One thing that has come up in various threads is the way characters grow in games.  Conversations revolve around such things as 'point based characters hyperspecializing' and 'wizards getting better at whacking stuff with sticks for casting spells'.

I have personally noticed, and seen that others have noticed, that many games have a sweet spot where play tends to be more enjoyable for most players, often not the starting point nor the notional end point of the xp spectrum.

In D&D this is often said to be within three to five levels of 10th level, in White Wolf it appears to hover around 100 to 300 xp.  

What I am about to bring up is not meant as a bolt on addition to a game, nor is it entirely my own idea. It is meant as a possible way of addressing these issues in future game design, or more aptly, as food for thought.


Lets call it 'colored' Xp.

To steal a moment from the discussion on the main forum about John Ross's twelve catagories by Jimmy B. and John Morrow, you could have potentially twelve colors of Xp, one for each catagory.  Actions taken in 'that catagory' could only be used therefor to raise the skills/attributes/what have you related to that catagory.  That fine a split seems a tad excessive, however.

Further, I'd recommend an extra color/catagory of xp for 'general purpose', colorless xp if you like.

This is not unlike the Chaosium/Runequest Xp, but by breaking it into catagories you actually eliminate the 'cart full of weapons' problem

Here is the key: The guys that fight the most get the most out of fighting while not totally allowing them to ignore all other facets of their character.

Me? I like a sort of four parter: Combat/physical stuff; Magic/knowledge stuff; social... um/stuff? and 'Generic/colorless stuff'.

Casting spells in combat makes your Xp for a fight magic xp, say. Bluffing your way out of a fight (or into the Duchess's bedchamber...) earns social xp.

Now, your world weary Samurai can be the finest swordsman in the land and still have points in Haiku, even taking the time to raise his Haiku skill without hurting his 'Sword some poor bastard' skill.

This is where the 'generic' Xp comes into play: The Samurai spends his generic XP in his 'Sword a bitch' skill, representing study in his down time.

And I totally stole this from Fable.  The John Ross stuff from the other thread made me think if it, but yeah, a video game.  I have no shame, I steal from where-ever the whim takes me.

No no, its an intresting facet spike, Id have to aggree. Personally I like that you can focus on certain aspects of a character and have them become better. Its true of most things, you practice one thing over and over it becomes second nature to you. Its how we are wired. Its sorta how nexus did thier skills too, sorta picking one skill and it leached xp into it and after a while it would "level" you could always switch from the one skill you were leaching xp into into a lower skill and get that up quickly.

However then the problem is another one, the people who would use this system to abuse and thus "power level" their characters skills (Ie only using one sword or what have you) and wouldn't care if you also had a masters in poetry, they would have 3 points better in kill samuri and you'd be dead.
So In that lies that there also needs to be a limiting factor.  Nexus negated this factor by making the dime differental disapopriatly longer with each iteration, and in our modern day games, I think that's the key, time. Time, its the one thing never fully intergrated into any game because it can get so out of wack, so its going to be the hardest to create a workable solution with.

...Thinking here... perhaps.. you could dole it out in chunks over a session? That would be intresting. Lets say your playing your game and you have obtained enough xp to level. However, instead of an enigmatic all at once pay off it takes the rest of the session to build up, or perhaps further at unexpected moments untill you receive the total pay out.  Example, lets say your playing a bard, you get xp to level, but the gm doesn't level you. Instead the very next time, lets say you enter combat he announces. "hey you think your a bit better at using your weapon, add one to your bab." or further down, you roll a skill, and he says "You think you might have picked up soemthing there, would you like to increase that skills rank by a point?" etc untill at the end of the session or however long it takes you to "level" up.

Hmm..

Well, just ideas. What I think I'm going to end up doing with pandora is have fixed leveling caps for attributes, weapon BAB and the like, but have a seperate method for skills. This way I can keep "Power levels" the same and have skills be more free form. But I havent worked on that yet. Keep up the good ideas spike!

Has been done in Germany. "Midgard" uses three different types of XPs: Combat XPs, Magic XPs and General XPs.
Mostly, it's a book-keeping hassle, but I haven't played the game at enough lengths to judge its long-time effects.

