A more powerful game world

[Deepbluediver]

Most of the games I played in, and most of the games that I've read about, have the general population of whatever world you are inhabiting always be about level one. Only the PCs, a handful of other adventurers, and the important enemies/NPCs seem to have a decent number of levels. I never really questioned this, until I played one short game where every NPC had several levels (most NPC levels, but still). The entire adventure took place within the confines of one city, so I don't know what, if anything, the DM had planned for the rest of the world, but for some minor-plot related reason, the lowest level character in the city was 3 (including us, at the start) and most averaged between levels 6-10.

Ever since then I've been intrigued by the idea that of what would happen if you built a world where every day mundane tasks awarded some small amount of Exp, and just by living and surviving you would slowly (very slowly) level up. (adventuring of course lmeans you level up much faster.) I find it ammusing to think the doddering old man in the corner of the local inn spouting rumors and cryptic clues might actually be a 12th level commoner.
Age would be sort-of correlated, in that everyone starts at level 1 as a young-adult, but as you grow older the variance spreads out, depending on just what every person's life is like.

I know that D&D is set up so that the PC party is supposed to be "heroes of land", but I'm wondering what other people think of something like this?

[Shadowknight12]

In the game I'm currently running, the world was invaded by the creatures with the Aberration type (which didn't exist beforehand; some creatures like the Will-o-wisp were changed to another creature type if I wanted them around) and their Elder-God-like Kings, which decimated the world. Their only weakness was magic/supernatural powers, so the only survivors were spellcasters (and the people they could protect) and most of the creatures in the Monster Manuals.

Everyone in that world has PC classes, and practically all of them pursue magic/become supernatural creatures if they can.

It's a very high-powered world, and my player is playing a pixie rogue/beguiler. :smallamused:

[Tengu_temp]

First, this really should belong in the DND 3e subforum.

Second, I don't like the idea of "almost everyone in the world is level 1", and especially not the idea of "almost everyone in the world is a level 1 commoner with all ability scores at 10 or lower", but you also need to keep the world consistent. If there's a lot of people at higher levels than the party around, then why aren't those people fighting monsters?

[Jay R]

You don't get experience points for encounters that don't threaten you. It follows that most people don't get many points.

[Fatebreaker]

Here's a couple of non-D&D examples...

Exalted:
Unsurprisingly for a world that runs on the Rule of Cool, Exalted is full of Very Cool people. Aside from the super-powered Celestial Exalted and the thousands upon thousands of Terrestrial Exalted, there are gods, spirits, fae, ghosts, elementals, and all of their assorted offspring. Even a town in the middle of nowhere may be led by a god-blooded npc. Why is he not out adventuring? Because his ancestor (y'know, the god one) is the personal god of the village, who creates a steady supply of the god-blooded offspring to ensure that the village runs smoothly and provides worship. Exalted makes it very easy to have powerful individuals over a very broad definition of "power." Power also exists in organizations, some of which work, some of which do not. Power can be forgotten, dormant, unstable, or too difficult to wield. Power can be martial or spiritual or even artistic in nature. It can be acquired through items, training, or enlightenment. Exalted is a good look at a powerful fantasy world, especially one which asks and answers the question of what do powerful (but not epic) characters do in an epically powerful world.

Shadowrun:
In spite of cyberpunk's reliance on a mass of mindless, downtrodden, apathetic, and/or powerless non-characters, cyberpunk in general (and Shadowrun in particular) function because there are too many powerful individuals, all wheeling and dealing and fighting tooth and nail to eke out an advantage over their innumerable rivals. Shadowrun is a good look at a more modern sort of power, where information is fast and vital, if only you have the leverage to use it. Even a street gang has an important part to play in megacorporate politics, since they can form a deniable and expendable source of information or provide a flow of "items of questionable legality" in or out of an area. Convoluted webs of power and hierarchies can really help ensure that no singular villain is vital to your plot, allowing your players to cause mayhem aplenty, only for someone else to step up to carry on The Evil Plan (tm).

It's been my experience that classless systems are more willing to have a fuzzier border between "hapless NPC on the street corner" and "PC God-King." Even your run-of-the-mill nobody might have an unexpected skill or two, and it doesn't throw off the balance of the game quite so much for an npc to have a minor bonus in something that makes them unique.

