GODSEND Agenda (Character progression system)

[Jerry D. Grayson]

Hello all,

I lurk here a lot but never post but lately I've been beating my head against the wall.

Some of you may be familiar with my game GODSEND Agenda. For those who aren't the basic premise is that if gods walked the earth they would be considered super heroes in the modern day. The game uses WEG's D6 system as its engine

I'm currently writing the first supplement and wanted to add an optional rule that would simulate the heroic growth and progression of a hero from a comic book/mythic point of view. I'd like for the player characters to be able to change the world around them and have an impact on their campaign.

In place now is the standard experience point system that allows characters to buy more powers and skill but I'd like something that goes beyond that. I'd like a system that is a combination of Pendragon's Glory Attribute, Ray Winniger's Underworld's Parameters System, and the Marvel Universe Role-playing Game's Experience Lines awards system.

I want the characters to feel that their characters have accomplished more than just stopping the local "super villain" from poisoning the water supply or foiling Joey Bagodonuts attempt at robbing the Savings and Loan. The characters are larger than life and I'd like the players to feel that way.
I'd like the characters to have a way of actively affecting their world so that their accomplishments matter. There are a lot of super hero games out there but none of them (at least the ones I own) allow for the characters to make substantial difference in the game world without the use of GM fiat. Underworld was the closest that I could find that solved the problem.

Beyond the accumulation of "kewl" powers and advantages I'd like for them to become living legends. I'd like for them to be able to look at their characters and see growth beyond a few numbers written on a piece of paper. I want them to look at their characters and see a transformation from a fledgling hero to something truly EPIC.

So this is what I'm looking for;
A way to simulate glory, prestige or infamy
A way for the character to making a substantial and lasting impact on their environment over the course of a story arc or campaign.
A way for characters to grow as a supplement or alternative to the standard experience point award system.

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated

[Andy Kitkowski]

A way to simulate glory, prestige or infamy

Have you seen the use/gain/play of "Arthra" ("Artha"?) in Burning Wheel?  Sounds maybe a direction that you may want to go... thing is, you burn Artha in the same way you do Force Points in d6... but gaining it is through epic deeds, etc.

A way for the character to making a substantial and lasting impact on their environment over the course of a story arc or campaign.
A way for characters to grow as a supplement or alternative to the standard experience point award system.

What I'm thinking here is something simple, simething basic:

So, you have your standard XP system in d6, right?  Off the top of my head, it's something like "Gain X number of character points per adventure, which you can use either to add a single die to a die roll, or else raise your skills/attributes over time".

I'm thinking that maybe you should tie the standard XP gain into not only completing adventures and tasks (like normal), but also for heroic/desperate/suicidal/epic actions (not necisserily results, but the actions that inspire them).

Then, for every character point you get, you get a "shadow point" (equal number of) of "Glory". Glory is kept seperate from character points (spendignwise), and has its own charts for spending.  Make up a chart, something like:

2 Glory: Make a lasting change in one person. Write the change on the "Glory" section of the character sheet.
5 Glory: Make a lasting change in a small community of people. Write the change on the "Glory" section of the character sheet.
10 Glory: Make a lasting change in a town or village. Write the change on the "Glory" section of the character sheet.
15/20 Glory: Make a lasting change in a city. Write the change on the "Glory" section of the character sheet.
25/30 Glory: Make a lasting change in the world. Write the change on the "Glory" section of the character sheet.

I think that making the characters write their glory deeds/effects down will keep them interested in their log of changes, and perhaps get them thinking not about their next "XP add", but their next "service to the world".

Or make it "game-y": Spend 10 Glory to create an institution of some kind that people frequent (Fitness Center, Community Center, A bridge, A gang of vigillantes, a diamond that you created from coal and your eye-lazers, a spaceship, a fortress in the shape of a skull, etc): Then, from that point, you need to invest 1 new point of Glory into that resource per adventure to "tap" it, but you gain 2-3 Character Points from the power of human hope/glory/awe/despair/fear to use as you wish per institution per adventure.

Good luck, Jerry.  I'm a fan of your project (bought the original at Hobby Masters in Raleigh a couple years back).

-Andy

[Andy Kitkowski]

Or make it "game-y": Spend 10 Glory to create an institution of some kind that people frequent (Fitness Center, Community Center, A bridge, A gang of vigillantes, a diamond that you created from coal and your eye-lazers, a spaceship, a fortress in the shape of a skull, etc): Then, from that point, you need to invest 1 new point of Glory into that resource per adventure to "tap" it, but you gain 2-3 Character Points from the power of human hope/glory/awe/despair/fear to use as you wish per institution per adventure.

