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Progression in TTRPGS: Why your game might not even need Levels

(this post started as a reply to this post but it quickly got away from the point and became its own thing) Character levels: they're a constant hallmark of Dungeons & Dragons and so, as a result, have shoehorned their way into being an assumed feature of ALL tabletop games, especially for people who are new to the hobby or primarily only experienced with D&D. And it makes sense, right? Progression is a rewarding part of games, getting stronger and developing your character is fun and cool! Tabletop RPGs get the added bonus of allowing for your character's mechanical progression to go hand-in-hand with their internal progression, as well as allowing for escalation of stakes naturally as characters overcome challenges to advance the game's plot! This is all true, but it also benefits us both as players and writers of games to examine progression more critically - what forms can progression take, what styles of play do those forms benefit, and in what cases is a progression system just superfluous? Note that when I talk about progression, I mean mechanical progression - this can intersect with a game's plot or a character's internal growth, and I'll touch on that when necessary, but this post is about when your numbers go up or you get new cool tricks. So, now for my hot fucking take:

“Levels” (usually numerous linear tiers of progression where characters receive proscribed new resources) are really often just an unnecessarily restrictive means of progression, tbh - I think they mostly work in crunch and combat-heavy games like Lancer. Though they feel intuitive, I argue that levels are a very "game-y" mechanic that can feel fairly unorganic. Having a group that advances in ability at roughly the same pace is desirable in plenty of game formats (I'll touch more on that later), but if you open your mind a little it becomes a pretty limiting piece of design, especially restrictive in the context of character customization and intra-party diversity. The most common alternative (and my preferred style) is what I'd call varied or asymmetric progression - the three big mainline examples of this that spring to my mind are Blades in the Dark, Vampire: the Masquerade, and Cyberpunk Red. (more under the break out of consideration for people scrolling)

Literally none of these systems feature conventional character levels (Cyberpunk comes closest which makes sense as it cares most abt combat out of the three), but they all also have very strong progression elements. Basically, you just get to decide which elements of your character you want to improve or what new things to acquire , with the varying tracks (usually some combination of ability scores, skills, and special abilities like Disciplines or Playbooks abilities) having different costs for improvement. This generally requires some kind of XP system, but XP is good actually and D&D just sucks at implementing it (these systems have robust and explicit mechanics for awarding XP based on characters achieving their goals or performing in their specialties, Cyberpunk’s system is my personal favourite). The weakness of these progression systems is that they can feel very...numbers go up, as gaining a fully new ability for your character is usually an expensive investment compared to bumping up a skill by a point or whatever. Special abilities become harder to balance when they're not constrained by Class or some similar system - judging how strong an ability is and how much progression should be required to achieve it is much easier when you have a rough idea of the *kind* of character that will be acquiring it compared to when it's theoretically available to anyone. Of the above systems, Cyberpunk is the one where this flaw is the most glaring, but Cyberpunk also makes a lot of its more dynamic progression elements tied to gear, assets, and other things that fall outside of normal character progression to make up for that. Blades is the strongest here, possibly because it cares the least about combat and hard numbers, but it's divergent from its fellows in plenty of other ways that make for a strange comparison. The advantage of levels , accordingly is that they (should) entail much flashier rewards.

Even though I just said above that I felt levels are best used in combat-focused games, it’s possible that what I’m actually noticing is the way varied progression syncs with “sandbox” campaigns. Another throughline between Cyberpunk, Vampire, and Blades is that they all seem to favour the idea of a character group that self-directs more or less within a specific setting area, with game storylines developing organically via the fallout of previous sessions and reoccurring challenges that the characters need to meet (entanglements, rent, hunting, etc.). Old-school D&D, as noted in the linked post, falls a bit closer to this model, as it generally assumed an episodic sandbox style. Lancer decidedly does not favour that style of game - although it has a Blades-like Downtime mechanic, it lacks a lot of the sideways progression elements that Blades uses downtime to enable and most of Lancer’s downtime mechanics are a means for a character to gain a temporary advantage going into their next Mission. Advancing LLs in Lancer happens at the end of each Mission, themselves a sort of combination between "arcs" (common to many ttrgps in modern day) and D&D's "Adventuring Day" in which players advance along a storyline while attempting to overcome multiple combat challenges with limited resources. Characters get their LL whether they succeed or fail, which is something I like - presumably either outcome has made the characters develop in some way.

