This article is the second in a twelve part series that talks about the choices/decisions that need to be made when designing a role-playing game system. This time we’re going to deal with morality systems; character resources, rewards, and progression; and wealth systems. And contrary to popular opinion, wealth does not need to be implemented as a resource.
Q: What kind of morality system do you want in your game?
Of course we need to define what a morality system is. You can think of it as a “game mechanic” for describing where on the “good vs. evil” spectrum a character’s behavior should fall and/or a way of encouraging “good” behavior in player characters. Here are some options for morality systems that have been used in existing RPGs.
An Alignment System: Dungeons & Dragons, and here I mean the original version created by Gary Gygax, had a single axis “Alignment” system consisting of 3 categories (Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic) that described the ethical (law/chaos) perspective of characters. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons added a second axis for morality (good/evil) resulting in 9 different categories: Lawful-Good, Neutral-Good, Chaotic-Good, Lawful-Neutral, Neutral-Neutral, Chaotic-Neutral, Lawful-Evil, Neutral-Evil, and Chaotic-Evil. D&D 3.0 and 3.5 used the same alignment system as AD&D. D&D 4e replaced the 2 axis 9 category alignment system with a single axis 5 category system: Lawful Good, Good, Unaligned, Evil, and Chaotic Evil. The Palladium system (used in “Heroes Unlimited”, “Rifts”, and other games) had a single axis alignment system with 7 categories: Principled (Good), Scrupulous (Good), Unprincipled (Selfish), Anarchist (Selfish), Aberrant (Evil), Miscreant (Evil), and Diabolic (Evil); it made a point of there being no “neutral” alignments; instead there were “selfish” alignments.
No Morality System: Shadowrun doesn’t have an alignment or any other type of morality system. Why? Because the premise of that game is that the PCs are supposed to operate outside the law and take dirty jobs.
Getting PCs to behave as desired by bribing them with experience points or another reward: This is similar in concept to the “compulsion” of aspects in the FATE system. My 3D RPG has a “themes” which are very similar to FATE’s aspects; I will talk about them in Part 5 of this series.
A point system: I believe that the West End Games Edition of the Star Wars RPG introduced this concept. In that game, committing evil actions or calling on the Dark Side of the Force would net you a Dark Side Point (DSP). Upon gaining a DSP you rolled a d6 and if the result was less than your number of DSPs then your character turned to the Dark Side and became a non-player character (controlled by the GM) to torment the party as recurring villain. You could remove 1 DSP by “atoning” (essentially acting “holy”) for 2 adventures. In the Wizards of the Coast versions of the Star Wars RPG your character turned to the Dark Side when their number of DSP equaled their Wisdom attribute/ability score.
Hybrid: In White Wolf’s “new” World of Darkness games (circa 2004) characters have a morality score (called “Humanity” for vampires and “Wisdom” for mages) ranging between zero and 10; if your morality score reaches zero then you’re hunted down and killed. Characters also have a “Virtue” and a “Vice” which is like a more nuanced alignment system.
There are other options besides what I’ve listed here. This webpage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alignment_(role-playing_games) gives examples of morality systems used in several game systems.
Here are some things to think about when choosing a morality system for your own RPG. Alignment systems do very little beyond providing role-playing guidelines, so… what happens to characters that are role-played different than their nominal alignment? What if the GM wants to run a “heroic” campaign and one or more players wants to play an evil character? That’s also an issue in point systems where being pure evil results in character death (either literal death or the character becoming an NPC). When eventual character death is on the line, and the GM and PCs have different opinions on what exactly constitutes an “evil” action, the awarding of an “evil” point can lead to arguments at the game table.
