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Equalizing Character Progression
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@farfalla It’s all good. Lots of people don’t like FS3 and I don’t mind. I was just curious.
It seems, though, that things are being painted as two extremes:
- XP doesn’t matter at all so why even bother having it.
- XP is so super important that it leads to a dino effect and you’re going to be underpowered if you start the game later.
I see a middle ground there, where XP can be used for some minor progressions (“I’m learning French to talk to my new friend” or “I’m taking up horseback riding” or “I was a complete newb but now I’m kinda competent”) without it being a big deal.
If it’s a big deal to you, hey, that’s fine. You do you.
Objectively speaking, in FS3 you’ll get more power disparity between characters depending on how they spend their points in chargen (which is, again, by design) than you’ll ever get from XP.
@shit-piss-love said in Equalizing Character Progression:
I have not played an Ares game to any meaningful amount (async is not my jam) but it seems like I should give it a shot if just to see how the equalized progression plays out in practice over time.
I would just point out that what we’re talking about is the FS3 skills system. While many Ares games use it, it is not exclusive to Ares (it exists on PennMUSH too) and many Ares games use different systems. Ares != FS3.
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@shit-piss-love said in Equalizing Character Progression:
I have not played an Ares game to any meaningful amount (async is not my jam) but it seems like I should give it a shot if just to see how the equalized progression plays out in practice over time.
My experience is that people don’t fuss about XP much. You’re going to hit the cap within a year, probably, and most games also have delays on spending points, so progression is just very slow! It’s always nice to make a number go up, but I genuinely don’t notice a lot of people worried about it, because to be honest, what you come out of in chargen is largely going to be your character for a long time.
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@Faraday said in Equalizing Character Progression:
It seems, though, that things are being painted as two extremes:
- XP doesn’t matter at all so why even bother having it.
- XP is so super important that it leads to a dino effect and you’re going to be underpowered if you start the game later.
It’s a perception issue for me. Or two separate personal preferences that are at odds. Stats aren’t that important to me (and also I don’t understand them). If a game could exist without xp I’d be fine with it, so if xp isn’t going to have a big impact then I’d rather not have it. Additionally, the mental factor of knowing I can never catch up is a disincentive for me, regardless of how much it actually matters statistically.
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@Pyrephox said in Equalizing Character Progression:
@shit-piss-love said in Equalizing Character Progression:
I have not played an Ares game to any meaningful amount (async is not my jam) but it seems like I should give it a shot if just to see how the equalized progression plays out in practice over time.
My experience is that people don’t fuss about XP much. You’re going to hit the cap within a year, probably, and most games also have delays on spending points, so progression is just very slow! It’s always nice to make a number go up, but I genuinely don’t notice a lot of people worried about it, because to be honest, what you come out of in chargen is largely going to be your character for a long time.
Bold & Italics by me. (Thanks Pyre!)
Directed to thread:
This is where the dinosaur thing comes in. It’s where ‘catching up’ is almost impossible, in certain systems and genre’s.
When progression is slow, sheet wise, it engenders this feeling that if you don’t start at the very beginning you aren’t going to be relevant. That if a person’s character isn’t one of the ‘best’ at something, then they have no value.
This kind of ultra-competitive mindset can create negative and hostile environments in a game, or it can create diversity as people try to become the best at their thing.
I honestly think a lot of ideas on this are going to end up similar to system choice. Those who prefer more narrative growth are going to play certain systems, while those who prefer more gaming growth are going to prefer others, and then there will be some people who like both. Or neither.
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@Mourne said in Equalizing Character Progression:
@Pyrephox said in Equalizing Character Progression:
@shit-piss-love said in Equalizing Character Progression:
I have not played an Ares game to any meaningful amount (async is not my jam) but it seems like I should give it a shot if just to see how the equalized progression plays out in practice over time.
My experience is that people don’t fuss about XP much. You’re going to hit the cap within a year, probably, and most games also have delays on spending points, so progression is just very slow! It’s always nice to make a number go up, but I genuinely don’t notice a lot of people worried about it, because to be honest, what you come out of in chargen is largely going to be your character for a long time.
Bold & Italics by me. (Thanks Pyre!)
Directed to thread:
This is where the dinosaur thing comes in. It’s where ‘catching up’ is almost impossible, in certain systems and genre’s.
