Should players get free Merits according to the narrative? Pondering various Storyteller systems

My group and I have played a lot of various Storyteller systems - Vampire the Masquerade, Vampire the Requiem 1st, 2nd and MET editions, Mage the Awakening, Werewolf the Forsaken, Exalted, Exalted vs World of Darkness, etc. One thing that I always enjoyed about the systems were how they handled and codified the weird character quirks and the externals of what a character is - the Merits, Flaws, Backgrounds, etc. It felt really unique back in the day being able to start a game as a character that is filthy rich, influential, or perhaps hunted down like a dog.

However, when the systems moved away from "GM may I get another dot" into letting players buy certain things with XP (as discussed last time), one big question arose - should the players pay for the various Merits they acquired during play (wealth, allies, artefacts, etc.)?

(if you're familiar with how these systems work, feel free to skip the next three sections)

oWoD - GM may I get a dot?

Let's start with how things started. In the Old World of Darkness game like like Vampire the Masquerade players could pick Backgrounds, Merits and Flaws at character creation. Backgrounds were things that didn't fit into Skills, Attributes and supernatural powers of a character. Often they would be things external to the physical person, like their wealth, allies, political influence, fame, etc. They could also be character traits that were hard to express otherwise, like a measure of Vampire's blood potency, Mage's memories from past lives, etc. To confuse things further, Merits were kind of also that, but as an optional rule and usually at a fixed price rather than 5 dot scale. These would cover being able to keep track of exact time, having an eidetic memory, having someone owe you a favour, being a really big person, etc. Flaws on the other hand were negative things that would hamper the character and gave you more freebie points, like being blind, hunted by someone, having an enemy, being averse to violence and so on. People often would min-max taking a maximum amount of Flaws to build their perfect character.

All of those things you could buy / pick at character creation and only change later through roleplay. You couldn't spend XP to learn more languages or to increase your wealth in V20 (some other systems handled languages differently, but that's a different story) - those could only be awarded by the GM as a result of the narrative.

In practice, people would rarely go back to those and update them. "We found a new guardian angel? Cool! I wasn't told to put them as a Mentor so I won't! Even if I did it wouldn't change anything, I can just call them, right?". If someone did want to update some Background, they would have to do the "GM may I?" thing and arbitrarily get a "yay" or "nay". You pretty much never got new Merits, and you'd usually shed Flaws connected to having an enemy after killing them, etc.

Because things were so wishy-washy, you didn't have people specialise in these things since you couldn't rely on the GM approving your point increases, so you mostly stuck to what you had at character generation. Things changed, however, with the next iteration of the system.

nWoD - everything is a Merit you can buy! (some limitations apply)

In the New World of Darkness (aka 1st edition of Chronicles of Darkness) the system got way more streamlined. You didn't have Flaws, you only had Merits that also covered Backgrounds. So you could be wealthy, influential, know telepathy, kung-fu, etc. all under the system of a Merit. Best of all, you could buy a lot of them with XP after character creation! The ones you couldn't buy were tied to rather innate things about the character - you couldn't grow an extra half a meter to take the Giant Merit, nor suddenly develop Eidetic Memory (unless you were a cool Vampire, then you had a separate Merit in Covenant Book Ordo Dracul "Mind of Devouring Worm" that was basically Eidetic Memory, but that's another story).

Now people could want to spend their XP on Merits since they often offered some interesting mechanical benefits - Fighting Styles augmented how you would engage in combat, Striking Looks helped you with social stuff, etc.

Things worked similarly in Exalted 3rd Edition, with an added exception of "Story Merits" - Merits that you couldn't purchase with XP after character generation. They could instead be awarded or advanced by the GM though roleplay and social influence. Those were things like Allies, Contacts, Mentor, Artifact, etc. Otherwise, you could still buy some Merits, like faster reflexes, languages, etc.

There was only one caveat to the base system in nWoD - if you spend XP on something and you lost it, that XP would be gone too. That was addressed in the final iteration of the system.

CofD - Sanctity of Merits and more mechanics!

In the 2nd edition of the system, all the game lines introduced the Sanctity of Merits rule, which refunded you XP you'd spend purchasing any Merit you lost. So if you buy a loyal retainer Alfred and he gets killed, you would get all that precious XP back and be able to spend it on something else.

I think by now also all Merits had some mechanical benefit to them. Status used to be a nebulous pull in an organisation, and now it turned into a bonus to social and an ability to block other Merits. Mentors had specific areas of expertise they could help with. The list goes on.

So finally you could have a character that specialises in Merits be not only very effective in a game, but also rest assured they wouldn't be downgraded to useless just because someone blew up the tower housing their home, people, place of business, etc.

So now we come to the crux of our problem.

The problem - narrative Merits

So the problem arises when you introduce Merits that can be earned via a narrative. Things like Resources, Mentor, Allies, Contacts, Status, Artefact, etc. How do you handle them?

When a character wins a hundred million dollars in a lottery because they cheated with their future-sight, does that justify them catapulting from Resources 0 to Resources 5 (granting them like, 10 sessions worth of XP)? If someone robs them afterwards and they go back to Resources 0, does that give them those XP points back even though they didn't earn them? Or probably the most important variant - if you kill someone with a cool artefact weapon and take it as your own, does that suddenly drain XP from you to make you purchase it, or do you get it for free? Is it magically protected from being stolen back if you purchased it at character generation in comparison to getting it later?

It is a tough question. Let's examine things one by one with some examples.

