I'm currently running two games: Shadowrun 2e and Cyberpunk Red. And it's got me thinking about character advancement. Simply put, I hate both of these games character advancement. The thinking in the 90's seemed to be that you would be playing a single campaign for years and years, so the assumed rate for XP is a fuckin' trickle. And I know CPRed is a modern system, but it's obviously weirdly stuck in the past in some ways.Anyhow, this got me thinking about what I do like. I'm a fan of Demon Lord engine and Savage World, where you more or less advanced after "an adventure." It's a little loose, but it's worked really well at every one of my tables. I also really like how warhammer fantasy rp 2e did it; you're gonna get 100 XP a session at least, and that means you can usually get one advancement a session. It feels nice to see some sort of mechanical improvement, however incremental, at the end of every session. Finally, this one is a bit more wooey, but the only d&d campaign I ever ran, I just said at the beginning "you guys decide when you level up, I don't really care. The only caveat is that you all have to agree on it." They actually worked really well, at the end of every session they had an honest discussion about whether or not the game's events would warrant a level or not. Probably wouldn't work well for every group, but I've been gifted with generally good groups.Anyway, does /tg/ have any thoughts about advancement? One you hate or love? Want to tell me why I'm wrong about Karma being a giant pile of shit?
Yeah, being able to advance skills, attributes and abilities with exp is neat. Sometimes you may save your EXP to buy something more expensive (may happen more often at the end of the campaign), but these small steps feel rewarding. Playing and running WFRP 4e, by the way, but it's largely the same in this regard.Gaining EXP to level up afte weeks or months of gaming feels like shit compared to that.
>>97556320>Gaining EXP to level up afte weeks or months of gaming feels like shit compared to that.It blows my mind, the expectation for shadowrun is like 3-6 karma a session. I believe according to the table they have in CPRed, the absolute maximum you should be giving out is like 80 improvement points. It would take several sessions to be able to raise your role ability from 4 to 5.
>>97556264>thoughts about advancement Character advancement is how you incentivize player activity or if you're doing some sort of story focused game how you represent narrative beats. If the noombers for advancement are too sparse for how often you're playing or the expected duration of the campaign, change them. Personally not a fan of having advancement every session, once every 3 or so tends to be about right in terms of obviously achievable but not automatically given, but I'm usually running something with a lot simpler character stats than most games (osr lights, apocalypse world, faggy indi games instead of trying to cram a story into a crunchier game) and it works out. If I'm going full story narrative based game Dogs In The Vineyard is one of the favourite advancement and character development games. Its all directly following from the events in the session and how various traits were used or new ones were made. >karma being a giant pile of shit eeehh, I played a decent amount of 3rd but it wasn't good, just felt cool at the time. Shadowrun has always been a bit janky.
>>97556264Is the rate of gaining IP/XP the only problem you have with RED? If so, simply multiplying the numbers in the book should solve the issue.
>>97556922Lol, no, I've got a lot of issues with Red, but yeah, I just plan on doing exactly that with both IP and Eddies. I just think the philosophy behind the game is really weird.
>>97556264You're supposed to gain strength in these games by acquiring resources, not grinding. All the grinding in the world won't save you from being domed by a .50 caliber bullet.
>>97557234I want to add that the XP numbers worked for our 2+ year-long campaign. You're correct, but I wanted to add that the pace works for campaigns of intended length.
>>97556327You'd have to play 4 sessions with maximum IP gain to reach 300 IP to increase your role ability.
>>97556264I prefer games that don't have advancement.
>>97557713Can't tell if you're being serious or not, but this is the main reason I'll never get my players into classic traveller. People want number go up.
>>97557701Yeah, that's fucking ass. 4 sessions for a single point is bad.
