Slow Advancement Rocks

[coyote6]

An IF/THEN statement doesn't require that the speaker know what anyone's expectations are. It says IF this, THEN that. If you are not "this", then "that" doesn't apply. There might be no one who is actually "this". That has nothing to do with the reasoning behind an IF/THEN statement.

Well, true -- if the IF is never true, then the THEN will never occur. That makes it a pointless test. For efficiency, it should be excised; no use wasting process cycles on unneeded tests. That way lies bloatware.

 

[Ariosto]

I suspect it'll be a total of 8 to 10 sessions before the PCs hit level 10 -- and that may not seem like "slow advancement" to some, but it certainly is to me in my experience with 3.x.

Whoa!

Meeting once per week, the slowest rate would be 10th level in just two and a half months. In old D&D, I would expect more like a year -- with exceptions, naturally.

If memory serves, although the XP requirements in 3e increase slowly, advancement in level is expected to be pretty flat all along. If that's the case, then a year would take a character to 52nd level!

And this is slow??

You are seriously blowing my mind.

 

[Reynard]

Again, I gave examples of D&D campaigns that I think would fulfill my greatest ambitions for a D&D campaign. Since those campaigns exist, and have happened, it's possible.

I apologize if my post suggested I was making a judgement about your personal satisfaction with your individual game. That wasn't my intent. rather, I was making the statement (which I consider factual) that D&D, because of its rules of play, can not produce a literary narrative experience and that if that is the primary goal of a group, that group must alter the rules of play if they hope to achieve that goal.

Hopefully that clears up my point.

 

[Reynard]

Whoa!

Meeting once per week, that would be 10th level in just two months. In old D&D, I would expect more like a year -- with exceptions, naturally.

If memory serves, although the XP requirements in 3e increase slowly, advancement in level is expected to be pretty flat all along. If that's the case, then a year would take a character to 60th level!

And this is slow??

You are seriously blowing my mind.

That total of 8 to 10 sessions was going from 9th to 10th level.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Well, true -- if the IF is never true, then the THEN will never occur. That makes it a pointless test. For efficiency, it should be excised; no use wasting process cycles on unneeded tests. That way lies bloatware.

Perhaps, but perhaps not.

It is interesting to speculate what life might arise IF the earth had a different axial tilt, or a different atmosphere.

Also, because you are not one of the set to with the IF is applicable, it doesn't follow that it is an empty set.

Finally, if one often reads posts that one interprets as a call for X, it is sensible to consider IF X, THEN Y. This is true for two reasons. (1) It might demonstrate that people who seem to be calling for X are, in fact, not calling for X. (2) By examining the consequences of X (Y), one can determine whether or not one really finds X as desireable as one might otherwise suppose if one didn't consider the same.

One can always question whether the consequences Y really follow the condition X (i.e., claim IF X, THEN not-Y, or THEN not-always-Y).


RC

 

[Ariosto]

That total of 8 to 10 sessions was going from 9th to 10th level.

Oh.

That's quite a different matter!

I think there's a balance between real time in play at a level and real time between levels that can get tricky. Playing just once or twice a month is different from playing once or twice a week, and playing every other night is different yet again.

The comparison is probably going to break down, in any case, because I don't think "10th level" means quite the same thing in 3e as in old D&D.

In old D&D, the number of x.p. it takes a fighter to go from 9th to 10th is the number it takes for each level thereafter. With adjustment of awards for level, the actual number needed tends gradually to rise.

Up to that point, I reckon that in an "ideal" situation (like a "perfect gas" or something) a player would probably rake in x.p. at a fairly constant rate. If it took half a year to get the x.p. for level 8, then it would take about half a year to get the same amount again for the doubled total at level 9.

In essence advancement comes to a crawl once you hit "name" level. Instead of 9 levels per year, you are looking at maybe two. You have in a sense "made it", and it gets increasingly harder to find challenges that will deliver full x.p.. (When you've beat up Odin, it's probably time to retire.)

 

[Lanefan]

Eh, I don't know about that. Sagiro's, Piratecat's, & Fajitas' storyhours are pretty close to being my ideal of a D&D campaign, and they seem more book/movie/TV-ish than, say, descriptions of others' self-described sandbox games. <shrug>

Er...I'd think that's the point of a well-written storyhour - to take the events that happened in the game and spin 'em into a readable and - one hopes - entertaining story.

Even in my own not-very-readable game logs there's often quite a difference between how things play out at the table and how they read on a page after the fact, even though the events done in one are spawning the other.

Lanefan

 

[Hussar]

How is it One-Tru-Wayism to point out that playing D&D -- any edition -- by the rules presented cannot support a traditional, literary narrative because traditional literary narratives are not generally subject to random rolls and contests over narrative control? The mere existence of Action Points, as well as XP rewards "when its story appropriate" and the constant, heated debates over whether death should occur by chance 9or at all) on these very boards supports my position on this. I am not BadWrongFunning that kind of play, even if I don't much care for it: i am merely saying that in order to engage in it, you have to change the rules of play.

Ahh, cool. I understand that then. I'd posrep but gotta spread around and all that.

All cool.

Personally, I think that a well written narrative is something a GM and group should aspire to, even if they cannot achieve it. The game is best when players play their characters in believable and consistent ways and the GM presents situations that are both fun and interesting (those are not necessarily the same thing).

 

[Storminator]

Im glad I read this thread, despite the tangent. I just started a 4e campaign, (3rd session coming up) and slowing advancement would really help me. The PCs hit level 2 in the middle of the second session, mostly because they went past what I had planned and I gained 20min to write up the next part of the adventure, while they leveled. The previous campaign I ran played twice a month, and leveling every 2 sessions was a good pace, most of the plotline I was aiming for was mid-heroic at least.

In our 4e game the advancement rate has slowed down pretty consistently. Each level up to 6th took one more session than the last level, and 6th, 7th and 8th were the same. I can't remember the numbers off the top of my head.

I'd monitor the situation for a little while before making changes.

PS

 

[Sylrae]

This may have been said (and I'm not going to reread the thread to check) but I think the important part is how level advancement maps over Real-Time.

If you game once a month, you may want the players to level every session.
If you game every week for 8-12 hours, you might not.

Then again, if you have a definitive endpoint for the campaign (say you know the game will end on a certain date), you can definitely adjust level progression so that the players reach a certain level by that point, and probably plan your story to wrap up by then (I know I will be doing so with my upcoming game this year).