That is, how much time elapses in the game world between levels for your PC's?

So, the usual frustration with encounter building (solved in 2024) and a need to more or less strongly formalize the way that I do aventures led me to pause and consider how long it takes for a PC to level up in my game.

20th level is supposed to be a pinnace, something that someone works hard at -- wizards are said to spend decades and all that. This really kicked in hard when I stopped to analyze the whole progression in light of Adventuring days thing, and don't go do that math, it will make you wonder WTF.

in any case, the realization that we needed to really look more closely at character progression has led to some interesting insights on our end, and so I was curious what the results are in other groups -- especially given folks here will go through published modules.

I know high level games aren't that common for most folks, so I get that it isn't a steady beat -- it isn't really for us, either. 1st level flies by in a couple days, usually, but it can take about 90 days to hit 3rd level, and then it starts to pace more steadily (5th level within a year is easy, within six months is a bit tricker).

After that our goal is to handle each level in about 90 days time -- giving us about 4 years of in-world time.

For our table: It's all an abstraction, don't look at it too long or you'll go blind. But in preciser terms, the growth happens as you adventure, incrementally and imperceptibly as you hew your way through goblins and ghouls. Then, updating your sheet takes precisely one long rest.

"Don't look to closely" is right, if you think too hard about how much time actually went by in game, you'd realise in many campaigns that there is never enough time for all that to happen. If you don't include exessive amounts of downtime most parties don't really know each other for more than a few weeks or months - but are as close as a family after quite a short time. Also they get to a certain age (when the campaign starts) and "suddenly" their level goes up in quite the short time.

It has many factors, for example if the Campaign is a module with it's own pre-established leveling points or homebrewed.

In the few campaigns I've been a part of, most of which have had the same DM(s) I've seen anywhere from a level after ~3 two-hour long sessions to over 10 three-hour long sessions. I've also seen the early (1 to 3) levels breezed through, to the point where those only last a session or two each.

In a current campaign, we've been playing for about 3 hours every other week (though sometimes a month will go by without playing due to scheduling issues) for just over a year and we're at level 6; and that feels about right to me. https://vlc****/

~7 hours each week for over a year for level 6 seems far too slow in my opinion.

Quote from n1ivaar >>

It has many factors, for example if the Campaign is a module with it's own pre-established leveling points or homebrewed.

In the few campaigns I've been a part of, most of which have had the same DM(s) I've seen anywhere from a level after ~3 two-hour long sessions to over 10 three-hour long sessions. I've also seen the early (1 to 3) levels breezed through, to the point where those only last a session or two each.

In a current campaign, we've been playing for about 3 hours every other week (though sometimes a month will go by without playing due to scheduling issues) for just over a year and we're at level 6; and that feels about right to me.

~7 hours each week for over a year for level 6 seems far too slow in my opinion.

 
And how much time within the game world has passed?

For clarity I'm not asking about how many session. I am asking about how much time in the game world has passed while they level up.

I think the first few levels could go by quickly  a week for level two, a month for level three and three  months to get to level four in game. after that  it would slow down considerably.   there is more to growing stronger than just killing monsters downtime adventure activities can be explored  it might not the same as fighting some great evil but could be  important in other ways. it is something that is going to vary wildly between groups

I think it varies depending on the campaign. For instance running Lost Mines of Phandelver there's barely any down time, the characters go from level 1 to level 5 basically over the course of a long weekend, while in the Drakkenheim campaign I recently started several weeks have already passed just to get to level 2 because there's more scope for the players to do things between adventures. My players have all asked about whether we can add the Bastion system once the DMG comes out so that'll be more stuff to encourage downtime and extend the calendar time between levelling up

I'm on my third 1 - 20 campaign and I've settledin at a reliable 30 to 40 years from level 1 to 20. The first five levels are usually gained within the first 1 - 2 years of the campaign, 5 to 9 usually takes about 5, then 10 - 20 is really where i plan the huge multie year gaps worth of downtime where characters have to have built up enough wealth to live comfortably and do their crafting  advancement or suffer the embarrassing reality of still needing to work even after earning their dragon slayer badge. Generally the adventures that take place at level 10+ are connected by the longterm antagonist who also requires a multi-year spanof tiem for his plan to come to fruition since some jerks keep stalling him with their adventurous antics

In my 2 current games, we have a party that just hit 8 (started at 3) and it took about 2.5 - 3 months in game. The other one we’re at 5 ( started at 1) and it’s been 3-4 weeks in game. 

