rd level slots every rest at level 6 and it jumps to 2x4th level slots at level 7, at level 9 that becomes 2x5th and at level 11 3x5 plus a bump to 3(1d10+cha+knock back+hex) and none of that even touched on all of the many additional at will or daily powers they have been accumulating.

The PCs don't start with any glaring weaknesses that need others with their niche protected area of mastery to cover for them and they just keep getting more powerful both in focused niche and general flexibility rather than developing any. Eventually that overloads the system and the GM has choices between accepting their entire table can basically expect to act like Mary Sue or build a whole new game in the background of the GM screen that is separate from the one they appear to be running. By seven or shortly after the PCs are so over the top that any "I think this will help" can easily be trivialized by something the party already has or could get on a dime with the right feat/multiclass bingo

Zardnaar said:

Do you think the 70% was accurate outside Beyond or if the number changed in last 6 or 7 year?

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I think it's right.

I had one campaign where the players reached 17th level. It was my longest running. Ran like ten years. Yeah advancement was slow.

I had another make it to 12th and another to 8th. So I am spread all over the place. The 8th was 4e and I was just over it as a system.

Piperken said:

How you answered was great; mainly, was curious to see if there were any factors beyond the game, that that you felt constructively helped with ensuring the different campaigns went on for as long as it did.

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Thing that helps immensly is people having stable life schedule, enough free time on consistent basis and playing game being high on their hobby priority list. Back in college, one semester we played Tuesday mornings (10-14). It just happened that we all had only late afternoon lectures that day, so everyone was free till 15-16. Or later after college, Saturday afternoons were pretty much always free. We would meet around 15-16, play till 19-20, or if we didn't feel like going out clubbing, game would stretch to midnight. Repeat that for at least 40-45 Saturday afternoons in the year for couple of years.

GrimCo said:

Thing that helps immensly is people having stable life schedule, enough free time on consistent basis and playing game being high on their hobby priority list. Back in college, one semester we played Tuesday mornings (10-14). It just happened that we all had only late afternoon lectures that day, so everyone was free till 15-16.

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Throughout most of my life, I've always been able to find the time for social activities. But bear in mind I never had kids, which makes things a bit less complicated for me. I was able to game in my 20s, but things became a lot easier for me in my mid-30s because a lot of people my age had more free time. Most of my peer group have established careers, their kids were old enough that their parents didn't need them around constantly, and they're financially stable enough to easily afford gaming supplies.

I have kids but once a week in the evenings isn't too bad, especially since I'm now hosting at my house. The harder part has actually been getting my wife to find social out-of-the-house activities to do... but I think we have figured out a couple now.

Lanefan said:

That might be in part because they threw out all the data from the older - and thus likelier to be longer-term players - respondents.

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Maybe, but I don't think so.

Yes, the 1999 market research data covered players from ages 12 to 35.

And in more recent days (like, in 2021) we were told that players aged 35+ account for something on the order of a quarter of the player base. So, if we assume that held in the past as well, at least in theory, that's a large enough population to skew the results.

But...

We'd have to expect that somehow, the time between character restarts was generally much different for 36+ than for the younger groups at the time. And I don't see as we have a reason to expect that.

Lanefan said:

That might be in part because they threw out all the data from the older - and thus likelier to be longer-term players - respondents.

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I don't think so but maybe for different reasons than the ones Umbran mentioned. Most of the 5e campaigns I played or ran tended to fall into the 12-18 month range unless they were doomed groups that couldn't stick together in a shared hobby more than a couple sessions. The old surveys (afaik) were done in ways likely to skew away from those doomed groups participating even if they hypothetically were a smaller percentage then than tire they are today.

What we can absolutely say without question changed is the rate of advancement and how that impacts gameplay. Back in the day a 12-18 month campaign with normal exp distribution might get players into what we now call tier2 or early tier3 of play with more than a few adventures along the way going towards actively questing in persuit of accumulating and churning through gaggles of gold/magic items that played felt was a need they were excited to fill. Now with 5e either the gm adjusts xp down or devoted almost none of that adventure space in the campaign for gold/magic items players felt excited about having a need filled. Unfortunately if the GM uses normal exp distribution and devoted any meaningful fraction of the campaign it will make that 12-18 months into a stretch reaching right up into tier4/tier5 with a trivialized romp the whole way that makes the most OP of OP isekai anime protagonists look like a downright grueling trek

They have always been around, but starting a few years ago the "we only play Official Adventures" type groups became popular.

As soon as "An Official Adventure" came out they would game. and finish it....and then stop. Chances are there was not another adventure for them to go on. So they would just wait and not game at all.

Then when the next adventure comes out, get back together.....often with new characters....and run through that one.

And there are much more low and mid level adventures.