The typical platitude expressed by GMs in these situations is, “the more you try to argue that you don’t deserve [an evil point] the more you actually deserve it.” I used to believe that was true until I was awarded a DSP in a Revised Core rules Star Wars game because the GM equated DRAWING a lightsaber in a bar fight (after backing off and announcing that I didn’t want to hurt the other guy but would if he forced me) to declaring that I intended to kill a several levels higher but unarmed combatant (actually he was armed but he hadn’t drawn/wasn’t wielding a weapon other than combat gloves). If that was not sufficiently unreasonable I only drew the lightsaber because I had incorrectly concluded I was losing the fight (i.e. my character’s life was in danger) and that the opponent was trained in martial arts and therefore “legally armed” based on a rules mistake made by the GM (he denied me attacks of opportunity against an unarmed combatant that I should have gotten because my character did know martial arts) immediately after I had questioned some calls he made and he said “trust me I know what I’m doing.” I found out later that the GM had described “vitality point” damage we had done to each other me as not being able to land a punch on the other guy and him giving me a black eye and bloody nose. He did not consider his inconsistent descriptions or rules mistake to be mitigating factors for DRAWING a lightsaber.
So given that completely unreasonable GMs, who screw over their players for no good reason, actually exist, I believe that a point based morality system that results in effective character death is a poor choice for a RPG. Instead I implemented a “Karma system” that comes into effect more often but with much less severe consequences. The basics of this system are as follows.
There is a Karma pool of double sided white-black chips associated with the party; note that it is not associated with individual PCs (I recommend using Othello tokens for Karma chips). There are 2 PC chips per player plus 2 NPC chips in the Karma pool (although there is no real distinction between PC and NPC chips once they’re in the Karma pool). At the beginning of the campaign the pool starts half black and half white. When the PCs do something EVIL (and there are some very specific guidelines about what is EVIL), that can change a Karma chip from white to black. When the PCs do something truly heroic and self-sacrificial it can change 1 chip from black to white. PCs can spend the white Karma chips (which turns them black) to accomplish cool stuff and the GM can spend black chips (which turns them white) to accomplish the same things (plus a few others). I’ll talk more about what cool stuff Karma can do in Part 5 of this series, but for now I’ll just say that what it can do is like a combination of what destiny points can do in the Wizards of the Coast Star Wars Saga Edition RPG and the Fantasy Flight Games Edge of the Empire Star Wars RPG, plus a little bit more.
The Karma pool persists (it is NOT reset to half white and half black) from session to session with the following exceptions. When a PC misses a session, remove 1 white and 1 black chip from the pool; if the pool is all white, then remove 2 white chips; if it is all black, then remove 2 black chips. When the missing PC returns, 1 white chip and 1 black chip are added back into the pool regardless of what was removed from the pool because of their absence. When a new PC joins the group, 1 white chip and 1 black chip are added to the pool. At the beginning of each session, 1 white chip and 1 black chip are removed from the pool and then 1 white chip and 1 black chip are added back in following the same rules as for missing PCs; these are the 2 NPC chips which represent all the NPCs under the GM’s control for that session. The rest of the pool is a narrative device that represents the party’s relationship with the universe/supreme being. As a party the PCs can choose to change one chip (NOT one chip per player) from black to white at the beginning of the session, and this is “paid for” this using the “Destiny” mechanic which I’ll talk about in Part 5 of this series.
The benefits of my Karma system include that it encourages PCs to be heroic but allows them to be evil if they really want to be; they will just have Karma stacked against them on a regular basis. In this sense it is a bit like the “alternate methods” mentioned in the web page I linked to above. That the Karma pool is shared by all PCs mitigates potential conflict from the GM “picking on” a specific PC. It also encourages the rest of the party to apply group social pressure to bring a misbehaving PC in line.
And I promised some discussion of thought process so… the 2 NPC Karma chips are a recent addition to the game (since I started writing this series of articles “recent”). The original motivation was that for the case of a GM plus 1 PC, 2 Karma chips just isn’t enough. Once I added the 2 NPC chips I got to thinking, it’d be a good thing if the GM had a minimum of one black Karma chip to spend each session (assuming the players kept theirs all white to prevent the GM from spending black Karma) so I copied the absent PC rule for use with a changing cast of NPCs. As a side benefit, since the GM is going to be spending at least 1 black Karma chip per session that means the PCs are encouraged to spend at least one white Karma chip a session (if they didn’t it’d just flip to black next session anyway). And PCs spending Karma really enhances the game play. So yeah I’m very happy with the addition of NPC Karma to the pool.
Q: What kinds of character resources do you want in your game?
