What's your "Leveling Up" Sweet spot?

[Piratecat]

One 3e DM had us leveling about once every ten or twelve sessions. Way too slow for my tastes.

Both Sagiro and I do this (although I've sped up for 4e.) I really like it so long as the story is interesting and the PCs have good, strong personalities.

 

[Jon_Dahl]

My players have levelled every 3-5 sessions, and one of them kind of pointed out this is "pretty fast" I just love my players, because I'm a really hard DM by nature (I can't help it) but still sometimes players note that I'm too soft.

 

[arscott]

I like leveling about once a month in 3e. A bit faster in 4e, since the levels don't give you quite the same bump in capability.

I don't really get the attraction of 6+ year campaigns--As a GM, I've got more good ideas for campaigns than I have time. I'm a pretty vicious editor of my own campaigns--cutting out the sidequests that don't progress the overall story, skipping the incedental battles and skipping directly to the boss fights, and that sort of thing. So when you manage to complete important goals that rapidly, rapid levelling feels natural.

 

[Hussar]

Arscott, I gotta admit I'm sort of in the same boat. I like a tighter campaign personally. Then again, any time I've been involved in a slower game, it's invariably died a slow, grinding death as the DM gets more and more burned out. So, obviously, it's my experiences coloring my views.

 

[Mercurius]

Only 37 votes, but it is interesting to note that 22 of them fall into the 3-5 category. I suppose this is what is advocated in the RAW.

I'm wondering if there is a direct correlation between speed of leveling up and the "dungeoncrawling-to-roleplaying spectrum." What I mean by this, is to what degree the focus of the game is on combat and dungeoncrawling vs. to what degree it is focused on roleplaying. I'm guessing that the more towards the former, the more frequent the leveling up - as a general rule, at least.

My game, for instance, is very much focused on combat and dungeoncrawling - more so than I prefer, but somewhat of a necessity given my busy life and lack of prep time. If I ran the campaign that I would really like to run, leveling up would probably occur less frequently. But because my current campaign is pretty much jumping from one adventure to another with only a small amount of roleplaying and character development, then leveling up more frequently makes sense.

 

[Sunseeker]

From levels 1-3, I generally do every other week. From levels 3-10, I generally do once a month, unless we have some double-time sessions.(normaly is 4-6 hours, so, 8-12 can get players 2 sessions worth of XP).

I don't usually get beyond that. Assuming we kept the same pace of session length, I'd stick to the once a monthish setup.

 

[Traveon Wyvernspur]

Just started a campaign with some local guys and the plan I've come up with (we play every other week) is that I'm going to level them 1x per session for the first 5 sessions and then every other session after that. The first session was 2 good encounters and some good role playing as well. I figure 2-3 encounters per session, as well as skill challenges.

I personally don't want a 6 year campaign, I like higher level campaigns where I can throw bigger BBEGs out there at them and allow them to fully realize their powers, go down their different paragon paths, etc. I figure at this rate they'll be mid Paragon tier in a year.

 

[Lanefan]

I don't really get the attraction of 6+ year campaigns--As a GM, I've got more good ideas for campaigns than I have time. I'm a pretty vicious editor of my own campaigns--cutting out the sidequests that don't progress the overall story, skipping the incedental battles and skipping directly to the boss fights, and that sort of thing.

That's kind of a shame - skipping from boss fight to boss fight gets the story told, but at cost of any richness or detail your game world might have had.

That, and often what starts out as a side-quest ends up becoming more interesting than the story you originally had in mind.

Lanefan

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

As often as [in]humanly possible.

If I leveled up every day, I might actually get to max level for the first time.

 

[arscott]

Don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting we should cut the richness and the detail. I'm suggesting we should cut the 15' x 15' room full of orcs so we can spend more time on the richness and detail.

Combat, in most RPGs, takes up a huge amount of time relative to most other activites. If I'm going to devote 20% of a session or more to a single scence, then it had better be a really important scene. And most combat scenes just don't make the cut.

Look at 4e D&D for a great example. The designers put a great effort into creating a new, coherent and interesting setting for the new edition. And then cut it all out of the books so they had room for kobold statblocks.