This is the first part of a project that is an exploration of the currency of older forms of D&D, and some new ones derived directly from those older forms. Specifically, it's an analysis of the experience point, and of the amount of Effectiveness and Resources an experience point is worth. The issue of domains, with all the Resources and Positioning contingent on them, has been excluded, because its impact on the game cannot be examined in abstract terms -- the benefits of a domain can only be analyzed in terms of a specific setting in a specific campaign at a specific table. I concede that I may very well be remiss in excluding domains from my analysis, but I don't see a way around it.
My goal in doing this analysis was more to arrive at a personally satisfactory currency based on the experience point for my own OSR-type purposes, rather than to calculate the precise, canonical worth of the experience point in old-school D&D. I figured that this analysis would make clear to me the bits that I liked and didn't like about how the textual D&D currency already works, thus giving me information on which to base my own construction. I intend to continue this analysis with AD&D1 (or at least OSRIC), LotFP, and ACKS. I'd like to do B/X and/or BECMI as well, but I don't have access to them, so that'll have to wait indefinitely.
As for why I'm bothering to work within the OD&D-based OSR-type framework rather than designing something new from the ground up: please put the question aside for now. While I am not particularly averse to discussing the why of it, I don't want this thread to be bogged down with it. So, even if you have misgivings on that front, please assume that I have thought about it, that I have my reasons, and that, generally speaking, I know what I'm doing. We're here to talk about the experience point.
D&D '74
I began with D&D '74 because it's the oldest, and it's the only official D&D game that I actually have access to. I have summarized the levels and the benefits they provide in this pdf:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B9k6jY73glEKZmRUYW9Gd19tUHc/
So, what can we take from this?
Let's get the obvious out of the way: D&D '74 is a hot mess. I already knew that (from playing it as by-the-book as you can), and you probably knew it too. And now it's here in black and white, where anyone can see it at a glance rather than having to decipher its rather arcane text. Now that's settled, let's move on to specific details.
A Note on Variable XP Requirements
The conventional wisdom is that Magic Users require more XP to level up because high level magic users are more powerful than anyone else, and that Clerics require less XP in order to encourage players to step into a thankless support role. Well, for this version at least, the numbers do not bear this out: MUs are harder to level at first, but by level 8 become the easiest by a rather striking margin (so much so that I suspect typographical error, or something more insidious, about which more later); as for Clerics, up through level 8, they are hands-down the best damn class in the game, even without the lower XP requirements. The Fighter doesn't significantly outstrip them in combat until level 10, and their only real disadvantage before that is no arrows (magic arrows are the only weapons that deal more than 1d6 damage -- well, besides the +3 warhammer, but that's only when a dwarf uses it). But things like the best saving throw profile (until high levels) and the frankly stunning potential of Turn Undead make up for that handily. The Cleric here is a straight-up metal-as-hell holy warrior, not a namby-pamby Band-Aid box.
Still, in theory, I can see value in the concept of variable XP requirements, if you wanted to reflect _actual_ disparity in power level, or if you just wanted to create differences in difficulty level such that, if somebody wants to play on hard mode, they pick a class with higher XP requirements.
The Devaluation of XP
This is something that nobody complains about: as you gain levels, individual experience points decrease in value, because the amount you need to level up increases each time. We accept this because it makes sense: you leveled up and got stronger, which means you're now capable of handling bigger challenges, so you should have to go handle bigger challenges to get enough points to level up again.
But here's a thing: in this version, that's already taken care of. If a level 1 character loots 1,000 gp worth of treasure from the first floor of a dungeon, it's worth 1,000 XP. If a level 2 character does the same thing, it's only worth 500. To a level 3 character, 333; 250 to a level 4, and so on. To keep the ratio of gp to XP at 1:1, you have to venture to floors that are equal to or greater than your level -- floors that are expected to be more dangerous (and to some extent are guaranteed to be by the wandering monster charts).
So if you're going to decrease XP gain relative to challenge by level, why also devalue the XP themselves? It would seem more elegant to do just one (especially to do only the latter, since the former requires division, and nobody wants that).
On the Correlation of XP and Levels to Benefits
...There isn't one, really. It's a mess. Spell gains are all over the place. The way that to-hit bonuses and saves increase every so many levels (in groups of 3, 4, and 5 for Fighters, Clerics, and MUs, respectively) creates an appreciable pattern, but also creates dead spots in the progression, particularly for Fighters, who have to spend two out of every three levels gaining nothing but basically a hit die (which boils down to just one more blow they can survive, since HD and damage dice are both 1d6).
