Some great responses! It's interesting to see the variety of thought behind different play styles and experiences. I suppose in a sense I'm just "Spoiled" having played point buy systems first. I didn't really get into "Level" based games until 3rd edition and having started my first year of college.

Edit: I forgot to bring up, one thing I never considered was how Magic Items could be considered "Rewards" for leveling up and removing the sting of "Dead Levels">

Quote from: Spinachcat;842770Awesome! How did you discover Werewolf?

I spent the Summer's in my dad's house. Friends with the older kids, one of whom's older brother was a hardcore gamer himself. The older brother had moved out, but left behind some game's for his younger brother.

And so he gathered us all together to play Werewolf... It blew my mind, the idea of a game where you could do "What ever" you wanted. That it was a make believe game, but with rules. It started my love affair with RPG's..with Whitewolf of course my first favorite company (These days it's Pinnacle for Deadlands and then Savage Worlds).

3rd Ed got me into DnD 3.5 made me "meh" 4th edition drove me away...Pathfinder brought me back, and 5th edition solidified my love of seeing how things were suppose to be played "Old School". Less worrying about Challenge rating, letting PC's use their brains and cleverness rather than just rules and videogame esq talents.

From there, I started looking into OSR and while I don't necessarily want to play strictly OSR systems, I fucking love OSR adventure writing and styles..

Quote from: Spinachcat;842770Good luck! Love to hear more about your OSR project!

I've had this idea for a game for a few years now. I originally thought about doing it with Savage Worlds since I've written material for them (Specifically Interface Zero and Totems of the Dead).

I still just didn't know how to make it work, and OSR finally showed me the way...

The short tag line is..
"Imagine getting to play Heroes from the greatest 80's movies taking on the greatest 80's Villains.."

The Quick Story.... Two different future timelines are battling one another to come to pass... One of them, the Earth is a Paradise, (Think the Future from Bill&Ted) the other..a horrible dystopic future that combined the worse aspects of Evil Dead and Terminator with an eventual Fascists dictatorship like seen in "Escape from New York".

The 80's is the pivotal point where History is in flux.

This background is an excuse to have The Ghostbusters team up with the Karate Kid, Team up with John Matrix, and Ellen Ripley to fight Terminators, Camp Crystal Lake Slashers, Terrorists, and Kobra Kai Students..

Given the "Good things have to happen to make the good future" aspect, you might have one adventure where you have to take out an Island full of Terrorists who are pushing drugs into the populace, and in another adventure Make sure a local group of Highschoolers win "The Battle of the Bands".

The OSR "Dead Level" aspects I'm working on are the abilities of each class. I'm calling them "Stunts" and every class starts with a few basic stunts. They're sorta like Feats. I'm only going with 10 levels and I figured I'd let PC's invest in either upgrading an existing Stunt each level, or purchasing a new one.

My Class list goes..

"American-Ass Kicker"

"Cop On the Edge" (And it's alternate build "The Outlaw")

"Commando"

"The Egghead"

"The Charmer"

"The Guardian" (Who comes in Soldier "Kyle Reese/Ripley" variety Slayer "Ash style" Variety.)

When the document is done, I was planning on asking for Playtesters on this forum and a few others.

Dead levels are mainly a concern in 3E or 5E because of their open multiclassing system - if you don't get stuff when you level up in your existing class, you may as well go get a level of something else. Like how in 3.0 you'd take one level of Ranger for Track, TWF and Ambidexterity, then just take fighter and/or rogue or whatever.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;842982It's a shift among players in general, WoTC noted it during the 2e to 3.x days, actually.  They claimed according to one of the 4e preview books that the 3.x Monk was one of the best designed classes in terms of giving players goodies.  There was always something to look forward to, after hit points or BAB.  (They did acknowledge that most of the 'goodies' were kinda useless in a game, however.)

I think it is also commercially driven.  If you have players always choosing new abilities, feats, spells and other options you can sell them sourcebooks full of those options.  I remember for 3rd edition there was a bard and rogue book that was called "The Song and the Silence" or something but my friend always called it "The Lute and the Loot."  I liked his name better, but either way the books didn't really help our games be better.  I guess they helped Wizards make money though.  Getting players to buy supplements instead of just GMs definitely expands the potential customer base.

Quote from: NathanIW;843049I think it is also commercially driven.  If you have players always choosing new abilities, feats, spells and other options you can sell them sourcebooks full of those options.  I remember for 3rd edition there was a bard and rogue book that was called "The Song and the Silence" or something but my friend always called it "The Lute and the Loot."  I liked his name better, but either way the books didn't really help our games be better.  I guess they helped Wizards make money though.  Getting players to buy supplements instead of just GMs definitely expands the potential customer base.

They tried, but found out that anything with Player's Handbook sold better, much better.  Which is why they created the Player's Handbook 2, which sold much better than the Class Books.  In fact, it was found that people wanted more and more classes, which is why 4e had a glut of them, and why Pathfinder is creating them by the silliness.

Never had a problem with "Dead Levels" in my games. It's a silly term to me.

Most of my games have so much shit going on, levels, and "powerz" and stuff like that are pretty secondary to the game.

Those things, imo, should be nothing more than a mechanical expression of what transpires in the game. Presumeably your setting allows for whatever these classes offer in terms of "powers" and your levels represent the learning of those achievements.

Of course if you run a "DING! I just leveled I have new abilities!" style of game... then nothing I say will make a whole lot of sense, as we're playing different games.

Quote from: Orphan81;843044I forgot to bring up, one thing I never considered was how Magic Items could be considered "Rewards" for leveling up and removing the sting of "Dead Levels".

