Older D&D/AD&D and Other SystemsThe forum for discussions specifically related to the rules and procedures of either any of the older editions of Dungeons & Dragons (1e, 2e, BECMI, OD&D) or any other non-D&D roleplaying rules (Vampire: The Requiem, Dread), including non-fantasy d20 systems (such as Mutants & Masterminds).
Yeah, and we should totally cut out xp and skill advancement, because just being with your friends and roleplaying should be its own reward and putting the goal of character gain just causes nothing but trouble!
Seriously though, if you take that idea to its logical conclusion, that's where you end up.
Though I will note that there are some games that don't use experience or skill advancement (while still using skill levels) that are quite a bit of fun.
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I haven't played Marvel Heroic, but you described it as a "10 xp trigger". Excuse me for assuming 10 xp had anything to do with advancement, I must have been crazy.
Yeah, the term itself is a bit odd, because I think it hearkens back to the idea of "experience", in that a character gathers experience throughout their story arc. Since D&D took the idea of "experience is advancement" and ran with it, though, "XP" has all but become co-opted for that purpose alone.
Okay, I understand you've had trouble with this game in the past, but none of these are limited or even encouraged by GURPS - and entirely the fault of poor GMing. Here, let me illustrate with D&D:
None of these complaints are system dependant, I'd say all of them are rooted in DM vs Player discord, other than the psionics (but in gurps there are so many different systems you could use - its not hard to just ask the DM to use a different one, which I guess does make it fall back into a DM vs Player communication issue).
Thank you, reading through this thread I felt i had to add my comment even though as you rightly pointed out this isn't a fault of the system but trying to get it out of my system as another gm from Gurps converted a d&d game over to Gurps poses similar problems to what i mentioned.
Well at least I know now what I should be doing!
Thank you, reading through this thread I felt i had to add my comment even though as you rightly pointed out this isn't a fault of the system but trying to get it out of my system
No worries, I've needed a good vent from time to time myself! And it is true that GURPS doesn't safe guard against these things.
Despite you being able to run a game at any cp level you feel like, for instance, you do have to be aware of the impact of choosing a specific cp level - in the same way as you do for choosing starting level in any other game. Although I doubt there are many systems which truly safe guard against inexperience in this way - it is true that GURPS is just as likely, if not more so, to fall into these traps (as GURPS has so many optional rules that it is very easy to not realise the trapdoor your place beneath your feet if you're not paying attention to the potential repercussions of said choice).
Either way, GURPS has its strengths - but also has a lot of preconceived, and easy to fall into (more importantly) pitfalls (such as over-egging disadvantages in a very munchkiny way, as Jerthanis pointed out). And although most systems have pitfalls I will accept that GURPS has more potential ones simply due to its toolkit design and plethora of rules available. However I stand by the idea that GURPS, when understood, is a truly powerful and flexible system capable of much more freedom and stylistic choice than any other system I've come across to date. Which is why I favour it over all other system currently (despite still playing other systems, simply due to logistics and other players preferences/knowledge sets).
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Last edited by Reaper_Monkey : 11-15-2012 at 04:31 PM.
In that Gurps game I mentioned it was a rather varied band with two guards (played by myself and another) with one who had bloodlust as i recall and as a whole i thought it was a good group unfortunately as I said the inclusion of someone who wasn't bound by the same restrictions turned the game into a one shot as far as I was concerned.
A Gurps Fantasy game run before this was more successful admittedly I was defaulting as many skills as I could to run a Xena style character whom barely survived the adventure but it was still fun as we were all playing on the same level.
Never knew I could regret running a Zhodani character but it was still a good experience, transhuman space however I never could get a handle on although i loved the supplements they released covering the solar system I never got as far as character generation for that setting.
As previously mentioned the parts I dislike are more dm related than game system I have tried to run a Gurps Al-Quadim type game only for it to come to nothing because I gave one mage character too many spells that wasn't combat related as i recall they were more for surviving in the desert than anything but have any of you ever run a game and been surprised by what character your player wanted to play?
By that I mean rather than hack and slasher they actually wanted something more roleplaying than combat or simple min-maxing?
Yeah, and we should totally cut out xp and skill advancement, because just being with your friends and roleplaying should be its own reward and putting the goal of character gain just causes nothing but trouble!
Seriously though, if you take that idea to its logical conclusion, that's where you end up.
