Experience for the ordinary person
Johnn’s recent mention of the Ostrich-GM approach he sometimes takes to the question of how Administrators and Nobles get their character levels (comments, City Government Power Bases – Class and Level) struck a chord. There are really only two answers besides the close-you-eyes-and-hope-it-goes-away approach, and adopting one of them has some interesting implications for the rest of the game. NB: While this post is going to relate primarily to D&D and similar fantasy games, it should be applicable more generally. YMMV when it comes to any specific game system, though.
What do you get experience for?
Experience for NPCs derives from the same sources as for PCs. Essentially, this boils down to three distinct types of experience-earning event: Plot-based experience, Encounter-derived experience, and Metagame-derived experience.
This article will examine both, with a view to both expanding on aspects of Johnn’s post (and his entire series of articles), and to studying the lessons that this perspective provides on rewards in general.
Plot-based experience
Most GMs hand out experience for achieving significant steps forward in the plotline, i.e. for achieving a goal set either by the GM or by the players themselves. The size of the reward typically relates to the immediacy of the goal at the time it was set – small rewards (or no rewards) for short-term goals, moderate rewards for medium-term goals, and substantial rewards for achieving long-term goals and ambitions.
This category of experience excludes anything deriving from experience-earning encounters, but does encompass rewards for roleplaying, for clever skill use, and so on.
These are usually considered rewards for achievement, and that can be a problem, because it fosters a competitive atmosphere between the players and GM, not a collaborative one. Some GMs completely eschew experience rewards for plot-related outcomes for this reason.
XP for decisions and actions, not outcomes
I prefer to think of this class of XP as an award for decisions and actions, not for outcomes, which eliminates the quandary. Does a decision result in the plot advancing, or becoming more interesting or connecting to one or more players more strongly? That is something that should be encouraged, and hence a reward is entirely appropriate.
This has some interesting implications. Rather than rewarding success in achieving a plot point, you are rewarding engagement and participation. A player may in fact make it harder for the group to achieve a plot resolution and earn a reward by looking not at the most expedient path but at the bigger picture and long-term consequences, and persuading the other players to take a more difficult path to resolving the immediate challenge.
Challenge Level: The Trap Analogy
A perpetual question that vexes GMs who hand out experience for this type of behaviour is how much to award. Frequently, the scale is an arbitrary guesstimate. Few of them seem to realise that there is an existing mechanism and precedent for them to follow: Experience for bypassing or neutralising traps is awarded by determining a challenge rating for the trap on the scale employed for combat encounters.
If GMs simply assess each challenge, at the time it is posed, on the same 1-20+ scale used for Encounter Levels, he can immediately identify how much XP the challenge should be worth. As events unfold, subtracting the XP earned from encounters etc along the way leaves a balance to be awarded at the completion of the challenge.
This simple mechanism – with a slight tweak that I will get to in a moment – gives a consistent foundation to the award scale.
Enhancing the concept
I would even suggest going further; measuring time by estimated character levels earned before the challenge is resolved gives a natural fit to the existing scale. For example, in one of my campaigns, a character wants to change his current status (wanted fugitive, known throughout the Land, huge reward for capture) to Nobleman in good standing, with his own estates, because he has identified a political power-base as essential to his longer-term ambitions. My estimate was that this would require a minimum of 15 levels – 5 levels earned while obtaining the tools for creating a seamless new identity, and 10 levels earned while working through political games to achieve the social ranking that he desires. The challenge is therefore a level-15 challenge, and earns rewards as an encounter of EL15.
This approach carries a couple of additional benefits. If the character takes longer to achieve the goals, his character level at the time the award is bestowed means that he automatically gets a smaller reward. If the character discovers a shortcut and gets there more quickly, then he earns a greater reward – which is automatically capped, according to the rules.
In roleplay terms, it encourages the players to set concrete goals, rather than nebulous ambitions – the difference between “triggering a war between X and Y” and “encouraging war”. This gives the GM plot-development material for the campaign and a tool to automatically get a character’s attention with an NPC – simply by having them come from, or represent, X or Y.
