So, we are in our 3rd session of SCUP; and by and large, very fun so far! I’m sure I will come back with some more helpful, detailed and productive thoughts in a later post.
Fresh from our latest game though, I feel the need to vent a little bit.
Highlighting Stats.
This form of advancement has always left a bad taste in my mouth in other PbtA games, and so far my SCUP experiences are matching what has come before. I seem to always have my combat stats highlighted for the sessions with a lot of talking and intrigue, and my talky intrigue stats highlighted for the sessions filled with blood and gore.
Are highlighted stats a deliberate choice for SCUP adding something to the experience that I’m not seeing yet? So far in practice they have left me feeling frustrated, and I would enjoy hearing an outside perspective.
Highlighting stats is supposed to show what aspects of your character the players and MC are interested in seeing that session. I enjoy that feedback myself. But, it sounds like your MC might want to pay a little more attention to those choices during the sessions.
I do think players get too worked up about XP in PbtA games. The characters start out awesome and you can do so much already. When things don’t go perfectly for them, it often makes for some of the best scenes. When I have been frustrated, it’s mostly been about not having enough screen time.
To be honest: no. They’re a holdover from AW. I don’t mind the highlighting stats mechanic (actually, I rather like it) so it doesn’t bug me in SCUP, but there is no master plan with it and if someone could suggest something better, we’d be very open to saying “yes, that is thematically better. Let’s do that.”
I’ve only read the book so far and was okay seeing the advancement system there instead of the Dungeon World style failing XP. But I can live with either and new ideas.
I often push for my highlighted stats in PbtA games when it fits into the session at all. The MC of course has to pay attention to what is highlighted as well. Not only what they are highlighting but also what the other players are. They are after all supposed to state a preference that way.
So framing scenes that could make those stats come up should be on the MCs mind a little or at least not to prevent the highlight from coming up.
I think the aspect of Highlighting Stats that most bothers me as a player is that it’s out of my control. In creating my character I’ve already given my input into what I want my character to be all about in selecting my stats and moves. But it’s an arbitrary crapshoot if the other players (before ever seeing your character in play) pick up on what you’re going for and decide if they are interested in seeing it.
Despite how much you create the sly character who picks all the sly moves in their playbook, people might say “We’d rather see you be steady and arcane…” and then you’re faced with a choice: play the character you envisioned / created, or engage the game’s reward mechanism to play the arbitrary parts of a character people picked for you.
Perhaps this has more to do with the frequency and duration of the PbtA games I typically play in; the groups I’m in tend more towards short campaigns (3-6 sessions) than long epics, and so the challenge is absolutely getting enough screen time to each character to figure out who they are and what they do and what they want and make sure they get to be bad ass doing their thing.
I can see the point that if session after session after session, of playing one note it might be nice to have a gentle mechanism to guide a player to explore different parts of their character / character sheet… but I think there is more value in establishing and getting to show off the character the player brings to the table before telling them it’s repetitive and you want to see something different.
I totally understand Duane’s point about not getting “worked up” about XP in PbtA games… but then why have advancement at all?
While I understand this part is pure personal preference, I’ve always found the reward mechanism created by Dungeon World / Monster of the Week (revised)’s XP on a 6- to work well. It softens the blow of “You’ve failed, so you don’t get to do the cool thing you wanted to do, and something bad is going to happen on top of that!”
I thought the XP mechanic in the First Look of Apocalypse World: Dark Age was really neat. Each move and basic move had a little XP box beside it that got checked the first time you used it, and you advanced when you had used seven different moves. I didn’t get enough time playing that version of the game to explore how that really worked in play.
(As an aside, I just realized our group has forgotten to mark XP when rolling the faction move. I wonder if it would make sense to change the FP move to add “Roll + FP spent and mark XP” or something similar?)
As far as coming up with a SCUP specific thematic way to generate advancement, the first thing that popped into my head was adding a basic move like this:
Politics – When you make a pact, forge an alliance, or swear an oath with another PC, write it down and mark XP. When you break a pact, alliance or oath you’ve previously sworn, mark XP.
