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Advancement and Experience Feedback; Participation is appreciated!
Topic Started: Nov 29 2014, 07:29 PM (241 Views)
Mouse
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O.G. Nos
So today marks the forum's first month and I've distributed xp to the first few characters. I'd appreciate any feedback that players have regarding this so we as a community can hammer out the kinks and make it a better system.

Some points I'm interested in;

Do you think xp distribution was fair or not?

Do you think it was transparent enough or not enough to make it easy to predict how much you would get?

Do you think it should be adjusted up or down at all?

How was the pacing of advancement for how much your character did across the month?

Does anyone have ideas to create an advancement system for players who do not like to use character sheets or dice rolls?

Any comments you have would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for your time~ Mouse
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Bearing of Menace, Black Veins in Aura - Inoffensive to animals, Amputated Forearm

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Frank
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I think the free advancement point should abide by some or all of these rules:

It should only go toward a skill you actively used in the scenes the character participated in.
It should not be used for an attribute.
It should go by the rule that "Characters may not advance any trait by more than once each month." So you can't spend experience to bump an ability, then use the advancement point as well.

I think people would tend to use the free advancement point to optimize attributes more easily, because Attributes are usually more expensive to buy, and because an attribute is pretty powerful. I think that the point should be spent where it's justified simply because that goes along with established site rules. Also, both a person that is just mechanically logical, and a person who is deliberately powergaming, might be tempted to use xp to boost an ability, then the advancement point to boost it from 3 to 4 or 4 to 5 because it gets spendy then. You can't blame someone for being smart about the mechanics.

Otherwise, I think XP distribution was fair. I think it was awarded fairly based on participation.

As far as advancing characters for people who don't like sheets (like me), it's enough to just write and play. Encouraging us to log our threads does give us a way to show "Hey, this character has done all of this". I would just be mindful of characters who 'give' themselves too many material assets, like AA Guns and Mansions and whatnot.
Edited by Frank, Nov 30 2014, 11:59 AM.
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Mouse
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O.G. Nos
Frank
Nov 30 2014, 11:52 AM
I think the free advancement point should abide by some or all of these rules:

It should only go toward a skill you actively used in the scenes the character participated in.
It should not be used for an attribute.
It should go by the rule that "Characters may not advance any trait by more than once each month." So you can't spend experience to bump an ability, then use the advancement point as well.

I think people would tend to use the free advancement point to optimize attributes more easily, because Attributes are usually more expensive to buy, and because an attribute is pretty powerful. I think that the point should be spent where it's justified simply because that goes along with established site rules. Also, both a person that is just mechanically logical, and a person who is deliberately powergaming, might be tempted to use xp to boost an ability, then the advancement point to boost it from 3 to 4 or 4 to 5 because it gets spendy then. You can't blame someone for being smart about the mechanics.

Otherwise, I think XP distribution was fair. I think it was awarded fairly based on participation.

As far as advancing characters for people who don't like sheets (like me), it's enough to just write and play. Encouraging us to log our threads does give us a way to show "Hey, this character has done all of this". I would just be mindful of characters who 'give' themselves too many material assets, like AA Guns and Mansions and whatnot.
Concerning the free advancement point, I'll first say that it does already abide by the rules and guidelines established for xp (advancing a trait only once, for example.)

That said, I understand your concern about it being an enabler for power gaming; that was actually my intent lol. I wanted to create an approach that was more forgiving to players who cannot participate as much. I don't want them to feel unrewarded for playing and thought it would be more encouraging to stick around if they were still able to advance traits otherwise outside of their reach. I felt that the ease of this being exploited was a minor drawback in comparison to that. One high cost trait advancement a month is easily outweighed by the supplemental xp gain of several threads of activity. If other players disagree with that, it'll definitely get changed.

Thanks for your input, and please let everyone know if you think of something else or have more to add!
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Skarn
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The ghost of cbox past
Basically reiterating what I discussed with Mouse in cbox:

I think that advances should be linked to what the character has actually done in that month (if my character didn't participate in any fights in-thread, he probably shouldn't be raising Brawl), and that a given trait be advanced by only dot per month (a character going from novice to expert overnight seems implausible).

As for the free advance, I'm going to disagree with Frank: I think it's fine to use it for any trait that can be advanced with experience (attributes, abilities, disciplines, humanity/path, willpower).

Edited to actually answer some of Mouse's questions:

Do you think xp distribution was fair or not?

I think it was fair. As far as I could tell, everyone was awarded experience based on the formula laid out, and based on their level of participation. A better indicator may be December's award, as this was the first month of the forum, and many started part way through.

Do you think it was transparent enough or not enough to make it easy to predict how much you would get?


As said above, the formula laid out was followed. What I got was pretty well what I expected to get.

Do you think it should be adjusted up or down at all?


It's possible that the advancement will be a bit too fast, but again I think it's difficult to judge from just one month.

How was the pacing of advancement for how much your character did across the month?


The advancement seems fairly quick based on what my character actually did. Skarn chatted online with Mouse, flew across the city to investigate the rat incident, and has just arrived at the Rant (without really doing anything yet).

Does anyone have ideas to create an advancement system for players who do not like to use character sheets or dice rolls?

Not really. The mechanics are an important part of the game for me. I don't know just want to write that I succeeded (or failed), I want to try things, and have a chance of success or failure based on my level of skill and the difficulty of the situation. And this all comes down to the mechanics.
Edited by Skarn, Nov 30 2014, 04:48 PM.
Character Sheet. Character Bio. Advancement Thread.
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Sera Andreas
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T'is only a flesh wound!
Realized there was one more question about rituals and experience (because there's always one more question about rituals and experience). Sera started with a level 1, 2, and 3 ritual because she started off with Thaumaturgy 3. If I increase it to Thaumaturgy 4, will she also get a free level 4 ritual along with it, or are the free rituals for character creation only?

My bias is towards giving the free ritual, but I won't fight tooth and nail if others disagree.
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Mouse
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O.G. Nos
As things are, the rituals are for character creation only. I felt an experienced character (Thaumaturgy 4, for example) with only a single dinky ritual didn't make sense.

My preference is to not add a ritual with an increase after character creation. I feel like it makes Thaumaturgy dots extremely cost effective, more so than anything else. And I don't feel like it's in the spirit of how rituals were meant to be in the game.

Anybody else want to weight in?
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Sera Andreas
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T'is only a flesh wound!
Nonsense! Everyone knows that dots in performance (dance) is clearly the most broken thing someone can do :P. It's sound logic, I was going from the angle of a natural increase in rituals along with Blood Magic, but you have good points there.
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Mouse
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O.G. Nos
I don't want to effect advancement for the month of January, but afterward I would like everyone to re-examine them. I'll post my concerns after advancement is posted.
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