HP Reward Systems Revisited

[Kintara]

Right, Vax, perhaps with one tweak: the spending player decides where the advancement goes. I suppose that's optional, but I think it would be cool at least as an exercise in player co-authorship.

The cool thing about it is that all the GM needs to do is keep track of how they are spent to get an idea of what interests who, as well as who is getting the most attention.

[Kintara]

Oh, and also the tokens, once traded, couldn't be spent again in the same session.  Otherwise the economy would get all messed up.  But I suppose that's obvious.

[Ian Cooper]

Hi Mike,

I've been thinking about this recently too. There is a tension between giving players enough hero points to advance and increasing their propensity to bump. Some of my thoughts so far are:

• Changing the advancement costs. I agree this is a viable solution. Ultimately the rate of advancement is a campaign decision. How comfortable are you with players who exceed normal folk in ability? This works both ways. Foks who want less-advancement can increase costs, those who want more advancement increase costs. Some people like the idea of +1 point of increase is 1 hero point for everything apart from affinities/broad abilities which are 1 for 3. You need to decide on off-camera on camera costs still and concentration./li]
  [li] I have already used the saga rules (narrators chapter) which allow keyword increases at year-end. I am now toying with the idea of allowing keyword increases with each year. So one answer I am toying with is just to cost Increase Occupation/Homeland Keyword by +1 at 3 points  and Increase Magic Keyword by +1 at 6 points. The large costs but high reward hopefully gives players a better spend points vs. get a big boost to advancement trade off. I also like the idea that you get better overall at all your abilities over just one specific skill. Curiously thought this would almost be a move back from skills based advancement to character class. However I think traditional problems there could be obviated by a Buy New Keyword at 13 with a cost of 4 points. That allows people to buy those advanced occupation keywords too. I would double for off-camera and non-concentrated too. The former because it stops abuse, Buying a New Keyword at 8 points looks unattractive for mini-maxers and concentration is still a good choice to quicker magical advancement[
• Linking spending and advancement to goals/passions. Under this idea, much less formed, I was thinking it would be good to tie both the distribution of rewards and the expenditure of points to things you declare that you care about. So you could only spend points to bump in certain key story areas, and only gained points when you played in a way that explored certain goals/passions. This is a really formative idea as yet

If I end up doing anything, I'm most likely to end up with the second, because it is the simplest, just a new cost to add to the chart.

[Lamorak33]

Hi

How about this for an idea;

Each player has 3 hero points they can spend in a session/ story sequence. You assign experience HP as a seperate mechanism. I have often thought that folks who are pro-active and, well, heroic and are engaging the story are burning pints but the guy that sits back and rakes them in, always playing the percentages, is advancing quicker.

Thoughts?
Regards
Rob

[Bryan_T]

I have often thought that folks who are pro-active and, well, heroic and are engaging the story are burning pints but the guy that sits back and rakes them in, always playing the percentages, is advancing quicker.

I think the idea is that those who insist on winning get in play advantages, while those who accept losing sometimes have the potential to advance more quickly.  So is it more important to you to win the singing contest, or to be able to afford to increase your singing by +1 at the end of the day?

It took a while, but Mike Holmes finally got me at least intelectually convinced that losing is at times more interesting than winning.  Atlthough it is still hard to overcome those decades of practice at always trying to find a way to win!

Regards;

Bryan

[Kintara]

I have often thought that folks who are pro-active and, well, heroic and are engaging the story are burning pints but the guy that sits back and rakes them in, always playing the percentages, is advancing quicker.

I think the idea is that those who insist on winning get in play advantages, while those who accept losing sometimes have the potential to advance more quickly.  So is it more important to you to win the singing contest, or to be able to afford to increase your singing by +1 at the end of the day?

It's not a compelling trade to me.  I mean I can see it being a tough decision (because I'm really not going to want to spend those HP on bumps if it's costing me advancement), but not interesting.

But if bumping (either up or down) is tied to advancement, then I think it becomes more interesting.  Then advancement could be tied to a specifc instance of winning or losing, which is cool.  If you don't think the other players would bump their fellow players down, then you could give the GM some HP to spend as well.  Perhaps there could be a debt mechanic, where you can arrange for the GM to get some HP to spend on you (and bump you down) in exchange for some sort of advancement.  Maybe that's how things like cementing benefits from play would work (which might be clunky to handle by the "fan mail" technique alone).