Another thing I like about fucking with the d6 system... in a Matrix game I ran back before the sequels were released and washed away my interest in the Matrix, I basically had the players use their "Force Points" to roll all d10s instead of d6es for a roll.

Maybe, if you go the gamey route, above (which I'm kind of a fan of- It's like a cool blend of RPG and Strategic German Boardgame), maybe instead of your institutions producing "2-3 character points" (which would be cool and in-line with the feel of the setting anyway - the more projects you do in the world, for good or for evil, the more powerful and influential you become), maybe they can Instead, or Also, produce a point of "Essense" or something (rename it. "Essense", yuck): If you spend that point of Essense, you get to upgrade your dice from d6es to d10s (or d8s, whatever) for a roll...

Just a thought.  This would essentially turn your "extra rule" into a full-fledged ruleset... but hell, that would be cool in it's own right.  Look at expansion packs to german boardgames, card games or videogames: The simple ones just add "an extra level" or whatever, the cool ones change and expand how the original rules/play works.  

It would almost guarantee that everyone who buys Godsend d6 runs out to pick up the new supplement.

The trade in, though, is that it's a lot of work and playtesting.

-Andy

ps- Note, this is actually related to a system that I'm working on for a boardgame-RPG crossover myself.  Feel free to grab it and use it, or bend it in new ways as you see fit.

[Jerry D. Grayson]

Thanks Andy. I think the first idea will work best.

What if instead of making the points a secondary pool it used the actual experience points? Players could either spend them on the character or their particular Agenda.As they spent the points the would chronicle the deeds in a log that would, as the story progressed, give the player a sense of history.
Maybe the "spent" point can also act as a gage for how much renown the character has.
For instance;
A character spends 20 points on making a lasting change in the city. The change is made and also on the glory chart he is considered;

5: recognized
10: neighborhood hero
20: hero
30: local hero
40: regional fame
50: national celebrity
70: global hero
The chart is off the top of my head but could be refined so that the goal is to make your personal mark on the world and in doing so the character becomes famous or infamous.
The burden to make a difference in the world is up to the player to do or not as he/she sees fit.

[Andy Kitkowski]

What if instead of making the points a secondary pool it used the actual experience points? Players could either spend them on the character or their particular Agenda.

The reason I didn't go with that option is because, to a mn, give a d6 player a choice between making their character more powerful and giving them stake in vague backgroung changes, and they'll take the power any day of the week.  I'm not a powergamer, and I know I would.  

Expand that over time, and you have the players all dumping XP into skills and attributes and no world background- Normally in d6 (or most games), the characters make changes in the world during their adventures, and the GM takes that into account for the setting and metaplot. But here, where the players are just buyign into their characters, the GM here will be at a loss: he can't just let their in-character deeds make changes to the world (because that would hamstring this agenda rule- What's the point of even trying to put XP into the World, if the GM will just go ahead and make world changes anyway?)... and if he says, "OK, you get what you asked for: You still save the world daily, becoming more and more powerful... and yet still, no one on the street recognizes you or your contributions"... after a while, that would get pretty weak.

All I'm noting is that, for my group, myself included, we'd ALL, ALWAYS, take the XP and put them into powerups.  No question.

And then, 4 months later, we'd start whining to the GM when our characters never grew in the setting: "What?  I just saved the town from a fireball yesterday, it was on the evening news, and still no one recognizes me?  That makes NO SENSE!!!" etc. :-)

Just heading the grognards off at the pass.  Shadow XP gives them the chance to spend them on agendas of their choice, without worrying about the power tradeoff.

[Jerry D. Grayson]

I see your point and it makes perfect sense. You're right, players will be players.
I just want the mechanic to feel like a personal sacrifice, something substantial. Players that get shadow points would have no reason not spend them on glory or changing the world. If I was sitting on 20 points that had no other value I'd just pump them all into some grandiose plan to change the world. I mean, why wouldn't I?

I get exps, and a like amount of shadow points at the end of the game.... There needs to be a mechanic here..

Maybe the shadow points are doled out by the Gm as he sees fit and not just given when exps are given. Or maybe the shadow points are a percentage of the exps earned.

What if players had to have a personal agenda written on the characters sheet and they could only spend the points to attain those agendas. The character would have to role play towards their particular agenda and the Gm would award points for good role playing.

An agenda could be any personal goal but they would have to be lofty, not just "I need to pay my rent". Something the character could theoretically become famous for.

[Andy Kitkowski]

I just want the mechanic to feel like a personal sacrifice, something substantial. Players that get shadow points would have no reason not spend them on glory or changing the world. If I was sitting on 20 points that had no other value I'd just pump them all into some grandiose plan to change the world. I mean, why wouldn't I?

