What does advancement in a MU* mean to you?

[surreality]

@Seraphim73 There are aspects of this I like and some I don't, and I'll only really comment at all because I'm tinkering along similar lines, but from a different inspiration. (Aspirations in WoD. I don't think theirs is as ideal as it could be, either.)

The one thing that you can run into as a problem with this kind of system is that you have to be really careful when you set up those goals/aspirations/whatever you want to call them. If they're reliant at all on other things coming to pass, or other people, you can end up completely stalled out if <thing> gets endlessly delayed by something beyond your control, <person> you were supposed to do <thing> with ghosts on you, or <person> the goal was about quits/flakes/otherwise decides to chase pixies.

As a result, I like this as an avenue open for advancement, but I'm not keen on the idea of it being the only one, if that makes sense.

[Jim Nanban]

@SG said in What does advancement in a MU* mean to you?:

To me, if my character is going to advance, I'd like them to actually advance. I've sat at many tables, and played many games where the mooks scale up with the PCs and it gets tiresome to me. Level bosses, for sure make them tough and scale them up, but when the warm ups take three hours of rolling to deal with, why bother advancing?

This, so hard. If everything scales to PC level, then all you're getting each level are new skins. If I wanted that, I'd just play Overwatch. Which I do because it's awesome and I need clothes for my Overwatch dollies, but I digress.

This thread has some digressions, too. We might all do well to keep in mind a key phrase of the actual question, "In an environment that has sheet based advancement". I've got thoughts about "character growth," but they have little to nothing to do with the question.

Some of @HelloProject's thoughts remind me of The Angry GM and his well-worded rants on hacking games, on complexity, on what people like and why... A worthy read, especially once you realize his one-true-wayism is parody.

[SparklesTheClown]

There's a ton of interesting stuff here. I admit that in my mind, I keep thinking stuff like "I wonder if WoD can be done without XP in a way that doesn't make everyone angry", and other such thoughts along the lines of replacing XP with something that can give people a similar feeling of achievement or advancement.

I also think a lot of the stuff about motivation and meaning for both oldbies who worked really hard, and new players who need to catch up are interesting. My time on Windy City did indeed teach me that there is value in teaming up to fight against people who are more powerful than you as an individual, if you're unhappy with their status quo.

But yeah, there's a lot of useful knowledge and experience that I'm gonna try to make something out of, though I'll need some time (I literally spent today working on a song). And I'll have to read that Angry GM rant.

edit: Oh, and re: "better for whom", I obviously don't think there's anything inherently wrong with MU*ing, I just think that everyone can agree that tabletop books aren't meant for the long-form roleplay of like 100+ people simultaneously. So, I mean better in that regard. Also, when disagreeing, it's good to provide a productive alternative to the thing that you disagree with so that people can pick up on what would be a better idea.

[ThatGuyThere]

New Prospect had an interesting idea for xp in WoD. Instead of doing it as xp and spending it, it was time based you had a number of slots you could be actively learning things with and then when enough time passed it was added to your sheet. I don't remember hearing a lot of complaints about the system but the game did not last long due to other dramaz.

[Ominous]

I measure advancement by my character's impact on the game world. As I have voiced many times on the forum, I am against most XP systems, preferring XP to be tied to character age. If people want the feeling of leveling up their character, there are a myriad of games out there that can accomplish it much better than MU*s can.

[SparklesTheClown]

I certainly think that there are better ways to gain the same feeling of sheet advancement as XP offers, I just think that since so far a lot of the alternatives to XP haven't really caught on or necessarily given a lot of people the same feeling of achievement as XP, it's seen as a permanent standard.

And while I don't claim that my solution will work or even necessarily be considered all that great, I do think that there is value in trying and discussing.

[Jim Nanban]

@HelloProject said in What does advancement in a MU* mean to you?:

And while I don't claim that my solution will work or even necessarily be considered all that great, I do think that there is value in trying and discussing.

This. This this this this this. This motherfucker, do you speak it.

There is so much social pressure on not being wrong, especially in geek circles, that what passes for "discussion" all to often more closely resembles monkeys throwing poo.

If you want to talk about why something can't work, FFS do yourself a favour and first come up with the same depth of reason as to how it could work.

OK, I'll get off my MU Soapbox now.

[faraday]

@HelloProject said in What does advancement in a MU* mean to you?:

I certainly think that there are better ways to gain the same feeling of sheet advancement as XP offers, I just think that since so far a lot of the alternatives to XP haven't really caught on or necessarily given a lot of people the same feeling of achievement as XP, it's seen as a permanent standard.

