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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WizarDru" data-source="post: 2277303" data-attributes="member: 151">It's only weird if you approach it from the angle of 'this emulates my favorite stories' as opposed to 'this is a game' or 'this is a system that originated from a miniatures wargame'.As Monte Cook has pointed out on numerous occasions, level advancement is the 'carrot' of the 'carrot and stick' approach.  Characters are eager and excited to advance through levels, growing more competent and heroic with new powers and abilities.  That hardly means that's the only way, many other systems have a completely different approach.In the case of D&D, it best models the classic 'youth seeks his destiny and becomes a great hero' archetype.  A game like GURPS, for example, takes the tack of 'one day, our heroes met up and their story began'.  It's the difference between the Belgariad and Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser.  In a D&D game, you start as a relatively weak hero, somewhat more accomplished than the average joe, and rise to the level of a legend.  In a game like GURPS, you start as an accomplished hero...and advance very little.D&Ds rapid and early advancement out of the first couple of levels is designed to get players away from such ready fragility.  One might make a case that starting the players at 3rd or 4th level and then restricting level advancement to a much slower rate might be sufficiently grim-and-gritty for some....but I'll be honest: I like using Beholders and other crazy critters that would just not work in a grim-and-gritty game. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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