Craft Based Roleplay - the Missing Element

     While some might think its a bad idea to reveal your ideas, lest someone steal them for themselves, I don't think that either my idea is new, nor unique, just that I'll be adding it in a way that hasn't really been done in roleplay games. Crafting for adventurers...

Crafting for your Roleplay Group

     One thing that irked me in many systems for years was the inability to really make a half decent magical weapon. At least with a semi-realistic sense of the idea.

     My first encounter with the crafting rules was from Dragon Warriors, Book 2: Simplistic at best, once a Mystic reaches 4th rank, they can begin to craft +1 items, 6th for +2 and 9th for +3. The mystic must go off to a place to remain in solitude, and fast in order to 'attune' themselves to the mystical powers and then begin the 'creation' of an item. There is no talk of 'costs' other than time, 25 days to make a +1 arrow, 100 days for +1 weapon or armour, up to 1500 days for a +3 weapon..

     Yes its simplistic and flawed, A party could leave their 9th ranked Mystic off in some wilderness 'creating' the Warrior a +3 set of Studded Leather armour, and the group returns 1500 days later, now all 15th ranked characters, having acquired several other +2 and +3 sets of armour that are as good if not better from quests and such.. sorta defeated the purpose of creating magical items in the first place.

     Sure a GM could attempt to balance the system, but what ever you do, you'd probably be spending hundreds of hours coming up with some kind of specialized algorithm, that'd break either game balance or usability.. 25 days for a +1 arrow? just to be shot and lost in the very next combat? It only gives +1 to attack, ABR and Damage, its not all that good.

     Dungeons and Dragons does it just as bad, there are countless blogs talking about it just seems to be a kind of 'cash sink' for the GM to ensure the players have a reason to go out looking for more quests, rather than retiring.. even though 12+ level characters are pretty much expected to retire (according to the older forms of the rules, it can be argued) and are only brought out for epic world ending events.

    Rolemaster, Tunnels and Trolls, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, they have their own rules & houserules, blogs about it, but at the end of the day its pretty much the same.. Heroes acquire treasure, heroes get rich, heroes have little need to quest for the mundane magical items such as +1 items, but they still have a basci need for them, heroes sink cash into NPCs that make the items, or they sink less cash but more time OR experience points (another sink system to keep mages from getting TOO powerful) into making magical items with broader choices.

     Seems like not many people really got into the whole crafting side of things... 

Could be just your experience

Yes, I understand, I haven't played every single game with every single GM, and there are likely some half-decent games that are all about creating interesting items. Yet if you read up on this, by the very creators of D&D it seems that I'm on par:

     "The statement "I want to make a magic item" has the power to freeze a DM's blood. Players, too, can find the item creation process intimidating. Sometimes these fears are justified, especially when someone invents an entirely new item and then wants to sit down and make it - Skip Williams"

    I have crafted some adventures where players are trying to acquire the material components of weird and wonderous items, while I agree that they should have some kind of 'cost' to acquire, I am more of the opinion that it should be a cost of risk vs reward rather than a physical cost.

     I would rather stick to the idea that making a sword, be it magical, mystical or mundane, should approximately be of the same time of a real sword, 2-3 days for the weapon & 2+ weeks for the flair, but its more about "getting it right" because maybe forging a sword and getting it wrong just means melting down the blade and starting again, but if your using elementium steel, then it likely involves a few enchanted tools, some runes of protection against it (so it doesn't freeze or burn you while forging) and you'd only want to deal with it once, rather than risking deadly burns or life altering frostbite twice.

     So instead the "cost" to acquire goods, is for the group to acquire the magical forge, the mystical hammer, the tongs of fire, the cooling Pools of the frostbanes and several kilos of Elementium, Elysiuum Wood, Gems of Brightfire and Rubies of Blood. Once acquired, the Blacksmith/Mage/Mystic of the group gets to work, while the heroes rest their wounds and 3-6 weeks later, the Smith presents the Leader/Warrior of the group with "FleshForger the Magnificent" with all the bonuses (and possible flaws) of the new weapon.

Yeah, we all do that.. so whats your point?    

     Recently, (well, ok, 3 years ago now) We were tasked at Uni to make a game, and my group agreed to try making a "potion making game", We only had 13 days in total to make it (well its over 13 weeks, we had 1 day a week assigned to the task, because of other subjects, exams, studies etc) so in the end we made a game where you chose 3 ingredients and dependent on how you mixed it, it would come up with 1 of 9 possible potions/poisons.

     Now, the key underlying aspect of the game, was to experiment


---------------------------------- APOLOGIES TO READERS------------------------
Due to Google downgrading their system, this post was lost, I managed to find this much via some fancy caching, but from this point forward, I am mostly trying to remember what I wrote, appologies if it seems out of sync. Originally Published 08/04/2017
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The Game

The Experimentation of how each 'part' worked, was the process of the game. In the 'morning' You acquired the 3 ingredients from the forest, randomly, mostly it gave you a 1:5 chance, twice, either gaining the whole plant, the roots, the leaves or the flower, or nothing( 2 chances). You'd return to your workshop by the end of the day, if you had purchased food from town you ate it, else you could eat the leaves or boil the roots as a substitute, no ill effects, just the loss of your days work looking for it.
Lastly, you could try to 'experiment' on your potions. Each of the three ingredients could be fried, boiled or crushed (for oils), no other information was given.
Oh and also you could go to town, in town you could buy food for 1 copper coin each meal, and meals could last 4 days (so you could buy 4 max) but while in town, you heard rumours.. someone was sick, someone had a toothache, someone wanted to poison her evil husband.
The only thing we had in the game was that all three paid money (3 copper), the 'bad' job would pay even for failed poisons, but a copper if you failed and 3 if you succeeded.
So each night, you'd make up some potions/poisons, and when you had a few, you could go to town, and try them out. The 'experiment' was on the evil husband, if he died, you knew it was a legit poison, if he didn't it sometimes made him happy, or angry or no effect.
This was the litmus test. Angry.. probably ill effects, happy, likely good effects, dead, most definitely poison.
Now at the heart of this, was percentile effects, Boil the root and you got soup, you knew this from your own experience, eat the leaves, its not killing you either, So boil the leaves? fry the leaves? crush the leaves? Each has an effect: From memory, Boiling, drew out the potent qualities, but not the oil effects, Frying would destroy the potent qualities, but keep the oil effects, and crushing, gave you a 50/50 effect of both, while eating it raw, would give you half of the potent effect, but all of the oil, So it became a maths puzzle..
Roots had 25% poisonous Oil, but 100% Nutitional Potent,
Leaves had 0% poisonous Oil and 25% healing Potent.
The Flower had 75% numbing Oil, and 10% Poison.