It's worth remembering that D&D 3.x spelled out exactly how much treasure PCs got per level, the percentage that should be magic items. After all, treasure gains shouldn't be tied to anything as irrelevant as the plot and character choices.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;843048Dead levels are mainly a concern in 3E or 5E because of their open multiclassing system - if you don't get stuff when you level up in your existing class, you may as well go get a level of something else. Like how in 3.0 you'd take one level of Ranger for Track, TWF and Ambidexterity, then just take fighter and/or rogue or whatever.

You have to love a game design approach where you loudly announce that players can do something now, then redesign the game to try and stop them from doing it.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;843073They tried, but found out that anything with Player's Handbook sold better, much better.  Which is why they created the Player's Handbook 2, which sold much better than the Class Books.  In fact, it was found that people wanted more and more classes, which is why 4e had a glut of them, and why Pathfinder is creating them by the silliness.

I found that the constant stream of new classes and feats gave my players a sense of continual dissatisfaction and buyer's remorse. Every month, there would be something that they would have chosen instead if it existed when they made their character.

The CCG model worked in Magic: the Gathering. You can make a new deck every week, or even have six decks that you pull out based on your mood. In D&D 3.x, you generally got one class, maybe one prestige class, and less than a dozen feats over a year or two of play. Showering players with an abundance of choices they would never get to use was a recipe for unhappiness.

Wow!  
And I thought the arguments about the use of the term "CON Stunned" in HERO were silly.  

Player complaints like this is just one more reason I will never again spend money on a Level based RPG.  AD&D was enough.

Quote from: Orphan81;843044Edit: I forgot to bring up, one thing I never considered was how Magic Items could be considered "Rewards" for leveling up and removing the sting of "Dead Levels">

Hell, that's my go-to. It doesn't even need to be a magic item. Or anything especially useful. A rogue I played a while back always had a pack full of odds and ends he was hanging on to for a metaphorical rainy day, some of which he'd picked up during the first or second adventure and held on to for over a year of real time before I thought of a use for 'em. And being clever like that was always far more satisfying than doing something according to class, even if I did it exceptionally well.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;843048Dead levels are mainly a concern in 3E or 5E because of their open multiclassing system - if you don't get stuff when you level up in your existing class, you may as well go get a level of something else. Like how in 3.0 you'd take one level of Ranger for Track, TWF and Ambidexterity, then just take fighter and/or rogue or whatever.

I think this is the truth; earlier D&D had plenty of "dead" levels where you got nothing special, but they were just milestones on the path to some good level. You couldn't get the good level without first getting the dead levels below it. Multiclassing as a heavyweight feat changed that.

The concept of geting some shiny new ability on every level is a bit ambivalent - of course it is nice to get new stuff to do, so on an individual level, "dead levels" are clearly inferior to those that grants the character some new ability. On a higher level though, more abilities necessarily requires a more complex, if not allright cluttered system and consequently lead to a mechanical bloat.

I would blame the increase of internet-based discussions about character-optimisation (and that sub-culture that seems more concerned with building characters instead of actually playing them) for the increased concern about "dead levels". People who rarely play (if at all) aren't particularly affected by a not particularly streamlined gameplay.  

However, I think it is possible that there is also a certain double  standard at work here: after all, clerics and magic-users have always gained increasingly shiny new abilities on every new level.

Quote from: Hyper-Man;843164Wow!  
And I thought the arguments about the use of the term "CON Stunned" in HERO were silly.  

Player complaints like this is just one more reason I will never again spend money on a Level based RPG.  AD&D was enough.

Level based works fine. Its the at times loony ideals of the players that can skew things way way off kilter.

I wonder how these morons would handle a game like Tunnels & Trolls which is wall to wall dead levels.

Quote from: Omega;843304I wonder how these morons would handle a game like Tunnels & Trolls which is wall to wall dead levels.

Maybe by avoiding it?

Quote from: Christopher Brady;843073They tried, but found out that anything with Player's Handbook sold better, much better.  Which is why they created the Player's Handbook 2, which sold much better than the Class Books.  In fact, it was found that people wanted more and more classes, which is why 4e had a glut of them, and why Pathfinder is creating them by the silliness.

Been that way since Ranger and Paladin, Assassin and Druid

Quote from: Beagle;843291However, I think it is possible that there is also a certain double  standard at work here: after all, clerics and magic-users have always gained increasingly shiny new abilities on every new level.

That's true, but one thing I always found was that more mechanically-inclined players were drawn to those classes and casual players wanted nothing to do with them. Adding new shinies at every level of every class is providing no space in your game for casual players. Those casual players are less likely to be chatting in game forums, so its easy for them to be completely forgotten, even though they have made up a decent percentage of people in my game groups over the years.

I didn't use to care, but 3E convinced me this was a problem.  Did you ever level up in 3E?  The first time I did it, I couldn't believe it.  I had to go and rework half my sheet.  Skills, attack bonuses, etc.  Heaven forfend you had a stat bonus increase, you had to go down the entire list of skills and play with the numbers.  4E made you adjust literally every number on your sheet.  And none of it mattered.

I like LotFP where the Fighter is the person who gains attack bonuses every level, and everyone else skips those.  That feels really fucking awesome, because no one else is doing it.  Great example of a "small but meaningful" change.  

But yeah, I didn't used to give a shit, but count me into "make this number adjustment feel cool" camp.  If you're just giving everything +1 and all the enemies you're expected to fight get +1 on the backend, fuck off.