[TSOY] Buyoff XP Amount

[Bret Gillan]

Wouldn't it be better to make a Key's Buyoff equal to two Advances of XP rather than a flat 10 XP?

In a 5XP Advance game, buying off a Key allows you to buy a new Key with a little XP leftover.

However, if you set an Advance at 15XP, you're losing 5 invested XP when you Buyoff a Key which seems to be systemwise discouragement from buying off Keys.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Wouldn't it be better to make a Key's Buyoff equal to two Advances of XP rather than a flat 10 XP?

In a 5XP Advance game, buying off a Key allows you to buy a new Key with a little XP leftover.

However, if you set an Advance at 15XP, you're losing 5 invested XP when you Buyoff a Key which seems to be systemwise discouragement from buying off Keys.

Bret,

That's entirely purposeful. My estimation is that the group that wants advances at 15XP wants the slower rate of advancement, which makes a buyoff equalling 10 XP sensible. Feel free to houserule, though - nothing you're saying seems like it'd break the game or anything.

[Bret Gillan]

Oh no, I will accept nothing less than a complete change to every copy of the rules worldwide. ;)

Thanks for responding, Clinton. I was mostly interested in your rationale behind doing that since it seemed like being able to Buyoff a Key and immediately get a new one is kind of important - as well as a Buyoff meaning character growth (and character growth = Advances). Have the XP "reward" for a Buyoff being less than the cost to buy it seems to be a backslide.

But yeah, you're right. It's easily houserule-able, but I wouldn't be a roleplaying gamer if I didn't think I knew how the rules should work better than the game's designer. ;)

[Tancred]

I had thought this a typo in the rules and the buyoff is intended to be equal to one advance.

If you can buyoff a Key and get 10xp and advances are set at 5xp (say), couldn't a player start the game with a bunch of Keys he or she doesn't really want then buy them off straight away - getting a new Key for 5xp plus an advance for each one?

Okay, the player would have to be a bit of an arse, but even so, what's the rationale behind the profit from buyoffs? Just curious, since like you said, it's easy to houserule if I find it a problem in practice.

[Eero Tuovinen]

Each Key buyoff is a dramatic event in itself, so it would be against the goals of the game to punish it by not giving an XP award. Remember that the Key buyoff condition is not necessarily any easier than the xp conditions of the Key, so you could say that the player is forgoing an opportunity to score xp through the Key by buying it off, instead (especially as many Keys have exactly opposite conditions for buyoff and scoring). Also, a player may never regain a Key once lost, so cycling through Keys might, depending on the campaign setting and available Keys, narrow his future options considerably. You could say that in a sense lost Keys are like lifepaths of some other games, tracking the changes in the character's life; I see it quite sensible that the character get experience out of that.

I can easily imagine a player who is not an arse doing exactly what you describe; get some Keys he intends to lose, with the intent of highlighting how his loyal royal guard (say) has to rethink his values as a starting point in a campaign of justice, revenge and tears. Remember that each Key requires the player to achieve some in-game situation where the Key is bought off, so it's not happening just on the player's say-so. If the GM just lets the player "go out and get in a fight with somebody so I can get rid of this Key of Courage" or something like that without repercussions, I'm starting to doubt whether the GM is invested in the game at all. Those are excellent situations to spin story out of, you shouldn't just let players do stuff like that without it coming to haunt them later on. Even the most minimal "doctored" buyoff situation should result in one or two named NPCs with an interest in the PC. Just like Pool refreshment situations, those buyoff scenes become legitimate matter for future events of all conseivable kinds.

[Tancred]

Yeah that makes sense - especially when you say:

Each Key buyoff is a dramatic event in itself, so it would be against the goals of the game to punish it by not giving an XP award. Remember that the Key buyoff condition is not necessarily any easier than the xp conditions of the Key, so you could say that the player is forgoing an opportunity to score xp through the Key by buying it off, instead (especially as many Keys have exactly opposite conditions for buyoff and scoring).

Hadn't thought of that.

Thanks for the reply!