A further benefit is that it affords a sense of scale in terms of the combat-oriented encounters that might have to be overcome along the way, simply by adding the character’s level to the Challenge Level set by the GM. If the characters are 9th level at the time they establish a level-6 goal, anything less than or equal to CR15 is balanced. With CR15 as the level of the ultimate roadblock, it is clear that lesser challenges along the way will also have lesser level.
Tweaking the concept
Which brings me to that minor tweak that I mentioned earlier. Because the GM has established a scale based on the difficulty of achieving the goal and the character’s levels at the time, he can adjust the difficulty with changing circumstances in the campaign OR choose to have it become progressively easier to achieve (but worth a smaller reward) or anything in between.
Take the example of achieving political power that I mentioned earlier. So far, the characters have earned about 9 levels while striving to reach the 5-level checkpoint – the ability to establish a bulletproof false identity – and aren’t quite there yet (another 2 levels worth to go, so they are currently at the 3rd-level stage of the challenge). That gives me the choice of either keeping the overall challenge at level 15 (in which case the political phase of the game will be cut short) or of increasing the overall challenge level to be commensurate with the current power levels of the characters. The difference between where the characters are and where they were expected to be when completing the current stage of the goal gives an always-accurate scale to the modifier required. (9+2 to go = 11; 5-2 to go = 3; and 11-3=8, so I can add up to 8 levels to the difficulty of the encounters and the challenges to be overcome in order to achieve the goal).
This is the only mechanism I have ever seen for resolving hard numbers for such an increase.
Reward-matching vs Reward Differentials
Another area to be taken into account is the question of Reward-matching vs Reward differentials, or more accurately, reward differences. Some versions of the D&D game system match xp with the gp value of other rewards, some view the rewards as a global value to be divided into various pools and sources. The latter approach means that the value of any treasure or other reward is subtracted from the total awarded, leaving the xp component of the total.
The difficulty of this approach has always been translating non-economic awards into hard valuations. Once again, however, this equivalence principle can now come to the rescue – assessing a non-financial reward on a 1-to-20+ scale means that an immediate xp equivalent can be determined. That makes the Reward Differential view practical.
For various philosophic reasons, I subscribe to the reward differential approach, as I mentioned in one of my more controversial posts here at Campaign Mastery, “A Different Experience: A Variation on the D&D 3.x Experience Points System” – I’m going to avoid getting side-tracked into why, and save that for a post some other time. But it has always bothered me that there was no way to incorporate all the other types of rewards a character could receive. Finally, this approach has yielded a solution to the problem.
What this means for Administrators and Rulers
Okay, so now we get down to the nitty-gritty. We’ve established that there is a type of XP that gets awarded in some games for decisions and actions that propel the plot forward or that otherwise engage the campaign or achieve an ambition, and assembled a game mechanics system for determining how much those rewards should be.
Administrators and Rulers set goals and ambitions all the time, and actively work to achieve them. That translates immediately into a source of experience for such characters.
Past actions and decisions by NPCs can either be “stuff that just happened to fill in the time/background” or they can be intended to justify or propel the plot forward, arriving at a signpost point (by happenstance) just as the PCs reach a position to be affected by the goal that the NPC was fulfilling at the time. That means that there is a second source of XP for such characters that boosts their awards SOME of the time – and the more that an NPC matters to the plot, the greater the additional awards that the character has received as a result of reaching the point of mattering to the plot.
What has been created here is an interpretation of the XP game mechanics that permits an administrator or ruler to gain experience for doing what they are supposed to be doing. In other words, Assessing an NPC’s past history by means of the Challenge Level system gives a concrete total of XP earned by the character in the course of that history.
Equally, this permits the fabrication of a background to match a desired experience point total.
What has previously been a matter of abstract guesswork has been replaced with a systematic and quantified approach. While not all of the guesswork has been removed from the equation – a GM still has to estimate what Challenge Level is appropriate for various goals and achievements – the questions that are now being asked are finite and specific and not general.
