Flat/starting competency on MU*
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So I have often wondered what the standard WoD crowd would do if, presented with a WoD-style game, without XP gain. To make up for this, there is a starting competency level that all characters have to distribute... and that's it. No XP, no nothing, just... roleplay. I have seen it done on various themed MU*s like Transformers and such, but don't think I've ever seen a statted supernatural MUSH take this track.
To take the MET Vampire starting dots and scale them up, let's say, for skills: three things at 5, four things at 4, five things at 3, six things at 2 and ten things at 1, as an extremely rough example.
I wonder how this would go over in general.
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@bobotron said in Flat/starting competency on MU*:
So I have often wondered what the standard WoD crowd would do
Riot.
To make up for this, there is a starting competency level that all characters have to distribute... and that's it. No XP, no nothing, just... roleplay. I have seen it done on various themed MU*s like Transformers and such, but don't think I've ever seen a statted supernatural MUSH take this track.
More seriously now, for the nWoD in particular it comes down to powers (as in, Disciplines, Arcana, etc) and not attributes or stats. For most characters getting a +1 to their Dexterity won't make a noticeable difference, but for a similar cost upgrading their Glory from 3 to 4 could make a definite jump up.
Either way, I like statless systems. But what are you looking to achieve with this change? I think you should start with that before we can chip in on whether it would work or not.
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GarouMUSH did something like this using WtA rules back in the day. There were stats <attributes and backgrounds only, as I recall, no skills> and everything was done through rp and time rather than xp gain. Just about every stat needed justification, and usually a months-long wait before the raise went through. Gaining rank involved being involved and doing things IC to attain the sort of renown that might be relevant. Progression was ... glacial to say the least, but it was at it's height some of the best werewolf related rp available online (although a good part of that was likely due to the fact that it was single sphere and had, for the time, pretty stringent application requirements even for normal characters; other stuff was available on a limited basis, but basically as NPC's and you had to be an established player to app for one)
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Honestly, this only works if you give them "sets" of powers. Celerity becomes one power that makes them faster, Vigor becomes one power that makes them stronger, Dominate is mind-control, etc., etc. What I mean by this is get rid of levels and individual effects and make them "power over/of [theme]".
I'd also probably do the same with Attributes and Skills (maybe Attributes divided into 3 levels and Skills into 2 or even just 'if you have the Skill you're competent/expert and if you don't you're unskilled/average' depending on your prefered Skill type (Primary/Secondary/Tertiary).
A big part of WoD and CoD and most games with XP in general is being able to advance, grow in power, etc. The dice systems are built around it.
I mean, even in superhero games you have people being able to advance, learn new things, change their sheets. It's different in every game and definitely way more context-driven, but still.
"Excuse the hell out of you. He's a bag of dicks. I'm a carefully curated box of cocks." -- to @GirlCalledBlu upon being misrepresented.
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@bobotron said in Flat/starting competency on MU*:
I wonder how this would go over in general.
It depends on your player base.
That said, and it has already been said, nWoD 1E and 2E are built on the premise of advancement, 2E especially. If you eliminate XP as a mechanic, then you are also rendering null and void any power or merit that provides Beats, along with the Condition system. Regarding the latter, you are effectively gutting any of the risk-reward analysis in Vampire.
So, I'd say that, mechanically, you're going to need to adjust game mechanics. And then, you still have to deal with players bitching and wailing.
I don't think this solution to whatever problem you are trying to fix is worth the headache.
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@coin said in Flat/starting competency on MU*:
A big part of WoD and CoD and most games with XP in general is being able to advance, grow in power, etc.
I think most tabletop RPGs (and video game RPGs for that matter) are designed around this concept, so that's what people are most familiar with and generally expect.
There's a segment of the population that are perfectly happy without XP gain, as long as you let them make up the character they ultimately wanted right out of chargen. But there's another chunk for which the advancement is a large part of the enjoyment. If you flatten or cut the XP gain, you either need to substitute some alternate mechanism of advancement, or accept that a lot of those folks will get bored and leave.
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It's not necessarily 'advancement' per se, but definitely adaptation that I find to be important. If I make a social character that likes writing letters and so on, and events transpire to make them an outlaw on the run and all that, I'd want to be able to invest in some sort of combat or stealth or something along those lines.
A character whose skills and abilities are the same from the beginning of the story to the end haven't really had a chance to grow. So there'd definitely need to be some mechanism whereby IC effort = +sheet alteration/advancement.
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My general thought is to have a set of things that are volatile, meaning they can be gained, lost, stolen, destroyed, given etc. These tend to be things like status, rank, relationships, gear, investments of time and effort into making something (eg yourwards, a fortress, a company, a conspiracy, a successful band).
Everything else is a lot more static. You can give a budget for actual character growth, but this would be slow.
If someone wants the fun of growing from nothing, they can not spend their starting budget. If you have some sort of non-xp style benefit, you could pair gaining some of that with gaining access to xp at a pace faster than the growth for established characters.
I have a waggish sense of humor.
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@misadventure said in Flat/starting competency on MU*:
If someone wants the fun of growing from nothing, they can not spend their starting budget.
My concern with that is that there would be no 'competition' between those that choose to spend slowly and those that choose to min-max. Especially in nWoD, your stats and skills can (but don't always) directly impact your likelihood to hold certain jobs, and so forth.
