Quote from: John Morrow;365450I would add that "levels" also let a player know how well they are doing, allow two players to compare achievements, and let a player keep a sort of "top score".  In other words, it lets players compare their achievements and have a measure by which they can "win" in competition with others.

Thank heavens someone else has said this.

Levels are a palpable measure of your character's (and thus your own) success.

It's also an easier measure of your characters success than, say, percentage values.

Imaginary Conversation:

Player 1 - My Priest is level 4! Suck on that!
Player 2 - Yeah, well my Priest has a Ritual value of 56, a Prayer value of 29 and his Mace value is 74.25!

The kicker is that there's no reason why the Level 4 Priest doesn't actually have derived values like those that Player 2 has. But the Level mechanism gives you a bundle of stuff and is far more intuitive as a measure IMO.

I liked the way Mekton allowed two different types of characters -- the Luke Skywalker/Rick Hunter type who starts out callow and inexperienced but gains and improves quickly over the course of play, and the Han Solo/Roy Fokker type who starts out with considerable skill and experience but doesn't improve much beyond that during play, i.e. the D&D model on the one hand and the Traveller model on the other -- and lets the players choose at the time of char-gen which one they want. More games should do that.

Quote from: jibbajibba;365323Why do fantasy games adopt a level model? Is it just D&D heritage?

It's a tradition which dates back to at least 1971. The original pre-D&D concept was that characters could be divided into generic piles of (1) Flunky, (2) Hero, and (3) Super Hero. The notion was that a character started off as a flunky until you did something significant (no XP back then) and then got to fight as a Hero. Another something significant and you might be promoted to Super Hero. Not a lot of advancement back then, and the play was the goal.

Historically, this has developed into a progression ladder. OD&D gave rules for the first 8-12 levels or so with general guidelines after that. AD&D expanded the progression to 20 levels. Epic 3E expanded it to 30. I'm not sure if 4E has an upper limit, but it goes at least to 30. The point is that as the game has evolved it has created more and more rungs to the ladder (mostly higher rungs and not just more of them) but the basic ladder model has remained as a core element of D&D.

Certainly you could design a RPG without levels, but it would be RuneQuest or
CoC or something other than D&D.

The deep question of the thread is: why do characters in fantasy games look forward to getting markedly better in terms of personal power or ability?

And, yes, the answer is largely due to the influence of D&D. Fantasy games, more than others, are reactions to D&D. And their main audience, more than others, is people who are used to D&D conventions but are looking for "something else".

Doesn't matter if you're talking about levels per se or a more skill-based game like RQ, Dragonquest, or The Fantasy Trip. Characters who last a long time become much more badass, in and off themselves. However the idea of starting at zero is pretty much a D&D thing--other fantasy games from early on gave you a starting characters who was much more competent, mechanically, than a D&D 1st-level character. E.g. TFT.

So, why else? Partly because the whole fantasy genre is atavistic and antisocial. You succeed because of stuff that's built into your actual body & mind, as well as stuff you can carry, instead of your social connections and non-moveable wealth. And you identify with those things, too. So: character development = more HP, better attack roll, more spells, and more magic items.

This is further emphasized by the types of adventures typical of fantasy, beginning with dungeon-crawling (you can't take a space ship or a castle into a dungeon) and continuing with the hexcrawl. Not that everybody has to do these things, but when the center of gravity of players lies in that area, it pulls everyone, both written rules and culture of play, toward it.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;365544The deep question of the thread is: why do characters in fantasy games look forward to getting markedly better in terms of personal power or ability?

Because it's a game.

Maybe that's why i find other genres difficult to get into (see my thread Triumphant/Tragic/Suck) - the advancement mechanics are less marked.

Levelling up is something i look forward to. It's a game, therefore i want to get better at it. This is one reason why i don't want totally balanced encounters all the time. Once i've earned those levels, i want to feel the awe of mowing through lesser beings once in a while.

Quote from: JibbaSo with that in mind.
i) Why do fantasy games adopt a level model? Is it just D&D heritage?
ii) Why do people have a go at 4e for starting characters tough (whilst longing for the halcyon days when they could die from tripping up and often lost 2 or 3 characters a week) when they are happy to play a harden ex-merc in a cyberpunk game or a superhero that can fly and spurt flame from their fingertips? Aren't we looking to play in games where our PCs can do the same stuff as characters we see in movies or read about it books? Is it all Frodo's fault?
iii) How does D&D get away with hitpoints because its sword and arrows even though the same players woudl balk at it if it was bombs and bullets?

I'm sure we all have good answers.  
I figured I'd take a shot while I had a minute.

1)  Fantasy games take to the level and class system (I see you comparing this to skill based, but class based vs skill based is what this particular part is as much about) due to the D&D heritage, but much of that heritage is based on the combat mentaility---it did spring from a wargame, and hence Estar's Hero and Superheor comments are placed in context.  All the D&D/T&T archetypes were based on their effectiveness/place in combat.  Runequest was not merely a different ruleset, it was the first example of designers 'going gritty'.
So much of it is just heritage, yes.  But the reason most current or scifi games go to skill based is that same preference for gritty/realistic play, as opposed to level/class based.  

2) Similar reason, different scale.  Many of the people who complain about the uber-heroism of 4e are the people who are tending towards the 'gritty/realistic' camp.  AS you mentioned modelling our literary heroes/villains, It's a great game for modelling Arthur and Merlin, or for those who want to play a medieval version of a comic book.  It just does not model a more mortal scale well.

3) I have no idea, Jibba.  My history of house ruling and game design I think originally stemmed at reducing HP and adjusting the reality and damage/vs/HP ratios.  I don't hate the mechanism of Hit Points, I have never liked the rate of gain.

Quote from: One Horse Town;365547Because it's a game.