More money more problems - Resources

Your character hit it big. They won a lottery, robbed a bank or what have you. Now they want to convert that into more permanent, long-term wealth for their character.

Turn those rags into riches!

In stories usually that's the character's end goal and you don't linger on what happens next. If real life is anything to go by, chance are a sudden influx of money will revert itself back to zero sooner than later. That makes sense - it takes a bit more than just raw cash to produce more cash in the future. Heck, even some countries have problems with this:

Nauru, wealth based on guano quickly ran out

Even if you don't have to deal with people trying to rob you or con you, it can still be an issue. Doubly so when you're dealing with illegal funds you get from robbing a bank. Turning that into clean money and then into a legitimate income is an adventure in itself.

Money laundering, it can get complicated

Resources are also often tied with one's standard of living and include a nice place to live, a good bank, credit score, knowing how much money you can toss around without going broke.

Heck, capitalising on your success and turning it into long-term wealth is a big thing in pro athlete scene. A lot of those people tend to earn a lot of money but end up going broke soon after they stop bringing in their income. The smart ones, like Conor McGregor or LeBron James leverage their cash and position to start businesses and so on.

So that's why I don't think getting an influx of cash should instantly translate to getting wealth / Resources on a character sheet. It takes effort and attention to grow those. Chronicles of Darkness did have a useful alternative for that influx of money though - Cash as a gear you can use!

Cash - for when you get that influx of money

Also, if you could turn money into Resources without spending XP, someone with Resources 5 could easily fund a few characters with Resources 2-3 without noticing a significant drop in their reserves. Why wouldn't every group do it in Session 1?

Not everyone gets to be the Mega Rich Light-Bending Guy,

not without a heavy investment of XP!

Mentors - it's a fine day for learning

Mentors are people that have interest in character's long-term growth and success. Some characters start their story with one, like Zuko and Iroh, others earn the privilege of learning from them during the series, like Goku and Roshi, Kami, Kai, Whis, etc. (man that monkey had a lot of teachers!).

So when you find a suitable Mentor that should be that, onto the character sheet they go, right? Well, it depends on what the role of the person is in the story.

On one hand you have rather transitory characters that exist to teach the character a lesson, some secret technique, etc. Aang had a good number of them. He chilled with most of them for an episode or two and moved on. Those kind of characters wouldn't necessitate being put on the character sheet - they are a means to spending XP on something else - a martial arts form or the like. You have a small adventure with them, this lets you spend your XP and usually you're done until you want to learn something else.

On the other hand, you have Mentors that stick around and offer support to the character over a longer period of time, not only showing them the ropes of how to do something, but also being invested in their success and maybe long-term education. Sometimes they guide the character's morality and stick their neck out to save them.

Old man Bruce from Batman Beyond,

teaches, judges and provides the cool gadgets

(to live through his pupil)

Those kind of characters usually take a bit more to be convinced to train someone and sometimes even when they want to teach the character it's not that easy. Take Shifu from Kung Fu Panda for example. Initially he resents teaching Po, eventually does so anyway but fails miserably, and only after discovering how to teach his pupil does he manage to get through to him, with dumplings:

A teacher learns how to teach their student

There is also the trope with Mentors about learning "the secret technique". Usually only the worthy characters that have proven themselves are trusted enough to learn their master's final lessons. You have that with Shifu, Oogway and Tai Lung, where the student is denied the Dragon Scroll for not being worthy of it. Or heck, even in Asterix: The Secret of the Magic Potion Getafix withholds the final ingredient to make the magic potion from his student because he didn't respect the ways of the druids (and also was manipulated by the bad guy):

Missing the secret ingredient!

So spending XP on a Mentor would mean more than "this person will train you" - it means you did the legwork and have proven yourself to someone enough that they get invested in you and your success (and they learned how to teach you and get to you properly). Like sure, a lot of that might be better expressed through some kind of Social Links but in lieu of that, you have a commitment of XP.

This is further exacerbated if there are mechanics involved to having a Mentor. In Chronicles of Darkness a Mentor can do some amazing rolls for you and even be your sugar daddy. Suddenly being able to throw five private jets at the party because they got to know the recluse billionaire might be a bit much (they are probably antisocial and wouldn't want to hang out with a whole party of adventurers in the same room ;) ).

Similar reasoning might be applied to Allies and Retainers - an Ally might work with the group because they trust one person that actually put in the leg work, but not the whole group. A Retainer works for one person and isn't everyone's gofer.

Woof of Wall Street - your Ally might stick a neck out for you and smuggle money,

doing the same for a coworker is another matter entirely...

So okay, where does that leave us? I think we're mostly down to magic swords!

Characters and their signature items - artefacts!

A number of characters in popular media come with some signature gear. Sometimes things are rather mundane, like Indiana Jones' whip and fedora, and sometimes they are much more intricate and unique, like Sword of Light:

A fighter with their signature weapon!

Lesser gear comes and goes and there isn't much need to spend XP on them. But let's look at some more important magical items.

One category is items used for pretty straightforward powering up. They don't serve an important narrative in themselves, and eventually you even forget they are there. Demon's Blood Talismans for example weren't part of Lina's original kit, but after acquiring them to be able to cast some more powerful magic they mostly just became a background item.

Perhaps a more well known example might be Sokka crafting his meteor sword:

Sharpen your blades and your skills!

For the character, crafting the sword was a culmination of a bout of training with a swordmaster. In game terms you could express this as spending some XP on skills, fighting technique, etc. and adding a signature weapon to the character that would be either a good piece of gear or some minor artefact.