If you boiled the Roots and Leaves and fried the Flower, and threw away the Roots and boiled it again, you'd get a healing potion,
If you crushed the flower, added some raw, boiled the leaves and then threw out the leaves, you got a tooth numbing agent, so they could pull the tooth
and if you Boiled the flower several times, and fried the roots several times, then crushed the Boiled flowers into the roots, you got a deadly poison.   
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The Key to it was trying out different combinations, on yourself, and the evil husband to figure out what did what, and how it came together.

In Roleplay

Firstly, to get this to work in roleplay, you need to have the ability of your group to get stuff made. Like stated before, getting the 'ingredients' is part one of the game, Having your players procure a Firebird feather, a Core of Sphagnum and a Dedicated Crystal, is the adventure that they get to go on.

But having the Unique Powerful item, is only interesting if it is Unique AND Powerful.

To Create this, you have to have more control over the flow of goods and services.

If your players like the idea of crafting their own gear, upgrading it, improving it, then make sure your setting works, Making standard items less common, with technological advances, just recently discovered.

Cavemen/Minecraft: The Most interesting 'inventions' game would be starting from scratch, players probably already know about sharpening stones & attaching them to sticks with vines, but how about baking clay to make moulds to heating fire hot enough to melt ores to even make metals.. Playing the game in a minecraft like environment might even be your players thing.

Shift of Ages: As the Bronze Age was in decline and the Iron Age beginning, we see a whole area of roleplay barely played. Have your entire group in the fall of rome, as the Gauls have just discovered Iron and Steel swords are a brand new thing. The Aquisition of Iron Ore becomes an adventure of its own. Or if your more inclined, Steampunk, as all manner of steam powered things get invented, and usually ones that would never work, steam powered mobile phone anyone?

Post apoc: My favourite (and one I'm building a new campaign for) When everything has gone to hell, and your players can't even get a decent weapon, unless the bring back some scrap metal from outside the safe zone.. This one ties in nicely with fantasy: The players have steel sword, but how to get EarthElementium? or Plogistonium. Bring back a chunk of Ever-cold Metal and have your blacksmith forge up one of those as a Cleaver! or Chukrum!

So, now that you've got the setting, Have an NPC in town, controlled by your rules lawyer/ numbers cruncher, 'experiment' with the numbers, What does Plgistonium do? well its fire based Elementium, All Elementiums are harder than normal steel by 2 magnitudes, Plus they do Elemental based damage, they should cut through armour, like a knife through butter. Cool that's your end point, but now, you have to decide how long are they prepared to wait?

For simplicity, since we have 4 values to go with, 2x harder, knife through butter & fire damage, then we need our blacksmith to experiment with at least 4 variables, so we'll need to get him at least 4 sets of the Ore. Then you make skill checks for the Blacksmith, if he passes, he's made progress on 1 of those 4 areas, Or maybe you can't wait that long.. how about mixing it with normal steel, and halving the final properties.. halving the experimentation time.

See this is where I got bogged down in other systems, Because weapons don't typically have hardness values or sharpness values, or strength abilities, and weapons don't cut through armour, the player dodges & the armour deflects & the person cops some of the damage, but not as real damage, but as exhaustion & its all rolled into one roll or one saving throw.. it takes away the players, and the GMs ability to make cool stuff, unless you know the whole formula for THAC0, or such.

This is why I made my system, Because Elementium can easily have +2 damage, without needing to increase the Initiative costs, it can have a 'ignores 2 points of enemies metal armour' for the ABR and it can have 'flaming weapon if exposed to air' and 'is 80.c', so players know the blade is hot, it burns, flamable objects will ignite, water will slowly boil (or at least start to get hot) and each of these areas can be 'learnt' by the blacksmith as skills:
Active Skill: Manufacture - Elementium - Fire - +1 Damage, no Inititaive cost. 
Once learnt, then he can start to take on the next skill.

This all works for the HUB system of my game, where players have an NPC friend, back in town, that they get to level up and choose his skills between adventures, so that you have a plausible way for players to be getting much better weapons, without needing handwavium or bullsh*t Ecomonic systems. 

     

FATAL Critical Failures!

For a blog I'm doing research for (will edit link in here after I post it) I was researching other games systems, ones that did things poorly or horribly, and what they did that I should avoid for my own. During the process, I encountered some interesting (and shocking.. NSFW.. I mean for the average non roleplayer its Extremely NSFW in which writing I found my self cringing and re-writing this blog) roleplay systems, amongst the complaints from standard systems, Often people would cy...

At Least its not F.A.T.A.L!

Oh, and Gang Rape was the
plot for character
team building / formation.

For those not in the know.. FATAL is a system, created by Byron Hall, who probably didn't do a lot of market research into making RPGs, but did a lot of research into medieval environments, much of which seems to be D&D, medieval movies from the 80s, maybe some shlock horror, the Rutger Huer Movie "Flesh & Blood", typical teenage basement dwelling humour.

Whats not surprising is the amount of flak he got for daring to publish his ideas (well, a PDF at any rate). As it stand FATAL is listed as the worst, for all time so far, worst RPG system ever..

So of course I had to download it.

