02-12-2018, 07:39 AM | #21 |
Join Date: Sep 2007
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Re: Do you have any special rules/restrictions to regulate character advancement paci
Character design also influences the progression speed, or at least perception thereof. In the 3e days, when I wanted to feel like I was making "progress", I'd build characters with 1/2 point in various skills and devote more of the budget to attributes and Advantages. That way, the first few points make a big impact on the numbers -- especially remembering the bell curve, so a change from 11 to 13 matters much more than 13 to 15 or 15 to 17. That rapidly fades, of course, but it does give you an initial kick. The zero-to-hero style probably starts out this way. In other games, the characters were meant to be more experienced or constant, so a higher proportion of points might go into initial skills.
One of the things that appealed to me about GURPS when I first picked it up, way back in 1e days, was that you could just build a competent hero and play it if that's what you wanted to do. You weren't obliged to do the zero-to-hero storyline every time, and spend hours outside of town killing rats to level up to be allowed to play the interesting part of the game. It'd be perfectly possible to play an interesting game with no character progression whatsoever. That said, it is a reward, so it's nice even to me to feel like there's a little progression. The recommended rate (3 CP +/- 2 per session) doesn't generally feel too fast to me, other than that very initial kick with untrained apprentice zeroes. (And of course in 4e, that's a little less thanks to the lack of 1/2 point skils, not to mention floating skills to other attributes so you can't rely entirely on natural attributes quite so heavily.) |
02-12-2018, 07:57 AM | #22 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: Do you have any special rules/restrictions to regulate character advancement paci
I hand out 3CP per session for characters under 400 points, 2CP if under 800 points, and 1CP if over 800 points. Points are only for improving skills, attributes, etc.
I once handed out more but in my long-running game I found the original characters were growing too fast.
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Rupert Boleyn "A pessimist is an optimist with a sense of history." |
02-12-2018, 08:08 AM | #23 | |
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: GMT-5
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Re: Do you have any special rules/restrictions to regulate character advancement paci
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A typical campaign that I run might consist of 4-8 adventures each of which might be around 6-16 sessions long. I award a block of points at the end of each adventure. The amount of points awarded depends on how much progress the party made toward the campaign goals as well as how much down-time the party is about to have (and hence, how "realistic" it will be for them to grow). But it tends to come out to about 1.66 points per session. So I'm usually awarding blocks of 10-25 points each time. I keep the pace from getting out of hand on any one trait by limiting the progression of any trait by one level per block of points. So even if a player just got 15 points, they can't raise their Sword skill by a bunch of levels. They can raise it one level and spend the rest of the points on other things. Sometimes exceptions are made. For instance, if the adventure break happened to occur in the Temple of the Sword Dancer Instructors, then just this once, players may spend points to raise Sword skill by more than one level. |
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02-12-2018, 08:32 AM | #24 |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Do you have any special rules/restrictions to regulate character advancement paci
I've heard of people who do things that way, but it's very unlikely that I would allow it. I usually create a new setting for each new campaign, and it's very unlikely that a character created to fit setting A would have any chance of fitting setting B; and as a rule my settings are closed universes and people aren't going to wander in from other universes.
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Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
02-12-2018, 09:13 AM | #25 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ronkonkoma, NY
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Re: Do you have any special rules/restrictions to regulate character advancement paci
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For instance, I was thinking of running a "troll wars" campaign out of the GURPS Vikings book. The point of the campaign is that the characters' isolated village is being threatened by trolls coming down from the mountains, and they have to discover the cause and put a stop to it. That's a campaign. Now suppose they've done that. A year or two goes by. Time Use Forms are filled out. Players want to play in the Viking world again. The king in the south calls for men to go a-viking. The same player characters can now be used in a totally new campaign: sail to Britain and start plundering. Assuming the characters don't winter in Britain or try to form a settlement, the campaign ends when viking season is over and they go home. |
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02-12-2018, 10:42 AM | #26 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Do you have any special rules/restrictions to regulate character advancement paci
Quote:
Also, I was always the one who was suggesting possible new campaigns; it was never a case of "the players have asked for a campaign in this setting." I could come up with far more ideas for campaigns than I could ever have time to run. My longest list had, I think, fifty suggested campaigns! I did run a second campaign in Transhuman Space, a setting I really liked, but it had none of the same characters, and its theme was quite different. So as a result, I don't worry about where experience will take characters in five or ten years, or in a few hundred sessions. A typical two-year campaign has 24 monthly sessions, which comes to maybe 50-100 points gained. And on that scale, the typical GURPS progression rate works fine.
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Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
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02-12-2018, 10:54 AM | #27 |
Join Date: Dec 2012
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Re: Do you have any special rules/restrictions to regulate character advancement paci
Wow. I am in a totally different camp than most of you guys. I prefer my players' characters to experience growth. At the end of a campaign I want the characters to be in a totally different class of power than they started in.
For most of my campaigns I hand out 5 points minimum and give out more points if the players did cool stuff. So they average around 7 points a session. I am running a superhero campaign right now and give out 10 points minimum and then the extra for rad actions. Players are averaging around 13 points a session there. I even give out free stuff like rank and wealth based on what their in-game actions have accomplished. |
02-12-2018, 11:24 AM | #28 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: Do you have any special rules/restrictions to regulate character advancement paci
It is just a different style of play. I prefer slow advancement because it encourages character development rather than trait development. Anyway, I prefer that characters start out as heroes, so rapid advancement does not make much sense when you are already in the top 1% (or higher) of humanity.
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02-12-2018, 11:47 AM | #29 |
Wielder of Smart Pants
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ventura CA
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Re: Do you have any special rules/restrictions to regulate character advancement paci
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02-12-2018, 12:02 PM | #30 |
Join Date: Oct 2008
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Re: Do you have any special rules/restrictions to regulate character advancement paci
In my current game the characters get a free spend of 1 point/2 hours of play (They a total of 1/hour but the extras go to a special store only usable for training packages and special advantages). So they get the normal of about 4 points to use in a normal 8-9 hour session as they wish.
They are however limited in using maximally only one point in attributes/session, maximally one point/session in freely available advantages, and maximum of one point/session/skill. Further each of the things they want to buy have to have been used successfully under stress in the session to put a point in it. |
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