Generally though, I can see the reasoning between different types of rewards to separate "crunchy" and "fluffy" stats. I've done that for my own homebrew.

It's an interesting idea.

Personally, however, I think I'm getting tired of XP. Not character advancement, but XP.

Seanchai

Quote from: SeanchaiPersonally, however, I think I'm getting tired of XP. Not character advancement, but XP.

I agree with this statement completely.

In level based games like D&D, I take the True20 approach at this stage and simply award levels when I feel it is appropriate. (Usually once every two or three adventures).

If XP or character points or whatever are spent to improve characters, I simply award a flat amount based on an overall feel of what was accomplished.

I think Midgard was clearly ahead of it's time, but was sick with the typical german disease of that game design period- zero cool flavour, practically mathematical rule terms and an unhealthy abundance of excessive mikro ruling.
Midgard even let you spontaneously raise a skill through successful use (very cool feature, happened rarely).

Experience like in:
"Why does my Drymydic Knight-Commander needs 140 620 XPs to advance to level 12 and become a Knight-Paladin, while Suzie's Lake Elf needs only 89 500?!"
ais clearly uncool and is thankfully a relic of the classical rpg times. It's sometimes hard to explain/understand with how unreal rules we got along quite happily back then.

A system like in Shadowrun, where you mostly buy a skill here or a power there with a few earned xps is fine with me.

As to the coloured xp system, why not?
It probably fits better into a system which hasn't it's focus mainly on combat but where each skill class (I mean combat, social, wilderness...) is on par with the others.
As already mentioned (I think), bookkeeping may be a problem. Perhaps everyone could have a chance to score one fixed extra amount of xp (once per session?) with a risky but flashy maneuver? Perhaps even per skill class? Perhaps, some character traits chosen at creation do limit that?

Clearly, this is quite complex but could be worth working out.

-Einzelgaenger

@spike:
so now I read the thread about sp. rewards and I find that's about 50% of what we are talking here.
You can call it "coloured xp" or "appropriate character reward", but it comes down to giving out custom made xp. It's pretty irrelevant wether the player feels/states it's his PC's talent or his inner motivation, what matters is how deliberately he can/will pursue it.

Quote from: GoOrangeIn level based games like D&D, I take the True20 approach at this stage and simply award levels when I feel it is appropriate. (Usually once every two or three adventures).

What we've done is used a session-level progression. After a number of sessions equal to your current level pass, you gain a new level. So after the first session, you move from 1st to 2nd level. After two more sessions, you move from 2nd to 3rd level. After three more sessions, you move from 3rd to 4th level. There are some issues with it, but, on the whole, it's worked for us.

Seanchai

Quote from: SeanchaiWhat we've done is used a session-level progression. After a number of sessions equal to your current level pass, you gain a new level. So after the first session, you move from 1st to 2nd level. After two more sessions, you move from 2nd to 3rd level. After three more sessions, you move from 3rd to 4th level. There are some issues with it, but, on the whole, it's worked for us.

Seanchai

It's honestly the right and only way, but since the official ruletailers would get fired if they'd propose: "just make sure you level the players every few sessions", the poor schmohs had to work overtime to tweak stuff like ECLs, optimal encounters per day and other boring shit.
Seems to me you just drew the logical conclusions- D&D is made exactly the way that you're supposed to level on a regular basis, like every three sessions.

A couple of questions on that one, Seanchai:

1. If somebody misses a session, does it count?
2. Is there a cap, or does a 19th level chr have to play 20 sessions?
3. Do you have any guidelines about session length?

It seems to me like it would psh people towards unidimensional characters. If you want to be the best sword fighter, and the only way to get better is through combat xp, you might tend to look at every situation in terms of "how can I make this a fight?"

I like how Rolemaster handles it. It's a level-based system, but unlike D&D everything is a skill, so there's no chance of a wizard being better at swinging a sword just because he's been casting spells in combat.

When you go up a level you pre-spend your skill points for your next level to indicate what you're practicing. When you get that level those boxes fill in and you mark down what you're practicing next. If for some reason you jump two levels at the same time (I've only seen it happen once) then you just double the boxes you bought previously.