Maybe that's why i find other genres difficult to get into (see my thread Triumphant/Tragic/Suck) - the advancement mechanics are less marked.

Levelling up is something i look forward to. It's a game, therefore i want to get better at it. This is one reason why i don't want totally balanced encounters all the time. Once i've earned those levels, i want to feel the awe of mowing through lesser beings once in a while.

Yes, that too. Possibly one reason that fantasy is most popular is because it can most easily sustain the concept of improving your character by leaps and bounds, and personal character improvement can impact the game in the most straightforward way. Conversely if we take as a given that fantasy is the most popular, then it's going to be pulled in that direction by the mass of the people.

Good answers in here and I think we all tend to agree that D&D generated a fantasy genre that has rippled down the sucessive games. I can see that the whole 4e thing goes beyond the characters start tough into characters are universally 'superpowered' but linked back to the whole thread on Lethality that was running on Pundit's forum. A lot of players want first level to be a bitch they like a rate of death to run at about 80% per level for the first 4 or 5 levels as it gives them a feeling of success. They feel they earnt 6th level.
What do the same players think in a game where you come in at 6th level and you really ain't ever go to go much beyond 8th.

As an aside and not really my main concern, I really hate the levels show how well you are doing argument. A driver of RPGs is they are supposed to be more cooperative. No body wins. Now we all know that some players might 'win' but they don't win by getting up levels faster. They win by running the tactics or pulling the critical hit out at the right moment or making that awesome sacrifice where they actually get killed loosing all their levels but 'win' the game anyway.

I have zero problem running a campaign where everyone starts at 5th level or 10th or 15th. Just teh same way that in  WoD game I would make the Pcs tougher. I want t/he PCs to be cool to enjoy flexing their muscle will it stop a couple from dying? nope. Will it make the game easier nah.

Quote from: jibbajibba;365578As an aside and not really my main concern, I really hate the levels show how well you are doing argument. A driver of RPGs is they are supposed to be more cooperative. No body wins. Now we all know that some players might 'win' but they don't win by getting up levels faster. They win by running the tactics or pulling the critical hit out at the right moment or making that awesome sacrifice where they actually get killed loosing all their levels but 'win' the game anyway.

I think that you are reading those posts on this subject just a little too literally.  My impression was that people generally like to have a yardstick by which to compare and contrast, and the level-based system is intuitively easier for this function.  Then again, I could be completely off base as well.

Quote from: Drohem;365628My impression was that people generally like to have a yardstick by which to compare and contrast, and the level-based system is intuitively easier for this function.

I know that impulse must be there, the MMOs are full of those sorts of penis contests... but I've never gotten even the slightest enjoyment out of that in a tabletop RPG.
If I wanted competition I'd play a proper wargame... and sometimes I do... but when I'm doing RPG I want cooperative play.
I'm probably in the minority on that though.

Quote from: Drohem;365628I think that you are reading those posts on this subject just a little too literally.  My impression was that people generally like to have a yardstick by which to compare and contrast, and the level-based system is intuitively easier for this function.  Then again, I could be completely off base as well.

Correct, as i thought my imaginary conversation relayed (obviously not).

It's easier to gauge power via levels than other measures.

Quote from: One Horse Town;365705Correct, as i thought my imaginary conversation relayed (obviously not).

It's easier to gauge power via levels than other measures.

I'll agree this has some small amount of bearing.  As a GM in a skill based, I've actually taken to keeping track of total unadjusted exp so I have a rough idea of how the different characters compare.

Quote from: One Horse Town;365547Because it's a game.

Maybe that's why i find other genres difficult to get into (see my thread Triumphant/Tragic/Suck) - the advancement mechanics are less marked.

Levelling up is something i look forward to. It's a game, therefore i want to get better at it. This is one reason why i don't want totally balanced encounters all the time. Once i've earned those levels, i want to feel the awe of mowing through lesser beings once in a while.

To expand these thoughts,  D&D had a winner in the form of the dungeon to provide structure for people's campaigns when starting out. Traveller had a similar easy to understand structure (the merchant campaign) but lacks meaningful in-game advancement.

The dungeon + levels allowed D&D to maintain it's leading position. It is the also one of the few aspects of the game to be carried over from edition to edition despite otherwise radical changes in the basic rules.

Now D&D can be used to run more complex campaigns where not everything based on level advancement. Not every adventure (or even most) are run in dungeons. Like most roleplaying games it is flexible enough to handle a large variety of situations.

Quote from: estar;365714To expand these thoughts,  D&D had a winner in the form of the dungeon to provide structure for people's campaigns when starting out. Traveller had a similar easy to understand structure (the merchant campaign) but lacks meaningful in-game advancement.

The dungeon + levels allowed D&D to maintain it's leading position. It is the also one of the few aspects of the game to be carried over from edition to edition despite otherwise radical changes in the basic rules.

Now D&D can be used to run more complex campaigns where not everything based on level advancement. Not every adventure (or even most) are run in dungeons. Like most roleplaying games it is flexible enough to handle a large variety of situations.

On a somewhat anecdotal level, throughout my gaming life and game design forays, I have always believed in later variations of the psychological dynamic to improve and grow, as a group and on a persoanl level.  After watching player after player display some of their greatest satisfaction in their earned character growth, it was one of the game dynamics I believe translates easiest to the gaming table.
So it is also one of the few sacred cows of game design for my table.  I was very careful to include smaller scale but regular level mechanisms, because I think this is one of the greatest positive player reinforcers for a campaign.

Quote from: LordVreeg;365708I'll agree this has some small amount of bearing.  As a GM in a skill based, I've actually taken to keeping track of total unadjusted exp so I have a rough idea of how the different characters compare.

What is the purpose of this comparison?