A long time ago, when I was more invested into TTRPGs, I grew increasingly frustrated with the system of only distributing advancement/experience points at the end of a session.
This always made me think that certain challenges could be better dealt with if the players could access/develop abilities as the game progressed in real time.
At some point, I started to divise a play system that relied on a split experience atribution system, with players being able to automatically rack experience points from directly using their skills/habilties, while the DM would keep a tally of points from goals/missions achieved, distributable at session end.
A practical example: a burglar would have the lockpick skill. The skill would be tiered, with each tier having 100 points to max it out, and the higher the tier, the less experience would be given by making use of the skill, as the skill would be further and further refined and new breakthroughs in its understanding become harder to achieve. But DM attributed XP could either be spent towards maxing out the skill faster or gain a new or linked one, like disarming booby traps.
I drifted away from TTRPG and simply let my idea sit in a drawer in a notebook. Today I found my notes again as I was rummaging through the junk and the it brought some nostalgia.
To those with more experience in TTRPGs: would this be feaseable? Or enticing? Interesting?
Hm, the first session I ever ran I had this mentality. The session would entail meeting in a tavern, talking to the locals to gather info on a nearby tournament, and get ambushed on the road by undead. I had listed out every bit of XP that my players could earn along the way, plus a little over in case they did something cool. Both combat XP from killing monsters, as well as passing planned social and exploration checks and player-initiated social and exploration checks.
It was hell. I had a spreadsheet on one screen checking boxes to automatically add stuff (so as easy as it could be), for even the smallest stuff possible. The XP was shared as well, so I wasn’t even counting each player individually. The very next session I decided I’d start doing narrative level ups instead.
The problem with XP systems, especially the ones like Elder Scrolls which levels skills through use, is that it adds a ton of homework to the DM. On top of prepping encounters, quests, maps, NPC’s, oh-shit situation scenarios, etc., doing XP is a bit much, at least for me.
Part of the entire reason I moved away from DnD was the level up system. Savage Worlds is much better in that regard, since on an advancement players can upgrade combat skills, social skills, exploration skills, or gain the equivalent of feats (or remove what would amount to anti-feats) after an important story beat - all from the same point pool. So, an advancement could be achieved after a particularly important conversation or exploration event, and result in non-combat skills being upgraded.
Not all games use that type of system. Masks, for example, along with a few other PbtAs give players Exp/Potential when they fail a roll. That’s an incentive for trying riskier actions, as well as not power-gaming and only use the attributes/labels you excel at since failure has its own reward - besides being fun.
When you’re trying to think about how to distribute/grant exp, its not just about how characters are growing, but also why. Sure, you can have that TES-like system where you need to train Lockpicking, but how many opportunities will a GM have to present enough situations where a player can lockpick for Exp? Imagine every time someone played Skyrim and forged a hundred daggers because they needed to level up blacksmithing and how that would translate to a ttrpg (or not, since its a particularly bad system by itself)
I believe RPGs often benefit from narrative exp, and to use your Burglar example, they could have exp triggers that involve deception, forgery, stealing, etc. So whenever they lie to someone for self-profit, use their skills for ill gain, steal without clear necessity and such, they’d gain Burglar exp, and eventually perfect those moves or learn new ones.
I used that specific example because I had just read my notes on it but yes, your intuition is correct.
Even D&D derivatives use a system like that, like Flee Mortals’s Level 0 adventures. You start with no proficiencies, and whenever you succeed on a check or save you can gain proficiency in it (within reasonable limit)
I mean, depends on the system. PF2e has a great XP system and even encourages the GM to hand out XP during the session for things the system calls accomplishments.
But quite frankly, waiting until the end of a session is just good from a pacing perspective the majority of the time.
I’ll admit I got the short straw when it came to GMs.
sounds something like call of cthulhu rules.
If you successfully use a skill during play, without the help of Luck points, mark the box next to it. Between scenarios, you get to roll to improve any skills you marked. To improve the skill, roll 1d100. If you roll higher than your skill, it improves by 1d10. After you’ve rolled for all the marked skills, erase the marks.
personally i think xp is too fiddly. i prefer systems like fate where you can just rewrite skills to fit your style of play better.
CoC hit the playing scene of the place I used to go back then and made a success for how fast paced it could get but I failed to get enthralled by the system.
That’s a really nifty mechanic. I haven’t played CoC, but this seems like yet another reason to try it.
I’m pretty sure most powered by the apocalypse games give you exp the moment you fail a roll. (And blades in the dark as well). Blades does have end of session xp also. I forget if pbta games do
Don’t know that system.
That’s a great way to encourage players to try things, and move the game forward despite failure.
I was wrong about blades, that one gives xp for desperate actions, not failed actions
I recommend you check out Lady blackbird. Ot has a mechanic that to gain experience you need to use your attributes, but if at any moment you make something that goes against it you lose that characteristic forever.
