Game Mechanics Which Encourage Character Arc Progression

[Gradine]

Maybe I'm missing something here, but this sounds like the literal opposite of what the OP was asking for. That's a game mechanic that encourages the player to fail, not to progress.

Yeah, I'm very specifically looking for examples of game mechanics based around encouraging the development of a character arc for a player character. There are plenty of great roleplaying aide mechanics , and mechanical character progression (from a power perspective), but so far I've not had a lot of luck looking for the specific mechanic that touches on character progression from a story perspective.

On the one hand I can understand exactly why such a mechanic would be rare; as it has the potential to tread on player agency. But then we've also been living in a world where "Compels" have existed in the lexicon for nearly two decades. I'm intrigued by the idea and I was curious if any game systems out there had attempted to deliberately and explicitly develop along character arcs.

 

[Yora]

Maybe I'm missing something here, but this sounds like the literal opposite of what the OP was asking for. That's a game mechanic that encourages the player to fail, not to progress.

Someone described conflict or drama or something of that kind as "What the characters want, and why they can't have it."
Character development and progression is the struggle and how you react to setbacks. When characters can just get what they want, there's not much story and tension.

 

[Gradine]

Someone described conflict or drama or something of that kind as "What the characters want, and why they can't have it."
Character development and progression is the struggle and how you react to setbacks. When characters can just get what they want, there's not much story and tension.

Yes, but it's also about how the character manages to grow and overcome the obstacles and setbacks. Part of the issue with 5e's BIFTs, as an example, is that they're, as presented, fairly static. Apart from some questionably implemented examples of "You gain the following Flaw:", the game isn't really that interested, mechanically, in the character growing and changing. Does the PHB even have a cursory bit about how characters can replace their BIFTs over time as they feel like they don't fit anymore? I don't have my PHB handy but I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't.

And there's a lot of character development mechanics along the history of D&D helping characters progress in status and skill within the world, from strongholds to prestige classes to epic destinies, and a lot of meta-story advice about helping character progress in status and skill (such as through factions in early 5e) but it's all not quite what I'm looking for.

I am going to have to keep my eye out for Spire and Heart, though, those sound pretty cool.

 

[Umbran]

I'd point you to a pretty simple module:

• Each character has a Goal.
• Each character has a Flaw.
• PCs get rewards for preventing Goal progress by role-playing Flaws.
• Goals and Flaws can be changed, added, or removed. Removing an only Goal or Flaw requires replacing it with another.

The "character arc" is the progression of Goals and Flaws . . . I hope

You've given no incentive here to actually pursue goals. There's incentive to pick a goal you don't care about, so you can always be prevented from reaching it, and get rewarded for that failure.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I'm trying to tackle this very topic in how I'm designing GEAS. While there are Circles (levels), there are Chapters as well. When you advance into a different chapter, the power dynamic changes significantly. While you do get to choose new maneuvers each time you rise to a new Circle, when you advance to a new Chapter the maneuvers and abilities take an extra step up. Also, there are several "per Chapter level" rules in there, which further makes that separation between one chapter and the other.

Even your ancestral (racial) traits improve when you move to a different chapter:

 

[Umbran]

Tales of Xadia, a Cortex Prime-based game set in the world of the animated show The Dragon Prince, there's a couple of mechanics that support character arc.

1) Goals - a character can have up to three goals defined at any time. They have ratings in terms of die types (a d6 goal, or a d10 goal, etc). The higher the die type, the harder it'll be to achieve the goal. If/when you achieve the goal, you get that die added to your growth pool, which is used to advance/change the character.

2) Values - in the game the character has a die type in each of six values (Devotion, Glory, Justice, Liberty, Mastery, Truth). When you are attempting a task that narratively aligns with a Devotion, you get to use that die in your pool.

You can also question your value. When you do that, you get triple the dice for the value on the die test your are doing, you get Value's die in your growth pool, and you step the die value down one type. Afterwards you can choose to keep your value statement the same, keeping the stepped-down die, or you can rewrite your value statement to represent a new position on that value, and take the die type back up where it was.

So, character growth is in large part dependent on reaching goals, and having their values change over time - which sounds like character arc to me.

 

[Gradine]

That's a bit hard to follow in a post, but it sounds pretty cool. I'll have to check it out too!

 

[GMMichael]

Yeah, I'm very specifically looking for examples of game mechanics based around encouraging the development of a character arc for a player character.

A character arc is the transformation or inner journey of a character over the course of a story.

@Deset Gled , goals and flaws are 100% inner-journey items. A character arc is not, "here is a list of my successes."

You've given no incentive here to actually pursue goals. There's incentive to pick a goal you don't care about, so you can always be prevented from reaching it, and get rewarded for that failure.

I would expect goals to have inherent incentives. But if you're saying that PCs can game the system, there's a built-in check that the GM gives the rewards . (What rule set allows PCs to reward themselves?) So yes, a PC can say, "my goal is to protect the town cobbler, " and have a flaw of "ADHD for new quests." Leave on a new quest, and he's failed to protect the cobbler. There's one reward. But if the PC never actually goes back to do some protecting, or even tries, it's hard to say that the flaw prevented anything, since no progress was attempted.

 

[Fenris-77]

So I'm going to step outside the very keen offerings above for something a little less precise, but still on target. So I play a lot of OSR, and The Black Hack 2E is my go-to system there. There are a handful of small mechanical bits in TBH that add up to more than their parts, IMO anyway. First, players are encouraged to come up with their own backgrounds and evocatively expand upon them in-game in order to accrue advantage. So you mostly have all the players at the table actively building character backstory and motivation as the game progresses. But wait, there's more! The other half of the equation is the experience mechanic in TBH, which is simplicity itself but super slick. To go up a level the player needs to recount mighty deeds equal to their new level to the the other players, in character mind, as part of a night of drinking (or whatever). SO not only are the players actively building motivation but they are also regularly encouraged to mythologize their own exploits. Anyway, I love it.

 

[Umbran]

I would expect goals to have inherent incentives.

Cool. So, what are they?

The request in the thread is mechanic to encourage. We're just asking you engage with that. Give us a framework that doesn't leave everything up to the GM, but works in the context of the system.