Aberrant RPG - Awarding Experience

[Jager]

I am just curious both as an ST and a player what you consider to be a fair amount of experience points to recieve?

Does anyone watch about how many experience points they give/recieve per year?

I am curious to see if anyone keeps tabs of "staying within Canon"? In the game, for instance, there are six novas with Q:6+ in 2008. Does anyone follow within those guidelines?

What do you consider to be a reasonable amount of xp for a player to get per year?

How about per session?

How many sessions per adventure, and how many adventures per game year?

Also, has anyone considered the concept of giving out less experience to more powerful characters, than to less experienced ones?

Thus, allowing a slow catch-up in power for the newer players.

Has anyone played a game were Nova Points were awarded instead of xp?

[Hugin]

I would never award NP instead of exp, personal opinion.

In the game I ran it was 2-3 exp per session in a weekly game. I also allowed up to 5 exp per month based on write-ups on our yahoo.group

Game got pretty outrageous, but it lasted over 6 months. I've decided in future games to never allow either Mastery or level 4 powers in the game. Both Aberrant games I ran blew up when someone with Mastery did something unintended.

[Cody]

Someone better with number crunching than I am pointed out to me Hugo the Bouncer between the core book and Underworld accumulated around 110 EP in around a decade.

I guess it depends on your game too. If they're saving the world and putting their ass on the line twice a week they should be getting a helluva lot more EP than if you're chronicling the trials of being body guards for Tommy Orgy.

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

I had thought Hugo was 150 EP in 10 years. Ironskin and Dragon had less than this but over a much lower period of time. 4 Years?

For that matter, the Fireman (no first listing) has about 12 years.

I'll have to review these guys and see what the numbers are.

More to the point, I think that 3 questions need to be addressed here.

1) At what rate should experience be gained, Real Time?

2) At what rate should experience be gained, Game Time?

3) Should there be bonuses for "excitement"?

For #3 I'd answer "Yes". Thus explaining Totentanz & Pax.

[Cody]

Quote:

Originally posted by David 'Dr. Troll' Smith:
I had thought Hugo was 150 EP in 10 years.

Have I mentioned my memory sucks mightily?

[Jager]

Alright!!!!

Thanks for the responses.

Personally, I think excitement should add. I was also thinking of a rate of 15 to 25 xp per year to be an average. 15 for the really laid back, not doing much, while 25 would be the average, working nova.

45 to 50 xp per year would be for the suprising active (Pax and Tanz being excellent examples), but keeping it up year in and year out, would be tough.

"The light that burns brightest, burns out twice as fast."

Remind the players of this.

[Hugin]

What do you do then if your game takes 6 sessions in a weekly game to cover 2 weeks? 1exp in 6 sessions on the medium end, 2-3 if you're being generous? Ouch. Wouldn't want to be a player in that one. Kind of frustrating not seeing in growth in a character on that level.

[Jager]

My thought would be to set a maximum cap for a game year. Let's say 50, if the characters are going to have a rough and tumble year. Let the players know that there will be a maximum amount and go from there.

So, you take six sessions to cover two weeks. give them the two to three points a session, then advance time. Let them help you out with the math.

If they want to roleplay every little week, let them know that the tap will run dry, and stick to that call.

Another idea I had I will put into another topic.

[Jager]

Bumping it up for my own, selfish ends!!!

[Matt]

When I used to run games back in TN, we would play 12 hour sessions, so I would give out 7ish xp per night, with the max possibility being 10 over the course of a week. Now we play for a few hours and I give out 2-6.

My guidlines for xp are based on what's in all the ST books. Everyone gets 1 xp for showing up and playing for the session. At the end of the night I have everyone write down who they think was the best role player for the evening and that person gets an extra point. If time allows, I try to have a conversation about the game, with people saying what they liked and didn't like, what they want to happen in the game, etc. This is worth another point. The adventure itself is worth between 1 and 4 points depending on how much we accomplished and how into it the players were. In the 12 hour games, the adventure would be worth 2-6 points.

I haven't done much of it lately, as not everyone I game with has an internet connection, but I used to have a hidden section on here that people could come to and we would do play by posts for the events that transpired for the characters between games. Those were worth 0-3 points, me giving out 3 only once.

The in game time between gaming sessions varies greatly. I'll run a few games that happen over the course of a few weeks and then there will be a few months break until the next game. I've even had games where there were decades between adventures.

The people that I played Aberrant with did reward nova points for special occassions. I think there were maybe 3 nova points given out over the year that I played, so it wasn't that drastic of a concept.

When I began playing Aberrant, it was already established that none of our characters could ever get Q6, as I joined in on an ongoing game where they had aleady learned their lesson about playing in a Q6+ game.

I personally have never really worried about how the pcs stack up against canon. I don't think it is something that you can really regulate strictly by numbers. Some people can play a character with tons of xp and still fit in with the game concept, while another player can have close to a starting character and overshadow the game by their playing of their powers.

My goal is to always make sure that the players have fun. So once we are in the game then I always make tweaks here and there to my all my rules so that everyone is satisfied.

[Charlie]

I will say that the experience point system that WW established is a good one.

1 xp Automatically - as a friend from work says "Experience is what you get...right after you say opps!"

1 xp for Discovery - since I first started playing the WW ST system I have liked that.

1 xp for Exceptional Roleplay - not my favorite since it tends to create "Drama Queens"

1 xp for Heroism - I only give this when someone really does sacrifice knowing that I will not save them. I have never been one of those GMs, DMs, STs that allowed characters to surivive just to be a nice guy. People die when they are both heroic and stupid. It means just that more to people when they learn that concept that the Hero does not always survive and that is just what makes them a Hero.

1 xp for Wisdom - maybe I am partial, somehow I just believe that players should be rewarded when they do smart things. I allow plenty of time to think things out (especially if the character is more capable than the player).

1 xp for Creativity - if someone takes extra effort to me that is creative. Snacks, giving a fellow player a ride, anything that provides for a pleasant gaming environment.

1 xp for Cohesion - I had a ST that used to actually use a character multiplier for this instead - that way he was not running 6 or 8 different games as characters scattered to the 8 directions of the compass. He made allowances for if characters needed to separate (if it furthered the game along), however the 1 or 2 anti-social characters did not get the Cohesion bonus. I can't remember what it was, but it seemed like a .05% multiplier per member that worked together, times the total xps each character received.