Character Improvement, taken for granted?

[Matt Snyder]

I'd like to question something that I think is often taken for granted, or at least not spefically addressed often: Character improvement.

Is character improvement (improving character effectiveness, as Ron defines it) by metagame and/or reward mechanics a strictly Gamist tradition? I actually don't think that it is -- we have the examples in literature, for example, of the zero-to-hero routine. Taran Pig-Keeper becomes Taran High King. Pippin and Samwise are bumbling 'fraidy-cats who manage to become quite powerful heroes. There are others, I'm sure. Why not Simulate that in game, or make it the premise in a Narrative?

Ok, so it's clearly not special to Gamists trying to improve their character's effectiveness for competition.

But, do we take it for granted that it is?

I see two practical approaches fairly frequently, and I'd like to suggest they're sometimes seen as polar opposites for which I'd like to explore some correction.

It is my observation (and certainly a debatable one) that "normal" folks who play most any RPG desire some mechanics to improve their characters. It's just taken for granted. You play. You get experience. Your character gets better/tougher/more powerz/whatever. Further, I think there is a desire in many role-players to enjoy prolonged campaigns, in which they play a single character for a prolonged time, ever increasing his effectiveness.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have the notion that we should really be doing shorter-term, even "one-shot" (sorry Jared!) sessions of games like InSpectres or Dust Devils, and improving character effectiveness is pretty irrelevant because next week we're gonna play Universalis and a Sorcerer game after that, followed by Godlike, the Pool with dinosaurs, and then . . .

So, can a group satisfactorily play extended campaigns in some Simulationist (or whatever) game without any mechanic for character improvement, or does that clash with their taken-for-granted-presumption that a game should let you "get better at stuff?"

I'm asking all this in the Simulationist context because of the "Rethinking Simulationist Character Creation" thread in Indie Game Design, in which I offered up Avatar-13 sans metamechanics. Andrew Martin took on the "role" (for a bit of fun and to pose a valid viewpoint) that the Gamist gamer would break the system in a heartbeat.

I then got to wondering whether the metamechanic could do things that Ron suggested, like converting to some currency to "buy" social contacts and other elements rather than Effectiveness. What might such a metamechanic do for Simulationist games? I think I have a better handle on what a metamechanic can/should do for Narrativist games.

However, because of the historical "close relationship" between Gamist and Simulationist tradidtions, I don't think we've sufficiently figured out what a Simulationist metamechanic can and should reward and/or do.

Any thoughts? Am I making sense? Am I dead wrong about "Long term campaigns" vs. "Short term romps"?

[Mike Holmes]

Character Development and Character Improvement (or Advancement) are not one and the same. I'm not the first to make this point; it's relatively well established.

Do you really think that Pippin went up any "levels" in the LotR? No. The character's personality changes, his outlook changes. But he hasn't changed hardly at all in terms of "skills" or any of the sort of things that Character Improvement mechanics usually focus on. In fact, it terms of the story, the fact that he may have learned a little sword technique from Boromir is completely inconsequential. He never uses it successfully, IIRC. It's just plain not important.

What I'm saying is that all games should allow Character Development. Meaning that the character should be allowed to change. But Character Improvement is distinctly Gamist, and desired mostly due to tradition.

In a Sim game, it would be ridiculous to assume that if a character studies enough that he will not learn things. If the system relates to these things then they should change per the internal consistency of the world. Not via some unrellated mechanic unless that mechanic somehow rewards Sim play. Even then it would seem to be bad as it breaks in-game causality.

I can remember before learning of GNS that I really had problems with this idea (listening, Kirt?). I would go back and forth about how it was important that a character who was portrayed as learning should "advance" in that area. But then I would worry that players would not "adventure" but instead stay home and do nothing but learn. So I couldn't just reward that. So what do you do?

Well, this is incoherent design. I am trying to promote both Simulationist play, and Gamaist play, and, funny, there's just no way to do it here. I get that now. So what can I do now? I can realize that what I want is a particular sort of exploration, Sim.

Wait, you say, doesn't that mean that I'll have to reward the boring studying? Nope. That would be to say that I had to allow all things into the scope of my design, and that all players have an unstoppable Gamaist bent. What I can do is, say, limit the exploration to just the adventuring parts of the game. That is, I can just entirely ignore "Character Improvement". It's not something that I want people exploring in this game, so we'll ignore it.

