The Chump to God model

[Theo R Cwithin]

Is advancement integral to your enjoyment of playing an RPG? If it is how so? If you never advanced would it be fun?

For me it's not necessarily the advancement of, but rather the change in a PC over the course of a campaign.

Level advancement (or similar power-ups) is just one kind of change. Gaining the knowledge about the world and the campaign arcs is another that I consider fun. Making an impact on the game world through amassing a fortune, running a stronghold, discovering artefacts, making contacts and other such in-game occurrences not directly tied to levels are also things that I think are enjoyable in an RPG.

 

[Desdichado]

I classify anything that substantially alters the expectation of the players at the table a draconian change; your tastes may vary.

Stop right there. How is anyone's expectation altered?

If I say, and I'll requote, "roll up first level characters; we'll play a few sessions, maybe level up once or twice and be done" then everybody's expectations are put forward from the get-go. To me, this is no different than setting expections about, for instance, what campaign setting we'll be using, or something like that. "Forgotten Realms vs. Greyhawk vs. Eberron" or whatever.

More and more I've come to see the level system of D&D less as a ladder that a character is supposed to climb from 1st to 20th (or 30th if you play 4e) and more as a power-setting guide for DMs.

 

[Sadrik]

The poll question has got to be one of the most poorly worded ones out there, and it assumes a priori that one of those two models (which are really variations of the same model anyway) are the only ones out there.

Please explain a different D&D model. If you cannot do that then try and define one in a different game. From my repertoire of games I cannot really think of any that do not have a form of advancement that powers you up with more skills, powers etc. Some of them are very tame in the advancement areas, BRP for instance.

I'd say rather that evolution is integral to my enjoyment of playing a long-term campaign, but evolution is a significantly different beast than advancement.

I think I get what you are saying. How would you separate evolution from advancement and how do you generate fun in say a long campaign with one vs. the other?

 

[JoeGKushner]

True. This post, "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.

Of course, the fantasies you mention also all more than three-book-minimum, and none of them are really evolved out of the short story format the way Conan and his pulp cohorts did. There's a serious shift from episodic adventure that goes alongside the shift from "the characters are roughly the same level of competence and their adventures are singular due to circumstances" to "each successive adventure takes place at a higher power level."

I'm kind of curious as to what made this shift in fantasy literature happen. My pet theory is that people were wanting to have their Tolkien and Moorcock fused in an unholy union: all the everyman appeal of a hobbit, but with the cataclysmic endgame of an Eternal Champion. Frodo didn't become a god, and Elric was never an everyman, but somewhere along the line people figured they wanted both. I could be wrong, of course."

...does go a little way in following your line of thought. It's almost like there is a dividing line between when that genre becomes popular. Most of the material you note is relatively old, in the pulp era save perhaps later Fafhrd and Grey Mouser goods. Possibly Cugel. And of course there are the grim and gritty characters such as those found in the Black Company who despite being 'bad ass' often get chumped. But the formula, especially in a level advanced game, tend to follow a pattern up.

Conan? Bad-ass to ... more experienced bad-ass.

Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser? Bad ass to slightly badder bad-asses.

Cugel the "Clever"? Chump to... still chump.

Tarzan? Bad-ass to bad-ass.

John Carter? Bad-ass to bad-ass.

There's plenty of other models that are also tried and true classics.

The poll question has got to be one of the most poorly worded ones out there, and it assumes a priori that one of those two models (which are really variations of the same model anyway) are the only ones out there.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

T



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.

Ug, it's been ages since I ran the thing, but iirc, the main villain has an artifact or spell of some sort that ages people and grants the life energy to her, allowing her to make duplicates of them. The pcs stumble into a trap while investigating a murder, and have their life drained. It turns them into old men and women, and they must struggle through most of the rest of the module aged and decrepit - oh and they must hurry, because they are slowly degrading even further. They get Hackmaster style quirks like forgetfulness, second childhood, etc, along the way. It's a great module if played by the right people. Players who don't want to play along might be pissed at having there powers stripped, but playing Grumpy Old Men can be fun for a while. We had a blast with it.

