Slow and Steady

My House of Worms Empire of the Petal Throne campaign began in early March 2015 with six players. Eight years later, there are now seven players, four of whom have been there since the beginning. However, because of EPT's unusual approach to experience points and leveling, the rate at which these characters have advanced has been slow, even though most of them have taken part in more than 300 sessions. Indeed, until our most recent session, there was only a single character who'd reached the lofty heights of 7th level – and he only did so through the use of a magical tome (EPT's equivalent to the manual of puissant skill at arms).

That all changed this week. The characters all received a fairly large sum of experience points, thanks largely to their battles against high hit dice monsters (100 XP per HD according to the rules). This sum pushed two characters across the line into 7th level and brought several others closer to that mark. One of the newly minted 7th-level characters is Grujúng hiZnáyu, played by cartographer extraordinaire, Dyson Logos. Dyson celebrates this milestone briefly on his own blog, which is where the image above originally appeared (that's Grujúng's actual character sheet, in case anyone's interested).
About a year ago, I pondered the question of whether advancement rules are even necessary in RPGs, based on my experience of refereeing House of Worms all these years. I suppose it's inevitable I'd ponder it again after this past week's session. My feeling remains that, while it's not absolutely necessary that characters mechanically advance in a roleplaying game, it is important that they advance in some way. In the House of Worms campaign, for example, the characters have advanced socially over the course of time, gaining new ranks and positions within Tsolyáni society, as well as the prestige and influence that goes with such advances. That higher hit points or more spells were among the benefits they gained didn't matter for the most part. What did matter is that the players could see their successes had positive consequences for their characters, however they were quantified.