Sometimes characters pick up a magic item and wield it pretty easily pretty fast (like Thor and Stormbreaker in Endgame, probably since that movie was so long already...), but sometimes it is a process. In Book of Boba Fett we see Din struggle mastering the Darksaber:

Heavy is the edgelordiest blade...

Which might be a good basis for a mastery of an artefact being tied to spending time and XP on it.

Even if you get artefacts for free in Exalted, that's just the start of your journey. Many of them come with so called Evocations - special powers you gradually unlock by investing XP into them that someone wielding it for the first time wouldn't have access to.

Of course, things get a bit more complicated when you have a system for making artefacts also built into the system that is separate from the regular XP system, which is again the case with Exalted. The crafter spending their resources making some cool blade for the fighter would justify not spending XP on it, but if you want to treat it the same as someone who did buy a similar artefact at character creation and if they both end up getting destroyed and Sanctity of Merits kicks in, who gets how much XP? This can get a bit more complicated if you had to pay XP regardless and a crafter just facilitates you getting the kind of artefact you want?

Conclusions

In at least some instances it makes sense for characters having to "pay" for the windfall they receive as a part of a narrative. It keeps things consistent when it comes to Sanctity of Merits, and it keeps the numbers fair between the players (loss aversion and being jealous someone got something for free that you paid for can be an ugly thing). Things get a bit more complicated when dealing with artefacts and characters that can make them on the regular.

If you like your mentors,

here is a Mentor Tierlist

by Overly Sarcastic Productions

Just roleplay becoming a millionaire - a problem with Storyteller Backgrounds

Recently our group had a discussion about the progression of earning new dots in Backgrounds in an Old World of Darkness campaign we've been playing. He's been trying to beef up security in his Dragon Nest (magical lair from EvWoD), bolster his Resources by robbing some ATMs and strengthen the bonds with his demonic advisor. But because all of these interactions have been rather subtle, neither the GM nor other players noticed this until it was brought up recently that these things haven't budged on his character sheet. Unlike everything else that can be bought with XP, this one part of the character sheet falls under "just roleplay it out and GM should award you some points", which falls under the unguided realm of "mother may I" which doesn't ever seem to be a good part of an RPG. Let's go over the problem in more detail.

Hey GM, is this enough for Resources 2?

What are Backgrounds?

Backgrounds, also sometimes called Merits, are parts of the character in the Storytelling System that are mostly extrinsic to the character. They are things like income, fame, people that work for you, how influential you are in the region, how powerful of a mentor is guiding you, etc. Unlike D&D, in the Storytelling System your character can start being a rich, influential political figure if you spend your points right, which can be pretty fun.

The problem is that in some of the Storytelling Systems, like Vampire the Masquerade after character creation raising existing or getting new Backgrounds cannot be done with XP, unlike everything else. Instead, they are raised as a consequence of the narrative and roleplaying.

While this isn't universal (Chronicles of Darkness let you buy any Merit with XP and Exalted lets you buy some Merits with XP), it can certainly be annoying.

Just roleplay it out!

I personally dislike any system that tells the players or the GM to just roleplay any broad part of the game out without any guidelines or rules. They always leave things wishy-washy and even if the GM wants to be conductive to the players advancing their things, it often feels arbitrary. How do you gaige of a player has sufficiently roleplayed becoming a millionaire to raise their income? How do you balance one player nagging the GM consistently to get those Backgrounds they want vs a player that is less forward about what they want? Should a player that can make money out of thin air just be given the money Background another player invested a good part of their starting character points into? If a player wants to roleplay getting some powerful artefact as a Background, should they just be allowed to? How do you roleplay learning Mandarin for five years if the in-game sessions happen day-to-day?

This is kind of like when character's social influence is left entirely to roleplay - the option is never as useful as the concrete option of violence. If you have the XP to up your proficiency in a skill like Melee, you as the player are in control of the character getting more competent and that has a tangible application on the session - your numbers go up, you are numerically better. You can't rely on having that same agency if your GM doesn't facilitate you getting the Backgrounds you want (even leaving aside some more hostile GMs that don't want you to get them, even well meaning GMs may forget to set the scene you need or you may fumble meeting a potential Mentor / Contact / Ally, etc.).

Just spend the XP!

Seeing how the New World of Darkness solved this issue in 2004, I'm surprised this approach hasn't been backported to the 20th anniversary edition in 2011. Just letting the players spend XP to buy points in Backgrounds would address this issue and give players the agency to push for their character improving things external to themselves. As always, you'd want to also tie the system into Sanctity of Merits (a system from Chronicles of Darkness where if you lose something you spent XP on, you get refunded that XP) not to make players lose their investments and feel bad about it.

Of course, one can argue whether or not some particular Backgrounds (such as Mentor, money, artefacts, etc.) should cost XP if sometimes players can happen upon them, but that's a bigger topic for another day...

Net negative sessions

Recently in our group we have have played with some "Dice pool and mOral predicament based Generic roleplaying System", or DOGS, a more setting-agnostic version of Dogs in the Vineyard. After the session, the characters have regressed to be weaker than they started, and all due to how the system handles character advancement. So I figured I'd discuss this topic.

Now, character deaths are outside of the scope of this blog post. While they usually also result in a net negative session, they occupy a somewhat different category of issues. Losing a character means you reset back to a starting character, losing XP means you can regress below a starting character.

