Hi everyone, I was wondering what people think of the XP triggers in Uncharted Worlds, and whether anyone has experience hacking them. I get they are there for players to indicate what they want to see, and also nudge the game in specific scifi directions, but I prefer more mission / accomplishment driven XP system like in The Sprawl and Dungeon World. I’m thinking about hacking that in, instead. Are there any caveats to be aware of? What are peoples’ experience with the XP triggers? How many XP triggers do your groups hit on average per session / adventure? Thanks!
Hi everyone, I was wondering what people think of the XP triggers in Uncharted Worlds, and whether anyone has…
Hi everyone, I was wondering what people think of the XP triggers in Uncharted Worlds, and whether anyone has…
/listening for now, will toss in 2 cents later
I think I use a little of both. XP triggers and story milestones. So your getting XP for playing your “Role” in the overall “mission” you and the crew are on. I see it as the best of both worlds. One part player driven and one part story driven.
The xp triggers in UW are probably my favorite way to encourage people to actually play the character they wrote down on paper.
I don’t see a problem with goal based xp, but I would simply set 1-2 “group advancement triggers” based on their current goals. Maybe ask them at the beginning of the session – “what are you goals?” and write them down. For each one they accomplish, boom, 1xp like normal.
I’ve never felt the need to “augment” the XP triggers, players seem to level up fast enough to stay happy as-is. And they work great as a mechanism to both give ideas both to players and to the GM.
Aaron Griffin Yeah, don’t botch the regular XP, just add a few more XP triggers for your mission if you feel like it.
It is a good way to push them in a certain direction. Good stuff if you have limited time of play and don’t want so much sandbox-style “go with the wind” like Pocahontas.
I use them frequently in one-shots or short series.
A lot of the XP triggers are quite flavorful, but some of them stand out as being rather weak or incentivize the game to play out in particular ways. I’m concerned that their meta nature will interrupt the flow of the game when players go hard after them (as happens in the Essential NPCs podcast). I would prefer to replace them with something like objectives from The Sprawl, where an adventure has multiple (perhaps conflicting or optional) objectives to be achieved, and the group gets XP for hitting them (however they choose to do it).
Alan Tsang you should try trusting your players.
Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with having a “group xp trigger” that basically reads “A mission is completed”. It’s a nice way to fill in the max-3xp-per-session if the players were too goal oriented and not focusing on their own character foibles. Different strokes for different groups and all that.
Alan Tsang For me xp triggers are the adventure, so if you try to run some other adventure you might get into conflict with xp triggers.
It depends what kind of game you want to have. If you want missions then simply ask your players to choose xp triggers few days before next session and include them instead of preping mission and realizing later it is totally different from xp triggers.
Some xp triggers are straight adventure ideas like for example – passenger reaches the destination ( I would expect that player who chose this xp trigger would at least look for a passenger to transport, or you can have a faction come and demand that players smuggle this guy through the imperial blockade ). Then the rest of the adventure happens as they transport the passenger, someone is obviously after the passenger.
Some xp triggers are small stuff that players need to do and it’s totally up to them – like a bold stunt turning the table – it is something they have to think and execute -> example what the Drax did in Guardians of the Galaxy 2 when they ware pursued.
I guess don’t be afraid to make some time skip before the adventures, it might be hard to justify doing passenger transport on day one, then try to thoroughly analyse a disease on day two.
Thanks for your thoughts, everyone. Depends on the sort of campaign the players want to pursue, I may go with an objective based XP system (with branches for creative interpretation of goals). If people are interested, I can post the results here.
Yes, please post the results.