This move might focus the game internally to the politics of the player characters, which might not be a bad thing.
Another idea might be changing the Faction Point move to add something like “Gain 1 XP per faction point earned or lost” which would laser focus the game on both the struggle to advance your faction’s goals and to exist despite them.
This is the guy who did the stuff in a GM-ly way for Rob’s game. Bringing in the faction ups the fictional stakes. We had a sinister scholar get imbued with the power to blow the tops off of mountains when 1 was brought in successfully. But to game-ify them or given them XP related things would be good.
If you are consistently getting less XP than the rest of the players, I can understand being frustrated. Talk to your MC. I also think it’s fine to do some gentle lobbying for a particular stat to be highlighted.
One small thing I do when running AW is have the player whose character has the least XP give the start of session recap for 1 XP. Evens things out a little bit.
Well we shall see. But coming up with thematically-relevant mechanics is an interesting exercise
Duane Padilla I don’t actually believe my character has received considerably less xp than anybody else; maybe a point ir two, but I have been left with the impression that the highlighting stats system has arbitrarily conspired against my character.
If the existing rules were the final published version I would probably decide to hack in some other advancement system.
However for the moment it feels like it would be a wasted opportunity not to consider something that thematically or mechanically reinforces the core activity of the game.
Rob Deobald: I agree with your last assertion, there, and as soon as you asked all this yesterday, my brain began working. I like some of your suggestions above. Tom and I will confer on this and maybe change it. Also, if anyone else has any ideas, please let us know!
Rob Deobald I was thinking over your comment that you typically play short campaigns and how that could amplify highlighting stats issues.
What if the first session the player picked one of the highlights for their own character? You (hopefully) get the reward (XP) for playing your character how you imagine them while establishing a baseline for the MC and other players in the future. I know the first session or two there can be a lot of hemming and hawing, “What does your character DO? Can I see your character sheet?”
If you want even more control, the first session you pick both highlighted stats. Second session, you pick one and the MC picks one. After that, hopefully everyone has a good idea of your character’s modus operandi and can at least make informed decisions.
Duane Padilla if I had to have highlighted stats that sounds like a great way to do it.
How does highlighted stats drive game play? What emotional state does it engender in the players?
It seems if done “right”, a GM will drive the game towards player’s highlighted stats. Also players would in theory make decisions to drive play towards the highlighted stat: ie Cool is highlighted; player might make a decision to head to the local watering hole to chat people up; instead of charging out to kick Rolfball’s teeth in.
But – is that how it’s being used in SCUP? If yes, maybe there needs to be more explicit text on how to use the highlighted stats.
SCUP strikes me as more of a PvP game than most other PbAx games. I wonder if there’s a way to have one player try to engage another player’s stat somehow. Or perhaps “lowlight” a stat in some way – and I’m not sure how that would work, but in some way one player can choose another player’s stat – and the first time it’s used in a roll against the choosing player, the choosing player gets some benefit?
That is a great question. Upthread the question of “reward” in the sense of currency was raised. I highlight stat, Rob employs it, XP is gained and — because this is *World — the situation has changed. But what rewards does the player get? As MC I get to see something I want to see: Rob’s character Lord Veyal leave the fort and get his hands dirty. I’m not trying to get him outside to expose him to danger, I just want to see him in action (color, color, color). What would Rob get out of doing something he hadn’t thought of doing, namely: putting his character in a kind of situation that Rob himself had not imagined? I don’t know. Maybe it’s not rewarding to follow the dictates of another’s imagination. Or maybe there could be some reward in Rob being pleasantly surprised by the result of putting his character in a situation he had not imagined. A kind of primate shared attention “this is a cool thing and isn’t it cool that WE are both paying attention to the same cool thing and feeling the same cool awesome feeling of awesome coolness.” Now, it’s clear that that hasn’t happened yet for Rob. So …. the question is still open as to whether the highlighting mechanic is the best way to bring about that “hey, wow, WE are enjoying coolness” reward.