No Second Edition Love?

[tx7321]

Methinks you're taking the assumptions of how your group plays and spreading them a bit too far again. As much as I like the idea in theory of training before leveling, I've very rarely played that way.
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Methinks not.

Seriously, I think it does mention someplace in the 1E DMG about training, and at some level (name level?) not having ot train under someone. Anyhow, I've never seen anyone play where going from 1st to 2nd didn't require formal tutoring or training. At high levels sure.

This might be a widely held house rule though, I'd have to dig. Maybe someone TFoster knows.

As for 3E I can't recall how leveling up and training works.

 

[Desdichado]

Methinks not.

You could be right. That's why I qualified it with an IIRC.

As for 3E I can't recall how leveling up and training works.

There are no rules for it whatsoever, except optional ones in Unearthed Arcana. I think the designers pretty much assumed that as soon as you got into a fight that gave you enough XP to level up, you'd take a few minutes, pause the game, adjust your character sheets up a level and then restart the game.

Which is how we play. It's not perhaps the most satisfying way of handling levels (when I run, I at least restrict leveling to the downtime that happens between adventures, although I still handwave aside any training requirements) but it certainly is the simplest.

 

[T. Foster]

This might be a widely held house rule though, I'd have to dig. Maybe someone TFoster knows.

Eh, what am I supposed to know? In BtB 1E AD&D characters require 1-4 weeks of training to gain levels, determined by a subjective DM-assigned "performance rating." Low level characters generally require training/tutoring from a higher level NPC, but characters with good performance ratings can self-train at double the time (and money) cost. High level characters don't require tutors at all, but they still have to spend the time and money. This rule serves three purposes: 1) the performance rating system allows the DM to make a subjective judgment of player performance (in contrast to the objective BtB 1E XP calculus) -- a player who does a "bad job" (of roleplaying his class/race/alignment, or just generally) earns the same XP as the other characters but requires more training time (thus keeping him out of play longer and eating up more of his treasure -- and, if he doesn't have sufficient treasure, denying him further advancement as he's forced to go on zero-XP adventures to get enough money to train); 2) the (really pretty exorbitant -- 1500 g.p./week/level) training costs serve as a massive treasure-sink to keep PCs poor, hungry, and eager for new adventures; 3) the training rules also enforce character down-time, to keep the more active players from running roughshod over everyone else (remember that the default campaign-model in 1E wasn't a single "permanent party" but rather individuals playing in various combinations at their own pace -- see the example under "Time in the Campaign" for an example).

In my experience #1 was universally ignored (training was always calculated based on 1 week, and if the DM thought the player was performing badly he just gave him less XP), #2 was strictly enforced (but, as above, always based on 1 week), and #3 tended to be glossed over, since we always played under the "permanent party" model and either everybody trained at the same time or the rest of the party would wait around while the others were training. I never recall seeing a player/character excluded from an expedition because of training. The "NPC tutor" idea was also entirely glossed over/abstracted -- it was always just assumed that the character was able to find an appropriate tutor (or was self-training, though we didn't charge double time/money for that). Basically, every group I played in used the training rules as a treasure-sink and ignored all the rest. I can't speak for what everyone else was doing, of course.

 

[Aaron L]

Methinks you're taking the assumptions of how your group plays and spreading them a bit too far again. As much as I like the idea in theory of training before leveling, I've very rarely played that way.
__________________

Methinks not.

Seriously, I think it does mention someplace in the 1E DMG about training, and at some level (name level?) not having ot train under someone. Anyhow, I've never seen anyone play where going from 1st to 2nd didn't require formal tutoring or training. At high levels sure.

This might be a widely held house rule though, I'd have to dig. Maybe someone TFoster knows.

As for 3E I can't recall how leveling up and training works.

But you DO, you always take your personal game experiences and assume they applied equally to everyone who ever played the game.

No on one I ever played with ever used the level training rules. Of all the claims you've stated about how 1E played out, none of them had any bearing at all on any group I ever played with, and more than that, they seem downright bizarre to me.

 

[Rothe]

Eh, what am I supposed to know? In BtB 1E AD&D characters require 1-4 weeks of training to gain levels, determined by a subjective DM-assigned "performance rating." Low level characters generally require training/tutoring from a higher level NPC, but characters with good performance ratings can self-train at double the time (and money) cost. High level characters don't require tutors at all, but they still have to spend the time and money. This rule serves three purposes: 1) the performance rating system allows the DM to make a subjective judgment of player performance (in contrast to the objective BtB 1E XP calculus) -- a player who does a "bad job" (of roleplaying his class/race/alignment, or just generally) earns the same XP as the other characters but requires more training time (thus keeping him out of play longer and eating up more of his treasure -- and, if he doesn't have sufficient treasure, denying him further advancement as he's forced to go on zero-XP adventures to get enough money to train); 2) the (really pretty exorbitant -- 1500 g.p./week/level) training costs serve as a massive treasure-sink to keep PCs poor, hungry, and eager for new adventures; 3) the training rules also enforce character down-time, to keep the more active players from running roughshod over everyone else (remember that the default campaign-model in 1E wasn't a single "permanent party" but rather individuals playing in various combinations at their own pace -- see the example under "Time in the Campaign" for an example).

