'This group has played for 8 years and not passed level 5, how can they not be levelling?'
Friend-o, they're doing fine without X, and perhaps - just perhaps - ask yourself what you can learn for a group that's been consistently playing for 8 years considering I see your username asking for more and more games as though you've been banned from every game going.
No Games folks looking disdainfully at people who've been playing consistently for 8 years because 'levelling is an intrinsic part of the game and you're doing it wrong' is peak r/rpg.
@DarkestKale One of the best headings I've ever seen in an RPG supplement was called "The No-Growth Campaign". That's a perfectly fine play-style, but I also prefer the slow-growth campaign.
Numbers go up does not mean fun goes up, after all.
@blind_mapmaker I've definitely considered such things for Genesys, which has a (relatively) ridiculously low ceiling. Characteristics (stats) go from 1-5. Skills can be from 0-5. After maybe 10 sessions at 5xp, PCs are absolute beasts.
@DarkestKale Can happen with any system, I'd say. The more divested from reality the advancement is, the easier. With a modern-day setting and relatively short in-universe time-frames you'll notice this fast.
Sure it's easier if you do GURPS than say D20 Modern or PbtA, because mechanics are less obscured, but the main thing is we're so much more willing to believe that somebody can pick up a sword and be good with it after a couple of weeks when in reality it would be years and years of daily training. With a world closer to our lived experience that becomes much harder.
@blind_mapmaker@DarkestKale The Skinner-box treadmill of "I did an adventure, number go up" is at the root of the problem, and can partly be solved by not playing that sort of game—rather than generic Hero's Journey, one can start with a competent character and progress slowly if at all.
Meanwhile, I have someone angry at me (on reddit) because I'm 'not respecting the wishes of the game designer' by enforcing levelling when I suggest this is ok.
@DarkestKale@blind_mapmaker I still remember Mike Pondsmith ranting at GenCon about how all these Cyberpunk 2020 players were playing his game wrong and the new thing (Cybergeneration) would show them.
@RogerBW@DarkestKale
You're right, Rev. Roger BW. Though I think the problem is not so much that the starting characters are incompetent, but that there's an ever-increasing arms race to "keep things interesting" instead of making the plots, characters, locations, motivations interesting.
The starting characters in most RPGs are about as competent as the local guard, but when they have bested (read: killed) a band of lowly goblins, they need to face something meaner and tougher the next time. And then they need to be tougher too.
Of course, part of the problem is that most RPGs are a little too obsessed with combat too. But that's a never-ending discussion
@blind_mapmaker@DarkestKale Yeah, I think D&D 3e and later makes this very obvious with its steady escalation of foe parameters so that you're facing basically the same difficulty of fight for you even as your abilities increase.
I agree, absolute power level doesn't matter. What makes for interesting games IMO is a bit of ability to affect the world and stakes that make it worth the risk. (Which is why a Kids With Bikes game is playable even if you say "there will be no death or serious injury".)
Just one more comment: Escalation of parameters has one further drawback in that it makes it harder for players who are not hardcore p&p folks. I usually have one or two players in my group that are not very into rules and combat. It a slow-change campaign they can hold their own, because things are more or less stable. Constant escalation and character-building homework would send them running.
Of course, stability can also be boring. Personally I run my campaigns more like TV shows where you gain maybe one new power every season and otherwise advance incrementally.
@blind_mapmaker@DarkestKale For me interesting games in the long term come from doing different things, not from doing the same things with bigger numbers.
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