the only brilliant idea Marvel Universe RPG has is lines-of-experience.

from every session you get 1 - 3 lines of experience, and when you collect 10 relating to an action, you get one stone for it, meaning your power or skill got just one rank higher.

Works like xp points but it records the history of character.

With FATE, having phases of life, you could force players to write 10 lines of experience for each phase to describe what he did. Some background, or if you go easy on them, just use them for new phases.

There should be some additional carrots for lines of experience.

If player is trying something he does not have a skill for, he can check his lines of experience, and if he has tried before, he can try with an average skill (if default is mediocre) or get somekind of other bonus.

I think that this is a gem rpg designers should not miss.

I am building a Scavenger system, meaning, I try to collect the best part of the systems I know and include it to a system of my own. (mostly fudge based.)

This gem I will not miss.

Hi AoM,

A scavenger system requires a very, very deep understanding of your goals and how specific rules work for each system.

It's very easy to take, say, the nuclear power plant from a submarine, the jet engine from a mach 3 fighter, and the body of a Ferrari, and create...something that won't work.

If you focus your posting down to a single thread, with very specific goals, many people can direct you to ideas or games that have successfully achieved those goals, and you can work from there.

The Marvel system works well for what it is, a game about comic books. If you look at the myriad history of comics, and the usual comic geekery that goes with it, the history of a character plays a major role. Whereas if you look at other types of games, stories, or media, these things hardly matter.

What goal of your game, specifically, is fulfilled by this mechanic?

Chris

A suspicously similar system appeared first in the game Wyrd:
www.actionroll.com/gildedmoose/pdfs/wyrd.pdf

Mike

Why Lines of experience?

Basically, it works like experience points, but forces player to write history of his stories.

It places experience to the skills, without messy marking on the character sheets because they are listed on different page.

One way of awarding experience in a game is to give simply one skill, but I think that lines of experience is better. Now I can have a system that rewards heroic playing, by awarding a line of experience to the character when ever he does something 'cool', important or smart. So perhaps it's not about giving experience after session, its about awarding good roleplaying immediatelly.

And I am too old to use simple experience point system. It's too ... used. Oldfashioned.

Now playtesting must reveal what to do with those lines. I think that when you get 5 lines that especially refer to a skill, you get one rank to it.

Hi AoM,

I understand how the mechanic works, what I am asking is "How does it help YOUR game specifically?" Can you clarify how this fits in with the other mechanics to help your game goals?

Chris