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View Full Version : Pred 3e did people tend to only play one character?



Ozreth
2010-09-19, 04:30 PM
I always read about peoples older d&d days (pre 3rd edition) and here about "Their character". It seems to me like people had a character that they used through many adventures instead of creating a new one for each new module or campaign.

Is this true? I like the sound of it.

Zaydos
2010-09-19, 04:34 PM
My pre 3e experience was mostly limited to one campaign of Basic and a few games of AD&D and 2e so I never experienced it but the 2e PHB/DMG reference that habit.

Gavinfoxx
2010-09-19, 04:35 PM
I'd say that in the overtly "DM vs Players" editions, the mortality rate of PC's was quite high. In many of the early editions, you played a Fighting Man because you didn't have good enough stats to be a real class. "Their" character was just one of many character that got to high enough level to be able to not be under constant threat of dying all the time.

Eldariel
2010-09-19, 04:35 PM
I always ran with one per campaign...well, unless it died (happened quite a bit; life was hard for 1st level adventurers and back then we didn't realize you could start a bit higher for a more enjoyable experience).

cupkeyk
2010-09-19, 04:44 PM
I second the "my character" = "the character that didn't die within the first few sessions"

My old adnd character was a halfling rogue back when backstab involved autokilling most things.

oxybe
2010-09-19, 04:50 PM
Edward was my "my character" and mostly due to a luck streak longer then the nile. DM either kept rolling (all in the open) just enough to not hit or not kill me.

and Ed's luck has kept up over the years. his play has been pretty sporadic though, but he's yet to die over the course of 3 editions (2nd, 3rd & 4th).

but other then Ed, there's Shump who has the distinction of being my longest continuously played PC and the only to go from 1 to 21. other then those two there were many, many now faceless PCs whom i've forgot all about.

Matthew
2010-09-19, 05:31 PM
Basically, no. In years gone by the game was played pretty much as it is now, which is to say in diverse ways, depending on the group and their preferences. what there was less of was "character building choices", meaning that there was (and is, for those who play this way now) considerably less reason to roll up a new character to try out, since the emphasis was on what you did in the game, rather than how your character developed over its course. Of course, that is not true of every instance, and there were (and are) certainly people who take a successful character from game to game, preferably mostly with their goods, henchmen, and hirelings intact, but to reach the "endgame" of D&D you need to be playing in a reasonably stable campaign area where a character can be retired to.

The mortality rate of characters is often over exaggerated, as again that differs by campaign. When I first started playing I went through a good dozen halflings, but after that it was not very common for a character to be killed, because we knew better what we were doing.

That said, after one of my characters was slain in a Forgotten Realms campaign, he was replaced with another character I had run in the same campaign setting under a different game master (since by that time the levels were about the same), but that was more a matter of convenience than a result of planning.

Knaight
2010-09-19, 05:39 PM
Plus, there were other systems. Take GURPS, built to be generic from the beginning, its sales indicate a group of people that plays multiple characters in multiple settings.

avr
2010-09-19, 05:43 PM
IME the intention when starting a campaign was (and is) usually to keep playing with one character for each player. A campaign can easily die though, and not just because of the characters - if the game got sufficiently boring, or if people moved away/ couldn't make the time and another time couldn't be organised, or if someone got a new RPG and they really wanted to try it out, etc.

Aotrs Commander
2010-09-19, 05:52 PM
Well, leaving aside the fact that we often end up playing more than one character at once...

I think something also has a factor is that in 3.x, to get to 20th level is considerably less effort; even to get to mid level. The highest character I ever got in a really long AD&D game was about 10th or so; I don't think I've actually got any characters currently much lower than that!

So, once you've reached the end of the "life" of the character (i.e. at the point at which you've capped out the rules pretty much, bar the considerable more fiddly Epic levels), there's a reason to do start again with "new" characters. Plus, what Matthew said about there being more mechanical distinction.

Things like adventure paths help too.

Kurald Galain
2010-09-20, 04:37 AM
It seems to me like people had a character that they used through many adventures instead of creating a new one for each new module or campaign.

Is this true? I like the sound of it.
Yes, absolutely. Then again, this is true for pretty much every RPG.

FelixG
2010-09-20, 04:39 AM
I would say that "their character" is the one they my have identified with the most.

"My Character" is Felix, for whom i carry the namesake now, he was a royally evil character from a Fallout game. I have many a story of him as well. This is why he is my character.

