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MonkeySage
2014-04-19, 12:30 PM
Have you guys ever thought about this sort of thing? PCs learn more in a short period of time than an NPC could learn in a lifetime. They grow stronger at a rate far exceeding what most npcs could accomplish, you can even have a 17 year old sorcerer flinging around 9th level spells. I'm referencing d&d specifically but I think it applies to all rpgs. From a gameplay standpoint it makes sense, but how does one rationalize it from in game perspective? :)

Do you guys waive this off by saying that even PCs have to study for years? Or do your PCs actually gain mastery over their chosen fields within months of their first adventure?

Perhaps the simple fact that they're learning/growing in action, rather than from an arena/library?

The_Werebear
2014-04-19, 01:50 PM
I'm paraphrasing from a friend, who is quoting from someone else.

"A day where someone tries to kill you is the worst day of most people's lives. A day where a dozen people try to kill you is Die Hard, and makes you John McClane. The PC's who have Die Hard days every day for six months become physical gods."

This makes sense to me.

Pex
2014-04-19, 03:07 PM
Because contrary to some DMs' beliefs, PCs are special snowflakes. The multiverse actually does revolve around them. They insanely go into the Dungeon of Doom to save the world. It's why they're not the tavern owner, the Duke, the Wizards' Guild Headmaster, the Infamous Assassin, or the feared Dragon of the Mountain.

Kaervaslol
2014-04-19, 03:49 PM
Because contrary to some DMs' beliefs, PCs are special snowflakes. The multiverse actually does revolve around them. They insanely go into the Dungeon of Doom to save the world. It's why they're not the tavern owner, the Duke, the Wizards' Guild Headmaster, the Infamous Assassin, or the feared Dragon of the Mountain.

Funny you say that. My last group was composed mostly of stable cleaners/poop shovelers. They got inside the Dungeon of Doom not to save the world, but to score some dosh. Those who survived the devious traps got to fight the duke's men when they exited the dungeon, but a few managed to scape with the loot.

Not everyone plays by forgotten realms/dragonlance tropes.

Rhynn
2014-04-19, 04:14 PM
Stop running games with ridiculous pacing (using a system with ridiculously fast leveling). D&D campaigns can and have taken years and years of in-game time for PCs to reach high mid levels. :smalltongue:

Alternatively, play mechanically deeper / better games (and I say that as an OSR D&D fan) that don't use levels and have skill-based systems; see RuneQuest (especially 2E & 3E), HârnMaster, etc.

Kaervaslol: Were you, by chance, playing Dungeon Crawl Classics? If not, you should check it out. The game starts with every player creating a bunch of characters who are just chandlers, butchers, stableboys, beggars, and the like; they venture into a dungeon, and the ones who come out (a minority) get to first level and become "proper" characters.

Thrudd
2014-04-19, 06:14 PM
Have you guys ever thought about this sort of thing? PCs learn more in a short period of time than an NPC could learn in a lifetime. They grow stronger at a rate far exceeding what most npcs could accomplish, you can even have a 17 year old sorcerer flinging around 9th level spells. I'm referencing d&d specifically but I think it applies to all rpgs. From a gameplay standpoint it makes sense, but how does one rationalize it from in game perspective? :)

Do you guys waive this off by saying that even PCs have to study for years? Or do your PCs actually gain mastery over their chosen fields within months of their first adventure?

Perhaps the simple fact that they're learning/growing in action, rather than from an arena/library?

In 1e AD&D, leveling up required a period of weeks, a mentor of the appropriate class and level, and thousands of gold in expenses. If you didn't have a mentor, you couldn't level up until you found one. Once you hit name level, a mentor was no longer required, but you still need the thousands of gold and weeks of in-game time. Procuring henchmen and having items and equipment crafted in between adventures also takes weeks or months of in-game time. Healing can also take weeks of time.
Once you start building strongholds and towers and putting together your domains, the in-game time really adds up, as it takes months to get buildings constructed, to gather and equip troops, create thieves guilds and do magical research and craft magic items.
Also, experience tables in 1e required exponentially more XP to gain higher levels. A single location or adventure is not guaranteed to produce enough XP to level up. Yes, an adventuring PC will gain levels faster than someone who is a guard captain or a sedentary magic-user who stays in a tower all the time. That's ok. But I do like a game to impose some type of logical process for how characters gain new abilities implying world which operates by logical rules. This is missing in 3e and later.

INDYSTAR188
2014-04-19, 07:10 PM
In 1e AD&D, leveling up required a period of weeks, a mentor of the appropriate class and level, and thousands of gold in expenses. If you didn't have a mentor, you couldn't level up until you found one. Once you hit name level, a mentor was no longer required, but you still need the thousands of gold and weeks of in-game time. Procuring henchmen and having items and equipment crafted in between adventures also takes weeks or months of in-game time. Healing can also take weeks of time.
Once you start building strongholds and towers and putting together your domains, the in-game time really adds up, as it takes months to get buildings constructed, to gather and equip troops, create thieves guilds and do magical research and craft magic items.
Also, experience tables in 1e required exponentially more XP to gain higher levels. A single location or adventure is not guaranteed to produce enough XP to level up. Yes, an adventuring PC will gain levels faster than someone who is a guard captain or a sedentary magic-user who stays in a tower all the time. That's ok. But I do like a game to impose some type of logical process for how characters gain new abilities implying world which operates by logical rules. This is missing in 3e and later.

Does your group play 1E? Is there anyway to speed those timeframes up in-game? I ask because, while I agree with you about the silliness of the general logic here, I think that they phased those stringent requirement out for (most) gamers enjoyment. Also, I would love to play in a early D&D campaign, the first couple of levels would probably be brutal and I'm sure that's a large part of the fun!

JusticeZero
2014-04-19, 07:25 PM
Honestly, all the GMs I dealt with addressed the training time issue by making adventures episodic, with "After the incident with the wraiths, nothing much happens. The rest of the winter and spring pass without incident. What are you doing in the meantime?"

Rhynn
2014-04-19, 07:29 PM
Also, I would love to play in a early D&D campaign, the first couple of levels would probably be brutal and I'm sure that's a large part of the fun!

They are and it is.

I started out our ACKS campaign with B4, The Lost City, a module for levels 1-3. The party was 3 1st-level PCs, 1 1st-level henchman, and 4 0-level henchmen. 2 PCs and 2 henchmen died in the first room (despite the fact 0 hp doesn't mean death in ACKS, but a roll on the Mortal Wounds table; several of the dead were actually "put out of their misery" because there was no way to help them and they would have been too great of a burden).

It evens out fast, though; as early as 3rd level, the PCs are much tougher and able to "absorb" mistakes and bad luck both, to a degree. No one has died since the PCs all leveled up. The further you level up, the less likely you are to die (because the dangers you face don't increase in proportion to your level, like they do in 3E and 4E).

But that first dungeon crawl is always going to be brutal.

Thrudd
2014-04-19, 08:49 PM
Does your group play 1E? Is there anyway to speed those timeframes up in-game? I ask because, while I agree with you about the silliness of the general logic here, I think that they phased those stringent requirement out for (most) gamers enjoyment. Also, I would love to play in a early D&D campaign, the first couple of levels would probably be brutal and I'm sure that's a large part of the fun!

