Slow Advancement Rocks

[DrunkonDuty]

I like slow advancement. It allows time to stop and smell the roses; to savour the moment. I'm happy to fart-arse about role-playing lots of social interaction. Interacting with the GM's world, getting an idea of history and politics. That sort of thing. No need to level for this.

Plus it feels better for the story. If I'm fighting a campaign against a tribe of orcish barbarians I want to fight orcs; not discover that they're really just catspaws for the bloody drow/mind flayers/giant space hamsters or what have you because tougher encounters are called for.

Of course I do like rewards. But there are things other than than XP. Bling is nice. But so to are contacts and fame. Even just a bit of local fame: You walk into the bar at the cross-roads and locals line up to buy drinks for the one who captured the notorious outlaw, Black Bart.

And it helps that I like low level play.

 

[DragonLancer]

I always found the standard 3.x experience system levelled far too quickly for my tastes, even at high levels. However since trying out Pathfinder with the fast proression (this is our first campaign and wanted to try out the various aspects at different levels) I've found the fast track is about right.

 

[Mallus]

These days, I find my group's rather limited amount of gaming time, thanks to all sorts of wonderful adult responsibilities, neatly solves the "character's leveling too quickly" problem --and that's with supplementing our face-to-face gaming with lots of play-by-post on our campaign message board. After almost 2 years, our 4e campaign just hit 11th level. I'm guessing the PC's will be 12th by our 2-year anniversary in September.

I think if I were younger and gaming weekly, the default 3e/4e advancement rate would seem a little too fast. Seeing as I'm old(ish), faster advancement is a good thing. I'd like to try out the higher levels of a few classes before I retire !

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Then again, I play the game for the fun of whaling on monsters, finding out what's around the next corner, and learning what this neat magic trinket does; thus I see experience points and levelling as more an occasional (but pleasant) side effect of play rather than the reason for it.

Ah, for me, the priorities are reversed. Finding what's in the next room/town/nation/plane and leveling are what it's about for me, but I'm not so interested in magical toys. Even the awesomeness of 3e's magical bling bling isn't really interesting.

In fact, near the end of my 3e DMing career, I wrote an inherent bonus system so I wouldn't have to hand out bling bling just to keep the PCs' stats at where the game expects them to be.

And it helps that I like low level play.

Funny, I'm sick of it. Especially low level 3e, where half the PC classes have some kind of serious arbitrary gimp. But I've also become sick of low level 4e, after playing at least a dozen 1st level characters, at least two dozen heroic characters and all of two 11+ characters.

 

[Jan van Leyden]

Under my main 4E campaign the guys just rubbed their feet on the welcome mat of Paragon Tier during our 55th session. At around 4 hours per session, that's exactly five sessions, or 10-12 encounters, per level.

This has turned out to be quite a good rate of advancement for us, combining lots of roleplaying and combat opportunities with a good sense of progress. As the DM I'd prefer things to be moving a little more slowly, but if they're happy, I'm happy. At this rate the campaign, if it proceeds all the way to 30th level as intended, will run to about 150 sessions.

Which, with our gaming schedule of once every three weeks, means some nine years for a campaign.

The important thing for me is how the advancement rate is mapped to real time.

 

[Jhaelen]

Which, with our gaming schedule of once every three weeks, means some nine years for a campaign.

The important thing for me is how the advancement rate is mapped to real time.

Indeed. We're currently finding it difficult to play once a month, so slow advancement would basically mean no advancement at all. As it is it already took us over six years to get to level 15.

 

[wedgeski]

The important thing for me is how the advancement rate is mapped to real time.

Absolutely. If my game was once a month rather than once a week, I'd greatly accelerate the advancement rate.

 

[Reynard]

Absolutely. If my game was once a month rather than once a week, I'd greatly accelerate the advancement rate.

Monthly gaming is so hard on continuity anyway that I tend to not worry about advancement at all. or, rather, those monthly sessions should be self contained "episodes" where neither "story development" not "mechanical development" matter near as much as what's happening at the table at the time. You could even go so far, I think, as to create the characters in a range of levels and the DM picks the level for the next adventure. they are all "cannon" but the chronology can be mixed up (like the original publication of REH's Conan stories, frex).

 

[The Shaman]

The games I most enjoy have comparatively glacial advancement systems - your character starts reasonably competent and advances incrementally from there.

My fun comes from racking up experiences, not experience points.

 

[Bullgrit]

Don't quit. Post here, Bullgrit and I will keep you going.

LOL! That was a copy/paste from an xp I gave someone else in another post in another forum.

I meant to copy/paste & give xp for: "My fun comes from racking up experiences, not experience points." Can xp comments be edited?

Bullgrit