Ozreth
2010-09-20, 04:45 AM
Yes, absolutely. Then again, this is true for pretty much every RPG.

Well, for instance, I am about to run Expedition to Greyhawk. My players will create lvl 8 characters and they will be taken to around level 13. After Greyhawk, they will probably roll new characters for whichever new game I start.

Im guessing this wouldnt be the case in 2e? People would keep the same character and play a lvl 13 or 14 game when the new one starts, even if the game is completely unrelated to the last one?

Psyx
2010-09-20, 05:30 AM
I always read about peoples older d&d days (pre 3rd edition) and here about "Their character". It seems to me like people had a character that they used through many adventures instead of creating a new one for each new module or campaign.

Is this true? I like the sound of it.


Errr... no. One character per campaign. I suppose it varies by play-group, though.

If we did a series of stand-alone adventures then they'd be played in level order, and one character used throughout.

People speak of 'their character' because elapsed time focuses the memories on 'favourites', and dozens of other characters are forgotten. Certainly, when thinking of 1e and 2e, one character for each springs to mind over all others.

ghost_warlock
2010-09-20, 05:55 AM
:smallconfused:

I've got a small army worth of old AD&D characters. As most were located in the same campaign world, the same city even, I'd often swap them out between adventure modules. A few stick in my memory better than others, though. I suppose that's why I refer to characters by name rather than simply saying "my character."

I don't think any of them ever managed to exceed 12th level. My highest level 3.5 character topped out at 15th. Highest level in 4e is 9th, so far, but was built at that level for a one-shot game so I suppose he doesn't really count.

Kurald Galain
2010-09-20, 07:01 AM
Im guessing this wouldnt be the case in 2e? People would keep the same character and play a lvl 13 or 14 game when the new one starts, even if the game is completely unrelated to the last one?

That depends on what the group wants, and which edition they're playing isn't really relevant to the question.

If the game is unrelated, then no. If the game is in the same area and people want to continue playing high level, then yes. If the game is in the same general world, people may want to play e.g. the child of their previous character. And so forth.

ken-do-nim
2010-09-21, 05:24 AM
Well, for instance, I am about to run Expedition to Greyhawk. My players will create lvl 8 characters and they will be taken to around level 13. After Greyhawk, they will probably roll new characters for whichever new game I start.

Im guessing this wouldnt be the case in 2e? People would keep the same character and play a lvl 13 or 14 game when the new one starts, even if the game is completely unrelated to the last one?

I'll flip your question on its head and say that continuous character progression from 1 to whatever is the norm in any edition of D&D, and rolling up new characters for each module isn't usually done outside of convention play.

Kiero
2010-09-21, 05:40 AM
As far as I can remember, we only had one character per campaign in AD&D2e.

hamlet
2010-09-21, 08:00 AM
*shudder*

This thread 's gonna kill me.

The one point that hasn't been brought up that should be is that in prior editions of D&D, character advancement was MUCH slower. The expectation of going from level 1 through 20 just wasn't there, really, since it could take decades of solid play to get there, and the liklihood of a character getting through all that alive was very slim. Thus, when the character you happened to be playing at the time started geting into levels above 4th of 5th, you started getting posessive of the character. It was always your character, but by now you had a lot of time and effort invested in his/her advancement and you had formed a strong "bond" with it.

By way of example, in a group I game with (7+ years now, 1 campaign), one of my tablemates had kept his character alive for a full 6 years, and when he died, it was a huge shock, so much so that even his new character has never truly been "his" because it's not the original that lasted for so long.

People get attached to the characters that they've spent a lot of time playing, which is something that has, I think, been lost with the level 1-20 in a year mentality.

oxybe
2010-09-21, 09:07 AM
*shudder*

This thread 's gonna kill me.

The one point that hasn't been brought up that should be is that in prior editions of D&D, character advancement was MUCH slower. The expectation of going from level 1 through 20 just wasn't there, really, since it could take decades of solid play to get there, and the liklihood of a character getting through all that alive was very slim. Thus, when the character you happened to be playing at the time started geting into levels above 4th of 5th, you started getting posessive of the character. It was always your character, but by now you had a lot of time and effort invested in his/her advancement and you had formed a strong "bond" with it.

