Should PCs Be Exceptional?

[SableWyvern]

In my games, stay-at-homes level slower, but they can and do level.

In Ars Magica, stay-at-homes level faster.

They just don't get to have as much fun.

 

[SableWyvern]

In terms of how big a problem it is, how many people run the sort of games that would make it so is absolutely relevant, and its not like there's not a fair bit of evidence that multiyear campaigns are not common, if they ever were.

The problem is, there's no good means to measure who is actually running what and how.

At best, you might be able to make semi-informed guesses based on what is posted on reddit, EnWorld etc, and what the active posters there claim to do or like. You might draw some data about people who game on VTTs, when there is public information about their games available. You might have the gossip from some dude who hangs out in a game store or Youtube comments under a gaming podcast.

But unless you go knock on their door and ask them, you'll have no idea what game the people six houses down are playing, or how they play it.

 

[Lanefan]

If the PC's aren't special, and there's always other adventurers out there to handle things, is their any real risk to the setting if they fail?

Depends. If the PCs are the only ones who know about a particular threat to the setting, maybe there is a risk if they fail. Or maybe not.

But it's a nice discouragement to running yet more "save the world" adventures, I'll give it that.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I can see why you'd ask this question, because most of the official published adventures have the PCs saving the world/setting/multiverse. I have a couple thoughts on it:

This is very much like the question of "why can't the king just send his knights and wizard to fix the problem?" These adventurers are the ones here to fix the problem now; there might be other adventurers, but they're busy with their own paths.. maybe, even, the ones that were in the area already failed elsewhere.

But to the question... why does every adventure have to risk the setting? Why can't the stakes be more personal, not world-threatening? Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser are tasked with retrieving Death's cloak by some wizards. If they failed... well, the wizards just wouldn't have the cloak they wanted. The highest stakes I can recall were Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser unintentionally saving Lankhmar's nobility from a murderous cult. If the cult had succeeded.. well, there'd probably be some time of unrest, and then a new order would set in. But failure doesn't have to equal the end of the world.
Now, as I say this, I have run plenty of DnD adventures. They often involve the PCs saving things of consequence.. so if you're gonna be running those adventures, fall back on the first reply: the party are the ones that are here to handle things. The other adventurers/minor deities/elminsters aren't available.

After running so many of the official campaigns for 5e, I'm fairly burnt out on "save the world" style campaigns. Give me a basic dungeon or hex crawl, or something else with lower stakes than facing forces out to destroy the world.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The problem is, there's no good means to measure who is actually running what and how.

WOTC at least did a survey question on it at one point. You can argue its methodology, of course, but the general indicator was the vast majority of campaigns lasted less than two years of weekly sessions. Might have been a few years back at this point, but its hard to see a reason for long campaigns to have gotten more common in the last few years.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I just don't see the point of framing these discussions in terms of how popular one style or technique or game or whatever is.

Because it doesn't end up talking about just what the two of us in our little corners do. If you don't understand the benefit there, I don't know what to tell you.

It seems to always be used in response to someone stating their opinion about something, and to me it really reads like the more popular something is, the more important or valuable or worth talking about it is.

I kind of do think its more valuable to talk about what the hobby as a whole does than what I individually do. I don't see much point in the latter.

 

[pemerton]

game systems that both allow for some significant advancement and can handle non-linear presentations like Howard, Leiber, and Moorcock? Now there’s a design challenge.

In A Wicked Age?

 

[MichaelSomething]

Do you roll your character stats 3d6 in order?

 

[Autumnal]

In A Wicked Age?

I know the name, but nothing about it.

 

[Lanefan]

WOTC at least did a survey question on it at one point. You can argue its methodology, of course, but the general indicator was the vast majority of campaigns lasted less than two years of weekly sessions. Might have been a few years back at this point, but its hard to see a reason for long campaigns to have gotten more common in the last few years.

If by a few years back you mean 1999, yes they did; and they threw out all responses from the demographic most likely to be in and-or run longer campaigns.

My cynical take was then and still is now that they intentionally skewed the data to produce the results they wanted, so as to justify rapid-fire levelling and short 1-20 campaigns, promoting that as the expected way to play, and thus generating more sales as people kept buying new adventure books (and updating their core rulebooks) every year or two.

And so it's self-sustaining: they get what they design for, and today short campaigns are the norm because that's the only paradigm most new-since-2000 players have ever experienced.