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Guardian_A
Commodore
Joined: 24 May 2011
Posts: 1654
Location: South Dakota, USA
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 Posted: Sat May 28, 2011 6:20 pm Post subject: |
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| Bren wrote: | | Guardian_A wrote: | | garhkal wrote: | | Its not that i dont like them spending it to just look cool, but i feel i should not have to 'give them' it back for doing so. |
Thats how I feel as well. CPs are valuable, and players should treat them as such. If you just give them back any CPs they use during play, there is nothing to keep them from building up a pool of +50 points just so they can boost every roll they make during an evening of play. By being a little greedy with the CPs the players have to choose whether they want to improve their character or their rolls during a session. |
Haven't ever seen characters get anywhere near 50 points so that seems a false concern to me. I think the most I've ever seen is 19 CPs saved at a time for very experienced characters. And the way we play, typically CPs are only given at the end of a scenario or episode which might take 10-20 hours or so to play out, so characters can burn through quite a few points before they get any back. I have used up 15+ CPs on a single long scenario. On the big climax scenario, I used all my CPs and all my force points.
If it costs more character points to stay alive and do cool things than it doing so earns, players quickly stop trying to do cool things or the characters die. I like players choosing to do cool things. I like characters not dying.
I see CPs as one incentive for encouraging an enjoyable style of play. Guardian_A, you seem to as well as your list of CP awards "gives" character points for a number player and character actions that you appear to value. It looks like you are giving out 1-5 CPs per session, plus 1 CP per week of travel or down time, plus up to 3 additional points for the end of each a story. I don't know how long your sessions are, our stories are typically 10-20 hours of play or about 2-3 sessions which provides perhaps 10-20 CPs. That doesn't seem much different in number of CPs, possibly less, than what you are awarding. garhkal, based on your numbers you (and Sparks in general) are "giving" out twice as many CPs per hour as I do so you must be rewarding and incenting something. This really seems to me to be more of a distinction without a difference than a real difference in actual effect. But if you and your players are having fun, that's the real point. |
I give out CPs at the end of the night. In addition, I find a reason to give players +1 to a skill every 2-3 sessions. Finally, if the characters have an extended period of travel, those points are awarded instantly (This time can also be used as "training" time and players may buy skills at this time. I find this useful since it usually gives me time to set up our next encounter/event.)
We usually play between 6 and 10 hours in one setting. At the end of the night, players tend to earn 3-6 CPs. Most of our stories play out over 5-10 settings.
As for my players trying to do exceptional or heroic, . . . . it happens 2-3 times a night. I personally think that makes those moments all the more impressive.
I guess it all boils down to the storyteller and the players, like you said, so long as everyone is having fun, thats the real point. |
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Bren
Vice Admiral
Joined: 19 Aug 2010
Posts: 3868
Location: Maryland, USA
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| Posted: Sat May 28, 2011 6:59 pm Post subject: |
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Guardian_A - your actual CP award numbers sound pretty similar to what we do. Your rationale is different, but the numbers sound very similar with two exceptions.
1) We don't give out awards at the end of the night. Generally we only do that at the end of a scenario or what I would call the end of an episode - a thematic climax to a multipart scenario. That is one reason that experienced characters tend to feel the need to accumulate 10+ CPs (typically 10-15, sometimes as many as 19 CPs). This tides them over until they can finish a scenario. This forces the player to balance their CP total across not only the current evening, but their estimate of how long it will take to get to a thematic ending. I don't see this as a particular advantage, just that our tradition is evolved to wait to the end of the scenario.
2) The CP awards for "research" or time passing. This wouldn't amount to a lot of CPs between adventures for us as in game there was often only a couple of days or so of game time between adventures and sometimes no time at all, one adventure started up right after the next in game time. In game, the charactes only had limited down time and generally needed most of that either to heal up or to train skills and such spending the CPs they earned during the previous scenarios. But over the course of our campaign we played out about 3 years of game time, so that at 1 CPs every 7 days, that would be as much as 150 CPS per active character, which is no small sum, and for those characters that weren't active it would be a significant increase. I'm not sure I like that, but I can see certain advantages if one wanted a mechanism for NPC or currently unplayed or semi-retired PC improvement. |
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Whill
Dark Lord of the Jedi (Owner/Admin)
Joined: 14 Apr 2008
Posts: 10438
Location: Columbus, Ohio, USA, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way Galaxy
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| Posted: Sat May 28, 2011 10:50 pm Post subject: |
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| Bren wrote: | | garhkal, based on your numbers you (and Sparks in general) are "giving" out twice as many CPs per hour as I do so you must be rewarding and incenting something. This really seems to me to be more of a distinction without a difference than a real difference in actual effect. |
But considering that brand spanking new PCs join into PC groups with extremely experienced PCs, the higher the rate of CPs earned is an even greater disconnect between experienced and starting level PCs. Personally, I feel that giving out CPs like they're candy at Halloween can be very detrimental to some players' enjoyment in some games.