What this means for Adventurers
There are ramifications at all levels of interaction between PCs and NPCs. An NPC whose actions show that he is more capable than his history dictates can be assumed to have hidden elements to that history. An NPC whose abilities appear to be less than those that his history would make available may be someone else’s stooge, or may be taking credit that does not belong to him.
Administrators can possess hit dice, feats, class abilities, wealth, and magical enhancements aimed at furthering their goals, making them a match for the PCs. They are no longer pushovers.
Just as significantly, this system establishes a new class of activity for an Adventurer to pursue – an astute political manoeuvre can earn a PC as much experience as a hard-fought battle that achieves the same ends. This enables new types of adventures, new types of encounters, and new types of campaigns.
What this means for other characters
In fact, any activity practiced by NPCs can be classified according to goals and decisions. From:
- an Artist choosing how best to depict a battle scene;
- a farmer deciding how best to manage his planting and harvesting;
- a bookmaker choosing what odds are best for minimising his risk in any given sporting event;
- through to the blacksmith choosing what to craft next and the approach he will employ.
The scale of the goal determines what XP it is worth, and the XP accumulated in the course of a character’s history advances the character in level and increases their abilities, enabling them to become more skilled and more capable of setting larger goals.
Expertise correlates directly to past experience.
Game Impact
This system has a profound impact on the game. Effectively, every NPC has class levels. That’s a major alteration over the old-school assumption that most people did not. Adventurers become less defined in as a group by what they CAN do and more defined by what they CHOOSE to do.
The system encourages a number of positive roleplaying aspects – firstly, on the part of the PCs, but more generally on the part of the GM. Every character has a goal, every character has a history, and both of those are appropriate to the character. Those histories and goals will affect how NPCs relate to, and interact with, PCs.
NPCs become rather more capable than they are frequently depicted. If you have class levels, then – in a pinch – you can do as an Adventurer does, and are not completely a helpless victim.
Social hierarchies also develop naturally. Farmers tend to focus on short-term goals – seasonal, annual – and thus earn small amounts of XP. As a result, they are generally low-level characters under this system. Rulers and Administrators make bigger decisions, have more substantial goals, and thus earn more XP, giving them more levels. The abilities that they achieve are going to focus more on their own goals and ambitions than on the sort of mayhem that Adventurers are designed to cope with. So the PCs remain special to the campaign.
Ultimately, the game world becomes more challenging, and more consistent. Opportunities for plot development are opened that weren’t there before. It’s all good stuff. But it comes at a price.
That price is for the game to demand more insistently that a GM does his game prep.
There are shortcuts, of course, in fact the same shortcuts that GMs use all the time; when an NPC is needed, one can be created on the spot and the characters background and history assumed to exist. The GM need only create those elements that are necessary to the plot function of the NPC. Some experience may be needed to correctly assess what character level the NPC will have, but even that can be achieved by choosing an analogue from the Monster Manual which would be an appropriate level if reskinned; the creature’s CR then becomes the basis for an estimate of character level.
And, of course, giving an NPC one or more goals is always best practice, whether the GM is employing this system or not.
Encounter Experience
The second major source of experience for Adventurers is experience earned in encounters. Unlike the experience sources given above, these rewards result from the overcoming of an obstacle, whether that obstacle is a Trap, a magical effect, or a hostile creature. This is XP for outcomes, not decisions and actions.
It is important to note that this is the province of the existing XP game mechanics of D&D and related games; as such there is a lot less that needs to be said regarding it.
Type Of Outcome
The DMG makes it clear that the nature of the outcome is not important, only the achievement of it. It does not matter whether or not the opponent was defeated in battle (or the trap escaped, by extension), or was persuaded to stand aside. Only the relative difficulty (party level vs encounter level, degree of success (half XP if the enemy escapes), and difficulty (measured in terms of expenditure of resources) are significant in determining how much XP to award.
That’s actually very telling, because it means that overcoming any obstacle to the achievement of a goal earns the reward.
