I would personally hate any campaign where I played 10 sessions or so between levels.
Although I do understand this... sometimes players determine the pace of leveling. I have had sessions in which almost all my players were doing was sitting around RPing with each other. That's fine, but it generally doesn't earn XP. In some games, XP comes from encounters. In some, like mine, it comes from attaining milestones. In others, it comes when parts of the story conclude. And sitting around RPing with each other, usually doesn't get any of those elements advanced. So unless the DM just agreed to an "XP per session" or per hour rule, as players, if you want to level up, you kind of have to *do* stuff.
Now, none of my players have complained, but my point is, you can't just sit in the tavern drinking ale and shooting the breeze for a couple of sessions and expect to level up. You have to go out there and do stuff. (Again, unless it was agreed beforehand that sitting in the tavern would gain you XP.)
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Leveling pace varies widely. It is player, DM and campaign dependent.
Players from previous editions are quite used to very slow leveling. Players exposed to adventurers league or running WotC published content may have a much faster approach to leveling.
I've run some campaigns for AL players - DoIP and CoS. Leveling was reasonably quick but slower in general that the AL hardcover guidance. I am currently running a campaign for some friends from 1e days and the leveling rate is about 1/2 of that suggested in the modules from GoS and TftYP - most of those award a level at the end of the adventure - sometimes including leveling up midway (like sunless citadel and forge of fury). Even that sometimes seems a bit fast for them.
In particular, there is a bit of a disconnect between in game passage of time and advancement. Some folks feel it is immersion breaking to level up every couple of adventures since each could only take a couple of days of ingame time. For example, in my CoS campaign, characters reached about level 12 by the end, the game took about 9 months or so (33 sessions once/week - missed one or two along the way) - however, in game passage of time was probably a few weeks at most and likely less.
How important is it to decide what level the PCs should/will be for a particular event? Should I sketch the plot climax with a character level in mind? Would it be better to wait and see how the campaign goes?
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I live with several severe autoimmune conditions. If I don’t get back to you right away, it’s probably because I’m not feeling well.
How important is it to decide what level the PCs should/will be for a particular event? Should I sketch the plot climax with a character level in mind? Would it be better to wait and see how the campaign goes?
I wouldn't say that it's important, but it can help. For example, if you have a particularly hard battle planned and you have a zealot barbarian in the group you know that from level 14 onwards that barbarian is basically unkillable when it rages so if you wait until level 14 then you know that at least one cahracter can stay in the fight for some time.
At the same time you will need to have a way to avoid an event if that event relies on the characters being a certain level. When it comes to the climax and the BBE you can always create a foe that basically "levels up" with the characters. I do that sometimes when I GM.
I am literally doing what you are doing. I have a large over-arcing story that completes the goals of my player's backstory while also having a cool story. Currently the part is at level 3. We are 14 sessions in, and I intend to keep the party at level three for a little bit. I level them up based off of story. If they complete a big part of the story, then they level up.
The longest I have had, a 4 year campaign 4-8 hours most weeks we had reached level 14 by the time we brought it to an end due to us finishing university we where not bothered about leveling it was just all about the story and so we did a milestone campaign and trusted the DM to level us at the right story moments.
As a DM I have just started a campaign, players have told me they are coming into it anticipating it will let forever and not to worry about rushing leveling and instead just make a cool story.
But another campaign we went level 1-20 in 14 months, that was 1-3 sessions a week depending on work schedules and was written with the nywntion of getting us to level 14 quickly and then pacing it nicely from there to let us really enjoy our higher level abilities.
So I would say don’t plan, in face as a DM I never plan out to level 20, mainly because the players will, well be players. I scope out roughly my first tier (level 1-6) but planning wise I focus on the next 2-3 sessions. Yes I have story ideas written down as bullet points but until I actually get to dealing with it it remains no more then that.
My players just reached level 13 after 93 sessions, which took us about 2 years and 2 months. So 93 sessions over 112ish weeks. Up until now I've been using milestone leveling with the guideline that the players should gain a level when the number of total sessions played equals the sum of their levels, including the new level. It works out that they play the number of sessions equal to their next level to get to that level (get to level 9, play 10 more sessions to get to level 10). So:
Level 2: 3 sessions (2 +1)
Level 3: 6 sessions (3+2+1)
Level 4: 10 sessions (4+3+2+1)
...