So like - that's just milestone XP, right? It's just an explicitly regulated version of milestone XP, which is the most popular version of progression in D&D because most D&D tables run campaigns that are closer to the branching linearity of Lancer than the sandbox of Blades in the Dark (and also because 5e's XP system is doodoo shitty). The perceived linearity of this system still beats the hell out of the simplistic levelling of 5e, because an LL actually provides the character with a ton of different places to invest their resources - Talent ranks, mech skill points, the mech license itself; Lancer gives you a web of connected progression trees to work with. Next to that, D&D's levels become essentially a ladder that branches on occasion, with the option to jump onto another ladder if you so desire (though this comes at a very heavy cost). While I strongly prefer Lancer's progression to D&D's and will happily put it forward as an example of level-based progression being situational rather than strictly worse than variable progression, it should be noted that Lancer still runs aground on the flaw that haunts almost every progression system but is most glaring in Levelled progression: high-end play is fucking nonsense. LL 12 is, put simply, well above what most anyone will actually reach (though it is less egregious than D&D in this regard) and warps balance beyond recognition. The wonderful character agency of Lancer's progression introduces a new issue, where by around LL 7 or 8, your character probably has basically every mechanical option they want and the choices become superfluous. This isn't a huge issue practically as most tables will never advance far enough to encounter it, but it is a weird area of diminishing design space returns. With that said, even if either of these systems worked perfectly, heavy progression elements are still a choice, they aren't a neutral necessity of game design. So when does mechanical progression stop mattering?

Well, like, in oneshots or very short campaigns, obviously. Call of Cthulhu and Alien both have VERY limited mechanics for long term character advancement - a CoC character can improve their skills and recover from ailments (or boost their mythos score), as can an Alien character, but that's basically it. CoC's lack of progression mechanics is especially obvious when put next to its young niece/nephew (is there a gender neutral term for that?), Delta Green. Delta Green has many of the same elements of CoC, but ties in character growth via bonds and features a softcore version of Downtime Actions. This isn't necessarily better than CoC, it just indicates that CoC (like Alien) is far more interested in one-off scenarios or short sequences of linked scenarios, rather than extended campaign play. Eureka!, the brilliant indie mystery title by @anim-ttrpgs, leans into this wholeheartedly by featuring essentially no character progression mechanics.

This may sound at first like a strict detriment, but is in fact a pretty amazing feat of focused design. Eureka! is about playing a mystery story across a small number of sessions, and while you could run a Scooby-Doo or Knives Out style episodic campaign with it, that's not its primary purpose. Instead, Eureka! character creation allows the player to make a competent, skilled character from the very beginning - you know, like a mystery protagonist often is. You do not have to wait for your build to come online, a concept that clashes with the idea of short scenarios for obvious reasons, you just get to be good at what you want to be good at. Eureka! is also free from the weird little imbalances that come from certain long-campaign mechanics: Luck in Call of Cthulhu is a precious pool your character can spend to improve dice rolls, it refills pretty slowly and is clearly intended to preserve characters across deadly campaigns while also being a resource that should be spent carefully. In a oneshot, though, luck can be spent extremely liberally - you won't be needing it later, after all! Similarly, Delta Green's Bonds are a wonderfully grimdark way of providing characters with Sanity armor - but these bonds can ablate, and literally represent the trauma of your character's work destroying their relationships outside of the work, something you are encouraged to roleplay between missions (a price all its own). But in a oneshot, who cares? SAN becomes a very minor concern, which it absolutely is not supposed to be. This is what I mean when I say featuring heavy progression at all, let alone the form it takes, ought too be a considered choice when designing a game or choosing a system. Progression is, like most mechanical frameworks, a choice that comes with opportunity costs - think about the goal for your game and evaluate progression mechanics based on that goal! Simultaneously, when you read a TTRPG, its progression system or lack thereof is (or at least, should be) a hint as to what sort of stories it is suited to telling! I highly recommend looking further into the TTRPGs mentioned in this post as well as the post linked above - comparing the way these systems work across games is a great way to improve your design literacy, and will improve your skills as a GM, dev, or just a critic. Expect a lot more big ass text posts in future, I've got rambley nonsense crowding my upstairs it's gonna be everyone's fuckin problem

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