Streamlined Advancement for Conan

[Arkobla Conn]

And, I think, you've missed ours...This game screams for NOT being so mechanical. Advance them when you want...instead of being an accountant, you get mystery...

Eh?

I thought that your position was simply that you see slow advancement as not suiting your style of play. I have no problem with that.

Players tend to like it when their characters power-up. I know mine do, and I'm guessing yours do to, based on your own posts in this thread, where you promote faster advancement.

I also thought we had agreed that neither slow advancement or fast was intrinsically wrong, and you have not previously expressed the idea that allowing various advances to be staggered somehow precludes mystery (??) or turns the game into an accounting excercise (I would think feat selection and the like already do far more to promote this kind of play).

So, I guess I'm not seeing why you suddenly appear so opposed to my system.

Sorry for jumping back in the frey. I actually pulled way back when you seemed a bit put off by my original comments, so I deferred. I'm actually very against slow advancement...but, as we stated, that might be style.

I *LOVE* getting new abilities. And through my 30+ years of playing RPG's, it's a highlight to level. Now that we are older and have much less time on our hands, I found that getting exp in the standard way was soooo slow, we'd be stuck between 4-th and 7th level for over a year. There is too much to play, and not enough time, to be stuck. So, given that normal advancement is 'too slow' ... slowing it down is even worse! (for me).

You've done a great job of explaining how the system works...but fundamentally, not why. I get that you want to slow down the system...you can do that by not giving exp at all. I get that you want to give *some* bonuses, but you can do that 'in game'. For example - lets say that your group gets pushed into a desert, and they are forced to deal with the elements there. 2 game sessions later, they emerge, alive. Give them Desert Survival! Give them an extra Hit Die of HP's. Perhaps a bonus to Fort.

All I am saying is pull back from the mechanics. You, as the GM, have the right to set the pace. Take your cue from the book itself that asserts that there shouldn't even be experience points in this game...and build your assumptions from that point...

[This has been a facinating discussion. Please understand that NO offence is intended. You share a love for a fantastic game - and that is extremely important. Nothing I say should change how you feel about the game or how, ultimately, you run your sessions. Your players should feel very good about having someone who cares about what's going on doing the GMing...]

 

[SableWyvern]

Sutek:

Ok, your position is starting to make some sense to me.

I have actually felt a little tempted to make the system more comprehensive, but decided against it due to, as you say, the vast number of variables I'd need to track.

I agree that the system is not perfectly consistent because of that, but it is enough so for me and my players. I wouldn't consider this a major flaw, just a failure to take the system all the way to its logical conclusion.

It seems to me our differences are really more of style than anything else. As long as that's the case, I'm quite content for us to disagree.

Turim
I'm not using arbitrary GM allocation of XP in my campaign, but instead a modified version of the Silhouette XP award system. Originally, I tried tying this system to the default XP requirements, but realised in the end it was easier to start from scratch.

Since I am using fixed awards, it is much easier to scale the XP requirements as I see fit, rather than tailor the values of the awards to scale to suit an advancement schedule that was designed without my system in mind.

Essentially, changes to XP requirements were made completely indpendently of the ability purchasing system being discussed in this thread.

AK
I wasn't put off so much as simply working from a very different perspective. I've got no problem with discussing stylistic differences; I was a bit perturbed however, when from nowhere you suddenly seemed to be saying I was doing it Wrong.

Based on your most recent post, I would guess you weren't doing so.

As to Why? - You offer some excellent counter arguments as to "why not". Probably far more tangible reasons than the ones I can offer for my own reasoning.

I'll try and come up with a clearer explanation shortly. For the moment, I've just woken up, so I'll need to go get a coffee and have a think about it first. 8)

Oh, one other point before I wander off:

"Nothing I say should change how you feel about the game or how, ultimately, you run your sessions."

While I agree that no one should feel compelled to change the way they game because someone on an internet messsage board says they should, I know I've adapted and changed how I do things based on discussions like this. If you say something compelling enough, I'll take it on board. And, even if I don't make overt changes, this thread is at least getting me to take a closer look at how and why I do things, which never hurts.