Level 13: 91 sessions
This is just a guideline though, and sometimes they level up slightly before or after the mark based on story beats/completion of major arcs and objectives. For example, when their upgrade from level 9 to 10 took 14 sessions since they screwed around and spent a lot of sessions just doing RP, i shortened the time from level 10 to level 11 afterwards. It has worked really well thus far and has allowed me to pace the story really well, since obviously there should be more time between levels 12 and 13 than there were between levels 4 and 5 seeing as quest complexity and difficulty generally increases at higher levels. I plan on taking the campaign to somewhere between level 17 and 20 but from here on out I'm going to tie leveling much closer to story beats than to sessions played, since they're kind of in the endgame of the campaign, hopefully leveling them no more than every 10ish sessions.
So all in all we'll probably clock in around 150ish sessions, 3ish years for the whole campaign
My players just reached level 13 after 93 sessions, which took us about 2 years and 2 months. So 93 sessions over 112ish weeks. Up until now I've been using milestone leveling with the guideline that the players should gain a level when the number of total sessions played equals the sum of their levels, including the new level. It works out that they play the number of sessions equal to their next level to get to that level (get to level 9, play 10 more sessions to get to level 10). So:
Level 2: 3 sessions (2 +1)
Level 3: 6 sessions (3+2+1)
Level 4: 10 sessions (4+3+2+1)
...
Level 13: 91 sessions
This is just a guideline though, and sometimes they level up slightly before or after the mark based on story beats/completion of major arcs and objectives. For example, when their upgrade from level 9 to 10 took 14 sessions since they screwed around and spent a lot of sessions just doing RP, i shortened the time from level 10 to level 11 afterwards. It has worked really well thus far and has allowed me to pace the story really well, since obviously there should be more time between levels 12 and 13 than there were between levels 4 and 5 seeing as quest complexity and difficulty generally increases at higher levels. I plan on taking the campaign to somewhere between level 17 and 20 but from here on out I'm going to tie leveling much closer to story beats than to sessions played, since they're kind of in the endgame of the campaign, hopefully leveling them no more than every 10ish sessions.
So all in all we'll probably clock in around 150ish sessions, 3ish years for the whole campaign
I really like this approach, I levelled my players to level 3 over about 8 sessions, it would have been quicker but they took longer in game time then i expected to clear the first adventure I gave them. Personally tend to try to get players to level 3 as quickly as makes sense to the story simply because they are so very squishy at levels 1 and 2 all it takes is a couple of bad dice rolls (I roll all dice open table) and you get one or 2 dead PC's. But I think I might take a roughly similar approach to you, my party is 8 players strong and we are 100% remote so game time is a little slower, so I may stretch things out a little so they level after completing the quest they are on when they reach that session. But generally I like this, it saves me working out how many "encounters" each level should be, and trying to then gauge if one encounter is bigger or smaller relative to another.
My players just reached level 13 after 93 sessions, which took us about 2 years and 2 months. So 93 sessions over 112ish weeks. Up until now I've been using milestone leveling with the guideline that the players should gain a level when the number of total sessions played equals the sum of their levels, including the new level. It works out that they play the number of sessions equal to their next level to get to that level (get to level 9, play 10 more sessions to get to level 10). So:
Level 2: 3 sessions (2 +1)
Level 3: 6 sessions (3+2+1)
Level 4: 10 sessions (4+3+2+1)
...
Level 13: 91 sessions
This is just a guideline though, and sometimes they level up slightly before or after the mark based on story beats/completion of major arcs and objectives. For example, when their upgrade from level 9 to 10 took 14 sessions since they screwed around and spent a lot of sessions just doing RP, i shortened the time from level 10 to level 11 afterwards. It has worked really well thus far and has allowed me to pace the story really well, since obviously there should be more time between levels 12 and 13 than there were between levels 4 and 5 seeing as quest complexity and difficulty generally increases at higher levels. I plan on taking the campaign to somewhere between level 17 and 20 but from here on out I'm going to tie leveling much closer to story beats than to sessions played, since they're kind of in the endgame of the campaign, hopefully leveling them no more than every 10ish sessions.
So all in all we'll probably clock in around 150ish sessions, 3ish years for the whole campaign
I really like this idea, it seems a fair length and an easy way to keep track.
Im probably gonna kinda try using this as a guideline. Thanks!
There’s no way to determine how many sessions that would be. My advice, however, would be to focus on an adventure within each tier of playing. You don’t know if your players will sprint off towards different hooks, so I would focus on a local issue 1-4, then something new for the next tier etc.
you can still tie things together with a BBEG in the end, but it gives you the freedom to change things on the fly.