In this context I’m defining a “character resource” as any semi permanent (persists from session to session) numerical quantity that players can increase through specific actions and spend to increase their capabilities or accomplish cool stuff. By this definition, my implementation of a Karma pool is a character resource. My destiny mechanic is not a “resource” because it is rerolled at the beginning of each session. Typical implementations of “experience points” (a.k.a. “character points” in the West End Games Star Wars RPG, a.k.a. “option points” in the Fuzion RPG system, I believe that there is at least one system that calls it “karma” but I can’t remember the name of that system at the moment) are also character resources. Force points in the West End Games and all Wizards of the Coast versions of the Star Wars RPG are character resources. “Obligation” in the Fantasy Flight Games Edge of the Empire Star Wars RPG is a resource in reverse (you increase rather than decrease your obligation when you tap into it). Money/wealth can be (but does not have to be) implemented as a character resource. Gear is technically not a character “resource,” but in many systems it can be sold for money, which is. I’ll get to wealth/money systems at the end of this article; for now I’m just going to talk about “experience points” or XP.
In my 3D RPG, I followed the example set by the West End Games Star Wars RPG, and called them “character points” rather than “experience points” to indicate that they can be spent to do thing besides just improving attributes, skills, and similar abilities. For example, character points can be spent to provide a boost to dice rolls using the “themes” mechanic that I’ll discuss in Part 5 of this series. Using the definition above, character points and Karma are the only “character resources” in my system. This simplifies book keeping and character progression. Among other things character points can be used to buy weapons, armor, ammunition, and also to power spells.
Q: What kinds of character rewards do you want in your game?
My definition of a “character reward” is any benefit that PCs can earn for partaking in an adventure. Here are some examples. The most obvious character reward in RPGs is “experience points” (by any name). Money and gear are other character rewards. In the West End Games Star Wars RPG and Wizards of the Coast Revised Core Rules Star Wars RPG, Force Points are also rewards, as are action points in D&D 4e (although D&D 4e’s action points are very temporary “use it or lose it” rewards). Those are “game mechanical” rewards, but there are also “narrative” or “story” rewards, and narrative progress is generally what keeps players coming back to the gaming table.
The Star Wars Saga Edition RPG has a “destiny” mechanic. Its most pronounced feature is “destiny points,” but in Saga destiny also has a narrative aspect. Specifically each PC has a “destiny” (which could be a secret destiny not known by the player) and making progress towards that destiny provides short term numerical bonuses to the whole party.
I’d like my 3D RPG system to have a mechanic that flips that idea on its head, so that the reward is narrative progress towards the player’s personally chosen story goal. A GM with good story telling skills can do that for the players in his or her particular campaign, but I’m trying to develop a general purpose structured narrative system to help novice and expert GMs alike.
I have some campaign planning advice to this effect in the Game Mastering chapter, but it’s not an actual “game mechanic,” at least not yet. The “proto ideas” (I can’t even call them full fledged ideas yet) that I’m kicking around in my head involve hybridizing the narrative aspects of the destiny mechanics of Star Wars Saga Edition and Edge of the Empire with “Obligation in reverse” from Edge of the Empire and tacking that onto my “themes” system (which is very similar to the “aspects” system in FATE). If you’ve got ideas about how to do this, I’d love to hear them (you can send a PM to EliasWindrider on the d20radio forums).
But for now let’s turn our attention to “experience points” or XP. In d20 systems, PCs earn XP for killing things and also role-playing but the latter part tends to be a small add on. This rewards model encourages PCs to start fights and kill things rather than spend time role-playing and advancing the narrative. That is NOT the play style I want my rule-set to encourage. The Star Wars Saga Edition RPG revised the “get XP for killing stuff” rewards model so that avoiding or circumventing combat encounters granted the same XP as getting into the fight. This helped a little but didn’t solve the underlying problem.
In my 3D RPG, I call XP “character points”’ and for each encounter (either social or combat), each player receives 3 character points; plus 1 or 2 points for making the encounter fun for everyone or coming up with a really cool idea; plus 1 or 2 points for good role-playing; plus their share of the “service fee.” So what exactly is the “service fee?” Use of ammunition, spells, some superpowers, etc. is paid-for-with/powered-by character points. The “service fee” is the sum of all the character points spent by NPCs during an encounter. The share of it that each player receives is this total divided by the number or PCs and rounded up. The purpose of the service fee is to ensure that the PCs can afford to unleash an amount of devastation on the NPCs equal to that which the NPCs unleash on the PCs.
