Slowing Advancement and Other Arbitrary Restrictions

[painandgreed]

As far as converting to 1e- just one question - Why?

After about three decades of hard biting work, the makers have set forth a better system. If you are looking for flavor, you can make flavor in your campaign by altering your GMing style. I suppose this falls back to the ya ol' question of- "what is so great about 1e?" but no one has been able to explain it to me.

They've certainly produces a changed system. If it's better or not is in the eyes of the players which depends on if you agree with the changes or not. I like 3E better, but it still seems for every three steps forward they took two steps back., often changing the game into one I don't want to play.

I was thinking about it the other day, and thinking of going back to 1E (if I had to). Static rule set. Tons of books and modules which I already have. Simipler. Easy to modify. in fact, most of the modification I want was already done back in the 80's in what could be considered years of playtesting. Spells weren't nerfed in 1E as they were in 3E or at least transfored so they had no use except in combat. Polymorph, for example, had uses outside of combat because the 1E duration was in the area of hours by time a magic-user coudl cast it. In 3E it's in the matter of minutes and not good for transportation or subterfuge, only combat. In fact, most of my gripes about 3E is that many rules have been molded to only be reveant to short close combats. While that's an important part of the game, I'd rather go for other things too. So, if I wanted to go to another version, without buying more stuff, 1E would be my choice since I never had significant amounts of 2E or RC.

 

[Kestrel]

A reward system is arguably the most important subsystem in any game, simply because what rewards are given out for is going to have a major impact on what most players actually do. If the reward system (XP, say) is built around killing things and taking its stuff, then reward-minded players will kill things and take their stuff. This is where 3E has become a little stronger than previous editions -- rewards are given for "overcoming challenges" which can (though don't always) mean more than killing things and taking its stuff.

Conversely, if players are rewarded for "doiing cool stuff", you *might* get more cool stuff in your game. however, as any Exalted storyteller can attest, that isn't always the case -- having to listen to 5 minute long, boring, repetitive, "I just saw this in an anime" stunt descriptions can drive one mad.

Well, the main thing about it is that I want the players to reward the other players, as opposed to me as GM rewarding them. That way, its coming from a "peer" in the game instead of the gm. Hopefully, this is way of saying, "You entertained me and I wanted to show my appreiciation" Not sure if it will work, but hoping it will.

 

[S'mon]

See, I have a great difficulty in reconciling the idea that you can get through 13 1/3 creatures, in a system that everyone tells me takes 2 hours to do a single combat.

I have seen a 3e combat take 3 hours, but at 1st level a CR 1 combat takes maybe 5 minutes, though, and the average over all levels is maybe 45 minutes - far longer than prior editions, but you can still get 3-4 in to a 4 hour session. And I think most GMs tend to average combats more like EL = Party Level +1, rather than average EL = PL, so you get faster than intended advancement, not slower. This breaks down at high level (11+) but certainly the first 8 or so levels get rocketed through very fast.

 

[Lanefan]

...finally back after a month's hiatus...what'd I miss?

Anything that unties ExP awards from character actions is a lurking menace in my books, as it allows the cowardly/inactive/useless character to advance at the same rate as the character who is willing to take the risks. A system where the DM arbitrarily gives the entire party a level now and then falls right into this trap.

I also see ExP as a *character* reward rather than a *player* reward...if the character does something useful, it gets ExP for it. But in other threads here, many have said they give out ExP for showing up to the game, for "good roleplay" (whatever that is), for keeping a game journal, etc....in other words, ExP as player reward, with which I cannot agree.

As for the original question, yes, slow it down if you want to; assume going in that your campaign has the chops to last forever, and plan accordingly. Ask yourself where it might be, and at what level, 2 years down the road, and five years, and ten years...then tweak to suit.

Both the games I run and those I play in tend to advance very slowly; most are fine with this as long as the story can hold the imagination.

Lanefan

 

[Hussar]

You keep bandying about the 1E modules to illustrate your experiences with 1E. Think about the modules for 3E the same way. More, even, think about the Dragon Mag adventure paths: 20 levels, 12 issues(months). You can't get more core than that.

Sigh. You keep missing the point. I'm not saying that leveling is faster or slower in any edition. I'm saying that IN MY EXPERIENCE, leveling is exactly the same speed. What I'm not doing is making grand sweeping generalizations about how the game is/was played, unlike some of the posters in this thread.

I'd also be very, very surprised if someone can play through the AP's in 1 adventure/month. 4 sessions to get through a single module? That's some screaming fast play. It took us almost three months just to get through the first Shackled City adventure.

I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything. I'm trying to say that just because leveling in a given edition was a certain speed for you, me or anyone else, doesn't make that a general truth for everyone. It took some people years to hit double digit levels in 1e. It took us about one. Some people are apparently screaming up to 20th level in one year. It took us almost two to hit 15th.

