Need some help with advancement mechanic

[MrSanmdan666]

Hello together!

Since I've grown increasingly dissatisfied with established systems like Shadowrun and GURPS I've started  working on my own little RPG. I'm pretty new to all this (the Forge and game design in general), so please bear with me if I get the terminology wrong here and there...

Right now the game isn't much more than an idea. It's supposed to become a rather setting-less system, sortof like GURPS and its clones but with a very strong thematic tie. It will be built to support rather narrative games (with a bit of simulationism, to keep up the suspense of disbelief), stressing story and "roleplaying" (in the conservative sense of playing the role of a character and staying true to that role - a somewhat simulationist approach). Gamism is discouraged. The overall mood is supposed to be rather dark. Think Bladerunner, any novel from William Gibson (Neuromancer, et. al.), anything from H.P. Lovecraft...
However, as I said, it won't be tied to a setting, so in theory it should be possible to create a noir story set in the 20s, a historicaly correct medieval game, a cthulhuesque horror story, X-Files mysterie games, a cyberpunk or fantasypunk game (cyberpunk attitude in a high fantasy setting), dark fantasy, and much more.

Currently I'm working on several aspects of the game at the same time and another thread here on the Forge has given me some good thoughts about advancement in my game.

So here's the deal:
I was thinking about introducing an advancement mechanic based purely on training. There would be no experience points, no rewards for killing enemies or overcoming challenges. Actually, no rewards at all. Roleplaying should be the reward. The game itself should be rewarding enough. The training can occur whenever a character has time to spare. This can be in between sessions, when the character has several days/weeks/months at hand, or it can be whenever there is a short idle-period during a session, like taking a break from traveling or waiting for a certain event. So far my ideas. My whole problem is that I don't know what this will do to the game, what the overall effect will be. What will it do to the way the players play the game? How will it shape the overall game? How should the rest of the game mechanics be designed to go with this? (I know it seems kind of odd to make this marginal aspect the center of my design process - but you gotta startsomewhere)

This is my philosophy concerning advancement:
Advancement is not really supposed to be a big deal in my game. It should be a way to adapt and change the character between sessions, nothing more. The change should be to make the character more well rounded and better suited for the challenges he faces. However, since challenges aren't the focus of the game this is rather secondary.
The advancement mechanics will be very slim and minimalistic, leaving very little room to actually play out the training, further stressing the lack of importance to the game. It should be no problem to invest an hour of training per day whilst in the middle of a game, if there is time. It should basically be as simple as saying "I spend the next two hours training this-or-that skil/attribute with the help of these books/weights/whatever". The player will then mark down some points to keep track of his training effort. Once he has been training enough the skill/attribute will be raised by one point.
Advancement is also supposed to happen slowly. And it should get harder with every point you improve. It will be substantially harder to improve an already well-trained skill than it will be to train a practically undeveloped skill. (You know where this is going: I want to discourage powergaming and put a stress on broader characters, rather than highly specialised ones)

Somebody suggested it might be a good idea to use a purely skill-based system to go with this. I originally intended to use a combination of Attributes and Skills but I'm not dead set on this.
I personally have some problems wrapping my mind around purely skill based systems - which is not to say I wouldn't klike to use one! It would make things considerably more simple. Let me illustrate my thoughts with an example.
A Player tells me he is spending the next week training in the gym. By using several training methods he might train his running and weightlifting skills, but his overall endurance and strength will also improve, making it easier for him to use his, say, acrobatics or swimming skill, even though he didn't specifically train those skills.

Any coments, ideas, suggestions, advice and generally any input is highly appreciated.

[mindwanders]

You might want to have a look at Ars Magica for an example of this kind of advancement taken to extremes.

http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=774&

It has problems because the game is all about advancement which means that players often don't really want to go on adventures that often because they want to stay home and get XP.

If they had aded some other reward system like fate points in Fate:

http://www.faterpg.com

Then this would have been softened greatly. I would say that you need some form of reward system that rewards storytelling and character exploration for this idea to work.

A Player tells me he is spending the next week training in the gym. By using several training methods he might train his running and weightlifting skills, but his overall endurance and strength will also improve, making it easier for him to use his, say, acrobatics or swimming skill, even though he didn't specifically train those skills.

