Player motivation for an exploration-themed game

[Haltherrion]

I very much like the idea of keying level gain off of player knowledge of the game world, in theory. I do wonder in practice how the change in incentives will affect the game. In particular, I wonder if players' tolerance for long combats will evaporate, once combats stop being the principal means to character advancement. The players may care less about character optimization and more about developing relationships with NPCs and collecting useful rituals. Assuming the players buy into the idea, I think it could be a big win.

I've got to confess, the whole concept rubs me wrong. It's an interesting thought but implementing it raises a whole lot of issues for me:

• How does knowledge of the world really cause you to level up? Most leveling mechanisms are somewhat artificial, granted, but this seems more artificial than most.
• This puts a very strong emphasis on an aspect of RPGs that all of your players may not agree with. People play for various reasons, being told to play for the sake of exploring may offend a number of players.
• Even players that like to explore may resent being told they have to explore.
• There are much less intrusive ways to encourage exploration.

Just my thoughts. If a trusted friend tried this, I'd give it a go although I would certainly share my reservations with him. If it was a ref I wasn't familiar with, I would steer clear of a game like this as I would be wondering just how many other referee-mandates there might be in the game. Maybe he doesn't like spell casters either and their XP is going to be halved?

I'm not saying the OP would do such things but such techniques would certainly give me pause.

I'm sure it can be made to work but I just thought I'd share my reservations...

 

[RangerWickett]

In my games I already toss out normal experience awards. The group gains a level whenever they've accomplished something significant, and a significant stretch of time has passed. Or when the group seems antsy and wants a new level. For the past, oh, 12 years I've never bothered to calculate XP. So this idea was a way to add some structure back into the game.

My players don't like long combats; they only like combat that matters to the narrative, or that is wildly fun in its own right (the latter seldom comes up, much to my chagrin).

I like Lost Soul's comment about player created goals. I would definitely need a way for players to say, "I want to accomplish this," and I would add questions based on his goal.

As for how learning about the world causes you to level up, the setting is a primordial world, Planescape-esque, where belief shapes reality. If you know about the world, you have some measure of power over the world.

 

[Roger]

I sort of like this, in theory.

I think what I'd do is tie it in more explicitly to Paragon Paths. You want to be a Knight Protector when you grow up? Better spend some time on the Battlefields of Zorg. Otherwise that Path doesn't unlock for you.

Of course, this is practically begging the party to split up on a continental scale, which may or may not be a good thing.


Cheers,
Roger

 

[Ace32]

Another idea might be to simply make some kind of physical manifestation of their conquests. Maybe each part of the world you want them to visit has some kind of token of power. Acquiring these tokens of power is what enables the characters to grow in power. This takes out the metagame problems and also is incentive in itself - its a physical thing that they want to acquire. There is no problem with who is asking the questions or any need to handwave the ability to make a knowledge check to answer the question.

You could tie it into your original purpose as well - half the challenge is figuring out what the token might be in each land. The tokens would be representative of the land itself and therefore vary from place to place, whether they are totems of some important tribe or acorns from a tree growing where some deity was once struck down. This allows you to customize each leg of the game, gives the players a mystery to solve, and allows a rather arbitary system of leveling up to exist in a way that almost makes sense in-world.

The only problem is explaining how all of their equal level antagonists get around the need for tokens - or seem to have found them and kept them secret.

Still, just an idea for a different direction.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

If the world is a primordial world which can be affected by the thoughts/attention of its inhabitants, and the goal is exploration, then I would suggest the way to work this is to have the creation of the world itself be the "power source" for PCs leveling up. As the PCs explore the world and gain knowledge and understanding of it, they can begin to affect control over areas, shaping it to some degree. The more they control and shape, the stronger they become. More than one person can have an element of control in the same area, but as more and more people create this influence in an area, the more immutable that area becomes, and the less power a new person gains from that area.

NPCs of similar level have themselves already done this, exerting control over certain portions of the world. The PCs can start in better defined areas with more leaders and sages who have asserted control in the area. The PCs gain less power with their understanding early on. As they progress they have to find less well-controlled/defined regions of the world where there are fewer controlling influences in place already. The death of a person with strong influence in an area can actually cause the control and definition to regress, possibly create a conflict for the PCs as they advance in the game and start to understand the power of the world and their ultimate goal in the story arc - do they kill the nasty NPC and possibly destabilze things further?

The questionnaires are a metagame method of the levelling-up process, representing the knowledge, influence and control the PCs have. Since it is a metagame tool, the PCs do not answer the questions, the players do. As a result the idea of a knowledge check to get the answer is not an issue.

 

[RangerWickett]

You guys are amazing fonts of ideas. You should level up.

 

[Barastrondo]

The quiz as leveling's an interesting thought. I absolutely agree that it would be best done if you added more questions to the roster as they leveled up. You've gotten to level 7? Then there are 15-20 more questions to answer, instead of only 8 left. That gets across the idea that the more you see of the world, the more there is to see. It'd create branching paths of exploration and the sense that the world is almost limitless in possibilities.

Do you want the players to be invested in exploration at primarily an intellectual or an emotional level? It seems that the quiz would nudge them toward the former: the satisfaction of filling in maps, uncovering lore, things like that. I tend to spend a lot of time working on the emotional level, too, rewarding my players for exploration by letting them discover beautiful things — fantastic pieces of colossal statuary, singular fantastic grottoes, unusual and savory foods, artistic treasures, and of course lots of attractive people wearing exotic and interesting outfits. If sending a group to the City of Brass, for instance, I'd want the scenery to be gorgeous (even if oppressive), the shopping to be beyond anything they'd seen before, and of course there'd be lots of attractive people (humans, elves, genasi, tieflings, genies, medusae, what-have-you — the more diverse and exotic the better) wearing flattering variations on abbreviated vests and blousy pants.

Another trick I'd recommend is making sure that the players feel they've secured a home base sufficiently that they feel good about leaving. This won't matter to all players, of course, but you want to make sure nobody's on the fence saying "I dunno, I really don't know if my character could leave in all good conscience, in case the goblins come again this winter." Let them make their home base idyllic, of course stressing that it's all due to the PCs; not only do they get to change a portion of the world, but then they feel secure in moving on and seeing another portion.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

You guys are amazing fonts of ideas. You should level up.

Thanks, I keep trying but I haven't been able to level up since I still cannot answer one of the burning questions on the EN World Test: Who is the woman in Thanee's avatar?