GURPS has systems for skill advancement (As well as systems for learning through training IN GAME, which many games lack), and recommends giving character points for good roleplaying, as well as adventuring. You can also gain advantages and disadvantages through other ways (I saved a warrior's life, he owes me a life-debt [Ally advantage as an example], or I lost an arm [One Arm Disadvantage, or I got psionic powers from this radiation! [Pick a flipping psi power]).
So, yes, cut out xp. I hate it in a game like GURPS. D&D? Sure. But not GURPS.
GURPS has systems for skill advancement (As well as systems for learning through training IN GAME, which many games lack), and recommends giving character points for good roleplaying, as well as adventuring. You can also gain advantages and disadvantages through other ways (I saved a warrior's life, he owes me a life-debt [Ally advantage as an example], or I lost an arm [One Arm Disadvantage, or I got psionic powers from this radiation! [Pick a flipping psi power]).
So, yes, cut out xp. I hate it in a game like GURPS. D&D? Sure. But not GURPS.
I did mean all advancement, xp (whether xp means leveling or just a term for points you spend on advancement/training) or otherwise.
I kind of like it in games where CharGen is compartmentalized. So, you may have stats and you have skills. You don't take fewer stats to get more skills or fewer skills to get more stats very much. Instead, to be high in one stat you are low in another. Same with skills. So, to take disadvantages, you get to pick from a list of advantages to counter them. A disadvantage won't give you more stats.
This is my issue with a PB system. Without compartmentalization, min-maxing is rewarded too much.
I kind of like it in games where CharGen is compartmentalized. So, you may have stats and you have skills. You don't take fewer stats to get more skills or fewer skills to get more stats very much. Instead, to be high in one stat you are low in another. Same with skills. So, to take disadvantages, you get to pick from a list of advantages to counter them. A disadvantage won't give you more stats.
This is my issue with a PB system. Without compartmentalization, min-maxing is rewarded too much.
And thats where knowing the ins and outs of the system is useful. Is a swordsman great because of his physical capabilities? have his opponent break out cheap tricks (which starts rolls off of intelligence). Do to skill? grapple and raw force. Overall good at combat at the cost of other areas? put him in situations where combat isn't a good option. And so on. The diversity of the system makes it hard to min-max without opening great holes of inapttitude, at least for GURPS.
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Yeah, the term itself is a bit odd, because I think it hearkens back to the idea of "experience", in that a character gathers experience throughout their story arc. Since D&D took the idea of "experience is advancement" and ran with it, though, "XP" has all but become co-opted for that purpose alone.
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Yeah, I wasn't sure how much sarcasm I should use there and think I probably used too much. I spoke up about something as if I understood it when I didn't and then tried to make it out to be the result of someone using a term commonly associated with advancement when I probably would've said the same less-than-half-understood assertion if XP hadn't been mentioned at all. I should've been less abrasive about it, I actually was the one making the incorrect statements.
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Originally Posted by Jade Dragon
Yeah, and we should totally cut out xp and skill advancement, because just being with your friends and roleplaying should be its own reward and putting the goal of character gain just causes nothing but trouble!
Seriously though, if you take that idea to its logical conclusion, that's where you end up.
Slippery slope fallacy much?
But actually, I don't even disagree with your facetious point that advancement shouldn't be a reward that much. Advancement should come as a result of character actions in a story, growth as the character becomes the person they were capable of becoming and overcoming the internal and external challenges before them.
It shouldn't be a means of engaging the players in something they otherwise wouldn't care about. "Hey, there are goblins in the mines." "Why should we care?" shouldn't be answered with "Because you'll get XP and thus gain new abilities that are cordoned off for only after you've endured so many goblins" any more than "Hey, do you want your character to have a defect?" "Why should I?" "Because you'll get XP and thus gain new abilities that are cordoned off for only after you've endured so many hindrances due to defects"
Advancement is so highly tied to this hobby that just suggesting you forsake it is something you just used blue sarcasm speech about. As if it were so ludicrous that its removal is self-evidently undesirable. Have you ever considered why you enjoy advancement so much that you consider it so absurd to remove it?
