One potential mode of “old school” play is the idea that “everybody starts at 1st level”. Combined with each class having a separate experience chart table, individual experience awards, and open gaming tables it was pretty typical for adventuring parties to have a pretty wide variance in their levels. This, of course, isn’t “balanced“, so it’s come in for a good deal of scorn in the past couple of decades. Most groups today allow new characters to be rolled up using the party’s current level and keep everybody in lock-step through unified XP awards.

(My Ptolus group, however, has experienced a 1-3 level variance due to a variety of reasons. I have not found this be inherently traumatizing.)

Having played a megadungeon OD&D campaign for awhile now, however, I’ve found that there are a few mitigating factors in practice:

First, the open gaming table combined with super simple character creation results in everybody running a “stable” of characters. They can self-select whichever character is the best match for the current group or roll up an entirely new character depending on whatever is most appropriate.

Second, due to the lethality faced by 1st-level characters, players rolling up new characters want a couple higher level characters to accompany them. It greatly increases the odds of survival and the pace of advancement.

Third, it doesn’t actually take that long to “catch up”. For example, in the time it takes a 5th level fighter to reach 6th level, a 1st level fighter will reach 5th level. (And will catch up and become 6th level before the more experienced fighter reaches 7th.)

With all that being said, I’ve been giving some thought on how you can make the level gap more palatable.

In Eden Studio’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer roleplaying game, they compensate for the power difference between the Slayer and the Scooby Gang by giving the weaker characters additional drama points. Could this be adapted? Let’s say lower level characters get +1 inspiration points per difference in level? (So a 3rd level character adventuring with 6th level characters would get 3 inspiration points to spend per session.)

Inspiration points are a dissociated mechanic, obviously, but they could represent all sorts of things: It’s the guy who’s inspired to greater heights by Superman’s example. Or picks up a few tricks from sparring with D’Artagnan. Or gets an assist from Bruce Lee during the melee. But, basically, you’re rubbing shoulders with some elite dudes and some of it is wearing off.

Mechanically, we could simply use the existing action point mechanics for 3rd Edition. Alternatively we could continue taking our page from Buffy and allow for an inspiration point to be spent much more significantly:

• I Think I’m Okay: Restores half your lost hit points.
• Righteous Fury / Time to Shine: +5 to all actions for the current combat.
• Dramatic Editing: Actually alter the game world. (“Hey! There’s a secret door over here that leads us to the back of the goblin encampment!” “Good thing somebody dropped some holy water over here!”)
• Back From the Dead: Return from the grave through resurrection, a clone duplicate, a long-lost twin, or whatever else strikes their fancy.

Some of these look like they would exceed my “tolerance threshold” for D&D. Others wouldn’t. Your mileage will almost certainly vary.

A few years ago Monte Cook posted an essay on his website called “Ivory Tower Game Design“. It raises some very important points, but over the years I’m afraid I’ve come to find it deeply annoying because whenever somebody links to it or quotes from it, I can almost guarantee you that they’re about to completely misrepresent the essay’s entire point.

What Cook basically says in the essay is, “Instead of just giving people a big toolbox full of useful tools, we probably should have included more instructions on when those tools are useful and how they can be used to best effect.”

But the vast majority of people quoting the essay instead snip some variant of “we wanted to reward mastery of the game” out of context and then go ape-shit because D&D3 deliberately included “traps” for new players.

The methods of selective quoting vary, but they all basically look something like this:

“Toughness [is] not the best choice of feat.”

OMG! WHY WOULD THEY INCLUDE A SUCKY FEAT LIKE THAT?

There are two problems with this.

First, the full quote is actually, “Toughness, for example, has its uses, but in most cases it’s not the best choice of feat.” And then the essay goes on to further clarify its meaning: “To continue to use the simplistic example above, the Toughness feat could have been written to make it clear that it was for 1st-level elf wizards (where it is likely to give them a 100 percent increase in hit points). It’s also handy when you know you’re playing a one-shot session with 1st-level characters, like at a convention (you sure don’t want to take item creation feats in such an instance, for example).”

In other words, Toughness is a special purpose tool. When used properly, it’s a useful tool. When used improperly, it’s a wasted feat slot. The designers felt like people should be smart enough to figure that out for themselves, but the point of Cook’s essay is that it probably would have been better to include more usage guidelines.