What this means for Administrators and Rulers
Rulers and Administrators come up against obstacles all the time. Just as PCs should earn XP for roleplaying and other Plot-based activities, so NPCs should earn XP for overcoming their obstacles, determined using exactly the same criteria.
When one noble manoeuvres another out of their way through politicking, the rival has been neutralised in terms of obstructing the goal. The character level of that rival should then be used as the basis for the experience earned exactly as though the character had been defeated in battle. If the rival escapes with influence and power intact, then it is as though he had escaped the conflict, yielding and fleeing to preserve their life. If the noble was forced to expend significant resources to achieve this result, he gets more XP; if significantly less resources were expended than might have been expected, he gets less.
Implications
There is a subsystem within the game mechanics enabling a net EL to be determined when faced with a combination of foes. I use a variant means of doing so – refer to the XP-related article I linked to earlier – but the principle remains the same.
This same system can be used to assess the balance between allies and enemies, between factions and challenges. If a Ruler is 8th level, he had better not be facing more than two challenges of 6th level or greater or he will be overmatched, unequal to the task of achieving his goals – at least not directly. To ensure success, he will either have to isolate the two from each other, or obtain an ally of his own, or persuade one of the two to ally with him. The other can then be securely crushed/overcome.
These need not be rival rulers that we’re talking about. They could be minor social problems, or a thieves’ guild that’s gotten out of hand, or a river that has been poisoned, or any of a hundred other challenges that the Ruler might face. Where two problems connect with each other, they are allied – for example the thieves’ guild with a corrupt police force. Either the problems are separated somehow, or the ruler will have to throw everything he has into overcoming the combination – leaving other problems aside for a while.
Battlefield strategic analysis, under this paradigm, leads to the appropriate political or social strategy. Once the goals have been defined, tactics can be constructed to achieve them.
What this means for Adventurers
Ultimately, it means very little, at least in direct terms. This is what they are already receiving, and that’s the end of it.
Indirectly, however, it can matter a lot, because it means that NPCs earn XP at roughly the same rate that PCs do, just for doing what the NPC is supposed to be doing – practicing their craft, administering their group, Ruling their domain. Their character level will reflect the challenges that they have had to overcome to achieve their current positions. They will not be pushovers or wimps, and will expect to be treated with an appropriate level of respect – and are just as capable of punishing those who do not offer it as any PC would be.
Metagame-derived Experience
Some GMs award extra experience for player activities that support the game – whether that be doing research for the GM, taking notes on behalf of the party during the game, providing miniatures and battlemaps, or whatever. This is an approach that I have advocated in the past, though it should be a small component of the overall experience tally. It is assumed that the benefits to the enjoyment of the game are enough of a reward, but some small encouragement is occasionally necessary.
This is the one source of XP for which there is no equivalent for the NPCs, the one edge that PCs have over the field. Certainly, the GM could reward the NPCs for the tasks that he undertakes in furtherance of his game, but this should never be an option the GM takes up. These are things that the GM should do anyway, and penalizing the PCs in comparison for doing so should not be an acceptable choice. What’s more, there are so Many things that the GM should do that if XP were awarded the NPCs for performing them, it would be quite unbalancing.
The Logical Conclusion
This article has been all about taking one simple assumption – that NPCs are to be treated by the XP system in the same way as PCs – and carrying it through to its logical conclusions. Generalising the meaning behind the existing principles and then identifying the analogous situations for non-adventuring NPCs provides objective frameworks for the awarding of experience to NPCs for activities that:
- make them better characters to play;
- make them more interesting characters to interact with;
- make them worthy objects of respect by the PCs;
- open up new gaming opportunities; and,
- enrich your campaign.
You can’t ask for much more than that.
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April 15th, 2011 at 2:51 am
Thanks to Shannon (a subscriber and one of my players) for pointing out a small error that had crept into the final text of this article. Don’t bother looking – I’ve fixed it!