[Mike Holmes]

Apologies, yet again for delayed response. A function of years of trusting the email notification system that now seems not to be working for me for some reason.

As for Kintara's ideas, one side of me really likes the idea of players being able to bribe each other with HP. Another says that sometimes rewards should have no strings attached, and should be allowed to be saved for later. This makes me think about two pools...more below.

But, generally, Kintara, I think your play is different enough from mine that I don't think that your ideas are going to work for my game. If you play with them, however, do report how it goes.

Changing the advancement costs. I agree this is a viable solution. Ultimately the rate of advancement is a campaign decision. How comfortable are you with players who exceed normal folk in ability? This works both ways.

Good point Ian.

That said, I think that the fear of exceeding normal folk in ability is quite unfounded. That is, if you start out with the HQ "starting character" and throw literally hundreds of HP at him, you get a character who is still pretty normal. He might be master level in one or two abilities (two masteries). But no masters of masters, and no hero level characters.

Again, that's after hundreds of HP, and actually using some "advanced experience" as well. I think this is such a non-issue, in fact, that I constantly think about starting characters off at much higher levels than the "starting character" levels from the book.

Now, this is just my experience with play, and others may have seen other behaviors. But given the style that I play in, I have to consider this data when making up my rewards system.

So one answer I am toying with is just to cost Increase Occupation/Homeland Keyword by +1 at 3 points  and Increase Magic Keyword by +1 at 6 points. The large costs but high reward hopefully gives players a better spend points vs. get a big boost to advancement trade off.

The problem I have with this, largely, is that I think that a given player is going to decide that one or the other sort of buy is the worthwhile one, and eschew the other. Now, yes, there's a tradeoff of "Buy now and get less, or save for more later." Opportunity cost, basically. But, again, in my IRC game, players already stack up big piles of HP before spending, without the expensive options. So I think they'd just buy only packages if presented with the option (barring things like relationships and such that demand increase on the spot).

In any case, I'm not seeing how this helps the balance all that much.

I also like the idea that you get better overall at all your abilities over just one specific skill. Curiously thought this would almost be a move back from skills based advancement to character class.

Actually I like this too. But I like it as a "strategic" option. That is, I want players to be making small adjustments to abilities during normal play. I'd prefer to reserve keyword adjustments for explaining mass-scale adjustments to the character that might occur, perhaps, during long periods of "down-time." To be clear, I think that the small stuff should change during these periods, too, and in addition to keyword levels, I give some HP for spending on abilities normally, too. It's just that I think of the keyword stuff as sorta "out of play" refactoring. Almost like making a new character for play.

Linking spending and advancement to goals/passions. Under this idea, much less formed, I was thinking it would be good to tie both the distribution of rewards and the expenditure of points to things you declare that you care about. So you could only spend points to bump in certain key story areas, and only gained points when you played in a way that explored certain goals/passions.

I'm already less than comfortable with even monitoring when something counts for a reward, much less when it counts for spending. If a player wants to spend a HP, then he cares about it enough to spend it, IMO. Rather, I take my cues, in part, from what players spend HP on. So limiting it, would artificially change that.


Rob, what Bryan said. That is, what I want is the option to spend to be balanced between having the character look good winning (or losing less badly) at the moment, with development. The theory is that if these are balanced, then the decision ultimately becomes one by the player about the drama of the situation. That is, the player "wins" either way, so the choice is whether or not one decision is more interesting dramatically than the other to the players. Making it a win-win, in fact.

I am very enamored of this facet of the HQ reward system and don't want to do anything to damage it. All my efforts here are largely working around this one assumption.

That said, Rob, a pool of points to give is precisely what I've been thinking about. In fact, in recent weeks of play we've been using a mechanic called the Laurel. A player has the Laurel, and can give it to any other player for any reason. That player gets one HP as a reward, and then may pass the Laurel along to another player (who gets a reward). Etc.

The problem with systems like this is what I term "incestuousness." That is, when somebody, say, goes into a contest, is rewarded, and then spends the HP on the outcome. Or, worse, the person spends a HP on bumping, and then is rewarded for that, essentially. Without limit, in theory, one could simply pass the Laurel on to any player who bumped, leading to players always bumping (why not, you'll get the HP back). It's simply too tight a cycle of reward and expense.