And while I don't claim that my solution will work or even necessarily be considered all that great, I do think that there is value in trying and discussing.

+1 for the attempt. But having gone down this road before (outside of WoD circles), I can share this perspective:

There are a great many players who are easily motivated by sheet advancement. XP rewards for running scenes, rapid skill advancement, etc. etc. It's popular and common for a reason. It's the tabletop RPG norm.

There are some players who will get frustrated and grumpy if their sheet advancement does not allow them to progress in a way that suits them.

However, there are also players -- even some of the same ones mentioned above -- who will stick around on a game with no XP whatsoever or XP advancement that is so slow as to be nigh-insignificant, if the game is fun in other nothing-to-do-with-advancement ways. I have run games like this. I have seen it work.

I find it kind of refreshing not to have to deal with much of the drama that XP brings, personally.

It's not for everyone, but who says any game can be, or even should try to be?

[SparklesTheClown]

@faraday See, it's not necessarily that I want to get rid of sheet advancement (even though technically my primary game has no such thing in the traditional sense), it's just that I think there might be better ways to go about it than XP. And since many people have indeed tried, I think that seeing why those attempts didn't work out, and what worked out about them, could be educational in trying to build on top of that.

Like, what if there were a way to add an extra layer of abstraction to the concept of XP? In some way that is more contextually meaningful but also adds the sustainability of not dealing with mountains of XP? I haven't quite gotten the chance to really hammer things out (I've been super occupied with trying to acquire a Gameboy Color to use as a musical instrument), but I feel like there's some method of control that might be gained from shifting XP to more conceptualized gains that then transfer to your sheet as numbers.

Someone mentioned a game having goals and such earlier. While this idea does use a form of XP, what if games had, like, packages? Like I could see having floating in-character achievements to work toward, which nets you XP to use for stuff relevant to that achievement, which seems like a good set of things for staff to define. While goals could be more customized forms of achievements, where you work out with staff what it is that you're trying to work toward, then you work toward it!

It's a valid criticism that people you're depending on to get something done might drop out or change their mind or whatever, but this mostly seems like a common sense thing here. Like, staff should know better than to penalize someone for that, and instead just allow them to find an alternate avenue to continue with their goal. I wouldn't want to play in a game where staff don't understand simple common sense stuff like shit not always going to plan.

But anyway, in my opinion this approach also allows newbies to put in however much work they feel the desire to in order to try and catch up with oldbies and such. They're RPing anyway, so it's not like it's this huge grind, they're just focusing their goals and such. I also saw the argument that different forms of advancement aren't one sized fits all, and while this will always be true to an extent, I do think that this achievement approach could address a lot of that.

If your goal is that you wanna go fist fight vampires and such, you get achievements toward XP that's used for the sorts of skills you generally use to fight vampires. If you're someone who mostly just sits around researching and having nerd social involving that, then you'd get achievements that give you XP toward stuff that's used for -that-.

As for if said achievements are templates of XP or not, I don't necessarily think they should be hard templates, because it would restrict what the players can do a bit too

XP, to be used in the following attributes/skills/merits/etc as desired". So they still get the choice of what to use it for, but it's limited by what they were doing. The XP is contextualized.

Some sort of hard caps and diminishing returns would obviously be needed, and some reasonable constraints for how much people are getting all at once. But one last thing, before this gets too long, is that I could see the achievements not only being in different categories but different tiers. Higher level oldbies could be chasing more difficult to gain achievements, like epic level stuff, while lower level players can pursue ones that can be gained in a shorter amount of time.

There are obviously flaws here, because I'm half-asleep and looking at Gameboy Colors on eBay, but this is just what I'm thinking on the fly so far.

[surreality]

I actually really like the idea of setting something as a 'character advancement represented on +sheet and working toward that goal', as in, setting aside advancement points or XP or whatever else you want to call the various milestones or measures of accomplishment, and having people more or less automatically progress toward that stated goal through IC actions. That's pretty frickin' brilliant.

If I was going to look at this -- and seriously, after that mention, I think I probably will look into a means of doing so -- I'd use that as a separate thing from the kind of character goals as described. Aspirations in GMC/CoD, for instance, are just 'things I would like to do'. Even the book gives examples like 'have a one night stand' as valid for short-term character goals, for instance, that are valid to character development in terms of characterization, but may be harder to directly tie into advancement-based goals.

Realistically, you could do something like 'this XP gets assigned to seduction, if you ever choose to raise it', but that starts setting up a number of very subjective XP tracks that may be hard to manage, depending on the complexity of the system.

