Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Radazim 01-12-05, 04:11 PM	So, in theory, a group of newly minted 1st level adventurers could enter a deep dungeon, and assuming that they could handle about four encounters per day, they could conceivably gain one level every 3 or 4 days. Giving them some rest and relaxing this by half, they could easily gain 1 level per week. Even with ample "vacation" time in there, they could easily be 20th level in the span of a single year. This kills me. So much for the grizzled old wizard pouring over musty tomes. So much for the scarred and dour dwarf with tales of decades of battling duergar and derro in the mines and giants on the surface. You get the idea. I'd really love to see a plot-rich campaign that took two decades of game time to unfold. One with weeks or months of downtime between adventures, where the characters didn't race endlessly from encounter to encounter in search of phat xp and uber loot. One where it might take a game year to gain a level (but where that game year might pass in a month of real time, too). Eberron seems to me to be just the setting for a less frantic campaign, where plots can develop, where characters might take an extended vacation (or even attempt to retire) after a particularly lucrative Xen'drik expedition, only to be drawn back into some scheme against their will. As a DM, I like the idea that putting some "down time" between adventures more fully allows NPC's plots to advance, slowly, methodically. Spending their riches on pleasures of the flesh, the adventurers begin to hear the odd rumor of this or that, but only after a few months (and as their fortunes dwindle) does it become apparent that action is needed. I think when my Greyhawk campaign finishes up this year (or next?) I'll aim for this in my Eberron campaign. Has anyone run a campaign like this, where the campaign stretched over many years of game time with lots of "off camera" downtime between adventures, where combat wasn't a daily occurrence? I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Dex The King 01-12-05, 05:12 PM	In my last campaign combat wasn't a daily ocurrence, and in fact most experience points were earned through roleplaying and non-combat quests. But it didn't stretch over twenty years. For that to happen, I think there'd need to be a great deal of downtime between adventures, and I disagree with you over how this occurs in Eberron. Eberron seems to be a fast paced stting to me, where the players are involved in shaping the course of the world's events. For a year to pass by between each session I think the characters would have to be on semi-retirement during the "off season" and only go out adventuring when something drastic happens. The thing about Eberron is, important things are nearly always happening. Look at the timetable in the ECS, and at how many different events have taken place in the last twenty years. The time table seems turned up now, with the struggle between the Five Nations in the shadows, and the constant machinations of the Lord of Blades, Vol, the Lords of Dust, The Daughters of Sora Kell, Prince Ruken ir'Clarn, etc. I don't think characters can just sit tight and wait between happenings, as something is always happening! Then again, this is my opinion, and my style. I usually use several campaign story arcs, like a series of novels with similar characters. The events of these arcs take place in rapid succession, often with no down time at all, for you can't wait when Vol plans to level Sharn, obliterate Thrane, and seize control of Karrnath simultaneously just three days from now). And the Lord of Blades could easily decide that the best time for an attack on the fleshies is right after a major conflict. There can be downtime between these, but I dislike the idea of an entire year passing by, Eberron is a dynamic, evolving setting, and players should work to shape it, or someone else (a villain) will.
Dex The King 01-12-05, 05:12 PM	I thought I'd never have one . . .
Radazim 01-12-05, 05:57 PM	I didn't mean to suggest that I would force an entire game-year to pass between sessions. That being said, my query was more about how to have a long-running campaign that didn't result in the characters being epic level within a few years of game time. If most of the population is < level 5, then a long-running campaign doesn't need the PC's to powerlevel. They could be deeply involved investigating a complex plot that took two years to unfold, and not necessarily gain 12 levels along the way. (Contrast this with my Greyhawk campaign where the party is trying to acquire the Hammer of Thunderbolts and drive the giants from Geoff - clearly they'll need to be in the teens before they can encounter giants en masse, and in the high teens before the climax.)
debatedeus 01-12-05, 05:58 PM	I have had the same kinds of concerns with characters in my games. It bothers me that a mage could master all mortal magic in under a year. That said, there is something appealing to the idea someone dramatically increasing their abilities and learning something new under extreme pressure. A wizard suddenly mastering a new level of magical power, a fighter suddenly unlocking the secret of a fighting technique, or a monk suddenly gaining deeper insight into herself (higher consciousness through harder impact) all fit with my pulp world-view. I think the trick is to balance between two extremes of really quick leveling and really slow leveling. In my campaign, after some story arcs, the party doesn't find work for a while, and that some time passes. Sometimes it is as little as 3 months, sometimes it is as much as 2 years and I find that it works nicely for suspension of disbelief. The time could be considered the time it takes to turn a sudden surge of ability into a reliable source of strength for a character.