Q: What method of character progression do you want in your game?
Lord_Z gave the best presentation of the options for character progression that I’ve seen anywhere. The original post is at http://forums.nexusnine.net/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST&f=46&t=1&st=80#entry83 but I’ve copied the relevant section below
I see four possible routes: Leveling, Targetted [sic] Advancement, Narrative Advancement, and Multi-Classing. I can think of at least one game which uses a combination.
Leveling is the traditional method. Upon reaching certain thresholds (usually an XP amount but perhaps a story-based event), many of the character’s stats increase at the same time. Each stat tends to progress incrementally, but all all [sic] increase together. New capabilities are learned at the same time. Examples included every edition of D&D, HackMaster, and all Palladium games (unless your character is a fairy who doesn’t receive anything except W.P. bonuses when leveling).
Targetted [sic] advancement gives the player more control to advance certain stats or gain new abilities of choice. This is the way it is done in the Storyteller, D6, and Project Chupa systems. I think that the old Chaosium rules for Call of Cthulhu did something similar in which skills increased each time they were used. Targetted [sic] Advancement tends to lend itself to mini-maxing styles of play, but I think players tend to prefer the control if given the choice.
The third option involves no changes in the character’s stats. This is probably the best way to run a Dragonball game. It simply changes what those stats represent. Last week, a hero’s punch of ten damage could flatten a car. This week, those same ten points of damage could shatter a building. Next week, the character’s punch for ten damage will shatter a mountain. Your character’s nemesis still loses only ten hit points because he has been advancing in power proportionally.
The fourth option is a new concept to me. Advancement through gaining new classes and all the bonuses/new abilities which come with them get stacked on top of what the charactered [sic] already possesses. The guys at Accidental Survivors introuced [sic] me to the concept recently (within the last two years). Say your character starts off as a country boy in Missouri during the mid-nineteenth century. He starts with the Farmer Class. He gets conscripted into the American Civil War, so becomes an Infantry Soldier. He advances in rank to become an Infantry Sargeant. [sic] He desserts and becomes an Outlaw. He graduates to greater crimes as a Cattle Rustler or maybe a Bank Robber. He eventually redeems himself and returns to his hometown as a Pale Rider.
The West End Games Star Wars RPG is an example of a “D6” system, which as mentioned by Lord_Z uses targeted advancement. I believe FATE qualifies as targeted advancement, but it doesn’t use a traditional experience point system. The Fuzion system, the Fantasy Flight Games Edge of the Empire Star Wars RPG, and my 3D RPG use all use targeted advancement.
In the West End Games Star Wars RPG, character progression follows identical rules to character creation (although you can also use some prefab character templates to shortcut the character creation process).
In the Fuzion system, initial character creation and character progression follow different rules. For example to start with 4 ranks in a skill costs 4 “option points,” whereas improving a skill costs one point for every rank in the skill. For example, improving from zero ranks to 1 rank costs 1 option point; improving from 1 rank to 2 ranks costs 2 more points (or 3 total if improved from zero); improving from 2 ranks to 3 ranks costs 3 more points (or 6 total if improved from zero); the cost of improving from rank zero to rank “r” is (r x (r+1))/2. Fuzion allows you to trade in option points for money at a rate of 1 option point for 100 units of money that can be used to buy things. Fuzion also allows characters to pay for “complex items” in option points directly. The Generic Fuzion Rules (revision 5.02) say
While Option Points can be translated into money with which to buy equipment, complex things (like vehicles) can also be rated in points independent of their monetary value. After all, a tractor might cost $50,000.00, but how useful would it be to your character? It’s not worth 500 OP, that’s for sure!
In the Fantasy Flight Games Edge of the Empire Star Wars RPG, character creation and advancement also use slightly different rules. One example is that at the time of character creation, abilities/attributes can be increased by spending experience points, later they can only be increased by taking specific talents in the talent trees (which means you have to pay for a whole lot of other talents in order to reach the ability increasing talents and the total number of ability increasing talents you can buy is limited).
