Level Advancement and In-Campaign Time

[neogod22]

As the DM, you control the pace of the campaign. You should also factor in travel time, downtime, and the season. Travel takes a long time. 25 miles a day is all the characters can go. If you think about how far that is, I'm not sure where in the world you live in, but if you think about how far you can drive in one hour, that will take the characters 2 to 3 days to get to, one way. It usually takes a week for someone to travel to the next town and back. Another factor of time you can use, is the time it takes to get new supplies and/or make new weapons and armor. The more expensive armor can take months to make, and all armor is custom made. Even with general supplies. Stores do run out of stuff, and that means it could take a few days to a few weeks before they can resupply. Also, weather. Weather had the power that forces characters to stop until it passes.

 

[5ekyu]

I've run and played a couple 5E campaigns now, and one thing that bothers me a bit (and this bothered me in 3E too) is how quickly players advance through the levels relative to the passage of time within the campaign world. At standard number of encounters per day or per adventure, and using the guide for how adventured are packed together the way the hardcover campaigns pack them in, you can advance from Level 1 to Level 20 inside an in-campaign year.

If you think about, that's crazy! Not only is that now how real life works, that's not even how any of the fiction that D&D is based on works. Aragorn wandered the Wild for decades. Conan became a King as an old man. Paksenarrion was on campaign for years. The companions that met at the Inn of the Last Home had been separated for five years.

Adventures should be spaced out. The timing is yearly or seasonal, not penciled into a day calendar.

So I want to share what I have done recently, and I think is working quite well:

1) PCs do not advance in level during an adventure. The level you start the adventure in is the level you are for that adventure. (The exception is Levels 1-3. Arguably, 5E characters aren't fully themselves at Level 1, so you can advance up to Level 3 within an adventure).

2) Extended periods of downtime between adventures/levels. The default assumption is that you have a role in the campaign world (usually related to your Background), and that's what you spend most of the time doing. There aren't professional adventurers who are adventuring all the time. Adventures are something you go on when the opportunity arises. Like Bilbo's journey to the Lonely Mountain, or Flint Fireforge letting his smithy go cold.

3) Level up two levels between adventures. Adventures start at Levels 1, 5, 7, 9, etc.

4) Give players the flexibility to go on side-quests during the off season, or craft items, or start building a castle or temple or something. Stuff that takes weeks, months, or years. You can get started with that at the Level 3-5 downtime. No need to wait for when the PC is retired and no one cares anymore.

5) Introduce the trope that there's a mechanism why which the gang gets back together. "Evil is afoot. Old allies need your help. Meet me in Palanthus on the 1st of April."

This has a number of benefits.

A) Fictionally, this seasonable timing is just more believable in a lot of ways. It's actually a suspension of disbelief that someone can become a master of their craft in a month.

B) It gives the world time to grow and react to the things the PCs do. When they're level 7 they can return to the castle they cleared of monsters at levels 3 or 5 and see that people have moved in and resettled the area. The songs of their heroic deeds have time to be composed and precede them. Their enemies have time to lay and grow more complex plots to stop them. Etc.

C) No tracking XP! Just don't even worry about it.

D) Opens up new parts of the game, like strongholds or extended research and crafting.

E) Allows players to switch out PCs within the fiction. Tired of that human fighter? I guess she joined the Blue Dragonarmy during the years of separation. But look, a cleric has walked into the Inn and needs our help.

F) Episodic campaigns. This is preference, but if you share this preference for smaller, more episodic adventures rather than grand campaign arcs, this arrangement is perfect.

So, basically, the milestone leveling option where they level at GM assigned times and an additional 2 level per leveing kicker and enforced downtime, ok sounds fine. (yes morw whistles and bells but thats the gist.)

I have used variations of milestone leveling for years, works fine. Have since just moved to session-based leveling - 4 sessions x tier = level up.That leaves a bit more flexibility in their chosen courses of action.

I also think double-up leveling is a good idea that i plan to try in my next campaign. i have been intrigued by it as it allows more time to "get used to your new stuff" and cuts the periods of "changing character" in half. So, doubling the time to level but doubling the levels is just fine by me in concept and i think for my group it will play out better.