The big difference, if you want to slow things down, is that not every day is an “adventuring” day. In the first example, we’re building our bastion (house ruling the UA version), and sometimes waiting a week in game for supplies. We hand wave the time, of course, with options for downtime rules. The second campaign is more traditional going around and doing stuff. 
But in both cases, we have lots of things like travel time we just gloss over with, it takes you three days to sail from x to y. The time passes without incident. 
Travel is really where it’s at, if you’re looking to let more time in game advance between leveling up. At least until someone gets teleport. 

In the campaign I'm running right now, it's been about three months of in-game time, and the party is level 9. That's using milestone

I really think "it should take X days/sessions to reach Y level" isn't a particularly helpful way to approach it, even if you're doing pure sandbox. As the DM you still know what threats are on the horizon, and what level the party probably needs to be at bare minimum to survive them. So make sure they reach that level

My home group recently concluded Storm King’s Thunder with all kinds of additional content jammed in to take us all the way to level 20. It was pretty much four years of gaming, give or take a few weeks (September 2020 through August 2024). In game, it was about 10-12 months, just over a year at the very most. The DM uses milestone experience and we tend to level on the slow side even with a very reliable four hour weekly session. 

I think it is situational. 

You can live your life, just doing the same things - mundane living - while you get some experience and make some progress - you are mostly stable.

But if there are other events - like war or adventuring - you can gain a lot of experience pretty fast. 

If you are forced to constantly learn, get sufficiently challenged, and have access to sufficient resources, maybe even great teachers, mentors, and tutors, you learn and level quite fast.

For gaming at the table, I like to expedite the early level and then use appropriate times to level up when it makes sense story-wise.

Looking at my campaign calendar, the party has been together for fifteen in-game months.  In that time, they have advanced from level 3 to level 17.  The rate of advancement, however, has not been exactly static - I use milestone leveling, with the level up checkpoints becoming increasingly rare and difficult to obtain.  Stopping a major cult operation might have been a level up point at level 8, but would not be now.

That said, I don’t really look at in-game time when deciding levels.  The story moves at the pace it moves - sometimes events are happening, and the party is rushing toward a milestone, other times they’re dealing with the fallout or trying desperately to maintain the fragile alliances they’ve built. To me, the narrative - which includes a real-world timing component (waiting too long in the real world between major moments is bad storytelling) - is far more important than what the in-game calendar says.

Yeah, as a DM, I've started artificially inflating the length of in-world time that passes (either through travel time, locations simply being inaccessible somehow, "the trail goes cold" etc.). Just a preference. I've found it's too easy for 10 character levels to occur in a month of game-time, which... just generally chafes.

This is actually one of my biggest complaints about many of the modules they released: the first few levels or more are expected to be gained by characters over the course of a few days in some cases. I know we can fabricate any narrative we want to explain that, but it doesn't quite match my read of the 2014 class progression. Day 1 in the dungeon: My monk knows kung fu. Day 2: My monk suddenly figures out how to channel the mystical inner energy of ki. Day 3: He's mastered and specialized in a whole sub-sect of martial arts granting all kinds of mystical powers that completely change his tactics in battle. Day 10: He can run up walls and paralyze people with a touch!

It's just a preference, but I just like the idea that it takes longer amounts of time for new class abilities to be mastered/developed.

I'm not sure there is any meaningful timescale in the game. Level 2 to level 3 was a matter of weeks or months in my current campaign. There was a lot of downtime while the adventurers were finding people willing to trust them to help with their problems. On the other hand, they just levelled up to level 12 from level 11 and it took them like four days because they're in a really challenging lost city. Real time took much longer to go from L11 to L12 than it did to go from L2 to L3  (about four times as long).

There's just no fixed correlation between the two. I tend to keep a roughly fixed number of quests per level, and it just depends on how long between quests that determines how long it takes to level up.

Quote from MPA >>

From what I have seen in the videos of people who post their sessions. I have seen some gamers not make level eight after 30 sessions.  I don't understand why.  Maybe they aren't fighting enough monsters?  If you have 6-8 people in a party, that's a lot of XP to divide up into tiny amounts unless you are fighting high CR monsters?

The DMG recommends the option to advance without XP.  You advance to level 2 after one session, level 3 after another and 4th level after two session. For every 2-3 sessions there after you advance a level.  So at a minimum you could reach 12 level in as little as 18 sessions approximately.  That's typically where campaigns fizzle, probably because campaigns are lasting years before they reach level 12.   I don't know.

