Scrolling twitter, therefore essay. You know the deal by now.

So this tweet pops up in an OSR group chat, and I pop over to have a look.

Now this stuff always interests me, because the questions of “How do RPGs handle levels” and “How did everyone do it better 5e” are on my mind frequently. It’s one of those super easy things to take for granted when developing games. For instance, it’s common in the D20 games to put what you might call “trainer” or “learner” levels at the beginning of your level progression. If you want people to learn the game as they play, why not put the best levels to do that first? But wait! Most people start at level 1 regardless of whether it’s the best way to play that particular RPG. Even folks who are normally skeptical of WOTC’s design choices will approach this in a total uncritical state of mind. “It’s level 1, of course it’s the level you start at.” WOTC got everything wrong, but where to start? Nah man, they nailed it.

So as designers, it’s probably best if we think of how people are actually going to engage with our games. If you include training levels in your game, and you know people usually start at level one, maybe don’t include those training levels as part of the core progression. Unless you want every campaign to start off with a sloggy death march.

If you know people are easily confused, don’t start your essay on level trainers with an analogy on levels designed to teach you the game, known as training levels. Unless you want your audience to see you as having a total lack of or at best minimal sense of self awareness.

Crap.

Why have level trainers?

The first thing we need to address about level trainers is their unambiguous, specific value. What’s the criticism of them, again?

The purpose of level trainers in your game is to localize advancement within NPCs, demand a return to civilization or strongholds at given intervals, and give the PCs breathing room. In one of my favorite 5e games as a player, we were constantly moving to the next location and quest hook, because that’s how you play 5e. When another player and I wanted to make a potion, which we unambiguously had the resources, time, and expertise to do, the rest of the players said “No, we don’t have time, we have to go to (whatever it was).” Realistically speaking, not only did we have time, but we had no limits (that we were aware of) whatsoever!

It didn’t matter. Other players wanted to move on to the next thing, therefore we moved on. You just get dragged from place to place, chasing the next action high. You erode strategy from the game, long term goals can only live within the lowest common denominator of action sequences. What’s that lowest common denominator? Combat. You don’t overthrow the local baron in a clash between armies (none you’d have a meaningful impact on, at least), you face the baron down in an “epic” individualized combat. It lasts 3 rounds, and for some reason the baron is the toughest guy in the room. But that’s okay, let’s go do it again.

“We literally just need a few weeks to level here. You’re telling me we can’t wait that long to immediately go traipsing around the countryside?”

Having a level training mechanic isn’t so much to save players from themselves as it is to save players from other players, on the face of it. If you’re playing AD&D as intended (which is where the tweet thread comes from), the game is designed to kill stupid and foolhardy players who can’t think strategically. Taking as many notes as I can stomach from the OSR, Lords of Brackas will be following this trend.

Having a level trainer inflates the cost of not having downtime (which good games always address and meaningfully support) so severely as to make the choice not to take a break in town palpably stupid. Even the most gung-ho player will recognize this. Even if they want to go out and avoid leveling anyway, they will be shouted down by everyone else, much as the one person who wanted to stay put for a few days was shouted down in the reverse situation.

“It’s a bad simulation of how people actually learn”

Lewis probably has more sophisticated criticisms of level trainers, especially not when limited by 280 characters. This is not about poo-pooing him, we’re playing the ball, not the man. So I’m not insulting him when I say the idea your mechanic needs a narrative justification to exist is unambiguously stupid. The mechanic helps along the game. A simple “who cares” suffices to shut down people interrogating the narrative validity of a clearly and obviously beneficial element of your game.

A fellow I discussed this with in my discord made the same mistake.”They are a crude abstraction to represent a mispercieved lack in another abstraction.” But that stuff doesn’t actually matter. None of it matters! Downtime is good. Even in action heavy combat games like Lancer, they give you downtime actions between missions. They’re incredibly fun, they build up the tension for whatever action comes next, they reward you for thinking strategically (both in the moment and later on). They take full advantage of the player’s capacity to make choices. They don’t need a narrative justification, this is a game. We’re not simulating real life, we’re simulating Corwin and Merlin from the Amber Chronicles, Jack of Shadows, Cudgel the Clever at best, if we’re simulating anything at all.

So how does LOB do level trainers?