What I can offer here is what I've been looking at. I will do my best to explain why I'm doing things this way, but I'll warn: it gets off into some very esoteric tangents. It's something also designed around the idea of the game I would like to see exist in reality, this occurring in a shared/MUX environment, and oceans of navel-gazing abstract thought time. I may miss some bits that are relevant.

My goal: a collaborative, cooperative storytelling environment in which participants can freely share creative ideas and stories and create a shared world within a specified theme and scope.

Bear in mind, this does not require a sheet. It doesn't even require a system, really, depending on the folks involved. But to make it open to as many participants as possible, these things are useful tools. Not everybody can always agree, and as a result, a system of resolution is fundamentally useful and productive.

Once you introduce a sheet, you do have the advancement question.

I am not fond of XP earning caps for the reasons @ThatGuyThere has articulated. Further, the way I have seen them implemented in the past has led to precisely what he's described. I've also seen staff slow to process +jobs screw this up even further -- where, if staff were doing their job in a timely fashion, things would be fine, but then instead they wait two weeks to so much as touch the thing, and then all that work gets capped and slashed to half of its real value. From personal experience, I can say this adds dramatically to the level of frustration an earn cap can create.

I think learning time delays are a much more reasonable thing. The potential problem you get from this is that people will potentially spend more broadly than they might have otherwise if 'I have a need to spend my XP simply because it's here' issue.

Between the two, though, I think learning times still result in the much lesser evil. 'You get rewarded for your efforts' should be a constant. 'You get rewarded for your efforts up to a point, or unless staff gets lazy' is powerfully discouraging and rightly feels unfair. The players who are the most generous with their time and are doing the most to keep your game alive through running things for others are typically the ones most hurt by this.

It's better, IMHO, to allow people to earn what they earn, but spend in a reasonable fashion. What 'a reasonable fashion' is can vary -- some things are more reasonable than others -- but to tell people 'your efforts only mean anything up to a point' is, in my view, pretty awful.

[Seraphim73]

@surreality Absolutely makes sense. On FoH, you also get XP from noms and from events. Goals are intended to be the main way to advance, but not the only way.

Also, you can abandon a goal any time you want, or add one (assuming you aren't at your max already).

I do agree that you have to choose your goals carefully, but the ability to change them at need helps with that somewhat (so does not picking them to depend on specific other players).

To the point @HelloProject and @surreality are talking about, goals could easily be tied to explicit boosts, rather than to XP. Want to improve your character's social skills? Put together a goal where they get elected to the school board--if/when they succeed, they get +1 Bureaucracy and +1 Charisma. Want to improve your character's shooting skills? Put together a goal where they're recognized as one of the best gunfighters in this dusty town--if/when they succeed, they get +1 Pistols.

@faraday has put together a really nice XP-spending system for Ares--you apply XP to skills, and each skill has a cooldown, and when you get enough XP applied to a skill, that skill goes up. As a skill goes up, the amount of XP needed to increase it goes up, so overall learning time goes up too. Yes, it rewards/encourages broad skill bases rather than focused ones, but I generally think that's a good thing. If you didn't want to reward this quite so much, however, you could simply add in a caveat that for double the XP cost, you could halve the learning cooldown. I like the system because you can see XP applied to skills, so you still see progress, even when your skill rating hasn't actually changed.

[ThatGuyThere]

It also comes down to what role you want XP to play in your game. If the goal to have XP simulate the skills the character picks up and improves through RP, or is the goal of XP to provide the player the ability to have their characters abilities increase and provide the player with goals to engage with, both are valid ideas of game design but are at odd with each other. Those are two ways of seeing XP I thought of off the top of my head but I am sure there are many others as well.
Personally I see XP as an out of character construct, mainly because I find most learning and teaching scene to be dull as dishwater so learning my characters do is always off camera unless game policy mandates a log in which case i put up with two hours or so of bland RP.

On the topic of other ways of advancement Star Crusade had an interesting in theory method, at the end of each week you would write up essentially small xp justifications, (can't remember what term they used) and then you would get to credit towards raising those skills. You were limited to a set number per week but the justification could be both from on screen and off screen activities. I think the off screen part is essential.

[SparklesTheClown]

If nothing else, I've decided to use Scion as the case study for what I'll try to chop this system into. Mostly because I have infinite enthusiasm for Scion despite the fact that everyone hates it (plus it easily translates to WoD as a system, I think).

Scion is actually particularly good to think about for this, because it's a game where like, once you're a god, wtf do you even do? It's kind of broken in concept before you even apply it to a MU*.

