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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5795246" data-attributes="member: 42582">Another, but maybe related, difference of playstyle is this: are the players "entitled" to have their PCs gain levels?My assumption, as a GM, is "Yes, of course". Level gain is the backdrop against which the events of the campaign play out. It provides the default momentum - whatever exactly happens, we know that, in the fiction, the stakes will get progressively higher, as the PCs go from fighting goblins to fighting demons to fighting drow to fighting Lolth (or whatever it might be). For me, this is what D&D-style heroic fantasy is about.But for other approaches to play - including AD&D, as described by Gygax in the DMG (and, to a lesser extent, the PHB) - levels are not an entitlement but a reward for good play, and level gain is not a backdrop but a major goal of play. Whereas the sort of game I play takes for granted that the PCs will, somehow or another, come to the attention of the powers in the world and the cosmos (whether for good or for ill, whether as heroes or blunderers), in Gygaxian play coming to the attention of the powers that be is one of the things a player might strive for.A unity edition presumably needs to create scope for both sorts of approaches, plus whatever other approaches are widespread too.</blockquote>