Wednesday, April 8, 2020

Popcorn Leveling and Big Fucking Treasure

So here's a fun game to play with your favorite game.  Look for ways to reduce the memory burden.  Look for ways to erase things from the character sheet.  Look for ways to strip the complexity from combat without removing any tactical richness, because a lot of that cruft doesn't add anything except time.  Complexity is a cost, so what are you buying?  Can you purchase it cheaper?

Anyway, this is my attempt to get rid of XP.


Popcorn Leveling

Treasure is worth money, and that's nice.  But not all treasure is Treasure.

If  you have a Treasure, it's always worth 1000 sp.  Each piece of treasure is worth one level-up at the end of the session, awarded to a single player.  If four players find two pieces of Treasure, then half of them will level up this session.  (This is the only way to gain levels now.)

Once treasure has been identified, you have an Awards Ceremony, where the level-up is awarded to a player in a semi-random fashion.

Identifying Treasure

Sometimes Treasure is identified as soon as the party sees it.
"This is black ambergris, dug from the stomach of the living mountain."
"This is the Ruby Eye of the Pain God, plucked from his principal idol."
Sometimes you gotta haul the Treasure to a sage and ask them what it is.
"This is a golden freedom collar, given in ancient Cheox when a slave won their freedom, usually for saving their master's house.  They didn't make many of these." 
"This is the Jeweled Egg of Vandrok!  It holds the spawn of Vandrok!  Get it out of my yurt!"
Treasures don't have to start with "The", but it helps.

Whatever you choose, though, it should be simple to identify the Treasure.  Don't make them jump through hoops--they jumped through enough when they pulled it out of a dungeon.

There's two reasons for this.

First, a dungeon tells a story through its items, and there are few items that players pay more attention to than treasure.  Even more-so when we're talking about Treasure.  This allows you to bring the history of the dungeon front and center.  It gives you a soapbox for you to tell you dungeon's backstory.  (And all DM's love telling their dungeon's backstory.)

Second, identifying the Treasure in town is a good way to keep the focus on the dungeon, rather than the town.  (If you're doing gold for XP, the dungeon is where the game is.)

Selling the Treasure

Games already have plenty of systems in place for players to sell the Treasure.  I will add that Treasure is never intrinsically useful, except as something that can be sold for a high price.  A huge ruby is the quintessential Treasure.

Although, you certainly don't have to sell the treasure.  You can always just keep the crown for bragging rights.

The Awards Ceremony

This takes place at the end of the session.

First, everyone votes on who most helped the party achieve their goals. They get a d12.

Next, you do the same thing for the runner up.  They get a d6.

MVP: 1d20 + 1d12
Runner Up: 1d20 + 1d6
Everyone Else: 1d20

Make a big deal when you award them their shiny d12 or d6.  Pretend that you are at an awards show. Be explicit about why they earned this.

The point of this is (1) to recapitulate how the party overcame their challenges, (2) praise people for being good at this game, and (3) teach ourselves how to be better at this game.  This is how we talk about what is tested, and what tactics proved to be most successful.  This is where newbies learn what the table expects of them.

Then everyone rolls their dice.  Whoever rolls highest will level up.  If there are multiple Treasures being cashed in, the second place roll gets a level-up, and so on.

If multiple players tie for the highest roll, they all level up and gain a Player-Player Bond.

If a character is at least level 4, they can choose to donate their level to another, lower level PC.

Additionally, once you level up, you can add that Treasure to your title, as in "I am Morbo, who stole the Masterful Mirror from the Crab Queen."

Discussion

There are a couple of nice things about popcorn leveling.

First, you can now make the Treasures into the big, shiny rewards that they deserve to be.  The jeweled eyes of a giant idol might be a Treasure.  The lich's golden crown could be a Treasure.  A dragon might have several enormous gemstones in their hoard--each one a Treasure.

Players often respond well when goals are painted bright red and surrounded by flashing lights.  A dungeon where every room holds a small amount of treasure will feel very different than a dungeon where the purple wurm wears a diamond collar (and the players know that getting the collar off the purple wurm will result in one of them gaining a level).

I guess I'm also arguing against dispersed, smaller sources of XP, which is a slightly different argument, isn't it?

Second, this makes it easier for the adventure designer to stock a dungeon with an appropriate amount of loot.

Example: every floor of the dungeon is stocked with. . .

  • 1 Treasure that the party is 90% likely to find, and straightforward to retrieve once found.
  • 1 Treasure that the party is 60% likely to find, and straightforward to retrieve once found.
  • 1 Treasure that the party is 30% likely to find, and straightforward to retrieve once found.
  • 1 Treasure that is easy to find, but involves some difficulty in retrieving.
  • 1 Treasure that is easy to find, but will require a higher level party, or the expenditure of serious resources to retrieve.
  • 1 Treasure that is easy to find, but can only be retrieved by a high-level party expending serious resources to retrieve.
  • 1 Fuck-off Treasure that is not meant to be obtainable.
From Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark
Criticism


Some groups will be unhappy at the amount of RNG that is incorporated into popcorn leveling.  XP is the most salient reward for good play, and is one of the primary motivators of player behavior.  It's not much work to track a single sum of XP, so why should we leave it to chance?

