Drift: Spending XP during play

[Wormwood]

Resources are fun, and advancement resources tend to be put to many different uses. In Drift however, advancement resources seem to need a little modification.

While the idea of spending XP during play, often as a way to add extra oomph for an action, is fairly common, this is often seen as a secondary effect to it's use as an advancement resource. Sometimes they simply don't interact, other times it's a choice between a quick pay-off or investing in higher ability (like in the d6 system).

What I'm suggesting is to turn that idea on it's head. In Drift, actions should determine how you advance, and those actions you devote the most resources (in this case called Impetus) are the once you will increase.

So here's how impetus can be spent:

Spend a point of impetus to roll the die again, as if it rolled it's maximum value. Add the previous value to the new roll, to determine the new value of the roll. Indicate that a point of Impetus has been spend on the Truth, Insight, or in the 'undesignated' section of either Truths or Insights (if the action was 'unfocused').

And here's how spent impetus gets used:

Spend 5 impetus on a Truth or Insight to exchange one of it's Flavors for another.

Spend 10 impetus on a Truth or Insight to add a new Flavor, to a maximum of four Flavors on any one Truth or Insight.

If there are at least 20 impetus on either undesignated Truth or undesignate Insight, you replace a Truth or Inisight with a new Truth or Insight, respectively. The new Truth or Insight starts with one Flavor of choice and must be selected from either the Ship's Insight and Truth lists, or from those of the world being visited. The replacement need not match the Truth or Insight, but cannot cause a character to have no Truths or no Insights. The replaced Truth or Insight is the Truth or Insight with the least flavors, of these the one with the least marked Impetus, and if there is still conflict, then the player may choose which is replaced. The impetus on the replaced Truth or Insight, is transferred to the new one.

for example:

If Alice has just gained her 20th Impetus in undesignated Truth:

Alice:
Virtue: Strength (direct, resistive) - 6
Sin: Anger (deceptive) - 9
Aspirations: Purity (revealing, direct, informative) - 2
More Power (direct, destructive, restoring) - 0
Turtles All the Way (informative) - 7
(truth) - 20
(insight) - 12

She must now choose a new Truth, from the Ship list (they are between stops at the moment) she chooses Virtue: Reason, with flavor creative. She must now replace one of her existing Truths or Insights with this. First she looks to see which have the least flavors - in this case Sin: Anger and Turtles All the Way are tied. So she looks at the impetus for each. In this Turtles All the Way is the lowest. If it was her only Insight, she'd need to pick Sin: Anger instead, but since she has More Power also, she loses Turtles All the Way. As a result her sheet now looks like this:

Alice:
Virtue: Strength (direct, resistive) - 6
Sin: Anger (deceptive) - 9
Aspirations: Purity (revealing, direct, informative) - 2
More Power (direct, destructive, restoring) - 0
Virtue: Sincerity (Creative) - 7
(truth) - 0
(insight) - 12

This particular mechanic is rather important, it means that characters can never have more than five total Insights and Truths. This is intrinsic in the themes of the game, as we drift, we lose parts of our past, and gain part of our future.

So how does this look? Does this mechanic seem to produce the slow evolution of a character? Does this seem to fit the setting well? Should the undesignated Truth and Insight be designated before hand? Please let me know what you think.

Thank you for your time,

  -Mendel S.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Mendel,

I think you're on the right track. In practice, both Hero Points in Hero Wars and Spiritual Attributes in The Riddle of Steel tend to be only secondarily "advancement" and primarily metagame during play. I think they provide good models for something like what you're driving at.

It's pretty easy, really - if the in-game effect of the "XP burn" (to use the old turn) is mighty hefty, and if the adversity faced by the character is mighty scary, then people will use the XP burn a lot, and it becomes primary. Works great.

Best,
Ron

[Wormwood]

Ron,

The earliest I've seen "XP burn" was in the d6 system by West End Games, in particular with Character Points in their Star Wars game. In practice this permits XP (we all know what it is, so let's call it that for the moment) to be used in two distinct ways: Burning - which removes XP to provide a momentary advantage, and Spending - which removes XP to produce a lesser but more permanent increase.

The mechanic I'm suggesting isn't permitting these two uses, rather it's the idea of linking them, so that the only way to Spend XP is to Burn it. In other words, the only way to improve my Virtue: Strength (gaining a flavor) is to use that Truth in difficult enough circumstances so as to require the expenditure of Impetus (i.e. XP - breaking my own rules ...).

Simply put, if you link Spending and Burning, then you never get the chance to change the character via inaction, nor are you penalized for difficult actions (the problem I've always seen with Burn systems). As far as I've read, this sort of mechanic hasn't been used in a published game, probably because the bookkeeping can be problematic. In this case characters can never have more than 5 Truths and Insights, so no more than 7 catagories need exists (the remaining two are Undesignated Truth and Undesignated Insight). This seems a tolerable amount of bookkeeping. Besides, it's also the only numbers on the character sheet.

Now, since I posted the above idea, I decided to add an element of straight "Burn" to the game. In this case it's cancelling actions which oppose the character. This turns out to be a rather simple way to handle combat, someone tries to kill you, if they succeed on their roll, you either pay a certain amount of Impetus or die. Very easy, very deadly, and it makes combat less attractive as a solution (you don't just not get XP from it, you can lose some too), which is very much in fitting with the game.

   -Mendel S.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I see. And I like it even better.

Obsidian included a neat bit with its fairly straightforward experience-point system - the text permitted, and encouraged, spending the points for character improvement during play itself. Thus the "sudden surge" of much-needed energy (an increase in body points in the face of damage) could occur during play, and the character became much tougher "in concept" thereafter. I liked it a lot.

Best,
Ron

[Wormwood]

Ron,

Good to hear. At the moment the system design for the web version is essentially finished, I'm fleshing out the sample setting elements. Given the way the setting is seen in Drift, the worlds and systems are primarilly based on the character's homeworlds. So it becomes a matter of providing inspiration for ships, worlds, systems, and the missions that could occur in any of them. Probably tossing in some NPC's and creatures. Once that gets finished I will be posting it at my 52pickup site, and I'll put up a message to that effect on this board.

Thanks for your comments,

  -Mendel S.