 

[Eltab]

I worked out a timeline for my Tyranny of Dragons campaign, based on the groups stops and starts, travel, &c. There was one date mentioned in the AP that I used as the Zero reference. Then I translated the Harptos Calendar of FR into IRL Julian calendar.

The group started as L1 newbies in February and were L12 by August. I had to leave the group (they subsequently picked up a new campaign) in the Green Dragon's lair, about half-way through Rise of Tiamat.

 

[jasper]

hey hey the OP author is getting fiction all over my game mechanics. ....
This was a small tiny problem in 1E. Even adding in travel time, 1d4 weeks per level training, and other stuff. I had pcs hitting 9th or 10 (call it 20th for 5e) level in 18 to 22 game months.
You could throw in aging and death by aging effects from monsters. Aging effects casting/receiving spells from 1E. Haste took a year off your life. Etc. You could if possible have x time past between chapters / modules.
Or just ignore it.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Leveling is purely a game mechanic meant to keep the default player interested in their character over the long term. The feeling of course being that unless you were one of the "actor" type of players who could remain invested in their PC and advance and evolve him or her over the years through the simple act of just playing them through the story even if the character never "got" anything... the other 95% of the player populace wanted and needed new things to "play" with every couple of sessions. New abilities, new spells, higher numbers, this and that. If the character sheet didn't seem to change more frequently, they'd be less invested in keeping the character going.

But as a result, the game mechanics begin to rub up against the internal "reality" of the campaign setting itself, and you have to gently massage or completely handwave away all the descrepencies between the two. Why are PCs gaining all this power while the NPCs are not? The Watch Captain who has been on the job for 20 years defending a city still only has enough HP to maybe survive a single Burning Hands spell, but this rando kid who's gone out into the wilderness for the last three weekends to "adventure" now can take a Hill Giant's maul to the face and then brush himself off and ask for more.

Yes, it's narratively dumb, and it makes no sense. But that's why D&D is a game and not a novel. And oftentimes the game part of D&D takes precedence. And thus the best you can do is just... ignore it... when the game and the story are at odds. Accept the game requires mechanics that run counter to the story, let those mechanics play out, and not think too hard about trying to explain the issues away.

The other option of course being you play the illustrious E6 style game and have just 6 levels worth of abilities that character can acquire over the out-of-game years you run the campaign. So the PCs probably won't level up until like 6 months of real-world play. You do that... and really emphasize the fact that PCs DON'T change much at all over months and years in-world... and you get to keep HP low so that they can still get one-shotted by an Adult dragon even after 2 years of adventuring, and it makes the really old NPCs that have spent the last 50 years of their lives defending the world actually something of an anomoly when they are Level 18-- a level that not a single of one your players is ever going to sniff because the game will end before that character ever came close to it.

The question though remains whether your players could remain invested in a game like that? When they didn't "get" anything over the months of play other than just the experiences in the story. Is that enough for them? If so, great! But I tend to doubt most tables will have that luxury.

 

[Irda Ranger]

my worry would be that if you're using prepublished modules that expect the PCs to be level x at the start and level x + 2 or x + 3 at the end you might find the start bits of the module are too easy, or the end bits are too tough, or even both; and thus you'll have to do some tweaking.

Right, this wouldn't work with the big campaign books that WotC has published. So far the only one of those I've run was Curse of Strahd, but I ran it using a more standard advancement.

If I ever run Curse of Strahd again though, I might re-write it to be more like what I'm describing. Strahd would probably go into melancholy retreats into his castle for months or years at a time, obsessing over Tatiana, while the PCs deal with whole adventures relating to Baba Lysaga or the mad Abbot.

Excellent - provided you can convince the players/PCs to go along with it; it would be a bit heavy-handed to outright force this on them. Some players see their PCs either as professional adventurers for life, or want to use a quick few years of adventuring to secure their fame and fortune for life so they can go on to other long-term non-adventuring pursuits.

