From: bkoike@sdcc13.ucsd.edu (Bryce Koike)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.advocacy
Subject: Re: Character Development
Date: 1 Oct 92 14:59:15 GMT
Organization: University of California, San Diego

In article <1992Sep30.162658.4708@ncar.ucar.edu> urban@stout.atd.ucar.edu (Art Urban (PROFS)) writes:
>In article <cm182s182.051g@pdrome.UUCP> cm182s182@pdrome.UUCP (Clayton Miner) writes:
>%As much as I enjoy refereeing, and as much as my players 
>%seem o enjoy having me referee for them, the part of the game I hate the most 
>%is awarding experience points.  To me, no matter how I look at it, it always 
>%seems arbitrary and I am never sure that I am awarding the right number of 
>%points for the right reasons.  I am looking for way around this problem and 

	OK, I'm going to assume you're playing AD&D (or, in general,
any RPG that normally awards points for killing monsters and little
else).  This is how I would normally do it (and how a GM I know does
it on occasion):

#1.  Determine how fast you want the characters to advance levels.
	This is actually a bit important.  You can use this as a
guide, really.  "Well, I want them to gain roughly 1000 exp per
gaming session..."  Use this as some sort of general Required Work,
Toil, and Strife measurement.  [WT&S for the PLAYERS that is]  The
more EXP they need to gain in a single adventure, the harder they
must work, the tougher the monsters are that they must fight, etc.

#2.  Determine, based on the above, how much the current game
session is worth.
	If the party spends their whole time dacing around and
caving in the skulls of orcs for no reason (and little, if any risk)
then I'd say they would only get, perhaps 1/10th of the above exp.
Split up the "available" exp that each player COULD get into how
much they get for accomplishing certain goals.  "100 exp if Raleigh
uses his pet hawk to steal the key from the Vomish Priest" ... stuff
like that.
	(You don't HAVE to do this, and I doubt the players would
notice, but it's kinda neat.)
	And, of course, you can award exp for the class-specific
things, although I don't really care much for it.

#3.  Award EXP based on the above.  It's not "official," it doesn't
even require monster bashing for players to gain experience.
Personally, I prefer this over the AD&D "killumalot" method and it
works nicely.

>Well, what I'm about to offer works for me in my GURPS games, and I know
>little about the StarWars mechanics, but the philosphy will still apply.
>
>I like to hand out 1/2 Character Point per Hour of play. This does not allows
>for accidental favoritism, or whimsy. This system will not be reasonable for
>a group of players who are constantly screwing-off, as no role-playing is
>being done. So my simply answer to you is: determine a fixed amount of exp
>points to hand out per hour of play. If the players fail to "play" for most
>of an hour, then do not count that hour.

	I suppose that I like this, but if you play for 8 hours,
that's *4* character points!  To me, that's far too much.  1 to 2 is
about the maximum that I'd ever hand out.  (3 if a player is truly
exceptional.)  The norm in my games is *0*.  Characters get better
by training, working, and using skills in innovative new ways.  They
can run around and kill half a million Imperial Storm Troopers and I
won't let a single skill or stat increase...

>This approach eliminated the concern I felt when a character simply had nothing
>to do "in game" and "according to character", and technically should receive
>no character points. Under this approach everybody gets the same amount as
>long as they play the game.

	A good player will always find something to do so long as
the GM leaves an option.  (There's exceptions to this:  the
non-combat oriented character in a game that's ONLY combat...etc)  I
try as hard as possible to make certain that all the characters get
their moment in the limelight if they want it, and I leave numerous
openings for EVERYONE to get involved.  Because of this, if a player
is twiddling his thumbs, it's THAT player's fault, not mine.  Under
this approach, it's still up to the players to be responsible for
their character's advancement, not mine.

>Everybody has a different method, so don't feel compelled to prefer one over
>the other. Do what feels right to you...

	Very true!  One of the GMs I play with still uses monster
bashing for exp even though I begged him to switch...so each game we
have the Battle (or more)...

>--
>Art Urban 					       urban@stout.atd.ucar.edu
>===============================================================================
> "Oh no! The canary exploded!"                                      -Tom Servo 
>===============================================================================
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.advocacy