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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nagol" data-source="post: 6004243" data-attributes="member: 23935">I've run campaigns like this (1e) and have played in them as well (1e, equivalent 'start over' in other game systems).I found a few distinct behaviours I didn't like.1) The more the characters achieve, the less risk the players are comfortable with.  This makes sense if you think about it.  The greater the achievement, the more is at risk anytime the character is threatened.  Under 1e, it is possible to continue advancing infinitely fighting basic orcs -- it gets really slow, but advancement continues.  So characters tend to stay at a set risk level until the players gets bored, a change in the game world changes the risk level, or, least frequently, the player decides to try somethng harder.2) If the level split gets large, say 5+ levels (one game had a 11+ level difference between new characters and the lowest established character with a 15+ level difference from new to top) then new character survival becomes a lottery: does anything try to attack him -- yes; you lose, roll a new character, no; you win, collect xp! And the new character have almost nothing to offer in terms of ability other than as carrying capacity and chaff in combat.  The gain in levels is slow enough that a character requires multiple lottery wins with zero losses to catch up to the point where survability stops being random.3) Mixed-level groups tend to have a lot of social friction especially around reward division (because the lower levels aren't pulling their weight).  So a weak character tends to get little or no treasure and continues to get relatively weaker than the more successful characters.It works best when the campaign is the old type; i.e. when the campaign refers to the game world and whatever players show up for a given session play.  That way the lower levels can band together and try something reasonable rather than following the high-level group and hoping for a lottery win survival.</blockquote>

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