I downloaded the first version : Fantasy Adventure To Adult Lechery

The title gives away main reason why people hate it.

This the 2nd version cover..
The More safe for work version

Its a Great big overly detailed, and I mean comparative to Rolemaster or GURPS overly detailed, list of so many things a Gamesmaster should consider (and then discard what doesn't match their system) when designing their own system, Its just that FATAL included ALL of them.. 900 pages of rules and rules and rules..

Now, there are some glaring problems with it.. Layout, Design, 900 pages, tables of tables.. It could be salvageable, if it had some kind of underlying something to it worth salvaging. The book goes into great detail about diseases, phobias, psychological traits, aspects of dealing with life as a medieval peasant. Occupations, Skills and Equipment.. all before telling me how to play the Friggin game.

And Oh, My Gawd is it overdone.. 4 lines to explain what water is, another 4 for milk!.. If players need a Thesaurus of common terms, maybe you have the wrong kind of players..

So I'm not going to go any further, (as much fun as it could be) into picking apart a bad system, Discussing how, splitting it into Standard rules, Gamesmasters rules and the Adult material could have helped, nor how the Structure or format needed to be more player friendly..no, others have done before me. I'll focus instead on what a lot of people have focused on.. poorly.. the Adult Lechery.

If you read the reviews and counter reviews of the author, you'll come across how the bulk of people focus on the fact that your character can have an [here it is... no.1 reason for its ranking ] anal circumference, because, if and when you get raped, you need to know how much pain you're going to be in.

In comparison to the size of this blog.. that one line represents the percentage of filth in the book. But for 900+ pages, thats still 20 odd pages of filth.. and another 100 pages of dubious material.. And for typical human reasons, its the only thing anyone will ever remember of it.

So Why Write about this filth?

Normally I might read up on hundreds of pages of articles, double check my references, make sure what I'm writing about has plausible credibility to it.. I do the same for my own system. I might never point out some things I read, because its not what I like to share with others..

Yet like a car accident, We imagine how it might have been us.. and I looked back at my earlier works and wondered... would I have been so unlucky if I published in 1998?

Total 100% accurate of how players
Act in game, but real life?

Then, while travelling by train across south Russia these last few days, I had some pdfs in my tablet I could read, and one of them was Critical Failures. .. About a DM who has the power to send his a group of players, who are behaving like the worst players you could get, to the fantasy world they're playing in, when their behavior gets them into trouble, time and time again...

I didn't feel like I was reading something that someone had made up, I know people that behave that way.. I don't roleplay with them, and probably never would, but I remember being 12 and sorta maybe acting that way. So I could identify easily with who they were

The writing of Critical Failures is poor, language badly chosen, some serious flaws in the style, but heck, its better than mine half the time, and at least the guy wrote it and made it available for download.

But the funniest part for me, I didn't feel like they were playing D&D, even though that's the parody the author went for. No, I felt that they were playing FATAL.. and Byron Hall was the DM, and the RPG Net were the players... and then I took a look back at the RPG environment of the 80s and 90s and felt sorry for the Author of FATAL.. because it looks like that's what he's gone and done.. Made the RPG for the audience that has since, grown up, while the Author had not.

In the 80s all manner of things, with 20/20 hindsight, seems racist, sexist, misogynist immature and just plain wrong. RPGs were not immune, depending on the system & Gamesmaster, Characters would typically devolve into murder hobos, ultra powerful bad guys, or all manner of worse. Half of today's memes are based on 80s RPG fail.

So FATALs Author seems to be a GM whose inclusiveness went over board.  instead of putting down his foot and saying.. "hey guys,too much.. this is never going to be popular on the market.." no, instead the author thought that all roleplayers were like his group.. raping and pillaging across his game world.. so he added more rules to match all the consequences..

I got out of the standard roleplay scene when this seemed to be happening around me. Players were joining the brand new Vampire games, where killing and raping innocents became part of the norm. The teenage angst of lack of control in the real world bleeds into the control they need to exert in the roleplay world, lashing out at anything that offends them, and with power, allows them to avoid or beat back any social problems that may arise.

Lessons to be learnt

It asks the question, Why do we roleplay? Is its the Escapism? to get away from this world that we lack the skills and control needed to be successful and the desire to be so? To go to a place (even if its in our minds) to be able to be skilled, powerful and in control?

Is this an immature desire? I've had maybe a few handfuls of 'adults' in my life try to tell me that roleplaying is a childish thing, and that I should grow up. Now that I'm 40, a dad, I've researched what games are, what play is, what is a roleplay game, and how roleplay has a very critical aspect of learning about it. Gamification is mired in roleplay, Schools actually teach us to role play scenarios out, in order to solve problems.

"Train A is headed from the West at 20km an hour, Train B from the East at 30km an hour, they start 100km apart, at what point do they crash?"

Albiet, your not playing a Train, but the puzzle is set in a way that allows the student to visualize the problem in real terms, which is one of the cores of what a roleplay game is.

The Concept of Games & Play has been coming up in my discoveries over the last few years, and I'm quite seriously considering my PhD in this field. How much of the desire to roleplay is the desire to escape our own mundane vs the playground of the mind to learn?

Conclusion

My Own system went through stages, Complex, Simplified, Improvements, Mess, Restructuring. If I had published at any stage prior, I'd expect to be ripped to shreds by the RPG community for attempting to publish anything less than a half decent set of rules.

The current 'popular' RPG seems to be rules lite, narrativity styled RPGs, possibly due to the influx of females to the gaming industry over the last 20 years, So attempting to bring a new system, more complex than most, is bound for failure, let alone adding sexuality (No, mum, not that kind of roleplay), obfuscated layout, and adult themes (plus, claiming its all historically accurate).

Yet I have a complex system, So I guess I have empathy for this guy.. he thought that his differentiation, that 'thing' which would make his game interesting, is the first person to publish a game which dealt with the smut & puerile humour that many games devolve into. To cater to those teenagers and their angst at a lack of sexual experience. Not realising, that is the worst kind of roleplay, and the community as a whole would rather pretend it never existed, than admit that yes, once, they too tried to 'get it on' with a barmaid, and the teenage GM asked to roll for penetration.