With limited points, at least the player can do it only so often (this is what the Fan Mail pool is about). Still, the rate of incestuousness here will then be based on the rates at which said pool refreshes.

This all said, in practice I've run into another problem. Which is that, in practice, players don't pass the Laurel much (or, presumably, spend pool points). I'm thinking of incentivizing this. Here's what I'm thinking right now. For the Laurel mechanic, what I'd do is say that a player only gets his HP reward when he passes the Laurel. This, of course, would lead to more of the incestuousness problem, potentially, so I'd want to go instead with a pool.

So here's what I'm currently thinking for the IRC game (which I think I proposed somewhere above in at least very similar form). Each player gets, say, 2HP per session as awards to give out. These can't be spent, but must be given to another player. HP you get as rewards function normally. In addition, when you give a reward, you get a HP. There are other ways to think about this, but this one makes the most sense to me. Basically when giving out a reward, you get one HP, and the other player gets one HP.

This means that a player will get about the rate we expect (4 per session on average), with a minimum of 2, assuming that they do their duty and give out the HP by the end of the session. What's cool about this, is that if the player forgets, they can spend them at the end of the session remarking on what they thought was cool. Or, if we want to incentivize on the spot rewards, then we can say that rewards given out of the scene are worth half or somesuch. Or make it use-it-or-lose-it.

Just in case anyone is thinking of this, another way to deal with incestuousness is to simply say that a reward can't be spent in the scene in which it's recieved. But this is problematic, if a store of HP exist. Sure, you don't spend the one you just got, but you spend one you had. Not really much of a limitation. I do want players to be able to spend on the spot - saying they can't bump if rewarded would be a cure worse than the illness.

Mike

[Christopher Weeks]

I don't buy that 'incestuousness' is a problem, in your IRC game.  (Unless I'm still not getting it.)  Are you trying to cure it for that game or because you're working on general mechanical implementations?

You cite a worse case as "the person spends a HP on bumping, and then is rewarded for that," but I don't get the problem.  Bumping, not bumping, having your character face danger, having your character engage in romance -- these are tools of drama creation.  Is the whole of the problem that it screws up the decision of bump or develop?  Why does that matter?  You, Mike, are the strongest advocate that I've read for the "100s of HPs worth of development don't substantially improve competence" stand.  If that's right, it seems like 'to bump' or 'to develop' will always be merely and aesthetic choice on the part of the player.  Balance doesn't even mean anything.

[Mike Holmes]

There's a principle here that's hard to explain. The "incestuouness problem" does exist for the IRC game, even in the short amount of time that we've played. It's not quite what you think, however. It's not that the Laurel is getting passed simply to always reward every conflict, or ensure that people don't have to worry about HP or anything like that. There's no behavior problem that I'm trying to correct, here or anywhere I'm playing.

The problem is, in fact, that people have noted that such could be done, but aren't doing it anyhow. That is, with each pass there's always this question of whether or not the reward is merited. Sans limits of any sort, it could be theoretically that the reward is being handed out for less than good reasons. As a player, when I play these games, I sometimes even doubt my own motives (for no good reason). What I'm saying is that, if you at least limit the number of moves, then you know that players have pressure to have some criteria in place. This makes the reward worth more, even if it's being passed only the same number of times. People are expending a limited resource, not just passing out more of a potentially infinite reward.

On the recieving end, the question is whether or not it alters people's likelihood to bump. I think that on the spot rewards do change people's behaviors. Not that I can say with any certainty that it's harmful.

I think you conflate the idea of character power with rewards. That is, I think that though they don't largely increase a character's power in any way, that HP are still rewards. In fact, I think that the rewarding part is getting to use them in precisely the sort of dramatic ways you mention. So, no, not power balance, but, yes, balance of attraction of uses. What I often call selection balance. What you don't want is people making decisions based on power, but on drama. That's what the current system does. Put it out of whack, and certain decisions become too easy to make, and you see all one behavior or the other (or simply too much of one).