So this year we hit our 2 year anniversary in February, and it coincides with the party hitting level 7. That’s playing once a week for 3 hours a week with maybe a total of 10-15 sessions missed by me (the DM) over the 2 years. A party started 8 players is now 7.
The players have not felt leveling has been dragged out at all because they are invested in the story and have had loads of time at each level to explore their abilities. I run milestone leveling so it is up to me to feel out when the party should level.
I've been running three groups (around 15 players) through a Multi-Year (five years so far) home brew campaign and one of the three groups just hit Level 20 a few sessions back. We do milestone levelling and sometimes a group will just chase side quests so they may go four to nine sessions with no milestones and sometimes a group may hit two or three milestones in a session so it's very unpredictable. I constantly poll the group for feedback, and they love it so much they want to continue in the game world (Home-brewed) after we close out phase 3 of the campaign story arc. The players are a mix of some old school players and a bunch of 1st timers who had never played an TRPG before. The power curve was something I planned for in advance a little bit and we've been playing with Hit Dice capped at 4th level and allowing melee weapons to explode on damage rolls. I've found that the low hit dice on the PCs has kept them fairly well balanced on the threat of combat. The world is closer to Game of Thrones (Very few random Monster Manual Stuff) until they got into Phase 3. We play bi-weekly and we take a two and half month break from late October through until the new year due to scheduling issues and to avoid burnout. As a DM and for the players this has worked well for us as a group. The groups run through the world in real-time together so milestone prep is easier, but any group can achieve any milestone but its only a milestone for the first group to complete it.
Just my experience: the group I DM consists of 6 players. This means progress goes slower than a group of 4, considering all the RP moments. We have finished 15 sessions of 3 hours and they just leveled to level 4, with using specific milestones. With a smaller group I think 12-13 sessions would have been their leveling point. We play bi-weekly, to keep everyone in the flow of the story.
i’ve played higher level campaigns and the most common thing is it is more difficult to keep it tense enough. The super hero feel is high, but doesn’t make it fun perse. If you end a campaign at lvl 12-13, I think you have had a wonderful time
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"Time, like hope, is an illusion" - Lumalee "Time is relative" - Albert Einstein "It's a joke. It's all a joke. Mother forgive me" - Edward 'The Comedian' Blake "Do I look like the kind of clown that can start a movement?" - Arthur Fleck
How long a camaign will last is very subjective and highly depends on the duration of sessions, rate of play and leveling.
In general, i like when leveling occurs no more than 6-7 sessions., with lower levels 1-3 in shorter time. Around 2 years if taking 4 hours weekly sessions for exemple;
This is a difficult question to answer, the real answer is unfortunately, it depends. BUT I can tell you what I've been doing in my current campaign (42 sessions in over the course of about 18 months, we do not play nearly as regularly as we would like) which might inspire or help you figure out what you want to do.
First, there is no wrong answer as long as you and your players are enjoying the game, I've run very formulaic games for my group where the characters leveled up every session, which was a lot of fun for the game that we were running. I've also been running our current campaign for a year and a half and now on session 42 they just reached level 9 - and we started at level 3.
The way I've gone about it is this: there are certain story or plot arcs that I have in mind for this campaign, and I come up with an idea of what level I would like the players to be when they start that arc. This is based on the content of the arc; the strength of the monsters they'll be facing, the gravity of the conflict, the timeline leading up to the arc, etc. So, I tenatively plan for them to be at a certain level when they get to a certain point in the campaign. I use the character's personal quests to fill the space between these bigger arcs, and I'll give a levels here and there if there is a big moment in one of those smaller personal quest arcs. I play with my closest group of friends, so I occasionally give level ups for a session that occurs on someone's birthday or something of the like.
Another word of advice, your story arcs do not need to be connected. An underlying plot is wonderful for the campaign, and those moments where all of the seeds you've been droping for 40 sessions come to fruition are incredible, of course. But in the past year or so (I've been DMing since 2018) I've come to recognize the value in giving the party a "small" sidequest that has nothing to do with the overarching plot of the campaign. Every now and then plan a session where the party has downtime and give the players a chance to explore thier characters, thier bonds and thier surroundings in a low stakes way.
I recognize this got a little bit outside of the question you asked, and that you asked this question 3 years ago, so I hope your campaign is still going strong and that this might help someone out in the future.
I level up my players at a set rate. They know when level ups are coming. My system is to play as a many sessions in this level equal to the next level.