Something like this would probably have to use a shadowrun style skill tree.

It sounds like you are going for quite a realistic and gritty system. Is that what you are looking for or are you thinking of something more cinematic?

[mindwanders]

You might want to have a look at Ars Magica for an example of this kind of advancement taken to extremes.

http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=774&

It has problems because the game is all about advancement which means that players often don't really want to go on adventures that often because they want to stay home and get XP.

If they had aded some other reward system like fate points in Fate:

http://www.faterpg.com

Then this would have been softened greatly. I would say that you need some form of reward system that rewards storytelling and character exploration for this idea to work.

A Player tells me he is spending the next week training in the gym. By using several training methods he might train his running and weightlifting skills, but his overall endurance and strength will also improve, making it easier for him to use his, say, acrobatics or swimming skill, even though he didn't specifically train those skills.

Something like this would probably have to use a shadowrun style skill tree.

It sounds like you are going for quite a realistic and gritty system. Is that what you are looking for or are you thinking of something more cinematic?

[Sven Seeland]

Hm, I'm afraid I can't really dig too deep into other RPGs (at least not comercial ones) since I'm on a very tight budget now and I'm lacking the players and the time to actually playtest these games to the depth that would be necesary for the insight I'm looking for. This is why I'm asking for some reports of other people who have had some experience with the kind of mechanic I'm aiming at.
I will, however, look into Fate.

Yes, I am indeed going for something gritty and realistic. Nothing cinematic, nothing too over-the-top.

Unfortunately I'm very inexperienced with advancement systems rewarding storytelling and "good roleplaying". I have read about the pool but all the games I've ever played have used gamist advancement systems (like Shadowrun or AD&D).

Using a Shadowrun-esque skill tree will be a bit difficult since my game is not tied to a certain setting. You'd need to come up with a skill tree for every setting and I want he system to be engineered for flexibility, so that you can easily come up with a setting for a short one-shot adventure without too much preparation. I also want the skill system to be very flexible and open ended, so that the players can come up with whatever skills they want, not being limited to skill lists or trees.

[mindwanders]

Hm, I'm afraid I can't really dig too deep into other RPGs (at least not comercial ones) since I'm on a very tight budget now and I'm lacking the players and the time to actually playtest these games to the depth that would be necesary for the insight I'm looking for. This is why I'm asking for some reports of other people who have had some experience with the kind of mechanic I'm aiming at.

Ars magica 4th edition is now available for free. you just need to register to download it.

I will, however, look into Fate.

Cool, It was one of the first games recomended to me when I joined the forge and I've been really impressed with it. I'm hoping to run my first session with it this weekend, I'll try and post up something on the actual play section.

Unfortunately I'm very inexperienced with advancement systems rewarding storytelling and "good roleplaying". I have read about the pool but all the games I've ever played have used gamist advancement systems (like Shadowrun or AD&D).

Likewise.

What you need to remember is that it isn't the advancement that's important for your game. Advancement is seen as very important because it's the primary reward system for most gamist games. If you are looking away from the gamist style you should probably worry more about other reward systems more than your advancement.

[ADGBoss]

MrSandman, Hello

Right now I would just take a step back and look at the characters and your game.

What kind of characters are they? Are they neophyte individuals coming up in the world and the game will be about their growth? Then I would say Advancement system makes some sense.

Will they be characters who basically change very little statistically over time? Then I would say an advancement mechanic would be very minimal possibly even one controlled by the GM.

Will it be a mixture of both? Then again you are back to needing something more then minimal when it comes to Advancement.

A few more Questions:

How much time will typically pass between sessions? That is game world time.

How long is a campaign supposed to be? If your game is designed to run for 4 sessions then advancement may not even be necessary.  If you are going to encourage long term campaigns then it tends to take on a great deal more importance.

It seems to me that you heavily tie "Advancement" or reward to Gamism. Advancement is not a strictly Gamist idea.  Advancement was part of and is still part of many RPGs. It is not strictly a Gamist idea.  Same thing with Power Gaming. You can be a Power Gamer regardless of the game or the GNS aspects etc.  Believe me I have watched Power Gamers go after a NArrativist system.  It's the nature of the beast. They do it in RPGs, CRPGs, CCGs, and Chess.  So my advice is forget about them.  Don't design your game as a GM. When designing you have to be both GM and Player and see the game from both sides of that coin.  

