Levels for table-top Games

Matt Miller

The JRPG style of 'progression' in RPG's is now largely limited to electronic gaming, where software facilitates the tracking of attributes and ability dependencies. DnD 4E clearly illustrated the dangers of attempting to mimic that. Nobody goes up to lvl 100 for a reason. Arguably, 20 levels may be too many--OD&D only had 14, Dresden Files had (effectively) four. To a certain extent, its a matter of how long you expect to play, and how long it will take you to get bored of playing the same character. In Mayhem, we used 20 tiers (the power of defaults), which I regret.

Rob Hicks

...As far as levels, the game was designed to be functional in the 1-10 range predominantly, and progressed in ranks much more quickly than dnd did....We could have gone 1-10 and been just as effective....it would have made feedback charts easier to manage.