Mike

[Bryan_T]

Mike wrote:

That is, with each pass there's always this question of whether or not the reward is merited. Sans limits of any sort, it could be theoretically that the reward is being handed out for less than good reasons. As a player, when I play these games, I sometimes even doubt my own motives (for no good reason).

Reading this, an idea popped into my head.  First the disclaimer--I'm throwing this out here not as a fully fleshed out proposal, but as an idea which in turn may spark other people's ideas.  Brainstorming the options, rather than formally debating the merits of this idea.  So if you only want to read fully formed ideas, go no farther.

On to the idea.  The problem with putting limits on this sort of rewards is that it does not really change the issue you raise above.  You still don't know if it is really meritted, and sometimes you might pass up a good occasion in case better comes along, or you might give it on weak pretences just so it doesn't go to waste.

So instead, what if you add a built in criteria by making a direct cost to giving this reward.  The most obvious to me would be give someone else an HP, take a hurt (wound?  The one that gives a -1 on something and will go away in about a day).  And narrate why in a sentence or two.  "At the end of A's speech I get up and lead people into cheering.  I take a hurt affecting anything to do with my dignity, and give A an HP." 

Therefore you have a criteria: do I want to reward this enough to give myself some short term penalty?

Repeating, I've not thought this idea out in detail, nor do I claim that this is the best way to implement this idea--but seeing people reaching for some way to nuance this system, I just want to open up this area of personal cost for reward of others for discussion.

--Bryan

[Mike Holmes]

Well, I disagree with your analysis. That is, I think that if a person is passing up one opportunity to reward, thinking there might be a better one later, they're doing precisely the sort of analysis that I want done. Sure, they might be wrong, and maybe should have rewarded the earlier action. But at least they're considering it, instead of rewarding any old thing that happens to trigger the idea to do so.

Anyhow, I want that sort of limit to be the "deterrent" because I don't want there to be a real downside to doing this. That is, a limit, hopefully, makes a person discriminate, but if there's no other downside, then there's no reason not to make a reward other than thinking that later actions might be more worthy. In fact, from experience people don't reward often enough, and I'd prefer to reward them for making a well considered reward.

Basically I want to create a rate of reward where I'm pretty sure a person will give out rewards for only the better actions he sees, but gives out all that they have on hand. This will keep the reward rate relatively constant, while also accomplishing the primary goal of such a reward which is to allow one player to communicate to the other players what it is that they like about their play.

Mike

[simon_hibbs]

This all seems very complex to me. As a player I want to be able to focus on what is happening in the game, how it affects my character and how I can get involved in the story. Any mechanics that encourage me to monitor, evaluate and express opinions about othe rplayer's play are a distracton. I'd like to think I'd say things like "Hey, that was cool", without also considering how col it was compared to other cool stuff, and how much I wanted to reward it. If anything games generaly need less of this sort of potential inter-player politicking, not more of it.

It's also distracting attention, time and IRC bandwidth away from what's actualy happening in the game to additional game mechanics, and therefore actualy away from the other game mechanics that you say are under-utilised anyway.

Does your game realy need this?

Simon Hibbs

[Doyce]

I rather liked Eero's suggestion in this thread, though it looked like no one else replied to it:

Instead of spending points on incremental improvement, have abilities improve based on instructive challenges. Whenever a character faces an instructive challenge of level at least equal to the level of the ability to be improved, improve the ability rating based on the degree of success: +1 for a minimal success, [up to an] immediate raise to the challenge's level +5 on a perfect success. Something like that. As for what is an instructive challenge: whatever the player wants to be one. You could have setting such a challenge cost a HP, if you want to stick with resource limitations.

At first glance, this seems to be an event-influenced and player-controlled spin on Mike's Solution C -- granted, it's dictated somewhat by the roll of the d20, but still let's the player decide if this will be a point in time when they improve themselves.  My immediate questions:

- Do they have to declare before the roll that they want this to be an instructive event?  (I'd say no, but if yes, I'd leave 'normal' spends in the game as an alternative.)
- If they bump using HP to get a better result, can they then spend the HP to make it 'instructive'?  Thinking no, at first knee-jerk. Thoughts?
- If you want to make an instructive-increase to a magical ability, would the cost to do so be increased in the same way it is for a normal spend (x3, etc)? I'd guess yes.
- Do you still leave in 'normal' spending rules, to let the players change the attributes they have that are rarely rolled, but used often as augments?  I'd almost HAVE to say yes.

