Mechanics inform the playstyle

My group and I tend to play a lot of different RPGs and get exposed to a lot of different ways of handling the same design problems. How do you represent health? What do you roll for deception? How do you handle combat? How do you differentiate between different character types? How do you handle XP? How a given system handles these things and how much space is devoted to various things informs what game you will be playing.

Combat vs talking and the Edge system from Savage Worlds

We started running our Ravenloft game (Conspiracy at Krezk) using Savage Worlds system, mostly to test the waters before we delved deep with Savage Rifts and Rifts vs Star Wars. We aimed to create some more down-to-earth characters that aren't just some combat-focused adventurers. We hoped to find a lot of interesting options due to the large amount of books in the Savage Worlds roster and the system's popularity for making an interesting range of characters. As it turns out, a lot of the areas I wanted to take my character were severely limited.

In Savage Worlds, the system revolves around Skills and Edges. The first just inform what die you roll. The second are some more unique perks your character can take to augment a given playstyle.

I was thinking about making a character that could talk well to people. The options for that were being Attractive, being Very Attractive, being a Noble, or being Charismatic. All except Noble just give you +2 to roll, which is the blandest thing you can get from an Edge.

Now, what are my options if I want to be a combat character? Block, Improved Block, Brawler, Bruiser, Combat Reflexes, Counterattack, Improved Counterattack, Dodge, Improved Dodge, Elan, Extraction, Improved Extraction, First Strike, Improved First Strike, Florentine, Frenzy, Improved Frenzy, Giant Killer, Hard to Kill, Harder to Kill, Improvisational Fighter, Killer Instinct, Level Headed, Improved Level Headed, Marksman, Martial Artist, Improved Martial Artist, Nerves of Steel, Improved Nerves of Steel, No Mercy, Quick Draw, Rock and Roll, Steady Hands, Sweep, Improved Sweep, Trademark Weapon, Improved Trademark Weapon and Two-Fisted.

Similarly, there is a lot of emphasis and page count devoted to armour, weapons, combat vehicles, combat manoeuvres, healing, movement rate, as well as different monsters and burst templates you can apply. Talking to people is 1 page in this 161 page book.

Unsurprisingly, the system was only useful when we engaged in combat and didn't do much for us in other situations. After a few sessions our characters that didn't want to specialise in combat have ran out of Edges to buy that would be meaningful to them. In the end, this wasn't the best engine for the game we were trying to run - one focused around mysteries, exploring the unknown and people getting in over their heads. For that, we had to switch to...

The Lovecraftian horror of Chronicles of Darkness

Chronicles of Darkness is the second edition to the New World of Darkness line, which itself is a successor to the Old World of Darkness line. While the old systems used to be very min-maxy, the new one is less so.

We switched from Savage Worlds into Chronicles of Darkness after one season of our game and the game turned from being an eclectic group of adventurers into a more Lovecraftian tale. The Humanity system forced us to deal with facing off against horrors, dealing with slow erosion of mental sanity, dealing with lingering wounds and so on. On the flip side we also had characters that could persuade people by leaving themselves vulnerable to favours, foster a network of contacts among the militia, or even a character that just built themselves a safe library to study the occult. And all of that felt great!

All of these were natively supported by the system. While in Savage Worlds we most likely wouldn't be using any of these since the rules did not cover them, in Chronicles of Darkness we embraced them since they were right there, and our playstyle changed.

Violence as language in Broken Worlds

Broken Worlds is an RPG set in the Kill Six Billion Demons world. The system is heavily inspired by the Wuxia genre of fiction, and as such, the game revolves around martial arts and thus combat. We gave this game a try and the expectation pretty much matched reality - it was a system where you were expected to engage in combat, let your fists do the talking and communicate via violence. So if you'd go in and expect to have an adventure in the vein of Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky, you would be in the right place. If, however, you'd try to use this system for say, our above example of a more down-to-earth Lovecraftian story with mystery and intrigue, you would be sorely disappointed.

Monopoly and selfishness

Mechanics inform not only the playstyle in RPGs, but the same could be said about board games. And what better example to use than Monopoly:

In Monopoly, the rules incentivise you to be ruthless and cut-throat to win. Even if a player is a nice person in real life, when you start the game, you will inevitably turn into a jerk, because that's how you win. Mechanics inform the playstyle.

