Punch me in the face for XP - the failure of CoD beats system

Chronicles of Darkness is a pretty great series of games. It fixed a lot of things that were wrong with the oWoD and nWoD series and added a few interesting elements of its own as well. However, one thing I'm finding less and less fun the more I play is the beats system. While it seems fun at first, it starts to incentivise the wrong things after awhile. So today, let's talk about beat farming!

Beats - the small XPs

Beats system in CoD is a replacement of the traditional World of Darkness XP system. Both of them are radically different from systems like D&D - you don't get XP for killing enemies, but for things like accomplishing goals, roleplaying, or in general - having life experiences.

In the first edition of the New World of Darkness, you would gain XP at the end of the session or story based on things like "has your character learned anything?", "did you roleplay them in an entertaining or appropriate way?", "did you perform a heroic act?", etc.

Those were a bit hard to judge at times and often felt a bit contrived. "What did I learn today? Um, let me spin the Wheel of Morality real quick and come up with something". Worst yet - the system can also feel like a further downer after a session that might've not gelled as much. I remember feeling quite shitty after playing in a session that wasn't that great to begin with and the GM sternly proclaiming at the end everyone got the minimal, 1XP. Everything else about that game has since faded from my memory, but that one thing still feels bad...

But luckily, CoD is here to solve that problem with beats! Now each XP is broken down into 5 beats, and you accrue those beats through the game through a number of concrete ways. You get a beat when you accomplish a goal you set for yourself, when you complete a condition, when you get a dramatic failure, when you risk a breaking point (essentially losing sanity or humanity), or even when you get beaten up.

All of those conditions are concrete - it is clear when they are supposed to happen and you can proudly exclaim that you are getting that beat and why. The system is much neater and feels better. However, as anything that's driven by the actions of the PCs, it can get exploited a bit...

Beat farming - stopping the game to get your numbers up

Beat farming in CoD is perhaps the last vestige of minmaxing left from the older editions of the system. You can only get one beat from a given category of beat conditions per scene, but given that you have 3-5 scenes in a session, you can rack up quite the number of beats easily.

Generally, there are a few concrete ways you can reliably get beats in the game. First two are dramatic failures and Inspired cycling. You build your character up so they have at least one very crappy roll (1-2 dice max), and then at least one roll they can use often they are very good at. Usually for the last you combine high dice number with Professional Training 2 (9-again), or Trained Observer (9-again or 8-again).

Then each scene proceed to use your weak skill until you fail, upgrading that into a dramatic failure (giving you a beat), and then using your strong skill to get an exceptional success. While exceptional successes don't get you a beat straight away, the rules state that if that check doesn't have a specific exceptional success bonus, the character should get a beneficial condition. You opt to get Inspired, a condition that you can cash in for a willpower point, a beat, and an exceptional success on 3 successes instead of 5. This means whenever you roll your strong skill, you spend a willpower point (giving you extra 3 dice), spend the Inspired condition (getting that willpower back) and fingers crossed - you get that condition back again instantly. Rinse both each scene for 2 beats per scene.

In Mage the Awakening, I'm not sure whether by design or by accident, whenever a character completes an Aspiration (their short or long term goal), they get a new Aspiration. Moreover, higher-end Mages have more and more "Obsessions" - long-term Aspirations focused on supernatural things. You can cash both an Aspiration and an Obsession each scene for a beat and an "arcane beat" (beat you can only spend on magic stuff). This can start derailing the characters into "my current aspiration is to go to where the next scene is and do what we were planning to do anyway" and "I want to learn more about the particular supernatural creature we're currently investigating". This stops being conductive to "emergent gameplay" and just becomes a race to get more and more beats...

Moreover, Mages can also farm Arcane Beats by resolving conditions imposed by spells. The book even explicitly states that farming beats this way is normal. In a sidebar section called "The Beat Goes On..." we read - "At this point, you may be wondering what’s stopping you from loading up on Condition-causing spells in a relatively safe environment, resolving them all, and earning Beats by the bucket load? The honest answer is “nothing, mages do it all the time.”...". This means if you have a Mage with Fate 2 in your party, you can cast Exceptional Luck each scene, giving everyone in the party a beneficial condition they can use and gain a beat that way.

Finally, at the end of a scene, you can just punch each other in the face and get a beat (at least if you're mortal - supernaturals might have to cut one another up for it). If you take damage in your last three health boxes, you get a beat. For an average person, you need about 5 points of bashing damage, which heals after 75 minutes - most often enough for a scene change. Punch each other in the face each scene and farm those precious beats...