Hmm.

I think what I'd do is use this as an add-on to the normal system -- allow normal spends, and then offer this in addition, to give the players the opportunity for dramatic advances.

Downside: it makes losing a conflict less attractive when, as Mike has pointed out in the past, losing can be a fun and very interesting result.

[Mike Holmes]

This all seems very complex to me.

This part I'm not getting. I may be describing it badly. What I'm thinking right now is:

At the beginning of the session, the player gets, say, 3HP to reward on other players for whatever they like. When they give the reward, they, too, get one HP.

Seems pretty simple to me. 

As a player I want to be able to focus on what is happening in the game, how it affects my character and how I can get involved in the story. Any mechanics that encourage me to monitor, evaluate and express opinions about othe rplayer's play are a distracton.

This seems like a contradiction on the face of it. But that's a perspective thing, I think. That is, I see "focusing on what is happening in the game" as the same as monitoring other player's play.

I mean, somebody does something you like, you smile, and give them a HP. There are no technical requirements. Yes, the limit on HP makes you consider whether this made you smile enough to merit it, but if you give them all away too early or something, it's not a tragedy.

I'd like to think I'd say things like "Hey, that was cool", without also considering how col it was compared to other cool stuff, and how much I wanted to reward it. If anything games generaly need less of this sort of potential inter-player politicking, not more of it.

I have no idea what you're calling policking. I don't think my game has any of it at all, whatever it is. The idea of the mechanic is to have HP distributed in a way that provides some feedback, rather than completely arbitrarily (sometimes called an attendance reward).

It's also distracting attention, time and IRC bandwidth away from what's actualy happening in the game to additional game mechanics, and therefore actualy away from the other game mechanics that you say are under-utilised anyway.

As it happens, the way we play is that we have multiple channels going, one for all OOC stuff of this sort, and one for each scene that's currently ongoing (up to three or more at a time). This would be good signal information for the OOC channel. To be clear, our style of play actually already promotes people commenting copiously on other players' play. This is not seen as distracting at all, but rather as an enhancement to the experience.

Does your game realy need this?

This is your best point so far. The fact is that there's nothing wrong with my game at all, at the moment. We're tinkering with this for no other reason, really, than that there are other games that have mechanics like PTA's Fan Mail, which make the reward system into somewhat a better feedback system than does HQ's current system. Players have commented that they'd like to have a mechanism to reward other players. So this discussion is the result of that.

Or at least the current form of the discussion. Originally the problem was with my PBEM game, and the rates of rewards there. But it's all related.


Doyce (for everyone's edification, Doyce has been a player in the game a while back),

I may have missed Eero's post. But all I can say is...too sim. I see HP as a completely metagame currency. Recently I even ruled that players could pool HP between multiple characters they have, for instance. Now, if we said that instead of "instructive" it was "dramatic" or something. I might buy it. As it happens, however, such a mechanic already does exist in HQ, called the heroquest challenge. Meaning that when on a heroquest proper that a player may risk one ability to gain another. Which I think is really cool, and doesn't need to be usurped at all by the normal reward mechanic.

Yes, I have considered making something like the heroquest challenge the normal means of character advancement. See "Currency Based Rewards" at the HQ-Rules files site, or search it up here if you want to see what it looks like. Basically I don't use it becuase I think it goes a tad too far.

Mike

[lightcastle]

To some degree, I wonder if the reason this seems so hard is because HeroQuest is so easy to play without using Hero Points to advance at all. As has been mentioned, Jane Williams plays without any HP for advancement at all. In the new Firefly-esque game I've started using the system, I've let the players start with their abilities just ranked at what makes sense for the player.

On one level, this seems to work fine, since (as Mike often mentions) the system isn't about "winning", it absorbs such shocks easily.

I'm glad you're struggling with this, though, Mike, because part of me really likes this idea of a trade off on spending HP to look good now vs building stats. Also, many players like the idea of advancing their character through the spending of limited advancement resources. It just seems that debating an advancement mechanic in a game that seems to encourage simply applying ability levels as dramatically necessary becomes prohibitively difficult.

(sorry, I'm tired and rambly)