/musings on XP and growth

/musings on XP and growth

/musings on XP and growth

So I’ve been looking at the leveling/xp mechanic in UW, and I must admit that it’s not quite what I was hoping. From general feedback (in this community and elsewhere), the system adds too much overhead to the game: it forces the players to keep watching themselves in order to “gain xp” in a particular career. Add that to the general confusion about cross-career xp and so forth, and I think we can say that this particular mechanic is well-intentioned but clunky.

Part of the problem may stem from my own GMing style; I forego xp. No matter what game, I’ve very rarely awarded xp on a session-to-session basis. Instead, I’d worked on a story-milestone “system”, which is too arbitrary to make an official rule. People expect some sort of measurable growth/leveling up out of an RPG.

I feel perhaps I’ve missed something important. For the player, an xp system is a measurable growth and increase in power. For the designer… xp is a way to incentivise behavior in the players through reward. It’s flat out operant conditioning.

I have a number of goals designing this; I don’t want wide xp gaps between players, I want a steady pace of growth, I want the rewards to be narrative driven, I want the tracking/awarding to be both satisfying and brief.

While I’m mulling all this over, I’d invite you guys to post your favorite xp/growth system, and (more importantly) what they did that makes it good. I’ll be tinkering over the weekend, and will post anything interesting, to get the general reaction of the community.

currently working on the Factions chapter

currently working on the Factions chapter

currently working on the Factions chapter

Calling in a Favor

Whenever a character faces a social, financial or legal consequence, they can call upon a faction to take the brunt of that consequence, rather than tackle it themselves. This incurs debt.

Repaying a Debt

The GM can have a faction make a demand of an indebted character. If they fulfill the demand, one of their debts to the faction is repaid. If they fail or refuse, they incur an additional debt.

Insolvency

If a character accrues too much debt, the faction will take direct, hostile action to recoup their losses and/or punish the character. This can range from embargoes to arrest to assassination.

Our group stated a campaign, wanted to give some constructive feedback.

Our group stated a campaign, wanted to give some constructive feedback.

Our group stated a campaign, wanted to give some constructive feedback. We had a good long chat after game to discuss pro/cons

The pros:

Players loved the pc creation…so many options, especially with the new gear selections. 

Faction set up was cool, much like Hx for creating triangles tween pc’s and their relationships.

Combat moves…liked the more narrative style of combat rather than a harm #’s

The Cons:

Xp system difficult for players to keep track of as there are so many examples on the sheets and they didnt like the general set up.  Something like a modified bonds from dungeon world would be better where you have a simpler system where players perhaps work with mc to set career goals for sessions?

Players didnt like face adversity so much…it was the most used move in our 1st session and my players didnt like that some will easily meta this move so they are almost always using their best stat for the roll. 

Need a social move like “read person” from apocw – we have been ApocW gaming for many years we all agree to keep the depth of character interaction this move allows is really needed, otherwise the interactions seem hollow.

2 combat moves can be easily combined. The wording is the same anyways, you just have 2 diff stats to draw from.

Barter/Money/cargo… players didnt like the cargo so much not all games will be a firefly style…should be changed to more general term for currency.

Well, that’s it for now, we’re gaming this Tuesday again so will give more feedback soon

Reading through the character gen rules, I decided to try my hand at creating a character.

Reading through the character gen rules, I decided to try my hand at creating a character.

Reading through the character gen rules, I decided to try my hand at creating a character. It was supposed to be a character I play in a Firefly game on rpol, a deckrat/cabin boy/mechanic sort of character. Going through the options, he turned out a little differently than I expected.

Name: Kyle Mitchell

Origin/Careers: Galactic Starfaring Industrialist

Archetype: Greasemonkey

Stats: Physique 0, Mettle +1, Expertise +2, Influence -1, Interface +1.

