/tg/ I'm working on a gaming system with a organic character

>>52779301
Everything costs two things: time and money/something of exceptable perceived value.

>>52779301
>get rid of experience
You know not what you wish to do.

The first example I can think of is Ars Magica, but that has a heavy emphasis on what you do during downtime (specifically, seasons-long downtimes), and adventures still provide "free" skill points to spread around as you choose. Based on how you're describing your system, it's probably the best example of what you're trying to do, but it's already on the complex side. If you made each method of upgrading skills and powers unique with different values necessary, it becomes 10 times worse, probably more if you make powers unique skills rather than having them key off a given set of skills like AM does.

There's also Call of Cthulhu style, where if you use a skill during a session, you check against it for advancement after the session, and you only advance if you fail that check. It's very firmly tied to a roll-under system, or something similarly bounded, so as to slow down advancement as you get more skilled, but if that's what you're using, it should work far more simply than AM's system. It also doesn't help if you want to keep the playing field level for long periods of time, since people can start with more, lower skills and advance to become competent universally while the advanced specialist isn't likely to advance much, which is fine for CoC since individual characters are very prone to death and replacement, but wouldn't work so well for higher-power things.

>>52779417
But in the end, that essentially works the same way that experience. I'm trying to get away from an experience system or something technically different, but essentially the same.

Traveller is a good example for a way to do this. Character progression works like it does in real life: you spend money to get better shit and realize you're not happy with it so you work harder to get more money to spend on even better shit until eventually you find a new game to play even though you've only paid off 1/20th the cost of your ship

>>52779499
well, I've decided that there will be per session awards. 3 types specifically. Each session a character will gain a +1 to a derived stat, +1 to an attribute, and +1 to a skill.

My main problem is how to deal with abilities that have different tiers of power. Take an illusion ability for example. What milestone do you use to say you're character can manifest larger, more convincing illusions?

For reference the game runs on the concept that you're playing a super-hero (though most of the time you actually don't).

>>52779571
Not familiar with Traveller, but it doesn't sound like the game lasts long, and I don't think spending money to level would actually work in my system.

>>52779499
The CoC method - or rather, a variant thereof - might work. Maybe add in something like a "stress pool" where you can temporarily access higher level abilities (specifically one higher) and there's a chance that using that higher level might make it permanently available.

Abilities range in level from 1 to 5, and there's an attribute called body that starts at 100 and lowers as the character loses parts of their physical body (similar to essence in Shadowrun). Body is responsible for max attributes, but I think using it as the stress pool could work as well. So a brand new character with 100 body could stress themselves 5 (20 stress each time) times a game session to use level 2 abilities, and have 5 chances to make the level 2 abilities permanent. A level 2 ability could be stressed 3 times to use level 3 powers (30 each time), etc... For leveling, you roll the number of dice of the level stressed and if all dice come up the same number, the ability levels.

Thoughts?

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>>52780694
ALRIGHT.
>>52779629
>I've decided that there will be per session awards. 3 types specifically. Each session a character will gain a +1 to a derived stat, +1 to an attribute, and +1 to a skill.

So actually, you are clearly totally okay with things that are functionally equivalent to XP. You just want to regulate what people do with that XP.

Consider The Strange (and possibly Numenera? Dunno) have a system where you simply have a list of things that you can only spend XP on once per level, and you level up once you have spent XP on all of them.

If you genuinely wanted to eliminate XP your only option would be something like the CoC method, which also appears in a few other games like Eoris.

I seriously don't know what the hell you are intending to accomplish by doing this.

Another option is to simply not have character progression at all, players simply have a portfolio of capabilities, similar to say, the influences spirits have in WoD, arcana in Mage, etc. that define the borders of the possibility space of things they are able to do, and its up to them as players to think of increasingly creative and effective ways of operating within that design space over time.