I do this because if you level up after each arc, you are inadvertently punishing players who take their time. My way means that if the players really enjoy one area or get side tracked. It's okay. Then there's the fact I don't like normal XP, cause its broken I think some people call this Session XP which is fair I guess
So the way it works is, at Session 1 you are level 1. Then play 2 sessions to get to level 2, then 3 more sessions to get to Level 3, 4 more to get to level 4, 5 more to get to level 5, Etc. You can write this out as a formula
y=(x^2)/2 + x/2
X= The Desired Level Y = The Session you become that level
After 210 Session they are Max level. In truth it is a little crazy that levels 14-20 take as long as 1-14. But I rarely play that high. Most my campaigns end around 13-14. A solid 100 Session.
Although I do understand this... sometimes players determine the pace of leveling. I have had sessions in which almost all my players were doing was sitting around RPing with each other. That's fine, but it generally doesn't earn XP. In some games, XP comes from encounters. In some, like mine, it comes from attaining milestones. In others, it comes when parts of the story conclude. And sitting around RPing with each other, usually doesn't get any of those elements advanced. So unless the DM just agreed to an "XP per session" or per hour rule, as players, if you want to level up, you kind of have to *do* stuff.
Now, none of my players have complained, but my point is, you can't just sit in the tavern drinking ale and shooting the breeze for a couple of sessions and expect to level up. You have to go out there and do stuff. (Again, unless it was agreed beforehand that sitting in the tavern would gain you XP.)
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Leveling pace varies widely. It is player, DM and campaign dependent.
Players from previous editions are quite used to very slow leveling. Players exposed to adventurers league or running WotC published content may have a much faster approach to leveling.
I've run some campaigns for AL players - DoIP and CoS. Leveling was reasonably quick but slower in general that the AL hardcover guidance. I am currently running a campaign for some friends from 1e days and the leveling rate is about 1/2 of that suggested in the modules from GoS and TftYP - most of those award a level at the end of the adventure - sometimes including leveling up midway (like sunless citadel and forge of fury). Even that sometimes seems a bit fast for them.
In particular, there is a bit of a disconnect between in game passage of time and advancement. Some folks feel it is immersion breaking to level up every couple of adventures since each could only take a couple of days of ingame time. For example, in my CoS campaign, characters reached about level 12 by the end, the game took about 9 months or so (33 sessions once/week - missed one or two along the way) - however, in game passage of time was probably a few weeks at most and likely less.
My plans are for one year. So 52 sessions 5 to 6hrs long. But we all know that players will always alter a timeline.
How important is it to decide what level the PCs should/will be for a particular event? Should I sketch the plot climax with a character level in mind? Would it be better to wait and see how the campaign goes?
I live with several severe autoimmune conditions. If I don’t get back to you right away, it’s probably because I’m not feeling well.
I wouldn't say that it's important, but it can help. For example, if you have a particularly hard battle planned and you have a zealot barbarian in the group you know that from level 14 onwards that barbarian is basically unkillable when it rages so if you wait until level 14 then you know that at least one cahracter can stay in the fight for some time.
At the same time you will need to have a way to avoid an event if that event relies on the characters being a certain level. When it comes to the climax and the BBE you can always create a foe that basically "levels up" with the characters. I do that sometimes when I GM.
I am literally doing what you are doing. I have a large over-arcing story that completes the goals of my player's backstory while also having a cool story. Currently the part is at level 3. We are 14 sessions in, and I intend to keep the party at level three for a little bit. I level them up based off of story. If they complete a big part of the story, then they level up.
A New DM up against the World
The longest I have had, a 4 year campaign 4-8 hours most weeks we had reached level 14 by the time we brought it to an end due to us finishing university we where not bothered about leveling it was just all about the story and so we did a milestone campaign and trusted the DM to level us at the right story moments.
As a DM I have just started a campaign, players have told me they are coming into it anticipating it will let forever and not to worry about rushing leveling and instead just make a cool story.
But another campaign we went level 1-20 in 14 months, that was 1-3 sessions a week depending on work schedules and was written with the nywntion of getting us to level 14 quickly and then pacing it nicely from there to let us really enjoy our higher level abilities.
So I would say don’t plan, in face as a DM I never plan out to level 20, mainly because the players will, well be players. I scope out roughly my first tier (level 1-6) but planning wise I focus on the next 2-3 sessions. Yes I have story ideas written down as bullet points but until I actually get to dealing with it it remains no more then that.