In my experience #1 was universally ignored (training was always calculated based on 1 week, and if the DM thought the player was performing badly he just gave him less XP), #2 was strictly enforced (but, as above, always based on 1 week), and #3 tended to be glossed over, since we always played under the "permanent party" model and either everybody trained at the same time or the rest of the party would wait around while the others were training. I never recall seeing a player/character excluded from an expedition because of training. The "NPC tutor" idea was also entirely glossed over/abstracted -- it was always just assumed that the character was able to find an appropriate tutor (or was self-training, though we didn't charge double time/money for that). Basically, every group I played in used the training rules as a treasure-sink and ignored all the rest. I can't speak for what everyone else was doing, of course.

I think this goes to show the real variation in how AD&D was played, and I'm assuming T.Foster and others are talking from experience from when it first came out. I don't recall if training was in OD&D but when we went over to AD&D we didn't use training and all the groups we knew of, except one, didn't either. That one group started with BD&D and went to AD&D (becasue it was "advanced"), they never played OD&D (for what it is worth).

I recall even playing in a weekly game at the library, of the 3 different groups I played with none ever used the training rules. So in my experience, ignoring training was the common house-rule. We certainly knew it was not BtB, but we also typically ignored gp=xp and even awarded xp if you did not kill something, but merely tricked or subdued it. These too, in my limited exprience, were the common house-rules.

The odd thing, we did enforce encumberance, a rule that most other groups ignored.

 

[Piratecat]

But you DO, you always take your personal game experiences and assume they applied equally to everyone who ever played the game.

No on one I ever played with ever used the level training rules. Of all the claims you've stated about how 1E played out, none of them had any bearing at all on any group I ever played with, and more than that, they seem downright bizarre to me.

We used them. Heck, we still use them!

And Aaron, please don't say that someone "always does something." You have no way of knowing if that's true, and I'm sure you wouldn't like it if someone made the same claim of you. The Golden rule, and all that.

 

[T. Foster]

OD&D doesn't have training rules, and neither does Basic/Classic D&D, so in my experience groups that started with one or the other of those and then switched to AD&D were much less likely to use the AD&D training rules (and other rules which are different in AD&D from those versions -- surprise segments, material spell components, etc.). Most of the folks I played with in the mid-80s were too young to have played OD&D, but most did start with B/X D&D, and we all carried a lot over from it (for instance, I never saw surprise segments used in a game the way they're described in the 1E DMG until 2004!) but for whatever reason training costs were one of the AD&Disms we did adopt -- I'm not sure why, perhaps just because even back then the meta-game reasoning (that these costs serve as a treasure-sink to keep characters motivated to keep adventuring) was obvious to us?

Oh, and on a slight tangent, awarding XP for monsters that are tricked or subdued rather than killed is actually BtB in 1E AD&D (though monsters that are subdued or captured and then sold/ransomed generate XP based on their sale/ransom value rather than their "monster" value).

 

[Desdichado]

OD&D doesn't have training rules, and neither does Basic/Classic D&D, so in my experience groups that started with one or the other of those and then switched to AD&D were much less likely to use the AD&D training rules (and other rules which are different in AD&D from those versions -- surprise segments, material spell components, etc.). Most of the folks I played with in the mid-80s were too young to have played OD&D, but most did start with B/X D&D, and we all carried a lot over from it (for instance, I never saw surprise segments used in a game the way they're described in the 1E DMG until 2004!) but for whatever reason training costs were one of the AD&Disms we did adopt -- I'm not sure why, perhaps just because even back then the meta-game reasoning (that these costs serve as a treasure-sink to keep characters motivated to keep adventuring) was obvious to us?

Ah, that explains it. I started with BD&D, and probably my AD&D days were really days of an AD&D and BD&D hybrid. Which was probably very common.

 

[MerricB]

So in my experience, ignoring training was the common house-rule.

Gary Gygax also ignored that rule, except when players gained a lot of XP from a big treasure windfall.

Cheers!

 

[thedungeondelver]

I use training by the book in some AD&D games. In others I don't. I try to go by what suits the player's group and what the overall goals (in game) are.