Yes, I played/ran 1e from the late 80's pretty much until 3e came out. It doesn't take all that much real-time for these requirements. You just say "Everyone spends 2 weeks training for their next level. What else do you all want to do while you are in town?" The DM keeps track of how much time passes and marks off what day it is in their notes. Would that hurt players' enjoyment? I never thought so.
Technically, by the book (DMG), the DM is supposed to rate each player's performance after each adventure. The better you perform, the less time it will take to train for level up. If you played your character perfectly according to the DM's opinion, it might only take 1 week. If you did poorly, as in purposefully played counter to what your character is supposed to be doing (a fighter who always runs away from fights, a thief who only fights and never sneaks or steals anything, ignoring your alignment, etc), it will take 4 weeks to level up. If you received an excellent rating on your playing, you could level up without a mentor in double the normal time. I always ignored the player rating system and just said it took everyone 2 weeks to level up, or 4 weeks without a mentor.

I know they phased out those rules because most people probably ignored them anyway. I think this wasn't because it hurt enjoyment, but because the game itself was changing. As the game became more about playing scripted, encounter-based adventures rather than open-ended location based, keeping strict track of in-game time was something that became unnecessary and ignored.

INDYSTAR188
2014-04-19, 09:22 PM
Yes, I played/ran 1e from the late 80's pretty much until 3e came out. It doesn't take all that much real-time for these requirements. You just say "Everyone spends 2 weeks training for their next level. What else do you all want to do while you are in town?" The DM keeps track of how much time passes and marks off what day it is in their notes. Would that hurt players' enjoyment? I never thought so.

That sounds about like how I deal with downtime in my 4E game except there might be a skill challenge. Usually just a hand wave and a skip to the next adventure hook or whatever prep we're doing.



I know they phased out those rules because most people probably ignored them anyway. I think this wasn't because it hurt enjoyment, but because the game itself was changing. As the game became more about playing scripted, encounter-based adventures rather than open-ended location based, keeping strict track of in-game time was something that became unnecessary and ignored.

Fair enough. Seems like a reasonable explaination to me.

MonkeySage
2014-04-19, 09:24 PM
So far, about a month of ingame time has passed, give or take a couple days. They've gone from first to third level, and I'm thinking of slowing the pacing a little bit(I think switching to pathfinder might also help mechanically). The idea that you learn more by doing than reading appeals to me, though; strike at a dummy that doesn't fight back, or a friend who has no intent to kill you all you want, maybe deal with the occasional orc raid... but nothing will teach you how to fight like storming a bugbear camp. Same might apply to a wizard or sorcerer- given the chance to experiment with their magic, they learn more than they would just studying in a library.

Urpriest
2014-04-19, 09:56 PM
The flipside is that you don't need to have NPC power correlate with age. It's fine to have a world where young people can be at the top of their field powerwise, and where power correlates more to the sort of straights you're in and what you've been exposed to than to how long you've been studying. The whole archetype of the rising star in a field can apply to PCs and NPCs equally.

Pex
2014-04-20, 12:23 AM
Real world situations also matter. If you are playing 8 hours a game, one game a week, PCs leveling after a comfortable X in-game months or even an in-game year every comfortable Y game sessions works fine to keep the verisimilitude. If you are playing one game a month, taking 9 game sessions to level is 9 real world months. The game could feel stagnated for some people. Leveling every month would be too fast. Some comfortable margin needs to be found within that metagame, in-game however long it takes be darned.

NichG
2014-04-20, 02:23 AM
I've had a few campaigns where over the course of the game, 3-4 years passed. Its still ridiculously fast growth, but basically I think what it comes down to is that people have a hard time wrapping their head around long periods of time, and furthermore have a hard time wrapping their head around the idea that its okay for things to take a long time. It can be like pulling teeth to convince a group of players that its okay to take 3 months to travel across an ocean or something like that - they'll refuse to actually go in those directions for fear of that wasted time, or they'll go to extreme lengths to try to make that travel instantaneous, even if those 3 months are just '3 months pass, and you arrive in a new city'. It's also hard to maintain PC-driven inertia while also having things where waiting long periods of time without having life or death adventures makes sense in character - either you're driven or you're not, and spending a few years to do day to day jobs at the local Mage Guild doesn't tend to work.

What can help extend the timescales is to make there be things which the PCs want but which just inherently take a long time to process through. Make selling loot take a week per thousand gp if they want to get better rates. Enforce crafting times and make crafting very lucrative. Encourage spell research and make it take a long time. Give explicit benefits for establishing long-term business connections and other sorts of 'day-job' things which don't have to be played out, but which PCs can 'spend' downtime on. Make it clear that the players will not get punished for spending a lot of downtime doing crafting and such - maybe even institute a meta-game rule that, say, every time levels are gained automatically advances the calendar by a year worth of mandatory downtime, and whatever adventure happens next will happen after that year (but characters can spend that year crafting, earning gold with Profession checks, making contacts, etc).

For example, you could have something like the following set of options:

Every level gain 12 months of downtime to spend. Downtime can be used:

- Crafting, as per normal rules
- Spell/martial research. 2 months per spell/maneuver level, cantrips count as level 0.5.
- Special training: gain an extra skill point per 2 months dedicated to this. Gain an extra feat per 36 months dedicated to this.
- Business: Increase your business' monthly income in gp by the result of a Profession check for every month you dedicate to this (so it builds up into regular income).
- Affiliation: Gain +1 affiliation score for every 3 months you spend making contacts within a given organization. Also gain 1 new contact in the group for every 8 months spent this way.
- Leads: Gain a +1 bonus on all d100 treasure rolls in the next adventure per month dedicated towards finding leads for treasures.
- Relaxation/Personal development: Gain an action point to be used on the next quest for every 3 months spent relaxing or in personal development
- Bolthole: For every 6 months spent on this, gain the ability to declare a safehouse or allied location at some point during your subsequent adventures - a supplier in prison, a tavern allied with your side in an enemy city, a friend's house your party can use as HQ, etc.
- Reputation: For every month spent on this, you can gain/lose a point of positive/negative reputation - lay low after a crime, etc.
- Local Development: Build up local businesses and services. For every 12 months collectively spent on this by the party, a particular local business/merchant/organization has services as if they were a level higher (so you can upgrade the clerics of your local temple, upgrade the level of the town militia, etc), to a maximum of the party's new level.


Basically, reward players for letting things stretch out over long times. Consistency is also key - if you can make it generally true that gaining levels takes time, then you won't have to distort your plot every time to conveniently make it so that things take a long time for the PCs in this particular story, but someone who just went to a dungeon and farmed rats could hit Lv20 in a month. Also, if you telegraph when things will be time sensitive very clearly, then eventually players can learn to trust that and not feel like every single thing needs to be incredibly rushed.

The Oni
2014-04-20, 02:56 AM
I respectfully disagree, and I don't think it's weird or problematic at all that the PCs are more naturally talented than other people and learn faster. The PCs are better and cooler and more heroic (or villainous) and that's why you're playing them and not other, less heroic/villainous people.

icefractal
2014-04-20, 04:59 AM
Nothing wrong with downtime (and that list of options sounds interesting), so it's definitely possible to have things go at a slower pace.

You do have to factor it into adventure/plot design though. If the PCs are trying to deal with any kind of urgent situation, like a looming war or a curse on their home, or whatever, then taking months or years off in the middle of that generally doesn't fly. And if that situation runs long enough that several levels are delayed, you get bad real-time pacing even if your in-game pace is correct.