That's not to say that one is better than the other; just that in D&D, since power is clearly defined by level, giving an npc better skill points in, say, architectural history in turn bumps up his saves, his attack bonus, his feats, his attributes, and so on and so forth. So be prepared to adjust to a world where common folk hang out in the one to whatever levels, and bandits are an endangered species because college students are eager to level up in time for their midterms.

Also, now I want to play "Wizard-Architect Ace Spellman, master's degree in architecture, Dead Bandit University -- the Fightin' Familiars!"

It's a lot of fun when done right, though. It also helps for players to see a lot of npcs at a wide variety of power levels. It helps explain why monsters haven't overrun the world, amongst other things. As an added bonus, the more high-powered characters running around means that (like Shadowrun) the more the high-powered npcs have to contend with each other and cancel each other out without the help of the pcs to serve as deniable assets, distractions, shadow operatives, etc. to tip the balance.

[Seharvepernfan]

A long time ago, I went a made a metropolis by-the-books using the DMG. I ad-hoced my metropolis's population to be 33,000, because it was one of the biggest in the campaign world.

It ended up having 27,000+ 1st level commoners.

Keep in mind, that a few hundred more were just leveled commoners, experts, warriors, aristocrats, and adepts. I don't see how they could exist, but it also had a few 20th level commoners - I wonder what they do?

Anyway, my point is: compare this to every little town, village, and thorp in the campaign world. Each little village, even one with as little as one hundred people, has at least a dozen or more people with pc class levels levels and/or higher than 1st. 10% of all the little thorps and hamlets have mid level druids and rangers. Even a small town can have 10th level pc class characters, and will certainly have leveled characters of each class, in fact it will have several above first of each class.

The book says that for every person in a city, there are ten more in the country that support that city. So, from this we learn that the countryside is chock full of leveled pc class characters, and only cities have huge populations of 1st level commoners.

For a long time, I was under the assumption that the world was mostly 1st level commoners, and that affected how I imagined the balance of the world. It's supposedly full of all these monsters and evil races, yet the good races are mostly 1st level commoners! So, I went and came up with reasons and rationalizations for how such a world could even exist, then had that all turned upside down after I made a city and a town by-the-books.

Now, granted, all those country-living pc class characters might not have elite stats, and they probably aren't optimized, and all those city-living commoners probably have the average array, meaning that every person is above average at something, but still.

[Deepbluediver]

First, this really should belong in the DND 3e subforum.

Second, I don't like the idea of "almost everyone in the world is level 1", and especially not the idea of "almost everyone in the world is a level 1 commoner with all ability scores at 10 or lower", but you also need to keep the world consistent. If there's a lot of people at higher levels than the party around, then why aren't those people fighting monsters?
I mentioned D&D because that's the system I'm most familiar with, but I'm perfectly open to hearing about experiences with other RPGs. Like I said, D&D isn't usually set up to suppor this, but maybe some other system does it better. I think some one else mentioned Exalted, which I REALLY need to check out one of these days.

With regards to your fighting-monsters comment, it can be a measure of personality (not everyone likes spending every day hip-deep in blood and goblin entrails) or what you are trained to do. A level 5 Expert, who put all his skill points towards being a better blacksmith, probably wouldn't make a very good adventurer.


You don't get experience points for encounters that don't threaten you. It follows that most people don't get many points.
You would have to determine what exactly you mean by "threaten", but I can see even a simple farmer needing to fight off wolves, maybe robbers, and survive plagues, droughts, famines, swarms of locusts, and even unfriendly nobles. (and that's not even getting into surviving the PCs :smallbiggrin:) Virtually any profession has some element of risk, whether it's dealing with animals (houndsman, teamster), burning hot metal (blacksmith), risk of drowning (fisherman), etc. Again, it wouldn't be as quick a gain as slaying a dragon, but it might provide something if you where willing to except that things other than murder can provide exp.


That's not to say that one is better than the other; just that in D&D, since power is clearly defined by level, giving an npc better skill points in, say, architectural history in turn bumps up his saves, his attack bonus, his feats, his attributes, and so on and so forth. So be prepared to adjust to a world where common folk hang out in the one to whatever levels, and bandits are an endangered species because college students are eager to level up in time for their midterms.