Quote from: droogA couple of questions on that one, Seanchai:

1. If somebody misses a session, does it count?

That varies - I let the players themselves decide what the paradigm will be - but in general, someone who missed was considered behind a session.

Another niggle in that vein, character spend XP to create items, etc., in 3e. We decided that after characters had created 1,000 XP worth of stuff, they were considered to have missed a session.

Quote from: droog2. Is there a cap, or does a 19th level chr have to play 20 sessions?

It's a good question, but I don't know the answer. We've planned to use this system for a Midnight game that will take characters from 1st to 20th level, but thus far, we're only only 8th level or so. We've used this system before, but only to about 6th level or so.

One thing I thought about doing was doubling up after we got to the double digits.

Sometimes, if a lot of forward progress was made or we'd hit the end of an arc, I'd award double credit.

Quote from: droog3. Do you have any guidelines about session length?

No. Because of when we play, our age, and when we have to get up in the morning, we generally don't have sessions that are too much longer or shorter than we plan.

Seanchai

Quote from: James McMurrayIt seems to me like it would psh people towards unidimensional characters. If you want to be the best sword fighter, and the only way to get better is through combat xp, you might tend to look at every situation in terms of "how can I make this a fight?"

I suppose it comes down to implementation.

Lets us assume the players are staring down a locked chest. The rogue can't pick it (lets say he's currently in the corner dying of some nasty venom).

The fighter guy looks down at it and goes:

Hrm... I could smash it with my sword.  But... wait! Didn't the necromancer swallow something just before we killed him? Maybe it was the key! I think I'll cut open his corpse and look for the key.'

Now, smashing open a chest isn't worth any Xp at all, there is no challenge, no skill to that. So he earns nothing. But if his idea pans out, and the necromancer really did swallow the key, he earns a few 'yellow' xp suitable for raising 'cunning' related skills or attributes. Free Xp, in other words.

Not participating in a 'talky scene' means no Green Xp. In other words, trying to stay one-dimensional might not impact his ability in his 'gut a fool' skills, but it does impact his ability to do other things... other things that DO net XP. Sure that XP wouldn't affect his 'make things scream and bleed' skill... but who ever turns down Xp?

I was thinking about limited time. If you don't care about social stuff, and can only improve your social stuff during the talky scenes, you probably want to avoid wasting precious gaming time on the talky scenes. It could lead to players driving scenes away from their intent (i.e. starting a fight), or just hanging back and being resentful because time is being "wasted."

I guess what I'm saying is that it looks like this system could take in group playstyle differences and highlight them more than they should be. If the fighter guy, who just likes to chop things up, knows tghat he'll be getting generic xp from the talky scenes, and that he can spend those on fighting skills, he may be more likely to participate. At least if the scene is going to happen anyway he won't feeled screwed.

It's not so much about turning down xp as it is wanting to focus on something with your character and not being able to because the situation is about talking instead of killing.

James:

You seem to be saying this is a bad idea because people are shittards that can't work together and since everyone is so monomaniacal about pursuit of their chosen playstyle that it would fail due to poor socialization?

I mean: I play a fighter/gunbunny/killy dude in almost every game I play (and as a GM I punish my players mercilessly for such monomaniacal play....I am a bastard), so when the game starts and we spend the entire session wandering around town talking to people and what not... I am bored.

But consider this: I am not particularly rewarded or encouraged to participate. Generally fighters have crappy social skills, many have crappy charisma scores (dump stat, yadda yadda). That's just D&D.  In other games, I may sink all of my points into being 'killy dude mk VII' and just have nothing left.

But that doesn't mean that I am not WILLING to participate, it just means that I suck at it, and because I am not rewarded for trying, I will continue to suck at it.

Remove condition two and suddenly its much easier to get me to play along. Suddenly I have a REASON to participate.  

Face it: unless the GM and all the players are going totally Gore-fest monster of the moment, there will always be talky scenes. And if the fighter is resentful of them because he feels it is taking away from his killy Xp grinding time, you have other issues than just how you award Xp.