I was hoping for some rhyme or reason here. I was hoping I could look and see things like, "ok, level is worth X fraction of a to-hit bonus, Y amount of spell power, etc." Or maybe that, if the benefits per level were going to be uneven, then the XP requirements could be uneven to match -- that would be cool, too. And there's one instance of that: the MU has a short slump where the Cleric surpasses him in spellpower (at least by the SxC reckoning I cooked up), and it starts right when the MU's XP requirements start dropping. But when the MU pulls out of the slump (with aplomb), the reqs don't swing back up to match.
Clearly they just winged it all as they played, and that all just went almost directly into the books. I can't help but have less-than-charitable suspicions of the MU -- I can imagine that the MU requirements started out as 125% of the Fighter's right down the line, but since the scary spells don't kick in until later levels, some asshole was like "waaaah I'm never gonna get any sixth-level spells because magic users are so squishy" (nevermind that they really aren't particularly squishy in this version; their only real disadvantage at low levels is the lack of armor) and so they lowered the requirements to shut that asshole up and maybe also because they were eager to see those spells get into play, then just threw that into the book.
And, y'know, none of that is necessarily "wrong." But it is all rather wonky, and unfortunately doesn't help my mission of developing Unified Experience Point Theory except by showing me lots of things to avoid doing.
Next up, I'ma do OSRIC. I hope it will be more comprehensible.
For what it's worth, I am largely of the same mind about the '74 text and how it came about - it's pretty clearly just a snapshot of the current practice of the campaign, dressed up as "rules". I find that I write something about as coherent by merely vomiting up random notes about whichever D&D campaign we're currently playing. Nothing wrong in descriptive writing, of course, but as I've said before, I wouldn't mind it if they had paid attention to the processes of play and written more about that instead.
To play the devil's advocate for a moment, a couple of suggestions:
- Maybe the benefit of different xp profiles for different classes is not about difficulty at all, maybe it's all in there merely to be different and thus cause fruitful asymmetry between a group of PCs that at least initially might be gaining XP at the same rate with each other. Asymmetry of how much you still need to level up, specifically, as asymmetry of actual power is already well taken care of by the different and differently scaling class features. For this purpose anything at all goes, as long as the numbers particularly at 1st level are different enough so not everybody levels up all at once.
- Maybe the point of devaluing xp by several different means at once is to create an impenetrable fortress of regulations that can be tweaked by the GM flexibly, without excessive player oversight; if the mechanism of devaluation were clear and singular, it would be much easier for the players to get a cry on about any fiddling with it. A multi-layered solution allows you to choose your point of attack in such a manner as to leave whatever the players obsess over untouched.
I could also put down my own notes on Unified XP Theory (I obviously have some pretty developed ideas on it), but I'll desist for now, as I'm sure you've got your own scheme well in hand here. I'll read the next sequence with interest, to be sure.
It has occurred to me that, if each class is ensured to have one unique thing about them that is crucial (even the Fighter here is the only one who makes suitable dragon bait), even the most random and asymmetrical of progression patterns is can contribute meaningfully to play -- if you really need character X to gain level Y so that you can do Z, it becomes an element of the challenge to figure out how you're going to get him the gajillion XP he needs to make that happen.
While that does contribute to the game board, however, I can't help but think that a principled progression could do so just as well and probably better.
I think you've got it with 'character X to gain level Y so that you can do Z', but just take it to a larger picture - D&D is disassociated with it's overall ending. That being, presumably, level 20. No one gets there (Though a side note: I know of someone who's GM'ed one group of 4th ed to 30th level and is on the way with a second). It's worth mulling over an idea of '20 in an evening' - go up to level 20 in just one session/evening (yep, work out much multiplied XP awards), or at most, two sessions. Just do it. Get it out of the system. Witness the end.
I guess a broader question of 'isn't it about more than that?' comes up. "That'll just be gobs and gobs of XP - where's the meaning, man?". But I think a game like The Riddle of Steel with it's spiritual attributes is a game that does indeed go on to being about more than that. D&D, sans such mechanics, has level 20 as the end. But it doesn't seem like the end, because no one gets there - so one is left wondering as to the value of every XP point, because each XP point has become dissasociated with any sort of goal/ending in particular. Since XP is disassociated with anything in particular, it can seem significant in and of itself somehow. A sort of remnant feeling.
How is 20 the end? I mean, I can understand how it is the end in 3rd edition of D&D, because that's where a class description ends and epic levels (an arguably alternative rule) begin, but almost any other version of the game has different logic:
Original '74 version arguably ends at around level 10, at name level, although the game has an opening for the occasional post-name level adventuring, and of course the resolution to end around there apparently didn't last long (as can be seen in e.g. the introduction of 7-9th level spells, which almost single-handedly I think are responsible for the abominable level inflation). Still, I would say that it's the technically correct way to play the game: you play to name level, set up your keep, start up a new cast of characters maybe, have your name level superheroes patronize younger adventurers, play some dollhouse with them, and for the most part don't adventure with them anymore because they've already "arrived". The extra levels aren't there to be obsessively reached, but rather merely to have some rules for when characters happen to settle down at somewhat different pace; some take until 12th to retire, some until 14th, but sooner or later you've accomplished what you set out to accomplish in the campaign world.
