Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 7754337" data-attributes="member: 29398">It didn't, and just saying "AD&D" could mean either and usually means 1e IME.Not quite sure it's an apt comparison, but whatever...  And if nobody brings chips that week?That characters will progress through various levels is a default assumption of any level-based RPG but not all RPGs build into that assumption that you'll make it to the end stage.An almost completely different thing.In bridge (no idea about five hundred, whatever that is) you and your partner are by skill - and no small amount of metagaming e.g. bid systems, signals, etc. - trying to defeat your opponents in a fixed-length game of 13 tricks.In an RPG you and your party are trying to accomplish goals of some sort, usually, in an open-ended-length game; but above that you as a PC are trying to survive the various risks and challenges posed by the game.  The best way to survive is obvious: minimize the risks overall and then further minimize the risks you specifically take as opposed to anyone else.  If everyone gets equal xp all the time then the system is rewarding this type of play; to the point where I could easily see a situation where every potentially-trapped door, for example, results in a Canadian standoff - "After you."  No, you first, I insist."But if there's an individual reward - i.e. xp - for taking the risk (whether the risk turns out to be real or not to the PCs) then people will be more inclined to just get on with it.Simple - they're more likely to be able to come back next week and play the same character again.  And this doesn't just apply to 4e, it's true of any system that has PC death as a possible outcome.Agreed, but if the system rewards playing your PC cautiously while in effect hoping others don't, how is that any good?Though 4e is the game you were referring to to start with, what I'm saying applies to any xp-based or level-based game: levels and-or xp are a reward no matter how you look at it, and if they're not a reward for what one's PC actually does in the game and just given out equally regardless of what a PC does then IMO the incentive provided is in fact a negative one in that it discourages heroic play and individual PC bravery and instead encourages over-caution or even individual PC cowardice.Lanefan</blockquote>

Verification