Skills: Tinker, Upgrade, Custom Flyer, Repair

Loadout: EVA Worksuit (Simple C2 Attire, vac Sealed with integrated Engineering Kit), Heavy Duty work overalls (Rugged C1 Attire with many pockets filled with tools and spare parts), Personal Hand Blaster (non-lethal Stun Pistol), Fire Star (Heavily modified C3 Speeder, Agile, Rugged and Sealed)

Rooms: Workshop, Shuttle Bay

Descriptions: Energetic, Grubby, Young

Personality: Strong willed, independently minded, in some ways Kyle is a typical teenager in that he doesn’t like being told to do something, especially if he doesn’t want to do it, and he isn’t shy of letting people know. However, earn his respect, and you’ll get a hard worker. Earning his trust is easy; don’t treat him like a kid. Don’t assume that just because he is young, he is stupid, especially when it comes to machines. Despite this, there are times when he just wants to goof off and be a kid for a bit.

Appearance: Young and fresh faced, no matter how many times he washes or showers, he seems to be perpetually covered in dirt or grease, especially when he’s had to do a major repair or go crawling through maintenance ducts. Kyle keeps his hair short, periodically hacking at it with a knife, so as not to get in his eyes when working. Baggy and hard wearing clothes, patched cargo pants and work boots. He wears a “swat-style” vest with dozens of pockets which contain tools, parts, memory chips and candy bars. Always seen with a pair of oversized headphones.

Background: Kyle Mitchell, fifteen, was born on board the space platform orbiting a newly colonised world of Progeon IV. That platform serviced the many terraforming outposts on the surface and acted as a central space port for all ships and shipments to and from the colony. Kyle’s father owned a workshop at the platforms space docks and specialised in minor repairs to visiting starships and maintaining the fleet of orbital transports that shuttled goods and people to and from the surface. From an early age, Kyle spent a lot of time in and around the workshop and soon learned the business end of hydrospanner.

By the time he was ten, he was competent and skilled enough to work unsupervised on repair jobs for clients. The fact that he was small enough to get in to even the tightest of crawl spaces certainly helped. Sadly, two years ago, Kyle’s father died in an EVA accident leaving young Kyle alone. Although the station authorities threatened to evict Kyle and send him away down to the surface outposts, a group of friendly captain’s who had come to know and trust the boy’s skill convinced them to let him stay and continue working in the workshop that now belonged to him.

The last two years have been hard for Kyle on his own, but he has survived and even been able to put a bit of money away for the future. He might not be the best known mechanic this side of the rim but he hopes his little side project will change all that. Six months ago, in lieu of credits, a transport captain whom Kyle had done some work for gave the boy an old beaten down Hyun Industries Mk4 Survey Scout. Stripped down and rebuilt as an in-system racer, Kyle hopes to proof his worth as an engineer by building the fastest ship in the sector and winning the Spinward Rim Cup.

So I’ve been looking through the Preview Materials so far, and I’m super excited to play this game.

So I’ve been looking through the Preview Materials so far, and I’m super excited to play this game.

So I’ve been looking through the Preview Materials so far, and I’m super excited to play this game. The custom “class” based on careers and origin is really great, and opens up the opportunity for basically every character to be unique.

But simply theorizing wasn’t enough for me. I went and made a character.

Name: Iain Farholder

Origin/Careers: Galactic Scoundrel Technocrat

Archetype: Starhacker.

Stats: Physique -1, Mettle +1, Expertise +1, Influence 0, Interface +2.

Skills: Sneak Attack, Program, Upload, Weightless

Loadout: Custom Comm-Enabled EVA suit, dubbed his “Hacksuit” (Class 2 Attire, Simple, Sealed, Comms), Computer Kit, Polymer/Ceramic Holdout Pistol (Class 1 Pistol, One-Handed, Adjacent/Close, Concealed), and a Spacer Outfit (Class 0 Attire, Simple)

Rooms: Advanced Computer Core, Boosted Signal Array

Descriptions: Energetic, Slick, Smug

Backstory: Iain grew up on an Old Terran space station, SS-N31A, known by most as Nursery Station, or simply the Nursery. Named for the giant nebula to its galactic north, overwhelming most of the view in that direction, the station was once the farthest outpost of the Terran Intergalactic Empire, a final fuel and repair depot for the colony ships that routinely passed the border of settled space. As the years passed and more and more worlds beyond were colonized, the station became a major trade hub, extending the central shaft and adding two more docking rings, with accompanying living space, hydroponics bays, and mercantile concourses. Even greenhorn spacers, new to the frontier regions, knew that the Nursery was the gateway to the Fringe.

