[Ronin Storm]

Continuing some thoughts started in my "I just can't stand it!" thread, I wrote this concept document up in October 2003 as an attempt to address my problem with experience grind, in theory. It's not a new method, per-se, but it does spend a little time going into the problems and benefits of moving away from using experience points as the core engine of an online roleplaying game.

I'm always interested in thoughts, so feel free to fire 'em back at me.

If you hadn't realised already, this is pretty long so prepare to dig in...

Preamble

When talking about experience points (XP) we are clearly presupposing some use of a system to govern the game and/or game world. I'm not going to get into the relative benefits of systemed or systemless games here - that's food enough for a different topic and time - so accept that I'm reviewing this from a systemed games angle.

In the Beginning...

Roleplaying, at its roots, comes from many sources but none so influential as its root in wargaming. Wargaming held a variety of rules to govern the conflict of opposing forces based on some sensible logic. Roleplaying, in its infancy, was an extension of wargaming but for very small forces in fantastical environments.

Think back to the original release of Dungeons & Dragons - do you remember the boxes of minatures that you bought in order to represent the relative locations of the adventuring party and their assailants? Remember the various different dice and extensive rules of engagement, injury and recovery (well, okay, not that extensive, but certainly seemed a lot when I was eight years old)? All this came from wargaming - small-scale tactical combat.

While people were playing around with these ideas, play groups came to the idea that perhaps these minatures actually represented "people" with feelings and thoughts of their own. Revolutionary, perhaps, but that's where the bridge is made between wargames and roleplaying - when we ascribe and represent thoughts and feelings to the individual minatures (what I'll call "characters" from now on) rather than viewing them as a sheet of numbers describing their capabilities.

Still, that sheet of numbers held sway over our thoughts about our characters for many years. It was the "truth" about our character and anything else was mere fluff - you could blag your way past that guard at the gate till you're blue in the face, but if you failed your charisma roll then it would avail you nothing.

Furthermore, that sheet of numbers (the "character sheet") had rules governing its creation so that all people who wanted to play started on a roughly even footing. A fifth level Magic User and a fifth level Fighter should be roughly comparable, in their own fields (well, that was the theory, leastways).

Commonly, every characters started as a blank slate - the rank newbie in the universe, barely a babe out of swaddling now holding a sword against the tides of orcs and bugbears. Over time, as that character survived the simple scenarios and engagements they'd improve their skills - basically, they'd get better at smacking orcs over the head with their sword or whatever. That improvement was represented by the allocation of experience points. So gradually, as your character experienced more of the world they became more capable (stronger, faster, harder to kill, etc) through the magical assignment of experience points.

It was a simple lifepath - start knowing nothing and barely able to fend off a vicious rat or bat and then, over time, gain experience towards being the hardest motherf***er in the world.

It's a simple story. It's an old story. It's also a story that's been played too much and needs tearing out in favour of a new way.

Current State of Play

Unfortunately, this old model of play is still very much the forefront of online roleplaying at the moment. The largest body of online "roleplaying" is available in the form of MMORPGs such as Everquest, Dark Ages of Camelot and Star Wars Galaxies. At their core, these games are still based off the precept that every character starts as a blank slate and is formed through play - worse, that the formation of the character is through bashing rats and bats until you're able to bash bigger rats and bats.

To be fair, these systems have advanced enough that they choose to distinguish between different types of experience - bashing rats doesn't make you better at making swords. However, the core method of advancement is that you repeat an action until you are good at that action, then you can advance to attempting more complex actions until you're good enough at those to attempt yet more advanced actions.

There's a name for this method of advancement, among roleplayers online - that name is "XP grind" (experience point grind). It's the routine and often extremely tedious repetition of action to advance your character's avatar to the point where they actually represent something that you want to play.

Online roleplayers are coming to realise that the old model of character and experience no longer suits them. In fact, when it comes to it, the acquisition of experience points is just tedious. Who wants to spend time, as a player, guiding a character to bash on rats until they can actually go out and fight dragons? Why can't we just go out and fight dragons in the first place, as that's actually the thing that interests us?!

The answer is very simple: commercial necessity. The old model of online roleplaying speaks to a portion of the gaming market that enjoys playing an achievement-based game - "Today I got my Warrior to level 57 by killing a warren of Elite Orcs" or some such - if driven to achieve bigger and bigger things then a particular player will continue to pay a monthly subscription to maintain their character and bring them to bigger and bigger challenges. Ultimately, the model helps sustain that achievement-based game and thereby helps keep that monthly fee rolling in.

I'm not the only one who's bored by XP grind. I'm also not the only one who doesn't want to play an achievement-based game (leastways not solely achievement-based). I'm an explorer at heart - I need to find new things, new people, new places and remember that exploration can take place both through breadth and depth. I'm not the only one, so we need a new kind of game to support our wish to play differently. The commercial MMORPG market will likely never cater for our needs. Bionic Worlds, however, will.