Basic D&D has more of an "there's never any ending" ethos to it, if you ask Mentzer (I mean, that's literally what he says - that he doesn't feel like the game should have an ending), and the game does have 36 entirely ordinary levels in his treatment (vague as it is, it does suppose that you'll continue adventuring long after getting your castle and keep, although the nature of the adventures should change vastly) before getting to Immortal play. Earlier editions of Basic were at the other end, they ended after 3 levels and urged you to switch to AD&D.
AD&D I suppose is technically closest to the idea of 20 levels, although from what I've heard of older AD&D play (1st edition, basically), many people seem to have played it roughly like original: play to around name level, retire characters, start new ones. And that's the functional groups that manage to maintain interest in legitimate play to level up characters over a time-span of years, of course for the rest the game features mere short arcs at low and medium levels (or artificially inflated high-level characters), with the high and heady 10th level forever out of reach.
Considering the above simple overview, if I had to name a natural ending level for D&D, it'd be the 10th, not the 20th. Goes to show how optional the very idea is, that we don't even really agree about where the game ends :D
It's been my experience in playing D&D and D&Dalikes that the end condition has nothing to do with levels or experience. Perhaps I'm just weird, but we've never sat down at our table without some sort of in-game end goal in mind, whether it was a short-term scenario goal or a long term PC ambition.
Which is perhaps why I don't think that XP are the big-R Reward of D&D, but more of a means to an end. They are one of the cogs that contributes to the turning of the big gear that is the Reward Cycle, but aren't the RC themselves. They are good as proof of work -- evidence that someone is capable of playing smart enough to get as many XP as they have -- but ultimately they aren't an accurate way of keeping score. Yes, when somebody levels up, everyone congratulates him (or he boasts about it and rubs it in everyone's places, depending on how frenemy-friendly the Social Contract is), but the guy with the most XP is not necessarily the same as the guy who is currently winning. I know it'll make Callan twitch, but everyone "just knows" who is winning D&D, with or without XP.
All of which is to say, in the process of Unified XP Theory, I don't think issues like winning or end conditions belong among the considerations.
Actually, having just said that, something occurs to me. If XP come with a fixed endpoint in the manner of, say, Transcendence in the Solar System, that could conceivably be of use to the "game board" of D&D -- it creates a constraint and with it a challenge. Can you accomplish what you want your character to accomplish within foo-thousand XP? The more XP you get, the easier it becomes to accomplish things, but it brings you closer to the point that you're required to remove your character from play. That's a potentially fruitful tension.
This is, as far as my D&Dalike experience goes, a completely untested concept, but it's a very interesting one.
This is great stuff. I really, really wish you'd do it for the 1977 Holmes D&D, a game which many people in my age group learned "D&D" from (in combination with auxiliary materials), and which has apparently almost completely disappeared from the myth-tale of the origins of the game and unless I'm missing something, is diminished in discussions of the "OD&D" construct.
(People who are into the recent discussions - am I right in thinking that Holmes is sort of the precursor to Moldvay, and that Mentzer drew heavily on current AD&D developments, like skills, in modifying Moldvay? In which case Holmes and Moldvay are very much the odd man out as a unit, and tragically so, as they, again as a unit, are probably the best functional update of the original three booklets.)
Also, I'm trying to remember anything about the level limits. Marshall, what is the precise text concerning those, in the 1974 books? Damned if I can remember whether any such thing was ever dictated for play prior to recent times (e.g. 30th is over for good, in 4E) - and worse, I can't remember whether I forgot about it, if that makes any sense.
I'd love to do it for the Holmes D&D (that's one of the Basic editions, right?), I just don't have a copy. If anyone does and wouldn't mind sending me all the information, I'd tackle it as well.
The '74 text claims that there are no level limits for humans: "There is no theoretical limit to how high a character may progress, i.e. 20th level Lord, 20th level Wizard, etc. Distinct names have only been included for the base levels, but this does not influence progression." But it doesn't give any guidance as to the XP requirements; as you can see from the pdf, it's anyone's guess what those would be, so the furthest you can go without doing your own design is F9, C8, and MU11. What's odd is that attack rolls and saves are listed well beyond that point; at least, to me it seems a very strange oversight. Dwarves max out at F6, elves at F4 and MU8, and halflings at F4 (only humans are allowed to be clerics).
Another interesting thing: there is no name level for Magic Users in this version. The closest thing they get is the ability to make magic items at lvl 11. They never get their own wizard tower thang going on.
