Survey Results #1: Broad Outlines

We received thousands of votes on our first survey, which addressed the broader outlines of Level Up. Thank you to everybody who participated! From the start this has been planned as a data-driven process. These results — amongst other things — help guide us as we design the game. Some folks have asked why we’ve announced this project so long before its release; it’s so that we can get data at each stage in the process, and recruit great talent for our design team (more on that later!)

Anyhow, on to the survey results! Note that these questions were intentionally broad; each of these topics can be drilled into in more detail at a later stage.

These things were very important to you

• 100% compatibility with existing 5E material

• Meaningful character choices at each advancement level

• A fully fleshed out Exploration Pillar

• A range of martial maneuvers to give non-spellcasters more options in combat

• More ways to spend gold at higher levels

You were positive about

• A crafting system for magic items

• Mechanically distinctive weapons and armor

• Culture and species being separated during character creation

• Both a warlord class and a revised spell-less ranger

• A more detailed skill system

You are ambivalent about

• A setting toggle between cinematic and gritty modes

• An overhaul of multiclassing

• Kingdom or domain management, strongholds, and followers

• Gaining ‘species’ features are your character advances

• More core classes

• A more tactical combat system

• A full psionics system in the core rules

You do not want

• Social combat mechanically represented

• More core species

• A piecemeal species-building method of character creation

• A new initiative system

And you are polarized on

• Prestige classes

• An Immortal tier for levels 20-30

• Removing alignment

• More granularity to ability checks that advantage/disadvantage

The difference between the third (ambivalent) and last (polarized) categories is interesting. While both resulted in similar average scores, the deviation was very different. In the ambivalent category, votes were clustered around the middle of the scale, indicating no strong feelings either way. In the polarized category, votes were clustered at each end of the scale, indicating that there are two distinct, but strong-feeling camps on those topics.

The results came out mainly as we thought they would, with a couple of exceptions — we thought psionics and domain management would score higher. The latter covered a couple of different concepts, though (kingdoms, domains, strongholds, followers) so we will likely revisit that later and drill down a little more.

Thank you again for participating in the first survey. Right now we’re busy gathering our awesome design team — applications closed yesterday, and we’re sorting through a LOT of them!