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Equalizing Character Progression
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@Roz
Yeah, I mean, that’s a thing you can never really equalize (OOC relationships and institutional knowledge) and idk that it’s worth stressing about trying. But I’d like to get at ‘OK, you have catch-up XP or sizeable XP bonuses for newbies, then what?’ And what are the long-term spooled consequences of that/what more complicated issues do the other sinks you create cause. Because I do love the build-tinkering aspect of a character and I think it’s not unimportant, I just dunno if there’re better ways to tease it out. -
@Pavel said in Equalizing Character Progression:
I think a key part, in my view, of equalising character progression but still allowing meaningful progression is having some nature of character age limit, XP limit, or other encourager to prompt people to retire characters.
The main comparison when it comes to progression is between fresh new characters and years-old dinosaurs. So. Eradicate the dinosaurs. Either, have an XP cap (or skill cap, as in FS3), or have a retirement age “characters can last six months, that’s it.”
I really wish more games would have XP caps. Not just for issues of equalizing progression, but also because…
In many games, XP and character power also make a qualitative difference in the challenges a PC is going to face. But most MU*s do not have the staff (and staff don’t have the experience and/or interest) to change the quality of challenges thrown at high power PCs. Which means that a lot of “higher end” challenges just end up either being things that the higher end PCs can cakewalk through, or end up being so quantitatively overpowered that it gets kind of ridiculous.
I tend to think a game should define what power level it wants to run plots at, and bound the XP to within that power level. If your staff is really enthused at running street level stories, then no starting XP, and an XP cap to ensure that people don’t exceed that - if you want “progression” beyond that, find ways to make it non-numerical, like consumable resources.
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Everything I’m about to say has the caveat of “This effect may be desirable for your game, games are different and can have different goals”. I actually raised this thread because I’m working on a design project and some degree of character progress equalization is an attribute I’m looking to achieve. Don’t @ me because this doesn’t solve every problem.
One big wrinkle with the “every Character earns XP at the same rate” and especially “every Character has the same sum total XP” structure is that games tend to have a finite number of progression options. There are only so many Attributes, Skills, Spells, etc and, variable by where the ceiling is, there’s going to be inflection points where Characters start to all become Jacks-of-all-trades with homogenous success. This is incidentally the prime reason that I don’t play Arx and I imagine it’s a big problem in WoD/CoD games as well. For the kind of game I’m trying to design right now, I want to encourage deep specialization and especially cut a line between combat/noncombat Characters.
I’ve tinkered with a lot of solutions to this and the one I think is most interesting alongside an Equal Progression structure of some time, is a hefty amount of options for purchasing expendable benefits and assets that are subject to loss. Favors with NPCs or Factions. Assets like a Bar that gives you some influence but can also be burned down, etc. The idea that something you spent XP on can be lost is sacrilege in some philosophies but for what I’m trying to achieve, I think it has the interesting effect of these temporary or risked benefits being attractive to the sorts of Characters that “dinos” tend to be; deeply enmeshed in the story of a game, standing atop organizations that seek to project power, conducting higher stakes conflict against other actors.
(edit: first paragraph sounds defense because it is. i was having this same thread of conversation elsewhere and got dogpiled with unhelpful “it doesn’t solve every problem” responses and it ruined my morning coffee)
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@Roz said in Equalizing Character Progression:
@Faraday said in Equalizing Character Progression:
In practice, progression after chargen is so slow that there isn’t much difference between a brand new char and one who’s been playing for a few years anyway (assuming equivalent chargen spends).
@Pyrephox said in Equalizing Character Progression:
Mind you - there’s not a lot to spend XP //on// in most of the FS3 games I’ve played, so there’s not a whole bunch of FOMO. No one’s really flashing cool powers and abilities that you can’t…quite…afford, and they’ve tended to be very easy going and unlikely to push character death, so there’s not a lot of fear of ‘I must be X mechanically competent or I won’t survive combat’.
Yeah, I’ll admit that in a number of FS3 games I’ve played, it may not have been a huge difference. Some games expand what XP can be spent on, though, like Spirit Lake, where XP was used to purchase spells. And while I know they did eventually start giving some free spells to new characters, and it didn’t necessarily make a PC any less able to participate in plot to not have the same breadth of spells – it can feel less fun to just not have as many fun options to play with purely because you started a game later. This isn’t intended to be a knock on Spirit Lake, who I know put thought and effort into the best way to solve or alleviate that issue, but they’re just – an example that tends to stick in my mind. XP, in that scenario, really does become a currency for your character getting to feel cool and fun in that regards. Of course, this is a super custom usage of FS3 XP!
@Polk said in Equalizing Character Progression:
The larger a game, the more you’re going to have inherent disparities, and the more you have to find a way to DEAL with that. Not all PCs can be at the same point in their arcs in a big enough game.
Why tho?
That may sound kind of flippant, but I actually mean it kind of seriously.
There’s probably a less offensive comparison I could make if my brain was working, but I get the feeling the sentiment is cousin to the fear of welfare queens. “If we don’t make people work for XP, then no one will roleplay at all, they’ll just stay in their rooms TSing and getting superpowers.”