Argh! See what you made me do?! DnD publications and dates (http://adept-press.com/wordpress/wp-content/media/DnD-pubs-dates.pdf) through 1989 (AD&D2). Various other TSR titles and other companies' games are included for reference and perspective.
The colors are an artifact of doing it hurriedly, which I'll clean up a bit when I have time. (just did it - RE)
(Small rant not directed at Marshall) If tomorrow is the day when I live on without ever again hearing the words "red box" as a D&D reference again, it'll be too soon. For one thing, there were three fucking red boxes. For another, ignorant buttholes are forever bragging, "I've been playing D&D since Basic -" [pause] "Red Box." Implying "since the beginning," the pustulent fools.
Quote from: Ron Edwards on December 16, 2013, 11:36:35 PM
Argh! See what you made me do?! DnD publications and dates (http://adept-press.com/wordpress/wp-content/media/DnD-pubs-dates.pdf) through 1989 (AD&D2). Various other TSR titles and other companies' games are included for reference and perspective.
Thanks for putting this together! It's a much handier, cleaner reference than whatever I already have available to work with.
Quote from: Ron Edwards on December 16, 2013, 11:36:35 PM
For another, ignorant buttholes are forever bragging, "I've been playing D&D since Basic -" [pause] "Red Box." Implying "since the beginning," the pustulent fools.
Please cut some slack to, of all things,
non-native-English-speakers bragging like that. For example, one (and only one) "red box" was the first D&D product to be translated to Italian. I've always assumed it was the Mentzer one, as the whole -ECMI line of variously colored boxes followed it. Anybody already playing D&D in Italy before that would be an adult hobbyist using English-language materials from parallel import, while if you started as a kid then that particular "red box" is the earliest you could have started, thus deserving some relative bragging rights I suppose. It was already a hard-to-find collector item by the time I was in high school, IIRC.
@Rafu: yes, the "basic" italian edition is the Mentzer one. But even at the time the English hardbacks were easily available in game shops in bigger cities
@Ron: why did you write "level 4-14" on the 2th edition?
An interesting turning-point in AD&D is not marked by a new edition, but by a simple reprint: when the very crude cover images of the three 1st edition hardbacks were substituted by the much more elaborate and refined cover images better known today. It was a total change of image for the game, to a much more "serious" tone.
Italians are forgiven for past bragging in that manner. No more!!
Moreno, you're right about the new covers, which I think of as the "orange stripe" books. I'll double-check about the levels 4-14; my understanding is that the Cook sequel to the Moldvay 2nd edition was limited to those levels.
I can't get everything into one diagram. If I could, I'd include crucial adventure modules like the Giants series, B1: In Search of the Unknown (which is in Holmes), B2: The Keep on the Borderlands (which is in Moldvay), The Village of Hommlet, the A series, and the N series.
In the new revision of the file to be uploaded soon, I'm adding more horizontal lines and making them heavier, to indicate publications which were both economically discontinued and rendered "unknown" in the hobby subculture.
Quote from: Ron Edwards on December 17, 2013, 10:38:45 AM
I'll double-check about the levels 4-14; my understanding is that the Cook sequel to the Moldvay 2nd edition was limited to those levels.
Ah, I think you are conflating the Cook "Expert" D&D (1981) to Moldway's Basic with the 2nd edition ADvanced D&D (1989) (both by David "Zeb" Cook)
Reading again the diagram, probably is simply a copy-and-paste error from the 1981 book box to the 1989 one that brought that part. You can cancel these last posts of mine after the correction, they are off-topic to the discussion...
All quibbling about the diagram is god damn off-topic! This is to help Marshall and to develop his points, remember?
OK, I've revised the hell out of it, with an eye toward some temporal integrity so you can scan horizontally and get at least some idea of what kind of crazy influences were hitting anyone involved both from the past and in terms of what was appearing right at that moment.
Let's get back to 1974, however. Marshall, one thing that jumps out at me is the phrasing about whatever was happening at Gygax's "table." This table, it seems to me, is starting to take on the mythic quality that martial arts blowhards assign to the mythical street, as in, "Yeah, but would that work on the street?" Perhaps unromantically, I hold no faith whatsoever that the content of the 1974 text reflected play of any kind. I think it's a magical-thinking construct instead, mashed together from Arneson's (real) table and Gygax's existing Chainmail rules, reflecting neither particularly well or accurately. Whether any characters prior to this thing's publication ever actually underwent this sequence of levels and alterations - I am not claiming knowledge, but rather my current perception is that this never happened.