To expand on that, you want each level to occupy about an equivalent period of real-world time (maybe a bit faster on the first few). If the players spend 4 RL months dealing with a particularly troublesome ruin, with no leveling (because it was all only a week or two in-game), and then level three times in the next couple sessions (several years in-game), that's not ideal.

Rhynn
2014-04-20, 05:13 AM
To expand on that, you want each level to occupy about an equivalent period of real-world time

Why? It seems to me like going from "Awesome" to "The Best" (whether the system is level-based or skill-based) should take longer than going from "Decent" to "Fair." Most RPGs have this sort of approach (but not D&D 3E and 4E, where all the numbers just keep increasing on both sides of most equations; attacks & ACs, hit points & damage, XP gained & XP needed, save bonuses & DCs).

NichG
2014-04-20, 08:48 AM
A simple way to do it is to say 'the party levels once after every distinct scenario' and use several of the alternative systems to XP to handle crafting/material component corner cases. That way, you don't get a sudden 'okay, you have to take 3 years off now' sort of situation. Then its basically the same matter of pacing that the DM needs to handle anyhow without the in-game downtime as far as XP gain rates and things like that. Alternately, you shrug and say 'okay, so you jump three levels over the next three years until the cult of the Boar raises its head again' or whatever - its not really that big of a deal if you're already playing a game where you could gain three levels in a single scenario. Whether XP gain/advancement should take place during an adventure or at the end is a matter of taste, so you can figure out the particular pattern that works for you and your group.

jedipotter
2014-04-20, 10:06 AM
From a gameplay standpoint it makes sense, but how does one rationalize it from in game perspective? :)

This only comes up in fast games. Fast gamers want to go form 1st to 20th level fast. They expect to level up every single game night, maybe more then once. Maybe after every fight. They want each levle to be little more then a blurr.

Slower paced games can have the characters at the same level for months of once a week games. Maybe even something like one level every six months.

So in a year the slow paced game the characters go up maybe two levels. In the fast paced game they go up 25 levels.

And D&D mostly only gives XP for combat. The non-combat XP is vague and is only a couple lines, but combat XP has a whole system.

So take two wizards, both 1st level and 18 years old. Adam goes of to adventure, Zeno get a tower and studies magic. Zeno spends most of his time in research, spell creation, expermination, reading and so on. He learns tons about magic.....but gets no XP. Adam runs around and kills monsters. Every time he kills or helps kill a monster he gets XP. So a year later Adam is at least 6th level or more, while Adam will still be 1st. There is nothing in the game where Adam can ''solve or help slove a magic math problem'' in a classroom and get XP.

Rhynn
2014-04-20, 10:28 AM
This only comes up in fast games. Fast gamers want to go form 1st to 20th level fast. They expect to level up every single game night, maybe more then once. Maybe after every fight. They want each levle to be little more then a blurr.

It doesn't need to be leveling every session. A single session may easily be only one day of in-game time, especially in 3E (where few things take a lot of time, unless you make magic items). Even if you take 3 sessions to level up, and each session is 1 week, a party would go from 1st to 20th level in a year of game-time. (At 57 sessions, that wouldn't have even been more than 3-6 months of real time for my group when we were in junior high and high school.)

I think 20th level in a year of adventuring still meets the OP's idea of super fast advancement...

Telok
2014-04-20, 05:48 PM
So take two wizards, both 1st level and 18 years old. Adam goes of to adventure, Zeno get a tower and studies magic. Zeno spends most of his time in research, spell creation, expermination, reading and so on. He learns tons about magic.....but gets no XP. Adam runs around and kills monsters. Every time he kills or helps kill a monster he gets XP. So a year later Adam is at least 6th level or more, while Adam will still be 1st. There is nothing in the game where Adam can ''solve or help slove a magic math problem'' in a classroom and get XP.

The rate of advancement and what tasks you do to advance vary between game systems and even the editions of the game.

In AD&D a mage doing research or making magic items did get xp, perhaps not as much as a fighting mage but also without the daily risk of death. Also interesting was that something like a basic orc was only worth 15 xp in comparison to the 1500 to 2500 xp needed for the character to advance from first to second level, meaning that it could easily take 15+ encounters (with a real risk of death each time) to advance through the fastest level in the game. Between healing time, training time, and travel time gaining levels was slower in terms of game time.

In D&D 3.~ experience was restructured to be about 13 encounters per level. But those encounters were supposed to be dangerous with only a low risk of death for each encounter. Reliably threatening the party now required 'over leveled' encounters and reduced the number of encounters and the downtime between them. Combined with the expectation of easy magical healing, easy magical travel, and no training needed led to much faster in game level gains. In addition the non-combat things like magic item creation or a thief's heist no longer gave xp, indeed some of them started consuming xp. This deemphasized the traditional time and money sinks and made the game more focused on the D&D = combat paradigm.

In D&D 4e things got even faster. The target number was 10 encounters per level with no real risk of death unless you healing surges, which was scheduled to occur at the fourth encounter. Unfortunately the math was off and parties normally fought the over leveled encounters because the normal encounters were too easy. In addition no form of injury or crafting took more than eight hours and rapid travel became even more prevalent (although there were fewer long distance flying and teleportation spells than in 3.5 it was replaced with portals or buying flying mounts and flying ships). Additionally the only methods of gaining xp, money, or magic became combat and 'quest rewards', relegating everything else to unproductive time wasting.

What we're really seeing an a cultural shift in the game design towards a more combat oriented system with immediate mechanical gratification. D&D has become a system less capable of supporting political, intrigue, exploration, or mystery style campaigns and with no support for long term character goals or development beyond 'moar fighty powah'.

PersonMan
2014-04-21, 03:17 AM
maybe even institute a meta-game rule that, say, every time levels are gained automatically advances the calendar by a year worth of mandatory downtime, and whatever adventure happens next will happen after that year (but characters can spend that year crafting, earning gold with Profession checks, making contacts, etc).

I'd personally be against this, just because I feel like, in a roleplaying-heavy game, you'd either have to put all character development on pause for an entire year so you can continue to play it all out, or deal with these massive jumps in your character's personality whenever they level.

For example, I played a character a while ago who was essentially a sociopath who cared only for two people, viewing everyone else as potential threats to their safety and killing without remorse. One potential plotline for her development was that the party cleric worked with one of the two people she cared about to try to get her to be less uncaring about others. If there was a year of downtime at every level up, then such a slow development plotline would be impossible unless it was decided that it took over a year for each small change to be made.

In a more combat/plot focused game, where intraparty interactions take a back seat, it can work fine, but I wouldn't recommend it in a game where the PC-to-PC interactions played a large role. Too much happens in a year, people can change too much, to make skipping them with "and you do X for a year" a viable option, in my opinion.

NichG
2014-04-21, 03:37 AM
I'd personally be against this, just because I feel like, in a roleplaying-heavy game, you'd either have to put all character development on pause for an entire year so you can continue to play it all out, or deal with these massive jumps in your character's personality whenever they level.

For example, I played a character a while ago who was essentially a sociopath who cared only for two people, viewing everyone else as potential threats to their safety and killing without remorse. One potential plotline for her development was that the party cleric worked with one of the two people she cared about to try to get her to be less uncaring about others. If there was a year of downtime at every level up, then such a slow development plotline would be impossible unless it was decided that it took over a year for each small change to be made.

