Awarding Experience or Karma
Erudite:
Thanks for the explination Dionysus!
Eero Tuovinen , it sounds like a good method you use as well.
Kevin Smit:
I've found that experience awards are one of the more contentious aspects of rpgs. The thing you have to remember is that experience is a reward system, and reward systems modify behavior. If xp/ karma is gained solely by killing things, the characters will find ways to kill things (and not look for alternate methods). I've found that my groups are fairly intolerant of reward systems that lead to differences in reward (why did HE get more xp than ME?). Players across the board want to feel like they're progressing. The system that i ended up using was just to allow a progression every few sessions (depending on play time). It satisfied the players that their characters were getting better while avoiding all of the minutia of what behaviors produce the reward. Since the game "difficulty" rises in accordance with players progression, nothing really changes except the tools available to the characters. I've found that progression is more about the players' subjective feeling about their place in the game world than about promoting or punishing particular actions.
The Dragon Master:
Kevin Smit: I'd have to disagree with your assesment of "gamers" and reward mechanisms. For my own part, I prefer a game without any type of "experience" mechanic, or one where that mechanic is... trivial (i.e, Sorcerer and Classic Traveller). I prefer to focus on the characters story*, rather than on raising the stats. If I can't build the character I want to play when I start, I really am not interested in playing in the game period, and having created a character I want to play, I'm not terribly interested in changing the character in the (seemingly) arbitrary way that Experience Points allow for. I'm sure I'm not alone in that, though I'm almost certainly in the minority.
Erudite: Out of curiosity, do your players prefer the game to go this way? That is to say, having their gameplay rewarded if it fits what you want from the player? Or is the standard you're measuring their gameplay from one that was agreed upon by group consensus? Have you had any "player mutiny" since you started doling out experience like this? I'd be interested to hear how the group dynamic (rather than game dynamic) has been altered by this... technique.
*By which I mean the general path that the characters life will take which I have in mind when I create it. An example is the Dragon Blooded magic user I made for Exalted. The whole point of that character was a downward spiral based on the story of Brigid. The character pursuing these mythical points of power in order to increase his own, only to find it was just a myth, and no such places existed, with him eventually running into the Wyld believing that they must have been swallowed up by the Wyld in the distant past.
Erudite:
Note: for a somewhat deeper look at the experience mechanic itself, check out this thread: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=27357.0 . I tried to define the experience mechanic to some degree.
Kevin, you’re right, any reward system will modify behavior at least to a minor degree, even if it only reinforces behavior. I also agree that characters progression in a game is very subjective.
The one thing that hopefully changes with a characters’ experience is that the players’ feel their characters are getting “better” or becoming “different” and that those differences effect the story and/or the setting. I don’t really know of any experience mechanism that really does all of this well right out of the box. I think making any experience mechanic, or any game mechanic for that matter, work well comes down to good group dynamics and a good GM that understands what the group as a whole wants.
What a group and individuals want can vary greatly, so I’m not sure there is a “best” way to handle the experience mechanic. For someone who wants to play a character like Dragon Master, this all pretty much irrelevant; unless the group has a mix of people who share this view and those who don’t.
As for my experience using this method of giving out experience, I have found it helped bring everyone together. The players get immediate feedback for their actions and I can see the players’ reactions to gaining experience. I never really have used this system to penalize a player for how they play their character. I just try to reward actions based on how well they fit the character and story.
I reward experience for pretty much everything the characters do. If they just want to run around and kill enemies, then they gain experience for it. However, if those actions fit the character, they get more experience. If those actions fit the story, they get more experience. If those actions do both, fit the story and character, they get the most experience.
The surprising thing that has happened is players earn experience a lot more evenly actually. When I just gave out experience at the end of the session, one or two players always seemed to have earned more. This was usually due to a chain reaction of them taking action that fit their character which then directed the situation to more situations that fit their character.
Once I started rewarding experience as the events unfolded, the players who had sat back more quickly learned how to get their characters more involved with the story as it fit their character. It has been a really positive reaction. All of the players quickly immerse themselves and their characters into the story which makes it very easy for me as the GM to provide situations and challenges they can all participate in. This has really had the opposite effect of “railroading” the players to get a cohesive CA.
So, my implementation of this method has allowed me to encourage all of the players, regardless of how they like to play, to get more involved in the story, which in turn provides many more opportunity for them to take action or role-play. This style and implementation didn’t happen overnight. This has been an ongoing evolution as the group dynamics and interests evolve, so have my ways of doing things. And, after GMing for almost 20 years, it was only about 2 years ago it all really started to gel together fully with everyone enjoying it. Up until then there was often one or two players who didn’t get really involved or complained that they were not getting enough opportunity to earn experience.
The way I do things in what I reward experience for and way may not work for a lot of groups. However, I think using some type of method like I described where the reward for the experience mechanism is given real time, can help create a more cohesive game.
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