No one has to play at my table. I offered to run a campaign this way, people took me up on it.

As DM, you can facilitate this by making yourself available on non-session nights for pub or coffeehouse sessions dealing just with one player's character(s). Nobody other than Joe really wants to sit through a game session that's all just you and Joe designing and building Tobias' (Joe's PC) castle, and it's hard to multi-task these things (says me, who's tried it once too often). But if you and Joe go for a beer one night and you each bring your game stuff along, Joe's castle gets built and nobody gets bored.

Exactly right. We use message boards and chat rooms. This is a new source of fun because some players enjoy reading along with these parts even if their PCs aren't directly involved in.

Except the PCs aren't dumb; and they'll logically want to proactively press whatever advantage they've gained over their enemies before said enemies have time to regroup and lay new plots. This is where it gets tricky...

Tricky?? It's absolutely awesome when this happens!

Instead of single adventures, make the long break points come between adventure paths such that when they take a break they've finished off whatever main enemy was the focus of the last series of adventures. That way they can take their downtime without having to look over their shoulders all the time, and when the next adventures come calling it's a fresh start on a new story.

That's basically how it works. Or a new chapter in a longer story. It wouldn't make any sense for Big Evil Boss to just sit around and let the PCs go back to their quiet lives. But if the cult leader is killed and the cult disbanded, a few of its more dedicated members that survive might relocate to a new redoubt to lick their wounds and rebuild their strength. A darkness has been growing in Murkwood.

Absolutely! (though have a care for your item crafting rules, lest your PCs overpower themselves with the items they make)

On an unrelated matter, I never understood the complaints about overpowered PCs. The DM has literally infinite power. PCs can steal spotlight from each other if you allow one PC to have an artifact weapon and everyone else has to make do with potions and a +1 dagger, but PCs can never be overpowered relative to the DM. "Just add monsters."

Reading between the lines, I'm also guessing you want the campaign to last longer overall.

Only within the game-world fiction. It doesn't take any more time IRL. Well, maybe if you count the side quest stuff players do on their own, they're playing more hours of D&D per month.

Answer here, of course, is to slow down the advance rate. Instead of level 5 just being one adventure, make it a start-to-end adventure path (say, four modules culminating in a BBEG fight which ties off that arc) and have 'em bump to 6th partway through.

Depending on the adventure I might do that for longer adventures that have a natural break built into them. (I don't want to get into details here because spoilers)

 

[Uller]

You can't do much about the pacing of the APs if you play them as written...but yeah...you can advance really fast and it is a bit silly. As far as narrative goes around a campaign like that, I try to look at it as the PCs are already very powerful...they just don't know it yet...That 200 year-old elf wizard already has a basic idea of how to cast 7th+ level spells, he just hasn't had the need or opportunity...adventuring focuses his mind and unleashes that part of his brain. The 30 year-old human fighter is already a grizzled veteran but he hasn't adventured yet so it just takes a little time to shake off the scars and reveal the lessons he already learned through years of campaigning. So I encourage my players to not make PCs that are 16 yo kids just starting out but instead make them the character they think they will be at higher levels.

But for homebrews, I just mentioned in another thread, I just pass game time the same as real time. With one or two weeks between game sessions and each adventure taking 2 or 3 game sessions, going from first to second level took my group three weeks. Then we took a week off so that's a month. Second to third will be paced about the same...so 2 months to get from 1st to 3rd level. Probably will slow down for 4th and 5th level and that is as far as this campaign will likely go so probably 6 months of game time for 1st to 5th level. Seems okay to me. Higher levels will be slower going if we start a new "chapter" of the campaign with these same characters. Maybe another full year or two to get to 10th level and I'll put a much bigger chunk of down time between.

If you want it longer, make downtime increments in months or seasons or even 6 months or a year. So if a week of real life passes between adventures, a month or a season passes in game time.

It is up to the DM how often opportunities for adventure present themselves and the players need to kind of play along with the idea that their characters are not able to just go from one adventure to the next with no downtime in between. They got s*&t to do...families, jobs, positions in their liege lord's court or whatever.

