Ack! First level for 20 hours! [Archive] - Wizards Community

Ack! First level for 20 hours! [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
brogan
08-15-06, 10:37 PM I was under the impression that we would gain exp and level through out the weekend. What a disapointment! After the 3rd 5 hour session, my entire team quit. It was terrible, and I'll never do it again. After being told that "all the exp is kept online" and that we don't level, I could not bring myself to playing the last round. We actually found the well at the end of part 3 or 4, and then left to go back to Stormreach to enjoy ourselves. What makes the least amount of sense is that next year we "magically" become 3rd or 4th level. That is nuts, it is so much better to level a bit at a time and much more enjoyable. My 2 cents. The DM's were great, but the adventures were junk.
kiddoc
08-15-06, 11:38 PM I was under the impression that we would gain exp and level through out the weekend. What a disapointment! After the 3rd 5 hour session, my entire team quit. It was terrible, and I'll never do it again. After being told that "all the exp is kept online" and that we don't level, I could not bring myself to playing the last round. We actually found the well at the end of part 3 or 4, and then left to go back to Stormreach to enjoy ourselves. What makes the least amount of sense is that next year we "magically" become 3rd or 4th level. That is nuts, it is so much better to level a bit at a time and much more enjoyable. My 2 cents. The DM's were great, but the adventures were junk.

I think your source of information was misinformed. You do gain experience for each and every module. In fact, you gain different amounts of experience for different things that your group does during a module. All of your experience is tracked and every adventure awards a varying amount. With the exception of the "Living" campaigns where the policy is that adventures must be run for certain levels, none of the D&D campaigns allow you to level in the middle of a convention.

That's not the same thing as "magically" becoming 3rd or 4th level. That doesn't happen. If you play, you gain experience and level. But no-one levels DURING a con--that would completely destroy any semblance of party parity (Okay we need 1 table of 1st levels, but we have two 2nd levels and one third, but only 3 codex first levels and no adventure for 4th level blackwheels... blah blah blah). You level after the con. Right after it. Your characters are tracked online, and experience is awarded based upon the objectives completed, encounters accomplished, and decisions made by your individual party, during that adventure.

There is, however a Level Bump. This is something that happens that magically bumps up any player that hasn't played or that hasn't yet earned enough experience to the level of everyone else. This allows people that are just starting the convention to play in ANY adventure--instead of being relegated to having to find that reclusive bunch of characters that happen to be at their level. It's one of the reasons that XE can produce so many adventures for a convention--we can account for the exact level of every party member with relative accuracy.
jeffpicard
08-16-06, 12:41 AM A couple other factors on this:
Reporting: it's eaiser to report everything at once, than to try and report each individual table as a seperate event

Chatacter Tracker for XP: do you expect Every player to be able to access the character tracker in time to know what level to get to? The tracker method saves time (don't have to spend the last 20-30 minutes crunching xp) and ensures fairness about xp gain without the p[aperwork that a living campaign requires

That said, that level of paperwork for the living campaigns means you get xp and gold immediatly, but you have to track all of it yourself, and if you lose paperwork it can be a hassle

As for the level bumps, I've been running MoH pretty well for a home group, and they hit 10 Just before the level bump, so they're the "same" level as everyone who played less, but they have more gold and should be closer to 11
scrotoz
08-16-06, 08:58 AM A couple of questions....

We were told that treasure we found during the campaign would "disappear" after the adventure. Two separate reasons given were that the found treasure exceeded the EV allowed for 1st level characters, or because everything magically "resets" between modules at a convention.

Part of the fun of D&D is the risk / reward factor. Because I'd only play the Xen'drik campaign at GenCon every year (only con I get to), I "lose" the reward and still assume the risk. This also seems to reenforce the behavior of playing only 1 event per con because I have to wait for my character to be updated online.

I personally expected to use the XP/Campaign Tracker while at the convention (since I was playing multiple Xen'drik sessions).

Looks like I'll have to look into these "Living" campaigns. 20 minutes updating campaign trackers is fine by me, especially since each Xen'drik campaign module only took about 3-3 1/2 hours to complete (for my team) anyway. I'd feel better having a "receipt" of sorts for the adventure I just went through because I personally didn't see any attempt to track any treasure / gold / etc by the GMs anyway.
raalynthslair
08-16-06, 01:18 PM That's not the same thing as "magically" becoming 3rd or 4th level. That doesn't happen. If you play, you gain experience and level. But no-one levels DURING a con--that would completely destroy any semblance of party parity (Okay we need 1 table of 1st levels, but we have two 2nd levels and one third, but only 3 codex first levels and no adventure for 4th level blackwheels... blah blah blah). You level after the con. Right after it. Your characters are tracked online, and experience is awarded based upon the objectives completed, encounters accomplished, and decisions made by your individual party, during that adventure.