There's a point where you have to draw a line between realism/fluff and mechanics/balance, and then measure them both against the most important variable, FUN! In a world where wizards can shoot fireballs out their elbows, can you guess which one get's dropped first?

Frankly, given how dangerous and deadly highway robbery can be, I would expect any bandit who survived more than 6 months to have quite a few levels in SOMETHING.

[Fatebreaker]

There's a point where you have to draw a line between realism/fluff and mechanics/balance, and then measure them both against the most important variable, FUN! In a world where wizards can shoot fireballs out their elbows, can you guess which one get's dropped first?

Oh, no doubt, no doubt, but my point is simply that a level-based system links all of a character's abilities to a central limit -- the level. Players can figure out approximately what level an NPC is by what bonus he gets to his [Decorative Cake Frosting] skill, and from there, extrapolate other stats which are totally unrelated to the deliciousness of cakes or the decorative-ness of their frosting. Heck, people try and do this with the Order of the Stick characters, or even materials which aren't D&D related, like Lord of the Rings.

Now, why that matters is because some players will wonder why an NPC can have bonus points or skills or spells or whatever for flavor, but their player character cannot. Some players will not like this. If your players do not fall into that category, then no worries. It's just something valuable to know ahead of time, so you understand what you're getting into and the potential pitfalls to avoid.


I think some one else mentioned Exalted, which I REALLY need to check out one of these days.

If by "one of these days," you mean "today," then you are correct, sir!

Seriously, go now. If you don't have a good hobby shop nearby, then electronic copies can be purchased here. (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/index.php?keywords=Exalted&x=0&y=0&author=&artist=&pfrom=&pto=)

[Holocron Coder]

I'm not sure how the rolls go for a big town, but I like the approach of determining how many of a common group level to the next level.

So, let's say that only 20% of people level to the next level, and we have a city of 33,000, like the earlier example. Assuming we round up, that gives the following distribution

1 26,400
2 5,280
3 1,056
4 212
5 42
6 8
7 2

That's not too bad. I see the two best knights (7), the PCs and a few relevant NPCs (6, with the players starting low and aiming at 6), the king's personal guard (5), the various leaders of organizations (4), the best soldiers and cragments (3), good soldiers and craftsmen (2), the bulk (1).

That way, very unlikely to have 20th level commoners. In fact, in order to have 1 20th level character using this combination, you'd have to have the following distribution:

1 15258789062500
2 3051757812500
3 610351562500
4 122070312500
5 24414062500
6 4882812500
7 976562500
8 195312500
9 39062500
10 7812500
11 1562500
12 312500
13 62500
14 12500
15 2500
16 500
17 100
18 20
19 4
20 1

For a total population of 95,367,431,600,000. That's approx 95.3 Trillion people :smallbiggrin:

EDIT: Actually, the math was a bit off, so the total population would have to be 19,073,486,300,000 = 19 trillion.

The formula, for those that care, is as follows:
x = 1 / (1 - F^(n-1))
x - total population
F - fraction of remainder at each level (in this example, 4/5 or 0.8)
n - "position" of value = 1 (in this example, 20)

/mathnerdgasm

[bloodtide]

I have always done this in D&D. The Average level of everyone in my world is 10th. So every single NPC the players meet have at least a couple class levels. In general, most have NPC classes, but mix and sprinkled in with other classes. For example Tula the seamstress is a 5th level commoner/2nd level Sorcerer/1st level cleric for a total of 8th level. And it's easy to keep the balance as I run a high powered, high fantasy, high magic game.

Plus NPCs in my world are not super human(they don't use the point buy cheats to get a perfect character, for example). So Kron the alchemist is a 12th level wizard but his stats are 6,8,11,11,8,9 and as he rolled for his hit points he only has 19 hit points. And this is on top of the role-paying aspect that most people don't want to be heroes. So a great many 12th level NPC fighters would run from a kobold, for example. And finally the NPCs are not uber awesome bulids, so the 12th level wizard does not have maximized daisy chained fireballs, but he has a bunch of non combative spells.

