Fast leveling

This is one of my favorite of Professor Dungeon Master's videos, and I agree and endorse it completely. I once made a post where I posited that for Shadow of Old Night (under an earlier name) I expected that it would take 100 sessions to reach 10th level, the top of what I'd consider playing. The more I think about it, the more I think that even that is too fast. I counted 10th level as a level that I'd play for a number of sessions. If I were actually to run a campaign that I expected to be both evergreen; i.e., lasting potentially forever, and also one where we played pretty regularly (maybe not weekly, but still pretty frequently) I'd need to stretch it even more. For each level, here's ... more or less ... how many sessions I'd envision playing them for.

1. 5 sessions
2. 10 sessions
3. 15 sessions
4. 20 sessions
5. 20 sessions
6. 25 sessions
7. 25 sessions
8. 30 sessions
9. 35 sessions
10. 35 sessions
11. At some point you need to start over. This is now at 220 sessions. 

And that's just a swag; I wanted to move from 1st to 2nd relatively quickly, but to quickly slow down, and maintain as long as possible the sweet spot of the middle levels. To get through 6th level would be 100 sessions (more or less) and that's probably enough. By then, most likely, people will be ready to start over with new characters. But if they don't...

Let's assume that we played, on average, every other week. Twenty-six weeks a year. 220 sessions is less than 8½ years. While that seems like a long time, there are campaigns that have run longer. Of course, if we averaged closer to monthly, which seems more realistic for my current situation, then that lasts almost 19 years.

——(  †  )——

Of course, there is another way to do this, and that reduces the levels impact, by smoothing them out rather than having their improvements come in big chunks. This is a simplified advancement table for Old Night, showing what characters would normally get at each level.

First level is just character creation, so it can mostly be ignored, but if you look at, for example, 2nd level, you'll see that the character would get +2 hitpoints, +1 to all skill points, and no other advantages. At 3rd level, he'd get another +2 hit points, a new feat selection, and a +1 to his To Hit score. At 4th level, another +2 hit points, another +1 to all skill points, and a +1 to one ability score, or stat. And so on down to level ten.

In many systems of advancement, you've got something like experience points, XP. The Smooth Advancement™ (not really™) system uses sessions played. The easiest way to track advancement would be to replicate this small table in your notes, or on the back of your character sheet is probably best, and then also keep a tally of how many sessions you've played with the character. It is possible that different characters would not participate in every session, depending on player availability, so characters can be a little bit off from each other and out of synch in terms of when they get an advancement. But because Smooth Advancement smooths out the levels and dribbles out their advancement at a slower, more smoothed pace, that hardly matters.

Under this system, let's assume that a character, Garrett Undergrove, is a first level character. His player, Nathan, plays five sessions with him. After reaching five sessions, he can pick one of the advancements from level 2 on the table above. Level 2 only has two to choose from; the increase in hit points and the increase in skill points. Nathan can choose one of those two, and apply it to his character. Then he marks it off on his version of that table, so he knows he can't pick it again.

After he hits five more sessions, he can pick the other level 2 advancement. This means that after ten sessions, he's had all of the advancements associated with level 2, and is effectively a level 2 character. Once he has all of the advancements associated with level 2, he can now start taking advancements associated with the next level, level 3, but not until he's had all that level 2 offers. The same concept scales upwards; once he starts taking level 3 bonuses, he has to take all that's associated with level 3 before he can start getting level 4 bonuses. This prevents a character from taking all of the hit point adds, for example, before doing anything else. Although each level is smoothed, you still need to complete the level before you can start doing the next level.

Depending on the speed at which the GM wants the game and characters to progress, you now go in increments of ten sessions. That would be a little bit longer than the 220 sessions noted above. If you want faster leveling, every five sessions giving you a new advancement would be ~100 sessions to reach all levels, but still with a smoother progression. Of course, you can do something in between two; every seven or eight sessions. Or, if you really want to, pick up a new advancement every 2 or 3 sessions, for shorter campaigns with characters that get more powerful faster. 

But for Smooth Advancement, the track and goals should be known and communicated in advance. Like XP, players know when they're going to get another advancement, even if it is more modest than a whole level all at once, and they can track their progress to it themselves by noting with tallies or something how many sessions they have played and when they will be eligible for another improvement.

The advantage of Smooth Advancement is twofold: 1) it's not as disruptive a jump in power as a full level; character advancement is more modest session to session—although while still giving, in the end, the same advancement as leveling, and 2) for players who want to see advancement, they have the ability to track when it comes. Now, if they're the kinds who want to advance quickly and get powerful quickly, they're not going to love this system, because the advancements are modest. They need to learn to appreciate both delayed gratification and the fun involved in struggling rather than, effectively, turning on the cheat codes. But there are already plenty of games that offer power fantasy playing and fast leveling. The whole point is that Old Night is a different kind of game aiming for a different kind of tone, and therefore, it has to have mechanics that are a little different too.

Of course, you could also extend the "levels" upwards by replicating the same table further down.

I neither recommend nor am super interested in doing so, but it is always a possibility, of course.