Does anyone else here find RPGs where advancement comes mostly from finding better items or loot feel less rewarding than strictly class/level/perk progression? Is there any merit to this or does this just boil down to preference? Especially in contexts of long-term campaigns.
A few CRPG videogames have primarily loot-based progression and I personally like those a lot. Nethack for example most of the effectiveness comes from all the magical crap you strapped to your character, innates from consumables, charged scrolls and wands, and relic weapons. in late game you just hurricane through enemies, to the point the game has to basically cheat with teleporting mobs to even have a chance at stopping you. I prefer it over skill trees because I think it fosters experimentation better, you typically don't have to commit to gear you can swap it out. It doesn't have to be unrewarding you can have the reward come from being smart with your choices or picking gear that fits the class you're playing. I don't like how perk trees often lock you into a playstyle just by design and sometimes you wont find gear or situations that call for the perks you picked. It is ultimately preference but I prefer heavy emphasis on loot-progression.
>>96529112I could see how it might end up feeling a little off, since there is the knowledge that the GM was the one who stocked all the items in the dungeon. Or it ends up just being random luck if they're rolling on a table. It's also something that feels less permanent, since it could hypothetically be taken away from you, even if that rarely happens in practice.I wouldn't say it's a major difference in terms of rewards though, and loot-based progression has its own upsides of letting PCs be more flexible and spending less time planning out levels/perks.
>>96529112Traveller works this way. I've tried to pitch it to people I play with and they just don't click with it. I think the people like the guarantee implicit in a leveling system: no matter what, my character is going to get better in a way that cannot be taken away from me. Even it's just more hp and a couple of skill points, people like that sense of progression, and like to be able to see it in the rules.
>>96529635you can have intrinsics come from loot too
I've found that loot progression is more appreciated in chained one shots. The players get there hoping to survive and they walk out with a reward, kinda like a game show. But in a campaign format knowing your pre-designed progression motivates you more than random loot, you're gonna spend a lot of time with that character and you need something to bite on between sessions.there's also this >>96529714 Loot can mean a symbiote giving you psychic powers, a pact with a god, a mechanical arm, the heart of a dragon. The end result could be equal or even higher in usefulness or coolness, but unless everyone gets something at the same level it can kinda suck.
>>96529112I find it more rewarding, that's why I play monster hunter
>>96529112I’ve run minimal progression with few issues, the characters were all middle aged, highly skilled professionals so they could get shit done from the start. I gave out a bit of advancement after a while so they could add some stuff they couldn’t afford at the start or just get better at what they were already good at. As for equipment that wasn’t really an issue - the campaign was sort of like the old FASA Star Trek RPG - but the PCs did gain quite a lot of political capital.
>>96530610>but the PCs did gain quite a lot of political capital.isn't that the same as loot based progression?Instead of getting an object that lets you do something new you get social capital that lets you do something new.
>>96529635>>96529605I'm having a lot of trouble pitching ICRPG and Traveller to my players for this reason. Basically I think it boils down to class-based progression makes the players feel like they earned the progression while item progression feels a little more arbitrary. It really is a shame because I enjoy the setting and mechanics of Traveller.
>>96534091There are probably ways you could incorporate a degree of progression into the game. Say you give each PC a pool of resources that can be spent on rerolls, have that pool refresh every so often, and have the pool increase when they level.You could even frame it as a class or specialization if you wanted to limit what they were able to spent the rerolls on. It could also be set up as some sort of training that they'd need to spend money on in order to 'finalize' the level, which could also work as a way to give other innate bonuses such as skill training or languages. Simply knowing that there are ways to get those more automatic or guaranteed payoffs might help convince your players to give it a shot, even if the bulk of progression is still gear based.
>>965291123.5 and 4e had some big ticket magic items that I found myself wanting to progress into. Shopping for loot was fun and is an underrated design space. my fantasy game loot is doled out more by the fate system than by dungeon rewards and new players definitely get loot envy from some of the flashier magic weapons I have included. This is a 10 level game with players having one magic item slot per level so I try to leave a couple of extra items in the party's coffers to stress their decision making. final fantasy 11 had the best loot in its 75 era. Ps2 minimalism meant that every item was a known thing and every piece of gear you had was a big deal because you could switch whole gear sets in combat, allowing hybrids to wear caster gear while casting spell and switch to a melee set when appropriate. Tanks got alot of play from this too.
>>96530677True but it’s something you’d get in most campaigns as an RP thing isn’t it?
>>96529112The best items you can get in any game are the ones that give you new capabilities or do something specific. Be it major (a Cloak of Invisibility) or a relatively minor item (a little golem who stitches fabric for you). This is in stark contrast to purely numerically progressing items (Amulet of Natural Armour, +1 sword, etc.).As such, a game where you progress mostly through items will probably have more boring numerical items and fewer added-capability items because it can't foist the numbers stuff onto XP gains/Level ups.
>>96539818It depends on the campaign if it's just RPor if they get to do stuff with that power, but it's not that different from leveling up and now you're inmune to poisons or whatever. It's more things to do as a reward for playing.
>>96529635>>96534091You can have character advancement in Traveller, just do a short campaign arc then jump each character forward 4 years/a term for the next arc in whatever career they are in (rolling extra skills, mustering out benifits etc) to give them more skills and experience. Doing this you can start a campaign with a bunch of 18 year old newbies and advance them into being experienced retirees. I did a campaign once where the characters had kids that when they grew up took over Ma and Pa's old trader as the original characters retired.
>>96540382What do you mean, "rp or you get to do stuff with it"? Roleplaying is everything you do in the game.
>>96529592I love NetHack, and I think its progression system is awesome, but the lategame is very static and there's not much in the way of experimentation. You just take the most heavily enchant piece of armor you can find in the early game, and in the mid-game you work towards a kit. Every game ends up in one of two armor builds (GDSM+CoD+AoR or SDSM+CoMR+AoLS), and weapons don't offer much more diversity (Artifact+silver sabre is too good to pass up). Not to mention, NetHack does have skills, and it is possible to get locked a playstyle your gear doesn't favor, especially for classes that are low on skill points (e.g. Wizards)3.7.0 is likely to shake things up a lot though: more dragon scale mail effects, scroll of amnesia for relocating skill points, no access to Excalibur, etc.. Looking forward to actual diversity in ascension kits now, especially for wishless runs.
>>96529112>Is there any merit to this or does this just boil down to preference? Especially in contexts of long-term campaigns.One bit I don't see mentioned in the thread yet is that loot-based progression has much less of an ask for suspension of disbelief than development of intrinsic power, particularly for short-term campaigns that nonetheless scale. It's very difficult to explain why a Wizard who took decades of study to reach their first level then leaps close to the peak of the setting in understanding of magic inside three months, but conversely if the constraint is tools to channel the magic and carefully-kept, hard-to-discover, but easily-applied secrets then power-leveling is much more understandable.