 

[Arkobla Conn]

While I agree that no one should feel compelled to change the way they game because someone on an internet messsage board says they should, I know I've adapted and changed how I do things based on discussions like this. If you say something compelling enough, I'll take it on board. And, even if I don't make overt changes, this thread is at least getting me to take a closer look at how and why I do things, which never hurts.

 

[SableWyvern]

Ok.

So, why do I want a slower advancement?

Firstly, when running more gritty games, I have always tended to engage in a relatively slow rate of advancement. Certainly, well below the d20 standard. To some degree at least, I'm simply staying within my comfort zone, and doing things in a way that my own experience has shown to work.

I am also trying to maintain a very consistent level of "power" in the world as a whole. As I alluded to briefly earlier in this thread, I want a typical veteran to be 5-6th level. Levels 7-10 represent the truly elite, while 11+ is indicative of very rare characters who have gone beyond the human norms.

Part of my method of achieving this has been to frontload HP (something Sutek had a major problem with in a previous thread, but which works for me).

Anyway, by slowing advancement down, I should find it easier to present threats to the PCs that are both challenging and consistent with a dynamic world that is independent of them. IE, I don't have to worry about exceptional opponents appearing regularly and upsetting this concept of 11+ (and, to a lesser extent, 7+) being incredibly rare.

When the PCs do finally reach higher levels, they should gain a greater sense of achievement for having done so. Importantly, they can also gain a greater sense of achievement and power at lower levels than they could if they advanced more quickly.

Being more likely to be outclassed by supernatural entities and the occasional, very tough human, I can also play up the danger inherrent in the world, and the right and proper fear of such entities. Further, if they use wits, daring and cooperation to defeat these entities, the sense of achievement should be much greater, given that the challenge was greater than if they had been more powerful.

So, "mooks" (not the most accurate term in this context) should be defeatable but still worthy of respect, while truly dangerous opponents should be rare and Dangerous.

Given my own vision for the Conan RPG (which, I think, needn't necessarily be the same as ones vision of the Conan literature), I actually planned to start the PCs above 1st level, which would have gone some way to helping them get their cool abilities quicker. However, I had one player who was quite keen to begin at 1st level, and the others weren't really concerned one way or the other, so 1st it was.

I don't claim that any of that reasoning would stand up to particularly close scrutiny. As I mentioned, I think your arguments are more tangible than my own, and your own philosphy could probably be applied in such a fashion as to achieve many of the same things I am looking for, without slowing things down.

What it boils down to is that I have established a system that suits my own perspective, style of play and GMing strengths.

It's probably also worth pointing out that when I originally posted this thread, the thought that I might need to defend some of my basic assumptions had not occurred to me. I was not looking for advice or counter-opinions so much as presenting a system that I considered finalised, on the assumption that others may take something useful out of it.

As such, I wasn't really looking for the sort of discussion this ended up being, and hence why I have not been especially open to suggestions that I do things differently.

Again, though, that doesn't mean I'm not happy to have the discussion regardless.

 

[SableWyvern]

Also, I'd like to know how you handle spells that cost XP.

Forgot to reply to this part of your post.

First up, in all my d20 games that involve some form of XP penalty (level drain, casting or magic item costs etc...) I use XP debt instead of XP loss.

So, if your XP would otherwise go down, you instead simply acrue a debt of equal value, and you cease to advance until you pay it off. The end result is the same*, but this solves two problems -- first, the large amounts of paperwork (and general player frustration) that occur when a character actually loses a level, and the strange situation where a magic user who has just levelled up cannot cast spells or make items with XP requirements.

Regarding XP costs for spells being inconsistent with my altered XP allocation, this is a problem I have noted but not yet fixed. At some point I will adjust the spell XP costs to bring them in line with the altered advancment scheme (that point necessarily being before the player with the Scholar decides to expend XP on a spell).

*By which I mean, once the debt is payed off you are in the same position as if you had actually lost the XP and earned it back again.