If memory serves, most D&D culture around 1979-1980 was very dismissive toward the 1974 rules, thinking of them as "that old crap thing" whereas real players were up-to-date, using the newest thing (AD&D, the latest Dungeon article about assassins, some RPGA statement or other, the S series ...). I really don't think that rules-set developed a genuine play-culture at all! When it first came out, no one had it. When it became widely available in 1978, people were already completely fixated on the developing Advanced books, perceived at that time as high-end production and an imminent mainstream breakout. During this entire time, people learned way more D&D from adventure modules than anything else, and their rules presented a crazy-quilt of local practice and varying source texts, even those published by TSR.
Hi
Has anyone read Shannon Appelcline's work in this area? (RPG history in general, broader than just TSR publication history, or the specific original intent of this thread)
Or his take on 70s era TSR?
He has a column here:
http://www.rpg.net/columns/designers-and-dragons/designers-and-dragons26.phtml
which links to various PDFs of early modules WotC has re-released on rpgnow - Each product on that site has a "Product History" blurb which Shannon wrote, including year of original publication. eg 1981 Moldvay D&D
http://www.dndclassics.com/product/110274/D%26D-Basic-Set-Rulebook-%28Basic%29
Also Evil Hat has made one chapter of pre release version of the expanded 4-volume edition of his RPG history freely available, the TSR chapter for the '70s volume:
http://www.evilhat.com/home/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/DD70s_PreRelease_TSR.pdf
I can't find any evidence of the first edition still being available, but it got some good reviews.
I might get around to reading the pre-release TSR in the 70s chapter in the next couple of weeks.
Cheers
Karl
Hi,
I've read a fair amount of Shannon's writing about this so far, although I'm waiting for the big tome o'gaming history to come out before I sit down and study it. (His section on the Forge and independent publishing is good too.)
Although the textual history of D&D is endlessly fascinating, I want to focus on why I posted the diagram. It's to emphasize the memory holes in the understanding of D&D and role-playing in general - that a myth has replaced memory, and now that people are looking at the documents again, they're doing it through a lens of myth. It's like those absurd historian-archeologists who struggled to justify why the Nemean lion's skin might have been considered "iron-hard," as a genuine historical event; there's even a word for this, euhemerism.
I bring it up here because again, I challenge the notion that there existed a play culture, however small, prior to 1974, which produced the 1974 publication called Dungeons & Dragons as a record or expression of that actual activity. As I've written before, the various evidence and accounts indicate to me that this publication was far more artifactual, a publication effort without the kind of foundation that we're assuming. Was there a play culture prior to this point, with many features you and I would call role-playing? I think so. I think it would be found not only at Dave Arneson's table, but also among probably dozens or even hundreds of wargamers or group story-creators who didn't give it a new name, merely calling it "how we play."
But today, steeped in decades of developed role-playing culture, people read these poor little booklets and imbue them with mythic power. Whatever they say, must be the ur-essence Teh Awesome of role-playing, a nugget of design genius, after all, they were first, they invented it, right? And then on inspection, they turn out to be exactly what Marshall said, a hot mess - so the myth merely writhes and says, oh, well, they must be a poorly-written or incomplete expression of that design-genius and Teh Awesome play that was happening at the table. (Has anyone ever documented that Gygax and Arneson played together in the first place? prior to the writing and publication, I mean.) The booklets receive the most generous reading possible, retroactively injecting them with all manner of inferred play-practices that didn't develop until years after their publication.
What I see you grappling with, Marshall, is the possibility that so such thing had been happening at all, and in your investigation of the possible design genius - rightly cleaving straight to the improvement/consequence rules - you find that there isn't a "vision," there. As a non-adherent to the ur-myth, I'm not surprised. I don't think anyone ever played a character from 1st to 10th level in the way the book (kind of) describes, before it was published, and after that, probably hardly anyone ever did it, if anyone. That's why I was interested in the Holmes book, which as I recall was messy by today's standards but regardless, was an actual playable text with a sense of structure and potential accomplishment, and I know a lot of people played the hell out of it for a couple of years, albeit well-spiced with Dragon articles and Judges Guild materials. When the AD&D Monster Manual came out, the Holmes book was the only core book nearly anyone actually had, and an enormous number of tournament games - some of them seminal - were played with that mis-matched combination of texts as the only authority.
Personal anecdote and the OSR/orthodoxy discussions may color this comment beyond usefulness to Marshall, but in case not: my '76-'81 D&D play never once, not ever, with at least 4 somewhat-distinct groups, several dozen boys/men & girls/women, plus some convention attendance (i.e., some exposure to hundreds of RPers), never was gaining levels anything but "it happens when we think it should." Calculating XP was occasionally done as a sort of interesting exercise, but that's it.
Tunnels and Trolls, there I saw some XP tracking. D&D, never in any serious way.