In a more combat/plot focused game, where intraparty interactions take a back seat, it can work fine, but I wouldn't recommend it in a game where the PC-to-PC interactions played a large role. Too much happens in a year, people can change too much, to make skipping them with "and you do X for a year" a viable option, in my opinion.

I'd actually say its completely the opposite. The point of doing something like this is to allow growth and change to happen over slower, more natural timescales. This means that a given character can undergo a wider array of life experiences than a 3 month adventure to the Dungeons of Desolation would provide. In something with a year gap between 'life threatening adventures' characters can very naturally settle down, make long term relationships, build a family, create a business from the ground up and have it become successful and then established, grow older, etc.

Taking a year to have significant changes to one's personality is actually fairly realistic pacing, compared to having, say, twenty significant changes in the course of a month (thats almost one significant character realization or profound moment per day, after all).

Also, just because its downtime doesn't mean that it isn't something to be played out. Character-defining events don't all have to occur during 18 second battles to the death.

In a combat-focused campaign on the other hand, the actual timeline is totally irrelevant so there's no point in doing something like this. If you want to explore character development as a consequence of a rich and full life, setting development in the form of what happens to a world over the course of a century, etc, that's why you bring in something like this.

Tyrrell
2014-04-21, 10:48 AM
Ars Magica ties advancement to study, practice, and so on. In the game characters choose one source of xp for every season (i.e. four times per year). Adventure experience is typically not always great (equal to practice on your own for a small adventure , perhaps equal to being trained by a good teacher for the grandest and most trying adventures).

This means that PC's are not special snowflakes at least in regards to their acquisition of new skills and powers. It also tends to influence the flow of the stories. Games unfold over the course of decades not weeks. Being realistic in this way does have huge rewards but it also influences the feelings of the stores told.

You're not coming back in two months with a party that's four levels higher and ready kick but. You might come back three months later with a new spell or enchanted device specifically designed to deal with an issue, but you can only do this if you've spent the intervening time developing said spell/ device (meaning your experience gain was paltry-exposure experience rather than the richer rewards of studying a book, or really anything else). You could come back in fifteen years with a party that's much tougher but by then your villain has retired and the original princess that you hoped to save had instead escaped, started a profitable shipping business with the villains nephew, and breeds championship bloodhounds in her spare time.

LibraryOgre
2014-04-21, 12:05 PM
Have you guys ever thought about this sort of thing? PCs learn more in a short period of time than an NPC could learn in a lifetime. They grow stronger at a rate far exceeding what most npcs could accomplish, you can even have a 17 year old sorcerer flinging around 9th level spells. I'm referencing d&d specifically but I think it applies to all rpgs. From a gameplay standpoint it makes sense, but how does one rationalize it from in game perspective? :)

Do you guys waive this off by saying that even PCs have to study for years? Or do your PCs actually gain mastery over their chosen fields within months of their first adventure?

Perhaps the simple fact that they're learning/growing in action, rather than from an arena/library?

It's partially the nature of some of the new systems. Since recovery time from adventure is insignificant (healing spells and easy memorization), and there is no built-in training time to level, you wind up with big disconnects between the world-as-written and the world-as-experienced. You can go from 1st to 40th in a few months, while others plod along for decades and get only a handful of levels.


Because contrary to some DMs' beliefs, PCs are special snowflakes. The multiverse actually does revolve around them. They insanely go into the Dungeon of Doom to save the world. It's why they're not the tavern owner, the Duke, the Wizards' Guild Headmaster, the Infamous Assassin, or the feared Dragon of the Mountain.

In some systems, yes.

In AD&D, the PCs were special snowflakes because they were not NPCs, but they weren't terribly special otherwise... they still had to work and train, and the world only revolved around them if the DM made it that way. Chances are, the world revolved around other people for a good long while, unless the players stopped the world and made it fall into their orbit.

NichG
2014-04-21, 02:00 PM
You bring up healing rate, which is a good point. In 1ed D&D, it might take a month to regain your hitpoints non-magically.

so if you want to pace things out, it might make sense to use an 'Adventure Fatigue' system. For example, lets say that each character has a fatigue tracker that goes up to 100, and every encounter increases the fatigue tracker by some amount, lets say 10; furthermore, things like being KO'd, killed, energy drained, or diseased will also add a lot of fatigue. No ill effects are suffered until, say, 50 points of fatigue, at which point rolls begin to see minor penalties and slightly reduced XP gain (-10-20%). At 75 fatigue, it starts to become stat penalties and only 50% XP gain. At 98 fatigue, the character is adventuring on fumes and desperation alone - they can continue indefinitely (they're heroes after all) but they stop gaining XP entirely and begin to take major penalties (-4 to everything, spell slots don't come back, the works).

The trick is, the only way to reduce fatigue is to do non-adventurey things. Every day spent doing non-adventure stuff returns a single point of Fatigue. Very relaxing places might restore two points a day. Fatigue doesn't accumulate above 100, so desperate adventurers could sit at the red line basically and remain just barely functional, just taking an extra day off after every encounter to get back spell slot regen and things like that, but it'd be harsh on XP gain. So the party can push on, but much like the adventuring day I think player psychology will make people say 'hey, lets take 3 months of downtime so I can get my XP gain rate back up and be in full fighting trim' whenever they begin to get near the penalty thresholds.

Jay R
2014-04-21, 03:17 PM
Why is this different from ...
... the young D'Artagnan arriving in Paris able to defeat two of the Cardinal greatest swordsmen (Jussac and Bernajoux) in his first week?
... Einstein overturning Newtonian physics with special relativity, and publishing three other groundbreaking papers, at age 26?
... Picasso starting his Modernist period at age 18?
... Bobby Fisher becoming a chess grandmaster at age 15?
... Von Neumann learning differential and integral calculus at age 8?
... Mozart composing at age 5?
... my sister reading at age 2 1/2?

veti
2014-04-21, 04:05 PM
I know they phased out those rules because most people probably ignored them anyway. I think this wasn't because it hurt enjoyment, but because the game itself was changing. As the game became more about playing scripted, encounter-based adventures rather than open-ended location based, keeping strict track of in-game time was something that became unnecessary and ignored.

I'm sure the way you handled it was correct, i.e. the way it was designed to be played, but even that was way too much of an imposition for us. We just plain ignored the whole thing.

The thing about 'easy levelling' is, it allows you to embark on ridiculously long-winded expeditions, quests, adventures etc. in the knowledge that you don't have to complete the whole thing at your current level - you'll likely level up several times during the adventure itself. That's a get-out-of-jail card for when you're ridiculously deep in the poo-poo and your 3rd level party would have no chance of getting out, so it's a good job you're now 6th level. That wouldn't be possible if you couldn't level without a stable, friendly base to return to.

Look at it this way: the biggest inspiration for most of our players was LotR. Can you imagine adventuring from being a gardener in the Shire to hiking up the slopes of Mt Doom, without going up a few levels on the way? Yet with the "training" rule in place, there would be no chance to gain those levels.

Jay R
2014-04-21, 04:24 PM
Look at it this way: the biggest inspiration for most of our players was LotR. Can you imagine adventuring from being a gardener in the Shire to hiking up the slopes of Mt Doom, without going up a few levels on the way? Yet with the "training" rule in place, there would be no chance to gain those levels.

They spent two months at Rivendell, and another month at Lorien. By the old rules, they would certainly level up.

