Largely unimportant, but I play mostly one-shots.

For me, I'm pretty tired of advancement. It's relatively rare in fiction¹ for characters to improve continuously. I far prefer games where the characters "merely" change. My favorite is probably Primetime Adventures, where characters can be (sometimes partially) rewritten after the pilot episode, after their spotlight, and between seasons.

^{1: Creating fiction is what I am most interested about when I roleplay.}

If by "advancement" you mean "misery-tourism-weepy-emo-failure-porn" ... very important.

You would, definitely.

The very concept of a game without mechanical advancement is utterly alien to al lot of people, and that's why you don't often see its existence's importance stressed out. Take a look at the long threads about Spirit of the Century, starting from the preorder period, on rpg.net (I know, I was there :) ).

There were various things considered "too strange" in SotC (declarations, 'metagame' mechanics, fudge dice, whatever), but one of the most consistently talked about is the lack of advancement. Heck, *I* think the idea of shuffling the skills and changing the Aspects to be golden: practically the perfect mechanical implementation of how characters change in fiction, but people were continuously concerned about the fact that you did not get to be "even more badass" (as if you needed it...).

Some kind of change is important to me for anything more than a one-shot (or a few sessions). If the character doesn't change mechanically, then there is a weak link between the mechanics and the play. So far, in all the games I've felt good about that were not one-shots, there has been at least some advancement.

Frank

Oh, amend mine a bit: I do want a certain level of starting competence in a character, so that may account for me not rating advancement very highly.

Asking whether advancement is important is a loaded question - it presumes that we're unable to look at the game as a compherensive activity and are limited to a passive player-viewpoint where we're being fed interactions of different sorts with no perspective on why we're doing what we do. Surely we can do better than just focus on a given mechanic and say that it's important to us in isolation?

In other words: I have no idea if advancement is important to me in a given game. Depends on what the game is about. Give me The Shadow of Yesterday or Dungeons & Dragons or Exalted, and heck yes, advancement is important to me. Those games are built so that advancement is important in them. It's not me, it's the game. I'd have to be an idiot to claim that advancement of characters is somehow intrinsically important or non-important to roleplaying games when there are plenty of examples of both types of games out there. And I'd have to be very narrow-minded if my own game preferences just happened to fall in line with this small mechanical detail when there are so much better reasons for choosing one game over another.

And here we see why I don't usually participate in rpg discussions in the Internet. My answer to 80% of these questions is "depends on context". Not very interesting.

Well, Eero, focus on the first part of the root question, then. How important is an advancement system in your choosing whether or not to play a game? Does it make you more or less likely to want to play a game? I understand the argument that some games require it, and others don't. But just like you may be more or less interested in a game because it's got fantastical elements, or it uses dice, or it is GMless, I think advancement issues are one area which can make a game more or less interesting to some people.

Now, if it doesn't matter to you, if all that matters is how the gestalt works, then that's a fine answer too. It's an answer with information in it. It's a worthwhile addition to the conversation.

Good shift of perspective, that. My answer would be that I can't think of any tendencies for myself - there are games I like with advancement and without, and games I don't like as well. In isolation it's about as important for me as whether the game uses dice, to pick another common obsession of narrow-sighted roleplayers. This stuff is not what defines roleplaying, it's just what has historically been emulated from D&D.

When I think about what change might be that isn't advancement, I can see that a game could have change without advancement and be interesting to me. I have not yet played such a game (that wasn't a one-shot), so I would have to say based on that advancement (as opposed to change) is important to me. Dogs in the Vinyard comes close, but you can choose to advance (though my thought is that if one plays DitV to advance one's character as opposed to change/transform it, the game will become unfun - I have yet to play DitV with a group for more than a single town).

Frank

It depends on the game in question, obviously, but most of the time advancement IS important to me. (That's right, I'm the guy. Don't worry, I doubt it's contagious.)

I typically have a lot of stuff I want my character to do and to get involved with in a game, and frequently the distance between that and what the character actually can do is big. Without advancement, I've got nothing to aim for; I mean, I suppose that I could aim higher than whatever my character could currently accomplish, but it'd be a stupid and frustrating waste of time because there'd be no way to actually get there. Big goals are fun for me if there's a reasonable possibility that those goals will ever be attainable. Otherwise, they're just window dressing -- who cares if you want to kill the evil tyrant if you'll never be more than a low-rent caravan guard who'll never get within a hundred miles of the guy?