As everyone has a couple levels, the players can expect a much more powerful world. As every household will have at least one spellcaster, they can expect magical traps in every house, for example.

I have always, always hated the idea that the whole world is useless level zeros and only the players are special(like LotR).

[navar100]

Perhaps 4E can model it better. Almost everyone is a minion. They can have varying competencies in any abilities, but they all have one hit point hence their vulnerability to Evil Bad Guy attacks so they need PC heroes to save them.

[Oracle_Hunter]

Ever since then I've been intrigued by the idea that of what would happen if you built a world where every day mundane tasks awarded some small amount of Exp, and just by living and surviving you would slowly (very slowly) level up. (adventuring of course lmeans you level up much faster.) I find it ammusing to think the doddering old man in the corner of the local inn spouting rumors and cryptic clues might actually be a 12th level commoner.

Age would be sort-of correlated, in that everyone starts at level 1 as a young-adult, but as you grow older the variance spreads out, depending on just what every person's life is like.
For class-based games, it's pretty clear what this sort of leveling would mean -- nothing. A 20th level Commoner (3.X) is not a threat to a Tier 3 or better PC class of even half it's level without giving it WBL for some reason. Casters are the exception, so I would expect such a world to look more like a Tippyverse assuming Weak Class Distribution (i.e. classes are not chosen by NPCs but assigned according to the general fluff -- casters are rare, commoners are, well, common) whereas a Strong Class Distribution would have everyone with INT/WIS 10 being a Caster of some sort.

FWIW, in 4e the leveling mechanic is preserved for PCs (as it was in 2e) so what I end up doing is assigning power levels to NPCs based on some general expectations. Most of the "normal" world is, as you noted, Low Heroic (LVs 1-5) with seasoned military forces and spec ops in high Heroic (6-10). Exceptional NPCs may be listed as Elites (i.e. tougher than a normal NPC of their level) or Solos (much tougher) but higher levels are reserved for Big Names who got there through adventuring or living dangerously. Outside of the normal world (e.g. the Shadowfell, Feywild) things are inherently more powerful and so start off at high Heroic and move up from there. Epic is the preserve of Gods and god-like beings.

[Talyn]

Oracle Hunter said it right.

4E, conveniently, with its "the rules for PCs are not the rules for NPCs" allows you to stat the same NPC a number of ways, compared to that NPC's power level relative to the PC's.

Let's take, for example, Sir Argos, Knight of the Realm, an NPC I just made up. His background is the same no matter what level the PCs are when they encounter him - he is a minor noble who has been a professional soldier his entire life, fighting in the King's wars against the orcs of the mountains. Now in his late 40s and approaching retirement, he has been appointed the Knight Protector of a small town on the border of the kingdoms.

With that background, I determine that he is a Soldier-type NPC. Then, I need to determine what "class" of NPC he is.

When the party is just starting out (levels 1 to 3), he is a singularly dangerous foe, capable of tackling the whole party if they start trouble in his town. I stat him as a Level 3 Solo.

After the party has become tough enough that they can pick fights with orc tribes (levels 4 to 7), I determine that he's tougher than any one of them individually, but not to the point of being able to mop the floor with them. I instead stat him as a Level 7 Elite.

Later in the campaign, the PCs have defeated the orcs and have become nobles themselves, Sir Argos might be part of a rival noble's retinue. At this point, I stat him as a Level 11 ordinary foe - which is, incidentally, about the level I would have made him in a 3.5/3.P game.

Finally, as the campaign progresses, the PCs leave poor Sir Argos in the dust as they start to tackle giants and dark angels. By level 16, Sir Argos is just another minion-class enemy, as whole armies of elite soldiers can be driven against the PCs and break upon them like water upon the rock. From there until they finish the campaign, Sir Argos is a minion.

How is this relevant to the OP's post? Because in this system, if the DM wants to make the game world "more powerful," he simply changes the levels at which NPCs like Sir Argos change type - where PCs are expected to shake the foundations of the earth right away, perhaps he's an Ordinary at level 2, and a minion by level 6. Where powerful NPCs are common and expected, maybe he remains a Solo into Paragon levels and a valid threat all the way through Epic.