Everything changed when a crew of Jump Scouts found a stable Jump Lane directly to a planet deeper into the frontier–one that cut anything from hours to days off of the trip from the heart of the Empire to the Fringe. Commerce through the station dried up within a few Standard Years, and all but the most stubborn of the station’s inhabitants left in search of a better, more profitable port.

By the time Iain was born, thousands of years later, the Old Terran Empire was more legend than memory, the Nursery one of the few remaining relics that proved it had existed at all. Over the millennia, the station’s proximity to the major Jump Lanes combined with its near-derelict status turned it into one of the Fringe’s busiest shadow ports. Smugglers, pirates, and disreputable beings of every variety use the Nursery as a frequent port of call, and one in the market for illicit goods can find almost anything there.

Iain’s family, the Farholders, are descendants of the station’s original crew (or so they tell everyone–most of the records from that time were lost ages ago). He grew up around the Scum of the Galaxy, maintaining and repairing the Nursery’s ancient systems. A few upgrades were made over time, but much of the station’s underlying technology is still usable, if venerable. The station still gets by on rotational gravity, its power plants insufficient to power the artificial gravity generators that are now ubiquitous throughout the galaxy. The engines and drivers of this system are always going down, leaving entire sections of the station in Zero-G until they can be repaired. Most of the smugglers consider this the cost of doing business; the locals consider it part of the Nursery’s rustic charm.

Accordingly, Iain learned to be comfortable in an EVA suit almost as soon as he could walk. He demonstrated an early aptitude for computer equipment, and was soon an indispensable member of the station’s IT crew. From hanging out with the smugglers and thieves in his off time, he managed to learn how to better exploit the systems he repaired, and quickly became quite the accomplished hacker, stealing credits and information from the various small-time denizens and frequenters of the station, selling what he could on the Dark SectorNet for a tidy profit.

Eventually, he realized that he could make a better living if he took his services out into the stars (some growing heat from a few notable–and violent–station regulars was also a factor in his decision). He shipped aboard a smuggling vessel and made a trade of stealing and consequently brokering information. He recently parted ways with his previous crew under less-than-friendly circumstances, and is looking for another captain who might benefit from, his services.

Edit: Forgot Descriptions

Is there a working copy of the rules anywhere that I could get as a kickstarter backer?

Is there a working copy of the rules anywhere that I could get as a kickstarter backer?

Is there a working copy of the rules anywhere that I could get as a kickstarter backer? I’d like to play with some friends if possible.

15 minutes to go and every stretch goal achieved.  If you’re one of the 36 people still sitting at the $10 pledge…

15 minutes to go and every stretch goal achieved.  If you’re one of the 36 people still sitting at the $10 pledge…

15 minutes to go and every stretch goal achieved.  If you’re one of the 36 people still sitting at the $10 pledge level, consider getting VASTLY MORE STUFF by upping to the $15 level.

That’s $4 US.  Most of us have probably spent more on coffee/vending machines this week.

Community Created Character – Part 3

Community Created Character – Part 3

Community Created Character – Part 3

In our first Straw Poll, the community voted for an Academic Starfarer

In our second Straw Poll, it was decided that the character come from a Priviliged background.

Now we choose the Skills for our Priviliged Academic Starfarer, and by doing so, build our Archetype!

The Technician – Technobable, Calibrations, Navigation, Decorum.

The Scholar – Education, Deduction, Cosmopolitan, Luxury.

The EMT – Surgery, Chemistry, Custom Flyer (Class 3 Shuttle, Sealed, Rugged, Workspace (Medical)), Fame.

300 backers even, and less than CAD$1000 to go until we unlock Far Beyond Humanity.  Let’s get out there and bring…

300 backers even, and less than CAD$1000 to go until we unlock Far Beyond Humanity.  Let’s get out there and bring…

300 backers even, and less than CAD$1000 to go until we unlock Far Beyond Humanity.  Let’s get out there and bring this home, everyone!