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Any D&D/D20

Shadowrun

World of Darkness

Palladium

Other (feel free to post about it)

[BlackFlyme]

Nah, it was described as "like Attack on Titan, but all the titans are also undead".

[Rolan7]

Sounds like playing a group of humans in Vampire the Masquerade.
A friend of mine actually did that as a one-off, and apparently it was... okay.  Much more talking and evading than fighting of course, so probably more fun under VtM than DND.

[Kadzar]

Level zero adventures, anyone tried or heard of them? I find the idea stupid, even if it's something like "play an npc class for a few levels before you become an adventurer proper".

Someone I know had the brilliant idea of creating an actual level zero. No skills, proficiencies of any kind, or even anything remotely resembling a feature. They would only get 1d6 health, and had to roll it. No automax at first level as usual.

Ridiculous. No one would survive the first encounter, since no one would have any armour and would have to take a -4 on every attack due to lacking proficiency.

I've heard that the standard character creation process of Dungeon Crawl Classics involves rolling up 3 level 0 characters, and any that survive can be used to make your level 1 character.

But that's based on early D&D sensibilities, where level 1 wizards only get d4 health, randomly rolled, and I'm not even sure if they got a constitution bonus in some of those versions (OSRIC shows you only get at least a +1 if it's over 15). That may seem crazy to players of modern D&D, but the idea behind early D&D was that you were trying to get treasure and gtfo, since you got more XP from treasure than killing monsters, so you only got into fights if you fucked up. At early levels, any hit points were just a chance to avoid death if you happened to get hit.

[BlackFlyme]

Though there were usually some beefier characters to stand between the monster and the wizard to ensure gibbing doesn't ensue. Plus wizards can still pop off at least a few helpful, though not particularly powerful, spells at early levels.

Again, we would start with nothing if we agreed to this game. 1d6 health, no saves or BAB, no proficiencies with any armour or weapons, and no features at all. That's a -4 on all attacks, assuming we don't just go unarmed. If we do go unarmed, we also provoke attacks of opportunity for not having the Improved Unarmed Strike feat. We don't have armour, which hurts too, since wearing armour you are not proficient with also inhibits you.

And some of the beginning fights would have us squaring off against actual groups of zombies, solo, since it would be a normally day then all of a sudden it's a zombie apocalypse.

[NullForceOmega]

That sounds poorly thought out, unbalanced as hell, and unpleasantly like an excuse to get off on being a dick to the players.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

Sounds like typical original D&D. Want to kill a zombie? It's dumb and predictable, so figure out ways to distract it and throw stuff from a rooftop, etc. Want to kill a pack of zombies? Better get really creative. If you want to go toe to toe with a zombie, you're dumber than it is and far more of a disappointment to your famiry. Even if you're level 3 or 4 - why not climb up on a roof, pull up the rope, and throw debris on it until it's dead?

The game definitely does work and it is definitely fun. But there is an edge to it because your character doesn't have plot immunity and characters sometimes die horribly. But because there's risk, it's fun. I've played in games where there's no risk. I don't play in games like that anymore.

[NullForceOmega]

I'm just going to throw a comparison out here on this subject:

1st level RIFTS character:  Fully realized outfitted and capable character, starts capable and becomes insanely powerful.  Smoothly countered by the entire setting being insanely OP.

1st level D&D character:  Just capable enough to actually accomplish something, takes a long time to become powerful, and even longer to become extremely powerful.  Countered by balanced progression system.

0th level D&D character: Completely useless meatbag with no capacities whatsoever other than base statistics, has a nearly non-existent chance of ever actually becoming useful due to being dead out of the gate.  A non-leveled Orc can kill an unlimited number of these guys.

Now, I'm going to throw this caveat out there as well, the 0th level characters are severely restrained by their stats, far more so than any other character, if they lack the intelligence to come up with a good plan, they are dead, unless the DM gives no fucks about actual role-playing and lets them do anything the player can imagine regardless of lack of character knowledge or imagination.

[BlackFlyme]

It would be run by the problem player. He may have left the current campaign, but he hasn't left the group.

I know that he wants everyone's characters to make sense in his custom world, so he limited a lot of shit. He came up a story for one player already, and their first encounter would be in a mine. They would be a miner, cornered in a dead end. He's not giving us a choice to avoid the zombies or flee. And he's shit at encounters. Either he will make it dead easy or it will be a TPK because he never reads up on monsters before starting a fight with them. See: half-dozen ropers versus a level seven party.