Streamweaver 01-12-05, 06:46 PM	In my own Eberron campaign I'm running it at 50% experience in general and making sure to give several weeks downtime between intense adventures. It's been about 2 in game months and they are about to get their 2nd level. I'm pretty happy with the progression.
debatedeus 01-12-05, 07:17 PM	In my own Eberron campaign I'm running it at 50% experience in general and making sure to give several weeks downtime between intense adventures. It's been about 2 in game months and they are about to get their 2nd level. I'm pretty happy with the progression. What do you do about wealth from encounters? If you give 50% XP do you just give 50% wealth.
Sarlax 01-12-05, 07:55 PM	Has anyone run a campaign like this, where the campaign stretched over many years of game time with lots of "off camera" downtime between adventures, where combat wasn't a daily occurrence? That's how I'm running my Eberron game. They're playing Whispers right now, but I've put several months between adventures. By the beginning of Grasp of the Emerald Claw, a year will have passed in my game. I also ran my Planescape like this. All told, with the PCs starting at first level and living through three editions (4 if you count Player's Option) and getting up at 25th level, thirty years went by.
Takasi 01-12-05, 10:21 PM	I'm going by the DMG rules. 1 week per skill rank or feat; players can do up to two skills or feats simultaneously per week. To get from skill rank 7 to 8 it would take 2 months, and if you have a lot of skills to buff it could take half a year for one sitting. My players are only on their second level, but I'm planning adventures that take place while they're training. Trainers want money and in some cases deeds to be done. These in between adventures are very open ended and I'm giving players a large choice of trainers to choose from when they level.
GoodTeletubby 01-12-05, 10:30 PM	I'm going by the DMG rules. 1 week per skill rank or feat; players can do up to two skills or feats simultaneously per week. To get from skill rank 7 to 8 it would take 2 months, and if you have a lot of skills to buff it could take half a year for one sitting. My players are only on their second level, but I'm planning adventures that take place while they're training. Trainers want money and in some cases deeds to be done. These in between adventures are very open ended and I'm giving players a large choice of trainers to choose from when they level. uh, aren't the training supposed to be only 1week per rank you're earning, not 1week per rank you have? so going from 7-8 would only take one week, but going from 0-8 would take 2 months otherwise you've got a fighter with 10 int at level 20 taking a full year just to get his two skill points, and that doesn't seem right, and the rogue taking 7 years to level? not right at all
misanthropictodd 01-12-05, 11:14 PM	i have run a lot o' games long running and short in game time. i must say i prefer long developing campaigns. the gradual development is far more intriguing to me, alas it is not so for half the people i play with. :raincloud i have always wanted to do along term campaign with a few elven characters spanning centuries. :w00t: but i can't see it in the near future, or really ever with most of the players i have. they have ..... diverse interests :banghead: :looloo: :twitch: :tantrum: :headexplo the main problem we have is dms just burning out. i have said it before see my sad little thread. 10th level and oh the horror. but i do agree long term (game time is the way to go. just be sure you and your players agree on it :banghead:
Dex The King 01-13-05, 12:40 AM	I'm sorry I misinterpreted you, and I do think it would be possible to spread things out a little. As someone said, mention that a few months have passed in between adventures, even if years don't fly by (which I think we both agree they shouldn't) time will pass as characters grow in power.
nyysjan 01-13-05, 01:21 AM	if you don't want them to grow in power then give em weaker enemies and they gain less experience and treasure but remember give em a real challenge once in a while to keep em on their toes
Streamweaver 01-13-05, 08:23 AM	What do you do about wealth from encounters? If you give 50% XP do you just give 50% wealth. Yes as much as I can. There are actually rules for this in the DMG that I try to follow. Loot is a bit harder. I can cut coin in half without a problem but items are a different matter. When it comes to those I usually just cut out an item here or there from the horde or repace them with limited use items like potions or scrolls more often.
Edymnion 01-13-05, 09:55 AM	Well, there is one problem with such long term campaigns. Differant races age differantly. I don't know about you, but I prefer to play my character the way I envisioned them. When my Sorceress hits lvl 20, I still want her to be relatively young and powerful, I don't want to be playing a grandmother with world shattering power. And what would be a normal time for an elf would likely last longer than a Half-Orc is going to live. Frankly, even as a DM, I don't want to have to deal with the characters dying of old age before they really get into it. I also liked one of the ways I heard levels described (either by keith or sean k reynolds) about the grizzled old vet that has been loafing around for a couple years, and his skills have become rusty. Aka, he's back to lvl 1. But, given a few weeks of adventuring, he'll be back up to his old self (say lvl 4-5), and with enough work, could become even better than he was before. Thats a great way to have an old grizzled character with all the background you want, thats still only a lvl 1. I really wouldn't want a character like that dropping dead on me mid-game.
debatedeus 01-13-05, 10:17 AM	I really wouldn't want a character like that dropping dead on me mid-game. I don't think anyone wants that. That isn't the point of the thread. We're just considering how we can make the timing on the growth of characters more spread out. I don't want to see one of my player's Thri-Kreen characters die of old age because the rest of the group spent 2 years in school instead of adventuring or something like that. It's just that I am uncomfortable with someone adventuring time and time again and being level 20 in 5 months. It is concievable, but still pretty rediculous to me.
