I find myself asking why so many table-top role-playing games start you out a first level. Why so many games limit or control your character advancement. It seems like there is an idea that says you need to barely have any unique abilities until you’ve “earned” them. Then you have to spend a few sessions to gain that privilege. How would you feel about a video game that makes you wait multiple hours before you get anything new?
I want to elaborate on why I think this is a terrible idea. After the break, I’m going to talk about how Arkham City made me realize that character advancement in table-top role-playing games is broken.
Arkham City came out on Tuesday. Arkham City is the sequel to Arkham Asylum, a critically acclaimed video game. Everyone is saying the same thing about the game.
I am (the Goddamn) Batman.
I couldn’t agree more. From the start of Arkham City you feel like Batman. This is true of Arkham Asylum as well, but since Arkham City is the new hotness it’s what I’m going to focus on. If you haven’t played Arkham City, feel free to substitute Asylum. The same ideas apply.
From the moment you don the cowl and look out over a rooftop you’re given a plethora of gadgets and attacks. All of these unique abilities can be looked at like the majority of special powers in table-top role-playing games. Except, you get to start with all of them.
I start Arkham City as Batman. It seems like in too many table-top role-playing games I start playing as Bruce Wayne… outside the Monarch Theater… As his parents are gunned down in front of him. Completely helpless to the events happening around him.
There is a certain appeal to that but I have to spend game after game, week after week, in order to eventually be Batman. That just seems tedious. Why can’t I just skip ahead to when I’m Batman and start playing the game?
This doesn’t mean I’m a perfect character either, or even a complete one. Just look at Arkham City. For as much stuff as you start out with, you also start with a ton of potential stuff to get picked up later. Arkham City even rewards you with XP and Level Ups, like a traditional table-top role-playing game.
As a bit of a tangent, I want to talk about a concept my buddy John exposed me to that I absolutely abhor. John holds the idea that character advancement isn’t an important element in a table-top role-playing game. He’ll cite examples in film and literature of characters who “never advance” and while I agree with what he’s trying to say, I disagree with the message.
Keeping with the Batman analogy. In a table-top role-playing game, John thinks a player would be able to buy off Batman’s flaws. He could get rid of Batman’s lost parents or self-destructive relationship with Selina Kyle\Talia al Ghul\Every Woman He Ever Fucking Meets. While John’s right about this, Batman shouldn’t be able to “improve” by eliminating his lost parents, there is still a very important element of growth and advancement for the character.
If Batman didn’t have a strong experience point system, he’d never have been able to buy a new side-kick when Dick Grayson became Nightwing… or when Jason Todd was beaten to death. He’d not be able to modify his gear to take done Freeze or upgrade the Batcave with wireless internet. Character growth shouldn’t be looked at as a way to make a character more powerful, but as a way to expand their repertoire. Character’s need to evolve, and experience points can help us simulate that.
It’s this author’s belief that game designers and game masters need to start approaching their groups like how Arkham Asylum approaches Batman. You get to start out being as awesome as you need to be and then the challenges need to be presented at that level. As long as you don’t let your players steamroll through everything, as long as you tug at the chinks in their armor, they will find a way to grow, change, and advance.
What I’m trying to say, if I want to start at Level 6 who am I hurting? As long as all the players feel like equals and still have something to strive for, why do they need to slog through game after game of sub-par characters?
Just a thought.
[...] Rob Justice’s article on starting at level 1: How come we start at 1st level? [...]
Totally agree. D&D—which was my “go-to” game for the vast majority of my gaming life—made it tough to start characters as competent because hit points at higher levels made them harder to kill, meaning having a competent character meant removing some of the threat, which—as JustinSmith wrote—is much of the thrill of low-level games.
In True20, with its damage save, I realized I could start my characters at 6th level, or even 10th level, and the threat remained. That freed me. I hope I’ve designed Sword Noir and Kiss My Axe so that characters are competent—much like the characters in the stories which inspired them—yet still have space to grow.
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I hear you. But I think part of the issue is that some games don’t make the journey fun, and/or playing at highers levels IS such a different experience you might as well be playing a new game.