Thrudd
2014-04-21, 05:43 PM
Look at it this way: the biggest inspiration for most of our players was LotR. Can you imagine adventuring from being a gardener in the Shire to hiking up the slopes of Mt Doom, without going up a few levels on the way? Yet with the "training" rule in place, there would be no chance to gain those levels.

If LOTR were AD&D, they could have leveled up a few times. Once at Rivendell, once at Lorien, and for some folks possibly at Minas Tirith before Pelennor. Everyone probably leveled up one or two more times again after Morannon and the coronation, where they spent weeks or months maybe before they decided to head back to the Shire along their leisurely route.
The characters in that story do not become invulnerable god-like heroes, or even appreciably more powerful than when they started, however (besides those that were already nigh-invulnerable heroes). They get hungry and fatigued, hide and run away from monsters, suffer from the effects of poison and energy drain for the entire adventure (and his entire life!), get wounded in battle and have to spend weeks healing, get captured by gangs of supposed low level enemies, just for a start. Frodo and Sam are worse off by the time they reach Mordor than when they started, not suddenly stronger and more capable as you would expect a couple characters who have just leveled up from defeating a big monster like Shelob and escaping from Cirith Ungol.
Wanting to replicate a LOTR-like adventure in D&D is something almost everyone has aspired to at one point or another, and that's great. But the folks in LOTR, and literature in general, usually do not advance appreciably in power and ability over the course of a single adventure without an in-world explanation (like down-time where they learn new skills from somewhere, or getting magic equipment or divine favors). The game as it has come to be played is really not reflective of this type of literature.

russdm
2014-04-21, 06:20 PM
I think of it as the Morrowind VS D&D issue. In the Morrowind game, you level up by improving your skills and you improve your skills by using them. In D&D, you usually level by killing things since that has become the standard, even though in most games based on D&D you get xp for doing things.

D&D 3.5 has turned into more of a combat simulator and rarely includes things beyond that. Also, the xp system is clearly designed for combat with only vague generalities regarding awarding xp in an ad hoc style which includes everything not combat related.

Frankly, I like the way Morrowind/Oblivion does leveling much better than how 3.5 does it.

As for the speed of level ups, that is mainly a DM issue. It should take 13 encounters to level on average and those encounters ought to be a couple of days at the very least. For adventures like Red Hand Of Doom, I could see the party leveling so fast, but then they are engaging in serious encounters there.

If D&D 3.5 reflected reality, then the wizard who remained in his tower researching would increase in power, but it would be slower than a wizard who went exploring ruins and having to employ spells to stay alive. But with 3.5, a human wizard starting out at level 1 at age 15 will have barely reached 3rd level when reaching the age of 80 if he stays in a tower all the time. The game chooses to deliberately punish characters who aren't out getting involved in combat by giving them no or little xp.


Wanting to replicate a LOTR-like adventure in D&D is something almost everyone has aspired to at one point or another, and that's great. But the folks in LOTR, and literature in general, usually do not advance appreciably in power and ability over the course of a single adventure without an in-world explanation (like down-time where they learn new skills from somewhere, or getting magic equipment or divine favors). The game as it has come to be played is really not reflective of this type of literature.

This is all true, but yet the game still tries to sell itself as "Heroic" Fantasy and claim that it is like the way the literature is when it happens to be not.

Knaight
2014-04-21, 07:04 PM
Why is this different from ...
... the young D'Artagnan arriving in Paris able to defeat two of the Cardinal greatest swordsmen (Jussac and Bernajoux) in his first week?
... Einstein overturning Newtonian physics with special relativity, and publishing three other groundbreaking papers, at age 26?
... Picasso starting his Modernist period at age 18?
... Bobby Fisher becoming a chess grandmaster at age 15?
... Von Neumann learning differential and integral calculus at age 8?
... Mozart composing at age 5?
It's not, particularly. That said, unless a system is specifically built to handle prodigies, this being the standard for PCs does seem somewhat off.

Why is this different from ...
... my sister reading at age 2 1/2?
As for this, I'm not sure it's even that odd. It's relatively early, but as far as I know 2-3 is well within the normal range. Heck, I was reading by age 2, and I'm hardly some sort of genius.

NichG
2014-04-21, 07:45 PM
If D&D 3.5 reflected reality, then the wizard who remained in his tower researching would increase in power, but it would be slower than a wizard who went exploring ruins and having to employ spells to stay alive. But with 3.5, a human wizard starting out at level 1 at age 15 will have barely reached 3rd level when reaching the age of 80 if he stays in a tower all the time. The game chooses to deliberately punish characters who aren't out getting involved in combat by giving them no or little xp.


I think discussing the 'realism' of character advancement like this is very difficult. Who is to say that casting spells in dangerous situations should be better training at magic than casting spells in controlled/experimental situations, or even spending years poring over the writings of long-dead archmagi? There's no real-world equivalent in the form of, say, combat-academics to compare with what wizardry is thematically presented as (power via study/knowledge/intellect).

I could see the argument being more solid for martial characters. But even in that case, martial study in controlled circumstances might well allow a larger range of safe experimentation with maneuvers and techniques that someone hasn't yet perfected, whereas a pitched battle wouldn't generally be the place to try some new experimental moves.

If I were going to try to aim for a 'realistic' advancement system, I'd set it up so that magical lore/higher level spells/etc accumulates only from periods of extended study and research, and that magical 'capacity' and 'casting speed' accumulate from using magic in strenuous situations, with 'control' and 'complexity' being things that accumulate from any use of the practitioner's upper limit of spells. Which of course means we're no longer talking about a 'level-based' system, but it would mean that you could have academic mages who have never been in battle and know 9th level spells but take three weeks to cast them safely, and hot-shot wandslingers who never get beyond the 2nd level stuff they picked up from their mentor but can quicken three spells a round and cast all day without running out of slots.

TuggyNE
2014-04-21, 09:07 PM
If LOTR were AD&D, they could have leveled up a few times. Once at Rivendell, once at Lorien, and for some folks possibly at Minas Tirith before Pelennor. Everyone probably leveled up one or two more times again after Morannon and the coronation, where they spent weeks or months maybe before they decided to head back to the Shire along their leisurely route.
The characters in that story do not become invulnerable god-like heroes, or even appreciably more powerful than when they started, however (besides those that were already nigh-invulnerable heroes). They get hungry and fatigued, hide and run away from monsters, suffer from the effects of poison and energy drain for the entire adventure (and his entire life!), get wounded in battle and have to spend weeks healing, get captured by gangs of supposed low level enemies, just for a start. Frodo and Sam are worse off by the time they reach Mordor than when they started, not suddenly stronger and more capable as you would expect a couple characters who have just leveled up from defeating a big monster like Shelob and escaping from Cirith Ungol.

In counter I present the dramatic reactions of all the Shire inhabitants upon the return of the four hobbits. Everyone they met was astonished by their commanding demeanor, fearlessness in battle, skill in combat and leadership, and so forth*; they jumped from being random ordinary hobbits to being legendary heroes on par with Brandobas "Bull-roarer", capable of mustering and leading an effective rebellion against significant forces from downtrodden and nigh-untrained peasantry in a matter of days. Even in a rather E6-ish world like LotR, that's at least three-four levels of advancement.

*Well, they weren't so much impressed by Frodo, but that's mostly because he'd taken some serious penalties from the ring, Shelob, etc, so in comparison to the others he was pretty minor.