 

[Plane Sailing]

There's advancement, and then there's advancement. Consider a game like HERO, where your overall offensive prowess might see a gradual uptick, such as in a game where there are caps on damage, defenses and the like — but where you branch out and pick up more tricks, more skills, better-rounded attributes, and so on. Characters grow by branching out, not by climbing a ladder.

Social and personal advancement also might not have anything to do with mechanics. The "peasant marries the king's daughter" fairy tale might not have a thing to do with experience points; it's just a dramatic amount of social advancement. Similarly, there's the character who gradually heals a broken heart, or the character who finds renewed purpose when he adopts a child, or the character who comes to realize he hates his family and always has.

Quoted for emphasis.

I really like models where characters improve by broadening their capabilities rather than becoming more and more powerful in their core strength.

I also really like games where there is social and personal advancement within the campaign, I find that particulaly immersive and appealing.

Both of these approaches are somewhat orthagonal to the 'zero to hero' models espoused in the survey.

Cheers

 

[GnomeWorks]

Awesome! Perhaps you could say it again and someone like Gnomeworks can repeat how it may not be new to him?

Why, so someone like JoeGKushner can be all condescending and elitist towards them?

 

[JoeGKushner]

Why, so someone like JoeGKushner can be all condescending and elitist towards them?

Not at all. I was trying to convey the opposite. That it may be old hand for some and not appropriate and as you noted, that it may be a new personal experience for you.

As the point had already been made that the posted didn't care for it and you noted it could be new, to have it posted again that it was unoriginal seemed... worthy of targeting.

It seemded, and correct me if I'm wrong, that the point made, by you in one post, was that it could be new and that because it was so tried and true you were sick of it which seemed counter to the 'personal perspective' you'd just made. In my delirious lack of sleep mode, I confused by different meaning posts to be from different posters and when I made my comment, though I was defending GnomeWorks from someone who was being snide to the methodology of chump to deity because it wasn't new to them. My apologies for coming off 'elitist'.

 

[Desdichado]

I think I get what you are saying. How would you separate evolution from advancement and how do you generate fun in say a long campaign with one vs. the other?

Character development in a long campaign is essential to my fun. Just like it is in a long novel or series of novels.

It is not essential that my character get better for me to enjoy it, just that he (or she) develop. Change. In real life, we get better at some things while other things slide. We get out of shape and out of practice as we get older, yet our mental acuity might improve, or job-related skills develop, etc.

These kinds of changes make a character interesting. But as far as I'm concerned, a character that goes from "chump to different kind of chump" is just as interesting as one that goes from "chump to god". In fact, usually quite a bit more interesting.

 

[Nagol]

Stop right there. How is anyone's expectation altered?

If I say, and I'll requote, "roll up first level characters; we'll play a few sessions, maybe level up once or twice and be done" then everybody's expectations are put forward from the get-go. To me, this is no different than setting expections about, for instance, what campaign setting we'll be using, or something like that. "Forgotten Realms vs. Greyhawk vs. Eberron" or whatever.

You're right that the players at the table understand the house rules in play and how those house rules alter the baseline expectation for D&D play.

The baseline D&D ruleset offers indeterminate length play with known (and very substantial) power growth for successful play. A visitor to the game above, barring anyone informing him of the changes to the rules will come with an expectation that the campaign is of indeterminate length and with advancement. If a player was to inform him that the game is almost over because the characters are 3rd level, he will immediately recognise that as "not how D&D works" so house ruling must be in effect.

More and more I've come to see the level system of D&D less as a ladder that a character is supposed to climb from 1st to 20th (or 30th if you play 4e) and more as a power-setting guide for DMs.

And I do not. I see the level system as a character/player reward mechanism composed of massive change in character capability designed to promote continuous adventuring. If I want to play a game with a more static power curve at a preferred level of ability then I reach for a game that offers that form of game play.