The Chump to God model

[Jack7]

Starting powerful and declining over time would be perfect for a high-power Tolkien game where the PCs played Maiar, Elves, or maybe Numenoreans. There should also be the possibility of the occasional temporary "re-awakening" of power, but the Declinist trope is very strong in LoTR.

Edit: As well as Call of Cthulu, classic Traveller PCs start powerful, then over time their abilities degrade with age.

That's a good point. the condition could oscillate or fluctuate. And could effect entire regions or cultures (sort of like a combination moral-power plague), something I was actually thinking about last night after retiring to bed.

Already been done - sort of: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Archive: I8 Ravager of Time

This seems a British doo-dad JRRN, that I've never heard of or seen before. Course, I was never real big on store bought modules. Can you expound on what happened in the module a bit?

I'm deducing from the title that it had something to do with accelerated time and/or aging (not what I'm going for in this case), but I'm kinda curious as to what their approach might have been.

 

[AllisterH]

Hasn't D&D until the last two editions actually had TWO models.

Magic wielders - Chump to god.
Non magic characters - Dude to badass.

For example, a 20th level fighter in pre 3e isn't downing his weight in xp of 5th level fighters, whereas a 20th level mage could easily DOUBLE his weight in xp of the same 5th level mages?

 

[GnomeWorks]

Yawn.

Like there is anything truly 'new' under the sun?

"New" is a subjective term. Just because something is not new in an objective temporal sense does not mean that it is not new to my own experience.

 

[Umbran]

Starting powerful and declining over time would be perfect for a high-power Tolkien game where the PCs played Maiar, Elves, or maybe Numenoreans. There should also be the possibility of the occasional temporary "re-awakening" of power, but the Declinist trope is very strong in LoTR.

Yeah, but that's over hundreds or thousands of years. Legolas doesn't significantly degrade over the period of time he's with the Fellowship. The LOTR version seems more a setting conceit than a mechanic, unless your campaign is going to span that truly huge timescale.

 

[JoeGKushner]

"New" is a subjective term. Just because something is not new in an objective temporal sense does not mean that it is not new to my own experience.

Exactly. So in theory, chump to god model, despite being extremely well documented, could be new to your experience.

 

[tyrlaan]

I believe "zero to hero" might do better than "chump to god", but that's just me

I've always considered the second category "established an capable" and think of any superhero system as the perfect example of this.

D&D appears to always have been zero to hero except over the editions the zero has been inflating, so perhaps by 4e you can call it "four to hero". I perscribe this to the general experience that playing a zero isn't all that fun, or at least not fun for an extended period of time. It works a lot better in a book than at the game table.

Digressions aside, I'd vote neither because my answer is to adopt whichever paradigm fits the campaign.

 

[Doug McCrae]

D&D gives you a framework of Chump to God, zero to hero. Or, for fighting men, veteran soldier->minor land owning nobility.

Given that broad framework it's easy to start at higher level and slow the progression if you want. Begin at 3rd level say, and end the campaign around 6th level, 20 sessions later. This also helps to balance casters with non-casters throughout the level progression, which I think is a good thing.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I think it's the American Dream. Start small, wind up as president.

Though, in another thread on the same subject, mmadsen was 100% correct to say that the whole thing comes from Chainmail, from the fact that Heroes were worth 4 normal men (becoming 4th level fighting men in OD&D) and Superheroes were worth 8.

Incidentally I read recently that in his initial 18 page draft for D&D which he sent to Gygax, Arneson had the PCs starting as Heroes ie basically 4th level. And people say 4e PCs starting out slaughtering hordes of minions is a new idea!

 

[Barastrondo]

I think it's the American Dream. Start small, wind up as president.

Well, there's any number of fairy tales in which the peasant becomes king or whatever by the end, but they don't usually come as a result of increase of personal power. You wind up with friends that can drink lakes, or command over a magical item that summons genies or giant supernatural dogs, or there's a fairy that grants you a blessing. Usually the virtue of the hero isn't a capability to reach great personal power, it's cleverness or a good heart.

The peasant boy that becomes a sorcerer-king skilled at swordplay as well... that's pretty recent.

 

[Plane Sailing]

It's interesting that these are all post-D&D fantasies, though. I think only one out of three is actually inspired by roleplaying, but they're all watermarked after D&D came on the scene. The Howard and Leiber and Burroughs and Vance stuff that Gygax cited as most inspirational all pretty much feature characters that remain on an even keel power-wise.

I was thinking the same kind of thing. My 'literary fantasy heroes' are Conan, Fafherd and the Grey Mouser and their ilk. Perhaps becoming more competent with time, but in D&D terms hardly changing.

Probably why I liked RQ2 so much as a system - it fitted "my" literary heroes better.