V.A.L.U.E. Season 4 - PREPLANNING

General/Looking For Group
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41

I think that for new players, it is ESPECIALLY valuable to have a mixed-level experience, because it can be hard to figure out how characters work.

seeing the difference between someone at level 1 and level 4 - or having a level 4 who has potions and healing when you get one-shot - makes the game better for new players.

As someone who started a year ago and levelled up characters naturally (no downtime) I don’t think I would have benefitted at all from playing more similar level games.

I don’t think anyone should be forced to play something they don’t want to. At the same time, it does seem like the rules offer ample opportunity - especially for experienced players. Like, DM 2 tier 1 games and save the levels for a new character. As far as I know, DM rewards don’t have to be used immediately?

For me, it seems this issue happens rarely and does have a fix, so it doesn’t warrant a rule change.

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42

They don’t have to, that is right - but this is not a solution in my opinion. First, not everyone who wants to bring in a T1 character at level 3 or 4 is a DM. And second, you still cannot experiment with new character ideas, in T1 because every new character would cost 2 DM rewards.

Also, you say that it is valuable for new players to have characters of all T1 levels together - isn’t that an argument for allowing T1 characters to be created at all levels? At least it seems like it is not an argument to bar players from creating T1 characters at higher levels :slight_smile:

I grew bored of my moon druid in T1, but had to continue playing him because the rules did not allow me to make a new character that would have made more fun for me to play (and would have been weaker in terms of power level) at level 3 or 4.

1 Like
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This all seems like a lot of trouble so people can play a level they do not like playing. Finding a way to encourage more T2-4 play that folk enthusiastically want to join seems better than forcing changes to make T1 tolerable to people who hate it - especially when we can easily fill those table with people who very much want to be there.

In any case, have you not always gotten a seat at a T2 table or higher any Friday you wanted to? When was the last time you had to play T1?

It seems like rules changes of uncertain benefit for a situation that rarely arises, so I would suggest we keep it simple and retain current set up.

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44

I think it’s an argument in favor of keeping characters at level 3 or 4 for a while even if they have more gold and better armor than new characters. I wouldn’t recommend creating characters at anything other than level 1, because figuring out how a character progresses is quite important in my opinion. While experienced players wouldn’t face that issue, I don’t think it makes sense to have separate rules for new and experienced T1 players.

I’m not sure I personally am looking for a solution. I think I understand the concern/request, while I also think for me the key thing is that more advanced players already have an option to do what you’re talking about (=DMing). If they choose not to take that option, isn’t that just their choice? I think if this were to be expanded it would make sense to not “just” create characters at higher levels, but rather to offer more options/rewards that would enable someone to do that (though I’m not convinced it’s necessary )

I was thinking maybe one way to further deal with this creatively is to have a homebrew-“training” potion for characters who reach T4. With this potion, they can train another character in adventuring and help them level faster (kind of like the XP-item in Pokemon that you would give to the first Pokemon in your list so they would level faster). But then the character would need to have some kind of shared backstory.

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You already can go from 1 to 3 in one adventure (reward + downtime catching up), then you’re almost or at T2 after the next. (But, technically, to trade the potion you’d need the downtime and miss out on a level.) Basically a lot of effort for little effect. But a flavourwise nice callback to MMO-practices :slight_smile:

3 Likes
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I would be thinking more creating a backstory where a nameless level 1 observed and learned from the brave T4 adventurers, enabling them to have knowledge and experience at level 3 without ever having played an adventure. Maybe with some weakness to it (the Pokemon trained like that were always weaker than the regular trained ones)

As the character would have to be created after the potion is consumed, I don’t think it would be an item trade. Maybe more of a „training feat“ for the T4 character. But it all seems overly complicated for something that already has an option

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#4) We should minimize the house rules for character creation/during play

I agree. Game-breaking stuff is obviously bad but I think its good to give players some credit and trust that mechanically experienced players still try to share the spotlight because at the end of the day D&D is not a competitive sport, but a social game with collaborative elements.

And for newer players, making characters is daunting as-is. I am currently DMing two games for people with 0 experience in any RPGs and Videogames and for them the game is plenty meaty to get into. Its important to remember that people who have decades of (MMO)W/J/CRPG whatever experience just have differently wired pattern recognition than most people trying out D&D.