I used to love low-level D&D because the sense of danger, and characters had implicit motivations (you are poor, and there are rats to be slain!). However, I eventually got fed up with D&D because it was overly deadly to play low level characters, without pulling punches. I gave up, because alls I knew was D&D.
Recently I’ve rediscovered that love of “low-level” games. Currently, I am in a Burning Wheel game, with the setup being all PCs are from a backwater village. Turns out that one PC was a bastard of a baron, and has been named successor. The fur trapper is now lord of a neighboring land. his companions are a Shepard and a Magicians Apprentice, and we have a few hundred miles to go.
Part of the game is the journey, and part of it is seeing are characters evolve before we reach our esteemed friend’s Barony. Yes, I am playing a shepard, who dreams of being a warrior? Am I fairly inept now. Yes, it is made cooler by the nature of the game. This game works where others have failed because of Burning Wheel’s focus on challenging belief, the use-based advancement, and failure is a complication not a roadblock.
In this game, the journey and advancement are tedious but engaging to play and leading to an interesting story that we couldn’t do as competent characters.
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Rob Justice Reply:
October 19th, 2011 at 3:59 pm
I think that’s a totally valid type of story. The idea I’m trying to get across is playing the character you want to play. In your case, it’s the story of the farm boy turned hero. It’s a fucking cool story and I totally don’t fault you for it.
The problem I have is that too many table-top role-playing games approach gaming as that static zero to hero mentality. Sometimes, I want to start out being a goddamn Jedi and not a Nerf Herder.
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One of my colleagues once said that tabletop gamers don’t necessarily need their characters to level up, they just want to see stuff change on their character sheet. You can extrapolate this a number of ways, but even if all that happens is that you get to pick up cool things during play that reflect the change in the story or the interaction between your character and the narrative, you get that same sense of growth or achievement.
Marvel Heroes characters don’t start at 1st level; that makes no sense given the license. And let’s be fair, the game is being designed as “pick your favorite hero, and play him in this big crossover event.” But even so, the focus is less on leveling up and more on achieving milestones and unlocking cool stuff.
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Rob Justice Reply:
October 19th, 2011 at 3:55 pm
I think you really hit the nail on the head. To me, it’s not so much about where you start but that you evolve and change. A stagnate character is a boring character. Personally, I like to start out at a point where I already feel accomplished and evolve from there.
I’ve always thought games should be not about where Iron Man starts at but who he ends up being by the end of the story. “Advancement” as a means to evolution.
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One of my favorite games is Don’t Rest Your Head. There’s no “advancement” to speak of, since your powerfull abilities are available to you right from the first session. Players will almost always go out of their way to avoid using them though, due to the possible consequences. It’s the events that drive the need that push the characters, and the story, to their limits.
In a lot of more mechanically-oriented games the problem might be more one of power-creep and saturation. A +1 sword looks great at level 2, but once you find your third +5 Holy Avenger, everything else looks a bit blasse.
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Rob Justice Reply:
October 19th, 2011 at 1:48 pm
Don’t Rest Your Head (and most of Evil Hat Products) already have a good deal of the “Start out awesome” mentality.
I think the issue of “game balance” and “power creep” is another debate all together. I just think that if a player really wants to start with a +5 Holy Avenger, I’m going to give it to him… With a whole bundle of trouble. Whatever is important to my player’s character is what rules my games and if it’s a +5 Holy Avenger that makes the character feel complete, God speed!
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I’m with you in principle. How much of this argument ties into portraying a licensed character who’s obviously not “first level” and how much of it ports over into a more general sense of character competency at the launch of a campaign/ session?
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Rob Justice Reply:
October 19th, 2011 at 1:36 pm
It’s a good point, but I think the concept of what makes a licensed character legitimate is incredibly appropriate for a role-playing game. At least for myself, I want my characters to feel like they are, or at least have potential, to be like a licensed character. If this means a character should be portrayed with a greater sense of competency than I say go for it.
This is all assuming you’re not playing something like Fiasco, which is all about incompetency.
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