@HorrorHound Possibly, but is that how it is handled now? It seems more likely games would use that as a method to allow an XP discount or justification rather than adding 50 XP by fiat to a character sheet.
How is it too specific? My hope had been to avoid that. Even the example was the most generic case.
@WTFE Mu, indeed. I'm pleased to see that we have some of the same touchstones.
To Conan and starting off weak, I don't think an XP tax requires low starting XP. I selected that because it made the math quicker. Chronicles of Darkness made the interesting move from increasing costs per dot to flat costs per dot. There is no longer an asymptotic curve to eat ever increasing XP.
Depending on the automated XP amount, a system can support a strong mid-level starting character as easily as a 0 XP starting character. I find that the tails of the bell curve suffer with rules intended for moderate characters. Starting characters are more fragile than they should be, and characters with traits over 5 and roll modifiers are too powerful. Not too powerful for a campaign, but for the basic rules. Exploding dice and reduced thresholds are problems as much as assets. Powers that allow for multiple or contingent actions make ordering the action difficult.
Note, these are dice systems. There are no roleplay issues with either, and both can make for a fun experience.
There is a significant difference in a world class character with extensive contacts, allies, and status and a combat monster. I'm trying to avoid those distinctions as much as possible as some variance is desirable.
I think this might address accomplishment without maintenance. It provides punctuated points ("minor milestones" in FAE parlance) to change your character. It could allow a player to neglect stats so they can increase in others as they become important. The extreme case is just that. It would be a rash player who wouldn't keep back some XP to spend when they knew they would need it.
A system like this wouldn't make much sense for Fate or D&D. I could maybe make a case for Unisystem, but I was thinking of CoD. Chronicles of Darkness offers nothing for character advancement that isn't an increase of power or resolving a story. Since I didn't know of any other games that might have similar progression and a different way of handling it, I decided to ask.
@Bobotron Yes, it's based on time-learning, and use it or lose it. If you gain 2 XP per week, and it costs you 15 XP twice a year to maintain your base, that leaves you 74 XP a year to spend over your base. It might be helpful to think of it like the rocket equation: you want to get mass into space, but you have to take your fuel, which is more mass. That means you need more fuel. There is a point where you can't take more mass or more fuel because your engines are only so good. How good your "engines" are is your cap. If you can't maintain your very powerful character, you will naturally come to a point where automatic XP and the tax balance each other out.
I've never heard of anyone doing it, so I'm asking the groupmind if anyone else has to see what their experience with it is like.
@WTFE Great questions. I'll preface by saying I thought of this in my car when I got tired of listening to music. I was on my way back from professional training, and I was thinking about how RPG characters hit some magical threshold and never have to retrain. It must be nice.
I'm not sure how much of the difference between tabletop and MU gaming is real and how much is perceived, but everyone seems to want something different. I've reached the point in my consideration that I'd like some outside input.
@Bobotron The multiple objects usually comes when I implement other people's code. For instance, I just spawned a new TinyMUX instance from the 2.12 branch and the SGP globals weren't loaded in at startup, so I had to @startup. I have my own block of extended game functions that I tote around, which also has its own. Were I to implement something else, like @Thenomain's GMCCG code, there's a function object there that also needs to belong to the custom functions list.
So it could be a long entry under #1, it could be @startup on multiple objects, or it could potentially be an object that scans its contents. I was just curious what other people do.
Update: This has been a great conversation. It seems like this hasn't been tried before. I've been thinking of it as stat maintenance after talking with you all. Stats become capital, XP becomes currency, and capital depreciates. You can invest in existing infrastructure or create new infrastructure, and everyone get an allowance that lets them be competitive and have fun. The rest is up to your enterprising spirit.
Has anyone tried or played in a game that used an experience tax? If so, I am interested to hear how well it worked.
If you're unfamiliar with the idea, here is a brief outline using round numbers and a CoD system.
Example
Adam has earned 50 experiences and has spent 40 of them.
His XP comes from a combination of automatic XP and participation.
