[RPG Theory] Advancement

[stevekenson]

”Action is [Spider-Man’s] reward.”
— Xander, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

“Leveling-up” has become such a ubiqitous part of the RPG experience it has even survived the migration to console games, where character advancement is heavily based on it. Nearly every RPG includes some kind of “advancement” system, generally along the lines of: do well in adventures, get more skilled/powerful, rinse and repeat. But shouldn’t playing the game and having a good time be “reward” enough? Is an advancement system really necessary?

Strictly speaking, it isn’t, but character advancement does seem to be a significant part of the fun of playing an RPG. So perhaps rather than “is advancement necessary,” the question should be: “How do we make advancement even more fun?”

Most character advancement systems are like shopping: you have an amount of points and you “spend” them to get things, or “save” them up to get even better things later, assuming you can resist the impluse buy. If we stick with the “shopping” metaphor, then maybe there are ways to “hunt for bargains” or be the very first to get some exclusive new thing no one else has yet. This approach works well with point-based design-your-own-character systems like GURPS, since they usually provide tools for “bargain hunters” to figure out the most efficient uses for their points. The analysis for taking different feats or class levels in D&D is similar, based on what provides the most “bang for the buck.”

Of course, this type of character advancement is a meta-game mechanic. The player chooses what the character gets. Another approach is to have the character’s own actions determine advancement: if a character uses a skill, it gets better over time. This is the approach taken by systems like Basic Roleplaying (Chaosium). However, it doesn’t necessarily cover developing entirely new traits or advantages, just the development and improvement of graded skills and abilities. Perhaps a system like FATE could also apply this approach to non-ranked “aspects” of a character: the more they’re invoked, the stronger they get.

There are also in-game rewards: characters get titles, wealth, medals, jobs, etc., from grateful patrons and allies. They can also lose such things over the course of the game. The same is true with a lot of equipment and material possessions, although some “signature” gear has plot-immunity in some games and genres: Iron Man might temporarily lose his armor, but odds are it won’t be for longer than a scene or maybe a story arc at most before he gets it back.

Meta-game rewards like “brownie points” (or the equivalent thereof) are also common: characters rack up “good karma,” allowing them to better influence the story and save their own bacon when things get tough. Ironically, this sort of thing is probably most beneficial to lower-level and weaker characters than it is to the more experienced and powerful ones, unless this is the only kind of benefit you get from experience in the game.

How important is character advancement and improvement in an RPG and what are the best ways of providing it?

Comments

[eynowd.livejournal.com]

To me personally, character advancement isn't particularly important. I'd much rather have some sort of story advancement instead.

I have run games where the players sweated off on XP at the end of every session and couldn't wait until they got to the next level up. It kinda concerned me some, to tell the truth.

I think one of the neatest advancement systems I've ever come across was in the diceless Marvel Universe RPG. Basically, at the end of every session, each character earned a number of "lines". These had to be written out as sentences and attached to the character's abilities, and they had to be relevant to the game that had been played. For example, if you had the Black Ops skill and you successfully infiltrated an enemy's base, you could add a line to your Black Ops skill along the lines of "Broke into the Enemy's Secret Base and stole the plans". Over time, the lines you added to each skill built up the story of that character's exploits.

But then, whenever you added a total of ten lines to an ability, you got to increase it's numeric value by one. So, like CoC, the more you used an ability, the better it got.

It was kinda a little from Column A and a little from Column B.

I had a lot of fun with MURPG. I think it's a vastly underrated game (not without it's problems, but definitely worth a play)

[fatespawn.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I think it depends entirely on the players. D&D is set up so that advancement is almost entirely removed from the characters. Personally, I think that ruins a large part of the point of playing RPGs, but there are plenty of people who have a lot of fun doing it. Most of my experience is with White Wolf games (especially Mage: the Ascension) and in general I like the system of getting experience and spending fixed amounts for new skills without any sudden 'leveling up.' I'm of the opinion that what makes that system good relies on good judgement on the part of the storyteller in terms of what he lets people buy. It's important for players to feel that the character is developing, as oposed to the character suddenly being better at things. Something I find helps with that is making characters seek out instructors for a lot of skills, especially the higher ranks in them. It makes the players realize that if they themselves wanted to get better at fighting or computer programming or whatever that they would have to actually dedicate time and effort to learning about those things. It makes the characters more human.

[realitydeviantx.livejournal.com]

I tend to think that advancement should be directly tied to the in-game experiences of the characters.

As an example, if your character doesn't spend all that much time using her energy blast power, why should she suddenly become more proficient at it?

Let's say the character relied on heavy use of a psychic ability to achieve the goals of the adventure. Why not reward the use of that ability by giving the character a choice of different uses of that power? Maybe some new power challenges to choose from, or even new variations on the Power itself.

In ways this is a combination of D20 modern Talent Trees and also a bit like the Discipline trees that were used in Vampire the Masquerade. Unlike Disciplines, which are fairly linear and only allowed for one choice, having a power at a certain level suddenly opens up a number of options for said power (like Talent Trees). Talent trees are normally not associated with "powers," but I think the concepts are sound enough to allow for use with powers.

I think this concept can apply to skills as well.

Skill challenges could work the same way. Once a character reaches a certain rank in a skill, they gain access to new skill challenges which reflect a higher level of proficiency.

For example, having a Decipher script skill with oh, 4 ranks allows you to attempt to break basic codes, and higher ranks allow you to attempt to decipher even more technical encryption. You might even be able to specialize in certain types of encryption when you achieve a high enough skill rank.

I think it might even work well for abilities, but I'm fresh out of examples.

Just some thoughts.