So, to your goals in posting, Marshall:
Quote... to arrive at a personally satisfactory currency based on the experience point for my own OSR-type purposes
Quote... it is all rather wonky, and unfortunately doesn't help my mission of developing Unified Experience Point Theory except by showing me lots of things to avoid doing.
If I recall from my game eight or nine years ago, 3.0/3.5 used a uniform experience point table for all the classes. I never played AD&D2 in any sustained way, if ever, and don't know those texts well, but my impression is that its experience/level progression is more like AD&D and earlier forms, being class-specific. Can Moldvay/Mentzer fans refresh my memory about that version? I played Mentzer when its second edition came out, in 1985, but not since then, so I can't remember. I remember that Holmes had very specific "encounters per level" in the text.
Let's not forget the role of treasure, too. I remember from my first D&D period (1978-1982 or so) that people expected serious magic items in the first few sessions of play, as a huge and immediate level-booster to get the fuck out of 1st and into 3rd/4th, which was pretty much when AD&D became playable at all. (Younger people reading this may not know that 1 GP = 1 Experience point back then, and this applied to all things of value found, including magic items.)
I currently admire what I'm reading about encounters, experience, and levels in 4E, and I look forward to seeing it in play. It's about as close to a unified-experience-point mechanic as I can imagine. I confess that the whole idea of "old school D&D" in my head practically dictates that experience points and consequent level gain are weird and arbitrary and all over the place.
Best, Ron
Ron, that's a very good point about the '74 text's (lack of) foundation in actual play. My reading and playing of it suggests that to me (even though I consider it playable, within limits). Are you familiar with Dragons at Dawn? It's one guy's attempt to reconstruct some semblance of the game that happened at Arneson's table prior to the (unholy?) alliance with Gygax. Although, as a work of historical scholarship, I don't trust it any further than I can throw it (actually, I can throw it pretty far. It's rather aerodynamic. But you get my point), it's different enough from any form of D&D that it's given me the hypothesis that Arneson told Gygax all about what he was doing, then Gygax sat down to write a text, changing things according to his own instincts (and in ways that pushed Chainmail as much as possible -- I can't help but roll my eyes and chuckle every time the rules refer you to Chainmail), filling in gaps where he perceived them, and omitting things that he perceived as unnecessary or otherwise unworthy. And then that, without any play or probably even testing, was the '74 text. All speculation, of course, but I get the vibe strongly.
Regarding "Unified Experience Theory," I meant that in the sense of, say, unified string theory. Not a way to unify the XP mechanic, but rather a way to survey the XP mechanic and explain how it does, can, and maybe ought to work. I'm uninterested in the versions that actually are unified (I'm also uninterested in AD&D2, because it's just too much to handle).
It's been my general observation that, prior to AD&D3, 90% of D&D is cruft. Legend has it that even Clerics came to be because of some vampire character running amok, so a guy with power over the undead is introduced to bring balance to the Force -- the Cleric as we now think of it had nothing to do with the origins of the Cleric, and those origins did not spring from vision or ludodynamic principle, but rather from an ad-hoc patch (if the legend is true. It certainly has "truthiness"). One thing that interests me in my exploration of OD&D and OSR is how much of the game is actually essential to the game (not very much, by my reckoning, and I think Eero would agree, based on his exploits). And then, when you've figured that out, which bits of cruft do you keep or discard, and why? And what are the ludodynamic and social-aesthetic principles that contribute to the long-term adoption and transformation of game features, while others are discarded? Why, for instance, have the Druid and Ranger -- surely the two most stylistically heinous D&Disms -- persisted to this day, yet the d6 hit die and damage roll (comprising a neat, accessible damage system in which you can count on each hit die saving you from one hit, yet moment-to-moment you can pray to your dice to let you do better than that) are forgotten?
I also agree, Ron, about "OD&D" strongly implying asymmetry and all-over-the-placeness. Part of the reason I want to work within that framework is that those qualities speak to me on some level. So it is one of my hopes that this series of analyses will reveal to me why that is.
This desire began when I sat down to actually decipher and then play '74 D&D as close to RAW as possible -- I found that, structurally, I really really liked it. The problem remained that stylistically and Color-wise, D&Disms just don't do it for me. So I took five minutes to barf forth a world and style that excited me, and got a steaming pile of references to Richard Brautigan, Captain Beefheart, Ray Bradbury, Super Mario, and the band Eisley, all across a scaffold of economic satire (it has occurred to me that economics are the common thread in all of my design projects that I actually care about). And it was immediately clear that I had to throw out everything. I kept the Fighter and Magic User, but I fucked with them conceptually (deeply so in the latter case); everything else went. So how to build all the new things that need to go in here, with progression etc? And so here we are.
