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<blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 3442847" data-attributes="member: 2067">I gotta say, I'm not really familiar enough with the system to even suggest something that would be functional.BUT, I can give maybe some general ideas on making players feel &quot;behind the cutting edge&quot; in anything.The idea is to have a rate at which the system advances that can leave the player's behind if they don't catch up. Being at the cutting edge is the best -- there's no penalty, maybe even a mild bonus. But if you don't continue to invest in it (spending skill points, for instance), the penalty just keeps growing. As an example, think of spiraling debt. If you remain at the edge of the curve, you'll do well, even gain a bonus (keeping a good score). However, once you fall behind once, there's a penalty added on. And as you fall farther behind, the penalties grow and compound - every time you miss a &quot;payment&quot; the penalty gets applied again, making it tougher to get ahead.I'll use a d20-esque example: every level, you need to sink 1 skill point into Tech. As long as you do, you gain a +2 bonus to all Tech-related skill checks. However, if you don't, you take a -2 to all Tech-related skill checks for each level that you fail to invest in (so, -2 at the first level, -4 at the second, etc). You can invest 1 skill point to stop the decline (so that it doesn't go down again at the level), but it takes double the penalty to erase one category (so it takes 8 skill points to move from -4 to -2, and 4 skill points to go from -2 to 0).This means that if characters don't cling to the cutting edge by paying their &quot;dues&quot; at every level/time period/whatever, they quickly fall behind. And maybe most characters not dedicated to it will fall behind, but it's essential enough that they don't want much of a penalty, so they'll be paying more as they get later in time.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="I'm A Banana, post: 3442847, member: 2067"] I gotta say, I'm not really familiar enough with the system to even suggest something that would be functional. BUT, I can give maybe some general ideas on making players feel "behind the cutting edge" in anything. The idea is to have a rate at which the system advances that can leave the player's behind if they don't catch up. Being at the cutting edge is the best -- there's no penalty, maybe even a mild bonus. But if you don't continue to invest in it (spending skill points, for instance), the penalty just keeps growing. As an example, think of spiraling debt. If you remain at the edge of the curve, you'll do well, even gain a bonus (keeping a good score). However, once you fall behind once, there's a penalty added on. And as you fall farther behind, the penalties grow and compound - every time you miss a "payment" the penalty gets applied again, making it tougher to get ahead. I'll use a d20-esque example: every level, you need to sink 1 skill point into Tech. As long as you do, you gain a +2 bonus to all Tech-related skill checks. However, if you don't, you take a -2 to all Tech-related skill checks for each level that you fail to invest in (so, -2 at the first level, -4 at the second, etc). You can invest 1 skill point to stop the decline (so that it doesn't go down again at the level), but it takes double the penalty to erase one category (so it takes 8 skill points to move from -4 to -2, and 4 skill points to go from -2 to 0). This means that if characters don't cling to the cutting edge by paying their "dues" at every level/time period/whatever, they quickly fall behind. And maybe most characters not dedicated to it will fall behind, but it's essential enough that they don't want much of a penalty, so they'll be paying more as they get later in time. [/QUOTE]

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