By way of example, in a group I game with (7+ years now, 1 campaign), one of my tablemates had kept his character alive for a full 6 years, and when he died, it was a huge shock, so much so that even his new character has never truly been "his" because it's not the original that lasted for so long.

People get attached to the characters that they've spent a lot of time playing, which is something that has, I think, been lost with the level 1-20 in a year mentality.

1-20 in a year is still a long time. it took me about 2 years to get Shump from 1st to 21st in 3.5 and i was quite happy ending the game at that point in time and getting a chance to play another character. the entire group was getting ready for a change. playing the same character for 5+ years? sorry not for me. i would have retired the character a long time ago, and while i might have revisited him occasionally, he would have been retired.

"my character", Ed, has been around for 12+ years, but that was hardly continuous. there were many breaks, often years between playtimes, and the times edward came out to play post-retirement was for maybe a month or two or maybe a one-shot.

i'm plenty happy with 1 or 2 years to experience a character grow then retire.

Lhurgyof
2010-09-21, 09:46 AM
I LOVE Hackmaster, I only died like once. I was also the only character to make it past level 1 xD

mucat
2010-09-21, 01:02 PM
Well, for instance, I am about to run Expedition to Greyhawk. My players will create lvl 8 characters and they will be taken to around level 13. After Greyhawk, they will probably roll new characters for whichever new game I start.

Im guessing this wouldnt be the case in 2e? People would keep the same character and play a lvl 13 or 14 game when the new one starts, even if the game is completely unrelated to the last one?

I'm not sure what you mean by an "unrelated" game. If it's the same characters, isn't it pretty strongly related?

The way my old 1e/2e group used to play, we would start a campaign (usually) at first level, and work our way up until either the campaign ended with some climactic event that we knew would be impossible to top, or until everyone got bored and the campaign faded to a stop. Then we would started from scratch, usually with a different person serving as DM, when we felt like gaming more.

If the DM liked to use modules rather than homebrew material, the modules would be part of the campaign, not its main focus. We were likely to ask "What's a good module for 8th level party?" and then when that one was done, continue with either original material or another, higher-level module. It was still the same game world, though -- if the characters lived in Greyhawk, that's where the new action would start, unless there was a good reason they were elsewhere.

I think this is still a very common play style today, though modules and module chains have grown more ambitious, and more likely to provide a campaigns' main focus. Also, as gamers grow older, they usually prefer a more coherent campaign, so they're less likely to just toss level-appropriate modules into play.

I associate the old, random-modules-mixed-with-homebrew style of campaign more with a certain era of my own gaming history than with a certain rules edition.

LibraryOgre
2010-09-21, 01:50 PM
I will say that you usually died a lot more when you were new to the game. While there were plenty of ways to die later on, once you got experienced you (as a player) usually started to say "Gee, maybe I should stop sticking my face in front of a chainsaw." Thus, a lot of people's first experience with the game was dying a lot, and it stuck with them.

Caliphbubba
2010-09-21, 02:23 PM
I'll flip your question on its head and say that continuous character progression from 1 to whatever is the norm in any edition of D&D, and rolling up new characters for each module isn't usually done outside of convention play.

This is my experiance in every edition of the game I've ever played.

Zaydos
2010-09-21, 02:31 PM
Now I do have a question. Why did the 2e DMG give advice on how to incorporate characters from other DMs' games? I've never seen it happen.

Aotrs Commander
2010-09-21, 02:42 PM
1-20 in a year is still a long time. it took me about 2 years to get Shump from 1st to 21st in 3.5 and i was quite happy ending the game at that point in time and getting a chance to play another character. the entire group was getting ready for a change. playing the same character for 5+ years? sorry not for me. i would have retired the character a long time ago, and while i might have revisited him occasionally, he would have been retired.

"my character", Ed, has been around for 12+ years, but that was hardly continuous. there were many breaks, often years between playtimes, and the times edward came out to play post-retirement was for maybe a month or two or maybe a one-shot.

i'm plenty happy with 1 or 2 years to experience a character grow then retire.

To some extent, I think it depends on how often you play. If you play only once a month or something, as opposed to weekly, you would keep your character fresher for longer.

There is one party (in Rolemaster) we've had for about fifteen years, but we only ever had played with them once or twice a year in day quests. I imagine if we play them continuously for a year or two, we'd get bored of them eventually, and that is by near-unianimous consensus, our favourite party.

