How Important is leveling in RPGs?

[Summer-Knight925]

But seriously, how important is the leveling mechanic to you as a player?

Is it genre specific in importance?

Can a game get by without a leveling mechanic?

 

[Ahnehnois]

I'd be fine without it.

 

[was]

I like to see it every once in a while. Doesn't have to be very often.

 

[billd91]

I think it's important to have some form of improvement. It doesn't have to be level-based. Call of Cthulhu doesn't have levels yet it is still satisfying to get better at what you do.
It doesn't even have to be inherent to the character. Traveller characters traditionally improved VERY slowly. But they could get better gear, a better ship.

 

[Darkness]

Depends on the game system, starting power level, campaign, and possibly other things as well.

 

[Dice4Hire]

I want to get better. Either by levels, better skills and abilities, better equipment, or renown.

They all work for me, but I do not want to feel stagnant.

 

[Jhaelen]

I think it's important to have some form of improvement.

This! E.g. I really dig Runequest's system which allows you to check skills you successfully used and later spend time to train them without a concept of levels.

Particularly as a DM I like it even better though if there's a way to measure a pc's power level and compare it against an opponent's power level since it makes encounter and adventure design easier.

The Dark Eye is an example of a system where you spend xp (and gold) to improve your character by training and your level (which increases after a certain number of xp are spent) has no effect other than to measure your overall power.

Without any way to improve characters I'd only play the system for one-offs, i.e. create a new character for every adventure. I'm simply too easily bored with playing a character for a long time.

 

[sabrinathecat]

Some form of progression is essential, just because of human nature.
I still like the D6 WEG system of skill points that can be used to improve your character skills, or for an emergency bail-out in a bad roll.
I don't need fixed 5000XP=lvl3, level up every 3-5 sessions, but some form of progression.

 

[ProtoClone]

It depends on the genre.

CoC does fine without an actual level base system. They reward you with skill progression and survival (although the latter isn't always a reward). Some other genres do fine with level based systems but I am sure they would be just as fine without.

In my own experience, whenever I have played a game that used a level based system like in D&D (for example), the focus ended up being on getting to the next level; a sort of "Are we there yet" mentality for RPGs. While the games that had no level based system, like CoC, we ended up focusing more on building the story and developing our characters. This may not be true for everyone, although I would encourage people to play an RPG that has no level based system and see how it goes.

 

[Joshua Randall]

It's important to some players and not to other players.

Any attempt to force a player who likes frequent leveling into a system that dislikes frequent leveling (or vice versa) is going to end in disaster.