I also should warn of pitfalls of most of what you are looking at: Hogging the spotlight in a game can very often lead to characters progressing faster in XP-less or XP-unconventional systems. Linking power advancement to achievements definitely has this as a real pitfall that I have seen happen.

>>52781369
>So actually, you are clearly totally okay with things that are functionally equivalent to XP. You just want to regulate what people do with that XP.

Not exactly. To compare it with something you might be more familiar with, every game session would see the players getting an increase to a derived stat (AC, to-hit, saving throw, etc...), attribute (strength, dexterity, intelligence), and skill (Climb, Swim, Spellcraft).

>Another option is to simply not have character progression at all, players simply have a portfolio of capabilities, similar to say, the influences spirits have in WoD, arcana in Mage, etc

This is what I currently have. Each character has a portfolio of abilities, each ability of which has levels 1-5, similar to WoD. WoD uses experience to raise the levels of what the character is capable of doing, even if the player has to be innovative to make the most out of the current level of their power. A mage with prime 1 can only make minor changes to the world, while a mage with prime 5 can undo reality as their whims dictate, for instance. I want to get rid of the XP to level aspect, hopefully while avoiding the hogging the spotlight problem.

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>>52781369
This might help to understand. Here are a few examples of abilities characters in my game can take.

>>52779301
>/tg/ I'm working on a gaming system
[sarcastic laughter]

>>52781575
I'm sure it comes up often, but I've put a lot of time and effort into it. I'll settle on a change to experience I like, but having alternate ideas tossed around isn't a bad thing and might help me come up with something better than what I was initially considering.

idu the sarcasm.

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>>52781531
>To compare it with something you might be more familiar with, every game session would see the players getting an increase to a derived stat...

How is this any different from XP? No seriously. If you had a very strict definition of what XP is then maybe I can understand a kind of build point progression system like yours offering a way to get away from that. But you posted >>52779523 so I have no idea what the hell you are trying to accomplish.

>>52781531
>>52781564
I guess what I'm saying is that you could simply have these set at a higher level of variable granularity, and not allow progression.

If we are in the business of comparing game design boners, then
a) Behold, my Stand!
and
b) This is actually a relevant comparison for what you may want, wherein your character's core powerset is actually without progression, just so broad in scope and confusing to navigate that it takes many sessions to come to an understanding of the sort of things their character even does. It *does* mean throwing balance out with the bathwater in this case, but from the experiences I had testing this system, it actually works out completely fine since people only have a finite ability to even comprehend what their character is capable of. In my test game of this, the most useless character in the party by far was the one whose power was capable of ending the world, because they just couldn't decipher a tactical use for it, whereas the guy who had a dog that made people hallucinate dogs was fucking unstumpable.

>>52781858
this post >>52779523 was referencing this post >>52779417 where the suggestion was to essentially use money as XP and I was just pointing out that paying money to level up or the accumulation of money to determine level was not really any different from strictly using XP.

And in a technical sense it's not really any different from having XP. So I suppose the real difference is that it loses the rather abstract idea of XP in favor of something more tangible that the character uses each game session. Increasing your AC by one has a more mechanically direct benefit on the character than gaining 2,000 experience, even if that 2,000 experience translates to new abilities. So I'm looking for a new way to permanently increase character abilities that doesn't rely on an abstract XP concept.

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>>52782121
Okay, so what you actually want is to eliminate XP as an intermediate currency between advancement and stats.

Presumably then, as long as you provide the same benefits to everyone, you don't even need to provide +1 skill, +1 attribute +1 derived per session. If it was a shitty session, you only give +1 skill to all.

If there was a timeskip and you want everyone to be grizzled badasses afterwards, you give +1 ability tier.

Possibly, you could have people vote on what benefit to receive at the end of the session.

Or have progression work off of checkboxes (IE you only get to check one box at a time, they advance different things, you can't repeat them until some bullshit or other happens) like some kind of hybrid of The Strange and Blades in the Dark.