My players just reached level 13 after 93 sessions, which took us about 2 years and 2 months. So 93 sessions over 112ish weeks. Up until now I've been using milestone leveling with the guideline that the players should gain a level when the number of total sessions played equals the sum of their levels, including the new level. It works out that they play the number of sessions equal to their next level to get to that level (get to level 9, play 10 more sessions to get to level 10). So:
This is just a guideline though, and sometimes they level up slightly before or after the mark based on story beats/completion of major arcs and objectives. For example, when their upgrade from level 9 to 10 took 14 sessions since they screwed around and spent a lot of sessions just doing RP, i shortened the time from level 10 to level 11 afterwards. It has worked really well thus far and has allowed me to pace the story really well, since obviously there should be more time between levels 12 and 13 than there were between levels 4 and 5 seeing as quest complexity and difficulty generally increases at higher levels. I plan on taking the campaign to somewhere between level 17 and 20 but from here on out I'm going to tie leveling much closer to story beats than to sessions played, since they're kind of in the endgame of the campaign, hopefully leveling them no more than every 10ish sessions.
So all in all we'll probably clock in around 150ish sessions, 3ish years for the whole campaign
"To die would be an awfully big adventure"
I really like this approach, I levelled my players to level 3 over about 8 sessions, it would have been quicker but they took longer in game time then i expected to clear the first adventure I gave them. Personally tend to try to get players to level 3 as quickly as makes sense to the story simply because they are so very squishy at levels 1 and 2 all it takes is a couple of bad dice rolls (I roll all dice open table) and you get one or 2 dead PC's. But I think I might take a roughly similar approach to you, my party is 8 players strong and we are 100% remote so game time is a little slower, so I may stretch things out a little so they level after completing the quest they are on when they reach that session. But generally I like this, it saves me working out how many "encounters" each level should be, and trying to then gauge if one encounter is bigger or smaller relative to another.
I really like this idea, it seems a fair length and an easy way to keep track.
Im probably gonna kinda try using this as a guideline. Thanks!
There’s no way to determine how many sessions that would be. My advice, however, would be to focus on an adventure within each tier of playing. You don’t know if your players will sprint off towards different hooks, so I would focus on a local issue 1-4, then something new for the next tier etc.
you can still tie things together with a BBEG in the end, but it gives you the freedom to change things on the fly.
My first campaign lasted over 10 years and I was level 18
So this year we hit our 2 year anniversary in February, and it coincides with the party hitting level 7. That’s playing once a week for 3 hours a week with maybe a total of 10-15 sessions missed by me (the DM) over the 2 years. A party started 8 players is now 7.
The players have not felt leveling has been dragged out at all because they are invested in the story and have had loads of time at each level to explore their abilities. I run milestone leveling so it is up to me to feel out when the party should level.
I've been running three groups (around 15 players) through a Multi-Year (five years so far) home brew campaign and one of the three groups just hit Level 20 a few sessions back. We do milestone levelling and sometimes a group will just chase side quests so they may go four to nine sessions with no milestones and sometimes a group may hit two or three milestones in a session so it's very unpredictable. I constantly poll the group for feedback, and they love it so much they want to continue in the game world (Home-brewed) after we close out phase 3 of the campaign story arc. The players are a mix of some old school players and a bunch of 1st timers who had never played an TRPG before. The power curve was something I planned for in advance a little bit and we've been playing with Hit Dice capped at 4th level and allowing melee weapons to explode on damage rolls. I've found that the low hit dice on the PCs has kept them fairly well balanced on the threat of combat. The world is closer to Game of Thrones (Very few random Monster Manual Stuff) until they got into Phase 3. We play bi-weekly and we take a two and half month break from late October through until the new year due to scheduling issues and to avoid burnout. As a DM and for the players this has worked well for us as a group. The groups run through the world in real-time together so milestone prep is easier, but any group can achieve any milestone but its only a milestone for the first group to complete it.
[Edits - Our sessions run 4-5 hours in length]
I am ze Scoolio (GameMaster)
I have been playing a game for 5 years, we started at level 1 and are now at level 18.
We usually play about 8 hours once a week, but holidays, etc. interfere.
It’s been four years for me.
Level 9…
Come participate in the Competition of the Finest Brews, Edition XXVIII?
My homebrew stuff:
Spells, Monsters, Magic Items, Feats, Subclasses.
I am an Archfey, but nobody seems to notice.