Post Script

Further topics on this to come:

* Will Roleplaying games of the future be boring, or will Roleplay become obsolete, if we get too politically correct?

* How to Use failed roleplay systems, and identifying failure within successful systems, to build a better system. (Building a better mousetrap?)

* What IS roleplay, and what IS a roleplay Game? Does a conversation about a vorpal sword working on a Jabberwickerbasket count?


p.p.s. I Always thought it would be fun to run a roleplay group of evil (i.e. bastard) characters, while several other roleplay groups of good guys were hunting them...

Simple Systems equals Simple Games?

Remember when Diablo Introduced Prefix & Suffix Magical Effects to us?, changing the ceoncept of a "+1 Magic Weapon" to 30 different kinds of +1? Giants sword of slaying? Spiders Hammer of Light? This is my TL:DR, The More complex your game system is, the more players can do with it, when they understand it, But understanding it should not be the pre-requisite to playing, just to GMing.

 Simple Systems equals Simple Games

I want to preface this, this is more like a warm up topic for the different styles of GMing, Designing and Playing, so I'd appreciate comments to hone the concept further for the next blog.

Remember HeroQuest? 4 stats. Attack Die, defend Die , Mind & Body. Now in my early days of gamesmastering, I could not fathom how to use those other than the 2 types of hero.. the Fighter or the Wizard. Sure the weapons listed range & damage, and there was a movement score in there somewhere because it was a board game.. but that was all.. Fighter or Wizard (The Elf was a fighter with range).

Now.. years later, I'm sure I could run entire adventures with just those Attributes, because I've matured & experiences alot of life.. does your character want to steal something? hmm, lets see, natural attack die (not weapon) vs defend die (exclude armour), pass his 'mind' score to see if the shopkeeper noticed.. why? because a strong minded, alert, wise, character would know to be watching, while a weak minded fool would be lazy & bored..
 
So its very possible to play any system, with a good imagination. yet it leaves you with problems:

What if you don't have a good imagination? I think we've all read about the 2nd level hero who was free-falling with a dragon and used the fall momentum to puncture the dragons skull, insta-killing him, so he levelled up to 7th giving him enough HP to survive the fall, or the 20th level Paladin who fell from a 100m cliff and not only survived, but brushed off the 100 points of damage and waded into battle. GMs who don't have the confidence to say whether its right or wrong, because it might spoil the 'flow' of a game, or lack of knowledge to make a good call on the situation.. 

What if your understanding of reality isn't as good as your players, and their 'proof' spoils your plot and ruins the game session? This one was closer to home for me for many years, I wasn't well read on biology or physics or maths as a child, trying to GM my group resulted in many of my 'traps' failing, or me having to use (cringe) "because its magic!". This is most likely the whole reason DungeonWorld is so in depth, based so much on reality first, before magic has its effects, and why it has so many Attributes & Statistics.  

Hero Quest + house Rules.. 

What about duplicatable? Try to reproduce it? So a different GM might come up with a different approach for dealing with the Shop theft, maybe a house rule would be added for a 'stealth' score. This doesn't matter if you only play your game at your house, and recognise that different GMs will produce different results.

But, Ignoring Rules Lawyers, Most people want coherency and duplicatable results. If I play at your house with the 'pass the natural attack' rule, I'll want to put all level up bonuses into my natural attack.. but at someone elses' house, I'd need to use their 'stealth' score. not only are my characters able to port over from game to game, but I have to learn a whole different set of thinking to play.. the same game. 

I've had it myself, I'm playing at a friends house, and they allow some rule that flanking allows the attack of opportunity, so now I can make more than a few attacks in the same round.. with the right conditions, I could make 16 attacks against 4 opponents, in the same round.. impossibrew!

Knowing the rules match the game, you can 'join' any game, with a fair understanding of what you have as choices, to what to do, what can you do, what is impossible and what the GM will allow

If every house has a completely different set of rules, you'd soon discover you can only play with one set of friends.. and Convention gaming? right out!

"right everyone joining table #17, you need to include rules addendum 12, 13, 18, 21, half of 27b but nothing from 5th edition, we'll run an errata session in an hour, and see you back here in 3 hours to play!"

McDonalds Burgers are created with some pretty complex set of rules, every single burger has to follow the same rules, country to country, to ensure that the consumer gets the exact same burger in any and every store. yet the customer, has no clue about those rules, its just the same burger.

So For me, Complex might be Complex for the GM, but simple for the player. 

A Complex way to represent a set of bonuses a Skill could have...But Simple in its final result

I think the Gamer Industry goes through a pendulum swing, too complex, not complex enough.. D&D has hit the extremes a bit from time to time, taking note from the market, Rolemaster, Tunnels and Trolls, Talisman, there are many variants. Right now the market seems to be in "simplification" mode. Numinera, Fate, Apocolypse World, for a Mature market, with decent, imaginative GMs, who can 'fudge' the system to get what they want, in a way that players respect and trust.. it works.. no denying it.

Yet I worry about the GMs without the back support, brand new to the world of roleplay, making decisions which put off their players, or get put off by the system for its lack of ability. Because at the end of the day, If I can only be a Fighter or a Wizard, I'm going to leave the system soon enough, because I don't know any better.

But.. as my Next Blog is more about.. How many variants are there truly? is it fair to say that no system can be a catch-all system? How many kinds of systems should their be? Real vs Unreal, Simple vs Complex? are there any more parameters? Would it be easier for a DM/GM to begin his session invites with "Hey guys, running a Sandbox Multi-Plot Fantasy of D&D, who wants in?" or would it be better if the games defined themselves as "Sandbox Multi-Plot Fantasy" so the market knows what they're getting into before buying the game?

to XP or not to XP, are new DMs so Lazy?