The Future

Experience points are part and parcel of the achievement-based game. They are the focus of MMORPGs as they are the tool by which the monthly fee is renewed. They are, perhaps, not inherently evil but their use as a focus of the game is absolutely misplaced.

Allow me to drift into some more fluid musing - I'll tighten these thoughts up later.

XP are one possible tool to allow for development of a character's attributes - the statistics that define a character's capabilities within a particular system.

After a fashion, character creation systems are also based off XP - sometimes a different form of XP, but broadly they are used to develop the character's attributes from a completely blank slate into some semblance of form, to customise the character to our wishes and needs.

It's fair, then, to look at the development of a character as a single process - not broken into character creation then character development through the game as is common in most published systems.

If one desires a statistical representation of a character, a requirement for systemed games, then there are a number of decisions to be made and a set of assumptions that can be formed (or thrown away). To note, there are clearly many decisions about a character that cannot be represented (easily or fruitfully) through number values - the suppositions and decisions below are around the ones that can be represented numerically.

Common suppositions:

• Characters start from a fresh base - ground zero
  
• Characters are provided the same amount of pre-game XP (previously points allocated under the character creation system)
  
• Within specific fields of expertese, a pair of starting characters will be roughly equal no matter how they spend their pre-game XP
  
• Characters are expected to survive long enough to develop through in-game XP acquisition
  

Player decisions for their character's creation:

• Characters' area(s) of speciality in terms of skills or talents
  
• Characters' base attributes, perhaps based on genetic background or specific aptitude
  
• Specific bonuses or penalties (ala White Wolf's merits and flaws) for the character
  

The lists above are likely incomplete, but accepting them as they are for now it is clear that none of the common suppositions need to remain - that is to say that none of the suppositions necessarily underpin any of the player's decisions for creating their characters.

Here's a radical idea then - how about we discard all the suppositions, replacing them with these new statements:

• Characters can be created with any level of experience or aptitude
  
• Characters are created using as much or as little pre-game XP as is required
  
• Characters need not be equal as long as they are fun to play
  
• Characters need not survive in order to become what the player hopes from them - they can start that way and then survive as long as the player and game world allows
  

We may also wish to add a statement that is now opened up to us:

• Characters need not develop through the "expenditure" of XP - instead they can develop organically according to the player's needs and game world constraints
  

These concepts radically shift the styles of game we are likely to play with the characters that they can now create.

I can almost hear the cries of "abuse, abuse!" as people look at a system free of boundaries and controls - you might ask what "protection" players have from grief players seeking to creating godlike characters and rampage through the world without consideration.

That protection should be relatively easily provided through managed entry into the game and game world and a watchful administration team. Additionally, a strong community can encourage the styles of play they appreciate and be watchful for abusive players. Ultimately, though, the responsibility for protection of the game community lies with the administration team.

Protection aside, removing the old suppositions creates options for each player in terms of the characters that can be created. For example:

• Veteran or old characters can be created, having a wealth of knowledge from lifelong experiences but now physically past the point where they can act on that knowledge. Older character creation systems in achievement-based games would prevent this style of character (too many points in skills) and while you may be able to opt to reduce your character's physical attributes this can often make the achievement-based game tedious/over-difficult to play.
  
• Midlife characters - people in both their physical and mental prime - the competent and experienced character can be very satisfying to play and can help a player reach the parts of the game and game world that interest them most. Again, older character creation systems would see this character as being the result of many months of experience harvesting.
  
• Oddball characters, being characters that display cripples in exchange for "powers" of one sort or the other. Or even characters that are simply crippled. Achievement-based games make the wheelchair-bound character tedious to play as lack of mobility can also lead to lack of interesting play time.
  

And that's really just the beginning.

Summary

The old style of achievement-based game, where characters start as useless newbies with the intention that they grow, over months and perhaps years of development, into being the character that people often wish they could have played from the outset. The achievement, for that style of game, is the gain of experience.

If we remove the suppositions that surround those games, however, and radically reduce the focus on experience points we can move into a new style of game. The impact of this is the ability to create characters as you want in the way that pleases you with the requirement being on the administration team to provide some form of overwatch to keep grief-play at bay.

Edit: Changed topic subject to move inline with admin suggestion for articles.

[Demiglot]

Bravo Ronin!

Okay now I know what you were referring to in your "can't stand it" thread. I'm very much in agreement with you. I've played some short campaign PnP and LARP with similar ideas to your "new statements." Those games were some of the richest RP memories I have.

I "play" these "games" not because I want to become powerful, but because I want to engage my imagination. I think that a system that catered to the players' creativity would be a breakthrough for the genre and I, for one, would pay twice as much a month to participate in such an experience.

If this is the direction that your new project is heading then please be let me know if there is any thing that I can do to help you.

[Ronin Storm]

[Tychus]

[Ronin Storm]

Fair point, Tychus. I admit that I had not been considering that angle while writing. I was writing much more for me and, perhaps inherently, for a smaller audience than any MMO would normally manage. I'm thinking back down to the scales of discussion board communities such as this one.

[Demiglot]