[+]Training and Reward, not Assumed Advancement

[doctorbadwolf]

BRP = Basic Roleplaying, the family of RPGs descended from RuneQuest and Call of Cthulhu. They are usually skill-based, and in most of them skills can either increase with experience or with training/practice.

Addendum: Typically, using a skill (sometimes with the requirement that it is used successfully, sometimes with the requirement that it's in an important situation) gets you an "experience check" on the skill, which means that you can roll against it after the adventure. On a failure, you increase the skill by some amount, usually 1d6%, 1d10%, or 5%. Training (with a teacher) takes time and money, but usually gives you good results. Study (without a teacher) only takes time, but is less certain than having a teacher.

Yeah I’m much more thinking soemthing like:

You improvise a Technique in play, defend against a technique, or find a book describing it, and want to train and perfect it into a new Technique you can use without the skill improvisation rules. Later that day, you recreate the technique in a sparring session, and roll with the appropriate skill. Success means you’ve started learning it. The next day you reach a safe haven, and you can take more time with it. You find someone at least on your level in that skill, and practice and train. Let’s say it’s a Minor Trait, so it only needs 5 successes to learn, and you can only gain 1 success per day, so it takes a week to train if you’re really on the ball, but if you roll poorly it might take long enough that you’re still working on it when you leave not-Rivendell, still needing 2 successes to learn it.

A Major Trait might require 10 or more successes.

Skill ranks might be major, while specialization ranks are minor, but with skills you can simply count successful checks (must be total success) once a day toward training in a skill. This might be too fast in advancement, though.

I think with skills, you’d have roadblocks where you can’t get your 3rd rank without training with someone who already has at least 3 Ranks, or teaching someone the skill to have at least 1 rank. To become a Master (6 ranks) you have to train with a master or teach someone to reach Journeyman level.

It is perfectly possible in point-buy systems for the GM to award some points with a requirement that they be spent on a specific form of advancement. It's also possible to for the GM to require characters to buy up things they've actually used, and forbid buying up things they have not touched. These things tend to be quite deeply buried in the detailed dialog between the GM and each player that detailed point-buy systems like Hero or GURPS require, so they aren't talked about much.

The GM should not, IMO, be that deeply involved in the specifics of how the PC advances.

Beware of reducing everything to training-time equivalents. I have played a homebrew system created by a chap who worked for IBM, at a time when staff don't seem to have been allowed to do things unless they'd taken the appropriate training courses. Adventuring didn't give you any advancement points at all; the only potential gain from it was money to pay for training. This does not promote an entertaining game.

Im definitely not in any danger of doing anything like that.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The GM should not, IMO, be that deeply involved in the specifics of how the PC advances.

Unless you want to hand it off to the player (with some degenerate cases) or do a lot of micro-bookkeeping, its kind of hard to avoid in systems that have somewhat compressed steps; you're only going to get so much advancement, probably less than the range of skills and abilities you'll use in a given session.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Unless you want to hand it off to the player (with some degenerate cases) or do a lot of micro-bookkeeping, its kind of hard to avoid in systems that have somewhat compressed steps; you're only going to get so much advancement, probably less than the range of skills and abilities you'll use in a given session.

I disagree, but I also do want it in the hands of the player, yes.

I want the GM’s role in it to be to help guide and give inspiration and such, and adjudicate the execution of a set of rules that the player engages with.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I disagree, but I also do want it in the hands of the player, yes.

Well, if you want the players to do it, that's easy but it also means it can be hard to distinguish from a regular non-lump experience system beyond "player needs to explain why this particular ability is advancing." If that's all you need, you could layer it over a lot of extent systems.

I want the GM’s role in it to be to help guide and give inspiration and such, and adjudicate the execution of a set of rules that the player engages with.

Like I say, at that point you could pretty much just apply that to most systems that have you buy individual improvements without need for much in the way of new mechanics. I think there's be some perverse incentives in some cases, but that's going to be a person by person problem.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Well, if you want the players to do it, that's easy but it also means it can be hard to distinguish from a regular non-lump experience system beyond "player needs to explain why this particular ability is advancing." If that's all you need, you could layer it over a lot of extent systems.



Like I say, at that point you could pretty much just apply that to most systems that have you buy individual improvements without need for much in the way of new mechanics. I think there's be some perverse incentives in some cases, but that's going to be a person by person problem.

The point is literally to require doing things in game to gain advancement.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The point is literally to require doing things in game to gain advancement.

And my point is, who gets to decide if they have? If its you, I don't see it as that much different from the GM-assigns-points method, and if its the player, then it just seems like normal individual experience awards on the honor system.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

And my point is, who gets to decide if they have? If its you, I don't see it as that much different from the GM-assigns-points method, and if its the player, then it just seems like normal individual experience awards on the honor system.

The rules.

I genuinely feel like you’re missing the whole point of the entire thread and I don’t know how to explain it differently right now. I will try later.

 

[cranberry]

If I recall correctly, 1E required PC to spend 1 month per level engaging in training in order to level up.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The rules.

Rules don't enforce themselves. Whether they've been properly engaged with still requires someone to decide.

I genuinely feel like you’re missing the whole point of the entire thread and I don’t know how to explain it differently right now. I will try later.

I don't think I'm missing it so much as not seeing how you expect this to be self-enforcing.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Rules don't enforce themselves. Whether they've been properly engaged with still requires someone to decide.

This is a separate question from “who decides” or “whose hands is the process in”.

The group and GM enforce the rules regardless of what rules we are discussing. The rules decide when you fail a death saving throw in 5e, and the DM enforces those rules if there is an issue with the rules at the table.

That doesn’t make it any less up to the player to decide when the the PC is engaging in a given action.

Like…it’s literally an action the PC can undertake. It’s “I’m going to use my week of downtime to take a training endeavor to train that fire kick technique I improvised during the adventure.” And then the GM operates the rules engine in the sense of asking for rolls, but success or failure isn’t even up to the GM, it’s up to the dice and the success ladder.

I don't think I'm missing it so much as not seeing how you expect this to be self-enforcing.