Conclusions 

The mechanics of a system inform the playstyle of the players. A system with a heavy emphasis and page count dedicated to combat will inevitably work better if you focus on said combat. If you want your players to engage with your story using something other than their weapons, you should use a system that incentivises non-combat solutions. While you can always pull the "just roleplay it out" card, everyone will often try to resort to the path of least resistance and go with the listed mechanics with predictable outcomes rather than more nebulous "I think this should work but the rules don't say anything about it".

If you are a game designer, keep those things in mind - don't just grab one system of mechanics and expect it to make your game play the way you intended. Look at what you want the players to experience and roleplay while they play your game and then either find a system that caters to that, or make one yourself.

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.

Dexterity is King

While playing various RPGs, you sometimes see tropes and patterns emerge. We recently started playing Exalted vs the World of Darkness (a "fan" expansion for Old World of Darkness from a former Exalted and 20th edition oWoD writer), and coming back from playing a fair share of Chronicles of Darkness, we were reminded of an old trope - Dexterity is King.

Dexterity is King means that among all stats a character has, one of them is clearly more important than others. That one stat is usually Dexterity. Here are some examples of why that might be.

Godbound

Godbound is an OSR-based system that uses the well known stats of Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma. You can use any of those stats for rolling checks ("roll vs Charisma to try to persuade someone") and two stats always contribute to a saving throw. However, when it comes to combat, you only use the first three stats.

Constitution gives you HP, and that's all it does. Strength and Dexterity are used when you attack something. If you are doing melee, you use Strength, and if you do ranged, you use Dexterity. Your to-hit is determined by the attribute used, your damage modifier is also determined by the attribute used. In that regard, they are interchangeable. However, on top of that, Dexterity is also used to determine your Armour Class, something that's useful for any combat character.

With all of that, if you are going strictly for optimal play, why wouldn't you always take max Dexterity and dump Strength? Being able to not only hit things at a range but also get better armour while you're at it is clearly a better option. Of course, flavouring your character and the choice of Words will encourage you to pick the other option, but usually you'll never make Dexterity your dump stat in Godbound.

Stars Without Number - Int is king too!

Stars Without Number (looking at the Revised Edition here) is another OSR-based system from the same author. Unsurprisingly, Dexterity is also King here - it still modifies your Armour Class, is used by ranged weapons, etc. On top of that it modifies your Initiative, and can be used for a variety of spaceship rolls.

The system does have a few things going for it though - melee weapons have an additional Shock amount of damage they inflict even on a miss, and there are a few Foci around you can use to make yourself quite viable as a melee or hand-to-hand combatant in a scifi setting with plasma guns.

While running a game in SWN, we came across another interesting quirk however - Intelligence can be King too. My specific character was a True AI and was very starship-focused. As it turned out, the system around using spaceships was built around the concept that some characters might not have Dexterity since they could lack a humanoid, physical body (such as a Virtual Intelligence that is the ship, or an AI that gets plugged into the ship). So now pretty much every starship-related roll can be made with Intelligence - piloting, gunnery, star navigation, ECM jamming, etc. On top of that, True AI use Intelligence modifier to get more Processing (power points used to power their "magic"). Int became such a dominant attribute that I developed a 6 level plan for my character to increase it by 4 ranks just to get that extra +1, which was a more optimal strategy than increasing my skills.

Mouse Guard - Attack is King

Mouse Guard is an RPG set in the comic book setting sharing the same name. In this system, the conflict resolution revolves around picking a series of actions to carry out against your opponent. You can Attack, Defend, Manoeuvre or Feint. Attack trumps Feint, Feint trumps Defend, and the other combinations carry out either independently or based on the difference between successes. Attack and Manoeuvre don't have any hard counters. Manoeuvre lets you gain some advantage over your next action, while Attack directly helps you resolve a conflict.

As such, after playing through an entire season of Mouse Guard, we came to the conclusion that you should "never not be Attacking" - it helps you achieve your goal directly, do it fast (which is always good - you don't want to take too long and be attacked more yourself), and there is no way to directly counter it. If the system even had one hard counter to Attack, this wouldn't be the case, but alas.