Am I mad? Well, does InSpectres have character improvement? No, it has franchise improvement which promotes exploration, not Gamism (interesting how sharing does that).

So I'm not saying that one can't explore Improvement either. One could ahve a game about College or something. It just has to be presented in such a way as to not give some competitive edge.

Consider Pendragon. It's all about how a character changes. But are there any advantages to the changes (I'm talking the traits here, not skills)? Nope. The mechanic makes it completely Sim, devoid of any Gamist incentive at all.

So, yes, character change is great. But when it gives a character a comparative advantage in a game, that's when it's Gamist. If you want Sim, all you have to do is avoid that.

Mike

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Mike,

Actually, I think you're swinging pretty wide with that hammer, the one labelled "Itza Gamist!" I do agree with you, as you know, that Reward Systems can easily include little or no character-improvement.

I'll be addressing all this pretty carefully in the Gamist essay, but just as in the Sim one, reward systems remain awfully, awfully scattered vs. clumped, historically, across RPGs. I'm interested in everyone's viewpoint on this thread.

Best,
Ron

[Blake Hutchins]

Interesting subject.  Thanks for surfacing it.

Point of fact, origin of the quantified improvement represented in most RPGs seems to be an artifact of DnD leveling assumptions, but Ron's right in that it is endemic to most Sim games as well.  GURPS, Pendragon, and Storyteller provide some examples of firmly entrenched character improvement systems.  In S-F or even fantasy literature, the farmboy-to-hero arc represents only one type of story, usually closely tied to LotR clones or Star Wars style hero's journeys.  See the interminable Wheel of Time malarkey for a prime example.  Many, many other stories presume competent characters from the get-go, and skillsets remain fairly static through the ensuing story.  What makes a difference in these latter stories is a change in character or development of a crucial insight that comes about as a result of repeated failure or adversity.

OK, it feels like I'm fumbling in the dark here, but of the systems I've been exposed to at present (not a comprehensive list of Forge games, by the way), only Everway and Trollbabe focus on a less quantified-development road.  Though Trollbabe relationships might technically be considered quantifiable improvements in terms of their impact on a character's effectiveness, I see their tight integration to story choices made by the player as a distinguishing characteristic; they're not skills or powers that represent a growth in internal character capabilities.  If there are games I've overlooked that minimize or eliminate the usual take on improvement, please thwack me with the information.

I've spoken to a surprising (to me) number of gamer friends who insist starting characters must be inexperienced.  Particularly in d20, but certainly not unique to it, is the concept of youthful, inexperienced characters who undergo a progressive coming-of-age/leveling up series of adventures that ultimately transform them into epic heroes.  Again, see Wheel of Time for an example if you can stomach it.

It's a real hurdle in approaching CRPG design, as RP character improvement is absolutely tied to the reward structure, but that's another story.  One thing about The Pool that all my players commented on was that it didn't feel like they were creating the usual rookie character.  Even there, though, some players focused on building up Traits as a way of improving character effectiveness.  However, my Pool group displayed an interesting variation in this behavior.  After the second session, they started to compare the number of words in their character stories.  When Player Z missed a session and didn't get to add words to his story, he expressed his feeling of "lagging behind" the other players - but not in a bad sense.  The stories seemed to take on a sort of "coolness" aura.  As a benchmark, I was much more interested in pursuing their story investment than in their trait leveling, and I think if we'd continued the game beyond four sessions, character story development would have provided the "improvement fix."

Part of the problem is that few mechanics explicitly reflect character development, which can be an ineffable thing.  Sure, you can gain Virtues or Flaws or accumulate or lose Humanity or Compassion, but I don't know that this stuff really reflects development in terms of it being the main thrust of a character narrative.  Even most of the Virtue/Flaw stuff seems tacked on as a workaround, not as an explicit part of the rules.  Frankly, the best development angle I've seen lie in Sorcerer's suggestion of a character rewrite following a  drop to zero Humanity, and in Pendragon's personality meters.  TROS may also have something along these lines with its Spiritual Attributes, but as these are spent to improve the character numbers elsewhere, my instinct says to lump 'em with XP systems for purposes of this discussion.