A point raised recently suggested that Roleplay games should not have Experience Points, and my response was, If a GM can't be assed to count up what happened that session and award XP, he's Lazy and if Players feel that they need to grind, kill or overly play-act to get levels, then something is wrong with the Game/DM

To XP or Not to XP, are new DMs so Bad/Lazy?

The Argument was, that by awarding XP to players, you create a bunch of problems that breaks the game flow. Some arguments against XP are

• Awarding XP is too much accounting and record keeping.
• XP systems force players to grind, or to 'clear each room' for the XP
• Adventures have to be 'XP balanced' to ensure a good play experience, which ruins the plot
• Organised Play / Society games have to have a fair system, XP breaks this
• It Motivates plays in a bad way, its bad for their psychology

And Some Arguments for Non XP systems are

• The GM can just skip XP requirements to ensure players are matched to each other
• It allows you to choose how to 'level your campaign'
• Players are motivated, not by murder, but by play

Now, Ok, maybe I'm a little OSD&D in my style, but after reading so many articles about how many people are so bad at actually playing and or DMing.. I'm not surprised that people want to trash the XP system.

What is XP?

The reality of Experience Points, is a mathematical representation of the cumulative knowledge and confidence of a player to perform actions to a certain degree of knowledge. a 10th level character is defined by his 10 levels of skills and abilities, based on his experience in using those skills and abilities, but also his confidence in doing so.

So, first up, the Arguments against XP are based on incorrect assumptions of XP in the first place. Awarding XP because the player played well, or from gold gained, or because the GM says its a good idea or is impressed by a cool Simpsons quote, is of course going to put a bad spin on what XP is, so the DM & players are going to be asking themselves.. why am I getting these? and causes motivational issues,

"Quick, Run for your lives, there is a 19th level hero coming, and he only needs 5 more XP!!!"

Against XP

Accounting

Lets Look at the Points above, Firstly, If you can't do the math, don't be a DM. Your players may not like doing numbers, but certainly OSDMs used to be good with math, in their head, why do you think role-master even exists.. because we could think numbers as fast as we spoke. 

Me? I have the players do a "talk around the fire" after every session, they remember all the events that happened in the adventure, I write them up on white board, or a sheet of paper, and jot the XP for each of those things next to it.. they aren't writing down numbers or making calculations, they are remembering what cool stuff they just did, reinforcing in their characters minds, how cool they are, how confident they are in their skills and how they'd feel about doing those things again in the future..

"So guys, we've just cleared the dungeon, we took out that team of skeletons, dowsed the mummy in oil and lit him up, evaded that rock fall trap
- and we didn't all die,
- Haha, yes, that's right, and we got through those zombie snakes and claimed the treasure from the inverted pyramid trap. yeah, I think we did pretty good.. did I miss anything?"

what an EXPERIENCE they just had!

Grinding & Clearing

If your players are OCD like me, they 'need' to clear each room, not for the XP or the Gold, no, for the feeling that its now "rightened". Heck I am used to taking all the bodies outside and burying them, or burning them in pyres, ensuring the dungeon is cleared..

I think this comes down to what kind of play is happening here, are any of your players good? or lawful? why would slaying all the creatures, just because [XP], even come into this? If the Neutral players are saying things like, Hey, I need to get more practice in, and fighting some monsters is gonna make me feel better as a fighter.. sure.. that makes sense, go ahead, but the DM/GMs role is sometimes to remind players how to stick to their players 'character'.

Possibly its about how XP is awarded. If your still awarding XP for kills, gold and GM brown-nosing then of course grinding will result, That's Bad XP, (see below). The Only problem I can see is more about the balance issue, in the next heading.
Me? If players figure out a way to 'bypass' a room, using clever tactics, if they manage to escape across a bridge and cut in in time, leaving 50 Orcs on the other side, if they cast sleep, and lock the door, on 3-4 guards.. they have "defeated" those creatures and get XP accordingly

"remember that time we trapped those 4 Basilisks in the mirrored room? they were trying to find the hidden door with their eyes closed, wow that was awesome, how cool are we that we defeated 4 Basilisks so cleverly" 

Balance Adventures & Balanced Heroes

This has been a hobgoblin for me, almost a bugbear when ever I hear DMs talking about 'scaling an adventure'. I don't for a second think that the real world scales any difficulty for me when I endevour to find my way across a new area of town, or go to a job interview or study for an exam, and I as sure as hell-fire won't do the same for my world, maybe because I have 8 GMs all running their games in a live environment, so 'scaling' would kill off all realism, but that's a whole different kettle of fish.

I get that most games are being run as 'a couple of friends, getting together to play a different kind of board game. Board games are designed to start everyone equally, and give them a fair chance at some competitive environment to see who is better, or have balanced skills to ensure each person gets a fair turn.

But this is roleplay, not supposed to be a board game. If one of your team hasn't yet got the skills to defeat the creature that's coming up, then the team work together to figure out a way to be a team, how to balance their skills to defeat the creature. The Subliminal point of the game is to figure out how to work better in groups, not force the game to do half your job.

Me? One thing I make clear for new players (either to RP or my system) is that group co-operation is tantamount to winning, information is worth as much as a magical weapon, and negative play will result in dead characters. If the group is not ready for Night on Bald Mountain, then maybe they should travel to The Forest of Doom, Or Hire some NPCs to join the party to boost up their total CR.

"Guys, Guys, come look, this old map points out that there are two Tarrasques in the first temple, and an Allips haunting the second, Maybe we need to hire a Cleric for this one?" 

Bad Motivation from Bad XP

This is mostly what the problem really is. If I play a game where my reward system is purely for killing, then the only thing I should be doing is killing. Most board games [descent] require you to kill the creatures so they don't kill you, so you claim the treasure to win the game. So anything other than attacking and killing the creature is going to end badly.

