NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Staffan" data-source="post: 9718037" data-attributes="member: 907">I disagree that you need to start adventuring, or at least start an RPG campaign, as a novice. You can, but you definitely don't have to. The hobbits in Lord of the Rings might be novices, but Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, Boromir, and Gandalf certainly aren't. Amos Burton, Naomi Nagata, James Holden, Alex Kamal, and Roberta Draper certainly aren't the equivalent of 1st, or even 3rd, level characters when we first meet them. Xena has many skills, and a background as a warlord terrorizing nations. John Sheridan is a decorated war hero, and Delenn is secretly a member of the ruling council of the second most powerful (well, third) nation in known space.That said, when we meet most of those, they're all coming into a new context. The Fellowship is going on a quest to destroy the One Ring. The future crew of the Rocinante are seeing their mothership the Canterbury being destroyed, and themselves being drawn into interplanetary intrigue. Xena is leaving her warlording days behind her, and trying to be a hero instead. John Sheridan is being assigned command of a space station and start being not just a starship captain but also a diplomat. That's where the secret sauce is coming from: competent characters with a fair bit of (not necessarily detailed, but alluded to) background story coming into a new situation and seeing how things shake out.And I think that works in RPGs too. While a lot of Critical Role's initial success can be attributed to Matt Mercer's DMing skill and world-building, and the players being what Matt Colville referred to as "professionally charming", I think part of it is that they had already been playing for a while. The PCs had established dynamics, and were starting at something like level 7. I wonder if maybe that's why I never could get into one of their subsequent campaigns, because they were starting at low level (2-3 IIRC) and having that awkward establishing stage, and that just didn't appeal to me.<img src="https://media4.giphy.com/media/XOFsOM3MnuWEE/200.gif" alt="The Next Generation Star GIF" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Not of adventuring itself. It's something that might happen as a consequence of it, but "grinding XP" or the equivalent has never appealed to me.</blockquote>

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