In my experience, RP character development usually results from player authorial choices that arise in reaction to severe in-game setbacks for the character.  Improvement occurs as a quantifiable enhancement to the original character's internal resources.  Further, improvement decisions usually involve optimizing the character to the level of competency the player wanted at the beginning of play.  Hence, I'll propose the idea that most improvement systems, however unwittingly, reflect first a design decision to allay the players' frustration at being shackled during character generation, and second an effort to contain the scope of player "power" vis-a-vis the GM and setting.

Egad, what a muddle I've tossed out here.  Bring out the analytical brooms, people.

Best,

Blake

[Matt Snyder]

I agree that reward systems need not be for improvement, Ron. Although, I'm not convinced how much "the rest of the world" does. I think this is one element of game design that gets included, whatever the game, just because that's what you do, because that's how it's always been done. Dust Devils even has this, because it was a "gaming assumption" I couldn't see otherwise (and if my hazy memory is right, you or someone else questioned it, even though it's a pretty minor aspect of the game).

I guess what I'm saying is that this is one of the things, along with others like "who narrates?", that I consider it a almost a duty to challenge in designing new games. That is, make games so that those "normal" gamers will realize many of the assumptions they define AS their hobby are only one variable WITHIN their hobby. It's one more step, however small, in changing the way people think about the hobby so that 1) they'll try something new and 2) other non-gamers might one day also take part, with no assumptions necessary to

By "normal," I mean gamers who are playing games like D&D and Storyteller and even games like Riddle of Steel, Fvlminata and Godlike.

I'd like to better undestand some examples of compelling (read: really fun over the longer term) reward systems that do not increase character effectiveness, and I can't point to any immediately. Whether that's because increasing effectiveness mechanics are actualy taken for granted as I suggested above, or because I simply do not recognize or am unable to think of good examples of games off the top of my head, I don't know. Likely the later.

If you have some examples in the coming essay, great. If you or others can share some specifics here, that's great too. I'm most interested right now in ones that promote longer term, "campaign" play of, say, more than a dozen sessions. I think we have ample evidece of games that don't do this that are generally aimed at shorter-term play -- octaNe, for example.

[contracycle]

Well, I've on occassion suggested that there is no particualr reason a character should not be redesigned from time to time, possibly on my present thinking, at the start of each story.  Anyway, I see no particular reason for keeping this habit, as I think of it.

[szilard]

. In S-F or even fantasy literature, the farmboy-to-hero arc represents only one type of story, usually closely tied to LotR clones or Star Wars style hero's journeys.

...and even in these stories, not all of the main characters dramatically improve. Consider Legolas and Gimli in LotR or Han and Leia in Star Wars.

On the other hand, Luke may have been a farm-boy, but he had phenomenal piloting skills and technical expertise from the beginning.

Why is this relevant?

I think that character advancement (in terms of skill-gain) is important. However, it is much more important to some characters than it is others.

Go back to Star Wars. Luke gained some impressive skills over the trilogy. Han had most of his at the start of it. Did he change over the films? Of course... just not primarily in terms of skills. Instead, he found a community, a cause to fight for, responsibility, friendship, and love.

Now, the question becomes is this sort of non-skill-based character growth something that can be modelled in long-term games in such a way that players are satisfied?

Can it be made compatible with some characters gaining in skill?

Do we even need a "reward" system? What are we rewarding?

Stuart

[Mike Holmes]

Matt, I'm really confused.

Yes, it's patently obvious that the "normal" way to play, or, IOW, the way that RPGs have been previously designed, is to have Improvement reward systems. That's a simple fact.

We're just agreeing that this needs to change for certain sorts of design. What's the debate about?

As far as examples, well, since this is a new idea there have been few reward systems that exist that emulate this design principle. Sorcerer is the only one that I can think of off the top. No character improvement rewards in that system. Yet I think that getting to refactor your character is a compelling reason to play towards a resolution of a kicker. And bonus dice are a compelling reward for excellent narration.

Are those sufficient?

Universalis is an interesing case. You are rewarded for creating conflict and merely for participating, and the reward allows you to continue to create change in the game. These things have nothing to do with Gamist character improvement (though one can improve characters if one likes). Universalis has not been around long enough to know whether it can promote long-term play.

Perhaps a game that has a non-character improvement reward mechanic that supports long-term play does not exist. Hero Wars would be a debatable example. Aria? TROS?

But let's say it doesn't exist. The question is do we want such a game? Assuming so (if not, then this whole discussion is pointless), then all we need to do is develop one. What would it look like? Perhaps something that set up destinies for the characters that had to be achieved incrementally, each taking several session to accomplish. Not improvement, just steps on the road to a final destiny. Just an example.

