Experience Gain in nWoD 2.0 - An analysis and shit

Thenomain

For instance I might want to play a professional boxer but have no interest in having scenes around him sparring, working out, having actual fights

Then you shouldn't be playing a boxer.

Let me clarify: Most tabletop systems are about extraordinary people doing extraordinary things. If you are playing a boxer and your contribution to these extraordinary situations has nothing to do with boxing, then yes, I'm going to say you are playing your own character wrong at worst, that you don't get to increase your boxing skill at best.

Most tabletop systems don't award XP for downtime, and it's only the skill-based games I've seen that give GM the power to say "no" to spending. Really, the GM can say "no" to anything, but would be a complete jerk to do so.

Now, I'm talking in tabletop terms because the systems we're talking about were designed for tabletop. The situations that you're talking about are unique to Mu*s, and I generally think that you're smart enough to come up with some ideas that help transition from the tabletop to online. You don't, mind you, so you sound like you're shying at flies or making mountains out of molehills.

This is the preface to the following: WoD gives XP for showing up. You were there. You participated. How you take it from here is going to depend, but I prefer to think that showing up on a Mu* at all is worthy of a cursory thanks. If you want to use that cursory thanks to up skills you never use, then go for it. Call it a part of downtime.

RfK apparently folded the 'participation' part up into what kind of RP you were engaged in. Weighing one over another is smart. Hard to quantify and probably harder to qualify, but I like it. It's akin to a GM saying, 'Well this was a light day, so only 1 xp for everyone.' This is part of the table's rules and a right that's been given to the GM, sometimes explicitly. Without a GM, we need to find other solutions, and this one hits the right notes for what the RPG was going for.

This post has no grand conclusion. I've lost my train of thought, so I'm ending it there.

edit: @Misadventure asked me:

Did you miss that Arkandel was saying he didn't want to play up the practice/training side of being a boxer?

If this was the point, then I missed it like a skull-shaped meteorite misses the Earth, and Arc and I are in agreement.

What I thought was being said was, "I shouldn't have to play a boxer to raise boxing stats." I like my response to that—if you want to raise boxing then you better damn well have boxed somewhere along the line of the character's adventures—even if it's one-hundred percent inappropriate to what was actually said.

Pyrephox

@Sunny said:

Has seriously no one ever played in an experience limited campaign in tabletop?

I'm totally on board for an experience limited game, especially if it keeps things street level. But I do think the suggestions to limit cap or spending, but not both, have merit - every restriction is going to cramp people's fun to some extent - you want to make the fewest restrictions possible, while still crafting the game that you want to run. A low rate of XP gain, and a cap on XP acquisition, would seem to be enough - a med-to-high rate of gain THAT YOU CAN'T SPEND is just going to be frustrating, without a trade off of fun.

Ganymede

@Sunny

I think the resistance can come down to the common opinion that "if I earn X, I should be able to use it how I see fit."

People can wrap their heads better around this: "I can only gain X, so I shall only spend X."

I'm in the camp that you ought to limit gain, rather than spending. The limit on spending is rational to me, but it will meet a lot more push-back. This thread is a good example.

Sunny

@Ganymede

I anticipated push-back and insult flinging, believe me. It's not the only aspect of the game that's going to do it, either (I'm actually really surprised there wasn't an enormous stir over the ability for PCs to come back from the dead). If I end up with no one playing there, I can just turn it into an online tabletop for my playgroup or something. I'm also aware that people are operating without the full picture (since I haven't actually provided it), so I've got to take feedback through that lens as well.

mietze

@Sunny I think a lot of TR policies kind of broke that barrier for a lot of WoD people. If you can bring back a permafrozen PC at will with no consequences (and having earlier transferred 100 percent to a new PC that you're playing now) then I don't see why people would fuss about Hi I'm Back From the Dead much either. And there has always been staff/GM fudging across genres and time too about the get out of death free card. I don't think it's /that/ much of a stretch.

Thenomain

Coming back from the dead is a huge spec-fiction trope. Also a huge video game trope. It's honest to the meta game rules, so it will probably only come up in argument about a game's internal consistency versus its external consistency. That's where I see it.

It's also not rare in RPG rules when they want to talk about that character death issue.

Misadventure

I was actually entertained by some Apocalyse Engine hacks that allowed a chance to retcon events. Both the direction to describe how things were set up or different in the past than it appeared, and the random results that skewed perfect player escape hit a solid note with me.

Arkandel

@Thenomain said:

Did you miss that Arkandel was saying he didn't want to play up the practice/training side of being a boxer?

If this was the point, then I missed it like a skull-shaped meteorite misses the Earth, and Arc and I are in agreement.

You can play a boxer and never land a punch in actual RP. You can play him the next day after a fight he won, all beaten up with a swollen face, bruised joints, limping around like he's a man thirty years past his actual age. You can have him deal with bookies trying to get him to throw a fight in due of his debts and the consequences of what that entails. You can play him being recruited by local petty mob bosses to go harrass store owners for protection cash.

I can keep going - my point is when it comes to playing a character staff often is of a mind to butt in where they're not needed and not do so when it's less ... flashy. Is the guy who sits in a room collecting charity XP and only shows up for violent PrPs to throw some dice only to vanish again afterwards better for the game than the afforementioned boxer who doesn't like to roleplay combat itself? (and mind you, I'm not that guy since I love training scenes, this is an example). And yet the former will thrive in a justifications-heavy system a lot more than the latter.