DOGS and gambling with your XP

Advancement in DOGS works like this - when you are in a conflict, you spend your dice back and forth. When you are forced to spend 3 or more dice at the same time (due to being hit by a strong attack), you get Hit and take Consequence dice. The number of those dice is equal to the number of dice you had to spend at one go, and the type of dice depends on the type of conflict you are in (for example D4s for stuff like talking, D6 for chasing, D8 for beating someone up, and D10 for trying to kill someone). At the end of the conflict, you roll all of your Consequence dice. If you rolled any 1s, you experience Growth (your character improves), but if the total of the two highest dice exceeds 7, you get Long-Term Consequence (your character degrades, or worse).

If you're rolling D4s, it's generally not too bad - you are more likely to roll at least one "1" than have a pair of 4s, but as soon as you hit the D6 territory, the odds are against you! We had some players that hit both Growth and Consequences at the same time a few sessions in a row (meaning they were shifting dice from one place to another), and a session where two characters just suffered Consequences and nobody advanced one bit.

Sure, showing character's lateral growth can be interesting to an extent and somewhat thematic, but tying character progression to a random dice roll feels like a system is asking you to game it.

New World of Darkness and losing dots

New World of Darkness differs from its successor, the Chronicles of Darkness, in one crucial way - it has linear XP cost, rather than flat XP cost. Due to that, it's a very minmaxy system. It also lacks a very neat system - the Sanctity of Merits.

In nWoD, you can invest your XP into things external to your character - Merits in forms of Retainers, Contacts, etc. A 5 dot Retainer can cost you 30XP, and you can earn 1-4XP per session roughly. So that's about 8 sessions invested in one (very powerful but still mortal) person. If they happen to get into a firefight trying to protect your character and die, that's a large investment down the drain. At least with Sanctity of Merits you'd get the XP back, but that concept hasn't been invented until the CoD system.

Similarly, your character can lose their Morality due to being exposed to trauma or the supernatural. You start at Morality 7, but if you lose it and try to buy that 7th dot back, the linear XP cost will set you back 21XP for that single dot. You are out 6+ sessions worth of XP to get back where you started.

In Chronicles of Darkness, flat XP costs means you don't lose too much, and Sanctity of Merits refund you any Merits you lose. At worst you might lose about 1 session's worth of progress due to Morality loss, which isn't too bad.

Conclusions

People are pretty loss averse. The pain of losing something outweighs the joy of gaining an identical thing. Having your character suffer a setback that reverts their progress back multiple sessions can be an unpleasant experience, especially if you measure yourself against other players that didn't suffer the same adversity.

Related topics:

• Categories of XP Systems

Categories of XP Systems

For some, the XP systems are the lifeblood of the campaign, the juicy reward you work for through your adventure. However, as with any system, the Experience Points can be much more than a simple carrot to dangle in front of your players. Ideally, it would be one of the systems used to reinforce the themes of the game and the intended playstyle.

In a well designed system, any system should reinforce the intended set of playstyles or general things to happen in a session. Human brains are designed to optimise a reward-seeking behaviour, so if the characters in our game get rewarded with XP for doing something, we are naturally encouraged to do that thing more to get the same reward. If you get XP for killing monsters, you will seek out more monsters to kill, etc.

Below is a large compilation of various XP systems that I tried arranging into a somewhat cohesive whole. However, because sometimes the systems have odd edge cases with how XP is given out, some of them might not fit as neatly. I've also tried briefly explaining any important mechanics relating to XP in any given system, but by no means is it an exhaustive explanation - that would take too long. Finally the various sections feature an insight into what the given XP systems might encourage from the players and the game as a whole.

Goal-Based XP - Dungeons and Dragons, Stars Without Number

Goal-Based XP systems are very focused on characters accomplishing set goals.

Dungeons and Dragons is a staple when it comes to Goal-Based XP rewards. Most of you should have come across this infamous XP table for how much XP to reward based off what sort of adventure the party is having:

You use it to figure out how much XP to give out per encounter the party completes, and you multiply it by factors such as the number of monsters and so on. It's very cut and dry this way. In short - you have your goal ("a monster is attacking you, stop it") and you get XP for completing your goal ("kill the monster").

The Dungeon Master's Guide also gives you a few alternative ways to reward XP - for completing noncombat challenges, for reaching significant milestones, or per-story / per-session rewards. All of those are a variation of "Goal-Based XP".

Stars Without Number features a similar system. By default, you get flat XP per session, but you can change it to getting XP for achieving a personal goal, completing a mission, or more interestingly - loot. The group can decide they would tie their character progression based on how much money they get, or how much money they "waste" on things other than themselves.

All in all, Goal-Based XP encourages the players to think of the game as a series of challenges to overcome in a vein of more modern computer RPGs - "here is your quest, do a quest, get reward". It is a fairly straightforward system, but it doesn't encourage much nuance - you're not really rewarded for having an introspection as a character, having some meaningful interactions or the like.

XP by Practice - Cyberpunk, Call of Cthulhu, Mouse Guard

A different approach to gaining XP is to reward a player for using a particular skill. A few old-school and more modern RPGs use this system.

In Cyberpunk 2020, characters have a list of skills, stuff like Rifle, Drive, First Aid, Personal Grooming, etc. When a character uses that skill in a session and succeeds, they mark it, and at the end of the session the GM awards the player skill-specific XP (called Improvement Points) based on how critical that skill was to the character or the party this adventure. If you accumulate enough Improvement Points for that skill, you level it up.

