D&D General A History of Violence: Killing in D&D

[Micah Sweet]

You at least now properly qualified it.

D&D thread. Why should I have to qualify that?

 

[Clint_L]

I'm defining fair as meaning that a character played for 6 sessions should level up where a character only played for 3 of those same sessions as a replacement for another character who died 3 session in should not, as it's unfair to the character who was there for all six.

Characters aren't real, so nothing is fair or unfair to them. Thus, we must be talking about what is fair or unfair to players. Why does a player care what level a new player joins at? What difference does it make to them? Wouldn't fairness be that everyone at the current game is given similar opportunities to participate in what is happening right now?

If I join a softball team, they don't expect me to play without a glove until I put in the same amount of games as the players who've been there for years.

Levelling is not a reward for players sitting at the table, it's a reward for characters in the fiction.

I don't see levelling as a reward, I see it as a way to progress the story.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

People who expect games to be designed for the majority of users? I mean, I know your ethos is to ignore such things, but that's not everyone.

Personally, I would argue that a well-designed game accounts for the majority of use cases, not the majority of users. It may be the case that only 10% of players care about downtime activities, but neglecting them might have a large outsized effect on the game's overall success if those players feel excluded.

This, among other reasons, is why I advocate for rules that I personally have no use for, like "novice level" rules or robust slow-progression stuff (a la 13th Age's incremental advances). Developing a game that successfully supports a robust variety of play-interests is an ideal, to be sure, but one very much worthy of being pursued.

 

[KYRON45]

If you're right, why is there more than one RPG?

The first guy sold the first RPG and it was successful. Someone else thought....hey, what if i made my own thing...maybe people would buy that too.
Same with cars and candy and socks etc.

 

[Thomas Shey]

D&D thread. Why should I have to qualify that?

People reference things outside of the D&D sphere all the time in D&D threads. Its not a hermetically sealed box.

(And I have to note even within it you mentioned one thing that clearly isn't necessary even within D&D since its something you object to being the case).

 

[Thomas Shey]

Personally, I would argue that a well-designed game accounts for the majority of use cases, not the majority of users. It may be the case that only 10% of players care about downtime activities, but neglecting them might have a large outsized effect on the game's overall success if those players feel excluded.

Maybe, but barring optional rules (and even sometimes including those) basic design features are going to not make everyone happy; sometimes you've got to decide who you're aiming at.

This, among other reasons, is why I advocate for rules that I personally have no use for, like "novice level" rules or robust slow-progression stuff (a la 13th Age's incremental advances). Developing a game that successfully supports a robust variety of play-interests is an ideal, to be sure, but one very much worthy of being pursued.

I'm only half there; I think sometimes trying to server everyone ends up serving no one. Obviously when you can its virtuous to supply the tools to cover a range of needs, but it may be doing so is, in practice, undesirable because it dilutes the effect you're trying for.

 

[Thomas Shey]

If you're right, why is there more than one RPG?

I'd argue that most games are designed for the majority of users they expect. It just happens to be that no Venn diagram of that populace is going to include all of them, and some things only a relatively small subset is going to care about one way or another, but you still need to make a decision about it.

 

[TiQuinn]

Im not advocating equal mechanical weight in all pillars, but lets be real, social and exploration are almost non-existent. Which is why a lot of folks run D&D as a murdersim. I found it very interesting back in NEXT when they wanted to streamline D&D a bit and that meant gutting the skill system...

It becomes really apparent when character options that don’t focus on combat are debuted and those options seem incredibly powerful for what they do like the Peace domain or the Divination wizard, partly because their focus is on an area of the game that doesn’t receive the same level of effort as the combat side.

 

[CreamCloud0]

I'm retired now, but when working there were most certainly some days I worked harder than on other days; yet my pay was the same for each day.

But you were still actually working all those days regardless of if you were more productive some days than others, you didn’t come in, sit at your literal or metaphorical desk, put your feet up and start reading a book doing nothing with the expectation of being paid at the end of the day.

 

[Lanefan]

Characters aren't real, so nothing is fair or unfair to them.

In the setting, characters are real and levels - as in being measurably more proficient and-or more-often trained at one's craft - are also real.

Thus, we must be talking about what is fair or unfair to players. Why does a player care what level a new player joins at? What difference does it make to them? Wouldn't fairness be that everyone at the current game is given similar opportunities to participate in what is happening right now?

Yes and no.

If I've been playing Jocasta for ten sessions (or 2 adventures, or whatever other measure of seniority you like) and you've only been playing Kalemeth for half that time because he's a replacement for your first character Iolaus who died, then I'd say Jocasta - by virtue of having done more during play than has Kalemeth - should level up before Kalemeth.

Put another way, Kalemeth shouldn't get to inherit Iolaus' xp even though they're both played by the same player. And if instead of dying, Iolaus left the adventuring group to return to town and do other things, he shouldn't get further xp for that adventure.

By the same token, at higher levels replacement characters always* come in at either a level lower than the party average or at a "floor level" that slowly rises as the party average goes up.

* - exception: if you're a brand new player to this campaign and this is your first character in it, it comes in at the party average.

If I join a softball team, they don't expect me to play without a glove until I put in the same amount of games as the players who've been there for years.

No, but as a rookie you'll be batting ninth in the order until you prove you can handle a higher placing or until another rookie comes in behind you.

I don't see levelling as a reward, I see it as a way to progress the story.

Opposite here: it's an abstracted in-character reward for what those characters accomplish. And to someone else's point: indeed killing monsters shouldn't directly make you better at picking locks, but it's easy enough to rationalize you earned those locksmith xp by picking the locks you had to in order to get to those monsters.