There are other things I like about character advancement, of course. It's a nice way to extend a game's lifespan, by opening up new kinds of challenges and resources to play with. It lets me adjust a character as we play (addressing oversights from character creation, or changing my character's niche, or whatever). And frankly, I just plain like the whole process; thinking about and planning that stuff out is fun, god damn it. It's one of the things that I like to do on my own when we're not playing, and makes the time when we do sit down to play together better for me.

I'm not opposed to advancement, but it's not something I look for, expect, hope to see, or write in. I more often write it out.

Just as a side note -- the original version of Traveller had no advancement rules. Other than acquiring money and equipment, the character you had at the end of character generation was it.

I would consider acquisition of wealth in Traveller to be a form of advancement (not that I ever had sustained Traveller play without houseruled advancement).

Frank

My group likes advancement, it's one of their set-in-stone requirements for gaming! And I like advancement too, though not as exclusively. I like having new clubs in my golf bag, new tools in my toolbox. I like getting to know one set of capabilities, then seeing how adding a new or incremental capability affects that established skill.

Advancement really isn't so important to me at all. I noticed this when playing D&D4. We're getting XP and that's fine, but I was surprised to find how little I actually care about it.

After listening to Ryan's show this morning, and mulling a bit about it, I think I'd have to rephrase my statements:

* I don't consider advancement to be a requirement in an rpg (just like pretty much anything else: you have to have what's needed, and nothing more, and sometimes advancement is not strictly needed).

* If change, or opening of new options and tools is advancement, than yeah, I like advancement

* If advancement is characterised as "power-up" then no, I generally don't care about it. It is true, though, that a game could characterise this in such a compelling way that I'd find it enjoyable (SolarSystem and TSOY, Burning [STUFF])

@Dan: your point '1' would be 'reward', not strictly 'advancement', according to Luke's speech in Ryan's show, and I agree with you. Some (many) games have reward and advancement strictly coupled, and if that's the case, then yeah, you need advancement. In Spirit of the Century, for example, the foremost reward cycle revolves around Fate Points, but those will not make you "advance", even if you are effectively much more powerful if you have many.

You point 2... yeah, I guess so, and again is a question of personal perspective: for me a game that lasts more than 6 months is a long campaign :)
Then again, you'd really need interesting stuff, and options, would not you? Not necessarily strictly "power-ups", especially if the characters start out as capable and effective (heroes). Am I right?

Posted By: Dan White2. Long-term campaigns. In running a long-term game (i've heard of 20 year campaigns! Several of mine have lasted 4 or 5 years) i suggest that to keep things interesting you need a barometer of some sort. I don't think it's a coincidence that most traditional games designed for long-term gaming have solid mechanical advancement systems. If you are running short 4-5 session or one off games, then non-mechanical advancement is more than adequate. I don't know if you could run a 5 year campaign with just non-mechanical advancement and keep it flowing and interesting (never done it).

I totally agree with this. I don't mind that IAWA or Shock or whatever doesn't offer mechanical improvement of the characters over continued play, because that's not what the game is about, or the way it's played. But in a 5 year campaign you really need to be able take on new sorts and scales of challenges over time or it becomes unplayable.

Sure those could be smaller and simpler challanges than the ones before (if you want to play a game about a fall from power maybe) but human nature being what it is we tend to prefer ones where you get to take on bigger and vaster challenges with your new and improved abilities.

Posted By: joepubIn a narrative, it is rare that the character gets more powerful as a result of trying to inflict its will upon the world. (Hero's Journey stories are a case where this is quite common, but I can't think of many others) Most the time, development of attributes and character qualities happens as a result of practice and meditation (a form of practice?), and even then the advancement isn't going to be significant unless mapped across years.

Now of course what I am saying here is a direct counter to Joe's statement about narratives, but I have to say I think there is a style of fiction where this is exactly what happens, the Fantasy novel sequence that begins with weak characters taking on limited threats and follows them as they gain more and more powers and take on bigger and bigger threats till the climax. The Lord of the Rings does this for the Hobbits (they start off as farmers and then gain magic items, and weapons training, and bravery and so on), anything David Eddings ever wrote does this for the main characters, and so on.