It's a good point, and I don't really have an answer to it.  Popcorn leveling might be a nonviable idea.

The enjoyment/hatred of popcorn leveling is going to enjoy on a group's tolerance for chaos, exuberance for big fucking treasure, and appreciation of a simpler character sheet.  XP might be a dissociated mechanic, but it is a well-tolerated mechanic, and people certainly don't complain about XP very much.

And even if you hate popcorn leveling, there's still a lot of parts of Treasure that are worth importing into your home game.

33 comments:

  1. Super interesting. I was just thinking about XP today. Currently I'm going with play 1 game, go up to level 2. Play two games, go up to level 3. But giving a big shiny ruby is much more fun.

    The leveling ceremony might be a bit tough to pull off. Not all adventures end neatly back in town. Would you defer leveling to a time when the ceremony could be conducted?

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    1. If not town, then at least when the Treasure is identified. If that's infeasible, then make each treasure identified as soon as the party gets a hold of it.

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    2. That would definitely work. Other ideas: they must bring an Identifier NPC with them. Or there's a class whose abilities include identifying Treasures. Though both those perhaps make it too conditional.

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  2. I've been using the MVP rule for a while now, I award 1 XP to every player at the start of the session (just for showing up, because I appreciate them making the effort) and three are given out at the end to:
    - MVP
    - Most interesting moment of the session
    - Lowest-levelled player

    I'll echo that the most important part of MVP is that the *players vote*. I'll have to see how popcorn levelling works! I'd probably give the option of donating levels from the start, especially since some players might have suffered a recent loss etc.

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  3. Interesting idea! I might try this at my table, in the future... I know you're doing this with an eye towards a simpler character sheet, but when you mentioned gaining "titles" my first thought was to add a space for players to list their various titles under their character's name. Seems like it would be great to have that get longer with time...

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  4. Whenever I see a voting system, I can't help but recall this post: https://zedecksiew.tumblr.com/post/183912222656/what-torchbearer-taught-me-about-rpgs

    In short: no votes.

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    1. "Vote who loses" seems a pretty low bar to avoid with a vote system

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    2. I'm heartened by the fact that most people like the Treasures but dislike the Award Ceremony. I'm not attached to the Award Ceremony idea.

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    3. Voting might not work for every group, but has very much helped in mine. Anonymous voting and invisible XP awards have helped my curtail some antisocial player behavior that circumstances prevent me addressing more directly. The problematic players noticed that they were constantly 2-3 levels behind everybody else and cleaned up their act.

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    4. "vote for who's the worst" seems like it'd be a drastically different system than "vote for who's the best." still not sure how much I like the EXACT implementation here, but I'm not opposed to "RNG with the MVP given an advantage" as an abstract concept...

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    5. What about if the DM just picks the MVP?

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    6. All these voting systems have the same issues.
      Voting is a manifestation of bias. What any individual player or GM enjoys might not be what the group enjoys. Who sets the goals? Players have varying levels of investment in the game. Should that be mechanically penalized or rewarded?

      Humans also enjoy being fair. What if the same player is MVP 3 sessions in a row? 5 sessions? Should votes be adjusted for fairness? Happens a lot in Apoc. World XP assignment.

      If the vote is at the end of the session, their brain-juice is at its lowest. Will they make the best choice? Will they consider all the necessary factors? At the start of the next session, will they remember all the details?

      I think I know what makes a game fun and what makes a good player, but if I only had that in my group - and enforced it - I'd have a lot less interesting games. Outside perspectives are needed.

      This road is littered with the corpses of game designers gone by. No voting.

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    7. I agree with Skerples in "Humans also enjoy being fair" but my experiences shows the opposite of what he says. People of my culture (as I'm not from US) tend to distribute the awards with everyone evenly so none is behind but also none is ahead.

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    8. I could have phrased that better.
      The best (and most common) scenario is that people think about the implications of their vote and vote to distribute MVPs "fairly" and evenly, so there's no point in a voting system because it's not actually awarding anything.

      The second most common scenario is that players don't think about the implications of their vote, and vote based on their personal biases or preferences, leading to scenarios like the one Zedeck describes.

      Neither scenario is good.

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    9. The amalgamation of individual player and DM (if the DM votes, too) biases is probably a better model of "what the group enjoys" than whatever any given DM arbitrarily chooses.

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  5. Interesting ideas here, but I, too, reject voting as an aspect of character improvement. I don't like what it does to the group dynamic, and I know players who would quickly lose interest in a game where this was required for advancement.

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  6. I like the idea but think the awards ceremony should be replaced by some kind of carousing instead of a vote. Also how does it work in a megadungeon where you don't return to town for a long time?

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  7. An easy trick for helping with the randomness would be to give additional dice to PCs who are below the maximum party level. Or subtract a PC's level from their result.