Adam gains automatic XP based on the 40 XP he's spent, not the 50 XP he's earned.
Brad has earned 50 experiences and has spent 50 of them.
Brad's automatic XP is based on his 50 XP spent.
A periodic experience tax is due. All players know the schedule, and some prepare by not spending their full XP. Each stat is assessed and there is a tax due of one beat per dot. This is a simplified value. It may be better to use 10% of the cost to buy the dot instead of a flat value.
Adam is a doctor and wants to keep his Medicine 4. He pays 4 beats to keep it at 4 because it is important to his character. A year ago, he bought a 2 points of Firearms because there were rumors of a monster roaming his neighborhood. The firearms skill isn't important to him, so he elects to only spent 1 beat to maintain the first dot of firearms.
He needs 44 beats to maintain the character creation base of 5/4/3 attributes, 11/7/4 skills, and 10 points of merits. Further, Adam has spent 40 XP in skills, resulting in 20 more dots, which means 20 more beats due. Adam would need 66 beats, or 13 experiences and 1 beat to keep his sheet as it is. He's willing to let a few things, like Firearms slide.
Adam's sheet is almost the same, but he's lost a step on a few of his skills.
Brad spent all his XP despite knowing the XP tax was coming. This is like going all out and burning the candle at both ends. Not only has he working a full time job and going to college at night, but he's been trying to solve the mystery of his father's disappearance.
He has no experience to spend, so all his stats decrease by one. This seems brutal, but if you max out your credit cards and spend your entire savings, you will also be in trouble. Brad's effective power level drops as he burns out from doing too much all at once. But, this also reduces his spent XP, which means he acquires experience faster than Adam.
Notes
Automatic XP must be configured to allow a character to maintain a character at a soft cap without decay. The number for the soft cap is immaterial.
Automatic XP is awarded based on XP spent, not XP earned.
Experience gained through participation or kudos is the way to increase power beyond the soft cap.
The tax cost is flat per point, but may vary between attributes, skills, merits, etc. Characters can be tall or wide, but seldom both.
Players always know when the next tax is due and how much it costs. This could even a display on the character sheet.
Players may decide not to maintain a stat and focus their attentions elsewhere. This allows them to rework their character over time or take a crash course in an emergency.
A system like this would likely pair well with a refractory period before raising a stat again.
I have seen some objects that run their own @startup that scans and registers functions. I assume it should be possible to create an object that scans all objects in a location, such as an auxiliary room, and registers the functions.
I would be interested to hear how others have handled it, and any lessons learned along the way. It seems like a measure of control versus duplicated work.
@Thenomain Right, and it works well for a currency system if you're not using it to fuel code. If you take that approach, a global balance would still be nice to have. You'll also need to code an object to handle paychecks, because the paycheck configuration parameter is global and a daily allowance based on signing in. I'd suggest leaving that at 0 and then looking at paycheck as a monthly job, just like it would have to be for rent.
@Lotherio I have been thinking of the necessary functions for a system like this, and I have come to the conclusion that it is much more workable if you don't attempt to implement it as an economy and go with a currency approach instead.
To only approach it as currency, you should only need the following:
Staff: create currency, destroy currency, global balance, and paycheck
Players: transfer currency to player, transfer currency to object (if you want player vending), pay currency to object (if you have OOC equipment vending or rent)
You can get more complicated than that, but if you create/destroy currency you never have to worry about the difficulty of generating a closed loop economy. Create/destroy is used for quest rewards or non-standard purchases. Global balance shows the funds of all characters. Paycheck is a monthly cron job to call create for each player according to an attribute, like resources or a fiat allowance.
Transfer currency to player is a direct payment for a good or service. If a player owns a vending machine, it's just transfer to object, which then transfers to the owner player.
I would suggest rent money be destroyed, even if a player character owns the building. They need to reflect their spending balance with the same attribute, like everyone else as there is no depreciation.
This has been interesting to think about, and with sufficient soft coding I'm sure you could make a real estate game. Was that the intention, or just to have money in the pocket?