Advancement should fulfill a Character's, not  aplayer's, goals and needs. The Player should be intrigued by the character but I am not convinced that Player desires are as tied to Advancement mechanics as character needs are.  Also the less important Advancement, the MORE important character creation becomes, IMHO.

Hope this helps.


Sean

[Sven Seeland]

Hm, good thoughts....

Since I intend the game to be rather flexible I can't really give you any definite answers to some of the questions. I can, however, tell you what general direction I want to encourage.

The campaigns will cover a range from one-shot adventures to longer running campaigns with relatively little downtime in between the sessions (a few weeks, at most) although it really depends on how the Game Master designs the story. In general, this is not going to be built for large, epical campaigns, spanning several years of gametime. A one-year campaign can be assumed to be extraordinarily long for this game. I also would say that a campaign that runs half a year with weekly sessions can be considered very long.

What kind of characters are they? Well, mostly they are pretty well established characters within the world and their numbers probably won't change a great deal. As I said, one year game-time would be exceptionaly long, so there is not much space for significant improvement of attributes or skills. Ideally, the characters will advance mainly on a conceptual basis, if you know what I mean. Their personality and views will change. This game is to be very story-heavy.
The characters will be detectives, investigators, monchs, hackers and such, all already pretty fleshed out. Think Cthulhu.
One idea I have says that they are basically ordinary characters that have extraordinary things happen to them. They uncover mysteries and contingencies (spelling?). They find out about secrets they're not supposed to know. They're more often the hunted than the hunter.

One purpose of this game is to provide a platform to play stories that don't fit into a system like Shadowrun (SR being pretty complicated, with strong gamist tendencies and a very strictly defined setting). Character creation should be quick and easy (with a more complex option for longer-running campaigns), the rules will be light and suitable for most situations.

As for my idea of advancement being gamist: I was probably being a bit unclear. I consider player-controlled "numerical" advancement as gamist. Of course there are plenty of ways to use advancement schemes in non-gamist ways (simulationist being the most prominent one).

So, to sum it up: yes, I am looking for a pretty minimalist advancement mechanic.

I hope this helps you understand what I'm aiming for.

[Precious Villain]

I've played in one short Call of Cthulhu campaign ("Beyond the Mountains of Madness" for those curious.  My character nearly shot Starkweather in the face over some bad oxygen tanks).  Call of Cthulhu uses a combination of training and field experience to advance characters slowly.  I.e. whenever you use a skill successfully you mark it down.  Then after the game you try to roll your skill and FAIL.  If you do, then the skill goes up.  This gives a "learning curve" where you take a long time to pick up a new skill, move quickly in the middle ranges and then slow down at the top.  I've played in two AD&D games with similar setups.

A couple of things happen in these games that might or might not work for your system.  First: advancement with the above systems was relatively fast.  Characters were able to put time out to train and acquire very high levels of skill in a short amount of real time, even if it took a fair amount of game time.  Second: advancement was persistent and constant.  Characters did not spend a lot of time at a single power level, rather they constantly pushed the envelope learning new skills and training up old ones.  Third: advancement took up a significant amount of time at the table and in game time.  It was a major goal of every character and pretty much understood to be a requirement to survive in some pretty gritty and tough worlds.  Fourth: characters spent almost every conceivable moment of downtime, even mid-dungeon sometimes, getting some training in.

So this is the question that you have to answer: "How much does training matter to the stories I want to tell through the game?"  You've stated a narrativist purpose, so I think it's the right question.  You also say that you want a minimalist mechanic that won't take up a lot of time at the table, so it seems to me that your answer is "Training doesn't matter much to the stories I want to tell."  

Given that, I think the idea of an unrestricited, Call of Cthulhu style training mechanic is a lousy idea based on my experiences in actual play.  Tracking every couple of hours of training will encourage players to search out every spare hour they can find to train.  You're going to have players whose characters aren't in the spotlight distracting you with: "I train X skill for X hours while you guys are involved in those critical negotiations."  

You'll also get "balance" problems up the wazoo.  If you've got only one player determined to train as much as possible, their character will rapidly outstrip the others.  (How?  Say they find twice as many opportunities to train.  That's twice as much advancement).  