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@GF said in Equalizing Character Progression:
@Polk said in Equalizing Character Progression:
The larger a game, the more you’re going to have inherent disparities, and the more you have to find a way to DEAL with that. Not all PCs can be at the same point in their arcs in a big enough game.
Why tho?
That may sound kind of flippant, but I actually mean it kind of seriously.
There’s probably a less offensive comparison I could make if my brain was working, but I get the feeling the sentiment is cousin to the fear of welfare queens. “If we don’t make people work for XP, then no one will roleplay at all, they’ll just stay in their rooms TSing and getting superpowers.”
When Arx did institute the catchup XP that I mentioned before, there were absolutely people who publicly expressed unhappiness with the idea that others could have free XP that they had had to work for. It made me sigh a lot to see. (I do think it was a minority opinion; I heard a lot more in favor/approving of the change then and also now, years later.)
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@Roz Why do you need to handle disparities?
Because a lot of character concepts get dull if you jump straight to page 200 of the story.
Sure, 3 months into a game, having people jump ahead a little bit isn’t a big deal.
But once a game is a year old, 2 years old? You’re skipping a lot of opportunity for character development.
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@Pavel said in Equalizing Character Progression:
The main comparison when it comes to progression is between fresh new characters and years-old dinosaurs. So. Eradicate the dinosaurs.
Or remove the tension in the first place. The philosophy of FS3 is that if you want to play a badass, you can start out as a badass.
I got so sick of games where I wanted to play a mature, skilled character but had to start off as some underpowered low-level newb and then scrape and scramble for XP. It was infuriating.
I’m not saying that’s the only way to do XP, or the best way. Ultimately it’s going to come down to the kind of game you want to run, and your motivations for having XP in the first place. But it is a way to avoid some of these issues. Progression isn’t everything.
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@Polk said in Equalizing Character Progression:
@Roz Why do you need to handle disparities?
Because a lot of character concepts get dull if you jump straight to page 200 of the story.
Sure, 3 months into a game, having people jump ahead a little bit isn’t a big deal.
But once a game is a year old, 2 years old? You’re skipping a lot of opportunity for character development.
I would say the main problem that comes from power disparities is that you can easily find yourself stymied in participation if you’re not throwing for example the huge dice pools that 75% of the game might be. Games tend to congeal, and it can be very hard to break past the “we’d love to bring you but you suck buddy”.
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You also lose a lot of character development if you’re so outclassed you can’t offer anything useful to potential RP partners.
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@shit-piss-love Yup. STs have to be up to that challenge (which is why some will retire dinos instead).
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@Polk said in Equalizing Character Progression:
@Roz Why do you need to handle disparities?
Because a lot of character concepts get dull if you jump straight to page 200 of the story.
Sure, 3 months into a game, having people jump ahead a little bit isn’t a big deal.
But once a game is a year old, 2 years old? You’re skipping a lot of opportunity for character development.
I think this is fine if there are plenty of opportunities for new characters to have the pivotal events that shaped the old characters’ development.
Unfortunately, again, in a lot of cases there aren’t enough staff, and not enough staff who want to focus on building those experiences for new characters, to make that happen in the same way. The larger your XP gap between characters, the more you essentially are running two (or more) games on the same grid. Because low powered characters aren’t going to be able to participate in a satisfying manner in high powered plots, and while high powered characters can “slum it” in low powered plots, when they do so, it’s usually not a great experience for anyone else involved.
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@Faraday said in Equalizing Character Progression:
if you want to play a badass, you can start out as a badass.
This is the thing. This right here. In the kind of game I’m looking to run, I want people to be able to come onto the grid with a character that can instantly get involved with everyone and everything that fits the character concept. Hot Shit Homicide Detectives. Cunning Political Animals. Well-Connected Socialites.
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@Pyrephox Completely agreed.
I know how i’m going to be handling that as an ST (making sure plot hooks get seeded to the right PCs, and can’t get trivialized by the more powerful PCs), but you have to have a plan for that. It won’t just happen.
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@shit-piss-love said in Equalizing Character Progression:
Everything I’m about to say has the caveat of “This effect may be desirable for your game, games are different and can have different goals”. I actually raised this thread because I’m working on a design project and some degree of character progress equalization is an attribute I’m looking to achieve. Don’t @ me because this doesn’t solve every problem.
One big wrinkle with the “every Character earns XP at the same rate” and especially “every Character has the same sum total XP” structure is that games tend to have a finite number of progression options. There are only so many Attributes, Skills, Spells, etc and, variable by where the ceiling is, there’s going to be inflection points where Characters start to all become Jacks-of-all-trades with homogenous success. This is incidentally the prime reason that I don’t play Arx and I imagine it’s a big problem in WoD/CoD games as well. For the kind of game I’m trying to design right now, I want to encourage deep specialization and especially cut a line between combat/noncombat Characters.
