If I were to design a simple new RPG it would not have advancement. Much like Traveller. So how do you get an ever changing game experience? Different spells might be a way. But what I would like to do would be the adding of powerful named enemies. Nobody knows you at first, you have no friends, and no enemies. Later, you know more about the world, you have made friends, and you have made enemies.
Personally, I think that “inner changes” and growth as a person don’t need rule support, that just works as-is. I guess the reason I was thinking of this was a podcast episode by Ray Otus I just heard about Advanced Sellswords and Sorcery. The idea was to have some sort of “advancement” which meant being able to take more wounds (being able to have more negative tags/aspects before being taken out) and I thought to myself: but this just makes combat longer, that’s boring!
Have you ever played Traveller? It doesn’t have any meaningful advancement at all. The only thing that changes over time is that you might have more money, better equipment (including a starship, of course). I still think it has long term appeal.
Same with the basic idea Fate as I see it: you might shuffle the skill pyramid around, but you’re not going to actually get better in absolute terms. And that suits me fine. Even though it’s very different from the D&D family of games. At least, that’s how I remember it. On Mastodon, @hawkjohenson remembered some sort of advancement (adding more skill points to the skill pyramid), but we both didn’t check the books. 😄
The Fate rules I read and used were Spirit of the Century, Diaspora (and that Mass Effect game based on Diaspora, not the other one), and some reading of Fate 2 way back when I revised my own Mesopotamian Fate variant (in German) – and I never noticed a way to grow the skill pyramid. I just reread my own Fate variant and it mentions switching skills in the pyramid and removing consequences and the like – but not getting more skill points.
Mass Effect game based on Diaspora
my own Mesopotamian Fate variant
What I am looking for is the promise of changing gameplay over time. Classic D&D achieves this in a way with spell levels. The game with and without *fly* spell is very different. Same with a host of other spells.
To take a very different example: I love how the gameplay of A Dark Room changes over time. So breaking away from that single axis of change (in the words of @halfjack) is central.
That is also why I don’t want to play a variant of D&D where characters get more and more hit-points and it’s all about the attrition, the slog, the grind, the endless back and forth. This happens if hit points are inflated, or special attacks like level drain and various save-or-die effects (poison, petrification) are removed from the mid-level game. If these are not in effect, then all you are left with is the slow back and forth of melee. Ideally, however, *combat is over in two or three rounds* when I run the game: at low levels, two or three hits should take people out; at higher levels, it’s spells, save-or-die and level drain and similar attacks that speed things up.
That’s also why I don’t want the armour class of the opponents to increase as the attack bonus of the characters increases. If you do that, *nothing changes*. I’m fine with fighters hitting every single round at higher levels. It’s supposed to feel different!
Changing gameplay is more important than more staying power, better chances to hit, or similar “advancement”.
#RPG #Indie #Traveller #Fate
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Interesting argument to simply create “chapters” and for advancement to them: Ditch Experience Points Forever!
Ditch Experience Points Forever!
Note that in Just Halberds I said the following regarding advancement:
Just hand out one kind of improvement to one character per session, if appropriate based on the events during the game. I’ll see whether I can continue doing this. I don’t want to count experience points and we’d still have some sort of advancement for the characters that are playing. This is important to me as I don’t want to advance characters that aren’t playing. – 2020-03-27 Ancient School Rules
2020-03-27 Ancient School Rules
– Alex Schroeder 2020-04-14 19:20 UTC
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Interesting discussion on James Maliszewski’s blog post where he wonders about character advancement, noting that he likes Traveller without advancement, and noting that in his Tékumel campaign characters seem to end up in the level 6–7 range.
Are character advancement rules even necessary? Do we simply include them in nearly every RPG simply because D&D did so in 1974? I haven’t made up my mind on this matter, but, between a lifetime of playing Traveller and the last seven years of my House of Worms campaign, I’m seriously beginning to wonder about their presumed necessity. At the very least, I’m looking more closely at experience and advancement than I have until now, with an eye toward understanding their purpose and effect on gameplay. What can we learn from Traveller and might its approach not be a better one than the never-ending mechanical escalation of Dungeons & Dragons? – Are Character Advancement Rules Necessary?
Are Character Advancement Rules Necessary?
I’m currently of two minds: I like no character advancement, and I like “the promise of ever changing gameplay”. Now, how to square the two.
I definitely think that the promise of ever changing game play is what makes D&D interesting. The reason this works, I think, is because the spells you gain don’t simply scale. The game changes if you can be invisible and fly. The game changes when you can dimension door and teleport. The game changes when you can travel to the planes. Outside of the specific rules, the tradition also encourages changes to the game when you reach name level and build a stronghold, and it changes once more when you start to forge alliances with and wage wars against neighbours. – 2012-01-24 Changing Gameplay Over Time
2012-01-24 Changing Gameplay Over Time
– Alex 2022-06-08 11:00 UTC
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In RuneQuest 2 you could purchase training to improve different abilities. This allowed a way to get rid of excess cash and improve a character. In Black Hack you roll to see if stats go up. Seems both increase your abilities and will thus change the game over time.
– Ruprecht 2022-09-14 22:48 UTC
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I wonder. The way you explain it, I get the feeling that a point here and there leads to more of the same simply at a larger scale. In D&D terms, you fight kobolds, goblins, orcs, gnolls, bugbears, ogres, in order, as your abilities increase. The kind of non-continuous change I would be looking for is the ability to fly, to turn invisible, to own power armour, to own a space ship. Maybe in RQ you can also gain new abilities over time that aren’t available to beginning characters? That would be a kind of “promise” made to players if you could see that in the book.
– Alex 2022-09-15 09:57 UTC