Nevertheless, there are a couple of possible solutions.  The first is a hard limit on training time per game session.  That way people will only bother you about it a couple of times, and the serious roleplayers will easily keep up with the uber munchkins.  Another possible solution is to scrap one of your earlier ideas about training for a couple hours in your spare time.  Instead, make characters train at least a week to get any benefit.  That way training can only occur between adventures (unless adventures are really stretched out).  Of course, then you get the Big Downtime Problem.  That happens when you have 3 months off while someone's character is in the hospital, or researching a big spell, or whatever.  You've got 3 solid months of uninterrupted training, and thus a big jump in power and a ton of really annoying bookkeeping to do before the group can start ANYTHING at all.  

Overall, I think a training mechanic is a bad fit for a gritty, narrativist game like you're describing.  It's got players focused on their character sheets instead of their characters.  Maybe you've got some great group of amazing super role players who will turn their backs on that temptation to get more powerful, but that's not good game design it's just good gaming.  Game design is the focus of this forum, so . . .

Basically, I think you need to seriously examine what kind of game session you want to run.  What do players talk about, what do characters do.  Then build your system around that.

[Kryyst]

I know you are trying to get away from the statistical side of gaming a little more but as soon as you start dealing with skills and advancement you are bringing it back in and encorporating it to some degree.

One problem I would see as a player is that I can only advance while training.  This seems kind of unrealisitc as I think most people in reality would agree that if the classroom is your initial introduction to a skill then most of the real life training would come from being in the field and working.

So with that in mind perhaps another way of doing it would be to make it easier to learn a new skill through down time training then it would be to learn it just from play.  But it would be easier to increase a skill through play then it would be by training alone.

To increase the detail a little more.  If you learn a skill strickly from training you can increase the potential/understanding of  that skill but you have to actually use it in the field to raise it's rating up to that potential.  Kind of a situation you know the theory but until you actually do it under stress you don't really know it.  

Take shooting a gun.  You could be an expert marksman at a target, but completely horrible when that target is firing back at you.  So you developed excellent marksman skills during training but your practical ability won't be up to snuff until you use that skill during play.  Same with being a surgeon you could know all that there is to know about a human body and practiced on a corpse and sat through viewing but until you are cutting into a live person and working against a clock to save a life you really don't know how good you are.

On the other side you could learn a skill in the field for example a quick lesson like how to do some minor first aid.  But until you've had some down time training you probably would never concievably be able to turn that minor first aid skill into being able to perform brain surgeory.  So you would learn a base skill in the field but would have to do some down time training to increase your potential with a skill before increasing your practical ability with it.  

Now granted all of this is probably a lot more complicated then you were originally thinking.  However this has had a secondary effect of given me a new way to look at advancement so I'll thank you for that.

[Sven Seeland]

Why, you're welcome ;)

While your ideas, Kryyst, indeed do make sense I don't think it'll be suitable for my game since - as you already stated - it's way too complicated.

Now to my Precious Villain...
While it all makes perfect sense what you're saying I get a feeling that you are suggesting a system without any advancement mechanic at all - or a GM controlled advancement. Neither of which is really what I was looking for, but I'm open minded, so let's see...

These are my possibilities as I see them at the moment:

Since this game is designed for shorter campaigns it would make sense to omitt an advancement mechanic. Instead the advancement mechanic could merely be an extension of the character creation mechanic (which I don't have any idea about yet) which can be utilized by the GM to hand out some advancement in between games.

I could also try to design and balance the training mechanic in a way that makes it undesirable to train a lot in the field or use two seperate mechanics for field training and downtime training (in the field you learn whatever you have been doing there and during downtime you can learn whatever you want)

Last but not least: stick with a karma-based mechanic like it is used in Shadowrun. Although this did work quite well in practise, I am not so happy with this since it's an unbalanced approach. The GM hands out points to reward "good roleplaying" (simulationist/narratavist) and these points are then used for gamist purposes...

All three approaches seem equally valid to me right now. Any thoughts?

[Precious Villain]

I'm not saying "don't use advancement" or "don't use training for advancement" I'm just highlighting some of the things I noticed in those games that you might not like having in your game :)  In fact, I enjoyed those games a great deal and didn't mind the drawbacks much at all, but this was in a pretty gamist, cinematic D&D game . . .  So solutions!

