[Golden Age RPG] Experience as a physical item in-game.
Enker:
Thanks everyone for all of your comments so far - they've all been very helpful and I'm keeping notes on all of the points raised.
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Ultimately I wonder what you are trying to achieve by having experience a physical resource. The natural result is that wealth and experience are now inextricably linked. That's the first consequence I saw. But what were your reasons for introducing the idea in the first place? That would help get a grip on the kinds of play that might come out of this idea.
A very fair question. When I began to put the system together I knew from an early stage that I wanted to approach progression from a different standpoint to most systems I had played, where experience was dolled out externally from the campaign after sessions and not a part of the game world. Mana became a physical representation of experience because of this. Character classes based around the idea that you were given a starting point and asked to create your own skills based on how you wanted the evolution of your character to develop and within confines deffined by your character's main profession, required a fuel that was easy to acquire but not massively useful in other ways (you'll notice that weapons and attack/defence values rely far more heavily on additing items and upgrading weapons.). Since characters have a limited amount of skill spaces we reasoned that players would be reserved in their creation or build on the strengths they'd already started. In setting terms Mana is crystallised energy that first came about over the course of the Mana Wars, though the full reasons why are being withheld so as to not interfere with the second season of the Radio Drama it is based on's story twists.
simon_hibbs:
I don't see the relationship between wanting players to be able to allocate 'advancement points' as they see fit and making advancement points physical. For example in GURPS the GM allocates advancement points to characters, and the players allocate them as they see fit to improve abilities, but these points are simply tracked on the character sheet. They have no in-game-world physical representation, so they can't be bought, sold or swapped. BRP based systems have players put check marks next to skills they have used successfully under stressful situations in play, and then have a chance to improve those abilities when the characters rest, but again the check marks are a meta-game mechanic and aren't represented in the game world, so again they can't be traded.
It seems to me that you don't need the many side-effects of making character advancement physical in order to achieve your goals.
Having said that, it's an intriguing idea and it's fun to consider the possible consequences.
Simon Hibbs
Enker:
But the whole point I was making was that too many games use experience with no rationalisation in-game. Throwing experience at players in downtime and having them upgrade between sessions with no realisticly explained gaming reason in-setting. In creating a physical representation of experience you are giving both a story based reason why characters grow and adding an item of contension between players. Throw a piece of experience into the middle of three players and see how they react rather than letting them all have one at the end of the session and spend it outside the game. By making experience more real you create new situations and don't break the sense of world.
Baxil:
Quote from: Enker on March 28, 2011, 01:15:41 AM
By making experience more real you create new situations and don't break the sense of world.
I'm curious; have you had a chance to playtest the system yet? How has that worked out in play for you? My gut reaction is that, for many groups, the unintended consequences could eclipse the benefits, but arguing about gut reactions here isn't going to help you much. (By "unintended consequences" I mean things like: The first time a player loses a bought-and-paid-for ability because a fellow PC stole their mana, your game is going to end explosively.)
I also agree with Simon that the side effects of a mana crystal economy are worth exploring. I'll go farther, and say they have potential as an explicit feature. For purposes of argument, let's say a clear mana crystal (1 CP) is worth 50 coin. Johnny Badguy is the evil millionaire head of an evil corporation and goes on a shopping spree. He maxes all Traits out to 10 from his starting scores of 3; fills all 11 Skill slots with game-breaking Level 3 skills; and makes a bandolier out of mana crystals so he has a spare 100 levels of healing always on hand. This requires (168 + 440 + 100) = 708 CPs of mana crystals. At 50 coin per, that's a total cost of 35,400. Anyone in this world with 35,000 coins can walk into a store and become an end boss!
Now, 35K is a lot of money, when the game's best weapons and relics max out at ~1000. But there are going to be a lot of NPCs with those sorts of accumulations -- heads of Households, Judges, Monarchs ... exactly the sorts you'd expect to make great villains.
And if the PCs want to try the same thing -- they'd better have some serious connections. Because the mana salesman, by definition, has the crystals on hand to max out his Social trait ... how much were they paying for those crystals again? ;-)
Enker:
I've playtested it across three groups of three - each different people at the time of writing this. Interestingly they each took a very different approach to their use of physical experience (Mana). The original reason I started this thread was to see if people knew of other systems with physical exp and if there were any big problems that had cropped up when playing. I'm pleased that people have taken enough of an interest to debate it and help me out with this issue. Anyhow, the groups I GMed with worked out thusly:
Group 1 - Freelancer / Nightsire / Phantom Brave [Three Sessions]
Were marginally competative, especially since the Nightsire wanted to ingest Mana to learn skills and the Phantom Brave wanted to keep the Fury alive as a bound pet, meaning that there would be none. The Freelancer chose instead to purchase Mana from a local shop, however had little cash and so had to complete several tasks beforehand. They dived on each piece and normally made rolls to determine who snatched it first.
Group 2 - CORE Soldier / Healer / Tech Knight [Four Sessions]
Much more conservative, possibly due to the dungeon-bound nature of their campaign. They saved up Mana comunally and then after each session took stock of what they had found lacking in their previous day's adventure and spent accordingly. Eventually the Healer had a second level healing spell (based on evolving his first level class skill) and the other two created base level 1 skills to cover a basic counter attack and to build a small two-way communications device (phone).
Group 3 - Cut-Purse / Bard / Riskbreaker [Two Sessions]
Interestingly this goup had a more ‘heist’ styled campaign and decided to all create skills based around sneaking in their own ways. The Bard learned a way to charm, the Cut-Purse to move without making a noise, and the Riskbreaker added points to his Social trait in order to talk his way out of some situations rather than have to fight. This scenario had the group backed by a wealthy investor who made a gift of some Mana to them at the start of their mission.
In all these sessions the persuit of Mana has of course been secondary to more pressing campaign based story elements (else what would be the point in playing at all), with Mana only produced from slain monsters it isn’t possible to just wonder into a store and buy 1000 pieces. Most towns would have very few in stock if any, depending on the local monster population. For me the system has worked very smoothly so far, but of course I’m the guy who wrote it and so the game WOULD run smoothly when I GM it. I have arranged for a group to play GMed by another player, which I will sit in on and take notes without participating to see how that goes.
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The first time a player loses a bought-and-paid-for ability because a fellow PC stole their mana, your game is going to end explosively.
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.
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