A different kind of eXPerience system

[John Blaz]

Had an idea for an XP system similar in ways to the Elder Scrolls games (Morrowind, Oblivion) but not as detailed.

There are four categories of XP. Combat, Exploration, Technology and Social. Each category has certain actions that reward the characters with differing amounts of XP that may only be spent to upgrade skills that fall under that category. Combat skills are anything involving weapons, shield skills and the like. Exploration covers stealth and observation skills. Technology skills are things like crafting and repairing equipment, and figuring out how things work. Social skills are things like Barter, Intimidation and such. So far, I have some very loose guidelines:

Combat                                                   Exploration         
XP    Actions                                                  XP    Actions
3      Cripple an enemy                                      5       Lift an object off a person
3      Help to defeat an enemy                            10     Sneak past an unalert guard
10    Defeat an enemy one-on-one                      15     Sneak past an alert guard
15-30 Fend off an overwhelming force                   20-30 Sneak past a large group of enemies


Technology                                              Social         
XP    Actions                                                   XP    Actions
2      Fix a piece of equipment                            2   per 10% discount gained through Barter
2      Modify a piece of equipment                       5-20 Talk your way out of a sticky situation
5-15 Make something from scratch                     10 Con sensitive information out of someone
15    Fix or disable complicated equipment (car) 


Obviously not a comprehensive list, but a good jumping off point, I think. Basically, XP would be spent on skills. So a character who fixes alot of equipment may freely put his hard-earned Technology XP into any Tech skills he wishes. What does everyone think?

[Vulpinoid]

Have you considered actions that may not fall directly into one of your four categories, or actions that might seem to cross into two or more of them?

Sneak attacks to kill an enemy? (Half-Combat/Half-Exploration)
Researching or casting a new spell? (where would this fit? would it depend on the spell??)

If your system uses attributes and skills, maybe you could divide the experience up into lines that parallel the attributes (then allowing points to be spent for improvement of the relevant attribute or its subsidiary skills).

I'm only asking because I've seen a couple of systems like this that didn't take these ideas into consideration.

V

[John Blaz]

I honestly just spat this thing up after half thinking about it at work today, and typed all up the moment I got home. But I would have to say that sneak attack XP (for example) would allow the player to divide the XP into Combat and/or Stealth skills, or just rule that all Sneak Attacks contribute directly to Stealth skills.

There's always room for more categories if need be, researching spells would have to go into a seperate Arcana category for example. Like I said, this is just a half baked idea I thought sounded good. It gives the players reasons to do things other than hack 'n slash (*cough* DnD *cough*). So rather than try and rack up XP from killing monsters, that stealthy ninja-wannabe is going to concentrate on what he does best, sneaking. Likewise with that character who enjoys crafting. Of course the GM would have to be careful about letting characters abuse the ways they gain XP. Maybe put a cap on XP earned per level for each category? Or put a cap on how much XP a character can earn total in a given amount of time. We could say characters may only earn 150 XP per game session, maybe more if there's a lot happening in the game.

And possibly, you could further tweak this based on class.
Let's say a warrior class character is allowed to gain 300 Combat XP per level or session or whatever, but only 150 Exploration XP, and 100 Social and Technology XP. That character is now going to need to get into fights to advance. Not that I intend to use a class system, but I'm just tossing the idea out there.

[walruz]

This is actually a really interesting system. You might want to think about incorporating some kind of "personality" or "meta" XP, for two reasons:
You might need something to increase skills/attributes that doesn't fall under any of these categories (or to buy perks/merits/qualities which doesn't).
It feels like if you reward this rather slim set of actions, playing the actual character might get pushed to the background in some groups. If you include meta-XP for playing your character according to personality, beliefs, derangments, negative qualities, etc, you can fix that.

Also, you might want to look at the experience mechanics of some Swedish RPGs. I haven't similar systems in a lot of american RPGs (although Burning Wheel comes close). Games like Drakar & Demoner: Trudvang and Neotech2 have systems where you get to test for skill advancement if you manage to pull off a critical success. If you're specifically going for the same feeling as The Elder Scrolls, something like that might work - Hell, Burning Wheel's system is even closer to TES than the test-for-advancement-system.

I would also like to mention that I have developed somewhat of a liking for systems with more rigid XP-rules (as opposed to loose guidelines as found in most games I'm familiar with, f'rex Shadowrun and nWoD). I mean, I like to get and award experience for roleplaying, but I like it when you get some additional input from the game itself, concerning when and how to award XP.