Experience is rarely universal. If you need an example in this thread alone of people making broad assumptions of how everyone's game looked, try this one:

In 1st/2nd ed it would take 6-8 months of play for the first 6 levels. It would then take 2-3 months for the next 2 levels each. Then maybe 6 months for the next level, and then 6-12 months for each level after that with wizards always being in the upper end there. To get to 20th level would be about 6-7 years or more on this time table. Most campaigns didn't go much beyond 9th or 10th though.

BTW, what did you think of my idea to slow down xp. Simply basing xp awards on EL, rather than per CR will dramatically lower your xp awards. It worked quite nicely in the WOrld's Largest Dungeon when I used it.

 

[Abraxas]

I'd also be very, very surprised if someone can play through the AP's in 1 adventure/month. 4 sessions to get through a single module? That's some screaming fast play. It took us almost three months just to get through the first Shackled City adventure.

The group I DM for made it through the 1st 5 AoW adventures averaging 5 sessions to complete each one - however, we don't play that often, so its taken 16 months real time. If we could maintain a weekly playing schedule it would have only taken 6 months.

Before that, In the Shackled City campaign run by one of the other players, we were averaging 2 or 3 sessions to complete each adventure.

 

[S'mon]

BTW, what did you think of my idea to slow down xp. Simply basing xp awards on EL, rather than per CR will dramatically lower your xp awards. It worked quite nicely in the WOrld's Largest Dungeon when I used it.

This is a good idea to deal with the excessive XP awards for CR 1 monsters when the PCs are ca 4th-8th level. 300 XP per 11-hit-point gnoll when the Sorc-6 PC is fireballing a dozen at a time is way too much.

BTW Hussar, I accept that your experience on advancement rate in 3e is different from ours, but it does seem to me that our experience is both more typical and more in line with the designers' intent. I'd be interested though in what tricks/approach you (you're the GM right?) use to keep advancement so slow, without halving XP awards. Do you spend a lot of time on in-character roleplay, for instance? Is it a larger than standard 4-PC party? I'm assuming it's not because of incompetent PCs.

 

[Reynard]

BTW, what did you think of my idea to slow down xp. Simply basing xp awards on EL, rather than per CR will dramatically lower your xp awards. It worked quite nicely in the WOrld's Largest Dungeon when I used it.

I actually think this is my best bet. it solves my particular problem directly -- low level enemies are worth too much individually. Besides, I have to do less math this way.

 

[Hussar]

This is a good idea to deal with the excessive XP awards for CR 1 monsters when the PCs are ca 4th-8th level. 300 XP per 11-hit-point gnoll when the Sorc-6 PC is fireballing a dozen at a time is way too much.

BTW Hussar, I accept that your experience on advancement rate in 3e is different from ours, but it does seem to me that our experience is both more typical and more in line with the designers' intent. I'd be interested though in what tricks/approach you (you're the GM right?) use to keep advancement so slow, without halving XP awards. Do you spend a lot of time on in-character roleplay, for instance? Is it a larger than standard 4-PC party? I'm assuming it's not because of incompetent PCs.

Actually I wasn't dming. Just a player in that one.

I'm not 100% sure how he calculated xp. I don't bother checking other people's math. I think he just ad hoc'd the xp from time to time and awarded it that way. It was a very high rp game with little combat, so, that would likely do it as well.

For my own game, when I started doing the World's Largest Dungeon, I was doing xp by EL. As Reynard mentions, it's just a whole lot less math. The idea was brought up in the module since a party which made a point of clearing out a region could easily level up way too quickly.

After three regions, I realized that it took about 15 sessions to finish each region. After that, I just looked at the xp needed to go up the 3 levels per region, divided by 15 and that was the xp each week. If the party took longer, I just locked down advancement until they went to the next region. Only happened once actually. And, it was kind of useful since PC fatalities had led to a bit of disparity between PC levels. A few extra sessions in a given region let those lagging behind catch up.

Before that, when I did my Shelzar game (lasted about 8 months) and my Mithril game (about 18 months) I gave xp strictly by the book. Even our tabletop 3e games advanced at about the same speed. I'm actually curious now. Time for a poll on the topic.

Damn Abraxas. How long are your sessions? WOW. That's screaming through.

 

[wildstarsreach]

Y'know, that's a number I see bandied about a lot. 20 levels in a single year of play. Yet, that was trotted out early in the 3e days, and, a great deal of play since then has pretty much buried that idea.

See, I have a great difficulty in reconciling the idea that you can get through 13 1/3 creatures, in a system that everyone tells me takes 2 hours to do a single combat.

Designer intent doesn't really amount to a hill of beans when it flies in the face of actual play. There may have been the intent for games to hit 20th within 66 sessions, but, I've yet to see anyone online who actually does this.

http://home.comcast.net/~eberron/aow/Party.htm

This was our age of wyrm campaign that went 60 sessions to 20th.