But you could also just make the rules that House Rules only start at T3 to T4 (Advanced 5.5e RPGV Houserule edition ahah) so you have the best of both worlds. Beginners are close to RAW and experienced players get their fine-tuned houseruled version

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I like this! While I understand that this would be quite a big change from our norm at VALUE, I do have to say that this rule change would make me pick the “catching up” downtime waaay less often.

And it would stop me from stalling characters at the bounaries of tiers.
This + an overhaul of the Dowtime actions to make them more attractive/useful would be lots of fun, I think.

I really, really like this suggestion!

1 Like
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You seem to forget that sometimes you need to stall a character at the boundary of a tier to be able to continue to play in a series of one-shots with a connected storyline or even a mini-campaign, right?

Unless high tier games become a lot more common, I would not want to be able to essentially play a character only for five VALUE sessions in T2 (assuming no catching up and no DM rewards for leveling; sometimes you might want to have a head start for one or two levels to get a particular build going) until I am forced to effectively retire them due to the rarity of T3+ games.

1 Like
50

I do believe that there are going to be more high tier games in the future. The limiting facter was oftentimes that not enough people had access to T3/T4 characters, so there just wasn’t that much demand. (plus → most of the people who had high tier characters were also regular DMs → often not available to join tables)

With the new proposed rule that anyone can create a character at any Tier that restriction will be lifted.

We actually saw this recently when Resil ran Crystaline City and took all of his players to T3. Suddenly there was a lot more demand for T3 games. I think this is gonna be a trend in the future. (plus if the rule passes you can just ask players to quickly whip up a character of the required tier)

As for your point about one-shot series: If the level up rule is in place DMs can plan around it. (as in: a T2 mini-series will have max. 5 episodes) At most it might exclude high level characters in each tier from joining every session of a mini-series.
As most people create new characters when joining a mini-series anyway this shouldn’t come up that often I think.

(alternatively the rule could also be that you have to level up your character at the end of each adventure → that way an adventure might last more than one session, so mini-series could still be arbitrarily long or short)

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intrigued

Where are those coming from / how can that be encouraged?

1 Like
52

It might be worth an open poll to DMs prior to a rule vote, “Would you run more T3/T4 games if more characters were available?” I feel like I see more player availability for higher tiers than I see games, but I have no data to back that up. For myself, Dragonlance ran from T1 to T3, with the original intention to follow-up and take characters to 20 (like you’re suggesting). But running higher tiers in VALUE wasn’t something I enjoyed, so I stopped DMing for awhile.

I’m not 100% sure I’m in favor of suggestion (definitely not against), but I’ll happily go through the thinking game.

If you need a halfway measure on the rule for mini-series and other situations, maybe make it “You can choose not to level if you take no gold/items/downtime days from a session”.

That way people can stay where they want if they really want to/need to, but don’t gain in power in any way so they’re not out of step with anyone else. You’d probably need a tandem addition to the DM reward “You must level in the next session if you drop an item for your character (cumulative for multiple rewards)”

That might be simpler than differentiating between adventure and session? Instead of downtime days, DMs can use “Exploration points” or whatever for campaign activities.

4 Likes
53

I don’t think we need to make things more complicated here. As long as we limit the amount of magic items (although the current limit in T2 and T3 is too low in my opinion), stalling a character at the top end of a tier, especially T2 and above, should not be problematic.

I don’t think there ever were issues of characters having too much gold or downtime in T2 and above - at best, accumulated downtime gave the option to directly jump a character from T2 to the tail end of T3 or even straight to T4.

Also, I don’t want to have to consider “do I not level my character, because the rewards were trash” as a player or “do I give out minimal rewards to allow players to stay at level 10 without losing out on a good magic item” as a DM.

Best keep rules as they are in terms of leveling. DMing high tiers is a challenge of its own, and I understand that not everyone enjoys it. OneDnD is not gonna solve high tier issues either. If anything, it will make high tiers even more difficult to DM for.
By keeping rules as they are we don’t pressure DMs into running high tier games more often and avoid all the other issues.

1 Like
54

Absolutely! We should definitely do a vote.

I was basing the low amount of high tier games simply off of my own situation with the matter. I’ve been sitting on 2-4 T3/T4 adventures which I never really got the opportunty to run because I was lacking players (or there were a lot of T2 players how needed a DM). Or at least that was how I percieved it.