(Another concern of mine is a loose idea of compatibility with other OSR endeavors. Not full compatibility, or even close to it, but a certain similarity. The phenomenon of FLAILSNAILS transports me in a way I can't describe, and I'd like to be a part of it or something similar. But this is such a loosey-goosey, close-enough-for-blues kind of thing that it barely qualifies as a concern.)
I honestly don't know if it's AD&D or AD&D2 (there's an AD&D2? There's a difference? Heh, okay, that's being cruel...) but it might be worth looking at the random dungeon generation tables. I actually had no idea they were so extensive, with the monsters all categorized into tables and the encounter chart actually including all applicable levels in the random encounter roll (ie, level one monsters could still show up in a level 10 dungeon).
If you look at what you have to face in order to get XP, that might be an evaluation metric.
Now one might assume fighting some orcs (even a scaled amount) is wussy at that point, gamism wise. 'Cus you're not gunna freakin' die! But the tricky thing is that treasure is not tied to the level of the monster. That's what made a weenie fight satisfying - because IF they had treasure (2 in 6 chance, I think. Maybe 3), it was ALWAYS scaled to level!! So a weenie fight was a good gamble! Because it got you a treasure roll equal to your level, merely for bopping a few kobolds on the head.
Which is interesting to contrast against 3rd edition. I thought it was great at first, in third - the tougher you face, the more XP! But it turns into a grind - you get exactly as much as you put in. Which is...how being an employee works! Blah! Where as fighting a few pissy kobolds and then rolling f'n awesome on the treasure roll was like winning the lottery (ie, the opposite of being an employee! Freakin' high roller! Literally!)
It complicates the value, but it's also something that adds to the value of XP (since gold was worth XP back in AD&D(2???))
Fascinating ideas and project. I like the way you're focusing on my two lighthouses in RPG design and reflection, Color and Reward. Callan's point speaks to me too, in that these two principles are obviously and only meaningful ("important," "fun," whatever you want to call it) in the context of fictional Situations.
Your, uh, fucked-with Fighters and Magic Users ... I'll be really interested in what situations you envision them in, and how that might get wrapped into situation-construction mechanics, which is what the random dungeon generators were and are. Some of the modern free on-line forms are really well-done, too.
I've always wanted to check out dungeon generation systems. This is a pretty good excuse to do so. Although I will have some reconstruction to do in that area, as well, because I'm defining "dungeons" differently. Rather than being the dark places of the earth, they are the resonant places of the earth: the parts of the world that are still wild, dangerous, beautiful, full of some combination of wonder and terror. They are, in fact, the points of light.
I've also gone and messed with magic items. The traditional +X magic weapons and their ilk don't exist. Instead of enhancing the functions available to you, magic items alter them or add new ones. For the most part, using a magic item to your advantage is a matter of ingenuity -- magic in general in this world is either apparently useless or too dangerous to use.
As for the PCs, they are all by definition people who don't fit in the established social order. The Fighter and Magic User are better described as Campaigner Who's Out Of Work Because All He Knows How to Do Is Fight And There's No Wars These Days, and Student At a Wizard University Who Is Still Too Young And Wild At Heart to Be Consumed By Pointless, Incestuous Academia. Another way of putting it is that all PCs have a built-in reason to go on adventures: because there is nothing else for them.
I actually do have rules for every version of Dungeons & Dragons at hand. I'm tempted to start geeking out and doing an infodump, but... I'm still having a hard time understanding what this thread is trying to discuss. Mathematics of level progression? Suggested XP rewards? Not sure what's relevant. I'll happily attempt to research any specific questions.
I should mention The Acaeum (http://www.acaeum.com/) is probably the best reference for the publication history of all the old Dungeons & Dragons products.
edited to fix link code - RE
For the moment, my main focus is to describe the value of XP in terms of the benefits provided for each of several versions of D&D, with occasional musings. Once I'm done describing, I intend to shift gears fully to doctrine and philosophy re: how, where, why, and when to tweak, adjust, and otherwise modify the workings of XP for the purposes of my own game (The Laughing City).
If you've got any thoughts to add about XP and its benefits, especially (for this thread) regarding D&D '74, by all means, post 'em!
An interesting discussion. I began playing D&D '74 (which I call OD&D) back in 1975 and have encountered some of these XP issues long ago. My solution was basically to stop counting XP altoegther.
What I do is simply to "level up" characters when we hit a convenient resting point in the adventure (a "Rivendell" moment, if you will) or at the end of a plot arc. I don't worry about the fact that some characters like thieves advance in levels faster than other characters. My group is very "team" oriented and tend to work cooperatively together, so they see the characters' abilities as a group resource.
Anyway, I got tired of counting XP long ago, realized that the XP scale tended to control the pace of my game, and decided to assume control myself.
