The Chump to God model

[Umbran]

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

No. So a mod can come in and warn you all for getting snippy and snipey, and threaten you with booting from the thread.

Really, guys. You know better. Cut it out already.

 

[Barastrondo]

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.

I must confess I disagree with the idea that all D&D players have the same expectations when they come to the table, barring house rules. It just doesn't bear out in my experience. Some will expect their favorite races to be available, be they gnome, tiefling, kender, or what-have-you, or at the very least that the DM will make provisions to allow them to play them. Some assume that the deities in the book are the ones that are being used, others ask about worshipping Thor or whatnot. Some take alignment very seriously and others will just jot down an approximation and ignore it from that point on out. And some don't expect campaigns of indeterminate length.

It all depends on what your previous experiences are, with D&D or with other systems. Either you have previous experiences that are forming your expectations (and I think an expectation of campaigns of indeterminate length is just as dependent on having played that way before as expecting "we'll see how it comes out" is), or you don't. And if you don't, generally you listen a lot more closely to what your fellow gamers are describing the game to be than you listen to what the books tell you. There are exceptions, of course. But I think most people with expectations have wildly variable expectations. Nothing changes in actual use quite like an RPG, and actual use informs people even more than the rules do.

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.

I consider the massive change in capability to be an option like just about anything else, and more optional than, say, rolling a d20 to hit a guy. It really just depends on whether you think that, say, the 1-10 play experience (or even the 3-6 experience) is worthwhile on its own without the promise of 11-30. For some people it may not be, but for others? There's no more a reason to go looking for another game than there is to give up the Hero System because you never play at the power levels where people would use Megascale advantages. Some people just don't have to play on every floor of the skyscraper if the facilities on the lower floors are sufficient.

 

[Umbran]

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.

Yes. But I think there's something worth noting here...

You're correct that many of the classic examples of the fiction are such that the main characters don't really advance in power. But in large part, those older works are:

1) Much shorter than today's novels - You can stack up several of the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser books together, and still not have as much content as a typical genre novel of today. We can argue over the quality of that content, but the note is still there.

2) Most of those classics listed above are more episodic than later series. Fafhrd and Grey Mouser don't advance. But then again, the plot of their early stories hardly impinges on the later ones. You don't really need to read the first few to enjoy the latter ones.

How many folks got annoyed with Star Trek about how episodic it all was, how the characters didn't change, and everything was wrapped up in a bow at the end of the piece? While many of those inspirational stories are cool, I am not sure their overall story structure is what makes them cool, and may not be the part of them a DM of a long-running campaign wants to emulate.

 

[Desdichado]

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.

See, right there, your characterization of what level you start the game at as a "house rule?" I don't get that at all. That's literally a foreign concept to me, and everyone I've ever played D&D with.

If your DM says that he's going to be running a game in the Forgotten Realms, do you call that a house rule too? If he says he's going to run the Age of Worms, is that a house rule?

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.

See, I understand all the words, its just the combination of them that makes no sense. There isn't any assumption of indeterminate length play. That's something that's entirely up to the group, not something that's "hard coded" into the game itself. Certainly it supports that kind of play, but not to the exclusion of other play styles, and not in such a way that it even implies that that's the way its supposed to play.

I think your conflating your experience with that game with something that's inherent within the game.

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.

But D&D does offer that. You just have to use it that way. You don't even need to really house rule it, you just use a certain subset of what's there.

1) Much shorter than today's novels - You can stack up several of the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser books together, and still not have as much content as a typical genre novel of today. We can argue over the quality of that content, but the note is still there.

Yes, but I'm not sure how relevent that is to a D&D campaign. Even an extremely long D&D campaign is going to struggle to have more content that, say, all the Conan stories, in spite of the fact that there's a fairly limited number of them and their all short.

2) Most of those classics listed above are more episodic than later series. Fafhrd and Grey Mouser don't advance. But then again, the plot of their early stories hardly impinges on the later ones. You don't really need to read the first few to enjoy the latter ones.

In other words, they're more like D&D then? Especially the iconic "run out of a published module" type D&D?

 

[Barastrondo]

Yes. But I think there's something worth noting here...

You're correct that many of the classic examples of the fiction are such that the main characters don't really advance in power. But in large part, those older works are:

1) Much shorter than today's novels - You can stack up several of the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser books together, and still not have as much content as a typical genre novel of today. We can argue over the quality of that content, but the note is still there.

(quibble mode) I would say you might not have as much word count. One of the tricks that, to my shame, I learned in college was how to pad out papers with word count. The actual content might not have been all that substantial, but clever bits of restating for emphasis bulked out those paragraphs. I'm doing it even now!

Most of those classics listed above are more episodic than later series. Fafhrd and Grey Mouser don't advance. But then again, the plot of their early stories hardly impinges on the later ones. You don't really need to read the first few to enjoy the latter ones.