So if you're hard-core, each scene you can get a beat for damage, dramatic failure, fulfilling a condition and fulfilling an aspiration rather easily. That's a beat shy of a full XP each scene, so you might end up with about 4XP at the end of a session - which is an insane amount (1XP is healthy for a normal session). Would the game be fun though? Heck no...

Mechanics distracting from the game

Discovering an exploit in a game can be fun. It makes you feel smart for noticing the various mechanics that make something up, you go through the rush of research as you dig deeper into the problem and finally you have the sense of mastery as you figure out the most optimal way of abusing the exploit. It is fun, but that's not what Chronicles of Darkness, or RPGs in general are about.

Sure, you can have a group that's all about deriving fun from breaking a game and exploiting the mechanics, do that by all means. You can similarly enjoy the Ivory Tower Game Design, but after awhile it feels like a system that punishes sub-optimal play.

Recently my group and I have switched systems in one of our game from Savage Worlds to Chronicles of Darkness. A new player joined us that didn't have experience with CoD. We had fun with the session, but by the end I came out of that session with 6 beats, and the other players had only 3 beats a piece. I am by no means a better player than them, nor was my character a more important part of that story. The only difference was I knew how to farm beats and I made a character that allowed me to farm beats. Since we're all loss-averse by nature, seeing someone get twice as many beats was most likely not a pleasant experience. We started using group beats since that point...

In a different session, one of our players cared about a particular NPC - they were tied to their backstory and so on. When my character failed a roll related to helping that NPC investigate their missing father however, I decided to cash it in for a dramatic failure and a beat, much to the dismay of the other player. The failure was not important to my character, but it was going against what the party wanted to accomplish. If we continued on this path for a longer game, we'd probably all start screwing the party over with dramatic failures sooner or later. Luckily it was a shorter game and we learned our lessons.

Cut the beats

Honestly, I feel if the beat system was cut entirely from CoD, the system might be better for it.

Say, if the players and the GM agreed to say, give everyone 1-2 full XP per session, that might be a good pace. Aspirations wouldn't give beats, but would be a way to communicate with the GM and the rest of the party what you as the player want out of a given session. Conditions already either give you a bonus when you "cash them in", or get rid of a penalty if they're negative once you get rid of them. Getting beaten up and surviving means you survived a fun action scene and either continue your story, or have some new enemy to beat up in the future. Risking a breaking point is a dramatic enough moment that it is interesting on its own, and finally for dramatic failures - perhaps the GM could offer you a Doylist choice with some kickback if they believe a botch would add to the story. Some of them could give you Willpower - another important resource in the game, or perhaps a reroll you could cash in in the future. Either of those options would be meaningful, but not important enough to heavily encourage the players to derail the game for their own benefit.

So all in all, the beats system in Chronicles of Darkness is an interesting tool, but when taken to its "rational conclusion" - it starts to break down. It's possible the game might be more enjoyable if we weren't chasing that proverbial carrot at any given opportunity...

When does PVP work in RPGs?

Player vs player conflicts can be an important aspect of role playing games. They can be an epic end of a story, or just as likely be the breaking point at which the game ends without a satisfying conclusion to the main adventure. Despite being an important aspect of the medium, there doesn't appear to be too much word count devoted to this aspect in any of the game manuals. So lets discuss this topic and see what insight we could find today.

What is PVP?

In broad sense, PVP is a conflict between two characters in an RPG controlled by the players. In theory this could mean any sort of conflict. You could have the characters competing financially in an EVE-esque market PVP. You could have two characters trying to accomplish the same goal, or get the same prize and thus competing with one another. Or you could even have some friendly rivalry of who can kill the most enemies and thus be "the better fighter".

Of course, most often when talking about PVP we are talking about two characters facing one another in a physical combat where only one of them will live by the end of the day. Two men enter, one man leaves.

The problems with PVP

There are many problems surrounding PVP, and many ways it can be done wrong unfortunately.

Probably the worst thing you could have in PVP is using it as means of spiting another player, or settling some out-of-game grudges. There is really no way this can end up with anything other than more grudges. Often you also end up dragging more people into your disagreement, either forcing them to take side or at best being awkward spectators in a conflict they don't want to be part of. These sort of things should be settled outside of the game really - you are solving nothing by making it into PVP...

Similarly, PVP might not work if used as a means of eliminating a character the group doesn't like. More often than not this is just a way of telling the player they made "a shitty character", which could be just as easily done out of the game. If the player feels they've been wronged by their character death, they can just as easily make another character that will still be grating to the group, making the conflict ultimately meaningless.