Whatever. I'm certain it can be done if that's a design spec you're looking for.

Mike

[Mike Holmes]

Do we even need a "reward" system? What are we rewarding?

No. You don't need a reward system. There are other ways to have a game be enjoyable including just enjoying basic exploration.

Reward systems are just another tool to accomplish design goals. A large and critically important set of potantial tools. But not absolutely neccessary.

A while back Walt and some others talked about a system that would have the two basic character types: the pro, and the improving character. As now, the question was how to reward the pro. One suggestion comes to mind that the pro is already rewarded with instant protagonism in the form of effectiveness that's higher than that of the rest of the characters. Boromir does not improve. He doesn't have to to be cool.

Mike

[Matt Snyder]

Matt, I'm really confused.
Yes, it's patently obvious that the "normal" way to play, or, IOW, the way that RPGs have been previously designed, is to have Improvement reward systems. That's a simple fact.

We're just agreeing that this needs to change for certain sorts of design. What's the debate about?

No debate, really. I'm confused why you're confused! I guess I was more interested in seeing some down and dirty examples or hearing some very specific thoughts on how to do it -- how to craft a reward system that 1) doesn't reward by increating effectiveness and 2) makes for compelling longer-term play (if it works well for shorter-term, that's great!) but still 3) might allow for characters to change.

If my previous posts didn't say that clearly or at all, chalk it up to too many posts on a hard-core multitasking day.

As far as examples, well, since this is a new idea there have been few reward systems that exist that emulate this design principle. Sorcerer is the only one that I can think of off the top. No character improvement rewards in that system. Yet I think that getting to refactor your character is a compelling reason to play towards a resolution of a kicker. And bonus dice are a compelling reward for excellent narration.

Are those sufficient?

I think they answer the question, but I think it might be worth discussing those and other specific approaches.

But let's say it doesn't exist. The question is do we want such a game? Assuming so (if not, then this whole discussion is pointless), then all we need to do is develop one. What would it look like? Perhaps something that set up destinies for the characters that had to be achieved incrementally, each taking several session to accomplish. Not improvement, just steps on the road to a final destiny. Just an example.

Or Quests, Mike. Or Quests. Click down memory lane.

[M. J. Young]

Do you really think that Pippin went up any "levels" in the LotR? No. The character's personality changes, his outlook changes. But he hasn't changed hardly at all in terms of "skills" or any of the sort of things that Character Improvement mechanics usually focus on. In fact, it terms of the story, the fact that he may have learned a little sword technique from Boromir is completely inconsequential. He never uses it successfully, IIRC. It's just plain not important.

Well, Peregrin is a bad example. If I recall correctly, he starts as a delinquent farmboy getting into whatever trouble comes along (such as stealing vegetables from Farmer Maggot), and insists on going with Frodo. He's forced to fight a couple of times, and so learns what he's doing. Boromir takes some time to teach him, but he's also exposed to Aragorn and Gimli, so he probably learns quite a bit working with them. Then he's taken by orcs, and probably gets more exercise in one week than he got in an entire year. He drinks the Ent drafts, grows a couple of inches from it, and winds up in Gondor. There he swears fealty to the throne of Gondor, is outfitted as a knight, and is involved in the ensuing combat to some degree. All of this builds both his skill and his confidence, until he and Meriodoc march back into the shire as knights of the realms and clean out the trash that  had taken over, because they are no longer ordinary hobbits.

Now, that could be represented by a gamist advancement model. It could be represented by a simulationist model that incorporates character improvement. It could be represented by a narrativist model that recognizes character development in improved ability from experience.

As has been observed regarding Star Wars, the other characters (apart from Merry, who undergoes very similar character improvements) do not change in this manner, but in others. Gandalf spends his life defending the group, and returns with greater power. Aragorn wrestles with his destiny and ultimately embraces it. Gimli learns to overcome his prejudices and love the elves (and particularly Galadriel). Boromir faces the crisis of the temptation of his own pride and confidence, falling horribly, and then redeeming himself in his dying acts. Gollum approaches a moment of redemption, only to be driven back into hatred and self-pity by Sam's prejudice. There are many kinds of change mechanics going on here.

Perhaps simulation requires that we provide many kinds of change options.

