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

[jmartkdr2]

I'll just say that, while evidence and many peoples' anecdotes seem to support this, my own experience varies pretty far from it.

I'm currently running and playing in about six groups, two of which are in the teens level-wise, and one of which is just relaunching after finishing up with my character at 19th level.

I typically run groups to pretty high levels; although it petered out due to losing several players to life issues, my 5e alpha game had several pcs in the epic levels, and various other groups I have run in 5e reached low to mid or high teens.

My 4e game went up to epic levels; the pcs finished up around 26th. The previous 4e game I ran went up to the mid-paragon levels, only wrapping up there because I moved.

My 3e games ended at high levels, including one epic level game that had some pcs in the low 40s and several groups that ran until the mid-teens.

My 2e games ran to pretty high levels, with pcs reaching the high teens; my 1e game had a few pcs in the 20s and one character achieving level 30-something.

My actual experience matches this, but based on how these conversations go and the actual data we have I think we're the outliers. Most people just struggle to keep a group together for that long.

 

[J-H]

I love the chaos and unpredictability of low-level play!

I like the chaos and unpredictability of high-level play!

 

[Steampunkette]

The two bolded bits seem to be in direct contradiction. Giving every PC (more) options at every level is going to cause steeper power grading, not flatter.

The intent was lateral progression, not vertical.

Social and Exploration features were both, specifically, called out. And more was expounded on, later, with the specific system-integration suggestions.

 

[Spellslinging Sellsword]

It would be interesting to know play time for campaigns. For example, median hours played, 90% of games played less than x hours before ending. For my own groups over the years I think the top limit seems to hit around 200-300 hours of play.

 

[GrimCo]

I'm currently running and playing in about six groups,

Wow. Out of curiosity, are they in person or online? Weekly, bi weekly, monthly? Most people have trouble managing schedules with even one or two groups.

Now, related to going from 1-20. It takes time. Leveling after every session is, imho, to fast. You get stuff to fast, don't have time to try new stuff in game etc. We used to do leveling after every 3 sessions. It gives you enough time to see your character in action at every level, try new powers, new combos, and then move on. With that tempo, it's 57 sessions, so just over a year if you play every week. But, if you take into account holidays, vacation days (20-30 days, so 4-6 weeks), random cancelations, more realistic time frame is 1.5-2 years. That's pretty long time. Even leveling from 3-8, so 15 sessions can stretch to 6-8 months of real time, and that's with pretty regular play.

 

[Zardnaar]

Wow. Out of curiosity, are they in person or online? Weekly, bi weekly, monthly? Most people have trouble managing schedules with even one or two groups.

Now, related to going from 1-20. It takes time. Leveling after every session is, imho, to fast. You get stuff to fast, don't have time to try new stuff in game etc. We used to do leveling after every 3 sessions. It gives you enough time to see your character in action at every level, try new powers, new combos, and then move on. With that tempo, it's 57 sessions, so just over a year if you play every week. But, if you take into account holidays, vacation days (20-30 days, so 4-6 weeks), random cancelations, more realistic time frame is 1.5-2 years. That's pretty long time. Even leveling from 3-8, so 15 sessions can stretch to 6-8 months of real time, and that's with pretty regular play.

Yeah regular play and fast leveling.

I try for 4 other sessions a level but are heading things up to hit 12 which is end of campaign.
We probably do about 26 sessions a year maybe 20 due to reasons you listed.

 

[the Jester]

Wow. Out of curiosity, are they in person or online? Weekly, bi weekly, monthly? Most people have trouble managing schedules with even one or two groups.

I actually left one out- it's seven groups. I play in three and run four.

The first one I play in is every other Friday, but we miss about one session in three for one reason or another. This one I (and a couple of the other players) play online; we use Discord for scheduling and Google Meet for actually playing. All the rest of the games are in person, with a few players sometimes playing remotely over Discord.

The second one I play in is supposed to be every other Saturday, but is really more like one session every 4 weeks or so lately.

The third one plays about once every 2-3 weeks, with the day basically being determined by peoples' work schedules and the like.

Then there are the four groups I run, two 5e and two my own custom version of DnD. The two 5e groups each play about every 2-3 weeks. The two custom ("DnD Jazz") games are more frequent, with each playing about every other week these days.

Add it all up, and in a typical month, I am probably running or playing approximately 6-8 games per month.

There is substantial overlap between the various groups; between them all, there are probably a total of 15 players.

Now, related to going from 1-20. It takes time. Leveling after every session is, imho, to fast. You get stuff to fast, don't have time to try new stuff in game etc. We used to do leveling after every 3 sessions. It gives you enough time to see your character in action at every level, try new powers, new combos, and then move on. With that tempo, it's 57 sessions, so just over a year if you play every week. But, if you take into account holidays, vacation days (20-30 days, so 4-6 weeks), random cancelations, more realistic time frame is 1.5-2 years. That's pretty long time. Even leveling from 3-8, so 15 sessions can stretch to 6-8 months of real time, and that's with pretty regular play.

Yes- but my games tend to be long lasting. We play for years, and have a pretty old school style where the players have "stables" of pcs that sometimes swap in and out of different groups.

 

[Distracted DM]

3) NPC scaling needs to be reined in, hard. Yes. A dragon isn't much of a challenge as a solo opponent when the party can collectively drop 300 damage in two rounds or less. So address the output issue and stop inflating enemy health and damage to ridiculous numbers to try and compensate.

I feel like there needs to be a power-plateau around level 12-13 where after that point the actual output doesn't change much, but the impact does. More ability to affect additional targets, social and exploration functions, etc.

Yup. These are some of my big issues. I considered plateauing it around level 9, wrote up some rough E9 rules, but haven't put them into practice.. partially because I've been running some of the big classics like Age of Worms that go from 1-20.

I've had a solid mix, personally. I've had plenty of campaigns that went from 1-3 to 17-19, and plenty that petered out in the tier 2 (5-10) area.

 

[MGibster]

I've got a pretty stable gaming group and we've been meeting regularly for more than a decade now. We started a new D&D campaign in late January or early February at level 1 and the party is 8th level now. But I've been using milestone leveling instead of experience because I hate calculating experience points. I'd say we're likely to be finished as early as the end of the September, and I don't plan on taking the group any higher than 12th level. I have no idea how far along they'd be if I actually tried using experience points.

 

[kigmatzomat]

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

Long running anything are the outliers. Most things are interrupted by life.

I have had the fortune of running both 2e & 3e games from 1st-20ish, and playing in a 1st-20th 5e game. Each took years IRL. The 3e game started with just the PHB and ended the week 4e books hit shelves. That's not something most GMs have the mental energy to consistently perform year after year. My 5e GM was smart/lazy/efficient and assembled a campaign by blending 3 published adventures paths into a mostly cohesive whole. I am a statistical outlier, having done it twice with unique homebrews that were only 5-10% publishworld building.

His approach is, by far, the smarter way to go, as I've also had campaigns utterly fizzle after I sank a ton of work into worldbuilding.

I will say that back in the 1990s when I played 1e/2e , it was pretty common for people to start campaigns at 12th level to play the "fun stuff". I don't know how often that happened during 5e2014. I would expect it to happen more in 5e2025 as it is not a major rules change from 5e2014, and people will want to see the changes in play.

Addendum: if our new game (yet another unique homebrew I've created, this time for Shadowrun) fizzles, I may try to run 5e at >20th level. The Greyhawk timeline for that other campaign is primed for major wars and toppling of governments, which is an ideal place to see what some epic tier characters can actually do to affect global events. My old character can easily be hand-waived away for several months, in a Feywild time-warp.