In FATE, character progression happens whenever you reach a “minor milestone,” a “significant milestone,” or a “major milestone.” Minor milestones let you SWAP some capabilities for others. Significant and major milestones let you ADD new capabilities. Reaching a “major milestone” could possibly be considered “leveling” except there aren’t actually any “levels.”
In my 3D RPG, character progression is similar to a cross between that in Fuzion and the West End Games Star Wars RPG. Character progression follows identical rules to character creation. The cost of improving a skill is similar to that in Fuzion; although in 3D skills are represented by dice not ranks. Any gear that provides dice that can be used in a check is considered “character advancement” and costs character points; it can NOT be paid for with money. Also money is NOT implemented as a resource in my system.
Q: What kind of money/wealth system do you want in your game?
In most RPGs money/wealth is implemented as a resource. How much money your character gets is generally completely at the discretion of your GM. If you have a stingy GM, he/she can prevent you from gaining enough money credits to buy a blaster for 10 or more session (I’m talking about a GM I played under, I mentioned him earlier) and or prevent you from acquiring one from a dead opponent by having it seized as evidence by the cops. If you have a generous GM you could buy a planet. Neither of those extremes is a good thing. A resource implementation of money also encourages bad habits in players. Exhibit A: looting their dead opponents gear so they can sell it at half value later; this isn’t very heroic. Exhibit B: maxing out the gambling skill and heading to a casino at every opportunity just to make money; the problem with this is that it wastes time that could be spent advancing the narrative. And tracking small purchases under a resource money system wastes precious game time.
One alternative is the Fuzion “option point” approach, where you pay for “big items” with what would be called “experience points” in other systems. I think this is a really good idea, but what do you do for “small items” and how small is “small?” In Fuzion “big” is pretty big (we’re talking vehicles and bigger) and stuff below that like hand guns and other gear is “small.” This doesn’t discourage players from looting to sell at half value or gambling; still wastes time tracking small purchases; and doesn’t guard against GM abuses or entirely eliminate the imbalance inherent in a resource based money system.
Another alternative is an abstract skill based system. The basic idea is that you roll a skill check to buy items. D20 modern’s wealth system http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20modern/article/20020801b seems to be fairly realistic and protects against GM abuses, but is more complicated that I’d like and is inherently level based so it won’t work in my 3D RPG. The storytelling system (new World of Darkness) has a simpler system of dots (think skill ranks) in the “resource” merit/skill. If something costs fewer dots than you have in resources, then you can buy it out of your disposable income, but the Storyteller (GM) can put reasonable limits on how often you can buy items. This wouldn’t work in my system because it’s dice based not skill point based.
My 3D RPG uses a hybrid approach to purchasing things. It’s sort of a cross between Fuzion’s option point’s method and d20 modern’s skill system. How big or small something is doesn’t determine how you pay for it. If something provides dice that can be used in a check, then it’s considered character advancement and costs character points. This eliminates most if not all potential ways a GM or player could abuse money. You can NOT gain character points by selling gear, but you could get favorable circumstances on a wealth check. I’ll talk about favorable circumstances in Part 5 of this series.
If something doesn’t provide dice (for example food, clothing, jewelry, a smart phone, plane ticket, vacation, apartment, mansion, or skyscraper) you can pay for it using the wealth skill. You make a wealth check, if your check result is as high as the difficulty you can buy it, otherwise not. This is a lot simpler than the d20 modern system because there is no temporary increasing or decreasing of a wealth score, but you could get favorable or unfavorable (e.g. being a wanted fugitive whose face is plastered on TV) circumstances on the check. The wealth skill can also be included in most skill checks to represent throwing money at a problem. For example, renting time in a fully equipped auto shop would let you use wealth when attempting to repair your car. In a no limit poker game you could use the wealth skill in a gambling check to force your opponent to go all in or fold. You could use the wealth skill in combination with the charm skill and charisma skill to attempt to bribe someone. But that’s getting a little ahead of ourselves. In Part 3, I’ll talk about “attempt resolution” mechanics in general before focusing on the method I came up with for my 3D RPG (here’s a hint, it involves 3Dice).