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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Korgoth" data-source="post: 3341992" data-attributes="member: 49613">This is not a direct answer to your question, but perhaps it will help: this muddies the waters of my own poll, but it at least partly depends on what kind of a game/campaign you're playing in.If you're playing in an Epic Quest to throw the Ring of Gyges into Mount Kilauea in order to preserve the idyllic lifeways of Hobbtopia, there's a certain notion of a cosmic struggle between Good and Evil.  So if the beloved Nigel Dustyknickers, companion of the Ringholder, gets shanked by a Satire of Industrial Man... the forces of Good have a problem.  So it's not too much of a stretch to imagine that the forces of Blessed Providence will guide another Noble Hero into the fold... a man of considerable accomplishment and worth who will have the necessary skills and pluck to replace the fallen Companion.  Why?  Because there is an implied intervention of Destiny into the whole course of events, and (given the nature of the struggle) an expectation of ultimate success.  Good is supposed to win, and will.On the other hand, perhaps you are playing in a Weird Tale where the characters are Fierce Wanderers.  They spend their time skulking about in the ruins of the Nameless City killing the equally fierce Crocodile Men and plundering their heathen artifacts to sell on the Black Market.  These are daring individuals, perhaps even heroes in some sense, particularly if you consider dark rites of the Crocodile Men, not to mention their man-eating qualities, to be inimical to mankind.  But that is only secondary, because mankind may have a civilization here but it is not Civilization... man's cities are corrupt with vice and avarice and some men are about as bad as your typical Crocodile Man (who at least is honest about his primitive motives).  Moreso than heroes, these are Adventurers who are in it for the thrill, or the loot, or the power, or maybe just because they're not satisfied doing anything else.  They seek the dangerous possibilities of life (you could wind up lying in a ditch, or wearing a crown) rather than the predictable and often depressing certainties of the mundane.  At least if you die with your foot on a Crocman's neck you know that you lived.  For Misfits such as these, there is no expectation of success nor charmed path.  They carve out an empire or die trying.Therefore: in the latter sort of game Level 1 is meaningful as the place where you start, the closest you get to the mundane.  Everybody starts out there and goes as far as he is able with his combination of luck, talent and skill.  If everybody else is level 8 and you're at level 1, well you've got some catching up to do.  But that's the game.Now, the dichotomy I presented, if not precisely located at the extremes, at least highlights them.  A game could fall in between.  But the point is, starting at Level 1 suggests a game of "This individual man against the harsh realities of this (often dark) fantasy world".  Whereas an epic quest of Good vs. Evil suggests that the characters are actors in a larger drama and have special destinies accordingly.  In that kind of game I can easily see how starting over at Level 1 could be inappropriate.</blockquote>

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