I was thinking back to the dawn of the hobby and how the internet and blah blah blah, and it occurred to me - why do we feel the need to establish / balance it all at once?

Let's say I'm releasing a product, and in my head, characters start at level 1 and can achieve demigodhood at 20.

Why do I need to release my tiny product wholly balanced for all 20 out of the gate? The original D&D books were a few levels at a time. Most of our players aren't going to immediately burn through fifteen all weekend sessions in a row. If you're lucky, you'll get some fans who play your system twice a month.

Would you be adverse to starting a system that had the rule for the first X levels of character development (3, 5, whatever) with the promise of more to come? To be clear, I'm not interested in the commercial marketing aspects (what is 1/4 of a leveling system worth, etc.), only in the hobby-consumer aspect: would you start playing a system wherein only the first ten to fifteen sessions' worth of rules was generated?

I hope someday to sell my work, but keep levels zero to five free. The leveling scheme tends to get you 1xp every two sessions, and you level when you have (your level plus one) xp... at which point you lose it all. Nets about 30 sessions of play just for that intro.

So assuming that kind of game, yeah, I'd play that for sure. Wouldn't even worry about the next ten levels because I rarely get that far myself.

Quote from: CitizenKeen;554232[...] would you start playing a system wherein only the first ten to fifteen sessions' worth of rules was generated?

That's an extremely interesting question.

My gut reaction is "hell no, I want the whole game, you money-grasping supplement-treadmill goon" but when I actually think about it, most of what I've been buying and playing lately is indie games with deliberately limited scope that not only don't have enough material to last much beyond 10-15 sessions, they don't have much replay value either (i.e. every 10-15 session run is going to go like all of the others).

I think a lot of it is in the presentation.  For instance, if the cutoff isn't arbitrary but rather breaks along different concepts of play - I'm thinking the BECMI series here - I would be much more inclined to go for that.

It also seems that this is a question uniquely scoped to class and level-based systems with a defined power progression; VtM, for instance, capped Disciplines for everybody including Methuselahs at five dots until the PHB came out. 7th Sea has all the rules for courtly politics and maneuvering confined to a single sourcebook, etc., etc.

An addendum to my previous answer: Whether I would play and whether I would pay for it are different questions, with answers depending on different things.

Quote from: beejazz;554255An addendum to my previous answer: Whether I would play and whether I would pay for it are different questions, with answers depending on different things.

Right. Like I said, I'm not really concerned about selling it. That's not really the plan at all.

I'm more interested in it as a game development concern. You create and produce levels 1-5, and get feedback. The community responds. You were going to take the dazzlemancer in this direction, but clearly the community believes it should go in that direction. People have combined the swordswinger class with the armorblaster feats in a way you hadn't thought of.

The kind of stuff that happens beyond limited playtesting, and devlops only once you release the game into the real world.

Quote from: daniel_ream;554253That's an extremely interesting question.

My gut reaction is "hell no, I want the whole game, you money-grasping supplement-treadmill goon" but when I actually think about it, most of what I've been buying and playing lately is indie games with deliberately limited scope that not only don't have enough material to last much beyond 10-15 sessions, they don't have much replay value either (i.e. every 10-15 session run is going to go like all of the others).

I think a lot of it is in the presentation.  For instance, if the cutoff isn't arbitrary but rather breaks along different concepts of play - I'm thinking the BECMI series here - I would be much more inclined to go for that.

It also seems that this is a question uniquely scoped to class and level-based systems with a defined power progression; VtM, for instance, capped Disciplines for everybody including Methuselahs at five dots until the PHB came out. 7th Sea has all the rules for courtly politics and maneuvering confined to a single sourcebook, etc., etc.

Fantastic response.

If the cut-off were rather arbitrary, but cost wasn't an issue (say, the game was free, well-edited, polish in layout if lacking art), would you start playing? Knowing it might be six months until the Levels 6-10 supplement came out?

Quote from: CitizenKeen;554258Fantastic response.

If the cut-off were rather arbitrary, but cost wasn't an issue (say, the game was free, well-edited, polish in layout if lacking art), would you start playing? Knowing it might be six months until the Levels 6-10 supplement came out?

Yes. Either that or a complete game that doesn't NEED supplemental material but could use it. Like a GURPS or Fantasy Craft or even a WoD game. One book playable out of the gate even if it doesn't cover some things in detail whether that be more advanced magic, detailed settings, or modules.

Quote from: CitizenKeen;554257Right. Like I said, I'm not really concerned about selling it. That's not really the plan at all.

I'm more interested in it as a game development concern. You create and produce levels 1-5, and get feedback. The community responds. You were going to take the dazzlemancer in this direction, but clearly the community believes it should go in that direction. People have combined the swordswinger class with the armorblaster feats in a way you hadn't thought of.

The kind of stuff that happens beyond limited playtesting, and devlops only once you release the game into the real world.

In a level-based game, I'm of the opinion that there are things you can and should balance from the start. If the core math is messed up, patching it with featlike options, items, or other optional materials can become problematic. So the core of the math should probably be right from the start.

Class-based (non-optional) stuff is kind of in a different category from that, as are non-math-patch materials. These sorts of things really can be developed after release and based on play "in the wild." Arguably, it might be a better strategy than releasing a full game and just hoping it works. I hope to try a bit of this myself.

My thought is that if you are looking at a modular stairstep approach (such as Basic D&D, which then became Expert, Master, Immortal, whatever) you ought to consider making the entry level Basic game either free or inexpensive.

If it's a good game folks will want to climb the stairstep and buy additional level expansions. If it's a bad game folks won't feel cheated.

Keep in mind that some folks will be happy staying in the lowest couple of steps, so you want to be sure that the game is playable at that level without needing later products. I know some folks who play Basic/Expert D&D and never wanted to progress higher. (Heck, I know a few who like to stick to Basic only.)

I can think of games where they tried pasting extra progression onto the top of an existing game and generated a bit of a mess (Epic Level Handbook for 3.0 comes to mind; perhaps Suzerain in Savage Worlds though I can't remember offhand what I hated about it).
In BECMI you do see occasional revisions; IIRC the rate at which thief skills improved got revised down when they decided on 36 levels?
 
A game perceived as 'incomplete' could be a turnoff to some customers, but on the other hand, others may enjoy getting involved.

Since I'm not really interested in customers, only some minimal amounts of adoption (don't we all want to know someone else is playing our system?), sounds like a stair step approach would work (thinking back to Basic, Expert, etc. is exactly what I'm getting at).

Thank you kindly!