Experienced Tiers or How much is too much?
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In a discussion about this last night there was something said that made me laugh, while being a bit sad but also rang true. The comment was something like: Tiered XP is great because I can play the character I want right out the gate before the game dies/shuts down.
Then when it's all over and the rest of you are ready for Dead Animal Pickup, I'm gonna go balls deep into Dahl. But only because she asked me to. Sweet-like. - Riddick (2013)
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@thatonedude said in Experienced Tiers or How much is too much?:
In a discussion about this last night there was something said that made me laugh, while being a bit sad but also rang true. The comment was something like: Tiered XP is great because I can play the character I want right out the gate before the game dies/shuts down.
There's something to be said about that. Many - most - games don't last nearly long enough for a small trickle of XPs to let you play a powerful version of the character if that's what you have in mind.
Of course not all games should allow let alone facilitate this, but it ought to still be possible somewhere.
What's much harder to implement - and in fact, perhaps counterproductive to - is allowing anyone to actually be more powerful than most. It's the difference between "I'm a great and powerful wizard!" and "I am a greater and more powerful wizard than you conjurers of cheap tricks!".
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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@arkandel said in Experienced Tiers or How much is too much?:
What's much harder to implement - and in fact, perhaps counterproductive to - is allowing anyone to actually be more powerful than most.
When you say "most," to whom are you referring?
This is important. Being "a great and powerful wizard" that is more powerful than NPCs is likely the objective of many players. Being "the greatest and most powerful among great and powerful wizards" is a more difficult objective for players, but one that many still seek to be despite the propensity for toxicity that such an attitude often brings to a game.
On BSG:U, it was clear that you were a "great and powerful" soldier or pilot. Only a small handful of people bitched about not being "the greatest and most powerful," which made gameplay pleasant. Frankly, our marine teams should have been heavily-outmatched many times, but we made it through with few casualties most of the time (unless the dice or Faraday were being extraordinarily mean).
Contrast that with Fear & Loathing, where everyone wanted to be "the greatest and most powerful" and restrictions on who could be a Guest Star, and there was more cattiness and drama than Eartha Kitt presiding over the Gay Haters' Ball. (To be fair, this sort of drama-llama level is customary on Vampire games.)
I posit that making Tiers available to all without application or requirements levels the playing field. I like the way Fate's Harvest has done it. I can play my murder mouse happily knowing that there are other murder mice out there, but each player only gets one.
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Meanwhile, another approach to disparity that I have considered is making XP player-based and not character-based. You can have plenty of different alts, but you only have one experience pool to draw from. You can have one very powerful alt, or you can have an assortment of increasingly less powerful alts. Choice is yours. Sure, thsi completely abstracts experience (so for example, a player can get experience for a plot Alt A was a part of and spend it on Alt B) but that's not really that big an issue in my mind, honestly.
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Agreed on the FH thing.
It's weird to me when people seem to have a hard time with high xp games, more so when everyone gets the same high XP. On Fall Coast everyone gets to high XP and then slows... Fate's Harvest you can start at any tier and play whatever you want.
Is it jealousy? If everyone has low XP and it trickles in... everyone is basically in the same boat as the Fallcoast model right? Just without the XP?
Then when it's all over and the rest of you are ready for Dead Animal Pickup, I'm gonna go balls deep into Dahl. But only because she asked me to. Sweet-like. - Riddick (2013)
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Some people really don't enjoy high powered games, and mistake that lack of enjoyment as it being a problem with those games instead of just a preference. It's also potentially more difficult to manage plots with a wide experience disparity, though I've never found that part of things personally challenging.
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@sunny said in Experienced Tiers or How much is too much?:
Some people really don't enjoy high powered games, and mistake that lack of enjoyment as it being a problem with those games instead of just a preference. It's also potentially more difficult to manage plots with a wide experience disparity, though I've never found that part of things personally challenging.