April 15th, 2011 at 5:21 am
Just wanted to point out something that could be cribbed from the Sims Medieval that nobody really thinks of – on the job experience.
The PCs are supposed to be adventurers, and thus get XP for adventuring, which is pretty much them just doing their job. So for NPCs, it makes sense for them to get XP simply by doing their job.
Whether it is a craftsman making something, or a clerk shuffling papers, they can be awarded XP whenever they do things on the screen related to their actual role.
Off screen, a regular Profession skill check is all that is needed to determine XP advance for a period. Thus, there is a steady progression of XP, even though this XP gain is a lot smaller. You could tweak this for use with PCs, making the Profession skill more viable and representing them having a more stable career outside of adventuring they can pursue.
I just wanted to say the following about Plot-Based Experience, since while your idea is apt, the analysis of it seems flawed. Taking a cue from the video games industry, Plot-Based Experience is about reaching milestones and achievements – the actual decisions and actions involved are inconsequential.
This is because, in theory, no matter what actions the PC take and the consequences, all routes reaching that point have the same reward, and therefore should have the same level of challenge, although favouring different abilities and skill sets. Of course, sometimes this isn’t always the case, but that isn’t really necessary – being able to fly can easily bypass a challenge to climb over a wall, for example.
I used this example when converting the first part of A Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past for the Legend of Zelda Roleplaying Game – one of the earliest objectives is to get into Hyrule Castle. The video game has the gates closed and guarded, and without the ability to scale the walls, it provides a fairly short secret entrance into the Castle Grounds for this purpose, through the base of an abandoned well.
The objective here is to enter the Castle Grounds, and thus the reward was given to get here. Beyond the secret tunnel, several other options presented itself – fighting the guards, using a disguise, bluffing the guards, using magic, or scaling the walls. These all had different actions, and different difficulties, but they all lead to the same reward. The PCs could choose which method was best suited for them.
This is a goal-orientated approach, that focuses on achieving goals, which means it favours outcomes. Failure isn’t rewarded, although often the PCs have the option of taking a second approach, although quite often the second approach is chosen for them – combat. Thus, the harder, more arduous, combat option is sometimes treated as a failure state or last resort option.
Even though this is roughly what you seem to be getting at with your mechanics, you simply dress it up wrong. The reward isn’t to do with the choice of actions and the decisions – it’s to do with reaching the objectives. It’s just that the decisions and actions are left to the PCs to allow them to play to their strengths.
Thus, the artist doesn’t get XP for choosing how to paint a battle scene, like you suggest. They get XP for painting a battle scene – that’s the objective – and choosing how best to do it is left up to the artist to determine.
You can also work PC initiated goals the same way – pretty much as you describe. Except, the reward is given for achieving the goal, and the means by which they will attempt this is defined by the PCs themselves. Chances are though, they may already have made the decision of how to attempt the goal before initiating it.
Quite often you don’t need to include both Encounter XP and Plot-Driven XP methods in the same campaign. Quite often, Encounter XP is merely a subset of Plot-Driven XP, and is often used to determine XP rewards for Plot-Driven XP.
Back to the example of the Legend of Zelda adventures, the Video Games feature the system where upon completing a dungeon, you would be rewarded with a Heart Container to increase your life. This is essentially equivalent to gaining a level.
Thus, you can design the story, knowing that the entire adventure up until that point should award enough XP for one level. You can simply reward this at the end, or you can break it up, often by breaking the story up into smaller objectives. Thus, you might have two or three reward points in an adventure – the module above actually had three: Getting into the Castle, Releasing Princess Zelda, and Getting Princess Zelda to Sanctuary.
This method often means that you can focus on the task at hand, and not worry about actually balancing the encounters and their rewards for growth. The PCs aren’t expected to clear out the dungeons – in the games, monsters always respawn between screens, even though they were significantly weaker than Link – so PCs who get bogged down feeling like they need to clear out every room and harvest for XP will find this rather pointless, because they don’t get anything for it, unless that is the objective. Instead, the focus is on the actual objectives – and achieving them the best way possible.
