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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5503929" data-attributes="member: 42582">Fully fully agreed.Of various level-based games, I think Rolemaster comes closest to making the ultra-simulationist reading of levels workable. But even Rolemaster doesn't take the view that spending development points (RM's equivalent of choosing skills and feats) reflects an ingame choice by the character in question. Of course, it might on some occasions for some DP expenditure reflect training, or some other chosen course of self-cultivation. But sometimes it just reflects what the character happened to get better at.And of course, you still have to squint a bit and look at RM's XP rules from a funny angle for them to make perfect sense. Subject to that proviso, however, they can be seen as suggesting that the principal method of gaining experience - at least for adventurers - is "hard field training" ie using what you know in real conditions. How excatly we should conceive of farmers, blacksmiths etc levelling is left unstated. But I have participated in threads on the ICE forums where (i) it is presumed that some alternative XP system, like story/roleplaying XP, is in use, and (ii) it is suggestd non-ironically that NPCs should get plenty of XP because they never stray out of character! So even Rolemaster has managed to create a community of players who can't grasp the difference beteen game and metagame when it comes to XP gain and level advancement.But at least what Rolemaster has going for it is that the power differential between low and high levels is relatively modest compared to D&D, so that a simulationist reading of the improvements in fighting skill, hit points etc is half-tenable. For practically any version of D&D I think this doesn't work (and Gygax's tortured discussion of hit point in the DMG (or is it the PHB) where he compares a 10th level fighter to multiple warhorses is evidence for this). Level in that game has always, in my view, had a metagame as well as an ingame significance (as reflected by the fact that in the 1st ed DMG there are signficant NPCs, like sages and mercenary officers, who have levels but can't gain levels).The other reason I agree with you about rejecting the "choice" notion is that it makes it hard to develop a character - PC or NPC - whose 5 levels in cleric or warlock represent not a choice but (for example) an ensnarement by a dark power. I remember this issue coming up in a practical way back in the early days of the 4e debates, when it was suggested that a warlock PC must tend towards evil because every level s/he chooses to reinforce her warlock-ism. For some posters, at least, the notion that the gaining of levels might not represent a choice being made by the character wasn't even on the table.Sometimes, although not always (cf the AD&D 1st ed sage). But anyway, the use of levels to model skills and experience is distinct from the questions of (i) whether level can change - for some 1st ed NPCs, like mercenary officers, it can't change except via GM fiat - and (ii) whether the consequences of level acquistion (which in 3E include class, skill and sometimes feat selection) are to be understood as choices made in the gameworld by the character who is gaining the level.</blockquote>

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