*Option 1.*
For the idea of strictly GM controlled advancement, that depends on what you want to do.  Only having stats go up when the GM says they do is an interesting idea, but it could lead to social contract problems and it's very easy for individual GMs who might pick up your system to get totally wrong.

*Option 2.*
I like the idea of separating "field training" from downtime training.  Godlike has a rule that allows in game advancement, but characters may only increase one stat by a single point.  You could do it in the middle of a combat round, but that was it.  The rule didn't apply if the characters had downtime and the opportunity to train (didn't happen often, given the setting).  This might be the sort of thing that could work for you, depending on how grainy your system is.  It'll keep a lot of problems in check, because players won't get any benefit out of squeezing in a few reps waiting for the elevator.  However, you'll have to have a system where a one point increase in a stat is never a dramatic change.  For comparison, in Godlike stats and skills are rated from 1-10.

You could further limit advancement in game (which Godlike does not) by stating that characters can only increase a skill that has been "OK'd" by the GM.  Maybe the character used the skill in a way that was seriously challenging, maybe the character made an effort to train or practice in game, or maybe the skill or stat featured prominently in the story (gotta' give one to the narrativists).  Of course, a character might get more than one skill qualified, but the burden should probably be on the player to ask at the time, not after the game.

You might want to explicitly define "Downtime."  Say downtime training can't be used unless you have at least a month off.  In a realistic game, moreover, you might want to limit the amount of training that can be done while not caught up in a story of some kind.  Certainly, most of us have jobs and commitments that keep us super busy.  You'll want to watch out, though, if you start putting in advantages like "super wealthy" or "patron" because enterprising players can turn that into months of training only time.

*Option 3.*
I don't think you should give up just yet and go with a karma based mechanic.  Note that Shadowrun has got some optional training rules, I believe they are in the Shadowrun Companion.  They just require you to spend money and time to improve as well as karma.  So you could kind of have your cake and eat it, too.

*Random thought.*
To give players more flexibility, you might allow them to "de-train" during downtime.  They'd lower some skills and use those points to raise others.  Probably only good for long stretches of downtime, but it allows characters to "adapt to the environment" without reaching celestial heights of raw power.  Trading in stat points for skill points, for example, as the talented amateur becomes the scarred veteran.

Any of the three options would go a long way toward mitigating the little issues that I saw arise with training based mechanics in previous games.

[Precious Villain]

On the other side you could learn a skill in the field for example a quick lesson like how to do some minor first aid.

This reminded me of an obscure rule from TSR's "Bughunters" (an equally obscure, if fun, game).  In "Bughunters" player characters were soldiers in some UN sponsored marine force that, well, hunted bugs.  Characters could train in virtual reality machines and acquire "Virtual" experience points that could improve some rolls when they had to do the actual mission.

Which gave me a thought: temporary training.  Not all skill/stat increases need to be permanent.  As gamers, we all just seem to assume that they are.  In fact, if you don't practice in the offseason you're game goes downhill.  Or consider all those Hollywood actors who put on massive muscles for an action movie role and then quit hitting the gym later (look at Brad Pitt in "Troy" or Ryan Phillippe in "The Way of the Gun").  

You could have field training give characters a temporary boost to a stat or skill that they already have, or provide them temporarily with access to a skill that they didn't have before (but at a low level).  These points are lost if training isn't done rigorously and regularly.  You could even go so far as to have a "one shot" skill (especially in a cyberpunk setting where chipped skills and virtual training might be available).  So the gun toting mercenary gives your lowly hacker a few quick, manly tips on how to handle a shotgun and then you wade into combat.  

Downtime training is just maintaining your character's "newly" won skills (maybe with the hope of someday making them permanent) or keeping the edge on their main skills.  So a sharpshooter character would spend a lot of time at the range to keep that extra one point of Firearms skill because he believes he might need it.  The negotiator, on the other hand, is watching the Spanish channel trying to keep up his Espanol.

By having a pool of non-permanent skill and stat points, you can let a character grow, change and improve but not in the ridiculous D&D way that often happens.

What do you think?  Brilliant?  On Crack?