Roleplay should award XP for all varieties of 'defeating' the monster. In the Original D&D, Arneson pointed out that the XP system was supposed to be class dependent. You gained XP for killing monsters if you were a fighter, for a wizard, you needed to cast spells, for a Cleric most likely healing and rebuking. If your DM doesn't award you XP for talking down an Orc, and getting him to go home and see his mother, as a means to get to the next room, then quit that game and go find a GM, better yet a ProGM.

Me? Well my system already includes this style in the rules, You don't get wizard XP if you don't wizard, A Bard pacifist, doesn't get XP for attacking an Orc with a blade, if anything, he'd be so disgusted with the fact, he'd lose confidence in himself as a pacifist and would lose XP. I do award XP for gold gained, because its not so common a metal to be all over the place, and getting it gives players (a false) sense of confidence, Rogues get double XP for gold, because that's what a Rogue is about.

"Yes, Greedo. I was just going to see your boss. Tell Jabba I've got his money."

Against Non XP systems

Matching the Players to the Game

Well, as I read somewhere quoted below, Why bother with levels then? 

I've played games in D&D where we wrote out a new character sheet for each 'level', so that we could play any published adventure with our 'characters' the matched the level of the campaign, we effectively scratched the whole system of XP and levelling, and treated it all like a big TV series, with flash back sequences to 'previous adventures', I've played level less systems, which gave you bonuses to stats instead [WHFRP+house rules] which worked far better in some ways, but made it nigh on impossible for the GM to figure out how to balance his encounters (which lead to the feeling that it didn't matter, knowledge did)

Besides the points made above about group dynamics and working with what you've got, rather than forcing the game to become, just a game, The problem here is that, if you take away the scaling, and match the game to the players, then your creating the most pointless grind machine ever.

If I have 3 heroes at 2nd level, enter a dungeon with 3x 2nd level goblins, then a room with 2x 2nd level skeletons and the next with 6 x 1st level bats.

How is that any different from

I have 3 heroes at 5th level, enter a Tower with 3x 5th level bugbears, then a room with 2x 5th level Wights and the next with 6 x 2nd level Giant Rats.

Or

I have 3 heroes at 20th level, enter a dungeon with 3x 20th level Demons, then a room with 2x 20th level Liches and the next with 6 x 10th level Vampires.

Then its just a numbers game.

We defeat the first quest, and gain a level, then later we defeat the next quest and gain a level, etc etc etc.. have you been playing WOW too much?

How can you possibly balance anything anyway?

    Lets say I have a character in a game, and we've played for 3 campaigns, gained 3 levels, its a no XP system we've defeated just over 100 approx level equivalent monsters in various ways per campaign, but then our GM moved states, so we had to find a new group. but they live further away and only two of our group can come play at the new location.

    So we meet up, introduce ourselves and our characters, and join their existing game, they have 2 level 4 characters and 1 level 2 character (the previous guy died), so now we have 5 players, this new DM thinks that because there are more heroes he can throw more at us, the first campaign has over 300 level equivalent monsters, doubling our effective understanding of our skills and abilities.. and we gain 1 level!? This DM has his own set of 'rules' on how leveling up works.. 

In an XP based game, this wouldn't happen. creatures have set XP, quests have a fairly robust set of rules on how to set XP for various traps, encounters, figuring out stuff, so the 100 creatures + quest resolution = level would balance enough out, that the 300+quest would surely give the group 2-3 levels.

Home brew rules are all well and good, but when you change certain core rules, you break the ability to continue anything with anyone else.. all new groups would need all new heroes, which for many of you, I think is actually happening, and that's sad. [don't you love your heroes anymore?]

What about Player Differences?

Not everyone is equal, 'equalling play' causes as many de-motivators for players as overly punishing players. If I don't need to worry about full participation to get my level up, why should I pull my weight? Maybe I'll just play as the cleric and hang back for the first 10 levels, healing the party between adventures but not actually endangering my life, until I have enough of the cool things to do some real damage?

What about Absent players? If a player is unable to attend a few sessions, because they're lazy or indifferent, they won't worry about attendance, because they'll get a level every X sessions anyway.. maybe just turning up to the Xth session to just level up

What if I decide that, after the death of my character, I should begin again at 1st, and will watch and learn from my peers, under the guidance and tutelage of these great and mighty heroes, I will surely learn faster to be a great hero like them one day.. Under an XP system, Its pretty obvious that I'll catch up 75% of the groups level after 75% of the time, but other than a (probably poorly designed) house rule, how can a 'every 3 sessions gain a level' system even understand that kind of scenario.

Last Few Points

Absent Players and XP

If a Player is not at the table, but the character is, Its fair to say that the character is not feeling 'like himself' or 'he's out of sorts' and as a result, would not be concentrating on whats going on properly, so he's not 'experiencing' events as much as his friends are and would not/should not get full XP. some GMs might harshly give 0%, while others might give half, my research into the human mind suggests that distracted students learn only 20% of their lessons, so in turn, I give only 20% of events experience to characters, whose players are not in attendance.

Roleplay and XP

If a player is demonstrating some kind of 'experience' as a result of their role-playing, i.e. they point out that their character is obeying their thirst, and must drink from the suspicious fountain, because they have no water in their water-skin, might make sense that they would 'experience' what its like to give in to their needs in times of peril. On the other hand, play-acting their characters voice, movements or other things, might help the roleplay experience, the character has no relevant 'experience' happening.. besides the fun of doing so, players should be rewarded out of game by words of encouragement or other meta elements, giving XP in game from out of game events, is akin to Pay To Win style games, The meta event should not change the game.

