Doing away with XP

[Jack Aidley]

No, if you give a flat rate, you're awarding participation. If someone doesn't show up that night, they aren't rewarded. This is an important item for campaign play, emphasizing consistent attendance.

Which would be true if you didn't award them XP if they didn't turn up.

[Thor]

I was also going to point to traveller as a game in which characters really only improve by getting better toys.

Another idea that might be different is to have the players use a reward system to mold their reputation. the player could choose to be feared, or loved, or looked up to, or connected or some other thing, which would make world react to them in some way that was beneficial to their style of play. a neat side effect of this is that if they botch a scenario they don't get worse but the world might treat them like they did. I kind of like the idea of negative experience points.

Another system we have been toying with is that from the start of the game the character is degrading (Now that my gaming group is turning fourty we bring this up less often). and the player needs to use rescourses at an increasing rate just to stay where they are.  You start the game in peak physical condition and have to find ways to make up for the fact that you ain't got it anymore.

the two could work together so that as your atributes decay your skill level or connections or hirelings or whatevergoes up.

[M. J. Young]

I was playing Gamma World in the early 80's, and it had no rewards at all, at least in the 4th edition we were using (I think there were some very minimal rewards in 3rd edition, which is what we started with).

The problem I had with it then was that Gamma World was an extremely deadly game, and there were no guarantees that you would create a survivable character, or not lose one that was durable to a sudden fluke in play, or be able to create another viable character after that. I, as a player, felt that the game needed some way for characters to grow a lot stronger than they were.

That, though, came from the fact that the game was geared to create a bleak post apocalyptic future in which death was expected, and that really wasn't something which interested me. I sort of expected it to create heroic adventures like its sister game AD&D (particularly as I didn't ever get to play AD&D but always had to run it, so I was looking for the experience my players had in some other game). I felt that the danger was constantly increasing, and all we could do was try to play smarter, more carefully, and with a lot more attention given to whatever technology we managed to accrue.

For what it was trying to do, it did it very well. I didn't really want to do that, so I didn't enjoy it so much as I might have done. On the other hand, I probably would not have enjoyed Call of Cthulu, either, and a lot of people do.

Multiverser has no "reward system" whatsoever. It does have character improvement, for any player who wants to put his character through the rigors of practice and training to get good more quickly, or in general recognition of the ongoing use of low-level skills improving. It never occurred to us that it might need anything remotely like experience points once we'd solved the question of how character abilities improve with in-game answers. As a result, players define their own objectives, and are rewarded by doing what they enjoy.

So add that to the alternatives to experience points.

--M. J. Young

[xiombarg]

I will note in passing that aside from the games mentioned, Pretender has no XP or reward system, tho characters can change whenever the group thinks its okay. If you do a search for threads featuring the game, you'll find that this didn't hamper people enjoying themselves at all.

[Robert Bohl]

I will note in passing that aside from the games mentioned, Pretender has no XP or reward system, tho characters can change whenever the group thinks its okay. If you do a search for threads featuring the game, you'll find that this didn't hamper people enjoying themselves at all.

That negotiated changes to the sheet thing is something I've been advocating for our game.

Were the rules of negotiating a change rigid or loose?  How was it managed?

[xiombarg]

Were the rules of negotiating a change rigid or loose?  How was it managed?

Loose. In essence, people just did it whet seemed appropriate, and paused to see if anyone objected. Formally, in the rules, it's a vote -- if people disagree, it comes to a majority vote, GM breaks ties.

[Sixteen Coal Black Horses]

I believe the trick is to create a focus on scalability that does not depend on general rewards. By this I mean that the players should be allowed to choose which areas or parts of their characters they wish to develop. This does two things,

1. It provides a level of scalability that is character-driven. This almost always drives plot. Plot makes the RPG.

2. It gives players a goal. I firmly believe that an RPG without an award system will not keep players coming back. With rewards, players work on their characters, work toward a goal. If done correctly, an award system drives character which, in turn, drives plot.

I have an example of a scalable award system, and I will provide a link to it, but I want to do it without it sounding like a shameless plug for my game. I truly believe in this so please keep that in mind if you choose to view the example.

In this game, Archena Role-Playing, we decided to make ALL aspects of a character awardable, from stats to skills and weaves (spells) -- the latter two of which are created by the players in-game. This is not new, but it does create an environment in which players have complete control over the development of their character.  You can download the sample here to see in total,
http://www.16cbh.net/Archena/archena-pt.html

[Gelasma]

In the german game Das Schwarze Auge (The Dark Eye) the Abenteuerpunkte (Adeventurepoints) are given out only for the in-game experience of the characters. In that game the XP are part of the simulation and not of the reward system - there is no reward system at all. DSA has quite a monopole in germany: the game ist played by the majority of german players, and most of them dont know any other games - and hence know XP only as a part of the simulation.

I've been playing the first six years of my rpg-career that way, then I joined an AD&D group and was quite shocked about the reward system - I felt like being back at school! So I left that group after the first game session and got back to my old DSA group. Since then, when gamemastering a game with a reward system the first thing I do is skipping the reward system and either use a flat progression-rate (even for players that dont show up) or, in systems with levels, let the players make a group vote about when to level up. My current D&D-group for example is stuck on level 8 or 9 since nearly a year, since they think more powerful characters wouldn't be fun to play. So we started to rearrange the characters instead of leveling them up.

My oberservation is that players that are not used to reward systems dont need a reward to play - to them the fun of playing is "reward" enought. If you give out rewards to these players they feel treated like children. While players that have grown up with a reward system feel uneasy when not getting rewards. Some of them even dont know what to do when not guided by rewards.

