One really nice thing with DH is balancing new characters against older established characters is much less a headache than in "other games with elves and swords". What I have been doing so far when a new player has joined the game is have them make their new character with roughly the same experience points as the lowest existing character on the team. It was a good starting method, but as the game progresses I am finding myself rethinking the process.

In particular our team has started to rack up a few successes and are definately starting to attract the attention of other Inquisitors and people of importance. These successes are not without cost, and most of the team have the scars (physical and mental) to prove it! Because several of our players never miss a game and a few are rather more spotty on attendance there is a growing gap in the team as far as XP is concerned. This would be a fatal flaw in a game like D&D (3.5 at least. 4th Ed is pointless). Fortunately this is NOT D&D and the points gap is not in itself a game-breaker. Now the challenge: I am considering inviting a new player into the game and the team is now spread out between rank 3 and rank 5. Putting a new player way behind the bulk of the team is not exactly a great incentive to the newcomer, nor is simply handing them "free XP" very appealing. My current idea is to mesh my earlier "build with this many points" aproach with a bit of player-controlled risk-to-reward management. The basic idea:

Give the new player (or an old player replacing a dead or otherwise retired character) a "safe" fixed amount of XP to build with. The player then has the option of finishing up right there or inflicting a little bit of harm on their new character in exchange for a bit more XP. My current idea is to allow them to "purchase" blocks of 400XP for 1D5 sanity points or corruption points (player choice BEFORE rolling) up to a "hard cap" as determined by the GM or when the player flinches, whatever comes first. This also has the possibility of being used to "catch up" a character who's player missed a few too many games for "good reason". Missed 4 games because you were hospitalized, on vacation or helping your sick grandparent? Give them the option. Missed 5 games because you were hung over? Too bad!

Selecting 400XP as the size of the block is by necessity a little arbitrary, but it seems to be a nice mid-ground number. Not too big, not too small. It also has the added perk (quite deliberate) of being the unit of measure in DH for extra starting gear/money for advanced character creation. (one month pay per each 400xp extra at character creation per DH core).

So new characters will lack some of the fancier custom gear, political favours, contacts and so on that can only be earned in gameplay but are still able to do plenty of "cool things" and reasonably keep up with the other acolytes if they play things smart. They get to decide for themselves if their new character is a fresh and enthusiastic rookie, an experienced operator or a scarred veteran, but NOT a bare-knuckles tyranid slayer fresh out of shrink-wrap with no personal traumas besides that time that mom caught them stealing cookies...

What do you think about this idea? Not looking for blank praise or scorn here. If you have praise, why? If there are flaws you see, what are they? The idea is to put polish on any good ideas and put a bolter shell through the forehead of particularly bad ideas.

PAX IMPERATOR!

Hey Mate

Only had time to skim a bit of the post (sorry, low on time) i suggest that for the guy coming in late, if it's between 3-5, make him 4. You don't know if he will be the always present type or the slack type, so compromise. Secondly, if you are worried about the prestiege (BY THE EMPEROR!!! its those acolytes that did A B C D and E) then make him write a history and both of you come up with some equally merritorious feats he has accomplished. Possibly make them in the same sort of field. E.G if the party were facing eldar for the main plot or something, this guy did something with eldar and so that would make sense for him to be put in the party, he has background knowledge on said issue.

Hope this helps

Ryorus

Very interesting thoughts. I'll give a bit of background on how I handle xp, then I'll discuss around your post. When I GM the xp is earned and owned in equal share by the player group. The group also awards themselves xp after each session based on how well they fell that they feel they collectively have performed in a few different areas. For my current DH campaign these areas are: Fun (how much fun did we have?), OOC-discipline (were we in time? did we get ditracted a lot?), Roleplaying (how "alive" and "real" do our charcters feel?), the Saga (does this feel like a realy good story? would we enjoy it if it were in a book or a movie?) and Sandboxing (how well do I, the GM, create opportunities to make their own destinies, and how well do the group take and make those opportunities?) These areas have been chosen by my group, me included, to reflect areas that we think is important for our enjoyment of the game. And the more they have enjoyed themselves the more xp they hand out. The areas are also discussed, challenged and sometimes changed after each chapter.

This system was created after lengthy discussions with several veteran RPers around concepts such as "why do we game?" and "What does the xp represent?". In short the result was: We game because it is fun. We all invest our time and enthusiasm to make it as fun as possible. We want to respect our fellow players investment of time, by maximising the fun that is had. The GM is our groups slave, since she invests much more time and has just about as much fun the rest of us. Xp is our reward for doing a good job creating this fun. We do know best what we find fun, so we can best judge our own performance.

After having this system in practice in a several pretty different gaming groups for a year or so I found two very interesting effects that came from this system. First, when we choose areas to score ourselves in we create opportunities for discussion and improvement. We need to think about why we play and what we find the most rewarding, or indeed the most disturbing, to our enjoyment. And after each session there is a good opportunity to discuss what you felt was lacking or awesome with todays gaming. This leads to high quality gaming time, and a lot of "unspoken ideas" that gets drawn into the light.

