So today they released the free adventure Hold Back the Dead, which features pre-made characters for players to use. Those characters are the ones from the 1980's D&D cartoon, except for a new Cleric. That show aired in 1983. 42 years ago. And in that 42 years, the characters have made it all the way to level 4. Bobby, the Barbarian character, was the youngest of the group. So he'd be 50 now. AND HE'S ONLY LEVEL 4.
Given how much they went through every week, I've been levelling my characters WAY too fast. I should only be going up a level about once a decade. My players are not going to be happy about this....
So today they released the free adventure Hold Back the Dead, which features pre-made characters for players to use. Those characters are the ones from the 1980's D&D cartoon, except for a new Cleric. That show aired in 1983. 42 years ago. And in that 42 years, the characters have made it all the way to level 4. Bobby, the Barbarian character, was the youngest of the group. So he'd be 50 now. AND HE'S ONLY LEVEL 4.
Given how much they went through every week, I've been levelling my characters WAY too fast. I should only be going up a level about once a decade. My players are not going to be happy about this....
You're giving them way too much of a time jump, the cartoon was 40 years ago but they characters haven't aged 40 years, they're still in their early to middle 20s (basically just enough to remove the "Dungeon Master is using child soldiers" aspect) so you're possibly right and they should be a higher level but possibly not by much
Back in 2015 r so, I was shifting into what would end up being the first real "5e" campaign I ran. I say first real because we had done a lot of playtesting and tweaking to to our collective house rules to adapt to the new system (as we were coming from 2e which we had been playing since it came out, having disliked 3.x so much that we couldn't even stand to talk about it).
In developing the setting for that campaign, which started before 5e came out, one of the things that was an ask of my players (whom I always poll for what they want when i create a setting) one of the things that came up was how fast folks level up. Not just PCs, but NPCS, as well. And while we had previously had conversation about that in the past, the whole idea of really taking it seriously as a part of the structure of a world hadn't come up.
And the 80's cartoon folks were a part of that conversation. Not in the usual sense -- we determined that without their magical items, they were basically 0 level people when they arrived, and we use that and some other points of reference for figuring some stuff out about how someone moves from 0 to 1st, and what that looks like and what it entails and how XP work and so forth.
Among the stuff that came out of that was that we figured, based on the show, they were around 6th or 7th level at the end of run. We also analyzed the hell out of the show from both a critical and game POV, including running numbers for XP in both 2e and 5e.
In any case, we reached a consensus among ourselves (and for ourselves) that for general goals, a year per level was what we would shoot for with NPCs, with PCs moving between 1.5 and 4 times as fast. So, for us, it might take a blacksmith 20 years to reach 20th level in his craft, but a PC could to the same in as little 5 years. And it was decided that was what we would use as our reason that PCs are so special.
That impacts adventure design, downtime design, pacing, and how we structure character arcs (which we started doing in the early 2000's based on stuff we had enjoyed the most from the previous 20 years of play), all so that they fit within the larger calendrical setups for the assorted worlds.
In my current setting, the general design is based on a season -- but with a little bit of flexibility since I usually have 15 or so adventures in a campaign.
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Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
Even if we go with 20 years old for Bobby, who was the youngest at 8 in the cartoon, that's 12 years (this is reasonable based on their appearance in Honor Amongst Thieves, though honestly Bobby seems to have aged more than the others lol).
12 years to reach level 4? Seems a bit unreasonable.
Yeah, I know, I'm applying real life logic to a fantasy setting. But then, this whole post was intended as a joke anyway, so I'm sticking with it.... ;^p
Maybe the problem was their magic items were so good (seriously, very rare and legendary items five seconds after arriving in the realms?) that it’s only the last couple of years they’ve actually realised they need to train and start levelling up
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So today they released the free adventure Hold Back the Dead, which features pre-made characters for players to use. Those characters are the ones from the 1980's D&D cartoon, except for a new Cleric. That show aired in 1983. 42 years ago. And in that 42 years, the characters have made it all the way to level 4. Bobby, the Barbarian character, was the youngest of the group. So he'd be 50 now. AND HE'S ONLY LEVEL 4.
Given how much they went through every week, I've been levelling my characters WAY too fast. I should only be going up a level about once a decade. My players are not going to be happy about this....
Just tell them you messed up and ask if anyone wants to help you fix it to be at the correct level set?
Enjoy your slop. I'll be enjoying good products elsewhere.
You're giving them way too much of a time jump, the cartoon was 40 years ago but they characters haven't aged 40 years, they're still in their early to middle 20s (basically just enough to remove the "Dungeon Master is using child soldiers" aspect) so you're possibly right and they should be a higher level but possibly not by much
heh hehe heh.
So, funny thing about this...
Back in 2015 r so, I was shifting into what would end up being the first real "5e" campaign I ran. I say first real because we had done a lot of playtesting and tweaking to to our collective house rules to adapt to the new system (as we were coming from 2e which we had been playing since it came out, having disliked 3.x so much that we couldn't even stand to talk about it).
In developing the setting for that campaign, which started before 5e came out, one of the things that was an ask of my players (whom I always poll for what they want when i create a setting) one of the things that came up was how fast folks level up. Not just PCs, but NPCS, as well. And while we had previously had conversation about that in the past, the whole idea of really taking it seriously as a part of the structure of a world hadn't come up.
And the 80's cartoon folks were a part of that conversation. Not in the usual sense -- we determined that without their magical items, they were basically 0 level people when they arrived, and we use that and some other points of reference for figuring some stuff out about how someone moves from 0 to 1st, and what that looks like and what it entails and how XP work and so forth.
Among the stuff that came out of that was that we figured, based on the show, they were around 6th or 7th level at the end of run. We also analyzed the hell out of the show from both a critical and game POV, including running numbers for XP in both 2e and 5e.
In any case, we reached a consensus among ourselves (and for ourselves) that for general goals, a year per level was what we would shoot for with NPCs, with PCs moving between 1.5 and 4 times as fast. So, for us, it might take a blacksmith 20 years to reach 20th level in his craft, but a PC could to the same in as little 5 years. And it was decided that was what we would use as our reason that PCs are so special.
That impacts adventure design, downtime design, pacing, and how we structure character arcs (which we started doing in the early 2000's based on stuff we had enjoyed the most from the previous 20 years of play), all so that they fit within the larger calendrical setups for the assorted worlds.
In my current setting, the general design is based on a season -- but with a little bit of flexibility since I usually have 15 or so adventures in a campaign.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
Naa they just used a Wish spell from AD&D to rejoin in 5th edition, the XP cost took them from level 40 back to level 4.
haha I like that
Even if we go with 20 years old for Bobby, who was the youngest at 8 in the cartoon, that's 12 years (this is reasonable based on their appearance in Honor Amongst Thieves, though honestly Bobby seems to have aged more than the others lol).
12 years to reach level 4? Seems a bit unreasonable.
Yeah, I know, I'm applying real life logic to a fantasy setting. But then, this whole post was intended as a joke anyway, so I'm sticking with it.... ;^p
Maybe the problem was their magic items were so good (seriously, very rare and legendary items five seconds after arriving in the realms?) that it’s only the last couple of years they’ve actually realised they need to train and start levelling up