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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 5095018" data-attributes="member: 2067">I'm on board with this. I've been exploring the idea through FFZ a lot, and my last ENWorld blog post has to deal with this idea, too. I don't think this is incompatible with linear leveling. Indeed, I think it adds a lot if this is an additional dimension. Sort of like Prestige Classes were originally intended to be, and what paragon paths and epic destinies are: if you're a member of Organization X, you can focus your abilities to help reflect that, rather than (or in addition to) getting general abilities from your main class. You could do it without linear leveling, but I think I like it better as an adjunct than as a replacement. The thing is that it's a very DM-intensive way to set up the game. You have to make prerequisites and ways for players to get prerequisites and kind of set up the flow of the entire campaign like a giant dungeon (going back to the idea of "dungeon flow," which games like Metroid or Zelda or Okami use). It's possible, with a more formalized system, that it could be made much easier for DM's, and I'd immediately get on board with finding one or helping to design one. The idea has a lot of appeal for me, and not a lot has been done with it. I'm not sure it's entirely possible to make an easy system like this, but maybe. I'd be on board with feeling it out, anyway. I'd never expect it to replace D&D's core leveling approach entirely for D&D, but I could easily see it getting placed on top. It strikes me that a lot of DM's who level up "when appropriate" rather than with XP are already doing this to a certain degree: you gain power when you complete a significant challenge. It's just that these DM's give out buckets of stuff at once with a level, rather than discrete, individual pieces. I've also noticed, in FFZ design, that the idea is a little easier to pull off in videogames, where you have unlimited time to explore, poke, prod, and research, to find hidden things. At the tabletop, you rarely have that freedom, because you have a game you need to keep flowing. Not that this makes the absolute case one way or the other, it's just something to keep in mind.</blockquote>

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