Thrudd
2014-04-22, 12:47 AM
In counter I present the dramatic reactions of all the Shire inhabitants upon the return of the four hobbits. Everyone they met was astonished by their commanding demeanor, fearlessness in battle, skill in combat and leadership, and so forth*; they jumped from being random ordinary hobbits to being legendary heroes on par with Brandobas "Bull-roarer", capable of mustering and leading an effective rebellion against significant forces from downtrodden and nigh-untrained peasantry in a matter of days. Even in a rather E6-ish world like LotR, that's at least three-four levels of advancement.

*Well, they weren't so much impressed by Frodo, but that's mostly because he'd taken some serious penalties from the ring, Shelob, etc, so in comparison to the others he was pretty minor.

"Legendary Heroes" for the Shire means someone who knows how to use a sword and isn't afraid of a couple half-orcs. So like, level 3-ish, maybe. lol

True, as was mentioned, even by AD&D rules the characters had enough down time over the course of their travels to level up a couple times (although by D&D or AD&D rules the Hobbits wouldn't have gained much XP for this adventure, I can't imagine there being enough to level up more than once through the whole story.) After Sauron was defeated, they all spent a good deal of time in Minas Tirith relaxing and learning. That's when they would have gained their levels from the adventure, by AD&D rules.

When they get home, the Hobbits are now level 2 or 3 at the most, and not afraid of Bill Ferny. The rest of the fellowship were obviously significantly higher level to start with, what with killing dozens of orcs each in multiple battles and taking nary a scratch through most of it. Are they more powerful at the end than when they started? It's hard to tell, they were pretty badass already. Maybe Aragorn got a big XP boost when he got the palantir and leveled once.

Krazzman
2014-04-22, 03:02 AM
The way I always tried to explain it is:

The gods favor this group for Reason X. Hence they een send chests with magic items if they survive encounter against [Z].
One of those boons is fast XP akkumulation. Hence they level up faster.

Works for our games. In my campaign they have an episodic feel and due to enhancing stuff/buying stuff taking time (as most of the stuff they buy has to be built first...). In other campaigns... not so much. We are under stress to resolve certain things in the least amount of time. (Kingdoms of Kalamar) we might have boat rides that take weeks/months and then track through an area for a certain time but still we should finish asap.

Raimun
2014-04-22, 04:33 AM
The basic assumption for modern D&D is that the player characters are becoming legendary heroes during their adventures.

"Prepare to venture forth with your bold companions into a world of heroic fantasy. Withing these pages, you'll discover all the tools and options you need to create characters worthy of song and legend for the Dungeons and Dragons roleplaying game." - Back cover of 3.5 D&D PHB-

Real world songs and legends tell of heroes like Beowulf, Sigurd, Heracles, Achilles and Odysseus. The challenges they face and the feats they can accomplish fall at the most to a mid-level range, most often below 10th level. Yet, in D&D you can advance way beyond 10th level.

If you are playing modern D&D and at the very least, not up to Beowulf and co., you are doing something wrong. :smalltongue:

TuggyNE
2014-04-22, 06:09 AM
"Legendary Heroes" for the Shire means someone who knows how to use a sword and isn't afraid of a couple half-orcs. So like, level 3-ish, maybe. lol

Ehhh. Given their other accomplishments (there were, after all, over a hundred total enemies in the parts they cleared out), I think it's reasonable to peg them at at least level 4 or 5.

NichG
2014-04-22, 07:57 AM
Ehhh. Given their other accomplishments (there were, after all, over a hundred total enemies in the parts they cleared out), I think it's reasonable to peg them at at least level 4 or 5.

Given 'Gandalf was a Lv6 wizard', I'd put the big combat heroes as starting and ending the campaign at Lv6, with the Hobbits starting at Lv1 and ending at Lv3, and the average soldier in that world being a Lv1-Lv2 character depending on what military they belong to (guardsman of Bree is probably Lv1 with an NPC class and a couple wasted feats, Rohirrim might be Lv1 with a PC class and customized feats or Lv2 with a PC class). This is why Orcs remain scary just by virtue of being Orcs - its only at very low levels that the +4 Str from their race makes that big of a difference.

I would consider the Ringwraith encounter where Frodo gets stabbed as situation where Frodo had the XP to level from 1 to 2 but hadn't yet leveled up, got hit with one level of permanent level drain just before he had a chance to spend downtime leveling, and the DM decided to be nice and let him 'be saved by elves' for long enough that he could level and work off enough drain to be non-dead.

Three levels of PC classes and a reasonable amount of optimization is enough for the hobbits to deal with hundreds of CR 1/2 creatures in separate skirmishes.

Jay R
2014-04-22, 09:15 AM
Given 'Gandalf was a Lv6 wizard',...

Which is not true. You are acting on the assumptions of the rules for D&D, as if they applied to Middle Earth. They don't.

The rules for D&D are a (poor) attempt to model how people grow and learn more skills and become more competent throughout life, as shown in fantasy fiction. But they are the model. The literature is the "reality" being modeled. Any discrepancy between the two is the fault of the model, not of the thing modeled. If you build a computer simulation of a fish, and it won't swim, you don't blame the real fish for mot doing what the model says.

You are assuming that Gandalf became a wizard, and learned specific spells, by being a human who learned wizardry as a class, and then gained enough experience to cast them. But that is not what wizards are in Tolkien's world. They are angels who have left much of their powers behind by taking on human form. There is no intersection between Gandalf and a wizard in the game D&D other than the word "wizard", being used to mean two very different things.

You might as well expect Theoden to capture orcs by leaping over them, because that is how kings capture opponents in Checkers.

NichG
2014-04-22, 09:34 AM
Which is not true. You are acting on the assumptions of the rules for D&D, as if they applied to Middle Earth. They don't.

The rules for D&D are a (poor) attempt to model how people grow and learn more skills and become more competent throughout life, as shown in fantasy fiction. But they are the model. The literature is the "reality" being modeled. Any discrepancy between the two is the fault of the model, not of the thing modeled. If you build a computer simulation of a fish, and it won't swim, you don't blame the real fish for mot doing what the model says.

You are assuming that Gandalf became a wizard, and learned specific spells, by being a human who learned wizardry as a class, and then gained enough experience to cast them. But that is not what wizards are in Tolkien's world. They are angels who have left much of their powers behind by taking on human form. There is no intersection between Gandalf and a wizard in the game D&D other than the word "wizard", being used to mean two very different things.

You might as well expect Theoden to capture orcs by leaping over them, because that is how kings capture opponents in Checkers.

Doesn't this critique basically apply to, well, any attempt at all to make parallels between D&D and fiction? Since the LotR debate here is about the details of precisely that, it makes it fair game even if in the broader scope the entire debate may be irrelevant. In other words, if 'given the events of the story, the hobbits must have gained at least 4 levels' is a statement admissible to debate, so must be statements like 'Gandalf doesn't do anything more powerful than what a Lv6 character can accomplish'.

Now, if you want to argue that this whole LotR comparison is silly, go right ahead. But fair is fair - that should apply equally to all sides of the debate. Given, however, that many people's D&D campaigns are in fact trying to model specific literary themes and tropes, I wouldn't be so hasty to completely throw out the comparison.

Jay R
2014-04-22, 10:23 AM
Doesn't this critique basically apply to, well, any attempt at all to make parallels between D&D and fiction?

No, it only applies when those parallels are clearly false. Gandalf is not from a race of humans, elves, dwarves, or hobbits, and didn't gain his powers through experience, as Aragorn, Bormoir, Gimli, Legolas, and the hobbits do. He is an angel, and his powers are greatly reduced because he took on human form.