When progression is slow, sheet wise, it engenders this feeling that if you don’t start at the very beginning you aren’t going to be relevant. That if a person’s character isn’t one of the ‘best’ at something, then they have no value.
This kind of ultra-competitive mindset can create negative and hostile environments in a game, or it can create diversity as people try to become the best at their thing.
I honestly think a lot of ideas on this are going to end up similar to system choice. Those who prefer more narrative growth are going to play certain systems, while those who prefer more gaming growth are going to prefer others, and then there will be some people who like both. Or neither.
Eh, not in F3S. There’s an XP cap, as I mentioned in my post. There are no real dinosaurs in F3S games unless it has a significant other system bolted on, because past a certain point, the ONLY thing you can spend XP on is Background Skills, and that point is the same for everyone.
There’s a discrepancy between someone who’s been on a game for a year and someone who just started, but a) it’s not very large and b) thanks to the XP cap, the newbie WILL catch up.
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@Pyrephox I wasn’t talking specifically about FS3, I snagged only cuz of the bolded parts and was using it to generalize an overall feeling that seems to permeate some systems/games in contrast to others.
I personally don’t have much like for FS3 since it’s so easy to be ‘better than nearly anyone else’ at chargen, and nearly impossible to catch up with, due to fixed xp progression. Even though that conversation should be forked really, FS3 has, in my experience with it, some pretty drastic potential to be min-maxxed which keeps me from enjoying it.
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I think it’s useful to look at what models for advancement exist in other games/systems.
There are many narrative style games where there simply is no advancement, except by special GM approval. It takes the FS3 “you had 20+ years to get to this point, you’re not going to change much” philosophy to an extreme.
On the opposite spectrum is the carrot-on-stick model. XP is a reward to keep players playing. Most MMOs and level-based systems subscribe to this model. A new player or replacement might get a fast-track to higher levels just so they can hang with their friends.
Some games treat XP as more of an OOC reward. Shadowrun for instance gives you a tiny amount of XP (aka Karma) per session, but most of the rewards are for good RP, clever solutions, teamwork, etc.
There’s no right or wrong way to do XP, but it’s important to consider why you’re giving XP in the first place before considering things like “should it be equal” or “should there be catchup XP”.
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@Pyrephox said in Equalizing Character Progression:
There are no real dinosaurs in F3S games unless it has a significant other system bolted on, because past a certain point, the ONLY thing you can spend XP on is Background Skills, and that point is the same for everyone.
There’s a discrepancy between someone who’s been on a game for a year and someone who just started, but a) it’s not very large and b) thanks to the XP cap, the newbie WILL catch up.
Unless you build your character poorly in chargen, because
@Faraday said in Equalizing Character Progression:
Objectively speaking, in FS3 you’ll get more power disparity between characters depending on how they spend their points in chargen (which is, again, by design) than you’ll ever get from XP.
Mummy Pun? MUMMY PUN!
She/her -
@Jennkryst said in Equalizing Character Progression:
Unless you build your character poorly in chargen, because
@Faraday said in Equalizing Character Progression:
Objectively speaking, in FS3 you’ll get more power disparity between characters depending on how they spend their points in chargen (which is, again, by design) than you’ll ever get from XP.
Yes but a decent game-runner will advise you in chargen if you’re screwing up your points, or help you out in shuffling around points if you get into gameplay and later realize that you messed something up.
Throwing faster progression into the mix isn’t the right solution for “what if you mess up your chargen”.
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@Faraday In every single FS3 game I’ve played, the game runners did none of that.
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@Mourne In every single FS3 game I’ve run, I’ve done this.
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@Mourne said in Equalizing Character Progression:
@Faraday In every single FS3 game I’ve played, the game runners did none of that.
Obviously I can’t control how games use it. It’s freely available and open source, so folks can do what they want. All I can say is how it’s designed to be used, and how I use it when I run games. I am also very open about the fact that it’s not designed to work for every game, and what types of games it is designed for. If folks are going to do things that run contrary to its design philosophy, it’s not gonna work as well. In fact, it may work terribly.
And even if it’s done perfectly, someone still may not like it. There are plenty of systems I don’t like. Everyone’s entitled to their preferences.
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For the game that I’ve sort of white boarded but haven’t been able to code into existence, the XP progression has multiple components that eventually should bring people close enough together so as to not have massive disparities.