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Grimace
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Joined: 11 Oct 2004
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Location: Montana; Big Sky Country
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| Posted: Sun May 29, 2011 12:07 am Post subject: |
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| Whill wrote: |
..snip.. Personally, I feel that giving out CPs like they're candy at Halloween can be very detrimental to some players' enjoyment in some games. |
Completely agree! Greater CP rewards lead to rapid escelation of skills and that becomes generally out of balance and creates the "bucket of dice" syndrome. |
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ZzaphodD
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Joined: 28 Nov 2009
Posts: 2426
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| Posted: Sun May 29, 2011 2:58 am Post subject: |
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| Grimace wrote: | | Whill wrote: |
..snip.. Personally, I feel that giving out CPs like they're candy at Halloween can be very detrimental to some players' enjoyment in some games. |
Completely agree! Greater CP rewards lead to rapid escelation of skills and that becomes generally out of balance and creates the "bucket of dice" syndrome. |
Earlier I was thinking of a system of escalating CP costs for raising skills to encounter spreading CPs around (some of the characters in the group tend to be very focused on a few narrow skills).
-When raising a skill up to base ability +1D it costs 1 CP less to raise the skill.
-When you raise a skill over +2D the base ability it costs one additional CP to raise.
-When you raise a skill over +3D the base ability the cost to raise the skill is increased by two CPs.
The idea was only to 'encourage' raising a broader spectrum of skills.
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Whill
Dark Lord of the Jedi (Owner/Admin)
Joined: 14 Apr 2008
Posts: 10438
Location: Columbus, Ohio, USA, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way Galaxy
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| Posted: Sun May 29, 2011 12:13 pm Post subject: |
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| ZzaphodD wrote: | | Grimace wrote: | | Whill wrote: | | Personally, I feel that giving out CPs like they're candy at Halloween can be very detrimental to some players' enjoyment in some games. |
Completely agree! Greater CP rewards lead to rapid escelation of skills and that becomes generally out of balance and creates the "bucket of dice" syndrome. |
...The idea was only to 'encourage' raising a broader spectrum of skills. |
That's one way to do it. I think the system's proportional cost works well-enough for me in general. Most players realize that you get more bang for your buck raising lower-level skills than higher ones. A player can spend his 6 CPs he just earned to raise a 6D skill to 6D+1, or he can use the same 6 CPs to raise three 2D+2 skills to 3D.
Another factor is the natural player attrition in my campaigns (Players inevitably have to drop out of a campaign over time, so PC groups tend to end smaller then they start and thus less PCs have to carry the burden of a good skill-set for the group). So remaining PCs sometimes have to beef-up in other areas to compensate for sudden losses to the group's skill-set.
If needed, I have two non-mechanical methods to encourage players to not over-focus their PCs abilities. (1) I merely suggest after adventures when players are considering how to advance their PCs. That usually works alone to encourage players to broaden their PCs' abilities. (2) The adventures' plots will inevitably put any given PC in situations where he is required to depend on skills outside of his focus. Sometimes PCs just get separated from the group or the PC that would normally perform the task incapacitated. They may not need the quite expertise level of the absent PC, but the group may suffer if they don't have any ability in at least certain basic skills that all advanced PCs should have. The rare stubborn player in my campaign that resists my suggestions usually learns the hard way to not over-focus.
These methods have always worked for me. I can't remember a single character I have ran since 1988 that ever had any skill higher than 8D. After getting a couple signature skills of a PC to that level, my players are wise enough to start speading the CPs around.
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Bren
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Joined: 19 Aug 2010
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Location: Maryland, USA
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| Posted: Mon May 30, 2011 2:29 am Post subject: |
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| Whill wrote: | | I merely suggest after adventures when players are considering how to advance their PCs. |
Agree with everything you said Whill. Suggesting skill increases has been an aspect of our gaming since we started playing flexible skill systems like Runequest and Call of Cthulhu.
And I find that astute players often ask the GM for suggestions on what skills to advance.
Although I guess we did manage to have a character or two raise a skill specialization above 8D, though I think 8D was the max for a base skill. One caveat on broadening skills, although I like broadening a character's skillsets in general, I often prefer (as both GM and player) to have a character have a few skills or groups of skills that they do not increase. This allows for some vulnerability or weakness and allows a role for other characters in a group or party to fill in the gap. |
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