Let's hear it for low-level PCs

For our Wild Talents game, our group consciously decided to reach for the stars and play ultra-high-level characters: trade envoys, planetary ambassadors, billionaire playboys and super-scientists. Good stuff, yes, but it's got me thinking about the other end of the spectrum, the low-level characters who have to scramble for every gold piece and make hard decisions about whether or not to leave the two-handed broadsword back at camp because it might put them over their carry capacity.

Part of the fun of low-level roleplaying is that little successes are amplified a hundredfold in the scope of the game -- and what's more, players tend to shoehorn these minor victories into the campaign itself, with admirable results. Bob over at The Dice Bag puts it nicely.

That was until the 3rd or 4th session we played. We’d picked up a mission in The Yawning Portal to help out some local merchants who were being pushed out of the market after refusing to pay protection money to a local gang. After a few hours of gaming we came across a building that used to be a brewery that just happened to be where the gang had set up shop. After a rather successful battle I came up with a bright idea to use the equipment to make up some homebrew. It certainly wasn’t easy to set up but within a few levels I had a rather successful business venture going on.

Dude started brewing up his own dwarven grog with little more than a throwaway skill and a generous DM. It doesn't get much sweeter than that.