Back in March, prompted by a discussion on Discord, I was perusing Jon Peterson’s Playing at the World to see if there was any discussion of rerolling HP on level up. Sadly, I was unable to locate anything about this topic, but reading several sections about XP did prompt another idea: what if the amount of XP a character could earn during an adventure excursion was inversely related to their encumbrance? That is, the less gear you carry, the more XP you can earn. There are several reasons that this might make more sense than is apparent at first glance.

The passage that prompted my line of thought follows:

The maximum encumbrance that a character can carry is 3,000 gold pieces worth—the choice of the gold piece as the base unit of weight measurement is certainly a wise one, given the expected course of gameplay. At any encumbrance above 1,500, characters must move at half their normal speed. This threshold is surprisingly easy for a Fighting-man to reach; an example in Men & Magic of a character with plate armor, a helmet, a shield, a flail, a dagger, a bow with a twenty-arrow quiver and a few miscellaneous sundries already wears 1,200 gold pieces worth of encumbrance, and thus can pick up only 300 more without incurring a penalty.

Peterson, 2012; §3.2.2.2 Endurance and Mitigation

The original game rules can be found in Men & Magic, page 15; see post image. Gold pieces are the currency of advancement if using some form of XP awarded for recovering treasure. Measuring and tracking encumbrance using such a high-resolution unit has up until now generally struck me as a particularly masochistic form of bookkeeping with few, if any, redeeming qualities. However, if encumbrance limits advancement, players can see the open “XP slots” in the unit of potential advancement. In essence, this approach puts a clear price on preparedness and, more to the point, provides an incentive for adventuring on various forms of hard mode. Conan in a loin cloth and carrying only a 50 GP-weight broadsword can earn a lot more experience than a tanked up fighter in plate dripping with armory and utility belts.

How would this work, exactly? According to Men & Magic, the maximum load at half normal movement is 3000 GP. This could be the excursion XP limit. A character who sets out with no gear could earn up to 3000 XP on the excursion while a character who sets out equipped with plate armor (weight: 750 GP) and battle-axe (weight: 100 GP) could earn up to 2150 XP (3000 – 750 – 100 = 2150). Note that throughout this post I am using the term excursion to denote adventuring time between downtime (what I call haven turns in my hazard system terminology). A single game session could involve multiple excursions (going back to town and setting out again). I can see a case for other potential limits as well, perhaps also keyed to the amount of XP required for next level. A 3000 XP per excursion limit would clearly break down at mid to high levels, so how to handle the upper range of levels requires some additional thought. Perhaps this would be a rule for “basic” level play (up to level 3 or up to level 5).

This approach could also help players pace the advance/retreat (risk/reward) cycle. One dynamic I have noticed over many years of play using treasure XP is that the ideal of matching adventurer excursion to game session (that is, ending each game session in a haven), is not realized as often as I might like. This is not the worst thing in the world, but ending in town does have some benefits. There is no need to remember exactly the circumstances of ending in the middle of action and it facilitates drop in play. The “XP potentiality” number, clearly reckoned, also would serve, I imagine, as a play goal, indicating clearly when it would make sense, at least in terms of XP reward, to retreat and bank XP.

What prevents players from loading all their gear onto retainers in town and venturing into the unknown wearing nothing but a loincloth with full XP potential, only to gear up on the road? Well, remember that retainers, though often controlled by players for practical gameplay reasons, are still NPCs at base when it comes to particularly weighty decision points, such as morale checks. Such an exploit seems like the kind of ridiculous Vancian situation that might test the loyalty of a long suffering retainer. Many other ways around the rule, such as taking gear from enemies, seems like exactly the kind of creative and varied solution that makes gameplay interesting.

My misgivings regarding heavy bookkeeping have not been completely erased, and some prosthetic or shorthand might still be required to make the above idea fluent in play, but writing down the game logic makes me think it might be worth giving a try.

I have been dipping into some Call of Cthulhu and Warhammer FRP texts recently, and this has gotten me thinking about skill-based (as opposed to class-based) systems. Back forever ago, I participated in a game called Blackwater Falls that started as D&D but was converted partway through to a fantasy White Wolf hack (which, at the time, seemed like the cutting edge of RPG design).

The basic idea of the old White Wolf system was that the chance of succeeding at a given action was derived from the combination of an inherent quality (an attribute, such as dexterity or appearance) and a learned quality (an ability, such as archery or medicine). Each of those stats were rated from 1 to 5, and contributed to a dice pool. So, shooting an arrow would be a dexterity + archery action. Assume a character had a dexterity of 2 and an archery of 3. In this case, 5d10 would be rolled, and the number of successes (dice results above some value, based on the situation) would determine the outcome. Too many dice and too much counting, but I still think the direct combination of inherent and learned qualities is an interesting and intuitively appealing approach. Some versions of D&D have something similar in the division between ability score modifiers and THAC0 or attack bonus increases, but the system is not generalized or particularly elegant.