But there seems to be this /bad fun/ or /wrong fun/ feel in a lot of what is said related to high xp games. As stated above in a situation like a game such as Fate's Harvest you can have alts at various tiers which means even if you're Joe that hates a powerful PC you can make a tier one PC and gain your trickle of XP while I can app in my high powered pc and do my thing.
What we gain is in social RP there is people to play. In events we don't have to go to the same events (high xp vs low).
I think my point is ... With games requiring players it seems that Fate's Harvest approach may be a model to draw the most players. Also, to reply to the question posed in the title: No amount of XP is too much.
Then when it's all over and the rest of you are ready for Dead Animal Pickup, I'm gonna go balls deep into Dahl. But only because she asked me to. Sweet-like. - Riddick (2013)
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Yeah...that's what "and mistake that lack of enjoyment as it being a problem with those games" means!
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I said it earlier, but I really think the issue arises when you combine multisphere games with high xp.
In a single sphere setting, everyone can do basically the same thing; and high xp characters basically can do those same things too, just more of them. There are small boosts (Especially in Changeling with regards to high Wyrd bonuses and drawbacks) but by and large those balance one another out and don't always come into play.
When you're working with a multisphere game, though, you start off with people doing similiar things (mostly relying on skills and low level powers that boost those skills/rolls) but as the XP creeps higher and higher, what players can do with it begins to vary wildly; and it's not always the most balanced of distributions. For example, at starting level a Werewolf, a Mage and a Vampire are more or less on an even keel. For the lower end of the balance, the Werewolf tends to have the edge - especially in purely physical contests. In the midrange, vamps tend to excel because many of their powers don't have much that resists them and they can afford a wider spread. At the high end, Mages are practically godlike compared to the other two by sheer value of flexibility.
This also has the ancillary effect of wearing on staff; which does tend to kill even the most enthusiastic ST's desire to come up with stuff. You not only need to know All The Things, but you also need to know every little detail of the rules and how they interplay or play off one another for basically every power listed in every book you're STing for. -
I think the tier chunks functioning similar to the concept of alt limits is a viable call, with small gains (if any, since 'none' is a viable option) going forward from there based on whatever structure someone is interested in implementing (you do you, theoretical game designer, you do you).
I also think this is a good way to provide a means of handling the 'I want my character to advance and progress as the story flows and in the directions it dictates' in a way that unbinds that growth from a standardized XP gain setup, in that someone could arguably make one character with the highest available XP amount, spend only a portion, and then have an on-hand bank larger than would normally accrue over time to spend from at will and as the story develops.
This lets the people who want to start as experts start there, and the people who enjoy the story of their evolution into expert (even if it's in a somewhat condensed timeframe) to remain within the same general point ranges of one another without much hardship.
Some systems give you a generous amount to start, but wipe or lock anything unspent at chargen, which encourages someone to spend everything then or lose it. Some folks don't mind losing it, but it does put them at a notable system-based disadvantage compared to those spending the whole lot. It has a way of cutting off the people who like the 'getting there' story if they leave things unspent once the learning curve kicks in. The alternative is a lot of random 'uh well I guess maybe s/he's good at making pancakes so I'll throw a point into pancake-making?' useless nonsense if they do end up spending the points just for the sake of not wasting them, which will sometimes end up creating an interesting opportunity, but more often than not is just as much a waste as not spending them would have been.
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@killer-klown said in Experienced Tiers or How much is too much?:
I said it earlier, but I really think the issue arises when you combine multisphere games with high xp.
In a single sphere setting, everyone can do basically the same thing; and high xp characters basically can do those same things too, just more of them. There are small boosts (Especially in Changeling with regards to high Wyrd bonuses and drawbacks) but by and large those balance one another out and don't always come into play.
When you're working with a multisphere game, though, you start off with people doing similiar things (mostly relying on skills and low level powers that boost those skills/rolls) but as the XP creeps higher and higher, what players can do with it begins to vary wildly; and it's not always the most balanced of distributions. For example, at starting level a Werewolf, a Mage and a Vampire are more or less on an even keel. For the lower end of the balance, the Werewolf tends to have the edge - especially in purely physical contests. In the midrange, vamps tend to excel because many of their powers don't have much that resists them and they can afford a wider spread. At the high end, Mages are practically godlike compared to the other two by sheer value of flexibility.