Second, this system puts a lot of emphasis on the cooperative efforts of storytelling and gaming. It really takes the edge of the "GM vs the players" mentality that sometimes appear while RPing. This I have found to be something awesome. People are much less worried about the success of their individual characters (or indeed the party) and much more worried about telling a captivating and grand story. Epic suicidal missions, glorious last stands or just being utterly and completely played by someone with a lot more info all becomes great moments of the story, rather than a failure of the players.

We also work on the assumption that RPing is a team effort, so the effort of the entire group, including the GM, is evaluated and the xp is given in equal measure to all. Even players who were not there gain the same amount of xp, partly since it makes balancing encounters easier (doesn't matter much in DH, but we use this xp-system for DnD and similar as well). But mostly it is because we feel that missing out on one of our wonderful sessions is painful enough as it is. A few times the player group has spontaneously awarded a symbolic amount of 50 individual bonus xp to someone. Mostly after outstanding feats of RP, bringing a glorious cake to the evening, or that time when our lvl 2 guardsman Castella oneshotted a stealer with a table-leg.

So, in my system, the players own their collective xp-level. So when they make a new character they make it on the same xp-level as their last one. However, I hadnt thought about the insanity points and corruption points that inevitably rack up over the course of gaming. Your solution on the problem is really good. As far as I can tell the amounts are pretty reasonable as well. If I played with playerbound or characterbound xp I would definitely use it. It gives the players the possibility to make meaningful choices, wich is always a good thing. For now I think my houserule on the subject will be something like: Every full 1k xp you start your new character with will cause her/him 1d10 insanity or corruption, players choice to be made before rolling any dice.

So this is definitely something to polish, rather than execute.

And this turned into quite a wall of text... oh well, xp and group dynamics are important matters, worhty of discussion :-)

ZillaPrime said:

Interesting idea. In this format (DH), I think the trade-off of additional XP in return for an increased risk of oblivion, is a great idea! The details may have to be tweaked, but the concept is pure genius. Kudos!

Because, we all know that DH is a amazingly lethal setting ... not just due to the formidability of the some of the opponents, but because of the very real risk of insanity and corruption ... which can be, and often is, as lethal as the players' opponents themselves.

Mellon said:

VERY impressive! I want to commandeer this idea, at least in some similar form, in my upcoming DH game. Now I just have to tweak it in a way that will not completely alienate my players I am sorry to say that they are a group of the most "power-gamer", "loot-hungry" THUGS in the history of RPG's. That is not to say that they don't role-play, or that they don't enjoy that aspect of gaming. Rather, it's just that they only seem to think, even in-character, in terms of risk vs. gain. So, since I don't want to bore my friends/players, I will need to find a median that will allow their mercenary-streak to come through, while still nudging the rewards given in the right direction meaning in the direction of us ALL having a good time gaming. Thanks for the insight.

Thanks for the flattery, you make me blush here :-) Let me know how your powergamers react to the idea. In the dream scenario they will start making a competition about how they can roleplay as Immersively as possible... You can try to let them score themselves within a few different areas, such as "John Wooo action scenes", "zombie splatter action scenes", "angsty emo monologues and oneliners" or "personal sacrifices for the Emperor". In those cases the players (and their characters) will be rewarded for taking bigger risks that makes for a better story. (that means a story that goes more along the lines of what you have decided you want to play)

Hmm, so the players decide for themselves how much XP they get? How do you prevent them from granting themselves silly amounts? Or just giving themselves a perfect 10/10 each time?

Darth Smeg said:

Yes they do.
I don't, they limit themselves.
Sure they could, but why would they?

I can understand that my method would feel very unnatural for a roleplayer or GM who are used to the "GM vs players"-attitude. I'll try to explain how I think.

The whole gaming group is gathered to have a nice time. This is the most important part. If we didn't have fun we would go play WoW or watch a movie instead. We create fun by telling an interesting story, including interesting challenges for the players minds. We game very cooperatively. That means all the players are at least a bit repsonsible for making the story enjoyable.

We all know that our gaming sessions will be better if we honestly talk about what we like. One example: If we kept talking a lot OOC this evening, and a player felt that made the session less fun she or he will say so. Because that might mean less talking about football or whatever the next session. We simply want our roleplaying evenings to be as good as possible, and we choose the areas we score in based on what we feel is important for having a good evening.

And in all honesty, how many xp your character have doesn't matter very much for how fun you have. Especially since all the players have the same amount of xp, so everyone can be equally useful. The NPCs have an unlimited amount of XP and numbers, and their plots can be any amount of complicated, so it's really not hard to make challenging fights or situations with challenging skilltests. The only effect of giving the party silly amounts of xp is to make them too highleveled for the rules system sooner rather than later.

If you want to start using this method, talk it through with your players beforehand. All player groups I've tried this on have been very confused at the beginning, but very happy after having tried it for a while.

Hi Mellon,

I especially like the "further XP? Only for some harm!" approach. You are right, most other pc will have endured SOME damage to mind and soul.

Are you sure with the 400xp for 1d5 Insanity/Corrupton? I would race the stakes here to 1d10. As far as I understood the "Mechanic" for the IH Background Packages, they are roughly about "1d10 for about 100-300 xp worth of advantages". Thereby, I would say that an "400xp block" would come with either 1d10 Insanity/Corruption