How should the Living RPG Series handle players without an appropriate level character to play an episode?

[Sazeral]

As we are already planning season 2, there is a question about how to allow players to participate in higher level games, say an episode designed for levels 5-10, if they don't character that has leveled to that point. Which of the following options do you think is the most appropriate? 

The tiers for episodes will likely model these ranges: 1-4, 5-10, 11-16, 17+

Please answer this poll and/or suggest alternatives.

Thanks

[chpexplorer]

I like options so i am perfectly ok with the last 3 options the first just seems like it wont bring people together but seems like it will only exclude people but I like the idea of throwing it out to the player. Let him choose at the table which one he would like to do. Rolling up a new character would let them experiment.  Letting them play a higher level of their character is great because they get to keep the rewards it will just come later but i say let the player at the table make the choice between the last 3 options

[DmitriWillguard]

I'm in favor of letting players create characters at the appropriate level for the episode, and then getting to carry that character forward.  It feels the most accessible and least-gatekeepy to me, and there's the built-in "penalty" of not being able to contribute past episodes' rewards to future episodes.

[1001100x02]

Adventurers League & Path Finder Society are different from Living Stargate in important and utterly fundamental ways.

First, there are so, so, many more than 13 adventures a season. Second, they're really no where like the linear story the LSG campaign has set itself up as. Thirdly, character progression isn't the strictly linear affair it is with the SG RPG. Oh, and there are a gajillion more people playing them than will ever play this campaign.

If you're going to start level-gating adventures -- which I think is a terrible idea that screams trying to hammer a SGRPG peg into a AL/PFS hole -- instead of designing them to be playable by any level then, you have to accept that some people aren't going to be able to play them. Putting that gate in, then twisting everything in knots trying to find ways to allow people to bypass it seems to me to be a self-defeating exercise. Why go to all the effort of finding a way to circumvent the problem when the problem doesn't even have to exist to begin with?

The question people should be asking is how to handle tables with both low and higher level characters sitting at it, which is far more pertinent to convention style play.
What happens if someone who's played all of season one sits down at a table otherwise populated by people whose first game is the start of season 2? Or tables where most characters have an extra half season of play over someone?

The devs should have gone with a scaleable NPC system where you work out how challenging an encounter/adventure is meant to be -- Milk Run, easy, difficult, hard, impossible -- and the system scales the numbers so that level of challenge remains broadly consistent. Since they didn't, it's going to have to fall to the episode writers to include a section dealing with these issues.

[LeonPNK]

Personally I would like to play my character at the lower level and if we succeed it will result in greater rewards.  This would result in gameplay that is more tension filled and rewarding.  Obviously I can do this regardless of what the rules say.  

[1001100x02]

The other option, not listed, is that given 5e is what it is, you just simply increase an existing character's HP and Proficiency to the minimum level allowed by the adventure. No class abilities/feats upgrades until they accrue the required MP

[Aranduran]

18 hours ago, 1001100x02 said:

The other option, not listed, is that given 5e is what it is, you just simply increase an existing character's HP and Proficiency to the minimum level allowed by the adventure. No class abilities/feats upgrades until they accrue the required MP

Not a bad option.

Personally I like options 2-4 of the list. Making players go back and play through earlier episodes may not be feasible. Unless people are willing to regularly run those earlier episodes, when you have someone new join an existing party it would potentially exclude them. I like to think of it as similar to how the cast of characters can change from season to season (or sometimes rarely in the middle of a season).

 

On 4/13/2021 at 2:50 PM, LeonPNK said:

Personally I would like to play my character at the lower level and if we succeed it will result in greater rewards.  This would result in gameplay that is more tension filled and rewarding.  Obviously I can do this regardless of what the rules say.  

In my experience, this works if and only if the rest of the party is willing to accommodate the handicap. And it is a handicap, because even if you went from 4 level 5s to 4 level 5s and a level one, the party is distracted by having to keep the level one alive. Of course, this is my experience from 5e DnD, not SG rpg.

On the other hand, AC is a lot higher in SG than in 5e (a tactical vest and a helmet that anyone can use provides 17-22 AC), and combat is generally less important in Stargate, and in combat, it is balanced even more on the players' side than it is in 5e (most of the time, jaffa will be firing at you with disadvantage unless they are practically on top of you, for example).

[1001100x02]

Option 2 is just dumb. No credit for playing with a character that isn't the one you wanted to play the game with in the first place? I can't see anyone agreeing to that.

 

[Landoris]

Personally, I like the third option, as long as the "rewards"that they don't access till appropriate level does not include the mission points. Give them the credit to help level up. But I have to ask, what about the opposite situation? If season 2 released episodes for newer players, what about someone that has a character from season 1 that is over the level? You don't want to make people unable to play through an episode with their favorite characters, so this needs to be addressed too.

[elfrhys]

As I'm in the process of adding a new player to a group that is 5 episodes in...  The way I'm handling it, rather than have the new character underpowered or the new player have to rush to play through earlier eps is to treat him as a transfer to the team.  I'm running him through a "recap" of missions he was ostensibly on with a previous team, mostly to get him used to the system, and bringing him in at one level below the others.