Quote Originally Posted by Saph View Post
It can actually make for quite a fun game, but you have to approach it the right way.

Recently our group has been trying out a game called Dungeon Crawl Classics, one of the new retro-D&D systems. In DCC, you start at 0-level, and you make up not one, not two, but three or four 0-level characters, and you play all of them. Whoever survives to 1st-level, becomes your PC.

Now, this is obviously heresy to some gamers, but when our group tried it we had a lot of fun! The key is to change your mindset. Instead of writing a 4 page backstory for your 0-level character, you treat their journey from 0-level to 3rd-level as their backstory. If they live that long, they'll have an exciting and eventful origin story, which will usually end up being much more interesting than a pre-written one. If they don't live that long . . . well, easy come, easy go. Rolling up a 0-level character in DCC takes 2-3 minutes, so they're not exactly hard to replace.

I wouldn't want to always run campaigns that way, but it's a valid playstyle and it can be quite a refreshing change from the more prep-heavy systems.
This actually sounds kind of fun. I don't like the idea of playing a game of D&D where you have one character rolled up like normal and it being considered expendible. But special rules for sub-level 1 characters that are quick to generate and you're expected to play several at once? That is something I can see working and want to try.