This doesn’t mean you cannot put in smaller side objectives for those that want to wander and explore, and this is where the Encounter XP method is fairly good, since you can include a unique area with some non-essential (but fun, and useful) treasure, and reward the PCs for finding it and completing the objectives.
Video games are full of these types of mechanics to get the player to do things – to give them an incentive to explore areas and do new things, and thus get more out of the game.
Lastly though – there’s the entire question of why NPCs need XP? XP, in itself, is merely a score or progress bar towards level advancement, and it’s levels that actually matter. Thus, 400 of 1000 XP just means 40% towards the next level. This is useful for PCs, who are constantly on the screen, and constantly scoring to improve their levels. It’s not at all important for NPCs however, since PCs never see this information directly – they only see the level of the NPC, and even then this is only indirectly. Thus the easiest approach for XP for NPCs is not to bother, and just give them levels when they need levels. For the most part, NPCs are there to provide a challenge, or some other non-adventuring service. If they are adventuring, treat them like PCs for XP purposes, until they are finished.
It rather sounds like tracking the XP of NPCs is the result of some form of simulationist-based OCD disorder than any sort of consideration about the actual impact XP has on the game and why it is used.
Harking back to the video games industry, plenty of games allow for character advancement without ever going near XP. Thus, it’s not really necessary that everything needs to have their XP recorded. There are other simpler methods to get to the actual point at hand – character advancement for key characters in the campaign.
Da’ Vane recently posted..Mapping the Action
April 15th, 2011 at 12:20 pm
Another epic contribution, Da’Vane! Let me start by saying that I appreciate the time that you take to write them, even when I don’t agree with what you’ve written.
Unfortunately, this time you don’t seem to have understood the point of the article at all. This could be my fault for not having explained it clearly enough, of course, or perhaps you hurredly skimmed the article and have formed a mistaken impression as a result.
The rewards-for-achievements approach that you describe is the usual one that is applied, and is exactly what I was advocating against. The reason for the confusion appears to be the question of scale of goals; I wasn’t talking about small goals like “get into the castle”, I meant goals of substance, like earning a patent of nobility from the king despite being the most-wanted criminal in the world, or negotiating a trade treaty with an unfriendly nation, or avoiding a war over religious differences. I then made the point that logically, the same principles should scale down to smaller subgoals that combine to make up these larger missions.
To use your own examples, gaining entrance to the castle is a componant of the larger mission, and there are multiple avenues that can be taken to achieving it. If the experience award were for achieving the goal, it would always be the same, regardless of how it was achieved; rewarding choices and difficulties overcome and advancing the plot, on the other hand, always has differing degrees of difficulty and hence would lead to differing rewards. Take the easy way, which advances the overall plotline by no more than the shortest line between the two signpost plot points, would earn less than engaging in the game world in a more substantial way.
The point of giving NPCs experience points? Yes, you can arbitrarily give NPCs level whatever with no rhyme or reason beyond it being what seems appropriate at the time. I even recommend doing so as a shortcut. The point of the approach that is the subject of the article is that the character must have done something to earn those levels, and that by quantifying where the character got his experience you also quantify the character-forming events and history that stands behind the superficial.
This is not about the players or the PCs, its about the GM having a tool that permits a better understanding and analysis of the NPCs that the PCs are going to interact with. This enables the GM to better cope with campaigns that are not prescripted and railroad hog-tied. “You must get into the castle” says the GM; “We’ll get around to it, but we want to go and talk to that Woodcutter with the puppet again, we think he’s hiding something,” reply the players.
Nor am I advocating that the GM track experience points for every NPC who has ever or will ever appear in the game, as you suggest; rather, I am suggesting that the GM employ a tool to ensure that the history behind each character is representative of and appropriate to whatever plot function the NPC is to have within the game.
The whole article is an examination and a consideration of “the actual impact XP has on the game”. I can’t see how you could have missed that point, so I can only conclude that you are playing Devil’s Advocate.