I liken it to my time in the military...I was deployed for 8 months to a combat zone. Most of that time was incredibly boring. Uneventful "presence patrols", maintenance and guard duty with occasional very brief events that you could liken to an "adventure"...In 12 years in the military only one combat deployment...

It is up to the DM to set that pace.

 

[Irda Ranger]

But as a result, the game mechanics begin to rub up against the internal "reality" of the campaign setting itself, and you have to gently massage or completely handwave away all the descrepencies between the two.

Ooooooorrrrrr ... you could use the rules I posted in the OP. They bring the game part of the game and the story part of the game back into alignment.

Yes, it's narratively dumb, and it makes no sense. But that's why D&D is a game and not a novel.

Ooooooorrrrrr ... you could use the rules I posted in the OP. Because it's both. It's a role-playing game. As in you inhabit the role of a hero in a story.

And thus the best you can do is just... ignore it... when the game and the story are at odds. Accept the game requires mechanics that run counter to the story, let those mechanics play out, and not think too hard about trying to explain the issues away.

Ooooooorrrrrr ... you could use the rules I posted in the OP. Because, in fact, the advancement rules in the PHB/DMG are not the best we can do. We can do better. Take that defeatism elsewhere.

The other option of course being you play the illustrious E6 style game and have just 6 levels worth of abilities that character can acquire over the out-of-game years you run the campaign

At no point did I say that high-level play was the issue. That's not a solution to the problem I posted.

So the PCs probably won't level up until like 6 months of real-world play.

At no point did I say that real-world time would be effected. I can say "Okay, the next quest will be six-months later in-the-game world. Tell me what you're doing with your down time." The actual amount of time spent gaming at particular levels is only stretched out a little bit. (Per adventure)

You do that... and really emphasize the fact that PCs DON'T change much at all over months and years in-world... and you get to keep HP low so that they can still get one-shotted by an Adult dragon even after 2 years of adventuring,

Did you even read my OP? Who are you responding to? I specifically said that PCs level up to level 3 during adventure #1 and adventure #2 (which is only a year or two later in game terms, not IRL) starts with the PCs at level 5.

The question though remains whether your players could remain invested in a game like that? When they didn't "get" anything over the months of play other than just the experiences in the story. Is that enough for them? If so, great! But I tend to doubt most tables will have that luxury.

I can see why some people would be bored with the type of campaign you describe. That's not the kind of campaign I described though.

 

[MrHotter]

That bugged me a bit too. I sorta explained the fast leveling for PCs in my world by saying my players have 'hero's blood'. It's kinda like being a superhero in my world. They can heal fast, live long healthy lives, and quickly learn and gain power. The hero's blood (or villians blood) is rare in my world, and if a group of heroes get together you can be sure something bad is about to happen.

The players are much like the WoT Ta'veren in my world. Trouble will find them even if they try to avoid it and they have incredible potential.

 

[Irda Ranger]

So I encourage my players to not make PCs that are 16 yo kids just starting out but instead make them the character they think they will be at higher levels.

That's probably the best approach for APs as-published. Nice.

I just pass game time the same as real time. With one or two weeks between game sessions and each adventure taking 2 or 3 game sessions, going from first to second level took my group three weeks. Then we took a week off so that's a month.

But the in-game time doesn't really line up with real-world time, right? Like you can hand-waive away a month-long ship journey, but then spend four sessions in a haunted castle that's only 48 hours of game time. How do you reconcile those?

It is up to the DM how often opportunities for adventure present themselves and the players need to kind of play along with the idea that their characters are not able to just go from one adventure to the next with no downtime in between.

Exactly. Gandalf shows up when he shows up. It's not like he's down at the Adventuring Bureau selling plot hooks to walk-in traffic.

I liken it to my time in the military...I was deployed for 8 months to a combat zone. Most of that time was incredibly boring. Uneventful "presence patrols", maintenance and guard duty with occasional very brief events that you could liken to an "adventure"...In 12 years in the military only one combat deployment...

It is up to the DM to set that pace.

Exactly. Exactly. You've got it.