I find that to be the wrong approach. In trying to stop the theoretical example of the twink who only grabs punching-stats but doesn't roleplay them - which it doesn't accomplish anyway, as I just pointed out an obvious way among many this can be easily circumvented - we penalize players who for a variety of reasons won't play concepts that could be fun for many people to interact with. Maybe they don't like writing justifications, or staff doesn't know them when it's time to approve that Renown/whatever spend. Maybe it's a particular aspect of a profession's life they have in mind - an interesting, original part - and for some inexplicable reason they are told they are playing wrong. But the guy who sits in a room is playing right! Nuts.

Staff should stay out of these things unless they are needed - unless there's an existing, proven issue where someone's really being a jerk. Otherwise let folks spend their XP and play their characters! Don't get in the way, enable them to play what you think is missing. Do you think the boxer needs to throw more punches? Don't try to shame the guy into doing it, run a plot where his punches come into play. Make an event the pinnacle of a small storyline where he's actually in a fight with an NPC antagonist and get him an audience of other PCs.Pull him in with honey, not by pointing at some "THOU SHALL NOT DO THAT" rule.

Thenomain

There is no such thing as "proof" on Mu*s. I thought that we were beyond this.

Ganymede

@Thenomain said:

There is no such thing as "proof" on Mu*s. I thought that we were beyond this.

That's not a bad word. Presuming that evidence is accurate and untainted is simply folly.

Big difference, man.

Arkandel

@Thenomain said:

There is no such thing as "proof" on Mu*s. I thought that we were beyond this.

And yet we're not - can you explain what the difference between "show me logs of RP where you earned Wisdom 4" and "tell me how you earned Wisdom 4, but it has to have been in scenes and not a justification" is other than in semantics?

Thenomain

@Ganymede said:

[Proof is] not a bad word. Presuming that evidence is accurate and untainted is simply folly.

Big difference, man.

I'll bow to your greater pedantic powers, but in the face of what reads to me like "staff have no right to get in my face without proof", I will use the words that I know to point out the ignorance involved. It is staff's job to maintain the theme and setting and game flow and etc. etc.

I have to say at this point I have no idea what conversation @Arkandel thinks we're having.

Cobalt

@Thenomain, I think what @Arkandel is saying is that staff should not overly design games (in this case XP policies) that would dictate how people RP or play their characters. That is to say: If staff are requiring that to improve a skill you have logs of your character using that skill, then they are dictating what your character RPs. What if you're playing an academic type? You find it much more interesting to see how not-academics react to your character, so you spend most of your RP in social situations rather than intellectual. But you feel like your character should go up a dot in academics. Should you be forced to churn out the requisite number of 'reads a book' scenes to go up in academics?

I have no opinion on this particular case, but it's what I think Arkandel is trying to say.

Ganymede

@Thenomain said:

I'll bow to your greater pedantic powers, but in the face of what reads to me like "staff have no right to get in my face without proof", I will use the words that I know to point out the ignorance involved. It is staff's job to maintain the theme and setting and game flow and etc. etc.

The words you are using are wrong, and you're not ignorant enough to fall back on them. Don't be like them.

I'm with you, though, that if you want to limit how fast people develop, throttle the XP gain -- don't set policies around what can be purchased.

Warma Sheen

Granted I'm not as big into MUSHing as most everyone else here but... Why have games been so eager to dole out tons and tons of XP? It has been given out fairly free and easy over most of the games I've been to. It seems like a game with much smaller XP dishing would help with a lot of the issues and gripes on staff side of things. It would be easier to build encounters, easier to set challenging plots, etc. On the player side it pushes you towards character development as your defining characteristic rather than being 'that one guy who can do X, Y, and Z'. Has there been any push in the direction of games with a much slower XP rate?

Bobotron

@Warma-Sheen
I think a lot of it boils down to a reward of some sort for participation. I like my XP too, but having hundreds and hundreds is crazy (anecdotal: I recently had about 200 XP to spend on a Changeling in the Lost LARP I'm part of. He was rounded where I wanted/needed him to be, so I bought some attributes and then jumped my Wyrd to 6, because I had nothing else to spend it on and the character HAD been spending a lot of time doing Wyrdly stuff).

I'm an advocate of staggered XP, XP caps per <X> period (like per month) and XP floor so that people come in with a chunk. I've found these three things to work out really well.

TNP

It's the culture of this particular game. Pern has no XP. Crystal Singer games had no XP. Most supers games have no XP. WoD? Not only expects XP but expects it fast. I'm not even sure what I'd spend 200 XP on.

Ganymede

@Warma-Sheen said:

Has there been any push in the direction of games with a much slower XP rate?

Absolutely, but it depends on what your definition of "slower" is. Eldritch and Reno have slower XP gains than The Reach, for instance.

Coin

@Ganymede said:

@Warma-Sheen said:

Has there been any push in the direction of games with a much slower XP rate?

Absolutely, but it depends on what your definition of "slower" is. Eldritch and Reno have slower XP gains than The Reach, for instance.

This depends. Eldritch is slower than Reno, but Reno has a consistent minimum of 2 XP per week, which is (give or take and never actually so around) the equivalent of 10 XP on The Reach. Sometimes on TR you got way more; but eventually, you got way less, which Reno does not apply. If Reno and The Reach ran concurrently, the most active people on Reno would outpace the most active people on The Reach in terms of raw experience points, and if we're talking "both games begin at 0", then it would happen very quickly. Eldritch scales back after six months, and then again after six more, and once more six months later.

Warma Sheen

Also, the cost of things on is much lower than on The Reach because of the GMC versions being used. 2xp a week flat, plus all the other ways to get xp adds up to very powerful characters very quickly.