RPGs

[aumentou]

So, here's a thing that annoys me about RPGS, and that I've noticed particularly in live games: the disparity between how fast characters learn in game, and how fast they learned before the gmae started.



Take, for example, EOS, a rubber sword LARP. Characters start with six skill points of advantages, at least one point of which will be cultural and therefore can't be changed. Fine, right?

Wrong. Characters who go to events can learn 2 points worth of stuff per event (in the gap referred to as "downtime" between events) from other characters who teach them. Even if there aren't teachers, you can learn one point worth of stuff just by experimenting. There are three events a year, so in your characters entire life up to the first event you learned exactly as much as you're going to in two (slow learning) years.

This is somewhat incongruous if you're 22. By the time you get to 30 it's just fucked up. By the time you get to 40 you've probably either got used to it or quit LARPing.

This isn't a one-game thing either - it's really common. Take WoD games: one live game per month gets the character 4 XP. One downtime gets a minimum of 1 XP and a maximum of 3. So you get at least 5XP a month, and have a rules cap of 10 (you can go to other peoples' games to get more than 7). You start play with a dot-build system (which is stupid and encourages min-maxed stats) plus 50xp plus another 40 if you're playing in a system with MC "bumps" (MC is a giant fuckup and the bumps are worse, but we'll leave that too). The dot-build system buys you, depending on what you pick and what system it is, somewhere between 250 and 400 XP worth of stuff on top of the basic-stats-at-1-because-otherwise-you'd-be-dead. So you've got a character with somewhere between 300 and 450 XP seperating them from birth.

Which, if you back-track it on the assumption that you're not learning faster now you're old, means your character is between 5 and 8 years of age.

This just gets worse if you try and have a background in which you've been around a while. In theory, my changeling character has been living in sheffield for 25 years, during all of which time she has been an adult in a state of continuous learning. In a year and a half of play she's picked up 99 XP, probably. In the previous 24 years of adult life, and the 50 years of magical prison before that, and the 15 years of actual humanity before that, she picked up 50 XP and her dots build which works out as about 441 XP on a baby statline (I could have munchkinned it a bit more, but I didn't).

If she'd accrued XP during the last 24 years at the same rate she's been picking it up in play, she'd have an extra 1400, give or take.

Even if she'd picked it up at the rate of one per month, she'd STILL have 238 more, or thereabouts. That's massive. It's huge. It's also really stupid and annoying.

There's this trope in RPGs that you start off as some schmuck and end up as demi-gods. I hate this trope. I don't mind the prospect of advancement, per se, but having the start point being "zero" and the end point being "godlike" is two problems. Having the start point being "professional with a human breadth of skills and techniques" and the end point being "famous master/mistress of some field, with some other interests they're not bad at either" would be less brain-manglingly insensible.

Rant over.

Comments

[springmaker.livejournal.com]

Experience is a great teacher they do say and I guess that when you become an adventurer life changes, you either learn quick or you die young. I think the general effect being sought may be that of a film where a character learns and evolves quickly for dramatic effect, although it may all get a bit silly if you play the same character for ten years. For a really stupid system try Traveller where life is so exciting you can actually die during character creation.

[the-shoveller.livejournal.com]

I've defended Traveller's life path system before and I'll do it again. The death at character generation exists as a game balance mechanic - it's only a consideration in the career paths with the highest returns (e.g. military, scout). The threat of death exists because otherwise no one would follow any other path (because the rewards of scout are just *better*). If there's the possibility that you might have to start again from scratch, there's an incentive to choose something less rewarding but safer.

[the-shoveller.livejournal.com]

One argument is that you earn xp for situations where you're under stress. One can live a quiet life earning very little xp, or a risky one with lots. PCs are the sort of people who do the latter. Doesn't work for non-xp systems like Eos though.

[mr-s-face.livejournal.com]

With respect, that's silly argument - at least when it comes to practical things. I know I personally have been in situations of high stress and come through them having learned fuck all in terms of practical skills. High stress might conceivably teach you how to relax under stress (better comp or resolve, maybe), but it isn't going to teach you how to do complicated sword moves or how to do better needlework.

[the-shoveller.livejournal.com]

That's an argument that "experience" and "training" have no intrinsic connection. Yet we place a great deal on emphasis on "life experience" as a criterion of how competent someone is (q.v. "veteran").

[mr-s-face.livejournal.com]

I would suggest that experience and training are often both useful in different ways. Training teaches you how to do things. Experience teaches you the little snags that come up, and checks that you can adapt to them when they arise. Both are useful, but if you have to just pick one, I'd pick training, because experience isn't as good a teacher of technique.

Your example "veteran", is someone who was trained first, and then gained experience. We don't take refugees of war-torn areas (experience without training) and call them soldiers.

[the-shoveller.livejournal.com]

Then perhaps you'd prefer separate experience and training mechanics. I know there are games that follow that route, but I couldn't name them off the top of my head.

[mr-s-face.livejournal.com]

Actually, I probably would. But it'd be pretty complicated.

[rat-lord.livejournal.com]

Corporation does something like this. You can spend downtime training skills/some stats untill you hit a certain level then you have to spend xp on them. The xp you gain from training doesn't have to immediately increase your skill it gets invested untill you have enough to increase it.
you can also just spend xp to increase stuff as well. As a system it seems to work quite well.