Since the LotR debate here is about the details of precisely that, it makes it fair game even if in the broader scope the entire debate may be irrelevant. In other words, if 'given the events of the story, the hobbits must have gained at least 4 levels' is a statement admissible to debate, so must be statements like 'Gandalf doesn't do anything more powerful than what a Lv6 character can accomplish'.

He does do things a 6th level wizard cannot do.
A. He uses a sword.
B. He lived for thousands of years.
C. He defeated a major demon - alone.
D. He came back from the dead.

The story of the hobbits is defined in the narrative as a story of people growing and becoming great. Gandalf himself said, "I am with you at present, but soon I shall not be. I am not coming to the Shire. You must settle its affairs yourselves; that is what you have been trained for. Do you not yet understand? My time is over: it is no longer my task to set things to rights, nor to help folk to do so. And as for you, my dear friends, you will need no help. You are grown up now. Grown indeed very high; among the great you are, and I have no longer any fear at all for any of you."

Discussing experience points and levels in that context makes sense, even if the model is a poor one. Treating Gandalf as a human wizard is not at all the same thing.


Now, if you want to argue that this whole LotR comparison is silly, go right ahead. But fair is fair - that should apply equally to all sides of the debate. Given, however, that many people's D&D campaigns are in fact trying to model specific literary themes and tropes, I wouldn't be so hasty to completely throw out the comparison.

Don't worry - I didn't. Just remember that when the model fails to model the story, it's the model's fault, not the story's.

NichG
2014-04-22, 10:52 AM
No, it only applies when those parallels are clearly false. Gandalf is not from a race of humans, elves, dwarves, or hobbits, and didn't gain his powers through experience, as Aragorn, Bormoir, Gimli, Legolas, and the hobbits do. He is an angel, and his powers are greatly reduced because he took on human form.

He does do things a 6th level wizard cannot do.
A. He uses a sword.
B. He lived for thousands of years.
C. He defeated a major demon - alone.
D. He came back from the dead.


If anything, this makes my point for me. Here we have a character who is clearly supposed to convey the uppermost level of ability within the setting short of full fledged deities, and yet most of the things he does while adventuring with the other PCs are things consistent with the acts of a Lv6 Wizard. If anything, this would suggest that Aragorn, Boromir, etc are Lv4 or something.

However, given the whole 'greatly reduced human-form powers' thing, I'd say it makes more sense to model Gandalf as a more powerful entity who is basically pretending - consistently - to be a character at around the same power level of the other PCs. He could shed that form and go take on demons one-on-one, but was unwilling to do so until the balrog showed up, at which point he started to do things inconsistent with that power level.

Anyhow, points A and B are easily done with a 6th level D&D Wizard. Living thousands of years can be achieved by being 'an elf', for example. That would also provide a racial weapon proficiency in longsword. Getting the BAB up to be good at it would be trickier, but simply having a magic weapon while everyone else has non-magical stuff could make up much of the difference.



The story of the hobbits is defined in the narrative as a story of people growing and becoming great. Gandalf himself said, "I am with you at present, but soon I shall not be. I am not coming to the Shire. You must settle its affairs yourselves; that is what you have been trained for. Do you not yet understand? My time is over: it is no longer my task to set things to rights, nor to help folk to do so. And as for you, my dear friends, you will need no help. You are grown up now. Grown indeed very high; among the great you are, and I have no longer any fear at all for any of you."

Discussing experience points and levels in that context makes sense, even if the model is a poor one. Treating Gandalf as a human wizard is not at all the same thing.

Don't worry - I didn't. Just remember that when the model fails to model the story, it's the model's fault, not the story's.

The point is, tripling one's level is quite significant 'growth'. And it didn't take place in a week of in-story time, it took place with multiple downtimes, training experiences, etc. The argument here is a matter of degree, with some people arguing 'they rested three times, but gained five levels!' and things like that. But there's no reason to assume that they gained five levels, or even more than a single level - if you're going from 1st level NPC classes to not-1st-level PC classes, you're doubling your ability over the course of the adventure.

Your point in the previous post stands - any specific story won't line up quantitatively with the system, because the system isn't the story. I don't know why in particular you're focusing on the specific Gandalf quote here, because its completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand except as far as an example that interpretation of story in terms of specific levels of D&D characters is a very fluid thing, and 'powerful character' doesn't automatically mean 'Lv20'.

ElenionAncalima
2014-04-22, 12:44 PM
He does do things a 6th level wizard cannot do.
A. He uses a sword.
B. He lived for thousands of years.
C. He defeated a major demon - alone.
D. He came back from the dead.


Maybe he multiclassed :smallwink:

Sartharina
2014-04-22, 12:51 PM
LotR works better with OD&D rules than modern ones.

Gandalf is a level 6... whatever that angel race/class thing is called. I guess it's somewhat like an Elf, in that it casts like a Wizard (And is the ONLY spellcasting class in-game) and fights like a Fighter. Actually, in 3e D&D he might be a Wizard 5/Fighter 5, putting him at 10th level, but not having any demonstrated abilities greater than level 5 aside from his resilience and a bit of combat ability. It also puts him as the same power level as a standard 6th-level party, explaining why he can single-handedly face challenges the rest of the party needs to work together to overcome.

Aragorn, Boromir, Legolas, and Gimli are in the level 4-6 range.
Frodo's a level 2 Hobbit (Level drain and experience penalties from carrying the ring are a PitA), Sam's either level 2 or 3, and Merry and Pippin are either 3 or 4.

Thrudd
2014-04-22, 03:42 PM
I'd say Gandalf was an NPC with undefined powers in game terms. The DM keeps his information behind the screen. Once in a while he busts out a spell-like effect, and by reputation he is called a "wizard". No one really know who or what he is (besides the oldest of NPC elves). He doesn't need to have levels or even a specific abilities or HP, because he is a semi-divine plot device intended to move the story forward at certain points.

In general, I think it doesn't really work to try to equate LoTR to a D&D game. Yes, Tolkien's work was a big inspiration for D&D, but I think it was more in the world-building sense than in the story-telling sense. The default D&D world became one where there are men, elves, dwarves, hobbits, fighting evil races of orcs and goblins, trolls, dragons, balrogs, and wraiths. A narrative/story game style RPG would work better to play out LoTR, rather than any version of D&D. Mainly because the game part of D&D, which is gaining XP and levels by finding treasure and defeating monsters, does not mesh with storytelling like this.

Raimun
2014-04-22, 05:19 PM
It's pointless to compare LotR to D&D. Tolkien wrote his stories before there were any roleplaying games (as we understand them: dice, character sheet, metric ton of rulebooks). Unlike the fantasy authors today, Tolkien couldn't have known about stuff like levels and hit points because they didn't exist yet. Ergo, knowledge of such things couldn't have been reflected in his works.

Sure, it is possible to compare D&D to LotR but there isn't that much common ground, I'm afraid. At the most, some things might have similiar names and look a bit like each other but that's where the similarities end. Orcs are differents, Wizards are different, magic (or "magic") is different, magic items are different, elves are different... heck, even humans are different. This is actually a good thing as far as I know, because D&D would be a very different game if it was completely Tolkien-esque.

If I were to DM a LotR-game, I would not pick D&D as the game system.