What I was thinking when I suggested this was that there'd be more than one Agenda, or different levels of Agenda, etc.

On differing levels (community vs world, etc), there is a choice as whether to push all shadow xp into a quick community change, or save them up over a few adventures for a world-changing effect.  If you make tangible effects to the former (community), then not everyone will be holding out for the big world-changing event.

Kinda like that game Civilization: Will you be the player who builds the wheel, then fire, then ampitheatres, philosophy, and medicine... or will you be the guy who is surrounded by nations with Atomic Science, but you're there with your wheelless, fireless slave army, just 7 years away from completing those Great Pyramids you started 4,000 years ago...

Also, maybe you can put your shadow XP into more than one agenda- Maybe every upgrade has to be different than the last one (in other words: No pumping the same agenda twice in a row, you have to pump another agenda first).  That way, the players are bound to spend the XP anyway... but now they get to choose which agenda to put it into, and at which level.

This makes the shadow XP comparable to regular XP: In regular advancement, you have to decide between attributes, skills; whether to burn them quickly to bring up low skills, or save them to build up high level, more useful skills/attributes, etc.  With shadow XP, you still have to choose between Agendas, and how much to spend on them.

Giving them the opportunity to choose will make this element a little more fun and game-like, IMO.

In any case, good luck dude!
-Andy

[Sydney Freedberg]

I'd actually say that having just one pool of XP for both changing your character and changing the world is more fun, and it can definitely be made to work.

give a d6 player a choice between making their character more powerful and giving them stake in vague backgroung changes, and they'll take the power any day of the week.  I'm not a powergamer, and I know I would.  Expand that over time, and you have the players all dumping XP into skills and attributes and no world background....

Probaby right, but Andy, you've just suggested the solution to the problem. Instead of having the choice be "make my character more powerful" (by improving my character sheet) vs. "vague background changes," make establishing background elements have a very concrete game-mechanical advantage that makes you more powerful.

People have suggested variants of this already in this thread; and Heroquest and Trollbabe both treat relationships you form with other people/communities as mechanical bonuses in subsequent conflicts where you can call on these allies. Off the top of my head, I'd be thinking of things like
- an ally. E.g. Batman beats up the thugs and hands them over to the cops, he gets 6 XP, so his player decides to invest that in a good relationship with the police and gets to write up Commissioner Gordon as an ally, whose stats he can call on when appropriate to augment Batman's.
- home turf. E.g. you spend XPs to create a neighborhood; now you can set scenes in that neighborhood, and its statistic "Narrow, Winding Alleyways +6" gives you a +6 bonus to ambushing any adversaries or sneaking away from them.
- a reputation. E.g. you save the city, and you spend some of the XPs from that on everyone in the city recognizing you; now you have a new stat on your character sheet, "Savior of the City +5," and whenever you need a random citizen to give you help/information/free donuts, you get a +5 bonus.
- backstory . E.g. I foiled the bad guy but I know he's coming back in a later session; so I spend some of the XPs from beating him on backstory and "suddenly discover" that he's the guy who killed my parents/love interest/pet rabbit, so now I have the background "Darth Vader killed Fluffy +9" and whenever I face off against him from now on, I get a +9 bonus to my attack roll because I'm so darn honked off.

The trick is to get out of the traditional RPG mindset of "only the stuff on my character sheet gives me power, and the only stuff on my character sheet is what my character can do, by himself." Emotions, relationships, background elements, etc. etc. can all be sources of power.

[gorckat]

just a few quick thoughts i had-

1)if the players have more than one agenda, they could dump it into more than one at a time, spending the shadow xp as they got it with no effect until they hit the threshold required for impact

2)if the players have any 'narrative' rights, let them decide the impact of a 'partial' edxpenditure, kinda fuzzy here, but its a kernel of an idea

3)damn- i got sidetracked as the 2nd popped into mind and i forgot my third- ah well

i like the sound of what you've got here JDG and, as a fan of the d6 system, i might have to get it- good luck

[Sydney Freedberg]

Oh, and check out "Muses" in Nine Worlds, a system whereby your character's goals have a mechanical value that makes your character more likely to win conflicts which makes you more likely to boost the goals which makes you more likely to win...

[Andy Kitkowski]

Probaby right, but Andy, you've just suggested the solution to the problem. Instead of having the choice be "make my character more powerful" (by improving my character sheet) vs. "vague background changes," make establishing background elements have a very concrete game-mechanical advantage that makes you more powerful.

...

