Using Experience points as a resource for other effects?

[timfire]

This came up in another thread in the indie forum, but I thought it might deserve a little more discussion here.

In the other thread, I proposed letting players spend their experience/character/whatever points for uses other than just character advancement. Specifically, I proposed letting players use their experience points as a sorta back-up hit point system, and also to boost rolls. My idea was sorta to combine the traditional experience point system with the popular hero/ drama point system.

The way I look at this, this is a Gamble vs. Reward issue. Players can play with high gambles and high rewards, or they can lower the gamble, which in turn lowers their net reward.

A few people raised concerns with this. They said that in their experience, systems like this can somtimes cause a downward spiral.  If a particular character starts to fall behind the other characters in the group, they are forced to spend more experience to keep up, which in turn makes them fall further behind.

Anyway, what do y'all think about using the same resource for both advancement and other effects?

[anonymouse]

These are simply for purposes of this discussion, and not something you have to stick to ("let's say it's 192-B for now"). ;)

Answer these:

1) How does advancement work? Are there traditional levels, do you directly add dice to pools, or some other scheme?

2) Can you lose advancement, or are there bulkheads as you go along? i.e. "you can lose N amount of experience points, but never enough to cause you to lose a level," or something similar.

3) How powerful are the imagined "other effects"?

4) How common are the imagined "other effects"?


There's nothing inherently stupid or blasphemous about the general idea, so saying whether you "like it" or "dislike it" is fairly ephemeral. Give us a framework for your intended use and we can start hammering out useful details.

[brainwipe]

I let my players use one or two XP (or RP in Icar) to allow them to turn a marginal fail into a pass. This is only ever used once per session (for the group) and only when important.

I think they like this as the dice are sometimes probabilistically harsh during a session!

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Timfire, I'm a little boggled. You are talking about one of the fundamental house-rules of early role-playing, which very quickly became a feature of many, many rules-sets by the late 1980s.

In Champions, for instance, experience points are the same as character points - and "burning" them for various Director Stance privileges, or to change the outcome of a dice roll, was very commonly observed throughout many groups in the 1980s, even though the rules contain no such option.

This technique was formalized into rules by ... oh, I can't even list them, it's huge. D6 (began as Star Wars), Over the Edge, The Whispering Vault, just to name a few, two of which were grossly influential on other games. HeroQuest is practically built on this concept; Hero Points are both a bank for improvement but also a dip-in bank for bumping up the results of dice rolls.

It also shows up in a completely different lineage of game design, back in early Dungeons & Dragons. Again, I'm talking about house rules. The deal was, the DM started everyone with X experience points, and you could "spend" them for levels, magic items, money, and equipment. After all, 1 GP = 1 EP, levels and magic items were rated in EPs, and equipment was rated in GPs. From this sort of thinking (D&D as GURPS), it was only a tiny skip-step over to burning one's current stock of EPs for various unusual (i.e. non-rules-codified) benefits.

As I say, this is an incredibly common technique, and I don't think you'll have any problems finding a wide variety of versions to compare.

Best,
Ron

[komradebob]

Isn't part of the problem with this that using the points for rerolls or modification of badness in the adventure likely to increase their end of adventure experience points?

Example: Trad Dungeonbash Game. On the first couple of outtings, the pcs go burglarize the local orc hold, snatching up goodies and engaging in wanton murder. They pick up xps that they save for the most part. The following outting is against something bigger and badder. They use their xps to insure their rolls versus The Big Bad, and defeat it. Now they get gobs of xps for their victory.

Actually, that might have good implications, now that I think of it.

Have you considered having xps "buy" other, non-level/skill stuff? FRPGs seem to have lots of coinage floating around. What if you gave pcs stuff instead? Sure, the adventure says that the pcs get x bazillion gold coins. What if they get a land grant based on their deed worth a similar value.

Sorry, I know Icar is sf. How about a Spaceship, or passage on one. Or gear? Basically, the characters' rep for being successful toughguys causes would-be investors/patrons to look them up and deck them out with supplies for the next adventure?

[Valamir]

Ron's essentially right in the GP=XP analysis.  After many sessions of Monty Haul goodness where our characters hired henchmen / caddies to carry our tool kit of magic, our next campaign formed with the intention of eliminated all traces of Haulism.  Characters were allowed 1 magic item appropriate to their level, all others had to be purchased with XPs.  If you found magic in a dungeon you had to pay the XPs for it out of your earnings from that dungeon or else the DM took it away (it was stolen by a thief out of your room in the night type stuff).  In return, if you paid XPs for an item with charges, the DM was responsible for provideing opportunities to recharge, and if the DM ever took the stuff away (had you captured, etc) he had to give the XPs back.  

Worked like a charm, and is probably why I never glanced askance at a HeroQuests cementing rules.


However, I don't think its quite that simple.  Any time you have a currency like this you've set up an exchange rate.  In D&D you could calculate that exchange rate pretty well:

3rd level gives you 1 more hit die, 1 better Thaco, some combination of better saving throw numbers, and some combination of weapon/non weapon proficiencies.  For the same number of XPs I could get a +3 sword (or whatever, I don't have the numbers kept in my head).  

