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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 6822852" data-attributes="member: 29398">Perhaps, but it's all I've got, and I suspect it's more than many. The simple mechanical answer: slower level advancement.  Sure there's other changes you can make, but that one is by far the most important.  In 1e changing that was the easiest thing imaginable: either very much reduce or completely drop the xp-for-gp rule.  In 3e it's harder as there's a bit more knock-on to deal with, most notably that wealth-by-level guidelines go out the window in a hurry, but I've seen it done.  I was in a 3e game that went for 10 years (I was in for 7 of that), but it only did so because the DM made a pile of changes going in to make it advance at a rate more like our 1e games.1e really goes only from levels 1 to about 12, but they can very easily be made to take longer to arrive. Monsters less deadly in 3e?  Surely you jest.Though if done right you shouldn't need these.By listening to what WotC said at the time.Pathfinder discusses this and - to its credit - even gives three different advancement tracks.  I don't remember 3e saying anything much about slowing things down, unless it was in a splat of some kind (I pretty much only got the core 3).Well, it's supposed to be 13 encounters per level in 3e, right?  That's what it's designed for, meaning a 1-20 campaign should as designed be about 250-ish encounters long. Both statements are or can be true of both editions.** - side note here: I'm assuming when you say AD&D you mean 1e rather than 2e.  If you're talking about 2e I can't speak to it at all, having never played it.There's adventures in both editions that really have nothing in them.  There's adventures in both editions that are huge.  For character career count it about averages out in the long run, I find.The difference in my view is that 1e is in many ways flexible enough to handle such a variable advancement rate (and a level per 10 adventures is slow even for us!) where 3e was somewhat more tied to the encounter budget.EDIT TO ADD: Something else is that in 1e as written you couldn't advance in the field at all; you'd hit a ceiling at 1 xp below the bump point and you had to go back to town and train up before you could get into the new level.  3e doesn't have that, and some adventures even expect characters to bump multiple times while in them and are written to suit; and nearly all 4e adventures do this.Yes, but does this actually work in practice?  I've never played 4e so all I can go on is what I read in places like this, but it seems rare that anyone's made it work and some of those who have are those who could probably make an enjoyable 10-year campaign out of a game of Monopoly.Which we try to do; usually about 42-46 sessions per year for a regular game.From what I can tell 5e is probably flexible enough to handle almost any advance rate. Which then brings us full circle: we have to find a way to reward and incent those who get it done rather than those who stand by and then loot the fallen, or who take the adventure off.I also use variable-by-class advancement tables in my game (which is based on 1e).Slight tangent, but related:There's many other ways to slow down overall advancement than simply tweaking the level tables: - play more than one party in the same world and on a by-adventure basis (or at logical break points) jump back and forth between which one gets played.  Keeping them roughly aligned in game-world time so they can potentially interact with each other can be tricky, but well worth it - have level loss or xp loss in the game as an occasional risk the PCs might face - encourage players to have a stable of characters and to cycle them in and out, with limited to no advancement while retired unless it's for a long time; for example this adventure I might be playing 5th-level Gloramir but after it's done I'm going to pull him for a few months downtime and either bring back 3rd-level Hrothgar for a run-out or roll up something new. - make newly-rolled-up characters come in below the party average level - let them die if things go that way.  It's hard to advance in level when you're dead. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Lan-"8 years in and the highest-level PC in my current campaign is getting close to 10th, but 3 of those came from a lucky Deck effect"-efan</blockquote>

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