Experience Points

[zot]

Originally Posted by Steve Jackson

The whole party should get an XP reward at the end of each play session, based on how well they played as a group. For instance, the GM might award 60 points for the session, which would mean each player gets 60 points to improve their character.

Rewards might also come instantly, in the middle of play – for instance:
• For an outstanding example of cooperation.
• For working as a group to solve a puzzle.
• For finding an unexpected solution to an in-game situation.

I think the whole group should get XP if one character foolishly endangers or seriously inconveniences the group it (this is what I do in my role playing system). Negative story twists can be far more dramatic and memorable than positive ones. This encourages them with a nice capitalistic XP reward.

Examples:

• A rough barbarian bumps into the grand vizier on his way into the palace and insults her. The the vizier is responsible for admitting every visitor to the sultan and she is absolutely furious beyond reason. Now, the group can not get an audience under any circumstances.
• A group is resting in a labyrinth inside of a mountain and a halfling negligently knocks a bucket attached by a long chain into a deep well, alerting hundreds of orcs (fool of a Took!)

[larsdangly]

I shy away from EXP systems that can slide into a 'mother may I' dynamic, where the players have to satisfy whatever meta concepts their particular DM is rewarding. This feels a lot less fun to me than earning points by splitting skulls or finding treasure hordes or whatever.

[zot]

Originally Posted by larsdangly

I shy away from EXP systems that can slide into a 'mother may I' dynamic, where the players have to satisfy whatever meta concepts their particular DM is rewarding. This feels a lot less fun to me than earning points by splitting skulls or finding treasure hordes or whatever.

Nothing wrong with that.

[tomc]

Originally Posted by zot

Nothing wrong with that.

I agree with both points. If a player totally screws up, and it's in character, dish out the XP's. If you wanna hack'n slash, that's fun too.

I remember the campaigns where the drama was generated by the players as much more fun than the ones where the GM (me) led them around by the nose.

[Jim Kane]

Originally Posted by larsdangly

I shy away from EXP systems that can slide into a 'mother may I' dynamic, where the players have to satisfy whatever meta concepts their particular DM is rewarding. This feels a lot less fun to me than earning points by splitting skulls or finding treasure hordes or whatever.

I have to whole-heartedly agree with you on that.

In fact, a brief reminder, for those in need a refresher, can be found on the product description of The Fantasy Trip, easily located on the back cover of TFT: In The Labyrinth, AM, AW; (and every advertisement ran back in it's day, for that matter) which reads:

The Fantasy Trip...is *killing monsters*, finding treasure, braving danger, joining quests, conjuring magic, and exploring the unknown — the romance and mystery life should be?

Notice the very first activity listed in describing the game:

Killing Monsters.

JK

[zot]

Originally Posted by Jim Kane

I have to whole-heartedly agree with you on that.

In fact, a brief reminder, for those in need a refresher, can be found on the product description of The Fantasy Trip, easily located on the back cover of TFT: In The Labyrinth, AM, AW; (and every advertisement ran back in it's day, for that matter) which reads:

The Fantasy Trip...is *killing monsters*, finding treasure, braving danger, joining quests, conjuring magic, and exploring the unknown — the romance and mystery life should be?

Notice the very first activity listed in describing the game:

Killing Monsters.

JK

Sure. But my group doesn't play just narrative or just hack and slash. We do both.

[Jim Kane]

That's good Zot; however, my post was not made in reference to your personal ideological stance on EP award methodology.

JK

[David L Pulver]

[QUOTE=Steve Jackson;2186201]And here's a modified and number-crunched experience section for you to look at.

I quite like this. Some quick thoughts after reading through it:

* The cost of raising Spells and Talents individually seems like they're intended for use only after you max out your point total at 40-ish points. They're too high to be worthwhile in most instances otherwise. Have you considered making the cost scale as a fraction of the cost to raise to the next level instead? Making it 50% of the cost to raise a point based on your current total might work well and make boosting Spells/Talents before then worth it.

* I like the wizard's staff rules! Very evocative, and solves some problems.

* I was very fond of the original "Studying" mechanic where you specified three talents or spells you were working toward and could only spend XP on these. It felt right to me. Can we retain it as an optional 'extra realism' rule?