Which ties into the second problem. The larger fallacy here is the belief that you can allow for meaningful choice in any kind of complex system without having some choices be inferior to other choices. This is something I discuss with more detail in “The Many Types of Balance“, but the short version is that in order to achieve this faux-ideal of “every single choice is just as good as every other choice, no matter what combination of choices you make” you need to severely limit either (a) the flexibility of character creation, (b) the scope of gameplay, or (c) both. As a goal, it’s not only without value, but it will significantly cripple your game design. It’s like demanding that a2-a3 and the King’s Gambit both be equally valid openings in Chess.

So the next time you see someone misquoting Cooks “Ivory Tower of Game Design”, do us all a favor and link them here. Maybe it’s not too late to nip this bit of false truth in the bud.

In “Revisiting Encounter Design“, I make the argument that 3rd Edition plays better if you use old school encounter design. To briefly sum up:

1. Design most encounters around an EL 2 to 4 lower than the party’s level.
2. Feel free to use large mobs (10+ creatures) with an EL equal to the party’s level.
3. Sparingly use encounters with an EL equal to the party’s level.
4. Occasionally throw in an EL+2 or EL+4 encounter.

Using this encounter design results in faster combats (which means you accomplish more in a typical game session) and drastically reduces the likelihood of the 15 minute adventuring day.

This advice is not radically different from that provided in the 3.5 DMG, which suggests that encounters should be 30% with ELs lower than the party’s level, 50% with ELs equal to the party’s level, 15% with ELs 1-4 higher than the party’s level, and 5% with ELs 5+ above the party’s level. (Let’s call this the 30/50/15/5 ratio for easy reference.)

THE ANALYSIS

This 30/50/15/5 ratio was not atypical in early 3rd Edition modules. For example, here’s the EL breakdown of combat encounters in the first section of The Forge of Fury (designed for a group of 3rd to 5th level characters):

EL 1
EL 2 (x7)
EL 3 (x3)
EL 4 (x4)
EL 5 (x4)
EL 10

If we use an average party level of 4th, this ratio breaks down to: 55/20/20/5. Not an exact match, obviously, but definitely within the ballpark of having 80% of your encounters equal to your lower than the party’s level.

But as you look at modules published in the last 5-6 years, the misguided “common wisdom” of how to design encounters for 3rd Edition had taken hold. For example, here’s the encounter breakdown from part four of Paizo’s Curse of the Crimson Throne (designed for 10th level characters):

EL 8
EL 10
EL 11 (x2)
EL 12 (x2)
EL 13
EL 14 (x3)

That’s a ratio of 10/10/80/0. 80% of the encounters are now above the party’s average level instead of below it.

You can see the same design principles in Wizard’s modules. For example, here’s Fane of the Drow (designed for 4th level characters):

EL 3
EL 4 (x4)
EL 5 (x5)
EL 6 (x5)
EL 7 (x2)

Which is roughly 5/25/70/0.

Similarly, here’s the breakdown from “The Demon Council”, the last section of Expedition to the Demonweb Pits (for 11th level characters):

EL 10 (x2)
EL 11 (x3)
EL 12 (x10)
EL 13 (x4)
EL 14 (x2)

Which gives us a ratio of 10/15/75/0. (This one looks a little better if you assume that the PCs are supposed to level up to 12th halfway through this sequence.)

THE TIP

A couple weeks ago, as I looked over my recent usage of published 3rd Edition scenarios, I realized that I’ve been instinctively using modules published in the last 5-6 years when the PCs are 2-3 levels higher than the recommended level.

For example, when you apply this guideline to the modules used above you end up with:

• Curse of the Crimson Throne 4: 50/10/30/0
• Fane of the Drow: 60/30/10/0
• “The Demon Council”: 70/20/10

Which definitely slants them back into the ballpark of what we’re looking for.

Reflecting on this also taught me something new: The tips in “Revisiting Encounter Design” are designed to widen the dynamic range of your encounters. Shifting the recommended level for these published modules made me realize that we’re also widening the dynamic range of our adventure design.

Fane of the Drow, for example, isn’t unachievable for 4th level characters. But it is a tough slog. And if you use “tough slog” as your baseline for normalcy, then you have nowhere to go: If your 4th level characters face anything tougher than this, their odds of dying horribly begin to skyrocket. Which means that if your 4th level characters “skip ahead” or take an unexpected shortcut, they could easily run headlong into a deathtrap.