Streamweaver 01-13-05, 10:18 AM	Edymnion brings up a good point about perception of character development and it got me thinking about the role time plays in a campaign. In terms of characters time isn't that important as a measuring tool. When they think of their character progression they don't really think in terms of months or years, but in terms of events. They don't sit down thinking "gee we begam 3 years ago that is a long time" they think "Wow remember when we had to run from lizardmen and that one time when we robbed the temple, and that other time when we got away from the dragon" All those could have happened over a period of 6 months, but it could feel like years to the player. This is why above I feel pretty happy with the model of just letting adventures play out with a few in game weeks downtime between big adventure periods. If you keep a good cycle of steady action and periodic breaks they will definitly feel like they've earned their knowlege regardless of the actual time they've spent in game. If you feel the need to illustrate how come they've come so far so fast just toss in some professional adventurers who talk about their big adventures and have the players realize that these guys haven't been through anything (players just love that). Give them an example of what intense means to the rest of the world and how they are orders of maginitude beyond that and they'll be able to accept it.
ENHenry 01-13-05, 12:06 PM	Don't you hate the people for whom everything comes easy? :) Or, do you hate them in a grudging-respect way? That's what Player Characters are supposed to be. They are those people who take to violence like a hot knife through butter, who master magics in months it took the magewrights or adepts years to accomplish, and who instinctively know the ins and outs of lock-picking, or horsemanship, or animal husbandry. We can still have our 12th level wizards who took 30 years to get there - but they are the NPCs, the "supporting actors." They aren't the prodigies that are the player characters. You can tell that Keith's influenced my way of thinking. :D
Golbez57 01-13-05, 04:32 PM	Within the very first hour of our first session, I tested the waters to see how comfortable they were with the passage of time without play, and movement from one area to another without loads of random encounters. They began as an already-established group of friends and renowned adventurers, and were summoned from Shavalant (where they had just aided House Orien by repelling attacks from radical Ashbound) to Vathirond. The month-long trek was played out with little description--with the "red line across the map" in mind and a little descriptive flavor of the lands they passed through--and no random encounters. Everyone seemed happy, and role-played the relief of reaching their destination very well. The task they were summoned to was to investigate raiders preying on the outlying settlements of Vathirond (those few that withstood the Last War) which seemed to originate from the mountains south of the town. They cleaned out the hobgoblins, bugbears, and troll that had taken up residence in the long-neglected keep they found there, and this was eventually offered to them as their new home with the condition that they help establish goodwill with New Cyre (one of the party members is a paladin from Cyre) and guard against the advance of nasty stuff from the nearby Mournlands. Again, time passed while repairs were made to the keep, this time four months. Recently, they made a voyage to the Frostfell, first taking the lightning rail from Vathirond to Sharn, then traveling by ship to Yrlag in the Shadow Marches, and finally a clandestine voyage to a secret settlement of Houses Tharashk and Lyrandar (and a fair number of dwarves) in the Frostfell. All of this took a good chunk of the gaming session, but most of it was spent searching for means of transporation and haggling over the price of passage (Favored in House helped them secure some loans... here's hoping they bring back some good saleable loot!). Again, many weeks passed here. Of course, there was a gratuitous amount of storytelling, combat, and questing going on over these months, and they advanced from 5th to 7th level. Still, I haven't been afraid to let time pass with a simple, "The weeks go by with [insert description of weather and events of some interest" and then pick up the action from there. They are still very much at the center of the action, not casual observers of things going on around them. It's a tricky balance, but it's definitely doable--so long as both the DM and the players are all okay with unplayed down time.
