Reverse Expectations

[Camelot]

I had a thought.

Since the dawn of roleplaying games, there have been levels. Many games today try to kill this sacred cow. However, there is one thing that you cannot (and many would say should not) get rid of; while playing, your character gets stronger. What if this were relatively not the case?

At least in D&D, your character at level 1 is a nobody who decided to go adventuring. At level 1, you have a great chance of dying early. If you can survive long enough to gain levels, your chance of death is reduced. Now, what if we reversed this? What if it was really easy to be a 1st level adventurer (or the equivalent in games without levels), but as you leveled up, enemies of your level grew stronger than you faster than you, and your chance of dying increased. What would you think of such a game design? Have you played a game like that?

 

[OnlineDM]

I think this is an interesting thought experiment. At first blush, though, it doesn't sound like a lot of fun to play, at least not for a traditional concept of an ongoing campaign. The ultimate outcome will be that your character eventually dies, correct?

It reminds me of old-school arcade games, where each level is harder than the one before it but your character remains the same. You play until you die, and then you pop in another quarter and start over.

The closest analogue in RPGs that I know of is the idea of a competitive dungeon delve that's done at some conventions, where the goal is to see how far your party can get before it's wiped out. The first room is a warm up, and it gets tougher from there. Eventually you die (or "win") and the game is over.

 

[RSKennan]

I've been toying with something like this for a homebrew game totally unlike D&D.

I think the key is to take away XP as a growth factor; You have to use some sort of benchmark system like Call of Cthulhu's skill ticks, or some other goal-oriented system. You'd have to build in an escalating difficulty of "levelling up" so that after a while, diminishing returns slow down advancement, and the character reaches the campaign's desired power level.

What you'd end up with if you did it right was characters who cap out without becoming the biggest deals in creation. There would be things above them that would always be above them; to take down such threats, it might take several territories or kingdoms led by noble PCs. The scope would change- a party of four to six adventurers wouldn't cut it.

Honestly, this is starting to sound a lot like first edition AD&D.

 

[Bluenose]

Characters getting better hasn't been the case in all RPGs. Traveller players from the very early days had characters that were pretty much 'finished' in terms of improving their abilities. It was hard (time consuming and expensive) to learn new skills (or improve your UPP). Instead, you improved other things. Equipment, contacts, finances, reputation, all sorts of things might be rewards; improving skills was not one of them. The 'always a bigger fish' concept was present too. Of course, Traveller managed without levels, so it might be hard to adapt the concept. But the idea of characters that don't become more skilled after a certain point didn't prevent long term campaigns.

 

[Nagol]

I had a thought.

Since the dawn of roleplaying games, there have been levels. Many games today try to kill this sacred cow. However, there is one thing that you cannot (and many would say should not) get rid of; while playing, your character gets stronger. What if this were relatively not the case?

At least in D&D, your character at level 1 is a nobody who decided to go adventuring. At level 1, you have a great chance of dying early. If you can survive long enough to gain levels, your chance of death is reduced. Now, what if we reversed this? What if it was really easy to be a 1st level adventurer (or the equivalent in games without levels), but as you leveled up, enemies of your level grew stronger than you faster than you, and your chance of dying increased. What would you think of such a game design? Have you played a game like that?

Traveler, one of the first RPGs published, didn't have characters get stronger from experience (well unless the player wanted to take a couple of years off from playing the PC at least).

Call of Cthulu, another old classic has the PCs generally grow more likely to be forcibly retired with experience even if the PCs skills grow a bit. The sanity rules see to that.

 

[The Shaman]

What if it was really easy to be a 1st level adventurer (or the equivalent in games without levels), but as you leveled up, enemies of your level grew stronger than you faster than you, and your chance of dying increased. . . . Have you played a game like that?

Yes, I have - it's called Call of Cthulhu, and it's brilliant.

 

[Crothian]

As others have stated you need to doa little research first as the games that do what you are saying are pretty well known and have been arpound for many decades.

But to look specifically at one of the suggests of the game being easy at low levels and then getting harder and harder as the levels increase I think is a bad idea. Players get attached to the characters the longer they play them. A game that made it tougher and tougher for characters to live would make it easier for players to get attached to their characters and then have them die.

I perfer games were the DM sets the challegne level and not the game. I also like it best when dieing is not the only and most common form of failure.

 

[Beginning of the End]

However, there is one thing that you cannot (and many would say should not) get rid of; while playing, your character gets stronger.

People have been getting rid of that since at least 1983. (That's the earliest published example I'm aware of with a game that featured no advancement mechanics at all.)

What if it was really easy to be a 1st level adventurer (or the equivalent in games without levels), but as you leveled up, enemies of your level grew stronger than you faster than you, and your chance of dying increased. What would you think of such a game design? Have you played a game like that?

It sounds irrelevant unless the character is being railroaded so that they can only face opponents who are of the same level.

 

[Umbran]

At least in D&D, your character at level 1 is a nobody who decided to go adventuring. At level 1, you have a great chance of dying early. If you can survive long enough to gain levels, your chance of death is reduced.

I think this is a slightly flawed premise. Your chance of death facing the same opponents is reduced, sure. But, if the GM is throwing tougher adversaries at you, your actual chances in today's adventure may be no better than they were three levels ago.

 

[Dannager]

I think this is a slightly flawed premise. Your chance of death facing the same opponents is reduced, sure. But, if the GM is throwing tougher adversaries at you, your actual chances in today's adventure may be no better than they were three levels ago.

Well said.

I grant you that it's probably a lot easier to lose a character in your first fight ever in early editions of the game - one strong swing of an orc's axe and that's it for the party wizard - but in modern games of D&D (or at least in 4e) you won't die at 1st level any easier than you will at 15th.