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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8129764" data-attributes="member: 42582">Different approaches to PC improvement and development can produce different play experiences.A stark example: Classic Traveller has almost no improvement of PC stats or skills - &quot;improvement&quot; is primarily via the acquisition of equipment - and this is a pretty noticeable feature of the play experience.A different example: in Marvel Heroic RP, and Cortex+ Heroic hacks derived from it, XP is earned by reaching character-specific milestones (eg for Captain America this might be forming or disbanding a team of heroes, and other actions connected to that like giving commands to felllow team-members). XP can be spent on mechanical improvement, but also on change: eg in our MHRP game Nightcrawler's player spent XP to change a character Distinction (a bit like an Aspect in Fate) to make Nightcrawler less nice, and also to &quot;lock in&quot; a new ability based on using an energy sword taken from a defeated NPC; in our fantasy games players have spent XP to change their Affiliations (eg becoming better at working with a group than working solo).Both this way of earning XP, and these ways of spending it, sever the connection between XP as &quot;victory points&quot; and accruing XP as equating straightforwardly to mechanical improvement.Even within a given improvement/reward system, the play experience can be different. When I GM Burning Wheel, one of the players is super-focused on making choices in action declaration that will generate the checks needed to improve stats or skills. When that same player GMs and I am playing, I am much less focused on this (and frankly also not as good at it). The result is that my PC has advanced less slowly than his, but given that the main focus of play is not PC improvement but what is happening to the PC in the fiction, that isn't a problem.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 8129764, member: 42582"] Different approaches to PC improvement and development can produce different play experiences. A stark example: Classic Traveller has almost no improvement of PC stats or skills - "improvement" is primarily via the acquisition of equipment - and this is a pretty noticeable feature of the play experience. A different example: in Marvel Heroic RP, and Cortex+ Heroic hacks derived from it, XP is earned by reaching character-specific milestones (eg for Captain America this might be forming or disbanding a team of heroes, and other actions connected to that like giving commands to felllow team-members). XP can be spent on mechanical improvement, but also on change: eg in our MHRP game Nightcrawler's player spent XP to change a character Distinction (a bit like an Aspect in Fate) to make Nightcrawler less nice, and also to "lock in" a new ability based on using an energy sword taken from a defeated NPC; in our fantasy games players have spent XP to change their Affiliations (eg becoming better at working with a group than working solo). Both this way of earning XP, and these ways of spending it, sever the connection between XP as "victory points" and accruing XP as equating straightforwardly to mechanical improvement. Even within a given improvement/reward system, the play experience can be different. When I GM Burning Wheel, one of the players is super-focused on making choices in action declaration that will generate the checks needed to improve stats or skills. When that same player GMs and I am playing, I am much less focused on this (and frankly also not as good at it). The result is that my PC has advanced less slowly than his, but given that the main focus of play is not PC improvement but what is happening to the PC in the fiction, that isn't a problem. [/QUOTE]

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