(no subject)

[technoir]

I had an interesting game design question.

Is earned advancement really needed?

Whats to say we have to have experience points in a game?

I was wondering if would hurt a system is if all the character advancement was based on how long the characters played or age. It seems to me that concept of an earned advancement through points is not inherently even. And if you are doing it in such a manner to keep everyone even then there is not point in having an earned point advancement.

Just a thought. I would be interested to see what other people thought.

Comments

[tomdpimp.livejournal.com]

might be interesting. but better for one-shot games.

[technoir.livejournal.com]

If it is a one shot game, you don't need advancement rules at all. I more talking about a different type of advancement. Making it less reward based.

[boonetaltech.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of the old Star Wars RPG by West End Games. The one where you had to spend time doing a skill in order to learn and improve it. Don't remember the details of the system but I do remember spending a month of hyperspace travel learning to pilot my ship.

[technoir.livejournal.com]

Thats not exactly what I meant though I seem to remember liking that. I was meaning a more even time based reward. No one earns more than any one else. So say your month passes and the characters in the party get a set amount of points period and they can decide where they want to spend them individually. It is not a reward.

[evangelos.livejournal.com]

It's probably important to consider just how important advancement points are in that particular game system. In DnD, being two or three levels behind everyone else is a drag, and your weakness will show. Low level characters are extremely weak compared to higher level ones. In Deadlands, if one character has 50 post creation points and another has 80, you may not even notice much of a difference (in fact, I doubt you could tell at all unless both were hucksters, templars, etc) especially if the two characters have very different types of skills, and while the 80 pointer would probably have the upper hand against a 20 pointer, the 20 pointer is far from screwed.

Deadlands has a system where you are rewarded for all sorts of things, whatever gives you a fate chip (which can pretty much be for ANY reason the marshal wants). You could call that "earned point advancement" and in my experience it works out well (though we houserule a 3-4 bounty point base reward per session in addition to converted fate chip bounty points).

[technoir.livejournal.com]

ACtually I was thinking in a different direction. Obviously it would work best with a system designed from the ground up this way but instead of keeping track of points imagine D&D and you just kept track of how much game time of adventuring the characters had. Say for every month of actively running around they got a level. Just evenly across the board. no keeping track of how much experience. Nobody missing out cause he missed an individual session. Your character is active for a set period, he just levels. And the party goes through time at the same rate so they all level at the same rate.

I was thinking in terms of divorcing the rewards for role play, killing a particular monster, or any goal based achievement. Simply making it an even you have adventured this loing there for you get blah. Do you think that would be a good or bad thing?

[(Anonymous)]

Reese's outer planar game was that way - he would just tell us when we gained a level.

I think a system with no earned advancement suffers a bit. I think a game with rapid but even advancement can outweigh that significantly.

[hoshiadam.livejournal.com]

(That would be me, stupid sign out)

[evangelos.livejournal.com]

That's actually sort of what I've been doing in DnD all along...well, with base XP anyway. There's still some variance when you take into account player-given RP awards. But I've honestly never used the book version of XP in DnD anyway...it was much easier to just ballpark a number based on how much the PCs accomplished (usually 20-50% of their level). And actually, before that, I'd just flat out hand them about 40% of a level in base XP per session, regardless of what they did.

Basically, my point with the last comment was this (which probably wasn't clear, I'd been playing AoC all day): earned XP awards where different players get different amounts is better or worse depending on the system you're using. In DnD, falling behind can be bad; in Deadlands, it doesn't matter as much. So, with a system like DnD, I would say that giving more even advancement is best, maybe with just a little bit of variance at most. In Deadlands, even advancement doesn't matter as much because the power curve is much flatter.

All told, I'm a favor of some earned advancement, with some controls to keep anyone from falling too far behind. Even if it's not tied to the character, but the party (ie, a session where you kill a major bad guy is worth more XP to the party than one where you only do minor things). The even advancement thing could work...I'm just not sure that I would like it as much. I want extra XP/advancement points for accomplishing big things.

[howlwhite.livejournal.com]

It would really depend on what you are trying to accomplish with your game.

Questions for this idea:

1) Is it based on time logged in?
2) Do you have an automated log out bot to stop players from leaving their toon online while not actually there?
3) Is it only based on time since character was created?
4) Could I make a character, use a bot to stay logged in and be the same strength as someone that has played every day since the same creation date? or stronger since my bot doesn't sleep?
5) How much effectiveness is derived from relative level and how much from gear?

~H

[technoir.livejournal.com]

This was related to table top games specifically. Not computer games. In computer games it makes a lot of sense to have a rewards based advancement.

[shumashi.livejournal.com]

I had this whole post, then realized I misunderstood the question. :)

I've played a lot of tabletop games, and have only had two campaigns ever which did uneven experience points. One was a 7th Sea campaign, the other is jeffrey's D&D game. Both give you extra experience points for roleplaying well. I'm not a fan of that sort of reward.

Every other game I've played, good roleplaying was a given. You don't get rewarded for it, you just do it. You don't get rewarded for not cheating, you don't get rewarded for good RP, you don't get rewarded for keeping your character sheet up do date. These are just things you do because that's how the game works. The reward is a fun session well played. That's it.