While you will get the bulk of your IPs from using a given skill, you can also get some basic IPs from studying or training that skill as a way to get at least a few ranks in a skill in a safer environment.

An interesting paradigm my old GM pointed out in regards to this system is that you tend to get more IPs the more you fuck up a mission (while if you succeed a mission you get more cash). Surviving by the skin of your teeth by driving away action movie style is more important to the character than driving away from a heist that went smoothly, so it nets you more IP. If GM is generous, if you are the last person alive from the party, you count as the entire party, ergo netting you even more IP for critical successes.

 A similar but less bombastic system is in play in Call of Cthulhu. Whenever the character uses a skill successfully, the GM can prompt them to mark it. At the end of the session you roll for every skill you have marked - if your roll fails (aka - more often for things you are bad at, and less often for things you are good at), it goes up. Simple and straightforward.

Contact has a system where you get a flat XP (based on your int) for using a skill, whether it's a pass or fail (critical successes double the XP, critical failures net you a 0). When you accumulate enough points, your skill goes up. You can train / study for another flat XP gain.

Mouse Guard adds a twist to the formula - you track how many times you have succeeded and failed in a given skill separately, and you have to get both of those numbers high enough in order to level up that skill. During the GM turn you have to pretty much go with the flow as to whether you can succeed or fail, but during the players' turn, you can influence your odds by doing harder or easier challenges to get that specific pass / fail you need.

All in all, XP by Practice encourages the players to be active - to be the person that drives, shoots, talks, gets into trouble, etc. The more rolls you make, the better your character becomes. While this solves the issue of players being passive or not wanting to take initiative, it can be a dangerous tool if you have an attention hog in your party. The system encourages you to be active all the time, even if that would be hogging the spotlight from someone else. Even if that is not an issue in your party, it can encourage hyper-specialisation - "you are the best healer, therefore you should roll to heal. Because you rolled to heal, you become better at healing". You can break up the monotony by forcing characters into a situation where they have to roll out of their comfort zone, but if you are behind on some skill, you have to put in a lot of effort to catch up.

Character Growth XP - Apocalypse World, The Veil, Star Trek Adventures

Systems that use Character Growth XP tend to focus more inwards. The adventure of the session is a way for the player characters to reflect on themselves and the characters around them. These XP criteria can get a bit complicated, so please bear with me.

In Apocalypse World, you get XP for rolling a highlighted stat (stats that best highlight the character), but more importantly - for getting your relationship with another player character (the relationship is called Hx) to "roll over and reset" (either by being very positive or very negative). You gain relationships with other characters either by causing that character to get hurt, or at the end of the session by selection a character that "knows you better than they used to". You lose relationship if someone "doesn’t know you as well as they thought". You also get XP for being manipulated by another PC, or by a few other moves. All in all, the system revolves around relationships with other characters and moving them up or down, even if it has a few other things going for it.

In The Veil, you get a point of XP when you attempt to do something for your own benefit and fail, but also more importantly for things revolving around your Beliefs. A Belief is what it says on the tin - a belief that drives your PC. If your Belief is tested, you get an XP, if it gets you into trouble, you get 2XP, and if your Belief is erased, resolved or changed after being tested - you get 3XP. The system thus encourages you to have Beliefs that would be challenged every session so you can see what ideas will persevere.

Star Trek Adventures is another big and a bit complicated system. First, the character can earn Normal Milestones for challenging their Values ("duty above all else", "we will persevere", etc.) and Directives ("The Prime Directive", "Seek Out New Life", etc.), using those two in a positive or negative way, or getting hurt by an attack. These encourage you to test and question your beliefs and to better yourself - the reward for getting Normal Milestones is usually a shift in focus and replacing your Values, rather than adding more things onto your character.

Characters that were particularly prominent during an adventure receive Spotlight Milestones. Those are used to further shift the focus of your character, but also to alter your Ship's stats as well (refocusing it based on the major events of the adventure). Every few Spotlight Milestones you get an Arc Milestone, which allow you to improve yourself or the ship (by adding points, rather than shifting them around).

Similarly, your character can also gain and lose Reputation based on their actions. They gain it for acting according to orders and Directives, preventing combat, establishing an alliance with an enemy, saving lives and acting above and beyond the call of duty. You lose reputation for challenging a Directive, personnel under your command getting killed, resorting to lethal force without cause and taking unnecessary risks. Reputation is used to gain ranks, privileges and responsibilities in the Starfleet and it is a mostly roleplay progression.

All in all, Character Growth XP is pretty useful when you want the game to focus on the characters at play. Everything loops back onto them and their relationships with themselves and each other, and the adventures of a session are useful mostly when they let the characters have those moments of introspection.

Cinematic XP - Broken Worlds, Fellowship, Chronicles of Darkness

Systems with Cinematic XP put an emphasis on things you would see in a movie or TV show.

In Broken Worlds, you can get XP by using a Train move (which is required to actually level up), but more importantly you will be getting XP at the end of the session for "failing in some regard", "exposing yourself to danger, cost or retribution through your actions" and "progressing your story in a meaningful way". Those three things you could easily see in any TV series - you want the characters to fail because that builds more complicated stories. You want them to expose themselves to danger, since playing safely is boring. And finally, you want all of that to have a meaning to the overall story.