Xefas
2010-09-21, 02:43 PM
Now I do have a question. Why did the 2e DMG give advice on how to incorporate characters from other DMs' games? I've never seen it happen.

Here's a good representation of how that sort of thing went down (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhmUj9QJ9RM). The video is a good illustration of the "I play my same character in every single game, regardless of gaming group or DM, until he dies."

I played 2nd edition for several years, and my group never did that sort of thing, but I knew people who did.

BlckDv
2010-09-21, 02:58 PM
Now I do have a question. Why did the 2e DMG give advice on how to incorporate characters from other DMs' games? I've never seen it happen.

I have. I'll give an answer; though I am sure it is not THE answer.

My uncle, who introduced me to the hobby, was one of the earliest gamers to the RPG scene, an avid player of Avalon Hill games who got into Chainmail as soon as it was released, and waited eagerly for AD&D book by book.

In his social circle, most of these early gamers knew each other well from wargame gatherings and conventions, and had existing social ties as a network of gamers who played in "shared worlds" before they had RPGs to play.

A couple of these fellows who had the resources (time, money, and creative energy) became the first Dungeon Masters for their friends in the area. They each "claimed" a small geographic area in a world that it was generally understood was connected, and left the rest of the world a largely undefined mysterious place of ancient kingdoms and ruins. They wrote up backstories, geography, and adventure hooks, especially dungeons, for their little corner of the world. The players then made their PCs, and dropped into the world based on who's table they were at when they started playing. The DMs all knew each other and were friends, and they would keep each other up to date on what was going on in their neck of the woods, occasionally coordinating events that had a world wide impact. When players wanted to go play with another DM, they checked to see how long it would take their PC to leave one DM's area and travel to the other, and would join that game when the time had passed, perhaps playing a lackey or henchman if it looked like it might take a session or two to catch up. I even recall one time when a whole party wandered over to "the next valley" and planted all kinds of odd clues and traps to confuse another adventuring party they knew was headed there in another DM's game.

In most of these games, the clock "ran" whether you were at the table or not, so if you let your DM know you were leaving today, you may have already arrived by the time another DM held his next game a next weekend.

I know that this style of play was not unique to my uncle, and that in fact the original Greyhawk and Blackmoor campaigns were linked in a similar way. I think this style of game was a short lived relic of the transition from wargamers to tabletops gamers, once the gamers in an area were not likely to be a single interconnected network of folks who knew each other, the idea of a campaign world being shared by many DMs became an odd idea and taking a PC from one game to another in which the DM knows nothing about the other game became very odd.

From all I know, this type of play was already uncommon by the early 80's, and I have not seen it in action since the late 80's... but I strongly suspect that many TSR staffers held onto the idea long after the reality had changed.

Hope that helps.

Ethdred
2010-09-21, 03:05 PM
Well, leaving aside the fact that we often end up playing more than one character at once...

I'm glad we weren't the only group to do that. I was really surprised when I first encountered forums such as this one, where it seemed everyone always and only played one character each, even to the point of saying they weren't able to play if there were only three players in their group. I never understood the hate for playing two (or more) characters at one time. We always used to vary our numbers according to who was at the table, including having one on one sessions where the player would have an entire party of his own characters. 1st edition modules usually said they were for 6-10 PCs (though this probably included henchmen etc). We were never precious about numbers - in one adventure we had one character each, but then another potential PC turned up, and I got to play her as well as my existing character (and she turned out to be one of my most memorable characters, and I still use her name as an alias online sometimes).

As for campaigns - we'd been playing for about 3 years before we finally badgered our DM into starting one, because we'd read about such a thing in the books. Before that (and in other sessions and with other DMs) we just pitched up with our existing characters who then got thrown into the adventure. We all had some characters that we liked to play whenever appropriate and which we generally wrote adventures for, but if someone had got hold of a module which was for different levels, we'd just roll up another character (or drag one out that we already had).

So you can tell that we had lots of experience in DMing PCs from other DM's games. There were a couple of issues around silly treasure being given out, but usually no-one batted an eyelid when your character turned up with a few thousand more XPs than he'd had the last time that DM had seen him.

Other than that group, I only did a "DM swap" once, in 2E. We'd just failed at preventing the return of Vecna, so all the characters were running for their lives. My wizard deliberately jumped into his portable hole with his bag of holding, causing a rift, which dropped him straight into the campaign that we'd already agreed one of the players would be DMing next time. (And I mean 'dropped him in' - he arrived just below the ceiling of the main room of tavern in which the campaign would start - along with all his cash, about 100,000gp, which was not now handily contained in aforesaid bag of holding - quite an entrance.)

