Levelling Out

Everyone should be the same level. I should be allowed to make characters that are level 8 from the get-go. Experience needs to be handed out equally so everyone can gain their levels at the same time, and rewarding different classes for achieving different amounts of experience is outrageous. Levels themselves are a terrible notion and need to abolished. These are but some of the complaints I've heard about levels in my tenure as a DM. Some of them ring more truly than others: I have played and enjoyed many rpgs that do away with the concept of levels altogether such as BRP (particularly its incarnation as CoC), Hârnmaster, 7th Sea, and Aftermath!) but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate why they're used as shorthand for advancement.

Levels are a fast and easy way to determine how powerful a character is, for one thing. It works as a rapid shorthand for understanding just where they stand in the scale of might and it obviates the need to track all manner of niggly little advancements that would otherwise not be tied to level. I actually prefer the Hârnmaster/Aftermath method of skill improvement over levels, but those games are a bitch to teach to anyone who doesn't have an advanced math degree and the patience of a particularly peaceful deity.

The most common issue that I actually run into in my games is level disparity. Because I have a tendency to run lethal games and because Danny has a tendency to constantly be recruiting new players, we have a high character turnover rate. New people join in on old games, or old people watch in horror as some manner of awful creature slaughters their character. Either way, it leaves a core party (composed of the original two adventurers in this case, Crispus and Oloz) that is hovering on the door of level 5 while new players must join in at level 1.

The Transformation

This morning I come bearing a journal entry and some artwork from Danny, the fellow who plays Oloz. The first is Oloz-as-was, and was drawn early in his career. The second is Oloz-as-is, and was drawn yesterday.

Oloz as an orc in his freeman's toga

I have seen my own corpse. I have taken this journal from his, my? body. I lifted my blades, my rings, my shield... I have taken from the dead before, these very things, even. I am no stranger to theft or to looting, and yet I am disturbed greatly!

Perhaps what disturbs me most of all is that this was no different. I scarcely recognize that brutalized, brutal face, all its lumpen features and fire-slicked scarring, those glassy little eyes. How can I look into my own eyes and not see myself? Maybe this is the only way that it could ever be? After all, what makes up a person? The body? I would say that it is not so. My body has changed, and though I have seen much that almost none alive could boast of beholding, and learned, gained from it, what was 'me' has migrated. The dead man in whose book I write was Oloz, and I am Oloz, but the shell we left behind is just that.

Player Journals: Aurelien Greenmantle, 3rd Furrow 502

Today we've got a player-written journal from one of my currently running games; the character, Aurelien the Greenmantle, a level 5 wizard who has been questing up and down the Lonely Lands and most recently entered the Rootwood with his companions, the Lamplighters (the ranger Jaquelline le Fevre, the paladin Quintis Beauclerc, and the strange and unpleasant wizard Theylon the Faceless).

Enjoy!

3rd Furrow, 502

I have seen so many things, met so many wondrous and dire folk, but what record is there? When I saw that elven caravan before the wood, smashed and scattered by giant-tossed stones, I was reminded by that senseless wreckage by other black days. They left no record, and how many others fall to similar fates? I thought of the dessiccated corpse of Milea Potioner - long dead when I met her, but through her written word, in a way, I knew her there. So I will do the same; I will write of my travels, and if I should die, perhaps others will know me even still.

And so much is there to write upon! I have spoken this past night with an ent! And in the afternoon, a giant of the Rootwood! Birchtongue, and Terelos, respectively - these are great peoples, wondrous and inscrutable. How many men of eighteen short years have treated with giantkind in this Age? A lucky little few, I would wager, and more of them will I speak with in the coming days, if all goes well. It is morning, and soon I will speak to the withdrawn wizard with whom we travel - I thought to begin last night, for how could I sleep despite my weariness in the presence of such an ancient and thoughtful creature as the ent? but of course there can be no fire-light in his grove, so now let me gather my thoughts and I will present you, my future reader, with the marvels I have seen these past days.

I yearn to be different

After some cursory thought and introspection, I've developed a theory on the differences between the way characters are handled in later editions and how that separates them from the earlier methods of character creation (and running your character). Here, I present these thoughts in rough and unfinished form: My thesis for consideration is that earlier editions of D&D (and earlier roleplaying games in general) tend to ask you to define your character in terms of who they are while modern editions of D&D (and other roleplaying games that have followed, or perhaps inspired, this trend) ask you to define your character based on what they can do.

This may seem like a fatuous division. After all, what is the difference? Let us examine the consequences of who they are style thinking. For ease of use we can coin the terms existential (who they are) and agency-based (what they can do) just to make what we're talking about a little easier to digest and perhaps fill the conversation with complicated jargon to confuse outsiders. Anyhow! Existential thinking in character creation does not ask you, necessarily, to find rules reflections in who your character is. More important than his statistics and skills is his past and personality, and in older roleplaying games it should be a very sparse past indeed.

On the Importance of Dying

Death, that horrible finality, is what makes life. It is the ultimate ending, the last word, the balancer that brings completion to every existence. Without the closing that death brings, life itself would have no meaning. It is defined by the very mortality that we strive to overcome. But certain games don't necessarily need to include death amongst their list of options. After all, if you're playing a video game and you die, what is the penalty? You must restart from the last save or, if the game is old enough or hard enough, play from the very beginning. The first is a false penalty that only serves to eat up time. The second is a penalty that stresses completion and skill as important factors in gameplay. Both are slowly falling by the wayside in modern game design.

There is a line of theory, and a good line it is too, that says that since dying in modern games is generally just a minor irritant, there's no reason to even include it in the game. It is a false penalty, one that wastes time but fails to have any real impact on the player other than forcing them to replay things they have already done. This issue was brought to the forefront for me by the excellent game Braid in which the player actually cannot die. And for video games, this is perhaps a valid argument. It certainly played out well for Braid.

The Delicate Balance

There has always been a sort of balancing act in roleplaying games, from the very first, though it went unrecognized then. In the games of Gygax and Arneson, the balance was weighted completely towards the referee; the DM had all the power to say yes or no to the players. Players were at the mercy of their DMs, who controlled every aspect of the game. If you asked your referee a question and they said no, that was the end of it. There was always, of course, some wiggle room for rules compromises, but in the end the final decision was left up to a ruling by the game's referee. In those days, it was implicit that the person running the game was someone that you could trust.

These days, there seems to be a highly adversarial relationship between PCs and DMs. I attribute this to the blowback of rules that followed years of subpar and downright poor DMs taking advantage of their position as ultimate arbiter to torture and violate their players. The relationship between players and their referee is a sacred one, one that is tantamount to that between a teacher and student or a parent and child. Abusive breaches of trust erode the power of the game and have resulted in a backlash of player-centric content.