[Vulpinoid]

Walruz's suggestions remind me of the experience table in RIFTS (and virtually every other Palladium book)...where you get arbitrary XP awards baased on rough comparisons of fights...he was pretty easy, low XP gain...she was tough, high XP gain...but you also get XP for simply using skills in interesting ways, or generally putting yourself at risk, physically, emptionally, or otherwise.

The flip-side of the system your suggesting is to have characters earn XP at a standard rate and make it easier to boost certain things in line with the character's goals (eg. Class skills and Cross-Class skills in 3rd Ed D&D). Personally I think your idea makes more sense, and the extreme I've pushed it toward in the pst is to have the players literally gain advancement points in specific skills/abilities as they use them.

You climb a wall, whether you succeed or not, have an advancement point for using that skill...either way you've learnt something new about climbing...what's that, you've got a climbing level of 5 and you've just reached twice that many advancement points (10), good work you now go up to level 6 in that skill.

This is basically taking your concept to the Nth degree, and probably pushing it further than you want, but it shows what could be done.

I'd definitely consider the option of the general/meta-XP that Walruz suggests, because sometimes a character needs to develop in ways that just don't seem logical otherwise. Such character advancement could be manifested in play through blessings by the gods, cybernetic upgrades, spontaneous mutations, new forms of understanding or other bonuses.

Personally, I don't think skill levels should be increased from success. I think that if a person succeeds, then they will believe that their current level of knowledge is adequate, they also get the benefit of applying their effect in the game world. On the other hand, if a person fails then they have to explore new options that might help them succeed in the future, this exploration of knowledge keeps them advancing (it also means they'll have to keep finding tougher challenges if they want to continue in their evolution).

V

[Menigal]

I've been thinking about a system like this for quite some time now.  It's nice to see someone else thinking along the same lines.  Now that I've got a bit of freetime on my hands (ah, the joys of unemployment!), I might start toying with it.

[Menigal]

You climb a wall, whether you succeed or not, have an advancement point for using that skill...either way you've learnt something new about climbing...what's that, you've got a climbing level of 5 and you've just reached twice that many advancement points (10), good work you now go up to level 6 in that skill.

This is actually the sort of advancement method I was considering.  It'll be hard to get the advancement balance right, but I think it would work out if you did.

[John Blaz]

You climb a wall, whether you succeed or not, have an advancement point for using that skill...either way you've learnt something new about climbing...what's that, you've got a climbing level of 5 and you've just reached twice that many advancement points (10), good work you now go up to level 6 in that skill.

This is actually the sort of advancement method I was considering.  It'll be hard to get the advancement balance right, but I think it would work out if you did.

I think that's a great method actually. It's simple, makes sense. It means the more skilled you are, the harder it is to improve, which is true in my eyes. Whereas an unskilled person can pick up all sorts of new techniques rather quickly.

[Lance D. Allen]

The Burning Wheel has a system similar to this for advancement of skills. I don't recall it exactly, as I've not played it much or recently.

When you want to advance a skill, you write that skill down and you have to spend points in support of that skill. Those points are semi-rare, and you can only spend a certain amount of them per session, or something similar.

I've got a similar system in mind, part time investment and part point expenditure. You have to use or practice the skill, and you've got to invest points to advance it as well.

Anyhow, if anyone has any better experience with BW, they can chime in with more information.

[David Artman]

Burning Wheel ... When you want to advance a skill, you write that skill down and you have to spend points in support of that skill. Those points are semi-rare, and you can only spend a certain amount of them per session, or something similar.

Close enough--skills advance two ways:
* when you attempt to use them (the thing I was going to suggest, in general, to remove the whole "how to divide" thing above--just like Chaosium games, in general) and, in time, those attempts have to be generally difficult or impassible, so...
* you spend Artha to get more dice/better chance of an outcome., which is noted and can lead to Major Gains int he skill/stat, once enough is spent (Epiphany).
----
To the main point, I'd just go with a "use it, mark it" method and have some regular period during which you roll to advance (or spend points on anything marked, or just get +1 per session--whatever works with the rest of the system).
----
The notion of metaExp is intriguing... and it reminds me that I need to add somethign like that to GLASS, but with player agency not GM-only. (I have an idea basically similar to Fan Mail in PTA.) Thanks for this thread!

[Darcy Burgess]

Hi all,

I've got to say I'm tickled with Vulpinoid's suggestion of only getting advances (or XP, or checks, or whatever) for failed rolls.