The complaint that I most frequently hear from old-school tabletop players about players who learn to “roleplay” from video games is that they are minmaxing numbercrunchers who only move through the plot in straight lines if they can help it, and that when such players move behind the GM screen, their NPCs are usually static and unchanging. They have no interest in exploring their characters or the world, just in grabbing the next Goodie that’s on offer. The traditional approach that you have described is very reminiscant of that complaint, and is largely something that the video game designers have learned from the traditional approach employed in RPGs (It’s all our own fault, in other words).
Arbitrary character improvements for ad-hoc character milestones are not a model that I think should be advocated. The article offers an alternative that brings consistancy to a haphazard element and provides a game mechanic that rewards that sort of behaviour. Admittedly, some aspects of the proposal are counter-intuitive, like rewarding the paths taken to achieving outcomes rather than the successful achievement of outcomes regardless of the method by which they are achieved.
April 15th, 2011 at 1:33 pm
It is probably a bit of both, I feel Mike. Although you may be using your own subjective values to quantify your position somewhat.
You mention you are focusing on goals of substance, and assert that the goals I provided were not of substance, yet exactly what is the difference? Getting into the castle is a short-term goal, I agree, but this doesn’t mean that they system is limited to short-term goals. Theoretically, there’s no reason why this cannot apply to a longer term goal as you discuss in pretty much the same manner.
Of course, this could be down to personal preference. You seem to be advocating that the effort is rewarded rather than the outcome, but this would actually detract from the objective at hand. It rewards the players to take the longest, most drawn out routes, to maximise their potential, and quite often the goal itself is needless. The players can just go out and do things, get rewarded for it, and so forth.
This is essentially expanding the applications of encounter-based XP rewards and applying it to other things as well. In essence, rather than redefining plot-based experience, you are actually just redefining (or more accurately expanding upon) what qualifies as an encounter. Encounter based XP is already the default system in the game – they already reward the players for effort rather than outcome.
It’s just that because of system preferences, this seems to have appeared to be focused on combat, traps, and actual obstacles, rather than for completing challenges based on effort, so anything that falls outside of this niche has gotten lumped into plot-based xp rewards, even though ad-hoc xp rewards as they have been previously known would better highlight this gap.
In the video games industry, it is exactly this sort of XP reward structure that provides the concept of XP farming or XP grinding, because it directly translates time and effort into XP, thus putting in more time and more effort means more XP.
Yet, the plot-based reward system puts the reward on the goals, and thus on the story. Grinding is irrelevant, because there is very little to be gained from it. It does focus efficiency in plot-completion, since the more goals completed, the more XP gained.
This makes these two opposite systems, although they can be combined and tweaked to create a spectrum of rewards, but it does pretty much come down to what sort of process you want for XP rewards – encounter vs. objective.
It is worth noting the following when it comes to games design, regardless of industry: Whether or not you call something a roleplaying game, there is no incentive to roleplay. In fact, roleplaying is often detrimental in games design, because it represents the players involved putting constraints and factors into gameplay that simply isn’t there in the rules. Roleplaying is essentially Rule 0 for players.
As such, when generating reward systems for games, even roleplaying games, you should not assume that the people using it will be limited by roleplaying. This will mean you will often see extremes of play that would otherwise be abnormal in a roleplaying game, because of the lack of incentive to roleplay.
This occurs more in video games simply because there is less social interaction involved, and people aren’t pressuring others who don’t roleplay to conform to their roleplaying standards. Or feeling compelled to match the roleplaying standards of others.
This is often why you see PCs in CRPGs steal and loot from people in urban centres, without battering and eyelid. It isn’t because they callous – it’s because they simply aren’t roleplaying their character, because the game itself isn’t giving them an incentive to.
This is important – because it means that without roleplaying to put self-imposed limits of reward systems, you are faced with two outcomes, based on two extremes. One where the PCs simply ignore the story until they have nothing else to do, because they are too busy grinding, because that’s the reward structure. Or one where they rush through the story as fast as possible, because that’s the reward structure.
