Do you prefer games, where the starting characters must climb their way up out of the mud blood and shit of the game setting; or do you prefer games, where the starting characters are big damn heroes from the start?

My default is that the first character a player plays in the campaign has to claw out of the incompetence zone. However, this doesn't take very long, maybe 3-4 short adventures or 2 longer ones. That goes on until the character reaches basic competence.  Though keep in mind that when I say incompetence zone, I really mean it.  That basic competence is functional, but no where near big hero yet.

Once there, two things happen. Rate of advancement beings to gradually slow. And death has a ratchet effect in that a replacement character gets to start at a new floor (as those are reached.  Death still hurts, because the floor is below what the rest of the group is doing, but there is a limit on how far below.  Plus, my system (or house ruled versions of previous systems) allow lower-powered characters to gain bonus experience, which tends to allow them to come close to catching up. Since I run system that can tolerate a certain amount of power differences, the floor/catch up rules don't need to be perfect.

Quote from: Jam The MF on January 13, 2024, 07:15:15 PM
Do you prefer games, where the starting characters must climb their way up out of the mud blood and shit of the game setting; or do you prefer games, where the starting characters are big damn heroes from the start?

I like _Call of Cthulhu_, which isn't so much that characters climb their way out as they constantly stay in the blood and shit. It's good when games have their focus. On the other hand, I also like games where characters start out as small heroes and grow into bigger heroes - like Buffy the Vampire Slayer; and some where the characters start as big heroes (and possibly grow into even bigger heroes).

I'm OK with zero-to-hero leveling, but it has generally felt implausible to me in practice, especially if it happens over the course of a dozen or so adventures at most weeks apart. When I have superheroes, they have an in-character origin story about where their amazing powers come from. With zero-to-hero, it's always felt out-of-character when the players talk about what will happen when they become super-powerful after more adventures.

With more moderate XP, the gains seem more in-character.

Levels 1-2 I find PCs too weak (in B/X); I level them up quickly or start at level 3.

It depends on how the advancement system is structured.

Something like D&D, WFRP, Dark Heresy, etc, I never jump ahead. You start as assistant helper to the shit-shoveler, and by the time you're Lord Commander of the Realm it really means something.

Something where you slowly gain upgrades, but finish largely the same as how you started, there's no real way to mechanically limit them. Climbing in an organization/acquiring wealth and prestige are of course possible.

As a GM I'm not punishing, but I do have expectations. Much like how I am as a dad, I know what you're capable of, and my universe will punish you for performing below your potential. It will also reward you knocking it out of the park.

When I was young, it was all about the power gaming and leveling up.  I'm a little wiser now and appreciate games like Traveller/Cepheus Engine and Fate where you start out as competent.

Greetings!

I always prefer the game begin with Characters that are mud-covered peasants.
Campaigns are as much about the Journey as they are getting to the Destination.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

I am a strong believer that a starting level character should have a basic level of competence in the skills inherent to the campaign type. So in a generic fantasy adventure game, every character should be able to fight a little, climb a little, sneak a little, swim a little, know a little bushcraft, etc. That's because these are basic skills for a fantasy adventurer, and a character that doesn't have them simply isn't competent to do the job.

I'm also generally in agreement with JHKim, that the 0-to-hero model just isn't plausible the way most campaigns play out. I tend to run pretty action-packed campaigns, and my last two campaigns have been hexcrawls (which means tracking events day by day and sometimes hour by hour). In my Dolmenwood campaign, it's taken 5 sessions to get to the point where most of the PCs have enough XP to reach level two, but those five sessions have only taken around 72 hours of in-game time.  In my previous campaign, the PCs went from level 1 to level 6 over the course of around three or four months game-time (despite that being over a year of real-world time). Even in other people's campaigns I've played, I've seen characters go from 1st to 8th level over the course of maybe a year or two.

A lot of it comes down to the ambitions of the campaign. If the idea is that the campaign encompasses the entire adventuring career of the PCs, the way the Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser stories do, then the D&D style level system probably makes sense. I suspect that requires an episodic campaign structure or a mechanic like Pendragon's campaigning seasons. My campaigns (and IME most people's) are more of a dense vertical slice of the characters' lives, essentially just a long episode in what is ostensibly a much longer career. For that I'd prefer a system where characters start out pretty competent and grow only in small increments.

I prefer games where the players build up power over time, but that being said I'm not a big fan of the level-0 funnel. It's a cool idea, but more often than not I'd just prefer the players started at level 1 with some sort of minor background information (social class, regional origin, and one significant life event).

Yes.
There are a lot of different kinds of games, with different play styles.

Quote from: Jam The MF on January 13, 2024, 07:15:15 PM
Do you prefer games, where the starting characters must climb their way up out of the mud blood and shit of the game setting; or do you prefer games, where the starting characters are big damn heroes from the start?

No preference.

I can dig a game literally from starting with nothing but a loincloth. (Dark Sun) to starting at 9th level with established characters because we want to get to the high level stuff. We've more than put in our dues playing lowbies.

If it's a game that's new to us, then I fully expect to start at the lowest tier. Otherwise you'd be missing the experience of playing a chunk of the game.

I don't have a problem playing Traveller or Gamma World, where you don't "level." I don't need to hear that electronic "ping" periodically; I'm role-playing.

OTOH if you want to plan a higher-level campaign from the start, I don't have a problem with rolling up, say, a 5th level character. But if the system has too many bells and whistles then I'm not going to want to start out with a bunch of options that are dumped on me cold, all at once. I don't like it, and if you compel me to play anyway then I'll pick something simple with passive-only abilities.

I'm here to role-play.

As far as the time to level, I don't care for the WotC style where the only brake on the calendar is GM fiat.  I prefer that the rules make it such that some things take some time, which slows the runaway level train down considerably.  Don't really care what the mechanic is, as long as it works to that purpose.  AD&D training costs usually manage it, at least indirectly.  Dragon Quest has explicit times to learn new things, which gets longer the more powerful the thing. 

It doesn't necessarily need to be "realistic" either, just slow it down some. My own game is geared to make full recovery happen in weeks instead of days.  Sure, if people are only partially down, and always recover in a week, that's not realistic.  But at least it means getting to Level 5 is going to take several months of game time instead of a few days.  And it does slow down at higher levels.  And it means that resource depletion on an adventure is really present.  I could string it out even more, but at some point you get players waiting around while their comrades heal, and if it goes on too long in game time, someone always wants to do a little adventure on the side, which puts us right back to someone doing something every day.

I like basic competence to experienced/highly competent as a starting point. For most DnD editions that means 2nd and 3rd level, 1st in 4e. Dragonbane starting PCs also hit my sweet spot. Not a huge fan of starting as shit covered peasant, unless the game is about being shit covered peasants maybe. Heroic fantasy PCs should have an heroic spark, while Sword and Sorcery PCs start out highly competent.

I was looking back at a 10 level ruleset, that gave 1st level characters:

(1 hit die + con modifier) x 3, hit points at 1st level.

That sounds like big damn heroes, to me?  Tough and resilient.  I guess it also depends upon how common healing is, too?  I'll go back and look at healing, in that ruleset.

But this thread is about personal preferences among forum members; not that ruleset.  I Don't want to run a 1 hit point character; but 30+ hit points at first level, sounds like you're really starting out at 3rd level?  To each their own, I suppose?