Old World of Darkness - Dex for everything

Old World of Darkness, even with its 20th anniversary editions, still uses Dexterity for everything. Rolling to-hit, whether it's with a gun, a thrown rock, a sword or with a fist, is a Dexterity roll with an appropriate skill. Block, Dodge, Parry? That's also Dexterity! Bite, Claw, Disarm, Kick, Sweep? All Dex! Initiative? Dex plus Wits. Moreover, after you roll to-hit, your successes carry over to become damage dice, so even if you are using a Sword that does Strength +2 damage, you can basically add half of your Dexterity on top of that. Since the system is also very minmaxy, if you are not starting the game with Dexterity 4 or 5, you are doing yourself a disservice!

Chronicles of Darkness - the king is mostly dead

With the release of the New World of Darkness, or later the Chronicles of Darkness, we finally have a system where Dexterity has been reigned in. In this system a lot of other stats have been given more usefulness. When you roll to-hit, you use Strength for melee or unarmed, and Dexterity only for ranged. Your to-hit roll is also your damage roll, so there is no weird carry-over. Your Defence is the lower of your Dexterity or Wits plus Athletics skill, so even if you don't have high Dex you can compensate. Initiative is Dexterity and Composure, while Speed is Strength and Dexterity. Your Stamina determines your hit points.

All in all, the many uses for Attributes allow you to build some very interesting characters without making them entirely useless - you can have a high Dexterity character that is hard to hit, but you'll probably be sacrificing Willpower or Stamina. You can have a character that doesn't have any Dexterity but can still brawl like a boss. Or you can have a tank that compensates for his lack of Dexterity, Wits or Strength by hitting the gym to get more Athletics to raise their Defence. And with the system being much more forgiving on the XP costs, you can easily tailor your build to match what is needed.

Conclusions

When designing an RPG system, you should avoid putting too much power into a single attribute or other gameplay element. The game is much more enjoyable when there are multiple "good solutions" rather than one "right solution".

Persona time slots and the three part structure of an RPG session

My group tends to experiment with different systems and techniques. One day we decided to try playing some Chronicles of Darkness, and our GM tried experimenting with a mechanic inspired by Persona - "time slots". The idea boiled down to this - every day was broken into a few time slots, and in each time slot our vampire characters could do one thing - go hunt for some blood, engage with their Touchstones, research something, etc. After one time slot where our PCs each did their own thing we would meet up and usually spend one time slot working out problems from last night, before the final time slot where we'd go out and have "the big set piece" of the session. We didn't realise it at the time, but we did find some pretty neat pacing structure for any session.

When we played through some Mouse Guard, the game came with its own pacing - the GM Turn and the Player Turn. In general, the session would start at the GM Turn, in which we'd be presented a challenge that we'd have to overcome - perhaps we'd be travelling between towns and dealing with a snowstorm, only to find out we needed to venture further into the blizzard to find some missing mice. During that set piece, every player would be accumulating "checks" for overcoming challenges with a hindrance. Finally, after that GM Turn was over, our characters would have some downtime to spend those checks to resupply, heal up and interact with NPCs in a more relaxed manner. In essence, it was a similar structure to what we have done in CoD, but in reverse - you'd first have the big set piece, and then you'd have the smaller stuff.

As it turned out, that pacing felt off - you'd usually start the game off with the action and then peter off at the end with things that didn't seem that meaningful in comparison. You might have the characters having a thousand-yard stare after fighting a band of weasels and expecting the players to have a follow-up. At least having this contrast allowed us to refine our approach.

So all in all, here is our time slot technique for any RPG. First, you start the session off with small, personal things. Let each player take initiative and roleplay some small thing they do during their morning as it were. Keep it light, don't do too many rolls, and keep it small - no more than two players in a scene ideally. After everyone has done their thing, let everyone meet up and make preparations. Discuss whatever needs discussing, figure out a plan of action, maybe do some small follow-up to something. Then, in the third part of the session have your big set piece - do battle, solve mysteries, engage with the world. After the climax of the session, when the big adventure is over, have a short moment for decompression and end the session soon after. Leave on a high note and give players time to formulate their plans for the next cycle.

