Rate of Advancement and how often people play

[Thornir Alekeg]

Its more then just how often you play, it also matters with how many hours per session and how many PCs you have. The more players, the slower things go and level gains also slows. And with few PCs things can move more smoothly and fast and level gain is usually faster.

Obviously same is true if the sessions are 4 hours verse 8 hours.

Lets see our group has 8 players, we play about 8 times per year on average for about 6 ours each. We've been at it for 5 1/2 years, so that's about 45 sessions or 270 hours of gaming. Between the two campaigns starting characters have gained a total of 11 levels. That works out to be one level every four sessions or every 24 hours of playing.

And all that really means nothing except we are having fun.

 

[Creamsteak]

I use the experience straight out of the book. I know it's not "cheating" to do otherwise, but I feel dishonest a bit when I reduce the experience (I used 1/2 for a while). More would be way too fast.

We play in blocks of 1 session per week for a month or a month and a half, then theres a two or three week lull.

I often see people level every other session (8 hour+ sessions) till they hit level 4. Then it gets slowed down to 3-5 sessions, but seems to stay consistent with that. I think this has to do with me throwing higher level encounters at them at first through 4th level, then slowing down into a rythm of soft, soft, soft, challenging, soft, hard encountes. I mostly award xp for encounters, traps, and avoiding either, but rarely for anything else (I feel like this is enough for my group, and I don't want to force them to do things they don't want to do).

 

[Evilhalfling]

That works out to be one level every four sessions or every 24 hours of playing.

Which oddly enough is just exactly the same average I have- although we play an 8 hr session 3-4 times per month I deiceded that since I require a week off to train, and an appropriate mentor or facility (library, temple etc.)
that leveling more than every 3rd session was annoying.

So I threw out the xp tables, and just give 1/3 the nessary xp per game, with RP or Story awards = 1/10 of a sessions xp.

we have gone from levels 2-12 then 3-7 now 3-8 this time we are headed for higher levels, I hope. The first game trailed off when the PCs had to many resposiblities pulling in different directions to work as a party. This time they have no resposiblities but adventuring. Its all homebrew adventures with one mini adventure exception, that one was heavily modified.

 

[krazykid]

XP seems to be a state of mind

We are also of the weekly session - Friday nites - about 4-5 hours a go. We level every 3-4 weeks. The speed is about right, you get to try out your new abilities but those ones you are hanging out for (eg fireball spells) are not too far away.

Interestingly we have been trying out different method of XP rewards recently. While playing the Sunless Citidal series we have been gaining levels at certain points in the module. This is to keep us balanced with the modules, and it seems to work.

XP seems to be a state of mind and as long as everyone is having fun then all is good

 

[MerricB]

There are two other points that I find interesting.

One regards the type of play that D&D was designed for: Dungeoneering. It seems pretty clear that Castle Greyhawk got a majority of the play, and that role-playing took a back seat compared to the exploration, monster-slaying and looting. This is not to say that role-playing didn't occur... but it certainly wasn't a driving force of the game.

The other is this: to achieve a faster XP progression, the main way of doing so was to give out more treasure. (Remember, 1 GP = 1 XP!) Thus, if the rate of advancement was too low for normal play, the way of making it faster was to move the campaign more towards the Monty Haul style...

Cheers!

 

[Jupp]

We play about once a month as well. A session is about 10-20 hours or so. Sometimes its Saturday/Sunday but that's only 3 or 4 times a year.

Generally we advance very slowly in levels in our campaigns. Back when we started to play 11 years ago it took us about 7 years (6 players) to reach about level 10 (+-2 levels depending on character). After that the campaign came to an end and our characters get their deserved retirement

Now that we have a new campaign (5 players) running since about 4 years we are advancing a bit faster than before and are around level 7 or so now. Still slow but I am totally ok with it since its not the leveling but the adventuring that is the interesting part

The other group I play in (4 players) has Midgard rules and there we level a bit faster. After 2 years in the campaign we are at around 4th level.

So that would mean that we leveled roughly every 8th session in the first group/campaign, every 6th session in the first group/second campaign and every third session in the second group. Obviously that can change greatly as soon as you have city adventures or other times where there are several sessions of intense roleplaying instead of XP hunting monster bashing

Greetings
Jupp

 

[MonsterMash]

My group levelled up after 5 sessions of about 3 hours playing. Its been roughly monthly so the campaign seems to be moving slowly, but at the moment this group can't really meet more often or for longer so its been fairly slow progression. I tend to regard levels 3-8 as the most interesting as players can deal with challenges, but can't just bulldoze everything you throw at them

As an OD&D'er I do find that 3e progression is very quick if you use the base rules, I use a modified XP chart to slow things down.

 

[wedgeski]

We play D&D about once a month, usually for a 10-12 hours split over two days, and will expect everyone, on average, to level once in that period. At very low levels the same period may occasionally yield 2 levels of experience (rarely, but it has happened on particularly fraught occasions), and in the mid to high ranges I won't be surprised to find the advancement rate slowing down dramatically. I'll let you know when we actually manage to play a high level game.

Which is kind of the point. When we first saw the likely 3ed advancement rate we were all horrified. I for one had an 11th level cleric who I had been playing for seven years (seven years!). But after however-many years of actually playing the game, we've all got used to it and frankly rather enjoy it. I can actually look forward to taking a character through 20 levels without two house moves and umpteen birthdays in between - it's refreshing.

Having said that, the once-a-month nature of our games tends to make them adventure-path-ish rather than complex or epic, and the notion of a 'campaign' is one where the setting is consistent as opposed to one where world-shattering events are shaking the characters' shoelaces every other week.

Should I ever get a weekly game off the ground, I will strongly consider curtailing the standard advancement. YMMV.

 

[Buttercup]

We play roughly once a fortnight (I've always loved that word!) with our sessions lasting about 4 hours, give or take 30 minutes. I don't hand out specific amounts of experience each session, but instead just tell them when they've leveled up, which happens about every 4 sessions at low levels, and probably every 5 sessions after that.

 

[Ahnehnois]

We ideally play once a week (although so sporadically that it's really only two or three times a month averaging it out for the year). We level up at a fairly uniform rate in every campaign we run, very quickly, probably better than once every other session. This is with ad hoc DM XP, but considering the high power level and the challenges we tend to face, by the book it would come out that way.

Extremely fast, but how else can anyone ever even experience the high levels? We've never had one campaign run so much as a year, so if we want to get somewhere fast advancement is the only way.