The world outside the dungeon

[Raven Crowking]

Ravenloft's original form was in the 1e module.

By the time 2e's Ravenloft boxed set came out, the plane was busily sucking up the Big Bads from other planes.

There were a lot of really good things in 2e, mind you, but the mindset of TSR in those days was a lot more "feel good". The DM became director more than referee; this in turn makes any "wins" less meaningful......just as the "wins" in pro wrestling are less meaningful than the wins in amature matches. IMHO, and AFAICT, the advice in the 2e books is the nadir of PC meaningfulness in any edition.

It is the only edition that I stopped playing, without even being interested in picking up another game, because it stopped being fun. A lot of the marketing re: 4e has been about "fun", but, as Gygax notes, that sort of "fun" lasts about a year before it pales. A campaign has to have more meat to it to survive beyond that point.

I don't know much about 4e beyond the initial release, but I do know this -- WotC would be well advised to encourage that sort of "meaningfulness" in game play if they want their version of D&D to rival computer games.

(IMHO, YMMV, etc., etc., etc.)


RC

 

[KidSnide]

In its original form where PCs are sucked out of their world into the mists, the fact that they have a limited ability to affect the world isn't relevant. The stakes are survival and escape. Who cares what happens to the domain? It's not like the PCs are invested in it. So long as they are invested in wherever they're from, getting back there alive (and the frightening possibility that they will fail at that endeavor) is more than enough to capture a player's full attention.

Evil mists and un-killable lords are ways of changing the nature of the game. By making "fixing the domain" essentially impossible, survival itself becomes a satisfying victory.

Ravenloft's original form was in the 1e module.

It's true that there were a pair of Ravenloft modules (and an adventure in Dungeon, IIRC) that came out before the box set.

My point is that the immutability of the Ravenloft setting isn't problematic to allowing the PCs to have an impact on the game world, provided that Ravenloft is used as a thing to escape from in order to return to the game world in which the PCs are invested.

By the time 2e's Ravenloft boxed set came out, the plane was busily sucking up the Big Bads from other planes.

My reading of the box set was that this was designed to allow the game master to frighten the PCs with the greatest evils of other settings, of which the players would be aware because they were part of the general D&D literature. I don't think the intent was to remove the current bad guys from the setting the PCs were playing in. But - yes - if you play it that way, I could see how it would be a bad idea.

Also, lest it be lost in translation, RC, I absolutely agree with your greater point that (1) allowing the PCs to affect the game world and (2) avoiding the "lets watch the NPCs show" are both crucial to a successful campaign.

-KS

Edit: accuracy and tone

 

[Lanefan]

Could you elaborate on this? I mean I get how adjusting the rate of advancement can give you a campaign of the desired length. I'm just unclear as to how you feel this is easier in one edition or another.

Knock-on effects.

Adjusting (and by adjusting, I mean hugely slowing down) level advancement in 1e doesn't really have all that many knock-on effects - at least, not that I've seen in 25+ years of doing it. Maybe it's just because I'm used to it... And the simplest way is to just knock out ExP for g.p., perhaps replacing a bit of it with a dungeon bonus or story bonus, whatever.

Adjusting level advancement in 3e has at least one very serious knock-on effect: unless the DM is really stingy with the treasure (and where's the fun in that?) the wealth-by-level guidelines go right out the window. I know because I've seen it: I was in that 3e game I mentioned for its first 6 years, and the wealth we'd accumulated by 10th-ish level threw the CR-EL calculations all to hell. Made the DM work harder, that's for sure!

A less serious knock-on effect in 3e but perhaps more significant in 4e is that the published adventures seem to be designed such that you are assumed to be level x at the start and level x+2 or x+3 at the end. If, however, you're the same level all the way through, either the beginning will be too easy or the end will be too dangerous. For example, H1 Keep on the Shadowfell is an adventure that really ramps up the danger as you go along; if you plan to run it in a slow-advancing game with a party of 1st-level types they'll get slaughtered at the end, but if you send a party of 3rd or 4th levels in there the first 2/3 of it won't present any real challenge at all but the last few encounters will really rock. Much of this stems from the fine-tuning of the math and scaling done in 4e and to a lesser extent in 3e.

A good DM will catch this and tweak to suit; a lesser one might not, until it's too late.

As for campaign length, yes it really helps to be in the same city with some of the same friends and fellow gamers that I knew 20 or 30 years ago. That said, there's always room for new blood...

Lan-"mmm...new blood...still in the containers, too!"-efan

 

[Votan]

Adjusting level advancement in 3e has at least one very serious knock-on effect: unless the DM is really stingy with the treasure (and where's the fun in that?) the wealth-by-level guidelines go right out the window. I know because I've seen it: I was in that 3e game I mentioned for its first 6 years, and the wealth we'd accumulated by 10th-ish level threw the CR-EL calculations all to hell.

I think that this is more of an issue with how magic items are done in more modern editions -- especially with the easy crafting.

One solution for 3E is playing in an E6 environment. This has the pleasant side effect of making a lot of magic items unobtainable as nobody has the caster level to create them (and thus caps the maximum advantage due to wealth).

 

[Rel]

Knock-on effects...

Understood and thanks for the explanation. It's been a terribly long time since I ran any 1e. Even though I suspect that there is an underlying assumption of "wealth by level" inherent in it, it may be more loose than the modern editions. Like I said, it's been a very long time since I ran anything resembling a 1e campaign.