* The recommended xp totals and awards seemed balanced. However, I was very fond of the individual experience rule that gave you 1 xp per hit of injury inflicted and xp = DX for a kill. I felt it added greatly to the flavor of a game and really encouraged players to get into the action. I'd like to see it as an optional rule; if not, I'd certainly house rule it back immediately.

[Skarg]

My thoughts on this second version from SJ:

* I like the new cost curve for improving attributes, a lot. I like that there can be rapid improvement as someone goes from inexperienced to someone who has done some adventuring that presumably got them some actual serious experience. And I like that attribute improvement rapidly slows down after 34 points and gets more and more expensive with each point.

* I like that adding talents is now a more significant cost. I'll have to run some actual examples to see how this actually works out for specific examples. This version is missing some details such as cost to learn spells, and whether increasing IQ gives more capacity to learn talents without paying the EP cost, or not.

* I like that the use for Gold or Wishes are clearly labelled "if the GM allows".

* I like that a "staff" can be other sorts of objects. This nicely gets us back to it not being a big disadvantage not to use a staff. (My first ITL character adores that it can be a silver sword, because he was already using one.)

* I like that staff damage is now same/different and requires fatigue. Needs to be clear how Staff Of Power damage works (1/1d? 1/2d? 2/2d?).

* I find the Staff of Power section still unclear about whether a wizard needs to pay EP for staff levels higher than their IQ to be able to charge a Staff of Power double, or SoP's just store up to twice the wizard's staff level?

* The part about what meditating for half a day specifically means, and what else a meditator can do, what can distract them, what distraction does to the effort, etc., still needs clarifying.

* You say only the wizard can draw ST from his staff, but can others (wizards or not) put ST into it?

* The lesser wish option I might use for some campaigns (after some in-game-world cosmological metamagical pondering). Exactly how it can be used would want specifying. The cost is a nice temptation to use EP for that rather than forever improving the character, and the cost is nice and high so it wouldn't be used routinely.

* I wouldn't use/allow the EP for gold option except maybe in an abstract limited campaign. The way I run serious campaigns tends to not want players making things happen in the world in such a way. Nicely, it clearly says if the GM allows it.

* I think having the GM assess EP is ok (results will vary by GM of course).

* However, the whole part about how EP is not for killing things and is for roleplaying, cooperation, working as a group to solve a puzzle, and making players laugh, is not at all what I would do. I don't mind if the rules make such suggestions, but I hope the rules don't invalidate other approaches, such as mine which is awarding EP to reflect actual experiences of the sort which I feel would lead to a character improving their abilities.

[Rick_Smith]

Originally Posted by David L Pulver

...
* The cost of raising Spells and Talents individually seems like they're intended for use only after you max out your point total at 40-ish points. They're too high to be worthwhile in most instances otherwise. Have you considered making the cost scale as a fraction of the cost to raise to the next level instead? Making it 50% of the cost to raise a point based on your current total might work well and make boosting Spells/Talents before then worth it. ...

Hi David, everyone.
(Note in this post, 'talents' means 'talents, spells and languages'.)

I somewhat agree with this. Talents start quite a bit more than attributes. But pretty soon the price of attributes catches up. After the player has bought 4 or 6 attributes, they have the choice of a 'cheap' talent or an attribute. At the later levels, it takes a determined effort to save enough experience to get that last attribute.

However, it is better that talents be too expensive early, than too cheap.

***

Talents do not raise the cost of attributes, so if talents scaled in cost with attributes, it would be advantageous for a minimaxing player to buy a lot of talents early. Perhaps talents should cost: Fixed cost + (Cost of attribute * Fraction less than one).

For example (just to make what I'm talking about concrete):

Cost for a Talent = 250 experience + (Cost of Attribute * 1/4).

I'm not seriously proposing this, just playing around with ideas for a bit.

If this system was used, early talents are bought at a small discount. But endlessly buying early talents is dangerous. You need attributes for general survivability.

By the time the player gets into the mid attribute levels. The talent costs are about what Steve suggested. No penalty or bonus relative to his rules. BUT talents are still cheaper now than they will be later. This encourages people in the mid levels to delay buying attributes until they get the talents they really want. (This is a nice dynamic I think. It slows people hurrying to max attributes. That makes people who have ACHIEVED max attributes rarer and more impressive.)

By the late game when the player is nearing the final attribute buys, attributes are expensive, talents are expensive. Further improvements come slow.

***

I like these rules more than Steve's, but I wonder if the extra complexity is worth it.

Warm regards, Rick.