I’ve tinkered with a lot of solutions to this and the one I think is most interesting alongside an Equal Progression structure of some time, is a hefty amount of options for purchasing expendable benefits and assets that are subject to loss. Favors with NPCs or Factions. Assets like a Bar that gives you some influence but can also be burned down, etc. The idea that something you spent XP on can be lost is sacrilege in some philosophies but for what I’m trying to achieve, I think it has the interesting effect of these temporary or risked benefits being attractive to the sorts of Characters that “dinos” tend to be; deeply enmeshed in the story of a game, standing atop organizations that seek to project power, conducting higher stakes conflict against other actors.
(edit: first paragraph sounds defense because it is. i was having this same thread of conversation elsewhere and got dogpiled with unhelpful “it doesn’t solve every problem” responses and it ruined my morning coffee)
I don’t like a lot of things Derp does but his XP for extras was a good idea. Not a fan of the for alts XP cost but I /like/ the cost for ‘special items’. So, could counter the excess XP for equal XP stuff by allowing spends for special items/plotlines/whatever. Like, someone could spend X amount of XP to get a plot specifically geared to them (which would probably work better on smaller games) and helping obtain personal goals. Or the xP could be used to gain an a-typical item: like could use it on a place like Arx that is more coded to be able to get a cool item created to add to the game or for any game a special object made to represent plot rewards, or a limited use item that gives them a benefit for one GMed plot. I don’t condone using XP to get alts. You’re basically forcing people to decide between playing what they want or progressing their current character. If you want people to have limited number of alts (1 alt, 2 alts, etc) just list it as your rule.
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@shit-piss-love said in Equalizing Character Progression:
I want people to be able to come onto the grid with a character that can instantly get involved with everyone and everything that fits the character concept. Hot Shit Homicide Detectives. Cunning Political Animals. Well-Connected Socialites.
I’ll come in with the super unpopular opinions: why can’t you just do this. Just give people whatever skills they want, if they make sense with the background and concept. This wouldn’t work in a big game, I guess, because of the time required to do apps.
I don’t really care much about stats and rarely use them, they’re just a thing to make goals and do numbers go up. That said, I won’t join an FS3 game after it’s well established. It’s too frustrating - and I agree with @sao about the OOC limitations on FS3 xp. It’s very demoralizing.
as previously stated, good day.
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@farfalla said in Equalizing Character Progression:
@shit-piss-love said in Equalizing Character Progression:
I want people to be able to come onto the grid with a character that can instantly get involved with everyone and everything that fits the character concept. Hot Shit Homicide Detectives. Cunning Political Animals. Well-Connected Socialites.
I’ll come in with the super unpopular opinions: why can’t you just do this. Just give people whatever skills they want, if they make sense with the background and concept. This wouldn’t work in a big game, I guess, because of the time required to do apps.
I don’t really care much about stats and rarely use them, they’re just a thing to make goals and do numbers go up. That said, I won’t join an FS3 game after it’s well established. It’s too frustrating - and I agree with @sao about the OOC limitations on FS3 xp. It’s very demoralizing.
You absolutely can do that! And I think you’re right that it becomes a tougher situation as the game size scales.
This is actually a lot easier to achieve if you move away from systems that emphasize dice pools with wide bands. The thing I’m working on now borrows a lot from Blades in the Dark concepts for this reason.
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@sao The problem with Dominica is one I actually also had with Diego for a bit — but I think it was a Spirit Lake issue, rather than an FS3 issue. When you only have basic skills/attributes/advantages to spend XP on, and you can start with them at maximum or one dot below maximum, there’s a lot less possibility to fall behind. But when magical abilities start at nearly zero (which was an awesome experience to play, don’t get me wrong) and can build up through the entire range of the skills (plus all the spells), there’s a lot more room to fall behind, and it definitely doesn’t feel good, particularly when higher level spells make mundane tools and lower level spells entirely obsolete.
Formerly known as Seraphim73 (he/him)
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One of the issues normalizing character progression has can be that incentivizing certain behaviors - such as running PrPs - is difficult as it is, simply because there are few things staff can reward which are meaningful.
If everyone has the same progression then that’s one less carrot available to game-runners.
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@Arkandel I don’t GM, can I have xp for being a goddamn delight?
as previously stated, good day.
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@Arkandel said in Equalizing Character Progression:
One of the issues normalizing character progression has can be that incentivizing certain behaviors - such as running PrPs - is difficult as it is, simply because there are few things staff can reward which are meaningful.
If everyone has the same progression then that’s one less carrot available to game-runners.
Although, honestly, a lot of people find simple recognition to be worth as much as XP. Or, better yet (but much less simple), integrating the results of a PrP into the game in some fashion.
I remember way back when in Darkwater, I ran a fairly simple PrP and, completely without being asked, Cobalt changed that grid room to have a bonus to harvesting fear for a while because of how that PrP turned out.
It was legitimately one of the most motivating experiences I ever had as a MU* GM. It was a very minor bonus, and I’m not sure anyone even USED it for anything, but just seeing “hey, you did a thing, and the world we’re playing in changed” was enough.