That's not really true. Other "Living" games have always given XP at the end of the module so you COULD level up between 20+ hours of modules at a single convention. It is only the online-reported-character-based campaigns that you do NOT level up until after the event - and that IS a harsh reality to have to deal with as a player. Nothing is more frustrating than having single digit hit points when you KNOW you've well surpassed the requirements for level 2 (and/or 3, etc) and have to struggle through some things (that were sometimes over-powering in these first 3(5) mods - but overall they were great!) where you could have had a slightly more advantageous position at one or two levels up (such as with Clerics with 2-3 Level one spells, that extra one or two Cure Light Wounds could be a life saver - literally).

But yea, there's nothing you can do about leveling until after all the mods are reported and your character is listed on line and all that jazz. Just the nature of the beast as it's designed for these new RPGA campaigns (are all of them going to be so rigid in their tracking and reporting methods like this or is there a chance for more "living" style campaigns in the future - just curious, no crtique intended).
brim4799
08-16-06, 01:52 PM Actually (getting ready to duck the stones) I liked it a lot! We played 25 hours at first level and I can't say I was disappointed. I thought the adventures were well written and it was nice to see that you could actually play 25 hours of adventures designed for 1st lvl characters without becoming TOTALLY bored stiff. I had a great time. Koodos to the writers.

BRiM4799
raalynthslair
08-16-06, 02:44 PM Actually (getting ready to duck the stones) I liked it a lot! We played 25 hours at first level and I can't say I was disappointed. I thought the adventures were well written and it was nice to see that you could actually play 25 hours of adventures designed for 1st lvl characters without becoming TOTALLY bored stiff. I had a great time. Koodos to the writers.

BRiM4799

Ok that's it! You're first level for a LONG painful time in the home-brew! *lol*

Yes, the writers did a good job writing the mods. They were VERY entertaining and were a great joy to run through (we did the 2 CC and all 3 WoW - that's a LONG series there, let me tell you). It was well worth the time we spent to do it too.
Mark the Hammer
08-16-06, 04:35 PM Not to mention that the mods were all written for 1st level PCs. So, no matter if you played one or played them all you were on even ground with everyone else at the official launch of the campaign. Personally, that is a pretty silly reason to stop playing. Were you not having fun in session #1 or #2???

And as for the treasure, I can just point you towards the Campaign Standards. It describes what happens....
brogan
08-16-06, 06:42 PM The first module where you are in Stormreach was fun at least we got to use a lot of skill checks and interact with the npcs. Parts 2 and 3 were almost nothing but walk from fight A to fight B to fight C. Much less role playing, which really hurts a low level campaign. I don't mind the not leveling part if we were all 4th level, at least then you have options.