Fellowship has a similar system, although it could just as accurately be described as Goal-Based XP. At the end of the session, you progress if you "saved or protected a community in need", "strike a blow against the Overlord and their minions" and "learn more about the world and its people". The system fits the narrative structure of the Fellowship where you're supposed to be on a somewhat serialised quest like Avatar the Last Airbender.

Finally, there is Chronicles of Darkness, a system with many ways of earning experience. Firstly, a character can get XP for fulfilling or making significant headway towards an Aspiration. Aspirations are either short-term, or long-term things you as the player want to happen with the character. This distinction is important - Aspirations are a Doylist choice by the player, not the character ("my character Watson doesn't want to get hurt, but me, Doyle the writer want him to get into trouble"). For Vampires, some of their aspirations revolve around the vampiric world, and some around the human world instead of being short-term and long-term.

Then, you earn XP for dramatic things that happen to the character - when they get hurt badly enough to be in danger, when a Condition ("Guilt", "Fugue", "Spooked", etc.) impedes them or gets overcome, or when you make your failure a dramatic failure. These generally denote some serious complications the characters might face.

CoD gives you a standard 1 Beat (partial XP) automatically at the end of the session, any dramatic scene can reward additional Beats at storyteller's discretion, and similarly exceptional roleplaying, tactics or character development might merit another Beat.

Another major source of Beats is risking a Breaking Point - when you challenge what it is to be human, when you are faced with supernatural forces beyond your comprehension or the like (appropriate to the supernatural type you are playing), you get a Beat. The Breaking Point check usually also results in a Condition that gives more Beats.

Some supernatural splats also reward different kind of Beats. Playing a Mage you can earn Arcane Beats for following your Obsessions (Mage Aspirations), dealing with consequences of your Magic (Act of Hubris, Paradox), being tutored or tutoring others, and encountering supernatural creatures. Playing a Demon nets you Cover Beats for living under the radar, acting according to your Cover (fake identity / skin you wear to hide in plain sight), or for forging demonic pacts.

This long long list should about cover most of the Chronicles of Darkness splats and systems.

So all in all, Cinematic XP is focused on creating "cinematic" moments in your sessions - moments of high tension, high drama and high consequences. Your story might be one of beating up baddies wuxia style, being the hero that rises up against an evil Overlord, or of a film noire detective getting beaten up on the curb. Whatever it is, it is your story to tell.

Hodge Podge XP - World of Darkness, Exalted

For the sake of completeness and to contrast against the Chronicles of Darkness, lets have a look at Old World of Darkness (Vampire the Masquerade, etc.) / New World of Darkness (Chronicles of Darkness 1st edition - Vampire the Requiem 1st ed, etc.). The system presented by these systems is a bit hard to categorise. You get XP for completing a session, for your character learning something new, for roleplaying your character well, and for acts of heroism. At the end of a story arc, you get additional XP for succeeding at the adventure, for surviving dangerous situations, and for displaying wisdom and coming up with clever plans. In nWoD, you would also get bonus XP when a Flaw you took would impede your actions.

All in all, it's a bit of a Hodge Podge when it comes to categorising. Some are for Character Growth, some are for Cinematic, and some could be considered Goal-Based. The system generally seems to just give you rewards for things you are expected to have in an RPG, without any special focus.

A bit of a more focused Hodge Podge XP system can be found in Exalted. In the 3rd edition, you get a flat mount of XP per session. You also get a bonus Solar XP for two things - Expression and Role Bonus. Expression Bonus comes in when you are impeded by a Flaw, reveal something about your character by expressing / supporting / engaging their Intimacies or being challenged, endangered or harmed while protecting or upholding your Intimacy. Role Bonus comes into play when you cede your "spotlight" and let another character shine in their Caste, or by doing something impressive in accordance with your Caste.

Exalted's Hodge Podge system, despite drawing from Character Growth and Cinematic systems, works much better than World of Darkness since it is used to highlight the key mechanics of the system. Intimacies are important in the system, so you get rewarded for engaging with them. Castes are important to what the characters are, so you should express yourself with them. Sharing the spotlight is important, so even if you don't get to shine, you still get rewarded for not interfering with someone else's moment to shine. It's quite coherent in its design.

Conclusions

Well, that was a long and varied list. If anything, this goes to show how varied the RPG experience can be. You can try to draw a number of conclusions from the comparison.

First of all, if you are designing or homebrewing / homeruling a system, take a moment to think about the XP system and see what sort of games and sessions it encourages. Are those elements congruent with the themes of the system? If so - great! If not - you might want to tweak them. XP system is like any other part of the game you're playing - a tool to help you tell the stories you want to tell. It's best when it encourages the playstyle and experience you want to get, not work against it.

Secondly, you should be aware of what sort of playstyle is encouraged by the game you're playing. Just like other mechanics and themes of the game, it will shape your play. Keep that in mind.

Thirdly, if you are playing a system where the XP system feels bad or like an afterthought, you should probably change it to suit your individual playstyle. In our game of Exalted vs World of Darkness we did exactly that - we threw away the oWoD XP system and made our own that encouraged us to keep looping back into the core themes of our game (it being a game set in high school, we were encouraged to engage with the high school and home life setting, despite being avatars of ancient demigods that fight vampires on the regular basis).

Finally, comparing the systems, it seems that mostly "XP by Practice" could be a detrimental system for an overall constructive play under the wrong conditions. All other systems can be made to serve your story just as well. You can mix and match elements from either to create the perfect experience for your game as long as you are aware of what purpose a given system serves. You want an XP system to reinforce your themes and other mechanics, even if you have to draw from different inspirations. That is fine.