Jarawara
2010-09-21, 03:41 PM
I associate the old, random-modules-mixed-with-homebrew style of campaign more with a certain era of my own gaming history than with a certain rules edition.

Pretty much this. It has nothing to do with the edition of the rules, but the era the game was in. In the 80's I saw many examples of players who would join a gaming group and present 'their character' for approval.

After awhile, DM's all over seemed to tire of this and started instituting the policy that characters must be made from scratch, generated in front of the DM. This was to prevent cheating, but also to promote originality.

It didn't work (not the cheating part, but the originality part). I would roll the dice and generate a character from scratch, but it really was 'my character' reimagined and recreated. I wasn't bringing my old character in to the new game because I wanted all the previous magical toys and XP. I wanted the same character because I *liked* him.

But overall, nothing much has changed. There were long-term campaigns back then, and there were short-term module-hopping. There are long-term campaigns today and there are short-term module-hopping. It's all a matter of what group you play with and if you can get a consistant group together.

As for my own campaign world, I've had players come and go, but it's always been the same world, and so if I called up my old-timers and brought them over for an afternoon of gaming, they'd pull out 'their characters' from a 25-year retirement and dust off their swords for a day of adventure.

Or we'd make some one-shot characters for a romp through some classic module. Lately, 'Against the Giants' has been calling me from the shelf, perhaps I should give that adventure a try again.

Jarawara
2010-09-21, 03:54 PM
Ethdred, I too come from a history of playing multiple characters. Often the DM would say "This is going to be a tough campaign, make three characters each so you have people on hand at all times."

Interestingly enough, it wasn't a 'killer' campaign. Most of those characters had long survival rates. But they were knocked unconsious, captured, immobilized, separated from the party, and generally made useless enough times to warrent having backup characters already in the field so the player had sometime to do until a rescue/heal could be conducted on the incapacitated members.

It didn't always go so well. In one campaign where the advancement rate was slow, the DM said there was a major event taking place and that everyone should bring every character they had available, including all their henchmen. The players filled the battleboard with over 70 people (each with their own lead miniature, so it was quite the sight). Then we screwed up on the way to the 'grand finale', got ourselves trapped in a battle that should have been a pushover, and 65 of the 70 characters died in one very long gaming session. Everyone I had ever played in that 4 year long campaign died that day.

I and another player made brand new characters for the next session, joined in with the 5 survivors of the debacle, as the DM desperately tried to re-write the grand finale to match our newly depleted force.

It was kinda nice to get back to a 'one-player, one-character' format after that. Much easier to keep track of it all.

hamlet
2010-09-21, 04:10 PM
1-20 in a year is still a long time. it took me about 2 years to get Shump from 1st to 21st in 3.5 and i was quite happy ending the game at that point in time and getting a chance to play another character. the entire group was getting ready for a change. playing the same character for 5+ years? sorry not for me. i would have retired the character a long time ago, and while i might have revisited him occasionally, he would have been retired.

"my character", Ed, has been around for 12+ years, but that was hardly continuous. there were many breaks, often years between playtimes, and the times edward came out to play post-retirement was for maybe a month or two or maybe a one-shot.

i'm plenty happy with 1 or 2 years to experience a character grow then retire.

A year is a long time?

And you said it yourself. It's largely a matter of personal taste. For me, and many like me, 1 year is essentially a "breaking in" period. After that first year, then you could probably start telling stories about the character. Before that, not really.

mucat
2010-09-22, 12:40 AM
Now I do have a question. Why did the 2e DMG give advice on how to incorporate characters from other DMs' games? I've never seen it happen.

I still do that, kind of...all my gaming these days is through PbP games. And very often (but, contrary to popular wisdom, not always) those fold before they reach a satisfying conclusion.

So if I like a character, and they never really get a chance to live because their campaign folds, I will sometimes submit them for a different campaign. Of course, they are remade to the new DM's specs, and their history is rewritten a bit to fit the new campaign background...it's usually more of a "reboot" than a continuation. Right now I have six characters in play in various PbP campaigns, two of whom are reworked versions of characters I created years ago, but who never saw much play. The other four are invented from scratch for their current campaigns.