[Ganymede]

@surreality said in What does advancement in a MU* mean to you?:

Between the two, though, I think learning times still result in the much lesser evil. 'You get rewarded for your efforts' should be a constant. 'You get rewarded for your efforts up to a point, or unless staff gets lazy' is powerfully discouraging and rightly feels unfair. The players who are the most generous with their time and are doing the most to keep your game alive through running things for others are typically the ones most hurt by this.

Going back to the system I proposed a page ago, I do not believe it hinders or rewards people based on their active-time; that is, it is not advancement based on activity. However, I believe it encourages activity because you can advance faster through cooperation and collaboration.

One of the things that nWoD did right was tying everything to XP. By making costs exponential, you had to devote more time to getting an extra point, which follows on the law of diminishing returns. What it does not account for is XP gain on a MU*, which is what I hope my system (which is based on a constant Time allotment) will do is level the playing field further between rookies and veterans.

I think it is important to consider abandoning using XP or advancement as a carrot for activity. While it can be an incentive to be active, a system that links advancement solely to activity is going to lose a large number of good players who cannot be online all the time.

[Arkandel]

@Ganymede said in What does advancement in a MU* mean to you?:

I think it is important to consider abandoning using XP or advancement as a carrot for activity. While it can be an incentive to be active, a system that links advancement solely to activity is going to lose a large number of good players who cannot be online all the time.

How does your system handle catching up to oldbies (if it does)?

In other words if you create today and I created three months ago, assuming similar playstyles will you be able to ever close the ability gap between our characters?

[Rook]

Interested in this answer. When I was working on my game/RPG, I was toying with a system that 'rubber-banded' skills and abilities. In essence, you have a set pool that you distribute. As you trained up something, you put time into doing so, and you could raise that trait a bit. But at a point, it takes an entire-character focus to go from 'Okay' to 'Amazing', just like it does in real life. If you want to be the most amazing gunslinger in the world, it takes hours a day of practice. Thus, it stands to reason that you aren't building skills (maybe even slacking talent) in Cooking or Basketweaving.

Thus, if you wanted a '5' in a trait, you had to voluntarily give up points to get there. It wasn't fast.

I toyed also with 'maintenance cost' of '5' stats. You sacrificed XP every month or so to maintain that amazing edge. When you stop working out 6 hours a day, 5 days a week, you cannot keep the Arnold physique, sorry. When you aren't doing 20 brain surgeries a week, you aren't as fast and good at them, etc.

Advancement was to either lessen (over time) this maintenance cost or allow for more 5's. But, also, my system allowed for dumping of XP into non-stat purchases, such as money, holdings, status/prestige.

[SG]

@Rook If you're having skills degrade like that, do you make it cheaper to buy back?

[Rook]

This never got off the ground. Too many people didn't seem to like a realistic approach to trait advancement past 'above average', so this was nothing more than an exercise on the how-could-we in RPG building.

I learned that most gamers not only -want- godlike characters, they will not be as interested in your game if they can't have one. I started hearing complaints about "That'd take too long to get 4-5 5s on my character". Mind you, this was the same self-proclaimed haters of so-called supercharacters.

Again, interested in seeing people's answers to @Arkandel, above.

[magee101]

I like starting at a level higher than 'minimum' but I also enjoy having to RP for xp, provide justifications or finding PCs or STs to run things for that justification.

For me the best forms of advancement in MUSHes is not the sheet itself (though it does get awesome when you start getting pretty powerful 6-12months down the road) but instead being able to work your way up the ladder of individuals and getting involved in the more behind the scenes setup and information sharing that leads to the metaplot or player plot scenes.

[Ganymede]

@Arkandel said in What does advancement in a MU* mean to you?:

How does your system handle catching up to oldbies (if it does)?

In other words if you create today and I created three months ago, assuming similar playstyles will you be able to ever close the ability gap between our characters?

Two ways.

First, with exponential costs, it takes more time to develop your skills to elite levels. Since all PCs start off with the same periodic Time allotment, being an oldbie means taking longer to get an extra dot above.

Second, the more you have, the less you get. Holdings; status; high-level skills: all of these can reduce the periodic Time allotment. In a GMC/CoD system, for example, you could penalize Time by a PC's Status or number of Attributes and Skills at 4+. The reasoning: you have to hone your connections, reputation, and skills to keep at such a high level of expertise.

Put these two together, and newer PCs will advance faster. You may never fully catch up with oldbies that are active, but you'll close the gap over time. There seems to be little reason to cripple active oldbies.

At some point, if it becomes an issue for lower level folks to make up the distance, there may be higher starting point allotments.