Quick question about campaign starting level

When starting a new campaign...

  • ...we normally start at 1st level, with few exceptions

    Votes: 22 55.0%
  • ...we start at 1st level the majority of times

    Votes: 13 32.5%
  • ...we start at a higher level the majority of times

    Votes: 4 10.0%
  • ...we normally start at a higher level, with few exceptions

    Votes: 1 2.5%

Li Shenron

Legend
If you take a look at your total experience of playing/DMing campaigns in any D&D edition, how often have you started a campaign exactly at level 1, rather than a higher level?

This question assumes you normally start a campaign with all PCs at the same level, otherwise replace "how often" with "how many PC".

The only edition of D&D I can say I've played extensively enough to make a conclusion on this topic is 3e, in which case after just a couple of years we pretty much settled to normally starting at level 3 to get a little more freedom in character creation. Occasionally I've also played in campaigns starting at much higher level, but these were practically always PbP, not tabletop.
 

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We almost always start at 1st. Occasionally, we'll start at 2nd, just to give PCs a bit more scope.

Starting anything higher than 2nd is exceedingly rare.
 

In all my years of playing D&D, the only time I haven't started at 1st level is because (a) I was joining an established campaign or (b) we were running a pregenerated adventure that needed higher level characters. All of the campaigns I've run have had PCs begin at 1st level.
 


We basically always start at Level 1. We've also started at 3 before, but I like the level or two of onboarding players get, learning the ins and outs of their PC before things get too complex.

Cheers!
Kinak
 

For me, the thorn here is the term "campaign". If I'm running a short-term game (say <10 sessions), I often start characters at higher levels. If I'm running a long-term campaign (>10), I usually start at level 1. I went for the second poll option.

To me, the experience of playing through from level 1 to the high levels is a big part of D&D.
 

For me, the thorn here is the term "campaign". If I'm running a short-term game (say <10 sessions), I often start characters at higher levels. If I'm running a long-term campaign (>10), I usually start at level 1. I went for the second poll option.

Right! To clarify, by "starting" I mean starting fresh with a new group of PCs, whether it's a one-shot game or a long-term campaign. I used the term "campaign" but maybe I should have used the more generic expression "game of D&D" because for us there has always been the implicit possibility of continuing, even if officially it might be presented as one-shot (of course it's different if the one-shot game is at a convention, then it's really one-shot).

But in general, by the intentions of the poll a "campaign" is anything that takes the PCs across more than 1 level (not counting levelling up at the very end). Thus, if you just voted by making some sort of average between the two cases you mention, you voted correctly.
 
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I/we start with level 1 characters like 99% of the time. What I've dome several times is starting at level 1, playing for a few levels and then levelling the PCs up to play some higher-level stuff.

In a long-running FR campaign under 3(.5)e the characters were taken from 7 to 10 by DM fiat in order to tackle "City of the Drow".
 


Level 1

But...

Campaign last long...so time spent at 1 is pretty small. New players (and characters) joining normally start higher (though how I have handled that has varied, but normally above 1).
 

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