From the incentives are powerful department: xp and advancement.
I doubt this will be particularly new. Gamers, like everyone else, respond to incentives. In the games of RPGs, we respond to XP and advancement. How you get xp has a powerful effect on how we act.
Notice:
Dungeon and Dragons: Xp for "defeating" foes, usually be murdering them. Hence, murder hoboes.
Apocalypse World: XP for using highlighted stats, and for resetting xp. Hence, relationships become super important. And, yeah, a few moves.
Dungeon World: XP for looting meaningful treasure, following alignment, and rolling 6-. And that's exactly the gameplay we see: low dex characters doing DD dex for the xp.
Wrestling: Advancement from maxing out audience. You increase audience by increasing heat. So, you get characters who seek the limelight.
Urban Shadows: Mark all 4 factions and advance. So, the characters seek out the moves (and, i guess, sexy times) that lead to marking those factions. The game becomes one of politics.
Fate: Doesn't really have xp, and so there's not the driver of improvement. There's not the same sort of response to incentives driving gameplay.
I saw a discussion on upcoming changes to Star Wars World, and the idea was to give each playbook different triggers for advancement. I think this would create a situation similar to alignment in DW, such that each character will be rewarded for different behaviors based on playbook.
This is absolutely brilliant: Han Solo improves as a scoundrel differently than how Leia improves as a Noble. And a Fighter improves according to different reasons than a Wizard. And shouldn't a Hardholder advance on different triggers than a Gunlugger?
What other games use incentives to promote specific types of gameplay? when have you seen this done well? When poorly? Is this completely obvious?
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DitV gives XP based on fallout, but also escalating negative consequences.
ReplyDeleteThe reward, therefore, comes by engaging the dice as often as possible, but staying at low-consequence levels and wrapping up conflicts quickly.
Basically: Try to push people around verbally, and then give in before the situation escalates.
Burning Wheel advances skills by using them (in tense situations) and gives (and removes) traits from your characters by the table proposing and then voting on them based on how you played the character. It is very individualistic and character focused.
ReplyDeleteLevi Kornelsen That is good. Predictably.
ReplyDeleteTim Franzke that's ... remarkable. How does the table vote? When?
Ole Peder Giæver I remember Prime Time Adventures using fanmail, which was pretty great.
As for immediacy: yes! In Urban Shadows, this is handle pretty well by checking off each faction as you engage with them. Mark all four, advance and erase.
I think you can do that with it going through the players (at least, largely) instead of the GMs memory.
Blades in the dark also has a system where characters gain xp differently based on playbook. They also get xp from making the riskiest type of rolls, which encourages players to do dumb shit.
ReplyDeleteI was playing Urban Shadows at Origins thinking about how new systems let you use experience to give you more moves, and struck with the idea that players should never be restricted from doing awesome stuff. And you shouldn't spend xp to do awesome things, you should receive it. What then do we spend xp on? Narrative control? Out-of-character benefits like control-over-the-snacks or the-player-with-the-least-xp-gets-you-drinks. Maybe you spend xp to steal the spotlight: The next episode will be about my character's backstory.
ReplyDeleteDavid Rothfeder You're right, it does. And it has group-XP, too. Which is a really interesting idea.
ReplyDeleteJay Treat I think there's a distinction or two here that we can tease out. I think in most of the games I mentioned you can always do awesome stuff, but with xp you declare which stuff is important to you to be able to do. The Gunlugger with "not to be fucked with" is declaring they want to take on a log of groups, right. And it gives a built-in incentives to do the types of behaviors the designer wants to create.
That being said, XP for backstory focus? Sounds awesome.
Cameron Mount That's true; I cannot easily speak to all versions of D&D, no more than i could speak to all ... eurogames? Yeah, something like that. Point is, its a big topic.
Cameron Mount Cool. And, also, I've wondered about a PbtA game based on gaining gold, where gaining coins is how you get xp and advancement. It hasn't gotten anywhere past the idea stage.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols, it should be video game based. Mario and Zelda are both about killing shit for money.
ReplyDeleteThe Shadow of Yesterday.
ReplyDelete(or it's offspring, Lady Blackbird)
reward you for hitting keys, reward you more for buying them off, and allow the players to choose the keys they want to chase.
Arnold Cassell Yes!
ReplyDeleteArnold Cassell That's brilliant. There it is, players choosing what matters and how they will advance. That's happy making.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols
ReplyDeleteLet's say your character has 4 traits.
Loud
Short Temper
stingy
secretly a nice guy
some of these might be required traits from character creation, others might be chosen especially by you. When you play your traits and they move the story in an unforseen direction you get a reward point at the end of the session. You don't have to play them though.
After every "story arc" or every 6-8 sessions there is a trait vote. Each player suggests 1-3 traits for each character based on how they were played in game.
Maybe your character has shown that they are not only secretly a nice guy but shown that quite obvious. So someone suggests you change secretly a nice guy to "nice guy". Maybe you weren't stingy in game and the trait gets removed. Maybe you killed everyone that had a problem with you and you get a "Murderous" trait.
That is just character traits though. Some traits also have rules meaning and character traits that were played heavily can easily be upgraded to give mechanical bonuses (or disadvantages).
Traits only get added when the table votes in majority for it. It's a great way to reflect about characters and to enforce characters changing mechanically and in the fiction.
I love it.
Tim Franzke Cool! What do the reward points do for you?
ReplyDeleteThere are 3 different kinds. The most commom lets you reroll 6s (in a d6 pool system), the next one gives you 1 extra die per point spend and the super rare one doubles your dice.
ReplyDeleteThere are other uses but that is the typical stuff.
Tim Franzke Cool. How's xp and advancement handled?
ReplyDeleteEvery skill has it's own rating. To advance a skill you need X of different difficulties of tests. Like a few easy ones and a hard one. Difficulty is based on the number of dice you roll vs your obstacle number. You only roll for stuff that is important to your beliefs (goals you set for your character that get you reward points when you meet them) and when there is an interesting failure consequence. So you can't spam a skill to learn it like you can in the Elder Scroll games. It is super elegant.
ReplyDeleteYou can read about it here
ReplyDeletehttp://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/98542/Burning-Wheel-Gold-Hub-and-Spokes
deleted because I missed earlier post
ReplyDeleteSounds like there's been a lot of thought about this before, which is awesome. I really like the idea of playbook specific means of advancement -- maybe, like DW, continue to have some that are general rather than specific. That could work really well.
ReplyDelete