New Level-less RPG

[Rogerd1]

As Savage Worlds has been mentioned, there is also Modern Age which works essentially based on tiers, Novice, Expert, Master etc.

Lords of Gossamer, has neither levels, nor classes, and is also diceless.

Omni has no levels, and neither does Tri-Stat, same for the same engine used with Age of Sigmar: Soulbound.

 

[aramis erak]

How experienced are you with different kinds of RPGs? I ask because what you are asking is a methodology that has been around for a long time.

Traveller was skill based, and ©1977. RuneQuest in 1978/

If you are new to.RPGs, especially those outside of D&D, I suggest looking at games like GURPS, Savage Worlds, Hero System and anything else that uses incremental advancement.

Seconded.

 

[aramis erak]

OG Traveller had no advancement system for characters.

dead «bleep»ing wrong. It's in book 3. Sure, it takes 8 character years... but it IS there.

 

[clearstream]

I've been monkeying around with some ideas. One thing I'm toying with is what an RPG without levels would look like. I'm trying to see if it's feasable to take the idea of a "level" and sort of divide it up into its constituent components that a player can "buy." Like if you thought of a traditional level as a "package" of advancements, it might (depending on system) come with any of:

Increased Hit points
Better Chance to Hit
More Chances to Attack
Ability Score Increase(s)
New Proficiencies/Skills, or increased expertise in them
New/More/Higher level Spells
New/Better Class Abilities
Etc. Etc... you get the idea.

This would work (or not) from a system of milestones. You hit x milestone, get an xp and you can spend your milestone on any of the aforementioned and probably more. A running XP total should provide an approximate idea of power level for terms of balancing encounters and/or writing adventures.

It may be that some degree of requirement barriers should be baked in to prevent a player from, say, buying into nothing but increased chance to hit at the expense of being a complete glass cannon. Or whatever the case may be. But to some degree, the idea would be that Players should be allowed to make this decision and be a glass cannon if they wish.

One thing to anticipate is increased playtesting costs, because your available combinations of abilities will be greatly increased. That's one reason D&D has stuck with class packages. If you deconstruct the design, you can see how much easier it makes both initial playtesting and later additions. The latter is well-worth considering, because if you want a balanced game, anything added must be tested against everything already there. Of course, for a local game balance might not be a consideration, and in all probability players will explore only a small part of the design space.

The primary detriment that I am seeing right now is that it require long lists of milestones. Probably some would be recurring and some would not. Some would be specific to classes and species. This would probably be several pages of tables. I think in my completely hypothetical system I want negative experiences to advance the character as well, e.g. "failing a quest," "surrendering," "fleeing," "getting robbed," etc. would be on the list along with what you'd expect: defeating enemies, finding treasures, completing quests, etc. etc. so forth.

Exactly. That's one of the common approaches to designability problem I outline above. You set some rules that limit combinations. Examples include

• Prerequisites
• Exclusions (if you take X, you cannot take Y)
• Recurrence (as you mention)
• Classes, backgrounds, species (as you mention)
• Costs (a useful balancing tool is to cost a feat at 2 ability points (just like an ASI) and price each ability in feats and half-feats using the mechanical value of ability scores as your baselines
• Uniqueness (which can also be across the players)
• World-based prerequisites (polities, titles, artifacts, seasons)
• One from A, one from B divisions (so you split the more desirable abilities into their own column, and make a pick from each column)
• Escalating cost (so Y costs more if you already have Z)

As others have said, you can readily find inspiration for such limits in existing game systems.

 

[kigmatzomat]

Level-less systems I know about off the top of my head

Current systems
Shadowrun
World of Darkness
Cyberpunk
Fuzion (multi system. Used by one version of Champions, Bubblegum Crisis, etc)
Planet Mercenary
Eclipse Phase

Games that have changed systems but I haven't played the new one
7th sea (d10 version)
Deadlands (card version)

Possibly dead products
Kult
Trinity

 

[Staffan]

Possibly dead products
Kult
Trinity

Kult came out in a new edition a few years ago. I don't know if Helmgast are actively supporting it with more material or not.

Trinity was also rebooted recently as part of Onyx Path Publishing's Trinity Continuum game. They released the core rules with a minimal modern-day setting as "Trinity Continuum", and are now releasing different eras as supplements for the core game (basically, the same model as the "New World of Darkness" games used). So the old Trinity game now exists as Trinity Continuum RPG + the Aeon sourcebook, and there are a number of sourcebooks out for that as well. OPP focuses mainly on releasing via DriveThruRPG though, so most of the sourcebooks are only available that way.

 

[kigmatzomat]

Kult came out in a new edition a few years ago. I don't know if Helmgast are actively supporting it with more material or not.

I never wanted to run or play in a Kult game but I own 1st & 2nd ed plus a half dozen supplements because it is a fascinating take on modern horror. A setting where someone who is not-quite-divine will incinerate a child who stole a lollipop because of their sin and someone not-quite-demonic will eat the child's heart to taste the sin. I like to visit for 30 minutes at a time then go back to watching Bluey with the kiddos.

Now any time I want to add a touch of horror or just freaky otherness to a campaign, I give something two or three powers/spells/rituals I converted from Kult. I had one BBEG do a variant of the "personal hell" ritual so that one full lunar cycle after they were slain, they would return as a fiendish incarnation, having leveled up after fighting free of the afterlife.

Trinity was also rebooted recently as part of Onyx Path Publishing's Trinity Continuum game.

A friend was big on Trinity when it first came out but I never quite got the bug. Part of it was the spiral bound format that I felt I was going to damage and the rest was it felt incomplete somehow, missing a hook.

 

[ThorinTeague]

I just read a very intriguing idea posted by a forum user in an OSR dealie, the idea of powering [or leveling] up during combat. I think that has some potential applications here as well.

 

[TheAlkaizer]

Burning Wheel is leveless.

 

[JohnSnow]

Savage Worlds (which I think has been mentioned a few times) does not use levels. You simply gain "advances" which you can use to gain an edge, boost skills, or increase an attribute, once per "Rank." You can use advances to buy off hindrances, but it's rather costly and not really advised. Rank is a little bit like level, but there's only 5 (Novice, Seasoned, Veteran, Heroic, and Legendary), and it's mostly used to limit access to the most powerful edges and powers. "Fly" and "Invisibility" are not available to novices, for example.

Overall, I find it a pretty spiffy system with just a nice level of granularity. But it's very easy to create "packages" that mimic classes as they've proven with Pathfinder for Savage Worlds (which actually added a special category of "Class Edges" to the game).