Tuesday, May 2, 2023

Secrets

I am continually amazed by just how influential the design of Dungeons & Dragons has been on nearly all roleplaying games that have followed in its wake. Aside from those games descended from or inspired by Chaosium's Basic Role-Playing, the vast majority of RPGs include rules for character advancement that make use of experience points in one form or another. Lest there be any confusion, by "experience points," I mean an abstract, numerical measure of a character's achievement the accumulation of which enables said character to improve his abilities or acquire new ones, whether in level-based "chunks" or by using them directly as currency.  

I was pondering this fact recently as I was working on the latest draft of Secrets of sha-Arthan. After a couple of periods of doubt, I've committed myself to a D&D-descended class-and-level design, because it's familiar and easy to use. The experience of refereeing House of Worms over the last eight years using the 1975 Empire of the Petal Throne rules – itself a D&D variant – confirms this to my satisfaction. Given all this, I had initially assumed, without much thought, that I would also be adopting a D&D-style experience system, right down to XP for defeating enemies and accumulating treasure. 

But, as I was revising my draft in light of playtest comments and suggestions, I began to wonder: do I need to use experience points at all? Or at least, do I need to use experience points in the same way as Dungeons & Dragons? The truth is, I've never had a problem with D&D's XP system. It does its just well and largely gets out of the way. Does it "make sense" from an in-game perspective? Kinda, sorta, if you squint the right way and don't ask too many probing questions. As I said, I'm largely fine with it and have used EPT's idiosyncratic version of it without much complaint from my players over the course of the campaign. That's why I was (am?) prepared to use it more or less as-is in Secrets of sha-Arthan.

But there was this little voice in the back of my mind telling me I could do better, telling me I could do something that fit both the sha-Arthan setting and the intended focus of game play, namely, the uncovering of secrets. Like Tékumel, which inspired it, sha-Arthan is an ancient world full of mysteries. Things are most definitely not what they seem and my goal from the beginning has been the creation and presentation of a fantasy setting in which unraveling its mysteries lies at the heart of things. Rather than merely delving into the depths for "more and bigger loot," I wanted to emphasize learning more about the setting and its history but in a way that was both approachable and valuable in-game.

Unfortunately, I must confess to being a bit stumped on how best to achieve these two goals. One of the perennial issues of any detail-rich setting, whether it be Glorantha, Tékumel, or Hârn, is degree to which those details become the setting rather than illuminate it. I know far too many self-professed "Tékumel fans" who never actually play in the setting; instead, their hobby consists of talking and thinking about the setting and its encyclopedic details rather than exploring them through play. That's something I do not wish to encourage with sha-Arthan – quite the opposite, in fact, which is precisely why I keep thinking about ways to square this particular circle. 

Here's an example of what I'm aiming for. Sorcery is a fact of sha-Arthan and has been for untold millennia but its workings are neither widely understood nor publicly taught. Spell formulae are thus secrets and player character sorcerers can only acquire additional ones through in-game activities, such as finding occult tomes or instruction crystals, joining a cult, or simply convincing another sorcerer to share his knowledge with the PC. Thus, to achieve a higher level, the character must do something in-game, such as, for example, learn a certain number of new spells through his own efforts. In effect, the character is actively involved in the acquisition of the power traditionally associated with gaining a new level and his player simultaneously learns a bit more about the setting in the process.

I very much like this idea and think it opens up a lot of possibilities, but it'll require a lot more work from the referee, who has to consider where the necessary secrets are located within his own campaign, not to mention from me, who has to lay this all out in a way that is easily intelligible to others. There's also the fact that the secrets necessary for every character class to gain levels are as straightforward as they are for sorcerers or adepts, whose level-based abilities derived from spells or psychic disciplines and are, therefore, easier to present as in-game knowledge. What about martial warriors or persuasive scions, to say nothing of the nonhuman Chenot, Ga'andrin, or Jalaka? How do I make a secrets-based advancement system work for them? 

I have little doubt I'll eventually find a way to make this idea work. At the moment, though, it's proving a little vexing, because I can clearly see where I want to go with the game. I just don't – yet – know how to get there.

22 comments:

  1. Here's a question: is it that you've achieved 2nd level, and so you can now attack two 1-hd monsters in a turn, or is it that you've experienced enough combat to fight two 1-hd monsters in a turn, and therefore are recognized as a 2nd level fighter?

    (A)D&D is very explicitly about the former. You acquire your experience, measured in loot and kills, and then parley that into some sort of training that gives you cool new stuff. But the second scenario feels more naturalistic to me. It also feeds into genre fiction where the hero suddenly finds he is more capable than he thought.

