D&D 5E The Illusion of Experience Points that Everyone Disbelieves

[Ahnehnois]

I am starting to strongly suspect that this is an edition-based preference. People who started with 3.x and up expect to encounter monsters they might conceivably beat, even if it might be a very challenging fight. People who started in the primordial soup of oD&D and its immediate successors expect that they might encounter anything at any time.

Am I way off track with these assumptions?

I think that as others have noted, the textually supported idea of balanced encounters predate 3e. Perhaps instead, it's a question of people who have been gaming for longer going more and more off the book. So a DM who started with 2e and have been DMing for a while might have learned to think outside that box and design a broader range of challenges, while someone who started with 3e might be younger/less experienced and still be playing more by the book.

I definitely think that the longer one plays, the more one's experience is likely to diverge from the "default".

Mind you, the whole CR/EL system was something I ignored even as a beginner DM with 3e, so I don't really fit your mold either.

 

[Balesir]

I am starting to strongly suspect that this is an edition-based preference. People who started with 3.x and up expect to encounter monsters they might conceivably beat, even if it might be a very challenging fight. People who started in the primordial soup of oD&D and its immediate successors expect that they might encounter anything at any time.

Am I way off track with these assumptions?

I would say you are off track, to a point.

oD&D had "dungeon levels" - basically, the deeper you went, the more dangerous it became. Dungeon level 1 was populated with roughly monsters with 1 to 3 or 4 hit dice and the power of the monsters went up from there. "Hit dice" very roughly approximated to "monster level", so this was not far from the 3.x and 4E guidelines for monster "appropriateness".

Of course, you could go down to the second dungeon level when you were 1st level if you wanted to - and if you could find some stairs leading down there (which meant total newbs rarely went there). But, if you did that, you were considered forewarned.

Once you hit level 5-7 or so, you were considered ready for "Wilderness Adventuring". This was much more "anything goes" monster power-wise. Even then, though, many DMs had "low level regions" and "high level regions" on the fairly reasonable premise that if the farmland around civilisation was full of purple worms then "civilisation" wouldn't last long.

This assumption of "dungeon levels until mid-levels, then wilderness" certainly carried through to D&D and AD&D, so the concept of "level appropriate encounters" actually has a pretty long history.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I definitely think that the longer one plays, the more one's experience is likely to diverge from the "default".

I started with 2e(albeit with rules from 1e mixed in. I've been playing for 20 years now. We actually went the opposite direction. I was taught to play by a group that mixed what they felt was the best rules from 1e and 2e together along with houserules to plug anything they felt was a hole.

I hadn't actually fully read the 2e rules and just assumed we were following them precisely until about a year after I started playing I decided to start my own gaming group and become a DM. Then, I decided to try the actual rules instead of all the house rules we had and found I liked them better. I still needed house rules to plug some holes and abuses, however.

When 3e came out I found I didn't need any house rules at all, so we ran exactly RAW. That continued through 4e and we still pretty much play RAW.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I am starting to strongly suspect that this is an edition-based preference. People who started with 3.x and up expect to encounter monsters they might conceivably beat, even if it might be a very challenging fight. People who started in the primordial soup of oD&D and its immediate successors expect that they might encounter anything at any time.

Am I way off track with these assumptions?

To clarify a bit, in our original 1e/2e group we didn't so much EXPECT monsters we could beat. However, we all realized that if we ran into monsters we couldn't beat it would likely end up in a Total Party Kill and the game would be over. Running was difficult at best against most monsters who could move faster than you or had magical abilities or had home field advantage with secret passages only they knew about and reinforcements to block you in and prevent you from escaping.

A couple of my friends who I introduced to D&D attempted to run games for the first time and had us face monsters we couldn't beat. We all died. They didn't enjoy that because they had plans for their adventures that they wanted us to face and see what happened. With us all dead they couldn't see us reach the later parts.