Plus, as everything has to make sense for his town, we have to follow his rules. He apparently chronicled or is planning to chronicle every single residents' lives. This means we must make sense, so no non-core races. Also, there are few dwarves, and they haven't had kids, so no playing a dwarf. Same goes for elves; they haven't got big families, so no elves or half-elves. Or orcs or half-orcs. There are no halflings in town either. There is exactly one gnome. No-one likes him, so you can't be a gnome either. So basically we are only allowed to be human.

And no non-core classes, barring few exceptions. No monks though, since martial arts don't exist in this world. Or hybrid/alternate/prestige classes. No druids. They don't exist in town, as there is no floral areas for them to exist in. No witches, as he can't wrap his head around what a patron even is. No alchemists, because he hates the entire class with a passion; especially since they get extracts that can act as spells, and he thinks that potions acting as spells is stupid. Though we are still allowed to take the brew potion feat, which can be used to make potions that function similarly to spells. No swashbucklers, as he hates one optional ability they have, and therefore the entire class must be banned. No familiars or animal companions, since those apparently should never have been added to the game, though leadership is still fine on the condition that he is the only one allowed to have it. There's even more banned stuff, but I can't remember them at the moment.

And his DMPC is probably going to come out from under a rock and go "haha, I have secretly been God all along! Bow to me!" again.

[NullForceOmega]

I reiterate my post above Leo's, this is bad gaming.

[Execute/Dumbo.exe]

*Snip*

I must say, I'm sort of morbidly interested in that game now.

[UXLZ]

Since I have school holidays in about two hours, I've been considering starting up either a DnD 5E campaign or possibly even trying to work out some of the World of Darkness stuff/Dark Heresy and doing that as a play-by-post here on B12. Would anyone here be interested in one of those, or have suggestions for the setting of a 5E campaign? (I've personally got a few ideas already, but input is welcome.)

[Kadzar]

Now, I'm going to throw this caveat out there as well, the 0th level characters are severely restrained by their stats, far more so than any other character, if they lack the intelligence to come up with a good plan, they are dead, unless the DM gives no fucks about actual role-playing and lets them do anything the player can imagine regardless of lack of character knowledge or imagination.

Yeah, early D&D is very different from modern D&D, in that they emphasize the game part a lot more than the roleplaying. It originally evolved from wargames, but it departed them in using means other than combat to resolve problems. The story of Braunstein probably best illustrates this.

So, yeah, it was less about playing your character and more you as a player trying to figure out a way to beat the challenge. I'm not actually sure that stats were even supposed to do much in Original D&D other than defining what classes or races you qualified for.

-snip-

The idea of playing level 0 characters has merit, if done right, but this is just wrong. So very wrong.

[NullForceOmega]

I never played 'base' D&D, just first ed AD&D, and AD&D definitely emphasized stats heavily (since skills etc. barely even existed.)

[wierd]

From the sounds of it, level 0 characters are basically teenagers or children; They have no training, and no skill in any discipline, and as such have no real knowledge of those disciplines.

With that in mind, I can think of some reasonable scenarios where level 0 parties could be created, and begin encountering monsters. The only starting equipment would be the clothes on their backs. (and those are just +0 ac type clothes.)

Perhaps I should just make campaigns for people to try out?  Since I dont have any vested interest in the actual play, (other than for people to have fun), it might be worth while. (EG, I dont really have any inclination to make the whizzard's magical realm.)

[scriver]

Iirc, I. DnD terms, anyone without adventurer experience is a level 0 character. Even if they've been a butcher, a smith, s priest or a minstrel for 20 years. No adventuring experience, no deal.

I believe 1st edition had negative or 0 levels for certain classes, though. A Cavalier, for example, could start as a -2 to 1 level character depending on how they rolled. The negative levels represented a squire or person who had not yet finished their knightly training, or somebody who was of too lowly status to become a proper (noble-blooded) knight.

Cavaliers also had a mechanic that let them slowly raise all their physical attributes to 18 as they leveled up. They were slightly unbalanced. Well, I guess they were balanced by the fact that they were supposed to follow their knightly code bullshit to the letter, which meant that it was impossible for them to survive any amount long of time.