What's your preferred starting level - or equivalent - for

Campaign of what? D&D? Necromunda? Mutants and Masterminds?

Solidly competent but with room for growth.

I find the hurr durr gritty starting as shitty mudfarmers thing untenably dull. I know some people enjoy it, but personally even in low power games, I like to play characters of significance and competence, otherwise it's just a comedy of errors as we roll from failure after failure, desperately trying to accomplish, well, anything.

Crazy event that brings *insert number of party members* unlikely people together. Am I glad my orc got that awful crit fail sense motive check roll, it involved some craziness in the bar and made the meeting of the characters more interesting than the usual meeting in the bar.

>>43564541
The question is general because I'm honestly curious about what your general philosophy is. Most groups and DMs seem to have a certain preference for the amount of magic and the amount of prestige and power their players should have.

"We always start from a level 1 because all of my campaigns involve a magical realm with giant rat sodomy" is an acceptable, if unorthodox, answer.

>>43564523
Starcraft cammpaing? Be an united earth confederate and distribute my health genes thru the kropulu female population.

File: Seacliff_Castle_Siege.jpg (546KB, 1680x1050px) Image search: [Google]

546KB, 1680x1050px

Right into combat.

Taking a page from the all guardsmen party, my favorite was one where a local lord is laying siege to an enemy fortress, and all the party members are all present at the battlefield for different reasons(paladin is there to heal the wounded currently moved to the captured monastery on the outskirts of town, fighter is part of the mercenaries being sent to take the southern wall, etc) None of them are aware of the presence of the others until the battle calls them to the town center and they have to work together to bring down a mini boss.

>>43564523
Mildly competent.
Most RPGs have that down-pat, though for D&D that really seems to be at about level 5 or so.

>>43564523
>That level
>Not annihilating every zerg before the time is up

>>43564779
OP here. This is from a fanmade UMS where all the missions in the campaign are souped up and designed to be played in 2 player co-op mode.

This mission in particular plain does not allow you to take over the Zerg before the time is up - the original mission does not have Ultralisks, while this one has 2/2 ones at the very entrance to the Zerg base, and many more Sunken Colonies. The final attack is absolutely massive, though it mostly looks really impressive instead of being particularly hard to defend (same old massing of bunkers and turrets with the occasional Spider Mine).

The missions are way tougher, though, and a bud of mine and I had some problems with the Terran campaign, for instance. Real treat, however.

>>43564922
>This is from a fanmade UMS where all the missions in the campaign are souped up and designed to be played in 2 player co-op mode.

I must have this.

>>43564922
Sounds cool!

Link please, until I forget about it.

>>43565037
>until
meant - *before

>>43564523
Level 1 for D&D. Because I play 2e, and my favorite range is 3-5. So it gives us time to get to that point, and then plenty of time to spend in it. Games rarely get beyond level 7, but that's ok with me, too. When we occasionally want something higher-powered, we start at 7 and crawl.

Also I particularly like writing low-level adventures, where everything can be scary and "I charge it!" just means rolling new characters. I find it's a more-fun game at the lower levels, and higher level stuff gets too ridiculous or allows players to just steam-roll everything.

I guess the players seem to like it. "Let's start at a higher level" is not something I hear, very often.

>>43564523
Anywhere from level 1 to level 3 is a good starting point. Main reason is it lets the players build their character, not just play stats and combos plus dice.

>>43565008
>>43565037
http://www.moddb.com/mods/starcraft-coop-campaign
Brood War campaign also available. There's also a solo version available, and an INSANE version which I've seen some really strong online Starcraft players struggle with, and some missions may prove to be utterly impossible, so I'd go with the standard version (Insane version wasn't tested, it was made as a request). Everything is on mod-db.

Thanks for the replies.

>>43565061
>>43565152
Do you think that low level characters inherently have much less viable options for combat, or interesting encounters? A certain reason I'm asking this question is how do people like dealing with the "we're struggling to fight rats and drunks" problem, or if it's a problem at all.

>>43565206
>A certain reason I'm asking this question is how do people like dealing with the "we're struggling to fight rats and drunks" problem, or if it's a problem at all.
It depends on your players. If your players want to play as powerful warriors, they will probably not have a lot of fun fighting rats. If your players just want to explore the world and talk to bartenders, then their level/abilities/power doesn't matter much.

Take a look at this http://www.critical-hits.com/blog/2008/07/04/player-motivation-and-types-revisited-again/ to find out what your players' motivations are, and tailor your campaign to hit those motivations.

>>43564523
>Magic?
Level 5
>No magic?
Level 1

Because lets be honest, lvl 1~4 with arcane casters means encounters are going to be trivialized by color spray, Daze and sleep anyways.