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  8. Love the idea. Was just thinking a way of awarding xp in a setting with no currency and this works great.

    No voting though.

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  9. For some reason I think this could be especially fun in a 5e game. other sorts of leveling seem weird there-- I've collected a hoard of copper pieces or stabbed a whole village of kobolds, so I get a whole new superpower?-- but "I stole a single big treasure and now I have a new superpower" seems just goofy enough to work. Not sure if I'd prefer this over a more traditional OSR game where it's mostly just your hit dice and to-hit bonuses that go up...

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  10. Man, I can't find it right now, but somebody online has a system for AD&D where you roll a d20 after each adventure (or game session, I don't remember) and try to beat a certain number to level up. The number is based on class and level, although if you were to adapt it to a system where classes are more balanced level by level (or if you just don't give a shit) you could work it down to just being based on level. If you roll and don't level up that time, you get a +1 on the next roll. After the first few levels, some of the numbers you're trying to hit can't be reached without several +1s, so you don't end up with someone gaining a level each and every time, or someone who just can't level up because he always rolls a 1. Once you do level up, the +1s all go away and you roll a straight d20 for the next level again.

    Anyway, that's a pretty good rundown on it. A lot of people don't seem to like the voting mechanism, so a target number seems like the way to go.

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    1. The downside is that it requires you to track the +1s. The upside is that it reduces the chance of being screwed by RNG.

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  11. Very tempted to combine this with Skerples's noble-patrons-and-taxes system, except that instead of taxes on all the gold pieces you find, your patron demands Treasures. Would explain why every Treasure is worth 100 gp: your patron pays a flat rate (which is way less than the Treasures are worth).

    This also paints a picture of a world where the nobility are obsessed with filling their vaults with ancient artifacts and send adventurers after them. I would be tempted to write an additional system for domain-level play where the level of your domain is based on how big your vault of Treasures is.

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    1. I dare you to go all the way and say that levels are only gained when your patron gives you promotions. It fits into Level 1 = Veteran, Level 4 = Gladiator title stuff that they had in the older editions.

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    2. I had been thinking that levels would be gained at the rate of 1 per Treasure given to patron, but promotions could be a lot more flexible and allow players to negotiate for their levels. It might conflict with pre-existing systems for gaining noble titles and ascending the church hierarchy, but maybe the "adventurer hierarchy" is a different social concept in the setting. I'll be thinking about it!

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  12. I like it.
    Also one of those who's a bit dubious about voting for MVP. What if instead (in order to hit the points of recapitulate/award/teach) there were a series of metrics provided beforehand that would provide bonuses? (SEACAT and NGR come to mind as examples of this idea) like:
    Saved another PC from certain death +1d6 (each time)
    Disarmed/sprung the most traps +1d6
    Opened the most doors +1d8
    Took the most damage +2d8
    Came up with a creative, non-standard use for a spell or magic item +1d10
    Talked their way past a potential combat +1d10
    Came up with a cunning plan +2d4
    Defeated a powerful monster alone +2d6
    Had their character die +1d12 (rolled next game, for their next character)
    ...and so on (note these are not necessarily well-thought-out numbers and examples in terms of the RNG involved--just jotted out to convey the idea).
    It would still allow you to encourage/reward certain styles of game play, while at the same time not asking players to judge each other's play. And I think just having the list of what gets bonuses would to some extent help "teach" new players what is to be expected or required to "succeed" in the game.

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    1. That sounds like it conflicts with the stated goals in the first paragraph of this blogpost. Too much stuff to keep track of.

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    2. Perhaps.
      I suppose it occurs to me because it falls within what I consider "minimal tracking" already, as I habitually jot down (extremely short-hand notes of) events as they occur so I can later remember what happened and plan further sessions. I can see how that might seem a burden, or somehow "extra", if it's not someone's habit already.
      Alternatively, have the players track it and being it up at the end. If they don't remember or bring it up then they don't get the bonus--simple!

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  13. I like the idea of big shiny treasures, but I think it creates as many problems as it solves. I like giving out small bits of XP for players making big decisions in line with their character. I also like having smaller objectives in the dungeon. I also like giving out XP for slaying monsters.

    I would also really hate to watch one player go three or four sessions without ever leveling up while another player got lucky and leveled up twice in a row.

    I would say you could achieve mostly the same effect of this rule through adventure and dungeon design. The PCs could learn the exorbitant value of a piece of treasure in the dungeon and figure out they're gonna level up if they retrieve it.

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  14. I'm in a game design sense in love with simplifying things down into big crunchier numbers, so the idea of finding a singular thing that gives a real impact but is hard to get sounds awesome. I definitely have to echo the concern that someone could get screwed by bad luck in the chaos, but I could see that working with the right group of people. Definitely a good brain-food post!

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  15. "Second, identifying the Treasure in town is a good way to keep the focus on the dungeon, rather than the town."

    There is an assumption behind this that I'm not following. Can you explain how this works, please?

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