Couple this with some player authority to set up challenges/scenes, and you've got a really rocking engine for driving play.  It would most likely be pretty dramatic, too!

Cheers,
D

[Vulpinoid]

Couple this with some player authority to set up challenges/scenes, and you've got a really rocking engine for driving play.

This pair of notions are a part of the current project I'm working on...

V

[Dementia Games]

Wow Vulpinoid, that's a refreshing way to handle skill advancement and something I've been struggling with myself.  I'm not actually using XP, rather the old "check it off and roll for it at the end" concept already used by Chaosium, I think, originally.  Your method would still incorporate such a thing, but on the flip-side.  If the GM feels (and the player agrees) that the failure in question was in a pivotal enough situation that the character would not forget the failure any time soon, then that character would gain insight that would advance the skill and therefor check it off to be advanced (or at least attempted to advance) later.  Really pretty brilliant.  Would you mind if I hijacked that part of it?  I certainly wouldn't use it otherwise, since it's not my idea.

[Vulpinoid]

No problems...I think most of us around here are more interested in getting our ideas inserted as memes into the collective thought process rather than trying to lock down ideas with patents and intellectual property licenses.

If anyone wanted to use any ideas I might suggest, I'd be more than happy to have the idea take root in another system. Naturally, I'd feel really complimented if my name appeared in design notes somewhere in the book...but that's not what I offer suggestions for. I just try to offer alternatives to give people a few more design options so that they can integrate the best combination for the product they've got in mind.

I think there's a lot of games at the moment which don't really consider the notion of failure versus success in their variety of contexts. Most games only seem to view success as the method of moving forward in a game. Small success = small benefit, big success = big benefit, some choose to add a difficulty factor for the task onto the potential benefits if the success comes through. It makes for a competitive style which might be good for gamist forms of play, but does it really reflect a decent notion of experience development in our world...or does it reflect the conventions we see in most forms of western narrative?

Personally, I don't think so. When success is the only method of advancement, we get the attitude of "if at first you don't succeed, try again"...but shouldn't it get easier with each try as you've learnt things toward the progression of success.

There's a great old anecdote about Thomas Edison attempting to create the first electric light bulb (this story is somewhat paraphrased, so don't shoot me down for inaccuracies, just consider the spirit of the story). He tried about 200 different variations which did not work, before he finally came upon a successful prototype. Someone asked him if he considered the first 199 variations to be failures, but his response was simple.

"I do not consider my first attempts to be failures, but instead I discovered 199 ways not to create a working incandescent lightbulb."

I'd like to think this is could be reflected in all sorts of situations. It's the effort that counts toward progression of the story, it's the failure that provides valuable knowledge to the participant. Success, on the other hand, provides the kudos and reward from observers and those who exist apart from the challenge.

Each have their part to play, and emphasizing, downplaying or even ignoring any one of these aspects will flavour the game mechanics in some way.



I've also been toying with the notion of skill degradation. If you don't use a skill often enough, there is a chance that it will atrophy. In this regard, characters build up through a series of templates the mundane occupations they hold and the social groups they belong to. These apply some "grounded skills and abilities" that have a minimum value. As long as the character stays in that occupation, then they will always be using the associated skills at some level. If they possess skills that aren't related to their job, then they have to make sure they keep using these skills during play to keep them fresh in their minds.

Characters who use more templates to accumulate higher numbers of job related skills and abilities also suffer the penalty that their occupational time commitment increases. Joe is a slacker who lives as a part time student, he doesn't have many skills, but it's only rarely that he has to go to class during the middle of an adventure. Claudia is a high-powered executive with huge amounts of skill and influence in various administrative and business fields, but her time commitment is high. There's always a chance that she'll be called up to do something at work.

Either of these characters can maybe avoid their time commitment once or twice with doctor's notes or calling in other favours, but if they miss their work commitments too often they suffer the penalties of losing their job, being penalised in their study, etc.

It adds another level of complexity to the whole XP notion, with the possibility that certain occupational/social templates add automatic points to specific skills between games, and the possibility that a single checkpoint could be removed from a skill if it isn't used during a game and if a character doesn't have a template that justifies the existence of that skill.

Templates would be added and removed as the character evolves through a campaign.

This may be a degree of complexity too far for most systems, but for those who'd like a level of social crunch that grounds characters into their environment, it could be suitable...

Just some ideas.

V