Bommyknocker Press

Journalling XP: an advancement system that saves you—the GM—work

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dear-diary

Scuttlebutt

There’s been some XP scuttlebutt kicking around lately, so why not throw an ashcan on the pile.

Grinning Rat would rather do away with XP altogether for something more diegetic. Azorynian Post would rather tether XP to character impact on the game world.

I like abstraction in games, and I’m actually pretty happy with number-go-up gameplay. I'm playing Cairn at the moment, but the time will come when I will play another game with character advancement.

The problem is, I’ve never been great with XP, for the same reason I’m not great with GP (in this world or an imaginary one)—I’m no good at bookkeeping. I find the act of stocking level-appropriate encounters with level-appropriate GP rewards to be a chore, too.

For this reason, if I’m playing a game with XP I like GLOG’s Popcorn Leveling approach - give a level to the lowest-level player every time the party recovers a Big Fucking Treasure. (Arnold pairs this with other forms of diegetic advancement, too, which will be familiar to Oddlike-enjoyers). I’ve based this system on Arnold’s.

The Rationale

XP systems generally act as incentive systems. Luke Gearing famously has a problem with this.

I'm ambivalent. While there are interesting design opportunities in diegetic advancement, I actually like Number-Go-Up gameplay. It feels good in the brain.

And while I sympathise with the distaste for incentivised gameplay, characters in most games I’ve played seem to advance at a fairly steady rate regardless of player skill. Game systems are typically tuned to support the sorts of activities the players are already undertaking, which means that XP rolls in more-or-less passively.

If this is true, then if we're going to have non-diegetic character advancement we have a mechanic that can support incentivised player behaviour, and very little to incentivise!

So what is worth incentivising?
What does good gameplay look like?

The answer for me is: anything that makes my life easier as a GM.

I’ve already admitted I don’t like bookkeeping. I have to fess up top something else here—I know they’re important, but I suck at taking session notes, too.

So here’s my rationale: I struggle to track XP, and I struggle to take notes. Rather than embark on a programme of self-improvement, what if I put the burden of both onto players? You want to advance, right? Well, if you do my homework for me you can. (Trust me it will make your life better too.)

Overall goal: a levelling system that requires players to keep notes of significant people, places and events during gameplay.

Design goals:

  1. Useable notes are kept for GMs and players to refer back to.
  2. Balance rewards for overworld and dungeoneering play.
  3. Streamlined system doesn’t consume too much table time.

Influences

The big influences are Arnold K’s Popcorn Leveling (as mentioned above) and Anne’s Landmark, Hidden, Secret post.

If you’re not familiar with Landmark, Hidden, Secret, you really should read it or read it again. Here’s the bottom line as a refresher:

CHRONICLE XP

(ashcan)

A levelling system for lazy GMs

CHRONICLE

The party has a Chronicle, which serves as an XP tracker.

The Chronicle is composed of Pages, each of which has 30 Lines.

PAGES

A page of the Chronicle is composed of 30 Lines, and is completed when these Lines are filled.

Upon completing a Page of the chronicle, the lowest-level character gains a level at the end of that session. If all characters are of equal level, the first level goes to the Scribe (the player who maintains the journal).

ENTRIES

Any significant person, location, and event forms an Entry in the Chronicle. Each Entry takes up a number of Lines.

Entries are made in order running down the Chronicle sheet. The sheet will serve as a record of the people the party met, the places they went and their exploits along the way.

Entries can be short - somewhere from a word to a sentence. Taken together they will form just the skeleton of your session notes, enough to piece together your comings and goings.

If your players want to take more robust notes - congratulations! They don’t get extra XP though.

If you are using an actual sheet of lined paper, consider using the correct amount of Lines per Entry so you have a visual indicator of your progress towards a level. For Entries that span multiple lines, you can leave it blank, write more details or do a doodle.

If you don’t want to be tethered to a physical page, just tally the number of lines at the beginning of each entry.

LINES

Some entries have bonus lines based on their import or difficulty. If in doubt about how many lines an entry should take up, take a step back and think about their significance to your campaign. The blacksmith’s secret affair is not material to you unless it is also the motive for the murder you are investigating.

To avoid filling your Chronicle with the minutiae of dungeoneering, there are specific high-value Entries reserved for any recovered treasure (which should be stocked per Arnold’s rules.

1 Line—Book Keeping

1 Line—Landmark Information

Note: often a person or faction will appear before they become significant in your game. Simply add them to the chronicle when it appears they will become relevant in the medium- to long- term

2 Lines—Hidden Information

4 Lines—Secret Information

5 Lines—Title

15 Lines—Treasure

Discussion

This hasn't been playtested or tuned. I think there's something interesting here, though. It should be easy enough to retune for differently-themed games.

During session 0, players could nominate an entry-type that awards extra Lines in order to incentivise their own preferred method of gameplay.

Additional Entry-types could work at your table. An ecological setting like Mouth Brood could award Entries to discovering new biological phenomena. A mercenary game could award Entries related to taking or completing jobs.

#gameable #theory #xp