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I am going to use a game system that already has a diminishing returns function (In this case, I want to use CP:Red, but it could just as easily be any other classless system with cost to buy up being more than previous levels, and so any SR past 3rd edition when karma pool goes away, no D&D or D&D like systems).
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The more you participate in play, the more xp you earn per week, with a minimum (small) but no real maximum (but see point 3 for why that’s not a big concern).
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Anything beyond the minimum xp is multiplied by a 1/current xp. So, if you have 100 xp and you put in Y amount of activity. You’d accrue the minimum + Y/100 xp till you hit 101, then it’s Y/101, and so on. The goal with this is that characters who join new, still feel new, but can accrue early xp pretty quickly so they don’t feel NEW forever. And could get within a close range of the majority of players within a reasonable amount of time. The amount earned, and minimum xp can be adjusted should they not work out correctly or needing to slow/speed up progression based upon ‘feel’. (This is what I need help with coding).
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The last thing I would point out is that gear purchases and monetary progression will all be handled by various systems to remove staffer delay for most everything. (I need help here, but I think I can manage most of it based upon prior limited coding experience and the ability to manage with staff until complete).
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Referenced by
shit-piss-love
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I’ve been mulling over this for a bit.
How do/would you guys handle something like Beats on a game where you want XP to be even among both new and old PCs? For those unfamiliar with CofD rules, Beats are handed to players after their characters do certain things (completing a goal, nearly getting killed, etc) and a handful of Beats equals 1XP. To me, it’s a pretty integral part of the mechanics (so getting rid of it isn’t an option), but obviously leans towards more active players. How do you still reward players for getting Beats without letting them run too far ahead of players that may be less active or unable to churn Beats as quickly as others?
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@catzilla Maybe just a max beats per week cap?
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@catzilla said in Equalizing Character Progression:
obviously leans towards more active players
It doesn’t, really, though. It leans towards the players you’re lookin’ at.
It’ll probably tend to be a bit like xp-spend systems where you’re required to use the stat in an important context, ie, a staff-run plot event, to raise the stat. You can easily end up sitting on a huge pile of unspendable XP if you’re never provided opportunities to do the thing in the important context.
What you need to do is equalize your plot-distribution, and make a spreadsheet so you know which PCs are getting good chances to earn these beats and which are playing regularly but have done naught but karaoke and a tiff with their landlord. And then watch that shit most hawkishly.
'You ride the mechanical bull, you do not fight it.'
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Another thing. Decide how much ‘less active’ you want to accommodate.
Yeah, somebody is gonna give you shit about it. How dare you exclude people just because they are not there.
But I’ve had the player experience of having my actions postponed so that staff can attend to somebody who shows up for a few hours once a week at a random time. Because I’m around frequently and predictably, I’d get put off and my scheduled shit would be cancelled for the irregular and infrequent players, who consequently were able to accomplish a shitload more than my PC could. It’s absolutely appropriate and a good idea to slow the game’s roll so that there’s a level of activity that’s enough to get a player the full-experience deal, at least in relation to GMing. But just decide what it is, don’t let it be a contest of who can log on the most or who can most effectively get sympathy for being too busy to play unless you drop everything when they show up.
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@Gashlycrumb said in Equalizing Character Progression:
What you need to do is equalize your plot-distribution, and make a spreadsheet so you know which PCs are getting good chances to earn these beats and which are playing regularly but have done naught but karaoke and a tiff with their landlord. And then watch that shit most hawkishly.
While I love spreadsheets a whole bunch, this sort of thing is probably doable on a very small game, but it’s not gonna scale well.
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This topic is always a classic. It’s one I’ve been thinking of again lately particularly in the world of CofD.
The best solution is, I think, probably the per-week limit that Roz suggested. Alternately, you could do something scaling such as Arx has done, where returns drastically diminish and you make the first few hits of <whatever> XP-gaining mechanism more powerful, which is probably what I would prefer to weekly caps, but does require a bit more work.
I really, really, really wish this was something more game runners looked at, though.
she/they
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@Roz GoB had a bit under 250 PCs at its largest. I don’t think many games are larger. Not all of the GoB PCs actually made the spreadsheet, you did have to be a ‘regular’. Admittedly I sucked and the whole game was pretty under-served GM-wise, but the spreadsheet wasn’t the issue and was not terribly difficult.