All in all, your XP system will shape your game to a greater or lesser extent. Just like with any tool in your arsenal, make sure it is aligned with the vision of what you want your game to be.

Changing the world - Dominion or XP?

My group and I have played a lot of Godbound since its Kickstarter. I've really enjoyed a lot of its mechanics, but my view on some of them has changed over time. Today I'd like to talk about one of those mechanics - Dominion and how the characters change the world with it.

Dominion Changes

Dominion is a sort of meta-currency in Godbound. It allows the characters to change the world on a large scale - affecting entire cities or nations. They can raise armies, build works of wonder, or shape the landscape at whim. It is also used to create great artifacts of power - something on the level of The One Ring, or Marvel's Mjolnir.

PCs earn Dominion at the end of each session, and every in-game month from their cults. They are required to spend a certain amount of Dominion in order to advance a level to make sure they are engaged with the world and don't just hoard Dominion to do some crazy expensive project down the line.

Initially, all of that sounds like a great concept - every PC can express themselves in a unique way and shape the world to their whim. However, in practice it seems players fall into two categories.

First, we have those that spend their Dominion diligently each session fixing up problems as they arise wherever they go. Those would essentially be Divine Janitors or Godly Handymen - if some Faction has a Problem, they'd patch it up instantly. The problem with this type of player is that they focus so much on the little things that when it comes time to making something big, they are broke - they have already spent all of their Dominion.

The second type of player hoard their Dominion and don't spend it until they are forced to to level up. You could call them Forgetful Divinities or Burst Spenders. It's not uncommon for them to accrue enough Dominion to make changes to the entire world at one go when they finally get around to spending those points. The problem with this type of player is that they make much grander and sweeping changes than the previous type - meaning these make the diligent work of the other players seem way less significant, even though they sank just as much Dominion.

In other words, when the Pantheon enters some new area, the Divine Janitors go and fix some small ailments the locals have - clear our some bandits, fix the food supply and so on. At the end, the Burst Spenders wake up and realize they need to spend some Dominion, so they make the sky rain gold and erect Minas Tirith around the village they were visiting.

Now which PC do you think the locals will remember and praise more?

Making investment meaningful with XP costs

An alternative approach to giving everyone Dominion to spend on changing the world would perhaps be to eliminate that currency altogether and just stick to spending XP. While not ideal for a game based on OSR like Godbound, where levels are very distinct and meaningful leaps in power, it might be more suited for a point-buy system like Chronicles of Darkness.

There is some precedent for such an approach in CoD. In Mage the Awakening the PCs can create lasting spells that affect the world in a meaningful way. That spell has to be "held" by the mage that cast it however, unless it is "released" by spending a permanent dot of Willpower - essentially spending XP on it. That cost was significant in the first edition of the book, but got much more affordable in the second edition.

Similarly, CoD allowed the players to spend XP on purchasing Merits for the characters - advantages the character can use that are not directly represented as the character itself. Resources, allies, status, retainers and so on could all be at the character's disposal for an affordable XP cost.

This approach sets a sort of precedent - the players are okay sacrificing direct power of the PC (being able to spend XP on increasing attributes, skills, or buying supernatural powers) in exchange for indirect power they can use.

Using XP in place of Dominion might be a bit more challenging - the players would be sacrificing their personal power to affect the world, but that wouldn't necessarily mean they would be getting a tangible benefit out of it. It would, however, be a very meaningful statement on the player's part - that this problem matters to them enough to make that sacrifice.

Player expectations

So all in all, there are a few player expectationswith one approach or the other that would need to be acknowledged.

In a Dominion economy, the GM should probably acknowledge the contribution of both types of players. If a player spends their Dominion, it shouldn't be an event that becomes mundane. The players that engage with the system and make frequent effort to make the game world better should not be overshadowed by the infrequent big spenders.

In an XP economy, each change is perhaps doubly important because the player sacrifices essentially a part of their character to make it happen. They will be weaker, therefore not having that many opportunities to shine during engagements or combat. They would probably expect to know that their contributions matter.

Conclusions

The Dominion system from Godbound is interesting, but not perfect. While Chronicles of Darkness give an interesting alternative to how the players can change the world, it also introduces some of its own problems.

It's probably useful to engage with the players, make sure their contributions to the game are acknowledged, and be mindful of what they expect out of the game for the resources that they spend.

How Chronicles of Darkness almost fixed minmaxing

The various World of Darkness games have a long history in the RPG community. The games have been around since 1991 and always had a strong following - not competing directly with D&D, but instead going for a more modern gothic horror settings with various staples of modern horror movies - Vampires, Werewolves, Mages and so on. Also for a long while they were pretty much a heaven for minmaxing. The most recent edition (Chronicles of Darkness) however, managed to largely solve this issue.

World of Darkness and minmaxing

World of Darkness (the old games, Vampire the Masquarade, etc.) had a very appealing character building and progression system. It was essentially a point buy system - you would have a budget of dots to spend on given categories and you could make your character within those boundaries however you liked. So if you had 7 dots to spend on your Physical Attributes, you could max out Strength and get your Stamina very high, but you would have very low Dexterity. Having 13 dots to distribute in your Knowledge Abilities you could be a PHD in Science and world's greatest surgeon at the same time, but you might know nothing about Law, Occult or Computers. You could also make yourself a generalist, having some basic knowledge across all fields but specialising in nothing.

