I was listening to an old episode of the excellent Grognard Files recently (episode #3, all about Traveller) and Blythy, I think, criticised Traveller for its lack of an experience system. I think he said (I was driving at the time so my memory might be wrong) that for many players character advancement and levelling up was really important.
Really?
As I've said before, I cut my roleplaying teeth on Traveller. I was a science fiction fan, so I bought a science fiction RPG. I wasn't inspired by fantasy and so D&D passed me by. (I do remember buying the Monster Manual and enjoyed reading that - but I don't think I used it.)
From Traveller I went pretty much straight into Call of Cthulhu, and from there to GURPS.
None of those games have "levels". Yes, there's a little bit of skills improvement in Call of Cthulhu and I imagine there is some in GURPS (but I can't remember it now). But there's none in Traveller (well, there's a tiny bit, but the basic premise is that you don't improve).
The reason for this is that your characters in Traveller, Call of Cthulhu, and GURPS start out competent. They don't start out at "level 1" - they already know what they're doing.
So I never got into the whole "levelling up" thing.
One-shots not campaigns
There's another reason I never really got into levelling-up: I mostly played one-shots.
I can't ever remember playing in a long campaign, where levelling up was critical. I think the longest I've ever run a single game was for about 8-10 weeks when I ran Call of Cthulhu that ended up being several scenarios mashed together.
Even when we were starting out and I was at school, we still didn't play campaigns. I can't remember much about my games back then, but I'm pretty sure that we liked to mix things up. We all took turns GM-ing and we never settled down into a long campaign. Character advancement wasn't on our radar, and it wasn't something we missed.
So my experience of roleplaying has been playing and running one-shots. (And even a scenario that may take a few sessions to play though is still a one-shot. But in my head, Masks of Nyarlathotep is a very lengthy one-shot, so I might not be the best to judge.)
Really?
So for me, the play was (and is) the important thing.
And when I hear people like Blythy say that players like to level up and that character advancement is important to them, I have to wonder if that's really true.
Or is that just me?
Really?
As I've said before, I cut my roleplaying teeth on Traveller. I was a science fiction fan, so I bought a science fiction RPG. I wasn't inspired by fantasy and so D&D passed me by. (I do remember buying the Monster Manual and enjoyed reading that - but I don't think I used it.)From Traveller I went pretty much straight into Call of Cthulhu, and from there to GURPS.
None of those games have "levels". Yes, there's a little bit of skills improvement in Call of Cthulhu and I imagine there is some in GURPS (but I can't remember it now). But there's none in Traveller (well, there's a tiny bit, but the basic premise is that you don't improve).
The reason for this is that your characters in Traveller, Call of Cthulhu, and GURPS start out competent. They don't start out at "level 1" - they already know what they're doing.
So I never got into the whole "levelling up" thing.
One-shots not campaigns
There's another reason I never really got into levelling-up: I mostly played one-shots.
I can't ever remember playing in a long campaign, where levelling up was critical. I think the longest I've ever run a single game was for about 8-10 weeks when I ran Call of Cthulhu that ended up being several scenarios mashed together.
Even when we were starting out and I was at school, we still didn't play campaigns. I can't remember much about my games back then, but I'm pretty sure that we liked to mix things up. We all took turns GM-ing and we never settled down into a long campaign. Character advancement wasn't on our radar, and it wasn't something we missed.
So my experience of roleplaying has been playing and running one-shots. (And even a scenario that may take a few sessions to play though is still a one-shot. But in my head, Masks of Nyarlathotep is a very lengthy one-shot, so I might not be the best to judge.)
Really?
So for me, the play was (and is) the important thing.
And when I hear people like Blythy say that players like to level up and that character advancement is important to them, I have to wonder if that's really true.
Or is that just me?
Nah, it's not just you. Players that learn on character-advancement games, and really like them, usually like that aspect of those particular games as often as any other aspect. And players that learn on non-advancement games, and really like them, aren't likely to feel the lack. But there are also gamers like myself, who play both types of game, and take each game they like as it is. I've never felt the lack of advancement in Traveller to be a problem, and I never thought to remove levels from D&D. They're different games. An author that writes "players like to level up" may safely be interpreted to mean "I like to level up, the guys I game with do too, the articles I find that support leveling as a good thing reinforce my opinion, and any time I read something that disagrees with me, I dismiss it as insignificant." ;-)
ReplyDeleteThanks - I'm glad it's not just me.
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