The Level System

This one started over coffee. DarkgarX mentioned to me that once levels were put into the game, the dynamic of the game changes from story to advancement. The feeling goes from "what am I doing in the game world" to "how can I get points?"

Now, admittedly, this is a pretty negative view of level-based games, but it is an interesting "advancement dynamic" that I am sure is present in all games. Everyone wants to do well, and everyone wants to get levels or skill points in a non-level based system to get rewarded at the end of the night and advance their characters. So this pressure is present in any game system with an advancement system present.

But do levels change things?

Levels, the Elephant in the Room

I always found it funny that levels are the one thing you can't talk about in-game in-character, yet in D&D they control everything, from character power to spells to monster hit dice. My Pathfinder world design, Realms of Proteus, tries to do away with that and allows in-game characters to speak freely of their level and stats, so there is a fun bit of power and meta gaming going on there, but for the most part we use euphemisms, "seasons" or some other sort of relative explanation of power and strength.

But do levels change things? Is the primary focus on hit-points and levels a factor in making the game more mathematical and cut-throat?

In a pure story-based game, you have this outward focus on how your character fits into the current story and overall game world. Your stats can be increased, and the focus of improvement is to allow your character to better be able to influence the story. A higher persuasion skill lets you persuade more NPCs, and thus your influence over that story grows. You can think of story based games as a fight to control the ever-shifting narrative between the players and the referee-controlled NPCs.

Levels. Hit dice. Tactical combat. Damage per turn. Whiff rate. Condition spells. Attacks of opportunity. Advantage and disadvantage. Here we go with traditional D&D style level based games, and a whole host of hard mathematical statistics comes into play. Not only do you have to be good at controlling the narrative, you have to be able to know how this hard math works, and master the combat rules. Levels make this easier, but also complicate things as you go up.

Levels vs. Narrative

Do levels fight the narrative push and pull? They certainly distract from it a bit, because all of a sudden you are not purely worried about narrative influence, to do good and control the narrative, you need to master the combat system too. You need levels to get better at this system, because roleplaying matters little in raising combat power. You need XP to get better, and you need to defeatefoes and solve problems.

Note how D&D type games lump problem solving and combat in the same pile of XP. If you solve problems with roleplaying and get XP, you get better at controlling the narrative (roleplaying skills), but you also get better in combat. You could have a 20th level character who just got roleplaying XP in their career and never touched a weapon, yet this person would be a better fighter than 99% of the people on the planet. You could have the inverse, a combat-only barbarian who never spoke a word being a diplomatic master negotiator at the narrative-influencing social skills just because of their level.

I think it is this connection between the ability for a high-level character to influence the narrative and the "let's have combat for XP" part of the game that troubles me. In a purely story-driven narrative game without levels, all you are doing with advancement is ticking up the skills you want. If you just want to be a talker, all you buy are social skills. If you just want to be a fighter, you work on fighting skills. Levels remove that granularity and ability to specialize, now yes, there are more social style classes in the D&D style games, like bard or thief, but those classes typically force you into a skill-monkey role and take away your ability to excel at combat.

D&D's classes make those choices for you.

You want to fight? Be a fighter! You want to be a fighter who excels at narrative control and social situations? You are out of luck, roll a rogue or a bard. Yes, as a fighter you can put skill points and feats towards social abilities, but typically (Pathfinder is a good example), the more skill-point heavy and social-focused classes are going to have an easier time of buying these feats and skills.

In D&D, King Arthur is King Arthur because he can kill very well, not because he has the skills and social power over the kingdom's narrative that a king should have. There's a disconnect there, and a simplification that I feel makes pure-story based games focused on the narrative a better choice for pure roleplayers than D&D style games.

Levels vs. Storytelling

I have had pure roleplayers at my table who played D&D 3-5 because that's what our group played. I always felt bad for them because they could care less about this mess of combat rules and gaining levels, and they just wanted to have fun. We did a good job accommodating them, but the game we played (D&D 4) required an attention to builds and rules that I felt turned them off to the whole game. We had some that loved the battle chess aspect, and we still like this part of the game, but the combat and level rules felt like an artificial limitation put over the game for players who were more interested in narrative control than "kill for treasure and XP."

If your players are more concerned with mathematical concerns and tactical battles, D&D works better, and I will go as far to say that D&D 4 works the best for players who want a Warhammer style figure tactical combat experience. D&D 5 tries to bring the story back to the table, yet it still has the baggage of a tactical game based on resource management, and a level system that connects narrative control and combat ability into one lump sum of XP. D&D style systems also pre-choose your character's lifetime ability to perform narrative control and combat contributions from game #1 with your choice of class.

Yes, you can switch careers and multiclass in mid-stream, but King Arthur is not a bard nor a rogue.

Answers?

I don't feel there is a good answer for this in the modern D&D style games. Again, we are hit with the abstraction of the class and combat systems, and this limits our choices. Of course fighters are the ones with the swords that never think their way out of a situation. The game assumes "fighters fight" and gimps their skills and gives them the best damage output and choices in swinging swords. I would love to see a D&D system "off the rails" that let people be people, reward skills used, and got rid of the abstract class and level system entirely.

Yes, Legend, Runequest, and other games do this, and they do it well.

There is a choice here of how much control you feel you should have (as a player) over your control over what happens at the table. If I choose to be a social character, I don't want my choices limited to, "well, pick a social class and suck at combat for as long as you have that character." If for a couple sessions I want to improve combat skills, let me improve combat skills. If for some others, I want to be the master of parlay, let me do that and improve my social prowess.

This is not about being a "fan" of a game, I collect them all and love reading them, so count me in as a fan for them all, as my shelves will attest. What this is about is taking a look inside yourself and asking, "am I getting rewarded for the things I want to do at the table?" Does a game force you into a role that later on you may regret or limit your contributions? Yes, a good referee can adjust things and give chances for everyone to have fun, but if your game takes a turn for the political, can your combat-focused character adapt?

It is again about understanding what each game does best, and finding games that fit your view of gaming and how your contributions are rewarded. We have moved beyond the "network effect" where every game has to be a modern version of D&D, and we are moving into an era where games are designed around a almost niche "way it plays" and the reward and contribution systems are designed to fit that game. You see this in videogaming with indie gaming. The big-box games are always there like the Call of Duties and D&D games, but a huge market is developing for custom and unique experiences that are off the level system tracks and as diverse as the players in our hobby.