This often caused games to be restarted, hours were spent in character generation in order to play again only to have us all die again and the process restarted. Players got frustrated at putting all that effort into their character's background and personality only to have him die to a monster that he had no chance of defeating no matter how smart or well played he was. DMs started being blamed for purposefully using monsters that were too powerful. It became the social norm to mock mercilessly any DM who used monsters that were too powerful for purposefully trying to kill the PCs off and being a rat bastard DM.

Eventually, DMs learned that it was less effort for them to constantly rewrite new adventures after a party wipe and it made them more well liked amongst our group of friends if they didn't use overly powerful monsters.

 

[Ahnehnois]

We actually went the opposite direction.

Well that's interesting.

I would say I've seen a pretty consistent progression from myself and the DMs I know of starting out relatively close to rules as written, a well-known published setting, and a fairly generic dungeoncrawl/hack and slash plot, to pretty much the opposite. Either heavy houserules or very liberal use of the rules at all, homebrew settings, and very innovative storytelling. In a way, I kind of look at my rulebooks as training wheels.

But maybe that doesn't hold for everyone. It's an interesting question.

 

[Balesir]

But maybe that doesn't hold for everyone. It's an interesting question.

Just to prove the potential for diversity, I went from RAW to freeform and then back to RAW again.

Initially I used RAW because I knew no better; when I eventually returned it was because I realised that "freeform" just meant that the rules I was starting with didn't suit what I wanted to do, so I took the first rational course and changed them. When I realised this, I took the second rational course, which was to start with a set of rules that actually DID suit what I wanted to do.

 

[ExploderWizard]

I would say you are off track, to a point.

oD&D had "dungeon levels" - basically, the deeper you went, the more dangerous it became. Dungeon level 1 was populated with roughly monsters with 1 to 3 or 4 hit dice and the power of the monsters went up from there. "Hit dice" very roughly approximated to "monster level", so this was not far from the 3.x and 4E guidelines for monster "appropriateness".

Of course, you could go down to the second dungeon level when you were 1st level if you wanted to - and if you could find some stairs leading down there (which meant total newbs rarely went there). But, if you did that, you were considered forewarned.

Once you hit level 5-7 or so, you were considered ready for "Wilderness Adventuring". This was much more "anything goes" monster power-wise. Even then, though, many DMs had "low level regions" and "high level regions" on the fairly reasonable premise that if the farmland around civilisation was full of purple worms then "civilisation" wouldn't last long.

This assumption of "dungeon levels until mid-levels, then wilderness" certainly carried through to D&D and AD&D, so the concept of "level appropriate encounters" actually has a pretty long history.

Quite right. If you add to this mix the general idea that the higher the dungeon level the better the treasure and thus more phat XP rewards then the allure of pursuing difficult challenges for players becomes more understandable.

The XP system in this model goes at a pace decided by the players rather than the DM. How much risk should they take on to gain the best possible XP without getting themselves killed? That is a great deal of fun to find out.

 

[howandwhy99]

Think of XP as Gold Pieces for Dungeon! the boardgame. A lot of D&D elements came from that game including differing XP requirements.

 

[Stormonu]

My experience followed Majoru's - I started playing about '80 and as time went on I started following the rules more and more so that by late 3.5E I was very much RAW only.

After jumping ship at 4E, I have found myself moving to be a bit more free with the rules, but I still find it sometimes hard not to go "by the book".

 

[pemerton]

I am starting to strongly suspect that this is an edition-based preference. People who started with 3.x and up expect to encounter monsters they might conceivably beat, even if it might be a very challenging fight. People who started in the primordial soup of oD&D and its immediate successors expect that they might encounter anything at any time.

Am I way off track with these assumptions?

I started with Moldvay Basic and then AD&D, and it's never been my intention to have the PCs meet violent enemies whose violence they can't even in principle have any chance of resisting.

a game where content is developed in order to suit the needs of a given group at a given time.

<snip>

It works with some prominent "story now" agendas

I would have XPed this but couldn't. It's nice to see a poster acknowledging that there are approaches to the game other than sandbox and railroad. So thankyou.