In regard to the thread generally, I posted something on the http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=5025">Likely Characters thread which addresses a lot of this, I think.

--M. J. Young

[Walt Freitag]

A while back Walt and some others talked about a system that would have the two basic character types: the pro, and the improving character. As now, the question was how to reward the pro. One suggestion comes to mind that the pro is already rewarded with instant protagonism in the form of effectiveness that's higher than that of the rest of the characters. Boromir does not improve. He doesn't have to to be cool.

That thread is here, starting three posts down.

A related (but rather abstract and GNS-technical) discussion which referred to this idea and explored some of the issues around it took place here.

But I should mention that a post by Kirt Dankmyer (xiombarg) just recently on the Rethinking Simulationist character creation thread clued me in about a system for anime RP called Mekton Zeta that apparently does exactly the thing Pale Fire and I had been talking about. From that thread:

Mekton Zeta was also notable in its very Simulationist attitude toward the Anime mecha genre: Characters were either "rookie" or "experienced". Rookie characters had very low skills, but could increase them greatly through play, like Rick Hunter in Robotech. "Experienced" characters had high skill levels, but they didn't increase them much during play, like Roy Fokker in Robotech. This very much was like character "advancement" works in a lot of mecha-oriented Anime -- either a character goes from competent to incompetent rapidly or remains more or less the same throughout a given Anime series.

Indeed...

- Walt

[clehrich]

I suspect that there's a haunting, unacknowledged presence here that's confusing matters: Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces.  As you probably all know, Campbell proposes a model story of the hero-quest, with a series of fairly fixed stages.  Lucas drew very heavily on this model for Star Wars: A New Hope (and to some degree for the other films).

Now the model is certainly powerful and interesting, but the problem I'm seeing cropping up here has to do with Campbell's pervasive influence on notions of "the mythic," which tend to bleed into ideas of storytelling in general in RPGs.  What I mean is, I think that a lot of games, whatever their GNS priorities (or incoherence), would like to draw on models with this high mythic flavor.  They want the story that's told over the course of the campaign to "feel" like "real myth."  And since Campbell has largely set the field of discourse for what that sort of story feels like, with help from Lucas, many games feel it incumbent upon them to mechanically "force" the hero-quest.  (Incidentally, you see this model very forcefully applied in lots of modern fantasy, including the Wheel of Interminability.)

The usual way of doing this, of course, is through character improvement mechanics.  Luke the Jedi is not the same as Luke the Farmboy, and so on.  The question is thus twofold:

1. If you want to produce the hero-quest, is mechanical improvement the way to go about it?  This seems to be largely the intended focus of debate here.

2. Do you want to produce the hero-quest at all?  I see no particular reason to retain that model.  It's suitable for various kinds of stories, but by no means all of them.  And if you're not hero-questing, there may well be no reason to "build up" characters in this manner --- that is, it may never even arise as a conception, except through atavistic clinging to tradition.

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Chris,

Interesting. It makes me wonder if it's taken for granted, like the subject suggest and advancement is just a symptom of what's going on.

I'll try to explain. My friend, the GM, is very *very* emphatic that the PCs are "the heroes." This may explain his take on kpfs I mention over in Actual Play. "The heroes," whatever the hell that means.

It is possible that character advancement is a feature of the PCs being "the heroes" even though not all PCs are really what can be called "THE heroes."

[clehrich]

Jack,

If you're saying what I think you're saying, it sounds right to me.  Isn't that helpful?  :)

I think you're saying that in a hero-quest, not everybody can be the hero.  You have to have the Guide (Obi-Wan, for example), and so forth.  So you can't try to make the Guide go through the whole hero-quest thing, or it all falls apart.  You've got to choose one PC to be the hero, and let everyone else keep the story in the air.

If you think about it this way, one neat advantage is that although the hero is going to be very central, and at the end be a Hero in capital letters, the other people are the ones with a clue initially.  At the beginning, Luke is a whiny schmuck --- but Obi-Wan is a Jedi Master, and Han is a hotshot pilot, and Leia is a tough-ass princess, and so on.  So the "secondary" characters are the ones with powerful characters on paper, which ought to satisfy them.  Besides, they can enjoy being patronizing and annoying to the would-be hero ("Hey, I've been all over this quadrant and I've never seen anything I'd call 'the Force'," or whatever).

Is that what you meant?