Maybe the characters were there but there was simply not that much interest in high tier games (or the type of games I was pitching) from the player side. :person_shrugging:
So if we do make a poll for the DMs, it might also be worth it to poll the players to gauge their interest in higher tier games?

I will admit that DMing for higher tiers is a lot more exhausting than for lower ones, so it isn’t something I would do every week… just once in a while. If other DMs share this sentiment, that would already increase the amount of high tier games being run.

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Imo characters aren’t the problem, they’d level up accordingly in short order. The adventures getting bigger than the AL system is designed to handle is an issue.

On the one side: I’d have a high double to triple digit collection of adventures in that ballpark.

On the other one: They are conceived & designed around high level game play. I.e. Often more of a sandbox than a chamber play. To long for a single session and under the assumption of a certain continuity in party composition &state, presumed background knowledge from previous sessions and planning ahead.

2 Likes
56

I would very much prefer if we kept leveling up optional. I like lower tiers of play especially tier 2. So most of the time I don’t want to level a character beyond level 10. And as stated by other ppl there is no problem with characters becoming op, if they don’t level up, due to the magic item limits for each tier.

1 Like
57

To add to that, see games like @xaosseed 's Brancalonia series- that one is way, way longer than just 4 games (after which characters would become T2 with forced leveling).

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Now for something completely different. I thought about a code of conduct and I expanded the classic “Don’t be an idiot” a bit. This is still work in Progress but I would like to have your input.

COOPERATE WITH EVERYONE ELSE

Try and pay attention to others and allow them their chance in the spotlight too. Make sure that the table environment is good and welcoming.

RESPECT OTHERS

This is a cooperative game and you are all trying to have fun together. Respect your neighbour whether it is GM/DM or player. Also players might be different in many aspects. Respect their gender/sexuality/ect.

RESPECT THE GAME

The DM/GM and Players have put much effort into this game. Please respect their effort and the rules of the game. That means that you don’t intentionally try to derail the game, attack other characters (without consent), destroy plot important items, ect.

RESPECT BOUDARIES

If you have a personal Boundary, such as a trigger (something that will upset you, or make you very uncomfortable) please tell the DM beforehand. If it happens tell the DM, they will probably stop the scene and make a break.

If you have a character with difficult and problematic aspects such as Body Horror, Abuse (both physical and mental), Racist, Cannibalism, ect. Tell the entire group before and accept that this might not be accepted on the table.

THE DM/GM IS NOT YOUR ENEMY

The DM/GM is playing the antagonist but is not your antagonist. Allow them to have fun too.

FOR DM/GMs:

YOU ARE EMPOWERED

If you or your players are uncomfortable with something you are allowed to not have it on your table. Politely request the offending party to stop their behaviour. If they don’t comply/ are aggressive/ ignore you or else you are empowered to ask them to leave. If you are unsure ask an experienced DM/GM.

Just because another DM/GM did allow something doesn’t mean that you have to do the same. For example: Allow Homebrew, certain interactions, certain character quirks.

You can run the adventure you want but if it has problematic and very dark themes, give a short content warning to make sure that the players know that things might get dark.

14 Likes
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This is great - kudos for the focus on what we seek to encourage.

Suggestions - all additive, I think what is there is good.

CONTEXT FOR NEW-COMERS

  • VALUE games have certain aspects to be aware of: these are open-table games often with people who do not know each other, often with people new to D&D, and we are typically looking to get a whole game run in a single night.

Addition under COOPERATE WITH EVERYONE ELSE

  • you will have a better time if you bring a character who is ready to go on adventures with others

Addition to RESPECT OTHERS

  • We will not tolerate theft or aggressive behaviour. Theft and aggressive behaviour are reasons for immediate exclusion from the game. Aggressive behaviour includes threats of or actual physical aggression, using racial, gender, or cultural slurs and otherwise harassing others.

That last is to have stated the obvious. It does not come up much but if it did, a new DM who might be uncertain has it in black and white to back them up.

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I’ve written a few code of conducts for non profit organisations, specifically international ones. If you want to brainstorm on this topic I am happy to share :slight_smile: but outside of this tread perhaps.

6 Likes