PoeticJustice 01-13-05, 04:49 PM	There is the whole suspension of reality bit. We all know the D&D system isn't perfect or even anywhere near perfect, but I think it works in context of the game. The entire premise of Eberron is that the Players are the last action heroes of the entire world. Elminster or Drizzt would be twice as powerful if they lived on Eberron. One problem. They don't. So the world instead relies on a group of phenomenally powerful adventurers who adapt preternaturally quick to save the entire world from the macinations of beings that have lived for centuries (Vol) eons (Lords of Dust) or wield incredible power and influence (Kaius and LoB). Sacrificing a year seems a bit drastic unless its for something REALLY important. Like Sanctifying a Lord of Dust (see BoED) or waiting for a planar conjunction.
kisama 01-13-05, 05:11 PM	I have my players running through an old module called "The Isle of Dread" which was orginally written for Basic D&D. In the first game, I stuck to the module mechanics and had the players trekking through the jungle traking the passage of time carefully along with random encounters here and there. It went ok. For the next game session I decided to do the Keith Baker red line (a la Indian Jones) thing and decided not to worry about time except in the context of "you put in another X days travel and ..." where the travel is only interrupted by major events. I have to admit, the red line system went a hell of a lot better, mainly because I could keep the players focused on the immediate game more and I spent way less time rolling dice and checking for encounters. I also stopped using "random" encounters too in that last game. Instead I decided to just look at the list, pick an encounter which I think would be good, adjust the CR according to how I felt at the time (evil grin), come up with a basic battle map, and then take it from there. I really like Keith's Level concept. In fact I think it's brilliant. I'm going to pass that along to the players.
Edymnion 01-13-05, 05:25 PM	And don't forget, there is prescident for quick level gain in the literature. If memory serves, it was only 13 months that Frodo and company were out on the road to destroy the Ring. The hobbits were all essentially first level commoners when they started, but they were at least mid levels by the time Frodo goes West with the Elves. They grew a LOT in a very short period of time. And while, yes, you CAN gain a level every couple of days by the rules, I really can't see any situation that would actually throw 3-5 life threatening encounters at the group day after day after day. At least not without it being an incredibly harrowing adventuring (like escaping from the underdark while every drow old enough to hold a sword tries to kill you) that again, I could easily see making the characters get exceedingly good exceedingly fast, else they would die in the process. I'm all for spreading the encounters out, but it shouldn't really be necissary to have any ruling for it. At the very most I'd say only one level per week of game time. Because really, if you spend almost 6 months of intense training, you can easily become the best around. You won't enjoy the process by any meaning of the phrase, but you would get it done or die trying.
Streamweaver 01-13-05, 10:28 PM	And don't forget, there is prescident for quick level gain in the literature. If memory serves, it was only 13 months that Frodo and company were out on the road to destroy the Ring. The hobbits were all essentially first level commoners when they started, but they were at least mid levels by the time Frodo goes West with the Elves. They grew a LOT in a very short period of time. And while, yes, you CAN gain a level every couple of days by the rules, I really can't see any situation that would actually throw 3-5 life threatening encounters at the group day after day after day. At least not without it being an incredibly harrowing adventuring (like escaping from the underdark while every drow old enough to hold a sword tries to kill you) that again, I could easily see making the characters get exceedingly good exceedingly fast, else they would die in the process. I'm all for spreading the encounters out, but it shouldn't really be necissary to have any ruling for it. At the very most I'd say only one level per week of game time. Because really, if you spend almost 6 months of intense training, you can easily become the best around. You won't enjoy the process by any meaning of the phrase, but you would get it done or die trying. Yes I think you've hit on something here a lot of us are getting at and this also kind of ties into topics talked about in the "Average level for adventurers" thread I posted here as well. There is a world of difference between adventures and epic adventures. This is basically the heart of the players world. There are other adventures out there and even professional adventurers but the players stories in this world are it's Epic Adventures. I don't mean that in the 20th+ DnD sense but in therms of the number of challenges, level of danger, frequency of action the players live a life of epic adventure day in and day out. Frodo wasn't some hobbit with wanderlust who fought off some wolves during a harsh winter, or helped track down and invading band of orcs. He live a thousand adventures and did things the normal hero of that age would only hear about in legend. This is the life of a player and why they should eventually progress to a point where people in the world are in awe of them.
pjackson 01-14-05, 07:31 AM	Still, I haven't been afraid to let time pass with a simple, "The weeks go by with [insert description of weather and events of some interest" and then pick up the action from there. There is a problem with this, if the party has a wizard of reasonably high level. It starts somewhere between 5th and 10th IME, and gets worse as his level increases. A wizard wants to spend some time doing things other than adventuring - copying spells; researching them; making magic items. You and the other players may want to just skip over the intervening time, but the wizard's player may want to use that time, and he will normally be acting in character when he does. My solution when I was playing a wizard was to make up a list of things I wanted to do with the costs in time/money/xp, so that when I got some free time (which was less often than I got a new level) I could quickly work out what I would manage to do in that time.