Should Roleplay Determine Character Advancement?

[Haltherrion]

This seems to be an argument for more rules for roleplaying.

Paint me skeptical. Your situations still seem fraught with subjectivity I suppose if you mapped non-combat encounters into a small number of fairly broad buckets and handled them with very clearly defined resolution methods it might be relatively objective, the reason being you have avoided the subjective boundary cases by greatly reducing the number of boundaries but:

1. Players will argue about even the broadest categories. Just (briefly) turn to politics for a moment: you don't have to go too far into either end of the spectrum to find people categorizing the root problem of a situation in a wildly different ways. It just goes to show that even with broad buckets, you'll get arguements.
2. Defining a system that minimizes boundaries by lumping things together doesn't seem like a very satisfying gaming experience.

However, I will say that my comments had more to do with leveling based on RP in more classic combat-heavy game systems. In such cases, I think the rewards and the rewarded behavior don't mesh very well. In game systems focused less on combat it could work well enough.

 

[Numlock]

Until now this thread is IMO not about advancement but about rewarding. The difference being that advancement is not 'getting' the character points/XP/levels, but deciding what to do with those acquired points.

Following the above definition of advancement, I think roleplay should absolutely determine advancement. For example, a imaginary fighter (system undefined) has spend a few weeks IG killing goblins. The player knows that he is going to fight a dragon (It's the BBEG), so he would like to spend his points he got for fighting goblins in dragonslaying skills. As GM I would not permit this. The 'goblin-points' can be invested in anything used (and thus learned or improved) during the Goblin fighting. If the player used Dragonslaying skills to kill goblins, than advancement in Dragonslaying would be in order.

Expanding this to roleplay. If a player let his character bluff it's way through palace guard and this is rewarded with points/XP, those points should be invested in social skills, not magic or fighting.

Concluding: Points should be invested in skills that were used during the acquiring of said points.

Otherwise it would be like solving sudoku's to train for a wrestling match

Just my 2 cents

 

[Balesir]

I think considerations of "realism" are rather a red herring, here. There is nothing "realistic" about characters "levelling up" at all. Not only is it not how people develop and change in the 'real' world, a world based on certain characters getting vastly more powerful than the general population (while that population remains living as it always has done) is simply not supportable as a world background.

Levelling through "experience" is simply a way of gradually increasing player options and complexity (as well as, perhaps, escalating the stakes in the game) in a way that encourages the players to take on (and hopefully overcome) the defined challenges, whatever they might be for the game in question. It's a way to get players to engage with whatever the game stipulates they get "experience" for to gain new toys and more choices as they ascend the learning curve/achievement curve.

Objectively assessable achievenments are good for this; subjective ones less so. If the objective of the game is to get the players to engage with the world setting itself, or with each other, rather than with a series of external challenges, then experience and levels are not really a useful character "advancement" mechanic at all.

 

[pemerton]

If the objective of the game is to get the players to engage with the world setting itself, or with each other, rather than with a series of external challenges, then experience and levels are not really a useful character "advancement" mechanic at all.

Classic Traveller is an example of this.

How would you see Runequest fitting in?

 

[Saeviomagy]

Put me down for a second "character advancement is only tangentially related to XP" opinion.

I mean sure, there are some very rare examples where a character requires some benefit he gains from levelling up in order to represent some aspect of his character that isn't linear progression of power (ie - you may have someone learn to use an item that he's found or a new language. The current 4e system says he can only possibly do that by gaining a level) but in general the only thing that levelling up (and the reciprocal levelling of monsters) does is to give a feeling that new threats are bigger and badder, and to keep giving players new and interesting things to do.

The only time this isn't the case is if you're one of those 'the world and all the monsters in it are set in stone ahead of time, so you'd better level up if you want to go to the place marked "here be dragons"' DMs (not that there's anything wrong with it, it just seems like a lot of extra work to me). And even then the XP curve is really behaving as a sort of drawn path through the world, not any kind of realistic gauge of characters changing and improving due to the world around them.

That also partly why I don't believe in any sort of differential XP system in D&D. 4e (and D&D in general) breaks down if one character is significantly ahead of the others. Differential XP just makes the DMs job much harder. Since there are plenty of other things to give out (magic items, boons, rerolls, roleplaying rewards like your own castle, RL rewards like sweets) that are much more fun for all involved and much less work for a DM, why would you choose XP?

 

[Balesir]

Classic Traveller is an example of this.

How would you see Runequest fitting in?

Interestingly, very early (1/2E) RQ had skill increases mainly driven by training - a very world-based/simulationist approach for its time. The "roll a fail to advance" mechanic is a very nice way to get diminishing returns on a skill as it increases in value, but too often I find the game devolves into "tick drive", where players spend all their time looking for ways to get checkmarks by all their skills.

In summary, RQ-style percentage skill with rolls to gain can be a nice, world-simulating advancement mechanic, but these days, if I was designing for a setting-based game, I think I would go for a simpler schema that de-emphasises skill gain during actual play. I think this is an area where Pendragon's skill gains over "winter" is a great model. Playing Pendragon where personality stats change during actual adventures and skills just get trained over winter (and atrophy with age) works really well, IMO. The focus during actual play is right on your knight's traits and passions - which is just where it should be!

 

[Mishihari Lord]

My question is simple in theory. Should roleplay determine character advancement? What I mean is, should roleplay be the only thing that determines character advancement? Should XP and other mechanical means of advancing characters be thrown out and replaced with roleplay only advancement?

I like the idea. I like it a lot. But I've never found a good way to do it. If anyone has I'd love to see the rules you used or links to them.