Only if these two choices are seen as being roughly equivelent will the exchange system work.  In 3E for instance, where the level also give you more skills levels, higher skill maximums, class abilities, and feats, there is so much extra stuff that comes with the level, that it is unlikely that a mere +3 sword would be seen as equivelent.

What you will have to watch for in your game is making 1 use clearly better than the other.  If "leveling up" (or however that looks in your game) is clearly a more "effective" use of the the XPs than whatever director stance uses you have for it, then no one with any developed Gamist sensibilities would ever use the director stance abilities.  At which point a large chunck of your rules exist but never get used.

Even if you aren't designing a "gamist" game, I think there is a little gamist monkey inside most all of us.  Its the same urge that makes us want to get the best deal on the new stereo and why we shop at Wal Mart more often than Needless Markups.  The spending of XPs has to provide an equivelent value or we'll "comparison shop" ourselfs into not using it.

As soon as you implement a system like this, the dreaded "B" word...Balance...does become an issue that you must pay at least nodding attention to.  Currency systems form a miniature economy in the game, and thus follow economic theory to a large extent.

[brainwipe]

Sorry, I know Icar is sf. How about a Spaceship, or passage on one. Or gear? Basically, the characters' rep for being successful toughguys causes would-be investors/patrons to look them up and deck them out with supplies for the next adventure?

A very good point, well made!

I sounded my players out on this some time back and they preferred that the Roleplaying Points remain in the meta-game and all in-game advances (such as raw equipment or Big Guns) should be through in-game means (buying, thieving, conning, blagging, etc). Thus the RP are used for effecting the Character and not the in-game objects.

[John Kim]

As I say, this is an incredibly common technique, and I don't think you'll have any problems finding a wide variety of versions to compare.

Well, the original Top Secret (1980) had Fame and Fortune points as an optional rule in the appendices, and the James Bond 007 (1983) made Hero Points a central mechanic.  However, in both of these they were separate from the experience system.  

Ghostbusters (1986) has Brownie points which function as both experience and roll modification.  This was the origin of the D6 system, by the way. The evolution of this is Star Wars (1987), which has a somewhat different concept.  Star Wars has Force Points which are renewed.  As long as you spend a Force Point heroically, you always get it back at the end of the adventure.  Thus, there is no long-term cost for using them.  Star Wars also allows spending XP ("Character Points") to modify rolls, but this seems to be intended mainly as a desperation move.  CPs have a smaller effect and have special allowances to use them for defense rolls.  

Many subsequent systems mixed them, most influentially Shadowrun (1989), which has a single pool of Karma points which are used for magic, experience, and changing rolls.  

Personally, I agree with the logic that timfire cites.  Mary Kuhner talked about her problems with Shadowrun on rgfa, and the combined spirals of Karma and wounds were top of the list.  It is for this reason that I tend to avoid doing this in my games.  Having fortune point spending subtract from XP means that effectively, you are trading a success for permanent loss of ability.  

I more often use a no-loss mechanic like Star Wars' Force Points.  i.e. You get a set of fortune points (or, say, Whimsy Cards) at the start of each session, and regardless of whether you spend them by the end, they're replaced by a new set.  So the players have no motivation to hoard them at all.  Now, that may or may not be what you want, but it is there to consider.  

An in-between choice is to have a separate non-interacting pool of points, like Hero Points in James Bond.  Here spending hero points means you permanently use up your set of them, but at least there is no loss in general ability.  

Another in between choice is like Star Wars, which allows spending of character points, but it is more usual to spend no-loss Force Points.  The Buffy RPG is similar to this, in that you have a large pool of Drama Points which refreshes from dramatic action.  Like Star Wars, you can spend XP as well (in this case you spend XP to get Drama Points).  However, since there are independent ways to gain drama points, this is not usual practice.

[timfire]

Timfire, I'm a little boggled. You are talking about one of the fundamental house-rules of early role-playing, which very quickly became a feature of many, many rules-sets by the late 1980s.

Well, I guess my fairly limited experience is finally revealed! ;)
I had a feeling I wasn't the first of think of it.

I'm still curious, though, in the games that mix these ideas, how common is spending experience on director-stance stuff? How many of these systems force the player to use them, or at least places players at a disadvantage if they don't? I would guess that games where burning experience this way is unneccessary or uncommon, it's unlikely that a downard spiral like John Kim mentions would ever be an issue.

On the experience-as-money idea, I like Ralph's idea. Both skills and items are forms of character empowerment (or at least, they often act that way), so I think it makes sense to make character's pay for permanent equipment upgrades with experience.

PS: At the start of the thread, I intended to simply use my project as a example, I meant for the thread to be more general in scope.

Thanks!

[Mike Holmes]

On the experience-as-money idea, I like Ralph's idea. Both skills and items are forms of character empowerment (or at least, they often act that way), so I think it makes sense to make character's pay for permanent equipment upgrades with experience.

Tim, baby, Champions (1980), is the posterchild for this idea. Everything is purchased with points, including equipment. If you get something mid adventure, you're even encoraged not to use it then; but you'll certainly lose it in between advantures if you don't pay for it then.

BTW, HeroQuest does trade in wins now for permenant gains later. Since it's intended to support narrativism, this is genius. Basically, every point expenditure is a statement about what's important to the player, and makes a thematic statement in play.

Mike