This is a style of fiction that many RPGs (like D&D, WRFP, Palladium etc.) have set themselves up to emulate, and I suspect they also support it, in that a lot of people who have written such books now have experienced that sort of story from RPG experience. This is also the style of fiction that is the common mainstay of most 3 year+ campaigns, which makes advancement essential for them. Certainly my normal play group, while happy to dabble with short-form games, regard it as not "real roleplaying" unless it involves multi-year games and strong character advancement.

Advancement is not all that important to me personally, but I know it makes some of the people that I game with tense and unsatisfied.

I like advancement in some games, and not others. I cannot imagine Misspent Youth with an advancement system, though. It is about the slow, downward spiral to adulthood, right? If anything, the game already has an un-advancement system, and that rocks on toast.

If you are going to add some kind of advancement system, let YOs add a freeform trait at the end of each game session. Let them sell it out like other traits, and downgrade it to something creepy, just like normal. This way, even though they're advancing and increasing their ability to affect the win outcome, they're also increasing their potential to become an annoying sell-out a-dolt, which is what it's all about.

It entirely depends on the game.

I wouldn't like L5R if I couldn't advance; especially since games of L5R are meant to start kinda small/medium and end end kinda epic.

In all the games of Tenra Bansho I've run, for dozens of people, I don't believe that I've ever seen anyone advance their characters with their EEps. People start pretty high, and the rewards for playing well seem to get spent on things tied directly to the story over advancing their character.

I think it really depends on the game and frame of mind for that game. For me, anyway.

-Andy

Posted By: HalfjackUnfortunately wealth is usually disconnected mechanically from practically everything else in games that track literal wealth (well, since D&D scrapped the "XP for gold" idea -- something I am only now wondering about). If becoming wealthy advances a character, then the best way to advance is to play a character who does almost nothing story-relevant. Unless the story is about starting a small business and growing it into an empire, I guess. Worked for Orson Welles, so what do I know? Maybe it is interesting.

True, wealth, at least GP in D&D, in some editions, has little meaning. In the early days, XP for GP tied wealth into the advancement system. In 3.x, wealth allows you to buy magic items and thus is also advancement.

In Traveller, wealth allows you to buy better equipment and bigger ships, and ties pretty directly into play in the games I've played in or watched. Thus it is a form of advancement.

Frank

Posted By: Paul B
If the tastiest part of advancement -- especially in a game like D&D, which someone (correctly) pointed out has zero-sum advancement -- is to escalate the scale of the fiction (i.e. "start small and end epic"), you could achieve the same thing by introducing a "fictional scale advancement" mechanism. Some way to pace out the fictional stuff: descriptions of stuff (level 1 threats are unarmed villagers, level 20 threats are skies full of dragons), the stakes at hand (level 1 stakes are social embarrassment, level 20 stakes are genocide), etc.

I wonder how different a game would feel if the mechanics were advancing the scale of the fiction directly, rather than advancing the characters (and requiring the fiction to scale alongside)?

An interesting idea. I have a feeling it would end up looking just like any other "leveling up" game, it's just that the mechanics might be a bit more abstract. The characters would still have a "number" which increases as the game goes on. The threats and stakes would also have "numbers" assigned to them. The game would also have to describe what happens when "level 2" characters have "level 1" opposition, because if the opposition is always at the same "level" as the characters, it will really feel like a zero sum game.

Frank

Posted By: ffilzAn interesting idea. I have a feeling it would end up looking just like any other "leveling up" game, it's just that the mechanics might be a bit more abstract. The characters would still have a "number" which increases as the game goes on. The threats and stakes would also have "numbers" assigned to them. The game would also have to describe what happens when "level 2" characters have "level 1" opposition, because if the opposition is always at the same "level" as the characters, it will really feel like a zero sum game.

Frank

Frank: what if the characters have no levels? My thought was that only the scale of the fiction "advances," which I suppose would include character descriptions.

p.

Posted By: coffeestainPlay Trollbabe?

I haven't! Is that what happens?

p.