We’re going to start this off from an odd angle, given everything I’ve said so far: the narrative justification for level trainers.

There’s a few elements to note in this exchange. First, I have to note how genuinely stunned I am seeing Lewis understands what leveling up actually represents. Every time i have a conversation about multiclassing in trpgs I have to deal with (generally) otherwise intelligent people claiming it doesn’t make sense to “suddenly” gain some benefit not from their class package, a standard they never apply to the core progression itself. I have to walk through the same conversation each time on why they’re mistaking a mechanical nominal overlay for the actual narrative at the table.

In-narrative, your fighter could always make a bunch of attacks. But 5th level (in 5e) marks the point where your fighter can do it without reliably failing, at least so reliably they would suffer penalties in addition to just missing. This actually matters to to the level training we’re about to dive into. First though, we’re gonna finish commenting on the exchange. While Lewis is absolutely correct, leveling up is a condensed milestone of improvements, it happens without any fanfare. Nothing to commemorate the event. If someone were watching, they would have no indication the character had changed until they busted out something only a character of that level would have.

You might ask, who’s watching? That’s easy, the players are! See, while I agree with Lewis totally, he absolutely missed what I think Jeffro was getting at. Jeffro isn’t calling for level trainers to justify themselves to a narrative, presumably meant to simulate people learning in real life. He’s identifying the level trainers as adding to the narrative that already exists. Level trainers are NPCs! When you include them in your game, you turn the act of leveling up into an event, focused on a character you can interact with. Training montage’s aren’t “realistic” or anything, nobody thinking straight has that qualifier. Training montages appropriately fit an event the game is incomplete without.

So how does LOB do level trainers?

Please be the shortest part of the essay, I’m begging you.

First thing’s first! When players reach enough XP to level up, they receive hit dice and (if applicable) additional MP and PP (huehue). They do not receive new spells or manifestations know, new maneuvers, or skill points (which is what you spend to earn class features and feats). So you still get something for reaching an XP threshold, which is likely to help you finish whatever activity you’re currently engaged it, and then go back to town. But you still need to return to civilization.

In order to get all of the other benefits I mentioned, players must go to a civilized area to train. The training lasts a number of weeks equal to the player’s number of hit dice. The training has a pre-set cost, which grows along the same lines as increasing XP cost for levels. There’s a set of time per day players have to train, but that training can encompass a very large range of activities. Your Warlord player can wage a short military campaign in that time, and provided he has a trainer helping him with the campaign (like an advisor style character), he gets the rest of the benefits of leveling up.

We mentioned the ability for players to take actions multiple times by inflicting greater penalties for failure, remember? We’re going to start off with the penalties for failing those actions. Succeeding at these actions provide very strong benefits in relation to training, which we’ll discuss in a moment. Because of that, I want to show how terrible the potential failures are. You don’t really need to know the terms, just know they’re awful. Side note: we’re just going to refer to this class of actions as “extra” actions for the moment. I don’t care to set their final term in stone for the sake of an essay.

When a character fails an extra attack or maneuver they don’t know, they:

Ends their turn immediately
Provokes attacks of opportunity from all creatures within 10 feet

When a character fails an extra spell or other magic action, or a spell which isn’t prepared, they:

Lose a component of 1d10 level (if any in inventory)
Roll on the Major Wounds table

When a character fails an extra manifestation or other psionic action, they:

Lose 1d10 psy points (if any available)
Decrease casting score by 1d4. A successful extra manifestation or other psionic action removes this penalty.

When a character fails an extra skill check, they:

Ends their turn immediately
Treat the skill check as a critical failure

Got all that down? Suffice to say the cooler the action you try to take when you normally couldn’t, the more permanent the penalty. The more it would help your current situation, the more the penalty inconveniences or even screws you outright. So, why attempt this except in the most dire situations?

Well, there’s more than one reason, but only one is relevant to the current discussion. Here we go:

When a player succeeds an extra action, their XP gained for the day is increased by 1%. For each day xp is gained in this way, their next level’s training costs are decreased by 1% (up to 15% total). Benefits from successes against insignificant challenges are subject to removal from the Historian.

You get to decrease your training costs, and you get to launch yourself upwards faster! That’s honestly it for the moment. Until next time!