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It shouldn't be a means of engaging the players in something they otherwise wouldn't care about. "Hey, there are goblins in the mines." "Why should we care?" shouldn't be answered with "Because you'll get XP and thus gain new abilities that are cordoned off for only after you've endured so many goblins" any more than "Hey, do you want your character to have a defect?" "Why should I?" "Because you'll get XP and thus gain new abilities that are cordoned off for only after you've endured so many hindrances due to defects"
Advancement is so highly tied to this hobby that just suggesting you forsake it is something you just used blue sarcasm speech about. As if it were so ludicrous that its removal is self-evidently undesirable. Have you ever considered why you enjoy advancement so much that you consider it so absurd to remove it?
Actually, I don't really like the fact that in D&D, while you can gain xp from some rp (and it's included in the rules in 4e), the fast track to being god is by killing twenty goblins, then twenty orcs, then a young dragon, then twenty ogres, then twenty trolls, then an older dragon.
But in any game that's going to last a long time (probably about ten sessions is the max for mid-length), you should get better at stuff. So you get points for doing various things that can be sort of meta (showing up), narrative-based (completing plot arcs or story arcs), or roleplay-based (seeking out a teacher or just roleplaying well).
I run GURPS super lite and quick; i am a massive fan of rules lite systems.
My players how ever love having characters with tons of numbers. GURPS lets me give them tons of "STUFF" for them to mull over and build into their characters that i can subtly ignore in game.
It works really well. They now have all these rules and numbers to show me that they can do stuff that i would have let them do anyway!
Actually, I don't really like the fact that in D&D, while you can gain xp from some rp (and it's included in the rules in 4e), the fast track to being god is by killing twenty goblins, then twenty orcs, then a young dragon, then twenty ogres, then twenty trolls, then an older dragon.
But in any game that's going to last a long time (probably about ten sessions is the max for mid-length), you should get better at stuff. So you get points for doing various things that can be sort of meta (showing up), narrative-based (completing plot arcs or story arcs), or roleplay-based (seeking out a teacher or just roleplaying well).
My problem with advancement is structural, actually. It makes sense when the story is about self-improvement, the characters starting at humble beginnings and slowly conquering bigger and bigger challenges as they work their way toward their ultimate goal.
Everywhere else, it really doesn't. What about a tragedy where the characters are desperately trying to keep it together in a world that's falling to pieces around them? Not only is increasing stats over time here simply out of place, it directly contradicts with the themes and structure of the game.
The second problem is, without houseruling or homebrewing, most advancement systems set the pacing for your story. Hope you weren't intending for that plot with the goblins to last more than 2 sessions or so, since by that point they'll be trivial for your players to deal with unless you start coming up with weird justifications for why there's suddenly way more goblins and/or they all have class levels now. Try to set a different pacing from that which the advancement system provides and things just break, sometimes hilariously so.
The third problem is, as has already been mentioned above, incentive structure problems. XP and loot systems not only create backwards incentives, but they're fundamentally flawed as incentives in the first place.
I haven't played Marvel Heroic, but you described it as a "10 xp trigger". Excuse me for assuming 10 xp had anything to do with advancement, I must have been crazy.
There is no reason for sarcasm, Jerthanis. Plenty of systems don't use experience as a shorthand for advancement. I'm sorry for not being clear enough in my presentation, though. Hope it did not bother you too much.
But in any game that's going to last a long time (probably about ten sessions is the max for mid-length), you should get better at stuff. So you get points for doing various things that can be sort of meta (showing up), narrative-based (completing plot arcs or story arcs), or roleplay-based (seeking out a teacher or just roleplaying well).
These are still all examples of advancement as a reward, you're just attributing the rewards to different types of actions than exhibiting defects. You're also offering the assertion that advancement should happen in long games, period, rather than explaining your reasons why.
Now, I can accept as reasons for advancement that it gets boring to use the same abilities and resolution system for too long, which is one of the reasons I prefer medium length games rather than sprawling games. I am not trying to say there aren't legitimate reasons for advancement beyond the skinner-box rewards system I'm characterizing it as, but I think there IS an element of that basic psychology. I'm interested in hearing about these reasons for advancement, but I personally don't like this type of reinforcement.
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There is no reason for sarcasm, Jerthanis. Plenty of systems don't use experience as a shorthand for advancement. I'm sorry for not being clear enough in my presentation, though. Hope it did not bother you too much.
Yes, I am sorry about that, I apologized above in my previous post inside the spoiler tags (since the other poster used spoiler tags to avoid derailing). It was meant to be very slightly edged, but on reflection it was just a jerk way to say it.
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Re: Why I Strongly Dislike GURPS
