(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

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.