How many folks got annoyed with Star Trek about how episodic it all was, how the characters didn't change, and everything was wrapped up in a bow at the end of the piece? While many of those inspirational stories are cool, I am not sure their overall story structure is what makes them cool, and may not be the part of them a DM of a long-running campaign wants to emulate.

An excellent point, since there's been an uptick in heavily serial fiction for a while in all genres. However, I think that RPGs can be injured to some extent by emulating the serial fiction model too closely, because after the first couple of seasons new viewers -- pardon, new players coming in are going to be lost amid the continuity. Worse, they can't just rent some DVDs to watch the first seasons. On the other hand, somebody could come into Star Trek at just about any time, and watch whatever episodes were cycled around in syndication, and still not really be missing anything.

RPGs can reward steady participation like no other. On the other hand, it's really important that the newcomer is also sufficiently rewarded just for picking things up. (And rewards can vary: a "start at high level" character can be less than ideal, depending on how many unfamiliar powers one is expected to master.) The really best GMs, I think are those who can take lessons both from long-running serials and from the simplicity of the short form.

 

[Garthanos]

Yes. But I think there's something worth noting here...

You're correct that many of the classic examples of the fiction are such that the main characters don't really advance in power. But in large part, those older works are:

You forgot one...

3) uninfluenced by D&D

 

[Umbran]

S
Yes, but I'm not sure how relevent that is to a D&D campaign. Even an extremely long D&D campaign is going to struggle to have more content that, say, all the Conan stories, in spite of the fact that there's a fairly limited number of them and their all short.

All the Conan stories? Yes, it'd be tough to match that. But then, that's the work of some 15 authors over 5 decades! I daresay the total time spent writing Conan stories exceeds the time spent prepping and running your typical two-year campaign.

In other words, they're more like D&D then?

No. Despite your implication, D&D does not have an inherent structure to the resulting stories.

My point is this - Have you honestly heard anyone ever say, "Gee, you know what cool about (Conan, Fafhrd, etc)? The fact that they are pretty much the exact same person in every single story, never changing! And the lack of continuity from one story to another - I just love that!" ? I've never seen it said even once, much less commonly. Thus, the episodic nature is not part of what makes those old stories really cool.

I love and read the classic tales we're talking about here, and they have lots to recommend them as a source of inspiration, but the episodic mode is not one of them. It isn't a particular hindrance, but neither is it a particular asset.

There are good reasons to run D&D in an episodic mode, too. However, doing so will not get you any closer to the coolness of Conan.

 

[Umbran]

You forgot one...

3) uninfluenced by D&D

I didn't forget it. I have heard the assertion that later authors are writign their styles because of D&D, but unless you're talking about Geaorge RR Martin, that looks to me like hearsay and speculation. Correlation does not imply causation.

I don't think the later authors were much influenced by D&D in how they chose to structure their stories. I think the more serial structure and drive to continuous trilogies is more about the business of selling books, and what more modern bibliophiles like to read. Episodic fiction is out of vogue for much the same reasons that the short story is in general a dying breed - and it isn't D&D's fault.

 

[Desdichado]

All the Conan stories? Yes, it'd be tough to match that. But then, that's the work of some 15 authors over 5 decades! I daresay the total time spent writing Conan stories exceeds the time spent prepping and running your typical two-year campaign.

Well, you make my point better than I do myself (I only meant the REH ones.) Why did you claim that Conan is a smaller body of work than Wheel of Time again?

No. Despite your implication, D&D does not have an inherent structure to the resulting stories.

That's not what I implied. What I said was that the way most D&D campaigns are run, especially if they're the iconic "play out of a prewritten module" was that they resemble episodic stories more than they do continuous serials. That's nothing inherent in the game, that's just the way most people play it.

That's the whole reason the Adventure Paths concept took off so well, I think... it represented a change of pace from the way most people play D&D.

I love and read the classic tales we're talking about here, and they have lots to recommend them as a source of inspiration, but the episodic mode is not one of them. It isn't a particular hindrance, but neither is it a particular asset.

Neither is the "zero to hero" model. My only point was that "zero to hero" isn't, contrary to JoeKGnusher's implication, the only tried and true structure to the fantasy narrative. You're not really disagreeing with that, I don't think, so I'm not sure what you're arguing about. We're already on the same page.

 

[Desdichado]

I didn't forget it. I have heard the assertion that later authors are writign their styles because of D&D, but unless you're talking about Geaorge RR Martin, that looks to me like hearsay and speculation. Correlation does not imply causation.

Actually, one of the three examples given that this was a response to was Raymond Feist, who's claimed outright several times that his fiction is based on his D&D campaign. Steven Erikson has said the same (except it wasn't D&D exactly.)

That's neither hearsay nor speculation.