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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 5519275" data-attributes="member: 29398">Interesting article.One thing that 1e did with its change of focus from field adventuring at high level to castle-stronghold-laboratory-whatever building, probably unintentionally, might be worth expanding on; and that's that like it or not it made the PCs become more political within the game world.  Their focus shifts slightly, from actually being the action heroes all the time to more or less often being the ones who tell other action heroes what to do.First thing: I think it's a design mistake to have a built-in hard-and-fast point in the game where one minute you're a certain type of adventurer (paragon, or whatever) and the next you've changed to something else.  Each campaign is going to hit that tipping point at a different level or stage of its development - in 3e for example it might come at 15th level, or 19th, or 24th, whatever - thus I think the mechanics need to be presented along the lines of "At some point your campaign will most likely have these things happen; here's what to do when you reach this point to transition your game into the next stage, and here's whatthe next stage looks like".That transition is this: at some point the game somewhat expects the PCs to mostly leave off actual field adventuring and to instead step more into the political arena.  The scale could vary; some examples:1. one campaign might have the PCs become masters of a small village, responsible for its defenses and well-being and for keeping the peace among the locals; 2. another campaign might see the PCs become leaders of armies;3. in a third they could play a true game of thrones;4. in a fourth they might found a company of adventurers where the PCs' job becomes recruitment and adventure assignment for the field adventurers rather than being in the field themselves.  You get the picture. <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=":)" />Mechanically, this poses some questions.  Political PCs have to be able to earn experience points and advance in level by being political just as field adventurers can advance via killin' and lootin', thus a new form of ExP awarding would have to be developed with less (or no?) ExP given for field action and lots more given for successfully doing whatever it is they've set themselves up to do.  So, to tie in with the examples above, the PCs would get ExP for:1. Each time the village successfully defends itself without the PCs direct aid but as a result of the PCs' training, also gain ExP each time a dispute is resolved, etc.2. Nice and obvious, the PCs gain ExP when their army or armies win battles due to their planning...provided the PCs do not directly participate in the fighting!3. ExP are gained when a throne the PC supports somehow makes gains over another, be it politically, on the battlefield, whatever.4. The PCs get a small share of all ExP earned by their stable of field adventurers while performing adventures on behalf of the company.Of course, if the PCs do somehow end up in the field through no real choice of their own then they earn ExP as normal for the adventuring but get nothing at all for the other stuff they've abandoned in the meantime. <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=":)" />The more I think about this, the more I feel that any such ideas should be presented as just that: ideas; rather than cut-and-dried rules, that each DM can adapt to suit her own campaign.  And as noted in the original article, this isn't for everyone; some campaigns will just keep on bashing foes and taking their stuff until the players die of old age! <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-"I'll stop now before I write an epic about epic"-efan</blockquote>

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