[Golden Age RPG] Experience as a physical item in-game.
Baxil:
Quote from: Enker on March 31, 2011, 12:05:35 AM
It is not possible to lose skills once they have been created, the Mana used is destroyed in the process and so is not stealable post-use.
Oh! ... Oh. Huh. The rules as written are ambiguous on that. Might be worth specifying (as well as mana prices).
I'm simultaneously relieved and disappointed. I think it's a much edgier choice to have your experience points be something that at any time you can convert, give away, or lose. This way, they are just a generic/intangible character boost that briefly spends a stage as a physical object. PCs shouldn't ever be banking more than 40 points at a time (the single most expensive thing you can buy, a Level 3 skill), and crystals are going to be a lot rarer because the spent ones never make it into the economy.
To answer the question you asked for your thread topic: Come to think of it, Fantasy Flight Games' Fireborn does have a partially physical XP system. PCs are reincarnated dragons, and to advance in rank, they need three different types of XP. There are Humanity Points (earned by dealing with present-day problems), Heritage Points (earned by reliving mythic-age problems via flashbacks, or otherwise connecting with their old self), and Hoard Points. Which are just what they sound like. Having physical objects that your mythic-age dragon once possessed gives you a tangible connection to your past self, and is necessary to strengthen your abilities.
Interestingly, these ARE vulnerable to theft - if you have 40 humanity points and 40 heritage points and a Rank 4 karmic item, you're level 4. But if you lose your karmic item, you drop down again until you can pick it back up (or a different, equally powerful item). This is mitigated somewhat by the fact that the value of the item is in your previous ownership ... so that the item has no power-up value for anyone else, only the basic karmicness. And stealing another dragon's hoard item won't do anything for you.
simon_hibbs:
Quote from: Enker on March 28, 2011, 01:15:41 AM
But the whole point I was making was that too many games use experience with no rationalisation in-game.
People learn stuff from experience, study and practice. Many games even have explicit links between in-game activity and ability improvement.
Do characters in your game world not learn from experience, training, etc? If they do, how do you model that?
Simon Hibbs
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