Quote from: Awsyme;800207Eh... maybe?  I think they definitely get more determined but fictionally you could argue they go from innocence and a focus on pies to realizing sometimes you have to fight to protect the things they love (e.g. much like world war 1 servicemen).  The hobbits don't show off sudden excellent swordsmanship - they fight a bit but it tends to be a small person doing what they can such as biblo stabbing the spider by sticking his sword upright and hoping. Sure they toughen up from all the walking and come home with better gear but I don't get a sense they're suddenly unusually better at killing people.

The hobbits cleanse the Shire without help, facing down the likes of Bill Ferny with ease. Merry and Pippin are even taller, as Sam notes when he sees them again. You think Sam could have handled Cirith Ungol the day he left the Shire? That Merry could have stabbed a Nazgul the first time they encountered one if he had had a suitable weapon? The personal growth and determination is the leveling up. The sword, the armor, the magic items and other gear are all concrete signals of their increased ability; they get these things because they are worthy of them, not the reverse.

QuoteVery few fictional characters often change their skill sets - its their personalities that tend to alter over the course of novels as they learn, love and hate.  Hell - in George R R Martin some of the characters actually get worse off physically as they suffer injuries.

It's hard to judge, since they don't tend to face exactly the same foes. Mages are easier to see the advance because of qualitative differences in their spell repertoire; unless a warrior has signature advanced techniques, we don't see the same thing.

QuoteProbably the only exception that matches the usually huge jumps that appears in most level based games are apprentice magicians and protagonist types.  Garion goes from farmboy to world shattering magician because 'prophecy' and Luke similarly goes from farmboy to force god because 'bloodline'.  What's unusual in a way (to me at least) is most virtual and pen and paper rpgs treat those characters as the defacto standard rather than the exceptions.

Lots of fiction has characters practicing something to achieve a goal, and getting promotions in whatever organization they are in. It's true that you most often see this in younger characters advancing as they grow up (e.g., every student in Harry Potter), because the older characters are already closer to full level and not likely to advance much more, let alone quickly, and advancement in RPGs is generally much faster than in genre fiction.

I know Ive mentioned this before, but Farscape is a great example of characters "levelling up" over time, and pretty much matches the classic D&D class archetypes.

Quote from: Bren;800225A lot of that is the game aspect. Starting relatively weak and getting progressively tougher adds a score keeping aspect that most people enjoy and there is the added benefit that the players can learn more about the system as their character increases in power rather than needing to understand all the spells, bells, and whistles from the get go.

Yes, that is very, very popular. Of course, characters can change as a direct consequence of play without an "advancement system" - as in the original Metamorphosis Alpha, for instance - but advancement systems are generally expected and desired.