References:

While searching for other arguments in this topic I found these threads to be (un)helpful.

http://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/20007/systems-giving-xp-based-on-roleplay-how-to-avoid-jealousy-party-balance-proble

http://www.geekspeaker.com/?p=537

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?260861-Roleplaying-XP

http://games-blog.pairodicegames.com/gaming-news/stunt-dice-role-playing-xp-rewards-and-how-not-to-be-a-jerk-while-game-mastering

http://geek-related.com/2014/02/02/the-time-for-experience-points-has-come-and-gone/

Pictures from:

http://cdn.meme.am/instances/500x/59120123.jpg

http://www.everyjoe.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/xpposter.jpg

https://primitivescrewheads.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/experience-points.jpg

http://gamingtonic.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/+rpg_think_of_the_experience_points_teddy_bear40672854.jpg

http://cdn.someecards.com/someecards/usercards/3-2-1-ding-you-survived-another-year-happy-level-up-day-to-reach-next-level-you-will-need-additional-365-experience-points-keep-up-the-good-work-f239e.png

http://cdn.meme.am/instances/500x/59120123.jpg

The Lists

In the endeavours of my system, my best friend Craig, had joined me in the idea of creating this awesome system. He introduced me to rolemaster, Wow, I thought my game was complex... I am curious how modern gamer kids view it, or if they even come across it..

But what we did back then was to grab all the systems we had access to and write out this big lists..

All the Skills, All the Spells, All The Traits, Flaws, Statistics, Modifier charts, Everything.. including all double-ups.. until we had this big BIG set of lists..

Early on, we check for things that were similar duplicates, but also, different duplicates.. wrote notes about how or why they were different.

Skills were broken into three groups.. easy medium and hard.

Spells were left in a big pile for much later.

While things changed, we always came back to these lists to check if we missed something.. sometimes it was a tweak of an idea, where we had the concept wrong from the start.. other times it needed to be scratched out.. too many skills based on the same thing, just because English language has two words for it, doesn't make it separate skills (but often it does)

Health, Bruises, Bleeding and Tracking

Ever forgot to rub out the arrow box when you shoot off arrows? or had arguments with your GM about provisions or potions that you had or had not drunk?

I'm sure its staple roleplay, there are many small aspects of the game that you might forget.. If its in your favour, you turn a blind eye, but against you, well I've seen entire tables rage against the DM about whether a potion was drunk or not..

So Imagine a system, where you tick off XP bonuses for each and every stat.. I tried tick boxes, rising numbered boxes.. mathematical equations, all sorts of things.. the biggest problem was tracking.. and worse still for health..

We had introduced a kind of non-lethal damage, called Body Ready.. not sure where I got the name now.. but you had a set of boxes.. and to nominate if the physical damage you just took was light, you ticked the box.. you could 'take a breather' in combat and get back d4+ con bonus BR.. if you didn't each tick cost you a -1 to all skills & stats (out of breath) and if it was medium, you crossed the tick, you needed a full round of breathing to stop that one.. but was still only a -1  and the final heavy, circle that crossed tick.. this one need a nights rest (or at least an hour per circle)

Health was another matter, When you got cut, you got health damage and bleed damage (per 5 pts of health = 1 bleed), you needed to stauch the wound to stop it.. else you'd lose that much bleed as health per round.

Then we also had a problem, If I smacked you over the head.. how could I knock you out? most systems had a rule about, if you're at 0 HP, you're unconcious... but as often as not, you were also bleeding to death too.. we had to lower death down to -15 to be able to counter that.. but what if you were poisoned, ok so now poisons had to have more damage to match the sword + bleed numbers.. ok so what about if you fall off a cliff? slam into the ground, maybe you break your legs.. do you pass out? walk away?

Health has always had a problem in Roleplay Games, its dumbed down to make it a game.. there we are again, referring to it as a game.. well I'm sorry, but by this stage this was no longer a game, this was a way of representing reality within a game system.. its called gamification..

Yes, some of my players riled against this attitude that I had (I've changed a bit since.. but I used to be very sheldon about it)

I was slowly developing something that was no longer a roleplay game, I was trying to understand how we represent ourselves as a set of statistics... why? because that has to be the basis to things.. a solid foundation, before making things playable.. and I think its become one of the reasons why alot of players actually like my game, because they can see themselves doing things, rather than a list of actions in a choice menu.

But I digress (I'll write more about this later) At this stage of development, we had Health, Body Ready, Knockout and Death.. you could get values of up to 100 Health as a moderate 7th level character.. but to get to 120, took an extraordinary ammount of bonuses, skills and game events.. 20th level characters might get 125... but We forgot healing..

The first iteration of the game, was WHFRP, health was out of 10, starting around 3... Dragon Warriors has something similar.. starting around 8 and sometimes getting to 25.. both systems had a fairly even idea that you'd wait a few days to get back 1 point, then 1 point per day after that.. seemed ok..

.. but after we added in bleeding, we needed to multiple everyones health by 5, (so that 1-3 points of bleeding per round, was less problematic), which meant all weapons x5, ok, so that made healing easier.. you started healing 1 point on day 1, and rose by 1 per day.. by 10 days, if you were still damaged, you healed by 10 that night..

Damage dice for weapons was now broken, poisons and spells broken.. everything was broken from this bleeding rule. So we scrapped it. I had to think of something new, something that worked.. infact the whole Body ready system was flawed, but for the longest time, I had no other solution..

But we did add all the Rolemaster Criticals in.. that made things fun. 

[DWDev]Statistics, Part 1

6 months of roleplay, moving out of home, meeting new friends, getting a job as a telemarketer, and gaming into the wee hours of the night.. seems like such a blur..

I really got down to business in the next 6 months, we had a regular group every Sunday, I was writing up professions.. gawd I can still remember the order: Knights Crusader, Knight, Hunter, Forest Assassin, Thief, Magician, Sorcerer, Priest, Templar, Thaumaturge and Commoner.. (ok, so maybe I missed a few)

To make things simpler, I didn't want to bog myself down with all the Warhammer professions.. It seemed that I re-wrote the character-sheets monthly, and with them some rules, which meant that I managed to have around 20 versions of Knights Crusader, before I gave up and decided to get something done about it..