The trick is to get out of the traditional RPG mindset of "only the stuff on my character sheet gives me power, and the only stuff on my character sheet is what my character can do, by himself." Emotions, relationships, background elements, etc. etc. can all be sources of power.

Totally agree- The problem here with the above is that Jerry is already constrained (not "hamstringed", really, but there are definite limits):  He's using the d6 system, best known for the system of WEG Star Wars.

It's really kind of a "traditional" game. If "narrative control" is to be added, it's going to bring the d6 system back to formula- Or it's going to be too far out of the experience of the average d6 player to be not too useful for them.

We have to think in terms of the d6 system and the people that play it.  This may mean giving up the Cool Hotness of narrative-control gameplay rules, or reconfiguring them in a way that are intuitive and complimentary to the d6 system.

Imagine if Jerry was an Iron Chef: He's been "handed" (by his choice) the special ingredient of Sea Bass.  He's got to make his dishes bring out the flavor, feel and essense of Sea Bass.  He can't just very well bake a huge meat loaf and drop a thimble of Sea Bass essense in there. Sea Bass, like the d6 System here, is both a framework and a hindrance.  The creative part isn't going to be dismantling the d6 System and reinventing it, but rather to do something new within the feel of the system.

If we can make narrative control, or relationships, scale to the d6 system in a way that works for the Godsend Agenda and its players (too bad we didn't get this thinking going for the release of the Core Book), that would be pretty cool though.

------------------------
Actually, scratch that. Maybe it can work, easily, with the d6 system:

Have the XP (no shadow xp) be poured into agenda elements (community, areas of conflict, institutions, etc). Then, any time that element comes up in the game, they get that extra 1D6 to roll on that task (kinda like spiritual attributes).

I'm thinking a scale like this (and adjust it if it doesn't match the standard xp handout scale):

An extra 1d6 whenever that element appears in a conflict: 5 points
2d6 : 10 more points
3d6 : 15 more points
4d6 : 20 more points
5d6 : 25 more points
6d6 (limit) : 30 more points

Again, though, this will be potentially New and Scary for traditional D6 players.  Let's see what Jerry thinks.

[Jerry D. Grayson]

All the ideas presented so far are great an all could potentially work well.

One thing I getting hung up is that the agendas part of the equation isn't very defined. I don't know if I should leave it as a nebulous part of the whole thing or if there should be defined categories and then let the players work within those confines. I think once Agendas are quantified then we can better approach the problem of making them work within the boundaries of the D6 system.

I like the concept of the Agendas being categories like in Civilization, but I want to keep the book keeping fairly lite.

"Give me two public celebrity, 5 world peace, and let me trade in these 10 police influence for one military influence "  isn't what I'm looking for.

I like the idea of buying dice for use in certain situations but again I run into a wall when I come to the agenda part.

Most of all I want the player to have a sense of accomplishment with the character that they themselves control,  not necessarily another "combat bonus".

Maybe my problem is that I'm looking at it from just a super hero point of view. If the game was a different genre, let say a space opera or fantasy how you would implement an agenda/glory system.

[gorckat]

ahh, but Jerry- part of being a super is about geting another combat bonus- i personally love the idea of dumping points into a 'community resource/agenda' that i have stated, by placing it on the character sheet, is important to me

let's try to look at some 4-color type examples:

Superman could be said to have dumped a good deal of points into metropolis, then the world and finally lois lane (a person as agenda might be stretching it, but it might be a possibility)- so whenever he does something relating to his agandas, he gets the bonuses.

Spiderman- points in Gwen Stacy, then MJ, points in NY (his home, and he felt strongly about protecting the common person)

actually, i think what i'm saying with these examples is this:

Agenda: Ideals, Individuals, Persons and Places that are central to a Supers ideology and motives.  Whenever these items might be threatened and the PC can suitably describe his character's deep and personal attachment to one of them, he may get the bonus dice assigned to it.

its rough, but i think it  might be what you were looking for- c super can designate a community center his secret ID works at as the place, and maybe all the kids he's helped thru it over the years as the people

hell, i know its rough, but i'm a lil juiced on sinus meds cause im not feelin well, but hey- take what you like and toss the rest :)[/b]

[Jerry D. Grayson]

What do you do with the guy (and You know he's out there) thats says his agenda  is " to be the best super hero, or Brawler there is in the world"? Just imagine him with a dice pool that he could use to bolster hist attacks. YIKES!

[Jerry D. Grayson]

How about a set number of agendas that have an opposite like passions do in Pendragon? A player starts with an even slate but can buy up one side or the other. The diffrent agendas give diffrent bonus in diffrent areas. or something like that...ok, im running out f steam here..just lost my train of thought.

better shut up now