Game spy interview with Christopher Perkins

Lord Zardoz · Sep 11, 2007

I found this via Slashdot:

http://www.gamespy.com/articles/819/819068p4.html

END COMMUNICATION

MerricB · Sep 11, 2007

Eep...

Christopher Perkins: We know that players enjoy the experience of "leveling up," provided it's not onerous, and so we've built a system that allows them to level up more often. We didn't want players to have to "level up" their characters every session because that would get onerous; doing so every two or three sessions seemed more appropriate and palatable, and that's how the new system is currently built.

GameSpy: Has the road to the endgame been lengthened, level-wise, or is there a new upper limit to how powerful D&D characters will get? For example, will a level 30 character in 4th Edition be as strong as a level 20 in 3.5, or is a level 20 character in 4th Edition about as strong as an epic-level character in previous editions?

Christopher Perkins: The way character advancement works now, it takes fewer encounters to gain a level, but it takes roughly the same length of time to reach 30 levels in 4th Edition as it takes to reach 20 levels in 3rd Edition. The rate of level advancement is still being playtested, however, so the jury's still out on whether the final game will work this way.

Pale · Sep 11, 2007

Hmmm... sounds like I'll be halving xp gain again.

Ruin Explorer · Sep 11, 2007

Pale said:
Hmmm... sounds like I'll be halving xp gain again.

The nice thing about XP gain, is that it's probably the easiest thing about D&D 3E (and presumably 4E) to control. Meeting twice a week, seem to be gaining levels too fast? Halve XP gain.

Meeting once a month, never seem to level? Double it (or more!). However 4E handles XP gain, very simple math will allow us to adapt it to our play-styles.

Reaper Steve · Sep 11, 2007

Christopher Perkins: We know that players enjoy the experience of "leveling up," ...doing so every two or three sessions seemed more appropriate and palatable, and that's how the new system is currently built.

I welcome this.
I was honestly expecting the model would be to earn 2nd level after one session, and 3rd one or two more later. Levelling is part of what makes the game fun.

Funny how there's been lots of comments about how 4e will cater to the younger crowd, the WoWers, etc. But I'm not part of that crowd...I'm 35 and have played since the Red Box Basic...and I'm thrilled to see the game going this direction. It's a game...not a simulation. It should first and foremost be fun and exciting. I don't want to have to play the same level dude for 12-20 sessions.

The comparisons of 4e with Exalted caught my attention, so I checked out the intro adventure on the WW webpage...and it looks like a blast. It also reminds me of the "Sharky' (hope I got the name right) approach to D&D...there's a reason there's +5 flaming vorpal holy avengers...THEY'RE FUN! Not that I want ridiculous absurdity, but I want to have fun. As as I get older, I want maximum fun in my limited gaming time. I have to make up for all those years I was getting 20 minutes of fun crammed into 4 hours.

Reaper Steve · Sep 11, 2007

MerricB said:
will a level 30 character in 4th Edition be as strong as a level 20 in 3.5, or is a level 20 character in 4th Edition about as strong as an epic-level character in previous editions?

Notice he didn't answer this question...

I hope 30 is the new 20, but I don't think that's the case because 30 is supposed to include Epic. I know 21-30 are labelled 'Epic", but I hope the scale has shifted somewhat, so that (for example) a 25th level 4e dude is equivalent to a 19-20 level 3e, still leaving 5 levels for what we know of now as epic.

Lonely Tylenol · Sep 11, 2007

Reaper Steve said:
I welcome this.
I was honestly expecting the model would be to earn 2nd level after one session, and 3rd one or two more later. Levelling is part of what makes the game fun.

Funny how there's been lots of comments about how 4e will cater to the younger crowd, the WoWers, etc. But I'm not part of that crowd...I'm 35 and have played since the Red Box Basic...and I'm thrilled to see the game going this direction. It's a game...not a simulation. It should first and foremost be fun and exciting. I don't want to have to play the same level dude for 12-20 sessions.

I've been playing since I first got the Blue Box basic set. I'm also not getting any younger, and don't have time for gaming that isn't a good time from start to finish. Back when I was actually "the younger crowd" I had time to play games that involved a lot of boring dungeon crawling, tedious rule mastery, and copper piece counting. Now that I'm old, I want more bang for my buck. I want a system that plays like greased silk, and that puts a shunt directly into my brain and hooks it up to the fun capacitor.

Pygon · Sep 11, 2007

The trouble with halving XP gain is characters end up treasure heavy, unless you cut that in half too. Which makes for boring looting and underequipped NPC's.

There were definitely times during the 3.x campaign I ran that levelling seemed to be happening a bit too fast, though.

MerricB · Sep 11, 2007

Pygon said:
The trouble with halving XP gain is characters end up treasure heavy, unless you cut that in half too. Which makes for boring looting and underequipped NPC's.

There were definitely times during the 3.x campaign I ran that levelling seemed to be happening a bit too fast, though.

It may be in 4e the "loot" from NPCs won't be so bad; certainly there was talk about no more masses of +1 swords as loot or similar.

For my fortnightly campaigns, the levelling speed has been pretty good. It's the weekly campaigns that seem somewhat fast.

Of course, if the power level curve isn't as great, then it may not be such a problem.

Cheers!