This makes me wish you'd stuck with jeffrey's game. Lots of really good roleplayers there. And hey, it would have been fun. :)

[jeffrey.livejournal.com]

Well, the reason I give the RP awards is because I have found all too often that, if I don't, there is much less actual role-playing. People will just "yeah, I do this. I do that." etc. They need more incentive to actually RP for some reason.

If you think it's a problem we could discuss possibly dropping it at the next session. I just started it a ways back because I found it ended up making a better game for everyone involved.

[technoir.livejournal.com]

The problem with RP awards as I have seen them in the past has been that no one actually wants to tell someone else, well you did not actually do as well as someone else on something. What has happened in many of the games I have seen and by no means all, is that everybody ends up with a role play award.

I am generally in favor of encouraging role play though. I think the role play award is probably more useful in games with mnore beginner players. Experienced players generally don't need much encouragement.

[jeffrey.livejournal.com]

I could see that being a problem, but... not for me. I have no qualms about not awarding extra RP xp if the person just phoned it in. And I don't just give one blanket award, either. I give awards of certain amounts (based on level, right now it's been 300xp) for moments of exceptional RPing. So if someone has two or three of those, they'll get 600 or 900. So people don't always get the same amounts.

Don't mind me, just butting in...

[gideondelnath.livejournal.com]

When I played with Jeremiah he didn't really get to see the RP award system in affect for DnD since we ran WoD for our group, but our system is more of an 'atta boy' instead of hard rewards in the tripple digits. In my group we have some fairly roleplayish people and some not so roleplayish people... we're also sadly numbermongers.

The groups' DMs (two currently) will hand out minor XP awards, at about 5-10 points at a go, -maybe- 20-30 for exceptionally good roleplay. The reason we did this is because the rewards are less noticable, but also allow for our exceptional role players to really show how they're doing later in the campaign, when they get to process a level up a good 2-3 encounters before the non-role players. We've started to discontinue the system though, as we're all getting better at falling into character and that so much of it is based on DM perception. The other DM and myself are taking a closer look at if we should keep the system, or possibly start handing out true atta-boys like rerolls or action points.

[shumashi.livejournal.com]

They need more incentive to actually RP for some reason.

See, that's totally baffling to me. That's like saying "People don't like to do the fun part, they just like doing fantasy-themed accounting." :)

I don't think it's currently a problem. I do wonder what's going to happen if the characters' levels start to spread out. I've never been a game where that's been allowed to happen before, so it's hard for me to guess how much of an issue that'll be.

[jeffrey.livejournal.com]

Well I'll do my best to keep everyone as close as possible, but not to the extent of giving awards when not earned or holding other people back. If someone is falling a bit behind, especially due to rp awards, then I will try to encourage them to rp more. Hopefully it won't become an issue, but we'll see. :)

[technoir.livejournal.com]

I did have an interest in the game. It looked be a lot of fun. The frustration with the constant failings of the program we were was the primary reason for dropping out. It drove my frustration way up. It made me also realize how much I prefer my role play in person. I can do more with my bearing and voice at a table that way.

That said I think Jeffery had some good ideas on the game. I would have liked to seen where it went. I also kind of liked my character. Just the frustration with the program we were using was overwhelming my fun.

[jeffrey.livejournal.com]

No one else had problems like that, so I wish I knew what made it so difficult for you. :/

[shumashi.livejournal.com]

It made me also realize how much I prefer my role play in person. I can do more with my bearing and voice at a table that way.

I'm with you there. Though that's not an option when playing with people in California, so it's a trade-off.

Pity about the technical difficulties, though. Wish we could have fixed that. :/

[jeffrey.livejournal.com]

And to get more to Jeremiah's point, I think a game like that could be excellent. I don't know about people missing sessions getting the same advancement though, because then they're not putting in the same work but are getting the same reward.

There's also might arise the problem of there not being enough incentive to do things for some people. Why go fight tons of monsters to get better at battle when I can ride my horse around for a month and get the same experience? There'd have to be a clear way to avoid things like that, where if they want to improve fighting skill they've got to do actual fighting, if they want to improve weaponsmithing, they need to make weapons, etc.

[technoir.livejournal.com]

The other side of that is the people playing the game are going to want to fight the monsters anyway or jump through the traps or what ever. The adventure is it's own reward or really why are they playing? If it is kept even on the advancement then everyone is equal in power and no one feels left out.

[hapersmion.livejournal.com]

Heh, at some point on the way home from the event, I was thinking, "What if everyone at a LARP got starting character points based on how old they were?" So, I would get a certain amount, hoshiadam would get a little bit more... and technoir would get ALL of them. *eg* And then everyone would get the same build as time went by. It would make it really difficult to attract new 18-year-olds, though. :)

But for a more workable idea, I was pondering a game where you can buy one skill or skill level after each event. Doesn't matter if it's Dagger, Dodge, or Lore level 5. It would be nice to be guaranteed to improve the character each event, instead of sitting still while you saved up for the big expensive stuff, but mana would probably require some tweaking. Perhaps it would come in mana sets.

Anyway, none of that really applies to tabletop so well, but I found it amusing that I was just thinking about this.