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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 583645" data-attributes="member: 4937">Croathian: This is D&D's oldest and most enduring problem.  It is I think the chief reason people move out of D&D, and I know that it is the chief reason RP orientated RPer's like my wife generally cite as the reason that they won't play D&D no matter the derivation.  Being first level implies being young, just starting out, being at the start of ones adventures, and indeed having not had alot happen to you in your life.Because of this, I'm considering whether a better designed ECL system and a more complex 'age' system could allow experienced characters to trade off early ability for quick development in long term campaigns.   I don't know, maybe allow you to trade 3 years for each 1,000 starting experience or something like that.   Or maybe impose 'rusty' penalties on skills so that experienced characters could start the game 'out of shape' - trading limited superiority for inflexibility in development.I've also considered starting a campaign with 0 level characters, and having a series of loosely connected mini-adventures that represent shaping events in peoples lives (probably after discussing with the players separately and in private some of the things they want for thier background).   However, to a large extent this involves me creating the PC's background, which isn't alot of fun.  In any event, both ideas are as yet unrealized since I haven't had alot of time to run or start capaigns lately. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />So, I don't have a system to fix the problem, other than going to GURPS (which works fine but has its own problems), but I am very aware of and troubled by the problem.  I'm surprised you are only encountering it when you play D20 modern, but I guess most D&D players are used to not creating much in the way of background.  BTW, for me V:tM's most endearing quality is it let you create characters with very very very deep sixteen page backgrounds and a full literary characters worth of motivations and experiences as starting characters.  A really well written V:tM background has the property of making the reader cry.   Of course, on the other hand, it made for alot of characters with 16 pages of ego stroking for a background.</blockquote>

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