-Brogan

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
brogan 08-15-06, 10:37 PM	I was under the impression that we would gain exp and level through out the weekend. What a disapointment! After the 3rd 5 hour session, my entire team quit. It was terrible, and I'll never do it again. After being told that "all the exp is kept online" and that we don't level, I could not bring myself to playing the last round. We actually found the well at the end of part 3 or 4, and then left to go back to Stormreach to enjoy ourselves. What makes the least amount of sense is that next year we "magically" become 3rd or 4th level. That is nuts, it is so much better to level a bit at a time and much more enjoyable. My 2 cents. The DM's were great, but the adventures were junk.
kiddoc 08-15-06, 11:38 PM	I was under the impression that we would gain exp and level through out the weekend. What a disapointment! After the 3rd 5 hour session, my entire team quit. It was terrible, and I'll never do it again. After being told that "all the exp is kept online" and that we don't level, I could not bring myself to playing the last round. We actually found the well at the end of part 3 or 4, and then left to go back to Stormreach to enjoy ourselves. What makes the least amount of sense is that next year we "magically" become 3rd or 4th level. That is nuts, it is so much better to level a bit at a time and much more enjoyable. My 2 cents. The DM's were great, but the adventures were junk. I think your source of information was misinformed. You do gain experience for each and every module. In fact, you gain different amounts of experience for different things that your group does during a module. All of your experience is tracked and every adventure awards a varying amount. With the exception of the "Living" campaigns where the policy is that adventures must be run for certain levels, none of the D&D campaigns allow you to level in the middle of a convention. That's not the same thing as "magically" becoming 3rd or 4th level. That doesn't happen. If you play, you gain experience and level. But no-one levels DURING a con--that would completely destroy any semblance of party parity (Okay we need 1 table of 1st levels, but we have two 2nd levels and one third, but only 3 codex first levels and no adventure for 4th level blackwheels... blah blah blah). You level after the con. Right after it. Your characters are tracked online, and experience is awarded based upon the objectives completed, encounters accomplished, and decisions made by your individual party, during that adventure. There is, however a Level Bump. This is something that happens that magically bumps up any player that hasn't played or that hasn't yet earned enough experience to the level of everyone else. This allows people that are just starting the convention to play in ANY adventure--instead of being relegated to having to find that reclusive bunch of characters that happen to be at their level. It's one of the reasons that XE can produce so many adventures for a convention--we can account for the exact level of every party member with relative accuracy.
jeffpicard 08-16-06, 12:41 AM	A couple other factors on this: Reporting: it's eaiser to report everything at once, than to try and report each individual table as a seperate event Chatacter Tracker for XP: do you expect Every player to be able to access the character tracker in time to know what level to get to? The tracker method saves time (don't have to spend the last 20-30 minutes crunching xp) and ensures fairness about xp gain without the p[aperwork that a living campaign requires That said, that level of paperwork for the living campaigns means you get xp and gold immediatly, but you have to track all of it yourself, and if you lose paperwork it can be a hassle As for the level bumps, I've been running MoH pretty well for a home group, and they hit 10 Just before the level bump, so they're the "same" level as everyone who played less, but they have more gold and should be closer to 11
scrotoz 08-16-06, 08:58 AM	A couple of questions.... We were told that treasure we found during the campaign would "disappear" after the adventure. Two separate reasons given were that the found treasure exceeded the EV allowed for 1st level characters, or because everything magically "resets" between modules at a convention. Part of the fun of D&D is the risk / reward factor. Because I'd only play the Xen'drik campaign at GenCon every year (only con I get to), I "lose" the reward and still assume the risk. This also seems to reenforce the behavior of playing only 1 event per con because I have to wait for my character to be updated online. I personally expected to use the XP/Campaign Tracker while at the convention (since I was playing multiple Xen'drik sessions). Looks like I'll have to look into these "Living" campaigns. 20 minutes updating campaign trackers is fine by me, especially since each Xen'drik campaign module only took about 3-3 1/2 hours to complete (for my team) anyway. I'd feel better having a "receipt" of sorts for the adventure I just went through because I personally didn't see any attempt to track any treasure / gold / etc by the GMs anyway.
raalynthslair 08-16-06, 01:18 PM	That's not the same thing as "magically" becoming 3rd or 4th level. That doesn't happen. If you play, you gain experience and level. But no-one levels DURING a con--that would completely destroy any semblance of party parity (Okay we need 1 table of 1st levels, but we have two 2nd levels and one third, but only 3 codex first levels and no adventure for 4th level blackwheels... blah blah blah). You level after the con. Right after it. Your characters are tracked online, and experience is awarded based upon the objectives completed, encounters accomplished, and decisions made by your individual party, during that adventure. That's not really true. Other "Living" games have always given XP at the end of the module so you COULD level up between 20+ hours of modules at a single convention. It is only the online-reported-character-based campaigns that you do NOT level up until after the event - and that IS a harsh reality to have to deal with as a player. Nothing is more frustrating than having single digit hit points when you KNOW you've well surpassed the requirements for level 2 (and/or 3, etc) and have to struggle through some things (that were sometimes over-powering in these first 3(5) mods - but overall they were great!) where you could have had a slightly more advantageous position at one or two levels up (such as with Clerics with 2-3 Level one spells, that extra one or two Cure Light Wounds could be a life saver - literally). But yea, there's nothing you can do about leveling until after all the mods are reported and your character is listed on line and all that jazz. Just the nature of the beast as it's designed for these new RPGA campaigns (are all of them going to be so rigid in their tracking and reporting methods like this or is there a chance for more "living" style campaigns in the future - just curious, no crtique intended).
brim4799 08-16-06, 01:52 PM	Actually (getting ready to duck the stones) I liked it a lot! We played 25 hours at first level and I can't say I was disappointed. I thought the adventures were well written and it was nice to see that you could actually play 25 hours of adventures designed for 1st lvl characters without becoming TOTALLY bored stiff. I had a great time. Koodos to the writers. BRiM4799
raalynthslair 08-16-06, 02:44 PM	Actually (getting ready to duck the stones) I liked it a lot! We played 25 hours at first level and I can't say I was disappointed. I thought the adventures were well written and it was nice to see that you could actually play 25 hours of adventures designed for 1st lvl characters without becoming TOTALLY bored stiff. I had a great time. Koodos to the writers. BRiM4799 Ok that's it! You're first level for a LONG painful time in the home-brew! lol Yes, the writers did a good job writing the mods. They were VERY entertaining and were a great joy to run through (we did the 2 CC and all 3 WoW - that's a LONG series there, let me tell you). It was well worth the time we spent to do it too.
Mark the Hammer 08-16-06, 04:35 PM	Not to mention that the mods were all written for 1st level PCs. So, no matter if you played one or played them all you were on even ground with everyone else at the official launch of the campaign. Personally, that is a pretty silly reason to stop playing. Were you not having fun in session #1 or #2??? And as for the treasure, I can just point you towards the Campaign Standards. It describes what happens....
brogan 08-16-06, 06:42 PM	The first module where you are in Stormreach was fun at least we got to use a lot of skill checks and interact with the npcs. Parts 2 and 3 were almost nothing but walk from fight A to fight B to fight C. Much less role playing, which really hurts a low level campaign. I don't mind the not leveling part if we were all 4th level, at least then you have options. -Brogan