If you like to know what would happen, if D&D and LotR collided, I suggest reading DM of the Rings (http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=612). :smalltongue:

Knaight
2014-04-22, 08:08 PM
It's pointless to compare LotR to D&D. Tolkien wrote his stories before there were any roleplaying games (as we understand them: dice, character sheet, metric ton of rulebooks). Unlike the fantasy authors today, Tolkien couldn't have known about stuff like levels and hit points because they didn't exist yet. Ergo, knowledge of such things couldn't have been reflected in his works.

They still don't exist outside of game abstractions that are almost certainly largely irrelevant to basically any author not working on actual D&D fiction. When something was published is irrelevant. I'd also note that trying to codify LotR with D&D makes a lot of sense, given that early D&D borrowed enough from LotR to run into intellectual property conflicts. It would also make plenty of sense in a number of generic systems, as LotR does have many of the concepts of character capability (e.g. Aragorn is specifically a capable healer, very skilled combatant, etc.) that these model.

Urpriest
2014-04-23, 11:00 AM
They still don't exist outside of game abstractions that are almost certainly largely irrelevant to basically any author not working on actual D&D fiction. When something was published is irrelevant. I'd also note that trying to codify LotR with D&D makes a lot of sense, given that early D&D borrowed enough from LotR to run into intellectual property conflicts. It would also make plenty of sense in a number of generic systems, as LotR does have many of the concepts of character capability (e.g. Aragorn is specifically a capable healer, very skilled combatant, etc.) that these model.

Remember though, D&D these days isn't about modeling generic fantasy, it's about modeling a genre that really developed out of D&D. That may or may not mean classes and levels, but it definitely doesn't include the kinds of narratives present in LotR, with their wide-ranging, often-separated casts with wildly different levels of competency.

Modern D&D is dungeonpunk. It's the sort of genre that's imitated by the Warcraft franchise, and it borrows from Lovecraft and Vance and Eddings and Gaiman and Martin just as much as from Tolkien.

The proper question to ask is not "how fast do LotR characters level?" but "how fast does Thrall level?" or "how fast did the Lord of Blades level?" or "how fast does Arya level?" The genre has evolved, the game needs to evolve with it.

Pex
2014-04-23, 12:37 PM
I'm curious how many young players today even read the Lord of the Rings trilogy and not just know of it from the movies.

Heck, I haven't even read it. :smallamused:

Thrudd
2014-04-23, 02:50 PM
I'm curious how many young players today even read the Lord of the Rings trilogy and not just know of it from the movies.

Heck, I haven't even read it. :smallamused:

Now you're just trolling. :smallsmile: Haven't read Lord of the Rings, riiiight...

Raimun
2014-04-23, 03:39 PM
They still don't exist outside of game abstractions that are almost certainly largely irrelevant to basically any author not working on actual D&D fiction. When something was published is irrelevant. I'd also note that trying to codify LotR with D&D makes a lot of sense, given that early D&D borrowed enough from LotR to run into intellectual property conflicts. It would also make plenty of sense in a number of generic systems, as LotR does have many of the concepts of character capability (e.g. Aragorn is specifically a capable healer, very skilled combatant, etc.) that these model.

There is no way you can codify LotR with any edition of D&D, old or new.

The only way that would get close is to make a separate D20 LotR-game. The game would have similar core mechanics but have its own classes, races, etc. ... though I would prefer kind of Mutants and Masterminds-style approach, where there are no levels and you are free to assign earned "build points" how you see fit. For instance, decide if you use 4 points to raise your Base Attack Bonus by two or raise your Skills by a total of 8 ranks. With some limitations, of course.

Gnoman
2014-04-23, 04:34 PM
There *IS* an officially licensed (based on Rolemaster) game called Middle Earth Role Playing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle-earth_Role_Playing). It's no longer available new, as the license has expired, but used copies aren't that rare, as far as I am aware.

LibraryOgre
2014-04-24, 12:16 AM
Remember though, D&D these days isn't about modeling generic fantasy, it's about modeling a genre that really developed out of D&D. That may or may not mean classes and levels, but it definitely doesn't include the kinds of narratives present in LotR, with their wide-ranging, often-separated casts with wildly different levels of competency.

Modern D&D is dungeonpunk. It's the sort of genre that's imitated by the Warcraft franchise, and it borrows from Lovecraft and Vance and Eddings and Gaiman and Martin just as much as from Tolkien.

The proper question to ask is not "how fast do LotR characters level?" but "how fast does Thrall level?" or "how fast did the Lord of Blades level?" or "how fast does Arya level?" The genre has evolved, the game needs to evolve with it.
I think that's somewhat circular. "The genre has changed because of the game has changed because of the genre."

Take a look at the fiction that's grown out of D&D... while there's little explicit training time, there's usually plenty of downtime. The 15 minute workday isn't an outgrowth of changes in the fiction... it's an outgrowth of game design choices. Read Raistlin in the early books... he hoards his spells, expending them carefully. In later material, folks become more spendthrift, but that's not because the fiction drove a change... it changed because the game it was attempting to emulate changed. The few times fiction has driven a game design change (Dragonlance 5th Age, for example), it's been widely reviled.

squiggit
2014-04-24, 12:51 AM
They still don't exist outside of game abstractions that are almost certainly largely irrelevant to basically any author not working on actual D&D fiction.
Even actual D&D fiction doesn't actually codify it in any notable way though.

Urpriest
2014-04-24, 12:09 PM
I think that's somewhat circular. "The genre has changed because of the game has changed because of the genre."

Take a look at the fiction that's grown out of D&D... while there's little explicit training time, there's usually plenty of downtime. The 15 minute workday isn't an outgrowth of changes in the fiction... it's an outgrowth of game design choices. Read Raistlin in the early books... he hoards his spells, expending them carefully. In later material, folks become more spendthrift, but that's not because the fiction drove a change... it changed because the game it was attempting to emulate changed. The few times fiction has driven a game design change (Dragonlance 5th Age, for example), it's been widely reviled.

Culture is circular.

And for the most part I'm not talking about D&D fiction, with the possible exception of the D&D fiction that makes it into the rulebooks in terms of NPC backstory. Most other D&D fiction is mass-marketed drek, it's not the sort of thing that's typical of what's enjoyed right now in terms of fantasy and has little effect on how people interpret and play the game.

Rather, I'm talking about the genre that grew out of D&D, and made its way into the games and stories that build off of and parody it. I'm talking about stories that have a concept of professional adventurers, that have dungeonlike catacombs explored by a party of essentially equal, thematically diverse heroes. That genre has become what D&D is about.

Now, do characters in those stories take downtime? Absolutely. The 15 minute adventuring day is the bleeding edge of gamishness, and the only tales it engenders are the Tippiest of tales.

They don't, however, follow the same pacing as LotR, which is what makes LotR examples utterly irrelevant. These characters do pause to rest between adventures...but they also go from zero to cosmic hero before accumulating a single gray hair. Look at the heroes of Darken (http://darkencomic.com/), who change their fortunes dramatically, or *throws up in mouth a little* Eragon, which exemplifies the "farmboy to saving the world" competence ladder, or Homestuck (http://mspaintadventures.com/), where the characters go from clueless kids to literal gods in less than a year.

Fantasy these days of the sort that D&D has come to represent is quite fast-paced. It really doesn't take 60 years for a wizard in that kind of story to go from apprentice to phenomenal cosmic power. It probably shouldn't take a few weeks either, but it's definitely a pretty rapid process.