Legends and Lore April 2, 2012

[FireLance]

To the second poll, 2 hours a week? Jeebus that's barely time to sit down! I raid in WoW for longer than that 4 days a week! When I sit down to the D&D table, I play for 6-8 hours. If everyone is free, we often have all-nighters! At two hours a week, even my fastest progressing games would take YEARS to complete.

I'm really starting to feel like the design of the new edition is aiming for a slam-bam thank-you-ma'am style. Who really plays D&D for 2 hours a week? Yeesh.

Well, my gaming group consists of busy working adults. Some are parents and some have other family commitments. Due to conflicting schedules, we are sometimes only able to meet once per month. However, we do try to ensure that our sessions are at least four hours long each (kinda pointless to meet otherwise).

So who plays for two hours per week? On average, we do.

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

The point where I feel the need to play another character varies according to the character and the party. I have had characters who are far too powerful in a narrow range of circumstances (presenting a difficult choice for the DM), characters who are basically useless, parties that lack certain dynamics and of course, real life interference.

I remember when I was writing my thesis I took a long break from D&D (we played about 4 hours a week for reference). Just after we finished a particular dungeon and had hit Paragon tier, I decided it was completely suitable for me to escort the rescued Eladrin princess back to the Feywild. It was a great exit, in character. If I hadn't been quitting for real life reasons, it was still a great exit - I would have happily rolled up another character. Months later, I rejoined the game with the same character, levelled up to 20-something, with great stories to tell about my adventuring in the meanwhile. Sadly this particular game didn't really jibe with deep roleplaying elements, but still.

So, I don't know why they're asking, but I certainly would encourage players to think about whether their characters will be there the whole time. Maybe there'll be death, perhaps some will complete important personal quests, perhaps others might find themselves with responsibilities other than adventuring. I think these all allow for fun roleplaying experiences. I wouldn't force any of them into the rules, but advice would be welcome!

 

[Minigiant]

This poll is weirdly worded... as usual.

You never should be expected to be bored with a character. I should want to play a character from leaving his master at level 1 to epic near-deity at level 20. But it doesn't have to all be in one campaign. A character can save a metropolis at level 7, be recruited by a king and save the kingdom at level 15, then slay a deity's exarch at level 24.

As for high level, a character is either a legend or fundamentally change (or stopped a fundamental change) to their home realm. They may have followers, their own land, travel to new planes, own magic items, and have powerful abilities on their own right, Overall they no longer do as normal mortals do as they entirely new responsibilities and drives. Their actions affect many and their resources are just as great.

In short... the high level character IS THE DRAGON.

Be careful when you fight the monsters, lest you become one.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I don't understand why a particular rate of advancement or level range of play has to be assumed by the rules.

 

[am181d]

Can two topics really be a menagerie?

As with some of the rest of you, my immediate thought was "Hey, there are some characters I've played for years." Although I have to admit that that's happened less often as I've gotten older. And I suppose that ultimately the lesson there is that the XP system is eminently ignorable, no matter what the edition.

I was definitely uncomfortable with the "what level do you get bored with your character" question. In my experience, it's the *campaign* that ends (either through attrition or reaching a natural end point) rather than people saying "Oh, I'm bored with such-and-such character."

At the same time, it's definitely true that the style of play I prefer is the lower to mid-tier, lower magic levels. I don't have a strong interest in playing in a campaign or running a campaign that involves a lot of planar travel or Birthright style kingdom management. But I guess I'm OK with preserving these as valid campaign choices for other gaming groups.

One way to read these columns is to try to play the "What are they really saying?" game. In this case, my guess is that they want to take the approx. power curve you see in 3e or 4e from level 1 to level 12 and stretch it so that you can advance that far in about a year. Based on what they've said previously about flattening the math, I'm guessing that they'll make the new 20th level closer to the old 12th in power, and then make 1-20 all one tier, with quicker growth but fewer power-ups between levels. Then they'll add options for epic levels afterwards, and maybe for kingdom management after 10th...

 

[DEFCON 1]

In what way do any of us think that how we play the game is close to being "typical"?

Doesn't the fact we come onto message boards and discuss, debate, argue, and whine about this stuff pretty much denote us as "non-typical"? Considering that there's probably hundreds of thousands of people who have bought / play the game in some format?

So just because the poll answers don't accurately reflect how WE play necessarily... doesn't mean that they are useless to them. There are thousands and thousands of people for whom what Mearls talked about is probably fairly accurate.

 

[Mattachine]

The description of play time and the amount of levels a character typically attains in a campaign matches my experience of D&D for the past 8 years or so.

As is true for some others in this thread, I'm married, have a kid, and have a time-consuming job/commute. Same for almost all the others I game with. That means we play about 2-3 times per month, for 2-3 hours a session.

I haven't been in a campaign that lasted over a year in ages. My current campaign will be a year in August if it continues. The characters are currently levels 4-6, and started at level 1. By the end of the year, I expect the average character will be level 10.

I found the poll questions this week pretty good, and they spoke directly to my own experience.

On the other hand, I would have liked to see these questions:
*At what level range do you most commonly start a D&D campaign?
*Do you usually play in ongoing campaigns, stand-alone adventures, a mix of the two, or something else?

 

[avin]

Well, my gaming group consists of busy working adults. Some are parents and some have other family commitments. Due to conflicting schedules, we are sometimes only able to meet once per month. However, we do try to ensure that our sessions are at least four hours long each (kinda pointless to meet otherwise).

So who plays for two hours per week? On average, we do.

I hear you. Long were the days when we could play all night.

Now we gotta negotiate with our wives to have a full saturday evening gaming

 

[GM Dave]

...

I'm really starting to feel like the design of the new edition is aiming for a slam-bam thank-you-ma'am style. Who really plays D&D for 2 hours a week? Yeesh...

My group essentially does that.

We meet once a week on Sat and have between 8 PM and 11 PM to game.

We can't really start earlier because there are little children still up and running around. Trust me, it is hard enough keeping one 3 yr old out of the miniatures (mind you they help my GMing by wanting adding more monsters to the fights but my players object to having their characters moved or removed from play suddenly).

Several of us have to get up the next day to work or church and we travel at least half an hour to a common house to game.

We used to play for longer periods but now have to be more focused.

A big, multiple person (I have 9 players and need to give them enough to do to challenge the players) battle can consume much of the night using PF rules.

 

[Gundark]

Yeah , add me to the list of 3 hour games , we play once a week . All nighters are a thing of the past . I need a game that moves along at a fast pace, so I am digging a lot of what Mike is saying .