D&D General Boredom in "Zero to Hero" Campaigns

[dave2008]

D&D, especially in the current edition, seems focused on large 1-13 level campaign adventures. I'm not inherently against starting at Level 1 (especially for new players), but when you've been playing for years, Level 1 adventures take on a sameness: goblin ambushes, lesser undead in the cemetery, rats in the tavern basement, etc. Unfortunately, this design paradigm means that some players (and DMs) get bored before the campaign gets around to "the good stuff."

The question I pose is this: Is there an assumption of mundane, trite adventures baked into the D&D experience? If so, what should one do about that? Start at higher levels? Somehow try to make beginning levels more interesting and impactful on the campaign?

Consider a few examples.

"The Red Hand of Doom" (3.5 ed, levels 6-12): This is considered one of the best officially produced adventures from the 3.x era. It doesn't start at 1st level with rat infestations in basements. Instead, the characters are thrust in a regional conflict and war. It jumps ahead to "start at the good stuff."

"Tomb of Annihilation" and "Curse of Strahd" (5e, levels 1-13*): These two regularly come up as the best officially produced 5e adventures. While both start nominally at 1st level, they each encourage the DMs to quickly skip through the first few levels or present a short intro quest that has little to do with the plot (and isn't considered a strong part of the adventure.)

I was thinking about this experience when I was reading a Savage World Point Plot Campaign that starts off with the heroes being told an asteroid is on a trajectory to hit their planet, so they must charter a ship and fly to the asteroid and destroy it with a nuclear warhead to save the planet. This is the opening of the campaign, and really starts it with a (literal) bang. But in D&D our heroes are killing rats in basements?!! Fighting goblins who rob merchants on the road?

Why is D&D so miserly about giving characters an epic beginning to their stories? Is it because the default assumption is that you're going to be playing in a campaign that will last months (or years), so you've got to keep from getting too big too fast?

You might want to look into Theros. The idea of that setting is you start off with a supernatural gift and can get even more goodies through piety (which is level independent). I am not sure about the adventure included, but the setting is geared toward that type of play. So is the Odyssey of the Dragonlords adventure, it has you taking on very difficult encounters a quite low level, IIRC.

 

[Shiroiken]

We usually start at level 3, since by then characters have all the stuff to fit the theme of what they are (minus a feat). We've occasionally started back at level 1, because we forget how dangerous it is. At level 1, everyone is VERY close to death in just about every combat, because a single critical hit can take someone out permanently.

 

[Tallifer]

What I don't understand is why low level published stuff always has the same old monsters (as the original post listed).

In their first two levels my party has met beavercats with a catapult, frogmen drugged up on gnome cookies with various magical side-effects, lethal sheep made out of knitted wool and led by a shepherd with an enchanting fife, fields that flow like rivers, fiery dreams in the night, jackaquirrels with very hard nuts and nets made out of woven branches, madly hooting hornbilled somethings and a rocky streambed which awoke when the ranger cast a root bridge on it to cross it. There have been goblins, but I spiced them up with different tribes, one partly made out of stone and the other potentially friendly swamp dwellers with potent herbs and dancing shoes for sale.

Plus at first level, two members of the party already got themselves involved in different aspects of local politics, requiring some improvisation and rewriting.

 

[Asisreo]

There's 2 things you can do if you're determined to start a game at level 1:

1. Quickly move along the low level parts.

Low level characters only need 300 exp to get to level 2, which goes by pretty fast. If you have every single encounter as a medium encounter, things will quickly be boring, it will take roughly 6 of them to get to level 2 and there's a limited number of things to fight. Instead, have hard or deadly encounters. Of course, be careful with this method. The PC's are fragil as is. Milestone tends to be slower since most DM's try to have level-ups during a conclusion which can take quite a while.

2. Make the fights more exciting
Sure, there's a limit to what monsters you can bring to a fight, but with creativity, you can make pretty fun encounters with what you have. Here's a secret: The difficulty isn't tied to experience gain. You get a hint of this with the EXP multiplier but a deadly fight could give the experience of an easy one and an easy fight could give the EXP of a deadly one.

The first case is easy to imagine with multiple CR 1/8 or 0 enemies but the latter actually has to do with drawbacks and benefits. If the party is facing a hard encounter but they have a benefit, they actually count as a medium encounter yet all the EXP remains the same. So, a fight against an ogre is deadly unless the players surprise the ogre, which will make it only hard (since the players essentially get a free turn).

Eventually, you can have players fighting the ogres face-to-face without it being deadly at level 2.

 

[Richards]

Right now, I'm actively working against speeding through the low levels. We just started up a new 3.5 campaign and I made the conscious decision to throw XP out of the window. Instead, I'm going to have five adventures for each level, 1st through 20th. (In my campaigns, the adventures are all homebrewed and take up one 4-6 hour session - think more "adventure from Dungeon magazine" and less "pre-packaged adventure that will take the PCs 6-10 levels to get through.") That'll give my players longer at each level to get a handle on their PCs' abilities before gaining new ones. So yeah, they're getting a refresher course in how fragile 1st-level PCs can be and it's forcing them to change some of their traditional strategies, but so far we're enjoying it. (We've currently gone through the first three adventures of the 100 planned for this campaign; I have the next three lined up but will writing them as we go along.)

Johnathan

 

[Retreater]

It's not just the monsters - it's the entire expectation of play and scope of low-level adventures. You could call it a bugbear, an ogre, or hill giant, but it's all basically the same thing: a brute with a club, low AC, high damage potential, not very smart and leading a band of lesser humanoids. There could be an infestation of rats, kobolds, goblins, mutated beavers, but it's still pretty much the same thing.

Like, what harm would there be in having the low-level characters start off their careers special? Embroiled in the setting's politics? Saving the countryside from an otherworldly menace that could destroy the region (or maybe the world)? Fighting a creature that is more than just a slightly bigger version of everything else they've already been fighting?

 

[commandercrud]

I will only ever start at level 1 and I absolutely hate how 5e basically skips over levels 1-2, and slow the pace waaaaaaaay down through level 5.

 

[dave2008]

It's not just the monsters - it's the entire expectation of play and scope of low-level adventures. You could call it a bugbear, an ogre, or hill giant, but it's all basically the same thing: a brute with a club, low AC, high damage potential, not very smart and leading a band of lesser humanoids. There could be an infestation of rats, kobolds, goblins, mutated beavers, but it's still pretty much the same thing.

Well that is an issue of adventure design then. I'm not familiar with published adventures really, but that is not how I tend to run my games. However, it has been about 4 years since we were in the lvl 1-5 range

 

[dave2008]

I will only ever start at level 1 and I absolutely hate how 5e basically skips over levels 1-2, and slow the pace waaaaaaaay down through level 5.

I took us about 18 months of game play to get to lvl 5.

 

[R_J_K75]

That'll give my players longer at each level to get a handle on their PCs' abilities before gaining new ones.

I've found this to be a problem at times too, unless the players really know the PHB, the casual player is hard pressed to keep up with new class abilities if they advance too quickly. Sometimes its a fine line between too fast and not fast enough.