This structure should help you transition from everyone settling at the table and still talking about things outside of the game, through the light things where people settle into their roles and get maximum focus right where the meat of the game is.

Too strong for fun, too good to be useful, and the paradox of power

RPGs are often an empowerment fantasy - a game where you take on roles of heroes or characters that are larger than life. You want to feel mighty, and often want to the "the strongest there ever was", or at least strive to. However, achieving that goal might be less fun than you think.

Our group has been playing Godbound for a long while. It's a game where you play high-power demigods (think higher-end comicbook heroes like Thor or Superman). A few months back we were excited to dig into a new expansion for that system called Lexicon of the Throne, which introduced a lot of new Words (superpower themes like "god of cities", or "god of war") to build your characters. One of the better Words out there is the Word of Dragons, letting you essentially play Smaug.

This is your PC

Now, a lot of Words in Godbound are pretty powerful, letting you go toe to toe with the biggest baddies around and reshape the world to your whim. However, there are two powers in the Word of Dragons that essentially break a part of the game - Breath of Death and Legion's Bane. The first power lets you decimate large armies with your dragon breath of choice, be it fire, shrapnel or liquid LSD. The second is pretty self-explanatory, you can kill large armies with ease, to the point you can wipe entire groups of mooks without even rolling. So once again, you are Smaug, your enemies are Lake-town:

And my breath - death!

Now, with such awesome power, it must be amazing to play as the Dragon, right? Well, not when it comes to actually using those two powers. Pretty much as soon as you take them, they become meaningless, and here is why.

Godbound operates on OSR rules, but condenses a lot of numbers down, so you don't do individual D&D-like hit points in damage, but entire hit dice. A typical Godbound can output about 4 hit dice of damage to an enemy, which usually has 15HD of health on the low end to 50 on the high end. Sometimes you can output as much as 10HD of damage to enemies that are particularly weak to your powers - a Godbound of Bow can kill armies, a Godbound of Artifice can kill constructs, etc. Those are some good numbers to pull.

Breath of Death can pull upwards of, on average, 90 damage if you're top level Godbound. And that's average - you could technically roll a perfect roll and do 180 damage, AoE, to mobs. There isn't really a grouping of mobs that could survive that hit. Again, you are Smaug, they are Lake-town.

(For those that know Godbound and wonder how this is possible - Breath of Death does 1d6 damage per level, triple to mobs, and is AoE. By rules presented in Godbound, AoE attacks against mobs do straight damage, so you are doing 1d6 x 3 straight damage per level.)

Legion's Bane is a much more direct power, pretty much boiling down to "if the mooks are weak enough, you automatically hit them and kill them outright, all of them". As my GM put it in one of our sessions - "you punch someone, and everyone in the three mile radius of the same socioeconomic status explode". To weaker mobs, you are One Punch Man, and the groups is one enemy for you.

Pretty much taking the Word of the Dragon makes you the designated "mob slayer" of the party. So this must be an awesome power, right? Well, sort of the opposite. Once you take the power to one punch kill mobs, mobs become pretty meaningless in the game, so putting them into the fight on the GM part is also rather pointless. Now the game turned from something like Dynasty Warrior, where you would have to cleave through enemies that might overwhelm you in the right combination, into One Punch Man, where the only meaning you can derive comes from reflecting on the power you have.

Now, that sort of reflection can be interesting, but the game has to be geared to allow for such self-analysis. Godbound doesn't have any explicit tools or prompts for things like that, but the genre it occupies (games of mythical heroes) might be implying that theme - you should be talking about morality, philosophy and so on in light of your god-like powers.

All in all, while having powers that let you specialise and be awesome at something, getting powers that make a part of the game so inconsequential they become meaningless might be detrimental overall. There are things out there that are too good to be useful in RPGs.

Ships, Shares and Startups

A primer on economics in space mercantilism.

Introduction

This post discusses a few ideas on how to apply real-world economics to handle low-level space mercantilism and distribution of earnings between PCs and NPCs. The baseline discussion will use the concepts introduced in Stars Without Number Revised book, as well as the supplements Suns of Gold, Skyward Steel and Scavenger Fleets.

