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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5325691" data-attributes="member: 4937">There are artifacts of the Arneson system to be found in a close reading of 1e AD&D.  In particular, it's worth noting that in 1e AD&D, characters did not gain levels as a result of gaining XP.  All that gaining XP did was give you the right to gain a level.  But it was actually the between session training that caused you to gain a level, and this training cost money and was assumed to be one of the most considerable drains on the players funds.  One way to demonstrate that was that by the rules, it was not possible to gain more than one levels XP at a time.   If you gained enough XP to gain more than one level prior to training, all the excess XP was lost.  You couldnn't actually gain enough XP to go up two levels (much less 19) regardless of what you did.  Gygax addresses the strengths and problems of this approach directly.  He notes that it would be concievably possible and perhaps realistic to just level up by spending all of your time training (presumably that's what most leveled NPC's do).  But he notes that this would make for a boring game.  The problem with Arneson's system is that strictly speaking, the adventure because non-essential.  So long as you provide yourself with a steady source of funds, you can spend the profits of your endeavors on your training and advancement and never 'adventure' again.  So the Gygax system of awarding XP for treasure earned in the course of an adventure and gaining levels as the result of purchasing training is a comprimise with the Arneson system because it encourages you to actually go into the dungeon and adventure.  It's important to note then that several people on the thread have complained about problems that didn't exist.  You couldn't gain levels by engaging in mere merchantile transactions.  Money earned from a business venture didn't provide XP.  Likewise, no matter how much money you pulled out of the dungeon, you couldn't level from 1st to 20th instantly.  If a 1st level thief pulls a 1600 gp out of the dungeon, he's only eligible for 2nd level and if he pulls a 100,000 gp gem out of the dungeon (theoretically possible at 1st level) he's still only eligible for 2nd level.  All the extra XP is lost.  Likewise, after pulling the gem out of the dungeon, he doesn't instantly become 2nd level.  Rather, he spends several weeks consolidating the lessons of his adventure and practicing his skills under the tutiledge of a higher level thief, and its this experience (not the abstract XP) that is actually responcible for his obtaining the higher level.However, very early in my D&D career, I dropped the Gygax model.  And in particular, I dropped its most realistic feature - that you could only advance in skill as a result of extensive, expensive and time consuming training.  Instead, I kept only the XP awarded for treasure found in the course of the adventure.  I did this despite the fact that at the time my biggest problem with the D&D system was I didn't feel it was 'realistic' enough.  The reason was I felt that the Gygax model too tightly constrained the adventures I wanted to write.  It was a fine model for a mega-dungeon nearby to a town so that at the end of every session you could end up back in town.  But very early on I wanted to run exploration adventures where the PC's would spend months or even years of time before turning around and heading back to civilization.  Under the Gygax rules, the entire time spent journeying in the howling wilderness only qualified you to advance a single level and the majority of the players efforts and experiences would not be rewarded.   The Arneson rules have the same problem.  I wanted to tell stories where there was no gaurantee that there would be a place to spend the money, and certainly not on a regular and scheduled basis.  It was in effect, all dungeon and no haven.My only real interest in a system is in story emulation.  If it lets me tell stories in the style I want to tell, I'm happy with it and I'll happily pass over the problems resulting from taking the system's abstractions too concretely.  Ok, it's wierd and unrealistic for a rogue to get better at picking locks if he picks no locks over the course of an adventure.  But so what.  We seldom worry about such things when reading a novel, and they shouldn't get too much in the way of are RPG stories either.  And if your game challenges are sufficiently varied and skill testing, it's an edge case anyway.  My PC's are not yet even 3rd level, and I've already called for or had the players actively choose to use pretty much every single skill in the game on multiple occassions.  It may not be fully believable that these tests are resulting in more capable individuals, but its certainly 'story believable'.</blockquote>

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