Xp, Reawards and skill points

[zoom]

Hello

I posted on here several weeks ago about a new diceless game I am designing....It was all going very well when I suddenly hit a bit of a snag.

This is my dilemma. Somebody (there name escapes me) suggested that rather than me giving out XP or skills points or whatever reaward you hand to the players at the end of the game, simply use the TOTAL amount of skill points they have used in the session to determine how much XP they have.

So if a player used 400 points in the game then they would have 400 xp which they could then spend on a table like the one below...

Attributes - 1 point per 10 xp
New skill - 1 XP
Skill increase - new level of skill in XP
new power - 20 xp each

ect ect ect.

This all looks a great way of showing character enhancement, however, I am unsure how this will work for more powerful characters.

In all the games I have played the higher and more powerful your character is, the harder it is for them to get more powerful. Where as in this system above it would seem that the harder the characters would become the more and more points they will have to throw around in the game, so in effect they will have far more points to spend on attributes ect above then say somebody who had only just started play.

so my question is, how can I maintain an award point system that is based on the points the characters spend in game and yet does not make it easy for them to advance as they get more powerful???

does this make sense... tell me if it doesn't and I will attempt to explain it better.

Zoom

[forlorn]

you could use bonuses, though you will still have some scale

[Anders Larsen]

Hi

I do not know anything about the rest of your system, but my first thought was, why not just give a fixed number of XP every time a player use a skill? Maybe you are trying to motivate the players to use as many skill point as possible?

There is a thing you should be careful of here. If a player get XP every time he uses a skill, he will try to use skills as much as possible, even to a degree where it seem stupid. A solution could be to only give XP if there is something at stake. That is, if his life get more complicated if he fails the skill test.

- Anders

[Christian Liberg]

hey zoom

I would recommend the following.

award xp 1-1 to the skill points used.

fill in X,Y,Z,O as you see fit.

Attributes cost X xp of current rating
New skill - Y times the current amount of skills in XP
Skill increase - Z times current level of skill in XP
new power - O times amount of powers

So if you have a 100 xp you could spend them as follows.

Current attribute is 5. To increase attribute to 6 you would need 5*X points of XP
Current number of skills are 3. To increase skills to 4 it would cost 3*Y points of XP
Current skill is 5. To increase skills to 6 it would cost 5*Z points of XP
Current number of powers are 1. to gain a new power, the cost would be 1*O points of XP.

Check out Vampire the Masquerade for something similar! The numbers used as variables should ofcause be based on how great an impact a given trait has, and how many XP the characters are awarded at a playing session.

However i would agree with Anders, make some sort of clause on the use of skills, the usage needs to be done succesfully or something similar, otherwise they will walk around throwing their skills to the wind. Or make some sort of catch of using skills ( powers that be are watching your every move, you dont want to attract attention and so on )

Good luck

Chris

[Filip Luszczyk]

What if, assuming skills on a 1-10 scale for the sake of the example, advancement in your system worked kind of like this:

When you use a skill in play, regardless of success or failure, check a box next to it. Don't check the same skill more than once per session. (I.e. I'm assuming the traditional model, where you have combat with lots of separate rolls, and everything else is resolved in one roll.)

After the session, for each checked skill, you get (10 - current skill level) in XP.

Add some table with advancement costs.

This means that:

-The more different skills you use during the session, the more you learn.
-The more you stick to the skills in which you're already highly proficient, the less you learn.
-You learn both from your successes and failures.
-There's only so much you can learn from using the same skill repeatedly in a given span of time (i.e. you won't advance faster through combat than through utilizing some obscure abilities that aren't used very often).

For example, if you have Swordfighting 7, Lockpicking 5 and Arcane Lore 0, and during the session you pick some locks and kill some goblins, you gain 8 XP. However, if during the same session you also examine some arcane inscriptions in the ruins, you gain 18 XP total.

How does this sound?

[zoom]

Excellent suggestions guys... I knew you lot would clear my head for me.

I am beginning to understand now that you can tailor your awards and xp to make the characters play in a certain way (dangle the carrot so to speak)

I think I will try to use a combination of what you have suggested by doing the following.

I will create a Vampire:masquarade style table but with a bit of a twist.

Characters would get xp through the following ways....

1. Call out - So if a character is about to use a skill or a power that uses points he can decree that if successful he wants to use these points as xp. This can only be done once per skill or attribute or whatever and as such will represent the times that the character is actually paying attention to what they are doing, such as in them difficult times and in moments of stress.

2. Rewarded - Characters will get extra xp in the form of percentages of the total xp at the end of the session for things like, role playing, defeating opponents, completing tasks and team work.

3. Legendary manouvres - If a GM decides that a certain manouvre or a certain action is legendary then they can decide to award the player xp for that action, even if it is with an already marked skill or power (see no. 1)

How does this sound. I'm trying to give the players more flexibility and have a say in the xp awards of their character, but at the same time not allow them to "throw skill points at the wind" as you say.

what do you think??

[Christian Liberg]

Generally i like it, but im hard pressed to know whether this will fit into the game itself.

Can you tell us a bit more about your game, and how ( and when ) rewards are given?

Concerning the mechanics ( and im not the right to ask, people in here are way better at those mechanics than myself )

1. How many XP's or percentages do you intend to create for each three XP gains?

2. What should characters do with all those XP? how does XP help the characters? it should all balance out of cause.

Chris

[vikingmage]

I always sound out my players to discover how they like their characters to progress. Some folks love the feeling of satisfaction in playing the same character for years and gradually building their XP/Skills/equipment up. Others find it all a slog. If you are playing Star Wars the roleplaying game there is always someone who wants to start off as the farm boy and the others just want their light sabres and Sith Patron to show up in session one.
Know your players and design your system for them. You can always keep backup ideas/rules XP systems if the players change and the mood of the game alters.