The discussed scenario focuses on low-end space merchant groups, ones with relatively small amount of crew where you expect to take big risks and get big rewards. On high-end scale, you’d expect the majority of people employed to have a relatively stable income and fixed payouts for whatever loot they gather. On that scale, refer to Skyward Steel, especially section “Prizes and Captures” on page 19.

If you are looking for some high-crunch mechanics around everything related to space trading and trucking, Traveller's Far Trader might have everything you need and more.

The Problem

Say Gaius and Hixon have earned some money together and managed to buy themselves a ship. They both contributed $500k, bought a ship for $900k and have $100k left over to invest in buying cargo for trading. They agree that they both own half of the ship and are contributing equally to running it, so everything is perfectly balanced. Whatever money they earn, they split 50-50.

Now, let’s say after a while Hixon wants to make a monetary contribution to his academy and wants to cash $10k out to do so. How do you handle this withdrawal from the ship’s funds to keep things fair? You could withdraw $20k and give Gaius $10k to spend on whatever he wants, but maybe he doesn’t have anything he’d want to buy and would rather buy more cargo to turn more profit. Keeping track of that cargo separately would be a problem, so maybe we should find a different solution…

Meanwhile, turns out running the ship with two people isn’t enough. The ship needs another crewmember. They want to hire Magnetar for the standard rate, but she knows working on a dinky little ship is a very risky line of work, as well as that if they score a big score she won’t see any of the extra profits. Now the crew has to figure out how to properly integrate Magnetar into the payout structure so as not to make anyone feel cheated…

And here is where we bust out our computers and engage in a bit of Spreadsheets in Space!

Ship Shares, but different from Traveller

Before we talk about a solution to our problem, let’s briefly touch on similar concepts you might be familiar with.

In the Traveller RPG, your character could earn Ship Shares, which represented 1% ownership of the ship you were on. While an interesting concept, it’s a bit too rigid and doesn’t do enough for our needs.

In Scavenger Fleets you had the concept of Cargo Shares, representing a claim to a certain amount of cargo space on a scavver ship. While an interesting concept in itself, it’s also not what we’re looking for. Cargo Shares are more useful for running small-scale trading on the side of a campaign where the PCs are tied to a specific ship, rather than being more in charge of things like what we are looking for.

In our scenario, Ship Shares would represent a proportional claim to the ship, its cargo and everything associated with it. The number of Shares is not fixed, it can increase and decrease as needed. The value of the Shares is also not fixed not to make them a stand-in for Credits. Ship Shares thus are closer to real-world shares in a company.

Practical example 1 - cashing out

To be able to use the Ship Shares, we have to determine their value. We simply start at some point where we’re liquid - when we have a freshly bought ship, all the credits and no cargo. So in our previous example we have a ship worth $900k and $100k in credits:

What is it?	How much is it worth?
Ship	$900k
Cash	$100k
Total:	$1’000k

We decide to create 1000 Ship Shares and divide them equally:

Who?	How many shares do they own?
Gaius	500
Hixon	500
Total:	1’000

So with our simple math, each Ship Share is currently worth $1’000 credits.

Now, if Hixon wants to cash out $10k out of his own pocket, he has to “sell” his Shares. So our adjusted tables look like:

What is it?	How much is it worth?
Ship	$900k
Cash	$90k
Total:	$990k

Who?	How many shares do they own?
Gaius	500
Hixon	490
Total:	990

The value of the Shares is preserved, but their number has decreased. Gaius owns the same number of Shares he used to, but he owns proportionally more than Hixon.

Practical example 2 - paying with shares

Now let’s say we want to hire Magnetar. She wants a cut of the future profits, but also wants a salary at the end. We agree to pay hey $10k and 10 Shares at the end of our trip.

Who?	How many shares do they own?
Gaius	500
Hixon	490
Magnetar	10
Total:	1’000

Practical example 3 - round trip

Everyone is ready and we lock things in. Now we’ll be dealing with a lot of cargo and other things, so cashing out will be really hard. We spend our $80k and get some guns, and we’re off with a bit of liquid cash.

