Barf Forth Apocalyptica

the swamp provides => Vanguard => Topic started by: Matt Wilson on June 23, 2010, 08:57:23 AM

Title: earnin' them xps
Post by: Matt Wilson on June 23, 2010, 08:57:23 AM

I am much in favor of how experience works in Vx's games, where a concrete thing happens in the fiction that generally isn't up for much debate. Stuff like "for good roleplaying" or "when you take a really big risk" leaves me going bleah. Who judges that? Me? No thanks. Notice how in Primetime Adventures the players give XP to each other instead of the GM? Yeah.

Keeping that in mind, I would like to figure out how to incorporate just a bit of "what the game's about" into Vanguard's XP subsystem. Some ideas I had:

• Mark XP the first time you take harm during a session.
• Mark XP when you do a thing that improves the well being of the Planetary Commonwealth.
• Mark XP when you discover a new world.
• Mark XP when you make out with a totally hot alien.
• Mark XP when you get in a chase scene.

They're still a little debatable, right? Was it a chase if it only took one move? Did that thing we did improve the Commonwealth in a meaningful way? Was that alien hot enough? etc.

Some of these might be good as role-specific, like the scout would mark XP when making discoveries.

I suppose they need to be a modest sized list, which includes events that can happen regularly enough to keep the characters checking off thingies on the sheet.

Do cool stuff with your guy and you get to fill in circles. That's the bottom line, right?

Title: Re: earnin' them xps
Post by: Simon JB on June 23, 2010, 11:07:27 AM

My suggestion would be to find concrete yes or no situations tied to those things and then award those. Like getting credit for improving the commonwealth, or just going to bed with an alien, presuming that it's probably going to be a hot one and not really minding if it's not.

Something like that.

Title: Re: earnin' them xps
Post by: Matt Wilson on June 24, 2010, 10:54:50 AM

Simon, yeah probably.

When I get a chance to playtest, I'll see what comes of it.

Title: Re: earnin' them xps
Post by: Daniel Wood on June 25, 2010, 04:17:06 AM

Maybe you could combine a standard, For Everyone xp list with one or two class-specific XP Things as well?

And surely every alien is hot enough in Vanguard.

Title: Re: earnin' them xps
Post by: Ariel on June 25, 2010, 05:04:40 AM

Life ain't nothing but green bitches and spaceships in Vanguard.

(Which is totally awesome.)