It’s a one-shot that can be played between 1 and 4 sessions depending on your group. If you have a group you should give it a shot. And it’s free I see that now there are other campaigns I have just played the first one
I run a Monster of the Week game and my players get experience throughout sessions, as well as at the end. The mechanics are basically:
- It takes 5 experience points to level up.
- If you fail a roll, you get an experience point.
- If you level up, you get the benefit immediately.
- At the end of the session, everyone gets 0-2 experience points.
I think other PbtA (Powered by the Apocalypse - systems inspired by Apocalypse World) systems do something similar.
I grew increasingly frustrated with the system of only distributing advancement/experience points at the end of a session.
Isn’t the simple fix to this to just distribute experience points as soon as they’re earned?
At some point, I started to divise a play system that relied on a split experience atribution system, with players being able to automatically rack experience points from directly using their skills/habilties, while the DM would keep a tally of points from goals/missions achieved, distributable at session end.
Your system sounds like the way that skill-based video game RPGs (Elder Scrolls games and Arcanum come to mind) handle experience.
In a lot of games I’ve played, I’d rather get experience for in-game accomplishments immediately and to be able to train skills like this during downtime - generally between games.
To those with more experience in TTRPGs: would this be feaseable? Or enticing? Interesting?
I could see people being interested in it. You get instant gratification and a bit of extra crunchiness. A lot of players enjoy that.
With the right skill system I could see this being useful. My main concern is that if you put this on top of a system with relatively few skills, it could encourage people to game it by grinding. There are ways to mitigate that, though.
In a system with fewer skills, instead of just being experience points, the “currency” you earned this way could be used for temporary power ups related to the skill in question.
You could also limit it so you only rewarded players for story-related tasks.
The overall skill trees I was working on were huge and skills were tiered, linked to class/profession.
An easy example: a magic using character.
Magic requires mana and spells burn specific amounts of it to be cast. A player could invest their experience several ways: spend their experience to increase their mana pool, spend experience to improve the grasp of a spell (better understood spells would be easier to use, quicker, last longer, etc), acquire new spells within a college or access another magic college (a magical healer could access offensive magic, like fire/lightning based spells, as a quick example, or defensive, like barriers).
It was fun to think about it, then.
I think the better question than “Does the experience system sound like it has potential,” then, is “Does the overall concept / system have potential?”
My gut is probably, but it depends a lot more on what you’re willing to put into it and what you want out of it. What’s your metric for success? If it’s something you want to run yourself and to share online to have a few groups use it, then that’s a lot more achievable than being able to get a publishing deal, for example. And in-between, publishing on drivethrurpg or something similar, at a nominal cost (like $2-$5), would take more effort than the former and less than the latter; and the higher the cost and the higher the number of players you’d want, the higher the effort you need to put in (and a lot of that isn’t just in system building, but in art, community building, marketing, etc.).
From what you’ve shared, it sounds like an interesting system. I could especially see it working in an academy setting where grinding skills to be able to pass practical exams is one of the players’ goals. I also could see it working well by a loosely GMed play by post system, with the players self-enforcing (or possibly leveraging some tools built into the site to track resource pools, experience, rolling, etc.), though I haven’t played in a forum game myself, so I might be way off-base.
Did your system have classes or was it completely free-form in terms of gaining access to those skill trees?
Primary objective: fun.
I’d share my work for free. At best, I’d add a little “If you had fun, consider sponsoring me. If you can’t, share it with others and keep having fun and causing mayhem.”
I’d laugh my head off if someone told me they used a Fire Wave in a narrow alley to take down a group of mobs and in the process burned a hole in the city wall or torched half the town.
Yes, it was created with classes/professions in mind and each class has a unique skill tree and some even have subclasses or class specific skills.
As an example: a magic user would need to choose which college it would start with - healing, fire, water, etc - and as the character evolves it can access higher tiers with more complex spells and skills. I had an idea to also cross skills to unlock others, as in having a given skill in the college of water and by acquiring a skill under the college of life, it would unlock a mixed nature spell/skill.
There was a lot of thought thrown into it. I wanted some very complex under the hood yet easy to play and approach by any person and get gratification by getting into the game, in the moment.
I only get to GM for a couple of hours a week. I’d hate that to involve narrative grinding. Although it’d be fair for a character to do it during downtime.
Cortex Prime has systems that let you gradually improve the characters bit by bit instead of levels either through spending xp or using a system called session recalls
I’m abusing the notion of level, I think.
The intention was to make growth intentional and incentivize role playing, with the characters growing as the game progressed.
You could use recalls in a way like that.
The system works like this: After each session everyone makes a record of what happened from their character’s point of view. These can be used in two ways:
-During sessions you can recall one of these events (“This is just like that time in Budapest”) and get bonuses to that roll. This can be done once for each record in a session.
-Between sessions you can spend records to improve stats and add assets/powers whatever to your character. Spent records can’t be used during sessions anymore. Each type of improvement has a required number of records to make. (think: improving skills is easier than getting better attributes)
If you as a GM rule, that only records with relevant experience can be spent to improve stats, it can be an incentive to do what you want to improve