But if Fane of the Drow is, instead, your expected baseline for 5th or 6th level characters, suddenly you’ve got room to breathe.

And where would having room to breathe become particularly important? Node-Based Scenario Design.

Revising your approach to encounter design allows you to be more fluid and dynamic in how you run and combine your encounters; it also allows you be more fluid and dynamic in how you run and combine your scenarios.

You know the story I never need to read again? It’s the one where some vigilante comes to Gotham City and says, “I’m going to use guns and kill criminals. ‘Cause I’m a bad-ass and I’ve got the guts to do what Batman can’t.” And then, ya know, something goes wrong: A kid or a cop gets caught in the crossfire. It turns out the “criminal” was actually innocent. Commissioner Gordon won’t stand for it. Batman says, “Stop being a dick.” Whatever.

Throw in a quote about “staring into the abyss” if you want to get really “edgy” about it.

(And, no, changing it to a flaming sword doesn’t make it “fresh and exciting”. Cut it out.)

This story has been D.O.A. for awhile now, but the recent Battle for the Cowl mega-plot in the Batman comics uses this plot (I kid you not) three different times.

What really cements the creative bankruptcy involved here, however, is that Battle for the Cowl exists specifically because Batman is missing. And Batman is missing specifically because he broke his own rule and fired a gun. Which means that there was actually an opportunity here to take this tired, weary story and breathe a little fresh, legitimate life into it by using it to explore and comment on the decision that Batman had made.

Unfortunately, all three of the writers involved were too busy beating this dead horse to notice the opportunity that was passing them by.

Step 1: I have just read some interesting things about recent DC continuity and would like to check it out.

Step 2: Let’s try Infinite Crisis.

Step 3: Ah, there’s a Countdown to Infinite Crisis. I should read that first.

Step 4: Hmm… Apparently this ties into a bunch of mini-series leading up to Infinite Crisis. Some googling reveals The OMAC Project, Rann-Thanagar War, Days of Vengeance, Villains United, and The Return of Donna Troy.

Step 5: And some more googling tells me what order I should read them in. Also, I seem to have missed a Prelude to Infinite Crisis…

Step 6: … and these mini-series wrap-up in several specials. When should I read those?

Step 7: Oh. Intermixed semi-randomly between the seven issues of Infinite Crisis.

Step 8: Okay, now I can start reading.

Step 9: Three issues into The OMAC Project and apparently the “story continues” with Superman: Sacrifice. Can I just skip that and keep reading this series? … Nope. Nothing makes sense. (In fact, it turns out that Superman: Sacrifice contains the event which arguably triggers the entire Infinite Crisis.)

Step 10: … and Superman: Sacrifice is split across three different Superman comics and a random issue of Wonder Woman.

Step 11: Okay. Tracked those down. I’ll continue reading…

Step 12: And then Infinite Crisis sucked.

(Some of the mini-series were pretty decent, though.)

Why is DC Comics asking me to do this much homework in order to simply read their books?

Admittedly, only some of this material was actually crucial for understanding and appreciating Infinite Crisis (insofar as that drek could appreciated on any level). But that doesn’t actually help, because I had absolutely no way of figuring out which bits weren’t essential until after I’d read them. (And it’s not as if I tried to seek out every issue of DC that crossed over with Infinite Crisis. These are just the major backbones of the event.)

If Marvel and DC really feel it’s important to create this kind of convoluted, multi-title, overlapping continuity, I say more power to them. But, if so, then it would really behoove them to put together reading lists so that readers who are interested in their comics can trivially figure out what they need to read.

Having cleared Infinite Crisis, I proceeded to 52 — which was delightfully straight-forward, except for the bit where you read issues #1 thru #50, then stop and read World War III #1-4, before finishing with 52 #51-52. (This problem, at least, is cleared up in the collections.)

But now I’m trying to figure out Countdown to Final Crisis and, as far as I can tell, it is literally impossible to put together a reading order for its penumbra of narrative. (In fact, all I can find online are people saying, “I dunno.”)

Below the “Read More” barrier, however, I have included my reading order for the first chunk of the modern crisis era at DC Comics (for anyone who might find it useful). I have included my personal grades for each story in parentheses after each title.

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