This also has the ancillary effect of wearing on staff; which does tend to kill even the most enthusiastic ST's desire to come up with stuff. You not only need to know All The Things, but you also need to know every little detail of the rules and how they interplay or play off one another for basically every power listed in every book you're STing for.In this discussion you're referencing 1e nWoD Vampire, Werewolf and Mage, right?
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It holds to 2e as well; though they did tone down Mage significantly with a few simple <and necessary> rules. 1e Werewolf, though? No amount of xp could make those measure up to the other supers.
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@killer-klown said in Experienced Tiers or How much is too much?:
It holds to 2e as well; though they did tone down Mage significantly with a few simple <and necessary> rules. 1e Werewolf, though? No amount of xp could make those measure up to the other supers.
With 2e I don't believe this to be true.
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Answer #1 : Players need to be on relatively even terms. Disparities in XP levels just breeds saltiness. And at some point somewhere, there should be an xp cap. 900xp is just insane. Like, for me, that's not even from a "omg so strong mechanically!!!!!" kind of angle. It's just...goddamn, you can literally buy every fucking thing imaginable with 900 xp. Your character is a mary sue on steroids who can do everything. That game isn't going to be fun.
Give people enough xp to be AMAZING at their thing. 400, 500, 600? Who cares, go for it. Don't give them enough xp to be amazing at every fucking thing.
Answer #2: All you need is Staff who is willing to tell people NO when they want to do something that isn't done with people's fun in mind. If some 900 xp mage gets mad at a 900 xp werewolf, if the mage shows up to a scene and goes "i atomize the werewolf", you just say no. Find another way to work it out.
If there is some retarded nonsense going on like the mage wants to kill the werewolf because the werewolf tasted the mage's girlfriend's breastmilk or some crazy shit (thanks, Fallout MU), you just siteban all 3 people on the spot and move on.
The problem with a game like Fallcoast and obnoxiously high XP, is that there might as well be 0 oversight. Staff on TR and FC actively does not WANT to be involved in their game. They want everybody to STFU and go play in their corner and leave staff alone so they can go play in their corner. Like, dating back to when I actually played TR, you had Shane (vampire) running around with some silly effect 24/7 and going "HAHAHA I CAN'T DIE! MY HEART IS CUT OUT AND IN A BOX SOMEHWERE!!!! FUCKYEAH KINDRED VODOUN!!!!!" and people making Septemi characters specifically to kill him (being the vampire bloodline with a "dispel magic" power), people starting fights in Elysium with 0 consequences, people unfreezing coteries and instantly being given Prince, etc, etc, etc.
The answer is always going to be "is your staff any good?" XP tiers are irrelevant. With 10xp or 1000xp bad staff is bad staff and bad game culture is bad game culture.
Just because people "can" theoretically do things, doesn't mean staff should let them, on the game. And no, staff doesn't need to specifically HR out every little thing, they just need to be paying attention and willing to say no in specific cases, and not be afraid of temporarily upsetting players.
TL;DR Make xp tiers available to everybody. The only requirement should be "hey, can you like...put a little more effort into your character's story, and make sure they make sense? No 18 year old mages with 500 xp and a mastery, please." And please, put an actual hard cap somewhere.
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@ganymede said in Experienced Tiers or How much is too much?:
@thenomain said in Experienced Tiers or How much is too much?:
This is what I honestly think about Tiers:
They're stupid.
Look, give everyone 300xp (or whatever) and then go back to the slower-xp system that WoD/CoD expects.
Throwing people all over the map for what they can and can't get involved in just tweaks me the wrong way. I can elucidate, but for the moment it's just a knee-jerk reaction of "barf".
If you're referring to Fate's Harvest, the Tier system is there to allow people to have alts. You don't have to apply to become a Tier-5 PC, but you can only have one of them.