Next up would be using PVP as a method of bullying. You might not have anything against other players per-se, but you still would like their characters' stuff, or the freshly acquired loot. And since might makes right, you would flex your muscles to get what you want. This again creates more resentment at the table more often than not, and at best you might get some catharsis after the group gangs up on the bully character and murder them. Overall, not that great.

Another reason why PVP might not work, is that you'd often be able to tell who would win a given PVP engagement before it even begins. It's not fun seeing a peace loving monk going against a two meter gorilla of a fighter.

On a similar note, who wins a given PVP engagement could be dictated or at least heavily influenced by how the conflict is structured. An assassin would win if they had the chance to perform some sneak attacks, a warrior would do better in an open conflict, while a werewolf might need full moon to rip their enemy to shreds. Alternatively if you can call what way the conflict is resolved - pistols at dawn, mental competition, a debate, a duel, etc., you can achieve the same result - skewing the fight in your favour. As such, whoever can control when and how the PVP takes place can almost assure their own victory.

Lastly, PVP doesn't work if it doesn't have a meaningful point to it. If someone wants to just retire their character and they just want to get them killed by betraying the party, that's just lazy and contrived. Just skip PVP and get to the point you want to get to.

When PVP does work

Even despite the bad rep it gets at times, PVP can still be used as a good storytelling tool.

The easiest scenario where PVP works is when all of the participating players want to engage in it. It's that simple. If two players want to role play some rivals that will battle one another on regular basis until one of them will drop dead eventually (and the rest of the party doesn't mind this potential sideline to the adventure!), that's great! If some player talks to their fellow players and says they want to cross the party so much they will kill the character, that's also fine. Any scenario everyone is on board with for PVP is a good enough reason to incorporate it into the story.

Second kind of scenario would be a game that sets out to have PVP from the start. Say you want to play a group of backstabbing vampires in Requiem - that's fine. As long as everyone knows PVP is on the table, what are the rules for engagement and everyone is fine with those from the get-go, that's fair game. This way everyone is prepared for the conflict that will happen.

So in general, as long as all participants (and spectators!) of a PVP conflict know the rules of engagement, the consequences of the fight and are on board with the idea, PVP can work. It's all about agreeing to the sort of game you want to play - you don't want to think you're playing a friendly game where everyone gets along only to find out down the line that someone is about to murder your character unexpectedly. It ruins the fun.

How to PVP and make it interesting

Now that we know we'll be having PVP, it's perhaps time to ask ourselves how to keep PVP interesting. On one hand it might be interesting to have a game where anyone can attack at any moment, on the other hand roleplaying a paranoid prepper that doesn't trust anyone ever can be very taxing.

So first rule of engagement is having to make PVP fair to the players. If you have open season for PVP, you don't want any player to be getting an unfair advantage. Keep in mind the word "player" - it's more important to be fair to the players than to the characters, although one often goes along with the other. If one player can scheme and get some sneaky advantage, either the other player should also be able to get that, or have some equivalent mechanic they can use. Say, have some mechanic in play for facilitating characters' downtime activities. Different characters might need different things to have an advantage in a conflict - a warrior might be ready to go at any time, while an assassin might need a way to sneak up on their opponent, while some manipulating mob boss might need a way to send their goons to do their dirty work.

If having an open PVP season is too much, you might want to add some structure to the PVP. Perhaps you might only allow fair duels, or only engage in a given place or time.

You could also have the GM or even other players be the arbiters of how a given PVP might be structured. Say the group agrees that whenever a duel would be declared, the players that don't participate in the conflict would be able to discuss how and when the actual conflict would take place. This could mean they would be able to choose a fair way for two characters to fight one another, or even introduce a dynamic in which the players can play favourites. Maybe some favours would have to be traded for one character to get an upper hand in defeating their rival, or maybe the group would use this opportunity to get rid of the most problematic character in an underhanded way. Of course, not everyone might be interested in a game of politics and favours...

Alternatively, the players might have to come to an agreement as to how the PVP should be structured. They might have to negotiate what sort of handicaps to put in place, how to level the playing field and so on. This could be a self-balancing game - a strong warrior might have to give a large handicap to a weaker oponent until they would agree to the conflict. Perhaps one could even negotiate a number of surprise advantages the other character could spring on them in the duel they wouldn't have time to prepare for.

Conclusions

There are many ways PVP can be done poorly in an RPG, and a few ways it can actually be done well. The main problem is keeping it balanced and getting players on board with the idea of engaging in PVP in the first palce.