Darrett said:

that is a very good idea in converting the xp into the a 100xp per advancement system, it opens for a more flexible way of rewarding xp. Do you reward your players individually as well? as opposed to the standard rules of equal advancment?

With the 1xp per advancment system its hard to reward them individually but, with the 2nd edition award system or your system, giving one or two players an additional 25xp wouldn't be that unbalancing. I guess you have to change the xp system if you want to award individual players. hmm I am taking this into consideration, maybe I give it a try.

good gaming

Mal Reynolds said:

Yes I do give individual rewards for particularly impressive performances.

I really don't give out any XP for simply showing up to a game, I often give out 5xp incrementally as players find clues, perform tasks, or roleplay a scene. On Saturday's game, the players were all part of the Gathering Storm battle at the start of part 2 (Keeping it ambiguous for anyone who hasn't played this yet), so I wrote down 10xp on my sheet. They found a few clues and expressed some suspicions that I thought were astute, so I wrote down 5xp more. They all earned an additional 10xp as they journeyed to the nearby Garden of Morr and did the initial tasks at that location.

In addition to that, the Apothecary used her knowledge of plants to use some of her previously picked schlaff to drug someone they had suspicions about, and get him to give them some information I hadn't planned on him divulging. That was worth 10 personal xp. Our player who usually is quiet and doesn't roleplay did a great scene with his Dwarf soldier, so I gave him 15xp because it was so encouraging to see. I do wait until the end of the session to give out the rewards.

Of course this isn't anything more than a return to the old advancement systems of many previous games, but I find it just works better, both for slowing the rate of advancement as well as giving me more room to give out targetted rewards.

Mal Reynolds said:

I think these are great ideas for games that are intended to last a long time. I have been playing the game with one group for a year, but at my LGS the groups shift more quickly and a "campaign" will last from 1-4 months. The standard Advancement system is great for short term games, or games that are played infrequently (like once or twice a month). But for anything longer than 8 months of regular play and the system can tap out quickly. I know characteristics might not be inflated to huge proportions, but action cards, talents, and skills start to run very short, very quickly.

For my long term campaign, we saw this problem coming down the pipe based on the rate of play, so we decided to switch up the mechanic to slow it down. I hope FFG eventually gives us something similar for long-term adventuring. I do not fully understand why there can't be different xp systems for campaign length of game time. Some gamers want to play a game for about 6 weeks before they quit it and move on. Other gamers can stick with one game for years. There should be "quick, moderate, and long-term" leveling mechanic that the group can choose for their game. It just makes so much sense.

So this is how we run it:

Quick game length (4 weeks - roughly 6 months): Give 1 Advancement and bonus advancements for story completions, major conflict resolutions (and failures at times - learn from your mistakes), and sometimes absolutely great role-playing.

Moderate Game length (6 months - year): We give out 1 Advancement as standard and rarely give out bonuses. At the end of major stories and for great roleplay sessions. The bonuses are seen more rarely than quick length games.

Long-Term length: This one is a bit more complex. I see no need for 100 point xp scales since it is just inflated math to me. So this is how we do it. A session can give 1-7 xp a night (on average 4-5 if a player is actively participating. Players who contribute less generally get 3-4). 5 XP creates 1 Advance. Advances on Characteristics are spent as normal. Skills cost 3 (yellow dice for the win!). Talents, Action Cards, and Fortune dice to characteristics, and specializations: Cost 2. People level at roughly 1.5 times the rate as they do in a moderate length game. After a year of play (with roughly 40 sessions) my current group is at roughly about a quarter of the way through rank 2. That does include characteristic advances (which slow things down by a week or two). They roughly purchase an advance every other session rather than every session (as I typically see with the standard system), with an additional week or two lag for characteristics. I don't remember off the top of my head what the awards are. I'll grab my notes later and post them up when I'm back at home.

I find the long-term system is holding up very, very well. If you compare our 40 sessions roughly with the standard system(grant it, this math is without buying an open career advance or characteristic advances), my players would already by rank 4 and a little beyond. If you took out some time for characteristic advances they would be rank 3 with some pretty beefy characteristics. At those higher levels, right now, the system breaks down. You roll so many boons and successes there is not enough success lines on cards to begin to mitigate the effects nor enough purple and black dice to make it at all that challenging when characteristics begin to creep up. Some people don't mind it, but eventually, I hope FFG gives the higher ranks some forms of tweaks (like a Super-Dodge that gives 2 purple or something), would at least be a step in the right direction.

Until then, it's slow pace for us.

Good Gaming,

Commoner

I suppose it depends on how much control over rewards you want, regarding 100xp/5xp systems. I like being able to hand out rewards in 5xp blocks, so the 100xp system works for us, as well as making it easily identifiable at a glance as far as how close you are to advancement. This probably wouldn't make a huge difference to most, but when you occasionally have a 10 year old in your group, it helps to limit the mental math required.

About the cards and talents, we've noticed that as well. The Social cards especially are extremely low, as each player has at least one, and one player has 4. We had to break the rules somewhat a while back because our party gained a new player, a Pit fighter, who was particularly intimidating. The Fear Me! card fit his character perfectly, but the Roadwarden had just chosen it the prior game as an advance. I allowed the Roadwarden to swap it for another card in order to allow the Pit Fighter to take it (I know we could have shared, but we like the unique approach), and it took a bit of a stretch to find something that worked as well for our RW.

This may just be that I allow "Influence the target" to have quite a bit of clout in social situations, so all the players have jumped on it as being the way to go.