The point being, the rules gives the DM a simple method to get guys to level, so I can't fathom why they would opt for more challenging/hard ways for them.  🤷🏿‍♂️

 The simplest reason is that they don’t want characters to level at that pace. I don’t want to be level 2 after one session. I don’t want to be level 12 after eighteen sessions. My DM doesn’t want it, nor do the other people we play with.

That said, I would point out that the question is not how many sessions between levels for the players but how much time passes in game for the characters. 

So, the reason that I mentioned the XP per Adventuring Day is because that's what you use to determine the budget you have when creating encounters. If you have 50,000 XP to spend, the XP value of the monsters you can use in that encounter get to total up to that amount. This is standard encounter design basics. 

Now, if you use XP leveling (which I am aware most people do not), and if you were to follow that standard for an Adventuring Day budget, then the speed of advancement is going to be less than 40 days to go from level 1 to level 20. So it is no wonder they recommend using Milestone leveling.

But I am asking you about your games and how long in world it takes to advance, being aware that it is most likely not at a constant rate. 

How you time that out, even using milestones, is the point here. Ultimately, I'd like to get a vague idea of what a "general opinion about how long it should take to level up" and "how long should a 1 to 20 campaign take in the game world".

As others have said, this can vary, greatly. In campaigns that I run, it usually take 4 years of real-time to cover 2 years of game-time to reach level 15.

Meanwhile in one game i'm currently playing in, it's taken us less than a week of in-game time reach level 4. 

Every campaign is different, every DM is different. Personally i'm a fan of slow advancement (and I usually use xp advancement).

Quote from AEDorsay >>

So, the reason that I mentioned the XP per Adventuring Day is because that's what you use to determine the budget you have when creating encounters. If you have 50,000 XP to spend, the XP value of the monsters you can use in that encounter get to total up to that amount. This is standard encounter design basics. 

Now, if you use XP leveling (which I am aware most people do not), and if you were to follow that standard for an Adventuring Day budget, then the speed of advancement is going to be less than 40 days to go from level 1 to level 20. So it is no wonder they recommend using Milestone leveling.

But I am asking you about your games and how long in world it takes to advance, being aware that it is most likely not at a constant rate. 

How you time that out, even using milestones, is the point here. Ultimately, I'd like to get a vague idea of what a "general opinion about how long it should take to level up" and "how long should a 1 to 20 campaign take in the game world".

 

 Ah, you see, that's a different question to the one you seemed to be asking initially. It seemed like you were asking how many calendar days to level up which is inherently variable, whereas that post is asking about adventuring days, which presumably ignores the days where nothing really happens. That's more stable and answerable.

In my games, I'd say each quest takes on average 1 ¹/2 Adventuring Days to complete. Some are done in a day, others in two or three. The majority are one day deals, but other take longer and so the average is probably 1.5 days.

I normally follow the published adventure tempo for levelling - one quest to get to L2 from L1, then two quests per level for the rest of the campaign.

That means that it's usually about three Adventuring Days per level. That makes it 59 days for a 1-20 campaign. I'll note that I don't abide by the Adventuring Day budget for encounters, so that may change things.

Quote from MPA >>

Quote from Born_of_fire74 >>

Quote from MPA >>

From what I have seen in the videos of people who post their sessions. I have seen some gamers not make level eight after 30 sessions.  I don't understand why.  Maybe they aren't fighting enough monsters?  If you have 6-8 people in a party, that's a lot of XP to divide up into tiny amounts unless you are fighting high CR monsters?

The DMG recommends the option to advance without XP.  You advance to level 2 after one session, level 3 after another and 4th level after two session. For every 2-3 sessions there after you advance a level.  So at a minimum you could reach 12 level in as little as 18 sessions approximately.  That's typically where campaigns fizzle, probably because campaigns are lasting years before they reach level 12.   I don't know.

The point being, the rules gives the DM a simple method to get guys to level, so I can't fathom why they would opt for more challenging/hard ways for them.  🤷🏿‍♂️

 The simplest reason is that they don’t want characters to level at that pace. I don’t want to be level 2 after one session. I don’t want to be level 12 after eighteen sessions. My DM doesn’t want it, nor do the other people we play with.

That said, I would point out that the question is not how many sessions between levels for the players but how much time passes in game for the characters. 

At issue isn't what you or your DM wants, but answering the OP's question of how long is it suppose to take to level up.  To which I provided a recommendation from the DMG for the OP.  

 

 Again, OP is not interested in how many sessions for the players between levels. You have not answered the question at hand.

I, OTOH, did answer your question as to why some gamers take so long to level, specifically how they are not level 8 after thirty sessions.