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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Grydan" data-source="post: 6254014" data-attributes="member: 79401">I'm of the "level when the DM says" school of thought, and for me MMORPGs played no role in shaping that preference. I figured out that it was my preferred method through playing D&D 4E by the book and finding that (at least when using published adventures) the timing of when the characters levelled was often an awkward fit with the events of the story. So after discussing it with my players I started using the rules as merely a loose guideline: when they were close to "officially" levelling, I would keep an eye out for an appropriate place in the chain of events. It feels much more natural to gain an increase in capability after you've just overcome a major challenge or completed a quest than to have it happen after you knocked off a random patrol or convinced a minor official to do you a favor. To date I've only played one MMO (Star Trek Online), and not only was it after I'd figured out that approach, but one of my biggest and most frequent complaints about the game from as far back as the beta was that I disliked their approach to levelling (admittedly, much of my complaining was about how it interacted with the largely irrelevant to D&D issues of rank and position).</blockquote>