Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Keldryn" data-source="post: 6363735" data-attributes="member: 11999">I don't think that the rates of advancement across all editions are actually comparable, as they reflect very different assumptions about how the game is played.How do we measure whether advancement is too fast, too slow, or just right?  Is it the number of game sessions played?  The number of adventures completed?  The number of hours spent gaming?  The amount of real-world time that passes between each level advancement?  The amount of game-world time that passes between each level advancement?  The number of combat encounters in which the party has engaged in?  Using the number of sessions played as a measurement is problematic.  For argument's sake, let's assume that one session is 4 hours of gaming time.  A 4-hour session of 4e or mid-to-high-level 3e can easily mean 2 or 3 combats with about an hour left for exploration and role-playing.  A 4-hour session of AD&D can often include 8 or more battles with still half the session left for exploration and role-playing.  In all likelihood, at the end of those four hours, the AD&D PCs will have killed more monsters and acquired more treasure than the PCs in the 3e or 4e game.Thus, the number of hours spent gaming isn't a very good measure, either.  A 3e or 4e game might need 8-10 hours for the characters to accomplish the same amount in-world as the AD&D characters.Either one is problematic when you consider gaming groups that play on a very regular schedule versus those that play much less frequently.  The group that plays for 6 hours every week will naturally progress more quickly than the group that plays for 4 hours every third week.  However, it will take the second group two months (3 sessions) to match what the first group can accomplish in two weeks (2 sessions).  Despite the fact that both groups spent the exact same amount of time playing the game (12 hours) over a similar number of sessions (2 vs 3), the first group might feel like the rate of advancement is way too fast, while the second group might feel that it is way too slow.  I would argue that the rate of advancement should to be tailored to how frequently the group plays.  It's easy to say that it should take at least 4 sessions of play to gain a level, but when you're in that second group and you're just reaching 4th level at the end of the first year of gaming, you might feel differently.The rules of TSR-era D&D, as well as the accounts of how Gary ran his early D&D games, suggest that frequent play was assumed.  Frequent play starts to balance out a lot of the randomness inherent in character creation and "I failed my save" deaths.  The structure of the campaign -- indeed the very nature of a campaign -- was quite different from how we tend to think of a campaign today.</blockquote>

Verification