XP has been a topic near and dear to me for a long time. For a while it was even something I was frequently asked about at ENW because I had developed a couple alternate systems to handle it in 3e that were (for me at least) much much easier than the standard method.

Ultimately however, by the time I got to 4e, I took only a passing glance at the XP system before chucking it entirely. Instead I opted to have the PC's advance a level every three sessions and that suited me just fine.

I will say that, while I don't really use it precisely, the Treasure Parcel system of 4e appears to deal pretty well with varying the rate of advancement if I understand it correctly. It basically says "here is a list of items that the party should obtain over the course of a level if you want them to keep within the expectations of the system". And the GM is free to dole these out at whatever rate he likes over the course of that level. It would make no difference if it took one session or ten sessions to gain that level in that circumstance.

 

[Lanefan]

Understood and thanks for the explanation. It's been a terribly long time since I ran any 1e. Even though I suspect that there is an underlying assumption of "wealth by level" inherent in it, it may be more loose than the modern editions.

Much more so, in fact; like most of the math in 0-1e. I've come to think over time that this looseness is what makes it so robust: one has a lot more wiggle room to make changes before getting beyond what the base system can handle.

XP has been a topic near and dear to me for a long time. For a while it was even something I was frequently asked about at ENW because I had developed a couple alternate systems to handle it in 3e that were (for me at least) much much easier than the standard method.

I played 3e for 6 years and never did understand how ExP were supposed to be divided. It seemed to be needlessly complicated.

Ultimately however, by the time I got to 4e, I took only a passing glance at the XP system before chucking it entirely. Instead I opted to have the PC's advance a level every three sessions and that suited me just fine.

Every three sessions? If you're sailing each week that's about 17-18 levels per year...after 5 or 6 years...does the game even go to 100th level?

One solution for 3E is playing in an E6 environment. This has the pleasant side effect of making a lot of magic items unobtainable as nobody has the caster level to create them (and thus caps the maximum advantage due to wealth).

I've never tried this. Am I right in guessing that the '6' in E6 means that nothing in the game goes beyond 6th level?

Lan-"and what if my level is already higher than my game's E number?"-efan

 

[MerricB]

I played 3e for 6 years and never did understand how ExP were supposed to be divided. It seemed to be needlessly complicated.

Blame Gary. No, seriously - 3e XP is directly derived from how AD&D XP was meant to be assigned (although it also gave more XP for beating tougher opponents, which Gary didn't recommend).

Of course, by the time Wizards got to 4e, they agreed that it was needlessly complicated and went back to a nice flat system.

Every three sessions? If you're sailing each week that's about 17-18 levels per year...after 5 or 6 years...does the game even go to 100th level?

Actually, along with BECM D&D, 4E actually has a hard limit on how high you can reach - 30th level. For 'modern' groups like mine, which meet every fortnight (if that), once per three sessions works very nicely.

Lan-"and what if my level is already higher than my game's E number?"-efan

Ah, that would be bad. You don't want to do that.

Cheers,
Mer-"complicated? I played ASL tonight. That's complicated!"-ric

 

[Rel]

Every three sessions? If you're sailing each week that's about 17-18 levels per year...after 5 or 6 years...does the game even go to 100th level?

In retrospect I think I'd have been slightly better served to extend it to 1/4 sessions. But since my campaign was never meant to last longer than a year (it ran for 11 months) then that wasn't a problem. They made 13th or 14th level, which was fine.

 

[Bullgrit]

I played 3e for 6 years and never did understand how ExP were supposed to be divided. It seemed to be needlessly complicated.

Huh? But you understand how to figure up AD&D1 xp, including the level of challenge rule?

Bullgrit

 

[Votan]

I've never tried this. Am I right in guessing that the '6' in E6 means that nothing in the game goes beyond 6th level?

Lan-"and what if my level is already higher than my game's E number?"-efan

Yes, basically. You progress to 6th level and then, every 5,000 XP, you gain a bonus feat. A few 4th level spells exist as rituals that you can climb a feat tree to get. It's not for everyone (one of my players violently rejected it) but it nicely removes a lot of the elements of 3E that were problematic in 3E.

For example, the only ability score booster ever obtained are gauntlets of Ogre power. The only way to increase hit points beyond 6 HD + CON is taking toughness feats. 5000 XP for characters of that power level is a long time per feat . . .

The AD&D equivalent would be a lot higher. Character's don't hit the power curves that it was designed to prevent until much later (it mimics LotR levels of power) -- perhaps e12? And it'd likely vary by class, I suspect.

ANd if I was playing AD&D by the PH book, there are a LOT less problematic spells (see shorter time stop duration, see no teleport without error). Plus, without bonus spells based on an ability score that radically increases with level, the wizard doesn't end up with such a huge number of spells. Without trival scroll creation, knock requires a precious spell slot.

And wizards are the only class to really show true exponential power growth past 9 to 12 levels in AD&D (maybe, a little bit, clerics, but they lack the punch of later editions).

So I think E6 is a pure 3rd edition solution; I have not thought about it for 4th edition, but I am dubious it would be a sweet spot there, either.

SO maybe AD&D is less fragile too?

[2nd edition and AD&D with supplements have a wider range of spells and classes -- I have not thought through whether this would be true in these systems in a careful way]

So I'd only start thinking about E12 (reformulated as an XP cap) for AD&D if you often saw 30th level AD&D character (like 6 months into a campaign).