Extended Signature
Just my experience: the group I DM consists of 6 players. This means progress goes slower than a group of 4, considering all the RP moments. We have finished 15 sessions of 3 hours and they just leveled to level 4, with using specific milestones. With a smaller group I think 12-13 sessions would have been their leveling point. We play bi-weekly, to keep everyone in the flow of the story.
i’ve played higher level campaigns and the most common thing is it is more difficult to keep it tense enough. The super hero feel is high, but doesn’t make it fun perse. If you end a campaign at lvl 12-13, I think you have had a wonderful time
"Time, like hope, is an illusion" - Lumalee
"Time is relative" - Albert Einstein
"It's a joke. It's all a joke. Mother forgive me" - Edward 'The Comedian' Blake
"Do I look like the kind of clown that can start a movement?" - Arthur Fleck
How long a camaign will last is very subjective and highly depends on the duration of sessions, rate of play and leveling.
In general, i like when leveling occurs no more than 6-7 sessions., with lower levels 1-3 in shorter time. Around 2 years if taking 4 hours weekly sessions for exemple;
Week 00 = level 1
Week 01 = level 2
Week 04 = level 3
Week 10 = level 4
Week 17 = level 5
Week 23 = level 6
Week 29 = level 7
Week 35 = level 8
Week 41 = level 9
Week 47 = level 10
Week 54 = level 11
Week 60 = level 12
Week 66 = level 13
Week 73 = level 14
Week 79 = level 15
Week 85 = level 16
Week 92 = level 17
Week 98 = level 18
Week 104 = level 19
Week 110 = level 20
This is a difficult question to answer, the real answer is unfortunately, it depends. BUT I can tell you what I've been doing in my current campaign (42 sessions in over the course of about 18 months, we do not play nearly as regularly as we would like) which might inspire or help you figure out what you want to do.
First, there is no wrong answer as long as you and your players are enjoying the game, I've run very formulaic games for my group where the characters leveled up every session, which was a lot of fun for the game that we were running. I've also been running our current campaign for a year and a half and now on session 42 they just reached level 9 - and we started at level 3.
The way I've gone about it is this: there are certain story or plot arcs that I have in mind for this campaign, and I come up with an idea of what level I would like the players to be when they start that arc. This is based on the content of the arc; the strength of the monsters they'll be facing, the gravity of the conflict, the timeline leading up to the arc, etc. So, I tenatively plan for them to be at a certain level when they get to a certain point in the campaign. I use the character's personal quests to fill the space between these bigger arcs, and I'll give a levels here and there if there is a big moment in one of those smaller personal quest arcs. I play with my closest group of friends, so I occasionally give level ups for a session that occurs on someone's birthday or something of the like.
Another word of advice, your story arcs do not need to be connected. An underlying plot is wonderful for the campaign, and those moments where all of the seeds you've been droping for 40 sessions come to fruition are incredible, of course. But in the past year or so (I've been DMing since 2018) I've come to recognize the value in giving the party a "small" sidequest that has nothing to do with the overarching plot of the campaign. Every now and then plan a session where the party has downtime and give the players a chance to explore thier characters, thier bonds and thier surroundings in a low stakes way.
I recognize this got a little bit outside of the question you asked, and that you asked this question 3 years ago, so I hope your campaign is still going strong and that this might help someone out in the future.
I level up my players at a set rate. They know when level ups are coming. My system is to play as a many sessions in this level equal to the next level.
I do this because if you level up after each arc, you are inadvertently punishing players who take their time. My way means that if the players really enjoy one area or get side tracked. It's okay.
Then there's the fact I don't like normal XP, cause its broken
I think some people call this Session XP which is fair I guess
So the way it works is, at Session 1 you are level 1. Then play 2 sessions to get to level 2, then 3 more sessions to get to Level 3, 4 more to get to level 4, 5 more to get to level 5, Etc.
You can write this out as a formula
y=(x^2)/2 + x/2
X= The Desired Level
Y = The Session you become that level
But I know math is hard so here's a chart
Session 0 - Level 0
Session 1 - Level 1
Session 3 - Level 2
Session 6 - Level 3
Session 10 - Level 4
Session 15 - Level 5
Session 21 - Level 6
Session 28 - Level 7
Session 36 - Level 8
Session 45 - Level 9
Session 55 - Level 10
Session 66 - Level 11
Session 78 - Level 12
Session 91 - Level 13
Session 105 - Level 14
Session 120 - Level 15
Session 136 - Level 16
Session 153 - Level 17
Session 171 - Level 18
Session 190 - Level 19
Session 210 - Level 20
After 210 Session they are Max level. In truth it is a little crazy that levels 14-20 take as long as 1-14. But I rarely play that high. Most my campaigns end around 13-14. A solid 100 Session.