I love the relationship advancement mechanic Andy is talking about. I want to so more stuff like that, too!

However, I also have a question:

Imagine a game where your character doesn't change. But you have a story goal, which you will reach once you've played out 10 scenes related to that goal. It might be like, "keep 10 tokens, with each scene throw one away. Once you're out of tokens, you achieve your story goal." Or it might be like, "Your story goal score is 0. With each scene, add one to it. When it reaches 10, you achieve your story goal."

Is this "advancement", and relevant to this thread? The character's not changing (necessarily), the world isn't necessarily changing. But the _story_ is being advanced. It's also a pacing mechanism.

So, is that advancement?

And another question:

Is getting better at a game "advancement"? Like, if we play IaWA, and we enjoying watching each other get better at it. Or we watch each other build a fantasy world together, and watch it grow. Is that advancement?

Posted By: Robert BohlBetween the latest episode ofMaster Planwith Luke Crane on advancement, and having runMisspent Youthat JiffyCon Lowell and having one of the complaints be that the characters don't get better, I'm wondering what people's opinions are on this. When choosing whether to play a game, when evaluating your enjoyment of a game, how important is it to you to have your character advance?

By advancement here, I mean for the character to improve, build, get better, level. I explicitly do not mean justchange(e.g., get worse, shuffle and rewrite but not improve, etc.).

Like many topics, my answer would be "it depends". The interesting question is what it depends on. There are a couple of factors that I can think of.

1) Does the advancement happen at the end of the session, or is it marked immediately (like in Dogs in the Vineyard XP or James Bond Hero Points)? Immediate marking is good for making advancement interesting -- but it also disrupts the flow of the game more. The more complicated the advancement, the more it disrupts the session. I find that immediate advancement means I'm much more likely to play the system to maximize my advancement. End-of-session or end-of-mission awards like many Artha awards (MVP, workhorse, etc.) don't motivate me to maximize my gains, though I may like getting them.

2) Is the benefit just advancing an existing numeric stat (i.e. +2 Strength, or change "I'm a Dog" from 2d8 to 3d8), or does it add something new to the character (i.e. gain followers, a new maneuver, or a new trait)? New things are more interesting, but if you keep adding new things then the character becomes more and more complex. Even if you're switching out old benefits for new ones, the change makes understanding the character more difficult. I tend to prefer a mix.

3) Is the advancement personal, material, or social? Some systems allow the player a choice of any (i.e. a broad system like Champions where you could buy a new contact/follower/sidekick/etc., or a system with universal traits for all three), while others treat these as different tracks. For me, it really depends on the setting and genre what I think fits.

4) Is the advancement a permanent benefit (i.e. +3 to all combat rolls) or temporary points to spend (i.e. five points each giving +2 to a roll)? I like having a mix, as long as I have some resources to spend.

Something that #1 and #2 make me think of that I haven't seen -- lining up a new benefit in advance (so it is more interesting) that is activated by something during play (so the reward is more immediate).

@Grant regarding DRYH... its advancement would be the Scars, and they are purely positive mechanical elements. Actually spending a Scar can keep you from reaching you "story ending" (getting some Discipline back, for example).

I would not view the normal "spiral" of the game as advancement (towards destruction, generally): it's just the combined currencies and resources of the character, not unlike in other systems characters spend "mana points", lose "hit points", accumulate "power points" and such, just in a much nastier way. :)

Well, additional traits in Misspent Youth would also dilute the significance of the remaining ones. Play FATE with 5 aspects, then play it with 10. With 5 aspects you have a much more intense, focused character.

I'm cool with advancement as long as it's followed by a Macbeth-like deterioration.
I think it'd be cool if D&D bell-curved progression.
Like after 10th level or so, things would be pretty much downhill from there.

I think advancement can be great fun! I put countless hours into MUDs just to advance my character, back in the day. Also, I'm still playing Guild Wars every now and then, enjoying getting new skills and such. And, obviously, my own game contained advancement, and that was important to me because that's part of the reward system that's important for that kind of challenge-based play (where advancement allows you to tackle greater challenges).

Most of the time these days, I've shifted my focus elsewhere in the games I play, but I can still enjoy good advancement-based games a lot.