You also had a few freebie points to spend at the end of the character generation, either taking Merits, or buying up more points in Attributes, Abilities and Advantages. If you really wanted to be the world's greatest hacker, surgeon, lawyer and politician in the same combination, you could invest in those dots.

The system was pretty straightforward and elegant - you didn't have any random rolls during character creation, you started off roughly at peak mortal level of competency and you could make your character however you wanted...

Unfortunately, there were ways to build a character optimally, and I'm not talking about "let's build a murderer so he survives longer".

See, after the character is created, you start earning XP. You don't level in this game, but instead can spend those XPs directly to raise your stats. So you can go from Strength 3, to Strength 4 to 5, etc. Again - very elegant approach, much more organic than hitting level milestones and so on. You're constantly improving yourself.

The main crux is that the higher the stat, the more it costs. Attributes cost current rating x4, so Strength 1->2 costs 4XP, while Strength 4->5 costs 16XP. Abilities cost current rating x2, Disciplines cost x5 or x7.

In other words, if you only focus on starting the game with a few very high stats you will be possibly hundred or more XP worth of dots ahead of a character that is an all-rounder. And this is a game where getting 5XP or more in a session is somewhat rare.

This pretty much meant a lot of characters were hyper-specialised early on and comedically incompetent in other areas. Not necessarily the best choice for a game more focused on more grounded narrative.

Chronicles of Darkness and minmaxing

World of Darkness came and went with its Time of Judgement. After a decade of a metaplot, the series got a reboot in a much less metanarrative-heavy setting called at the time the New World of Darkness. The new line of books focused on being more streamlined, chipping away some stranger bits and keeping the core more focused. Overall, it was a very good reboot, and the mechanics also got a small update.

For our discussion - the freebie points were gone, so you no longer had as wide of an option to push the minmaxing limits, and now the cost of the last dot of any given stat cost you double to further curb minmaxing. However, the old problem still persisted - generalists were punished, while specialised characters still got way ahead.

In comes Chronicles of Darkness, the second edition of nWoD. Not as large of a reboot as last time, but it was still a redesign of a few core mechanical concepts of the game. Something you didn't know you wanted until you got it. Once again, more streamlining and this time - the problem of minmaxing was almost solved.

You once again built your character a dot at a time, this time with no extra cost for the last dot. No freebie points, just a normal distribution of dots. Then, when you get into the game, you notice that one big difference - all of the XP costs are flat. Strength 1->2 costs 4XP, Strength 4->5 also costs 4XP. The costs are flat across the board. Since you didn't get any freebie points, every character has the same amount of dots in the various categories. This means the system is finally fair and even no matter what you do, right?

Well, there is a new, small problem - Beats.

Beats, Botches, Conditions and minmaxing

Beats are a really cool concept, certainly a welcome addition Chronicles of Darkness has introduced. Basically, each time the character fulfils an aspiration, or get into a really big fight, etc. they get a beat. You get five beats, you get one XP. Simple and fun.

Since you don't have to spend as much XP to push your stats to that final level, you get a lot less XP per session - one full XP is a generally good session, as opposed to about 4XP in the previous edition.

You get beats for a lot of activities - fulfilling your goals, getting beaten up, at the end of a session, etc. However, you also get them for taking "a dramatic failure" (a botch), or when a condition is resolved. Those two relate directly to dice rolling.

Another change Chronicles of Darkness introduced was that players had control over when they botch and not. The players don't just getting a bad roll and botch straight away (minus chance rolls, but those are infrequent). Instead, whenever the character fails a roll, the player can opt to turn that failure into a dramatic failure and get a beat that way. This gives the players a nice agency of when they really don't want to screw up badly and when they can risk it.Very neat.

On the opposite end, when a player rolls very well. When they roll an exceptional success, they get a condition - basically a short-term advantage they can use. Often, the players will get an Inspired Condition, which they can spend to make a roll turn into an Exceptional Success easier. That counts as resolving that condition, which means they get a beat. From our play, this also often ends up triggering the exceptional success and chaining into another Inspired Condition, giving players a perpetual way of generating beats.

Now, there is a small limit - you can only get a beat from any given source once per scene, so you can't just botch 5 times over and get an XP. You can, however, botch 5 times in 5 different scenes and get that.

So how is this minmaxing? Well, whether your roll fails or gets an exceptional success is heavily dependant on how many dice the character has in the given roll. If they have very few dice, corresponding to low dot amounts, they will fail more often, giving them a chance to take a dramatic failure more often. If they have a lot of dice in a roll, they are more likely to achieve an exceptional success, take the Inspired condition, resolve it on a similar roll, get another exceptional success and keep chaining it.

At either extreme, you get more opportunities to get more beats, therefore advance more. If you're average, you will often succeed, but not enough to trigger an exceptional success. So a minmaxed character will be able to both roll very poorly and very well, while a generalist will be stuck at being mediocre and neither getting the dramatic failure and a beat, nor the exceptional success and the condition resulting in a beat.

Overall, it's not really that bad in-game - you will usually have a way of getting beats one way or another, and introducing group beats means you don't feel like you fall behind other players. It's definitely an improvement over the previous editions!

Conclusions

World of Darkness and New World of Darkness gave a high XP-equivalent advantage to minmaxing characters as opposed to ones that spread their dots around. New World of Darkness curbed that a bit, but it wasn't until Chronicles of Darkness where that problem was largely solved. However, the last edition introduced new ways of gaining more XP that favour minmaxed characters. CoD is still a notable improvement over the previous editions, however.