I see where you're coming from, Marv, and absolutely agree that the XP scale controls the pacing (and also scope) of the game. But I think I differ from you in that I like it that way. It would seem that we have different basic approaches to the game, so I'll clarify mine in order to provide further clarity to what I hope to accomplish here.
I don't think of the game in terms of "adventures" as the term is generally understood by RPG folks or in terms of plot arcs, but rather in terms of "expeditions." And if the whole of an expedition turns out to be five minutes skulking in a hole followed by a fighter and two hirelings getting eaten by a Hobogoblin, followed by everyone else saying "NOPE" and getting the heck out of that hole and back to town, then not only am I fine with that, but I'm excited about it.
Basically, I approach it entirely as a strategy game. We play to find out if the players are lucky and clever enough to profit from the expedition, and how much.
And I want to be clear that I make no claims whatsoever that this sort of play is somehow superior to or truer than any other sorts of play; I'm just saying that it's what I'm into, as far as D&D and D&D-like setups go.
I play along the same lines as Marshall, couldn't imagine the game without the xp system. Entirely different, much more freeform.
4th edition on the other hand, there freeform xp makes perfect sense. By that point it's become a truly dead appendage to the endeavour :D
Eero, I'm getting really tired of your edition wars posting. (1) It's off-topic in this thread, (2) it's embarrassingly inconsistent with your ecumenical and friendly-intellectual approach to D&D concepts, and (3) it's flatly wrong in terms of assessing games' quality. No more, please.
I only mentioned 4th edition because I found it notable how Marv had ended up with the exact same philosophy of the endeavour that the recent developers of the game have adopted. It's an interesting comparison, and I stand by my judgement that of all the editions of D&D 4th is the one that best supports ignoring experience points, design-wise. It's pretty explicit in the DMG chapter on experience points (as well as being confirmed by my own senses and reason), they even suggest the exact solution Marv has of ditching the points and leveling up the entire party as the pace dictates. (DMG p. 121, "Varying Rate of Advancement" outlines how arbitrary xp count is and how it can be replaced with adventure arc based level-ups; the next section "Experience at the Table" makes it explicit that despite xp being nominally encounter-based, coming to play is actually the only requirement of advancing, and failing even this requirement is grounds at most for delaying advancement temporarily.)
As for edition-warring, I've no idea where that comes from. I would expect it to take at least two people and me having both a hate for 4th edition and societal need to convince the Internet about my stance. I'll cop to mild evangelism (heh heh) and full willingness to contrast and compare editions for insight, which shouldn't be much of a sin when Marshall's entire premise is to compare the xp systems of different editions. (And to tell the truth, I do not personally consider 4th edition much of a D&D despite it being an interesting-yet-flawed game in other ways. However, this has nothing to do with Marshall's endeavour, which well might cover that part of D&D's history for all that I know.)
Perhaps I should make more PC word choices - calling xp a "dead appendage" might sound unnecessarily negative, even if I intended it in good humour, like people talk about "slaughtering holy cows" when similar elements are encountered in game design. "An element of design carefully balanced out of contributing to actual content of play, yet ritually preserved for the sake of nostalgia" could be more to the point. XP clearly is in the 4th edition merely as a more fine-grained pacing device for leveling up, as opposed to being a scoring tool, reward system and a goal-determinant as it was in most earlier games under the rubric of D&D. Just like Marv describes, xp controls the pacing of the game, so the 4th edition designers took that control away from the events of the game and gave it to the GM instead. Makes perfect sense once you're committed to the sort of math the game embraces, and it makes even more sense once you get explicit about it and just drop xp accounting altogether, playing encounters at whatever mechanical level you want to play.
Marshall,
Here's a thing I never correlated before:
1) The text explicitly says there is no end to character level progression. This, despite leaving the players to figure out exactly what the XP goal is once they go off the charts. It's not quite clear if it continues to double (fighting man and cleric) or if it's a flat increase per level (as magic user). As far as character improvements, there are guidelines for going as far as about level 17.
2) Character levels are keyed to dungeon levels. As you mention earlier, XP rewards are nerfed for sticking around on low levels.
3) MOST OF THE XP COMES FROM TREASURE.
4) The tables for treasure and monsters max out at dungeon level 13.
This sort of implies the game, as written, is more-or-less maxed out around character level 13-16. I don't know where this "level 10" thing keeps coming from, as the yet-to-be-dubbed "name level" occurs at levels 9, 12, or 8 depending on class.
Now, what do you think is the reasoning behind prime requisite experience bonus/penalty? Is this some weird nod to "realism," that the most naturally capable would "obviously" progress faster? Is there some game mechanic reasoning I am overlooking? I never quite figured out where this rule comes from.
Eero, I don't want this kind of pushback here. We disagree about your post. You do it my way.
This thread's finished. As far as I can tell, Marshall's goal is met. Marv, feel free to start a new thread.