My conclusion is that a reward system is not a must have, but just a matter of habits.

[Sixteen Coal Black Horses]

My oberservation is that players that are not used to reward systems dont need a reward to play - to them the fun of playing is reward enought. If you give out rewards to these players they feel treated like children. While players that have grown up with a reward system feel uneasy when not getting rewards.

I'm with you, I don't think XP systems work at all.  I firmly believe that an award system should serve the player, one that recognizes player performance  and leads to character improvement.

[tiago.rodrigues]

Greetings to all.

I think it's all fine and dandy not having an experience point system, but going ahead and saying XP systems aren't workable is a bit much.  They clearly are, or every game which uses an XP paradigm wouldn't be here today.

That being said, even if there is no single score that is kept and used to buy ability improvements, whatever it may be called, I believe there still must be a way for characters to improve their abilities somehow, even if it's "study for n game months and make a Learning Roll" or "gain 1 point every time you score a critical success/failure".  I myself don't believe in freeform awarding of abilities to my players, because they'd just mis-use it -- at least for a number of them.  However, if your group can handle it, then I say go ahead with freeform.

[Jonathan Walton]

Lately, I've been pretty anti-experience or advancement systems.  I feel that it's far more interesting and realistic for characters to be constantly becoming DIFFERENT instead of quantitatively BETTER.  Torchbearer is the first game that, for me, really nailed this transformative model.  I feel like the need to get "better" is a throw back to the origins of roleplaying, where accumulation of power and material resources was part of the stated point.  Additionally, this way, you don't have to worry about issues of scalability, have high and low experience characters together, "balance," and other potential problems.

[Zak Arntson]

Do you mean to suggest that rewardless systems are not meant for ongoing "campaign" type play?  (note: you may not mean to suggest this, that's why I asked; it's a genuine question :)).

Not at all. Ongoing play just needs the buy-in of the group. In an RPG without a reward in the mechanics, the reward is in the play. This is a common goal of sim-driven play. I'm not a fan of sim play, so I haven't put enough thought into tying mechanical rewards directly into sim. My current thinking is that playing to either a shared realism or to the mechanics of the game are the reward mechanism. In fact, D&D 2nd Ed. was trying to approach this in their level/age mechanics, where your players started young (1st level), gained power with age & experience (gaining levels), then got old and died (aging rules). With aging, a sim reward was the aging of your character.

Also, there is no such thing as rewardless play. You need a reward for there to be participation (and a game). Whether this is actually in the game's mechanics or not, is another matter.

No, if you give a flat rate, you're awarding participation. If someone doesn't show up that night, they aren't rewarded. This is an important item for campaign play, emphasizing consistent attendance.

Which would be true if you didn't award them XP if they didn't turn up.

That's what I said, though. If you don't show up, you aren't rewarded.

My conclusion is that a reward system is not a must have, but just a matter of habits.

A reward system is a must have, but in the case of Das Schwarze Auge, the reward is in using the system to play. XP are a way to keep the game realistic (in terms of DSA's realism). So XP are a part of the reward, where the reward is immersion through realism.

---

As for transformative models, that's another reward system. Maybe I'm using too broad a brush for this discussion. I'm using the Forge Glossary's definition a) of reward. There are three definitions there, so RobNJ, which are you talking about, specifically?

[Tomas HVM]

...must one have a reward system that focuses on improving the character's statistics on the sheet?

If not, what are some good examples of reward systems that do not do that?

I've got a small game where no XP is used, where the abilities of the characters goes up and down all the time.

The one thing in the game that makes the characters stretch and twist, is what I refer to as "myths". The myths of the game are woven into the setting. They are very high goals that the characters of the game may strive to reach, or only dream about. Some of them are quite impossble to reach. Those will be dreams forever.

When a myth is reached, it is always as a function of thorough work within the character, the player pursuing one goal to the cost of other goals, negotiating multiple obstacles of great severity, and very often failing to face up to the challenge. So; when a myth is fulfilled in this game, it is with jubilation, it is a great event in the game (for all players and characters), and it has wide ramifications for the character in question.

However; the myths of this game are hanging so high, that most of the time characters don't even get close to any of them. Some players have played this game, and never had a myth come through for their character. Some players have been quite content with their characters dreaming of the myths, and otherwise keeping to the unassuming routine of life in the game world.

And still, even for these players the myths are important, because they define the goals and beliefs of their characters. The myths are central to the game not only as a possible achievement, but also as something the character may weave his dreams on.

The myths are fundamental to the direction and drive of the game.

The game is called "Muu". It's a norwegian indie-game, not translated.

My point is that XP is a very crude way of rewarding players. It is effective, of course, but it is equally possible to create other ways of rewarding the players of a game, and other ways to direct their efforts within the setting, these ways being equally effective in their own right.

How to grow skills by XP is interesting as a method, and challenging in many ways, but only within the framework of the most traditional of roleplaying games, in my view.

[Robert Bohl]

That being said, even if there is no single score that is kept and used to buy ability improvements, whatever it may be called, I believe there still must be a way for characters to improve their abilities somehow

But why must there be a way for characters to improve their abilities?  Just because that's what everyone's expecting?

[Robert Bohl]

I feel that it's far more interesting and realistic for characters to be constantly becoming DIFFERENT instead of quantitatively BETTER. Torchbearer is the first game that, for me, really nailed this transformative model.  I feel like the need to get "better" is a throw back to the origins of roleplaying, where accumulation of power and material resources was part of the stated point.

You've said exactly what I've been trying to say.  Thank you.

How did Torchbearer handle this?