(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

[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.