I wasn't talking about any particular game (though I admit with some irony that I forgot that Fate's Harvest has them). I was lamenting that tiers don't really do anything for a game.
It's possible that the way FH is doing it means that you're playing five distinct types of characters (one per power level). I don't know the long-term effect of it so I don't know if it's good or not, but this is the closest I can be to being optimistic about them.
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
@thenomain said in Experienced Tiers or How much is too much?:
It's possible that the way FH is doing it means that you're playing five distinct types of characters (one per power level). I don't know the long-term effect of it so I don't know if it's good or not, but this is the closest I can be to being optimistic about them.
It means you can do that, yes. It also means that no one person can have more than one alt starting at the highest tier. That's in stark contrast with The Reach and Fallcoast, where you could have a slew of PCs at the highest XP level.
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
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@ganymede said in Experienced Tiers or How much is too much?:
@thenomain said in Experienced Tiers or How much is too much?:
It's possible that the way FH is doing it means that you're playing five distinct types of characters (one per power level). I don't know the long-term effect of it so I don't know if it's good or not, but this is the closest I can be to being optimistic about them.
It means you can do that, yes. It also means that no one person can have more than one alt starting at the highest tier. That's in stark contrast with The Reach and Fallcoast, where you could have a slew of PCs at the highest XP level.
What is the goal of either method? That is, what is it you think that makes one method better than another?
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
@thenomain It means that there are going to be different power levels you can target for plots/etc. There will always be that handful of high-powered characters -- and newbies aren't shut out of it by default. Those people (edit: the day one created dinos), if they have alts, will necessarily also have lower level characters for mid-range or lower level storylines.
This isn't something to overlook in terms of its value. It means on Player's Day One, they can be involved with the same big bads as the dinos.
At the same time, simply being a dino doesn't mean someone is necessarily going to be a big bad themselves, because they may have used their higher tier character slot up for a different alt.
Without this sort of breakdown, a system that works like TR/FC's ultimately means that all of that dino player's alts are all big bads, and all newbies are stumbling over their own feet with starting stats. Though the newbies of today catch up in six months to the dinos of yesterday, tomorrow's newbies face the same slog.
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@thenomain said in Experienced Tiers or How much is too much?:
@ganymede said in Experienced Tiers or How much is too much?:
@thenomain said in Experienced Tiers or How much is too much?:
It's possible that the way FH is doing it means that you're playing five distinct types of characters (one per power level). I don't know the long-term effect of it so I don't know if it's good or not, but this is the closest I can be to being optimistic about them.
It means you can do that, yes. It also means that no one person can have more than one alt starting at the highest tier. That's in stark contrast with The Reach and Fallcoast, where you could have a slew of PCs at the highest XP level.
What is the goal of either method? That is, what is it you think that makes one method better than another?
I remember running a scene on The Reach for the End of the World storyline in which I had this big eye-thing that shot a laser from its one eye.
Yes. I did that shit. Deal.
Anyway, I hit this one dude's character--some Mage, fuck if I recall the name--and he goes "HOW DID IT DO THAT MUCH DAMAGE? I HAVE [insert insane amounts of Armor and Health and whatnot]". So I told him to bring it up after the scene.
And he comes all incensed about it and he tells me he thinks it's unfair he was hurt when he has all these defenses and I just was like, "well, yeah. It's that powerful BECAUSE everyone here has all these fucking insane stats--otherwise where's the risk of THE WORLD ENDING?"
I mean of course he didn't get the point because LOL the world would be different if logic triumphed that easily, but YEAH.
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@thenomain said in Experienced Tiers or How much is too much?:
What is the goal of either method? That is, what is it you think that makes one method better than another?
I believe the goal of The Reach and Fallcoast is to allow everyone to get to a high XP level, irrespective of the number of alts at that level. Fate's Harvest is clearly stated to be a place where people can play high-Wyrd changelings, but they only allow one alt at the highest level.
I like Fate's Harvest better because it limits the number of high-powered alts per player.
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