You see we had the period of time when the players were sick of me adding or tweaking rules.. they just wanted to play.. so I'd stick to a set of rules, but at the same time, would be making the next set for the next campaign.. at the table, I'd often get confused between the two.. Should a Knights crusader actually start with a horse & barding? one player started as a KC and sold off the horse, to buy some nicer magical gear, forgoing the crusade, because that was 'who he was' but in reality, he abused the rules to get a better start..

This is the inherit problem with players, treating the game as a game.. they don't take it seriously. Many RPGs create their rules to balance out this problem, which creates their own problem.

Imagine a world in which the wizards never managed to develop spells above 4th level.. why would a player play as a mage.. maybe it'd be ok for the first few years.. and possibly there would be some way they could use their 5th slot to develop a new spell, or they'd be stuck just casting the 4th as a 5th with a +1.. most would probably multi-class.. I don't remember, would a rolemaster wizard be better off?

Imagine an Island, where the largest creature is a squirrel or flying fox or a shark.. The Druid can transform into any animal he knows.. sharks only ok if he's near the water.. but everything else? becomes useless...

Image roleplaying in 200BC Rome, No Iron, No Steel, No Longbow, No Crossbow, but the Druid can become an Owlbear, Wizards cast Lightning and Fireball, Clerics can bring back the dead.. but the warrior.. reduced to semi-magical versions of short swords of Bronze..

Sure, I'm not being realistic(!) but that's the point, No given class is supposed to be 'equal' to another.. you play it because it suits you, or your temperament, or you'd interested to go outside the box, If we played it like a board game, we'd pick a character and level suited to the adventure and go from there.. sheesh..

So there I was.. stuck in this quagmire of players who wanted to stay stuck.. and I just wanted to make things right, or better.. We broke up the gang.

Now, sure, some of them were roleplaying other games, and some weren't, some had gotten jobs and lives, no-one had Girlfriends so that wasn't it, so I can understand that the frustration of not knowing the rules had gotten too much.. people wanted stability.. and I was a leaky boat of a GM.. 

Simplicity, Complexity and Tracking NPCs

All games have to start somewhere, and I, even as a naive 19yr old knew that I would not be able to begin with nothing.

So, over the next few years, I played (and researched) in this order: Dragon Warriors, Dungeons & Dragons, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Rolemaster, Gurps (fantasy), Traveller, Vampire(VtM) and Shadowrun. I then borrowed and read the base rule set for several other games, including some niche games, such as Tank Girl & DragonballZ.

By 19, I was 4 game systems into this list. I came to Warhammer via HeroQuest & AdvHeroQuest, which we a very clever marketing system for Citadel.

So I had these basic ideas: The game system needs to be rules lite in the basic design, so players can quickly make choices. Attack vs Cast spell vs Heal vs Run away, but I roleplay needed more choices too, rather than 'roll charisma'

How many times has it happened: I try to seduce the girl, roll: 20! crit, she succumbs to your charms and you bed her that night.. if only it were that easy, you'd just go into a club, say 1 line to 20-30 girls, eventually you get a crit20 and you 'win' (or in the new systems, take 20) 


The game system needs to have more reality to it. 

Not in the sense of story, play or otherwise, but the underlying maths need to be mathematical, the structure of the rules need to make sense, so that any human being can make choices in the world, which are logical, predictable and would react the same way in real life & game play. This gives players a nice sense of 'grounding' to work from.

Not having that grounding has always caused ire in games, both from my own experience, and told to me at numerous conventions. 

I had a game where I was playing a Vampire, who could speed up to perform multiple actions. I kicked a cup at my enemy, expecting it to fly across the room at heightened speed (or shatter and the peices fly across the room) but as soon as it had left the tip of my foot, it slowed down to normal speed.. the roleplay was broken by the rules (yes I know GMs should, but often side with rule books until they get more experience) an argument ensured, and the entire nights RP was soured by the lack of trust I had with the world.

So I needed a system that would follow the laws of physics from the start, THEN we could bend the rules for magic etc.

Lastly, I wanted my game world to be both dynamic and static. I can not tell you how many times I felt that the GM was pandering the players, to the point of frustration. (I have also fallen into the GMtrap, players conciously or subconciously become stupid if you let them get away with it, it also spoils the game). Usually this was because the GM had picked a campaign that was too high for the players, or too low, and had to scale it. Sure, a well written campaign can be 'scaled' but as often as not, the scaling causes things to be too easy, lulling the players into false securities, or too hard, causing them TPK more often than not (Why do players decide to keep going, when they probably know they're going to die?)

Probably because I was running a club, where each week I might have a whole new set of players, repeatedly starting campaigns, never finishing the storyline. I began to structure the game in sessions: If you got out by the end of the session, you lived for another day. If you failed, rock falls TPK. Players would look at the clock, and begin thinking about how to get out (one exception. If ALL players turned up the next week, we'd do a 'to be continued' ending)
But this created a sequence of events, in which a group of adventurers would come into the first room of a dungeon, clean it out, loot the room, then realise they were too damaged to continue, and go back to town to regroup, resupply and think it over. The following week, a new group, some of the same players, some new, would return to the dungeon, the older players would explain to the new what happened, and what they intended on next. Sometimes new players would provide new skills and find hidden treasures, or work out a puzzle to help the older team get through without harm (yes, sometimes old players would quickly make up a character relevant to the quest,just for that session,  so they COULD figure out the puzzle).

" Sir Baldwin, Hector and the Bard Zafrodi realise that their quest has come to a premature end. The Puzzle on the door is far too archaic to understand, they return to the city of Malthue and seek out a wizard. Hector, having some duties with his lord, agrees to meet them in a weeks time, leaving Baldwin and Zaf to find a suitable candidate. Along comes Hwentil the Shaman & Mystic, who mysteriously knows the Archaic Language of Hui'k Lui'k and together they figure out the door puzzle, and dispatch the undead they lie in wait behind the locking mechanism"

This meant that the world lived on between adventures.. that between the sessions, people were getting on with their medieval lives, and that was when I began to track these NPC lives, their politics and the world at large.