@Thenomain Thank you for the warning about substitution parsing. Separate grids lends itself well to most instances, but I can see situations where peering and Twilight are useful.
@surreality You could do brackets. It's not unlike making dark staff visible to other dark staff, but not players or showing the destination DBREF of an exit to builders but not others. Why [John Doe] in the contents list instead of [A Presence] or some other anonymizing tag?
@Apocalycious Thank you for looking into the Haunted Memories implementation. It seems like there are some positive implementation of WOD Realms and Reality Levels. Were there any issues that came up because of this?
@Lotherio I'm unfamiliar with the Pennmush economy. What does it entail? Is the currency separate from the default? I'm curious because I long ago removed generic resources/pay from my personal games and replaced it with a currency economy after seeing it work relatively well with D&D games.
@HorrorHound Putting a designator to indicate someone is there but in another reality is interesting. This would make @conformat more complicated, but I suspect that's already the case for anything that's going to require the rx/txlevels commands. I think indicating presence by substitution may be more important than flagging players that can see into both realities, but I would have to look into abilities or techniques that allow one player to see into another realm without being seen in return.
@Seamus The OOC note, or something functionally similar, should be relatively easy to implement. With enough work, I imagine it could be limited to a specific ability if one were inclined to represent the ability to sense ghosts or lurking horrors. Would it be jarring to accompany that note with an emit? When involved with a scene, you don't necessarily perform regular looks to see the updated room contents.
@ThatGuyThere I suspect this may be one of the more successful strategies. It has always seemed like a balancing act between IC and OOC privacy, not just of the scene, but of the character. Someone might not wish to reveal that they could see into the Twilight, and since Twilight already sees back into the base reality, that's fair. Setting your power on or off may be a good way to cut down on those distractions. The Auspex/Obfuscate war might also be helped by this, allowing you to activate a minor level of the power without giving away your full abilities. Were those the commands used to pose for the different levels? I had wondered how to implement the new commands without being obnoxious about it. That seems reasonable.
@Sunny I have noticed that, which is why I asked. Is there a way that you would be comfortable with it, or a particularly egregious breach that should be watched for? Names aren't important, but the basics might be instructive for what to avoid. For instance, perhaps Reality Levels only work in public spaces. For private locations, such as homes, it's assumed that players are going to work it out for themselves.
@Apocalycious I vaguely recall that from Haunted Memories, but I didn't play a character who could really take advantage of it. I do think that fully alternate realities should have their own grid, but coterminous realities can rely on the rx/txlevels. After all, it's potentially possible to pull a mundane into those worlds for a story and having them be utterly blinded when they get there would be unhelpful. Was there anything you particularly liked about their use of Reality Levels? This sounds like it might be one of the more successful implementations.
@skew I believe the TinyMUX implementation uses WOD Realms to hold the alternate descriptions, such as wraithdesc and faedesc. Realms and Reality Levels seem to correlate to two different implementations. Realms holds the descs and allows for limited perceptive differences, such as seeing a character hiding with Obfuscate or peering into the Umbra to see a spirit. Reality Levels appears to take this to its logical extreme and even room descriptions, emits, and other things are given bitwise permissions to determine who and what can perceive them. This sounds like a good use of the Realms code, and I think the faedesc is probably the most common implementation of Realms.
@Ashen-Shugar Are there any particular issues you would look for in an implementation like that? Thinking of it as a pocket dimension can be instructive, and with diligence, the grid could be shared among users without ever knowing or allowing crosstalk. I think it might be interesting to use it for time travel, which would be unlikely to have peering or multi-dimensional characters.
Does anyone make good use of these? If so, how have you implemented it in your game and what makes it so successful?
It seems the MU community at large has a concern (historically, or anecdotally inspired) with the Dark flag, and perhaps some of this has translated to using Reality Levels/WOD Realms, since it allows multiple people to share the same room or allows someone to be in a room without being visible to all players.
@Rince This looks promising and I'm setting it up now. I've been pondering what system to use for an Eclipse Phase game. This might be the one.