What is it?	How much is it worth?
Ship	$900k
Cash	$10k
Guns, 80 tonnes	$80k?
Total:	$990k?

We don’t really know how much those guns will sell for in the end, so we don’t try to keep their value too closely. We have a few adventures, our ship takes a beating, we trade cargo a few times, and our spreadsheet looks like a bit of a mess:

What is it?	How much is it worth?
Ship, damaged	<$900k? $700k maybe?
Cash	$1k - we’re kind of illiquid
Cats? Why do we have cats? 1 tonne	???
Roses, 30 tonnes	???
Computers, 10 tonnes	???
Total:	Heck if I know...

At this point, if someone wanted to cash out, we couldn’t give them a fair payment since we don’t know what anything is worth. We could try negotiating what would be a fair cat-to-share payout, but let’s keep things simple and assume you can only cash out when everything is liquidated. So at the end of our journey, we cash out our cargo. Now it’s time to cover our costs:

Item	Net amount
Cash balance, starting	$1k
Cats	+$70k
Roses	+$40k
Computers	+$300k
Refuelling fees	-$1k
Ship repair	-$100k
Magnetar’s Salary	-$10k
Final balance	$300k

Okay, our final cash balance ended up being $300k! We turned a profit! Time to update our sheets:

What is it?	How much is it worth?
Ship	$900k
Cash	$300k
Total:	$1’200k

Our final total balance is $1.2M, so we’re up 20% from our starting point. Not bad! We still have 1’000 Ship Shares, but now each of them is worth $1’200! This means Gaius has earned $100k ($500k investment, current shares worth of $600k), Hixon has earned $98k due to cashing out early, and Magnetar has earned $10k in salary and $12k in Ship Shares! Not bad!

Share salaries and investments

There are a few more concepts you should keep in mind when using this system. First, if you intend on paying the ship crewmembers a regular salary in Ship Shares, you shouldn’t forget to pay the important people on the ship as well. In our example, if Gaius and Hixon would keep paying Magnetar 10 Ship Shares per each trip and she wouldn’t cash any of them out, in 50 missions she would own one third of the ship. It might not be the ideal solution to go for.

Instead, you could pay each member of the crew a certain salary in Ship Shares. Say, everyone would be paid 20 Ship Shares, and they could take a smaller amount of Shares in exchange for a fixed salary. This way the final ownership would tend to represent how much everyone contributed to the ship over the whole campaign, etc. You could increase and shrink your crew easily without worrying about the regular crew being edged out completely.

Similarly, you could also allow people to “invest” in the Ship by purchasing Shares with their own money. If you’d invest in the Ship as a whole, you’d put the money in the pile and get new shares proportional to how much you contributed (in our example, investing $60k at $1’200k per share would net you 50 Shares). If you want to purchase someone else’s Shares, they’d get the money and you’d get their Shares - the Ship wouldn’t see the money.

Finally, if you want to kick someone out of the crew in a fair way, you could force-liquidate their Ship Shares at a fair market value (if Magnetar decided to leave, Gaius and Hixon could force pay her $12k from the Ship to buy back her 10 Ship Shares). This could be useful if you don’t want people that aren’t on the ship to be still eating into your future profits. On the other hand, if you’re strapped for cash, you might want to hold off on that…

Everything else

Now that you are basically running your spaceship like a startup, you can open the game up to a whole world of fun stuff you can find in the real world. Angel Investors that invest in new ships to earn a fair bit of money. Doing Seed Rounds to sell Ship Shares and raise money for future endeavours. Multiplying or dividing the number of shares to keep their value within a certain range (say, if 1 Share becomes worth $100k, you can multiply all Share balances by 100 to make the new Share be worth $1k again). Being straddled with debt for owning some Shares that went belly up, or perhaps re-inventing Limited Liability Company. Etc. Etc.

Your only limit is how much do you want to play Spreadsheets in Space, and how many Space Lawyers do you want to include ;).

Useful links

• Stars Without Number, Revised Edition, Free Version
• Suns of Gold
• Skyward Steel
• Scavenger Fleets
• Traveller
• Far Trader
• Actual Play - Stars Without Number, Blackstar (our mercantile SWN campaign)
• SWN XP & Money Table (useful spreadsheet from our game)