[Adam Dray]

I'm with Christian. Tell me what role your XP system and skill point system plays in your game. For what are you rewarding players? Showing up? Using skills? Doing cool stuff? Killing things? Keeping their characters alive? Making a political statement? I could go on and on. It's not clear from this post what you want to reward, so it's hard for me to suggest how your reward system should work.

But lemme take a stab at it anyway.

so my question is, how can I maintain an award point system that is based on the points the characters spend in game and yet does not make it easy for them to advance as they get more powerful???

Well, either raise the cost or lower the rewards.

You can leave the rewards alone and raise the cost such that the next skill level N costs N*N points. So if you have a 5, you earn 5 points for using it, but you need 25 points to raise it. If you have a 10, you earn 10 points for using it but it costs 100 points to raise it.

You can leave the cost alone and lower the rewards such that the player receives XP based on margin of success. So if he uses his Combat 10 skill and rolls 2 over what he needs to succeed, he gets 2 XP. This rewards tackling weaker enemies and avoiding risk -- probably not what you want. So what if you use margin of failure instead? If you fail, the margin of failure is your XP. For example, you roll against your Combat 10 skill and fail by 4: you get 4 XP. This rewards taking crazy chances and tackling stronger enemies. Characters learn from their failures. Sounds fun to me! The only thing you need is a rule that says you only get XP when the roll is for something that counts, something where failure hurts. You don't want players staying at home, shooting blindfolded at tin cans in their back yard at difficulty 11 or whatever, and failing miserably over and over to wrack up XP. That's not fun play.

So, does this help?

[zoom]

No worries guys.

Ok I am designing a diceless RPG which has a working name called Slotz at the moment. (it will be changed).

The game determines anything done on a system called score carding, which is very similiar to Ambers bidding system. The characters get their "score" by adding together the following 3 scores from their character sheet.

Skill - This is in reference to the action they are taking
Booster - a universal POOL of points the character may spend to increase certain actions scores, however they will need to spend time if they want to refresh it.
Construct - This is the representation of the item or equipment they me using to complete the action.

So if I was attempting to climb a mountain and I had the following -

Climbing skill - 20
Booster - 60 but I will use 30 in this action
Construct - 20 for climbing gear

My score for this task would be 70 - This is then compared with the GM's secret target score which they have determined by checking charts and taking into consideration things like weather conditions. If my score was higher than the GM's then I climb the mountain, If my score wasn't higher than the GM's, but it was within 10% of it then that is a partial success and I probably end up holding on for dear life. If I don't manage to get higher than the GM's score.. I fall to my doom :-)

Dead simply and dead straightforward ( I stress that this is still a game being designed). However with regards to XP. I want to be able to say to the GM that if I make the climb roll I want those points added to my XP. This means I cannot now take any points from any climb checks in the future and add them to the xp total (until the end of the session that is).

This then allows me as the character a certain level of control over how much xp I get. It also represents those moments when I'm going to use lots of point to complete a hard task and so I concentrate more and learn more from that moment than any other.

The GM however can also add percentages of the total XP awarded for things like Role Playing, and team work and can also decree that if I perform some sort of legendary manouvre or action in the game I can get the points for that action even if I have already claimed them once already.

I hope this makes sense.

[zoom]

Oh sorry guys..... just to mention too.

once xp is given out, the characters can then spend that xp on the tings like the following....

Skills - xp cost = current level x 2
attributes - xp cost = current level x 5
boosters - xp cost = current level x 4

ect ect ect

Now this sounds dead straightforward, but my concern is that as characters get more and more powerful they will be spending more and more points to complete actions ect. Without the system above, as you all suggested I would be faced with the problem of characters finding it easier to advance the more powerful they are.

I think I'm ok with this.. but if you have any further suggestions, please let me know.

Thanks to everybody who has helped me so far.

zoom

[Adam Dray]

Sounds like you know which way to go now. Be sure to post a Playtesting report once you've played it!

[zoom]

I most certainly will :-)

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

Here's what jumped out at me from the thread.

You wrote,

I am beginning to understand now that you can tailor your awards and xp to make the characters play in a certain way (dangle the carrot so to speak)

I think that's almost correct. The phrasing I've been using for a while goes like this:

If your reward mechanics match well to what the people think is fun to do, then play is rewarding.

It sounds like a no-brainer, until one realizes that RPGs which actually do this numbered less than ten until recently.

The difference between what you wrote and what I wrote is this: I'm saying, mechanics cannot make people want to play in a certain way. If they are disposed to play in a certain way, at this time, then if the mechanics work well for that, then the game is fun.

So rather than think of a game design like a Skinner experiment, in which you nudge and tempt and basically teach people to do X and Y and Z, I think of it like a meal. A person might like a set of tastes or textures, but will be surprised and pleased when they find out how well this particular meal or recipe satisfies that liking, maybe even in ways they didn't expect. They might even be surprised to learn that they like something that they thought they might not.

But if they really don't like that set of tastes and textures in the first place, then they aren't the audience, and nothing you can do with the cooking or the ingredients will change that.

Best, Ron

P.S. For those of you inclined to read too much into my posts, my analogy is referring to Techniques, not to Creative Agenda.