(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

[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.