    Not sure how this feeds into your thoughts about experience, or if it's even relevant, but it's what popped into my head reading your post.

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    1. Naturalistic is what I am aiming for. It's mostly a matter of finding a good way to implement it so that it's fun rather than tedious.

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  2. Heart, the city beneath uses a similar system, with each class having its own list of in-game achievements that allow characters to unlock new abilities.
    You could otherwise set up a list of setting specific (instead of class/character specific) achievements.
    Or both.
    Doesn' t Forbidden Lands do something similar?

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    1. Yes, Forbidden Lands does something broadly similar, though it's not based on class, since all professions have the same list of activities that earn XP.

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    2. Gangbusters' occupations have different achievements to gain experience too. It's useful in telling players what they should expect to do in-game, especially for unusual classes.

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  3. Another thing I think about is how D&D often conflates level with some sort of social rank. A 9th level fighter becomes a landed knight, and a wizard of the same level starts attracting apprentices. This, I think was a mistake. Why can't a 3rd level hedge wizard have an apprentice? Or a 10th level fighter be an army grunt? In some games it might make sense to tie ability with social status, but I don't think it should be as highly correlated as D&D makes it.

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  4. "Thus, to achieve a higher level, the character must do something in-game, such as, for example, learn a certain number of new spells through his own efforts. In effect, the character is actively involved in the acquisition of the power traditionally associated with gaining a new level and his player simultaneously learns a bit more about the setting in the process."

    Conventional D&D XP systems also require the active involvement of the player in advancing - the difference is that the actions required are generally the same for all classes and mostly involving killing things and/or collecting wealth. There's nothing inherently wrong with the idea of giving each class in your game different requirements to advance that involve more engagement with the setting and actual roleplaying than D&D traditionally asks for - but why stop there? Chaosium's BRP/Runequest approach is even better at forcing players to advance by practicing the skills and abilities they want to improve, and learning the secrets of your religion(s) and myths call for the same kind of setting engagement and revelations you seem to be after.

    Feels like you'd do better to mine ideas from Gloranthan roleplaying systems than making more class-specific advancement requirements for a D&D-inspired approach.

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    1. I seriously considered this, but it would necessitate abandoning the class-and-level system in favor of a more skill-based one, which I decided I didn't want to do.

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  5. I've been using the method in Greed Devil Face (#4 I think) for my most recent (and erratic) LotFP campaign. Each player rolls a d6 at the end of the each "adventure" (I'm following my reading of Moldvay, where an adventure is from town to the dungeon and back to town). If the result is greater than the PC's current level they go up one. You get a bonus for failing saves, getting the most treasure and take a penalty for not taking any damage, making all your saves etc. It's pretty good, makes the end of a session quicker and cleaner and seems to provide a nice pace of advancement.

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  7. What if your Secret XP system had a value assigned to each uncovered Secret based on what the secret is. For example a knowledge or spell based Secret would apply it's assigned value to that specific character attribute or knowledge base. A Martial Secret might be a specific set of combat abilities or moves a warrior would then gain bonuses for. Granted this off the top of my head, not sure of it's actual utility, and it would require a bit more thought and process for the referee, however in the end such a system could be more setting specific, instead of generalized, good luck look forward to the results.

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  8. Not entirely dissimilar from AD&D's need to find (and pay for) training before being able to advance in levels.

    You could go with a route where in order to advance in a level, the character must find a teacher/cult/master swordsman's/whatever who then tasks the PC with a secret of some sort to uncover and return alive.

    Could make them specific to classes then: Sorcerers need to find X spell or the Mystical Orb of Whatsit, warrior must defeat Grodar the Mighty and return with his sword, Cheno must find a relic of Mirakle-Gro the Maker, etc.

    Then once they return, level advancement could be the reward from the teacher as they share new knowledge with the PC who's proven worthy or the quest itself could be the reward of "self discovery." Making it there and back shows the PC has advanced on the way and has graduated to the next level.

    Just an idea.

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  9. SineNomine press has wolves of god. It's a low magic medieval setting in England (I think). The advancement is based on glories and shames (shames simply detract from glories). The glories do have some class specific stuff...so you could have a glory of a wizard type being the uncovering of arcane secrets. It's a fun variant on advancement.

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  10. You could just go with a Kevin Crawford -esque approach of granting XP for accomplished goals. In e.g. SWN, the XP requirements for the next level are in the single or low double digit range, and each character may have one short term and one long term goal. Of course, the Referee should only allow goals that result in actions and interactions he wants to incentivize.