>>97556327>I believe according to the table they have in CPRed, the absolute maximum you should be giving out is like 80 improvement pointsthey're half expecting longterm play, and half expecting that your guy won't live all that longpersonally, I like giving the players group IP based on how the session went plus bonus IP based on how they individually didand 4 sessions to raise it your role ability isn't that big a deal when you conwider how powerful your role abilities are. That's your level up
>>97558871>4 sessions to raise it your role ability isn't that big a deal when you conwider how powerful your role abilities are. That's your level upFour sessions to raise a single skill one point is awful. And fully half (at least) of the role abilities are shit.
>>97556264then andjust the amount of points given. Anything faster than once per month or 3-4 sessions is too fast for me and actively a turn off. It really breaks verisimilitude. In exalted the one time i played it we literally got from kinda nobodies top tier fighters in like 3 months irl and it felt really bad honestly.I want to feel that my character levels up slowly and organically. I also don't wanna start with a trashy character that is supposed to rise from the absolute bottom the way dnd does and it most other level based games do as well. The game with decently fast progression that i thought handled it best was Talislanta 4e actually. Simple skill based system, you give exp per session and at the end of the adventure you spend it to level up certain skills whose cost to rank up increases with their rank so you can swiftly increase your low ranks skills but it is harder to do so on our better ones. Allows total character freedom. Also decent training rules for downtime.
>>97556264My current go-to is a milestone progression system based on # of sessions played, with variants for shorter or longer play. Usually, giving 5 points to spend on stats, skills, or powers every advancement.
>>97558947>Also decent training rules for downtime.Oh, this is another thing I find interesting that hasn't stuck around in ttrpg design: the idea that you can fail in character advancement. In Shadowrun, learning spells comes down to a roll, and the money you spent to learn the spell is lost. In the WeG StarWars game, there were instances when you could fail to learn a skill at a higher level, and you'd be out half the experience you spent on it.I'm not a fan of this at all. I feel like if you've spend a character or in game resource on something, you should get that thing. I always thought that concept was weird and kinda shit.
>>97558962>I'm not a fan of this at all. I feel like if you've spend a character or in game resource on something, you should get that thing. I always thought that concept was weird and kinda shit.i think that this can be fun, if you make it explicitly part of the game theme like it's a struggle for improvement in some way or another. And obviously you need to have the required abundance of resources to make failing not catastrophic or character ruining but part of the loop, without giving so much that you trivialise the chance of failure. It needs a fine balance between the two to work.Though i also havent seen a system that does this very well. d100 systems have it where you improve by a little or minimally if you fail but i dont think it's the best application. Not the worst either
>>97556264You're playing an outdated version of Shadowrun, an already difficult game to run, what do you expect?
>>97556264>Shadowrun 2e... why?Seriously mate, why are you doing this to yourself?The best continuous character progression system is the one from CoC/BRP, where you simply roll on improving stuff you used during that session, and the higher the skill, the smaller the advancement. It is closely followed by the 5-points of oWoD, where you get exact amount of points on how this specific session affected your character (plus 1 point for participation to not prevent you entirely from advancing).
>>975590832e is 90s jank, for sure, but I'm learning to love it. The base system is decent, it's just that some of the subsystems are... unique.I also really like the brp advancement system, but I haven't used it that much because most of the CoC and Delta Green I've ran have been one shots. I just picked up a mythras post-apoc game that seems interesting though, so there might be some opportunity to experience that this year.
>>97558984>Though i also havent seen a system that does this very well.>d100 systems have it where you improve by a little or minimally if you fail but i dont think it's the best application. Not the worst eitherI guess the difference with the d100 systems is that you aren't really spending a resource to get better(at least in the ones that I have played) and if you didn't get better, it's usually because you're already good at the skillI kind of like the Delta Green/Unknown Armies 3e tweak on the brp system; any time you fail a skill roll, you mark it for improvement at the end of the session, and you don't have to roll again, you just a d6 in DG and a d10 in unknown armies.
>>97558245Why wouldn't I be serious?
>>97558984It's functionally equivalent to increasing the cost of advancement by a fixed amount. It adds nothing to the game.
>>97559772Because this is 4chan?
Idiot.