The Blackwater Falls system used that basic paradigm, but combined it with the simplicity of roll-under ability checks. Inherent + learned was a number from 1 to 10, and then the roll-under check was done with a single d10. Quick and elegant; I still like it. I don’t remember exactly how we did advancement anymore, but I think it was close to unmodified White Wolf. Each kind of stat had an advancement cost (inherent stats cost more to advance than learned stats) and XP was spent directly on improvement. This is okay, but seems less impressive in retrospect.

To refine this system, consider combining the core of the above paradigm with a roll to advance system (this is inspired by BRP or Call of Cthulhu). Inherent and learned stats would each be rated from 0 to 50, thus resulting in a combined range of 0 to 100. Don’t worry about how starting inherent stats are determined for now; it could be by rolling, arrangement of an array, or something else. Also don’t worry about how skills are selected. Just assume that starting characters have their collection of inherent stats like strength and a small number of skills. The exact list of stats is also not important right now.

Here is how action resolution works. Let’s look at dexterity and archery again. Say our character has a 25 dexterity and a 21 archery. The archery check number is 46. You could use percentile roll under for this, but simplifying by rounding down and using a single d10 decreases the number of required operations during play. So the target number becomes 4. Roll 1d10, 4 or less is a success.

Now for advancement. At the end of any session, each player picks one inherent stat (such as dexterity) and one learned stat (such as archery) that they used during the session, and rolls for advancement. However, the roll in this case is above instead of below (so that it becomes progressively harder to improve stats as expertise is gained). Following the example, the target number is 47 or higher. Percentile dice are rolled twice, once for the inherent stat involved and once for the learned stat. Any success increments the stat by 1. Pre-calculating the threshold number (inherent + learned) for each learned stat would make the action resolution process extra streamlined, and would be low cost since the numbers change infrequently.

Increases to inherent stats are limited by starting point. Not everyone can be Einstein or Arnold just by experience or trying really hard (though everyone can improve and it is the rare person that gets within spitting distance of their true potential). To reflect this, I would say that inherent abilities can be increased up to 10 points beyond the starting score. Thus, a character that begins with 21 strength can increase it to 31 through play. This is also important to prevent acquired blandness, as all PCs converge towards being good at everything (a common downside of overly general systems). Learned stats are also limited by their associated inherent stat. So archery can never be higher than dexterity (or whatever). Since all action checks are a combination of inherent and learned, going from 36 all the way to 46 through advancement is still useful, despite the rounding down for the 1d10 check, because when combined with different learned stats the percentile part might still make a difference.

Since the action check is done with 1d10 and the advancement check is done with percentile dice, not all advances will lead to a direct effect on play. That’s okay; they still bring you closer to a real improvement, and since the advancement checks happen every session, I think that is okay. The percentile number ends up being somewhat like the Hackmaster idea of fractional ability scores, but much more elegant. I’m not sure how long it would take characters to top out using this system. Given a large set of skills (and the increasingly slow chance of advancement), I could see this being functionally unbounded. If not, some more thought would need to be given to other forms of advancement.

I see learned stats for this system being significantly different than most of the skill-based systems I have encountered, which tend to be concerned primarily with modelling all of the things that define a complete individual. 4 points in drive, 3 points in literary analysis, 3 points in dancing, etc. That’s not the model for learned stats here. Instead, they would represent only adventuring skills (as appropriate to the genre in question). So a fighter-type might have pole-arms 20 and crossbows 17. The level of specificity is still somewhat up in the air. A specific stat for derringers is probably overkill, but an all in one melee weapon skill is probably too general. The traditional thief abilities are at about the right level of granularity (pick locks, hide in shadows, etc). For magic-user types, an individual spell or ritual is a separate stat, and could be used at will assuming all the requirements are met (along with some danger of mishap or chance of corruption). Learned stats will require some more explicit guidelines and examples, but I think the basic intent is clear.

Since all actions are based on inherent + learned, there would no suggestion that, for example, only thieves could sneak. Everyone could roll dexterity (or whatever) +0, even if they don’t have any appropriate learned stats, such as hide in shadows or stealth. The same is true for any relatively mundane action, like climbing.

Rather than an make an advancement roll, a player may choose to acquire a new learned stat, assuming that they have performed some action that allows getting a new skill to make sense in the fiction. For example, rescuing a martial arts master might allow a character to learn some kind of combat skill. Finding a tome of forbidden lore might allow the learning of a spell. The way I am thinking about this now, getting a new learned stat should not require a roll; it happens with no chance of failure. A newly acquired learned stat would begin with 1d10 points. Another option would be to require the player to roll under twice the associated inherent stat to start off the learned stat, but I think that might needlessly slow down advancement (the fictional justification, along with giving up an advancement roll, seems like it would be cost enough).