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    1. In the parody RPG Encounter Critical each class has a requirement that they have to fulfil in order to gain a level, in addition to getting enough experience points. Warriors have to defeat a significant foe using a new weapon, for example.

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  11. Look to martial arts/wuxia movies for inspiration for warrior type secrets. Master Xu knows the art of Five Plums Fist, but will only teach it to students who can withstand a night meditating under a waterfall. That sort of thing.

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    1. Sounds cool and ties in with Tuomas' comment above about having specific goals.

      I've seen xp as a measure of reputation, so you could devise a scheme of advancement that rewarded increased reputation.

      Reputation (or notoriety) are a measure of others' perception and so can be used to encourage interaction with NPC .

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  12. Check out how Mike Shea (Sly Flourish) handles Secrets in Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master. Essentially, you keep a list and put the secrets in any reasonable place they think to look.

    The alternative is creating a spreadsheet (or similar pile of data) of secrets and their exact locations to slowly and ponderous reference during play (or something similar) which is a ridiculous amount of work and slows the action down.

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  13. In one fairly short-lived campaign (starting at level 1, of course), I could not hit anything to save my life. If I did manage to hit, I invariably rolled 1 damage. The exceptions were for a giant spider, and a giant centipede, for which I managed to roll maximum damage. I remarked, "I'm pretty sure my dagger has a supernatural hatred of bugs." While I never convinced my DM to go along with that, I always thought that would be a pretty interesting way to run things: you've randomly rolled something enough times to be interesting, and from now on we're just going assume that's how it works.

    I never played the MSH game, but at one point I heard about power stunts, which sound pretty similar. Briefly, if your pre-internet player can find 10 instances in comics of a character doing something, then yeah, it's just part of their repertoire . If it's less that that, you can attempt it with a roll. The more attempts you've made, the easier future rolls are, and by the time you get up to 10 tries (or instances in comics, or a combination thereof) then you no longer have to roll, it's just part of your repertoire.

    I'm not sure how far you'd have to stretch this to make it the basis of leveling, but "you've punched above your weight based on luck enough times that we're just going to level you up" could probably work with some effort. It wouldn't even have to be anything complicated: the D&D adventure system board games let you level up a character just for rolling a natural 20. You'd expect that to happen every four fights or so, so doing it three or four times -- for things appropriate to your class -- might actually result in about the right rate of progression, win or lose.

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  14. I've been toying with the idea of having a "net-zero" approach to XP and advancement. I, like you, think that you need to do something in-game to advance one's attributes/skills/abilities. So one accumulates eXperience Points by adventuring, and then spends those points to actually advance (the DM should not make it difficult to spend those points). In the end, they've gone back to Zero, but are more advanced overall. Some characters may "bank" their points throughout an adventure, and if there is a lot, they do something like retreat to a monastery for study or practice or "go back to school" to get their Master's, or simply go shopping by visiting Wizards to acquire new spells, etc. I haven't been able to explore further an even more granular approach, where only certain "aspects" of advancement are automatic, and which could also be optional (for example, forgoing automatic advancement of HP for the chance to advance "to hit" even farther). Either way, simple 'leveling up' (with accompanying SFx of swirling energies and bulking up, as in some video games) has never appealed to me, especially when there so many potential role-playing and story-telling possibilities by making them go the extra step.

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  15. I would modify an existing mechanic, specifically, existing mechanics for magic items. Spells are things magic users acquire in addition to the "innate" abilities they gain from gaining levels; well, for every other class, so are magic items. So perhaps instead of acquiring a +1 longsword, a fighter learns the First Secret of Fencing, and all longswords behave as +1 weapons in his hands.

    To manage the power issue associated with the fighter then teaching the First Secret to every other longsword-user in the party, you have a few options. You can limit the First Secret to being useable by fighters, or perhaps also fighter subclasses; other classes will have their own secrets. You can impose a training cost, perhaps using magic item costs as a guideline. Or you can state that the secret may only be learned by meeting a number of challenges (and perhaps draw on the discussion of magic item creation in the 1e DMG for inspiration as to what constitutes an appropriate challenge for, effectively, creating a personal magic item).

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  16. A hint of deja vu? Dwimmermount had explicit secrets in the dungeon and values assigned to conclusions that could be drawn from those facts, as well as values assigned to maps of the dungeon; tweaking this provided a major source of XP for my 5e players (who played 52 sessions online during lockdowns).

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