Of the two, I prefer the latter. Because it does, at least, promote the story as a part of the game, rather than something that would otherwise be largely ignored if it wasn’t enforced by others. Plus, character development IS story development, and if you want to see how this can work in a game, with an incentive to do it, look no further than Planescape: Torment.
This may sound strange – the idea of the fact that roleplaying isn’t actually an integral part of a roleplaying game. Yet, if you look at complaints about what roleplaying is, and whether or not a game is roleplaying, the roleplaying is always different from the system, and the two can – and sometimes do – exist independently. The closest we have come to incentivising roleplaying is when a GM provides a reward for good roleplaying during a session, and rewards particularly good ideas, moments, and so forth with in-game perks.
You are right about video games roleplaying being the fault of tabletop roleplaying – the standard accepted definition of roleplaying is that it features character development, and uses a model that mimics the basics of D&D. This is because video game genres refer to gameplay, since the way to interact with the game is the most important feature of a video game. It’s a bit like us classifying RPG system by how their resolution system (D20, D6, SAGA, and so forth).
It is worth noting however that any curve can be seen as a series of straight lines when you put enough points in it. A circle is essentially an infinitely sided polygon. Therefore, there’s nothing wrong with moving the plot in straight lines – that how EVERYTHING is. It’s just a matter of how you use those straight lines…
Da’ Vane recently posted..Mapping the Action
April 15th, 2011 at 6:49 pm
We absolutely agree on the goals, Da’Vane, and you make some good points about the characters whoring the system for XP. That’s why the maximum payoff was reserved for choices that advance the plot – the delaying tactics you observe (and rightly complain about) are a case of hindering the plot. Is that a subjective opinion on the part of the GM? Yes, somewhat, especially if the campaign goals are foisted on the players from the outside BY the GM. In a more sandboxed campaign, however, where the players set the agenda for where they want to go and what they want to do, getting them to aim for some verabilised and concrete long-term goals can give the campaign direction and tell the GM where he should be focussing his efforts.
In fact, I agree with just about everything you’ve said in the comment above!
They are opposites, and viewed as incompatable by many. By using a common techniquue, which you rightly describe as expanding the definition of an encounter, this article tries to demonstrate compatability between the two and take the ad-hoc out of the equation, so far as PCs are concerned.
April 16th, 2011 at 3:53 am
So, it wasn’t a case of disagreeing then, but rather the fact that we are using different terms for the same thing?
Personally though, I don’t necessarily see the two systems as opposites, rather as different axis. It’s a bit like considering alignment: In D&D, morals and ethics are different, but they are not opposites. You don’t see Good vs. Law, for example.
There’s a lot of mileage to be had by shifting the potion between these two dimensions – a low goal reward, high encounter reward game plays much different from a high goal reward, low encounter reward game. These play different again from a high goal reward, high encounter reward, or a low goal reward, low encounter reward game.
Da’ Vane recently posted..Mapping the Action
April 16th, 2011 at 6:46 pm
It wouldn’t be the first time! Roleplayers like to think that the language that has developed around the hobby is universal, but it isn’t, especially when the variant dialect from video game design is involved.
And I certainly don’t see the two systems as opposites, but as complimentary. They do have some characteristics in opposition but that simply means that between them they cover the totality of activities, some being of one variety and others falling into the other category.
Your point about shifting the balance between the two schools of thought is a good one, and (in part) what I was trying to get at in terms of the impact of these notions on PCs. Every adventure will be different in terms of the balance between roleplaying and combat. Some may have little-to-no non-combat action, others may barely involve an attack role – combat can even be considered an indication that the characters have failed the primary mission if the objective is a diplomatic one! Rewarding one and not the other seems patently unfair, but ad-hoc experience awards are not a great step forward from that position.
I would rather adapt the exisitng game mechanic, extending it to encompass those activities that wouid normally result in an ad-hoc reward. Examining the implications of doing so is what led me to write the article in the first place.
May 13th, 2011 at 9:42 am
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