Experimental XP system for D&D 5e

Here’s the proposed system:

Characters no longer receive XP points or Inspiration Points in the standard fashion.

At the start of a level, you receive a number of “Persona Points” equal to the level (so 1 at first level, 19 at 19^th). When you gain a new level, left over Persona Points are lost. You can spend Persona points like Inspiration Points. When you spend a Persona Point, you gain an Experience Point.

At the start of a session, each player (sans the GM) puts a fate token into a Fate Point pool. At any point in the session, you can take a point from the Fate Pool and use it like an Inspiration Point. Players can spend multiple Fate Points. Whenever a fate point is spent, all the other players (not including the player using the point) gain an Experience Point. You then pass the GM the Fate Point, and he can use it like an Inspiration Point for a villain or monster.

At the GM’s discretion – like a climactic battle or negotiation—the Fate Pool can be refilled, but it can never have more Fate points than there are players at the table (not characters in play, but actual players).

Players should record their XP on their character sheet and can note when they will gain levels using the following table:

Level	XP needed
1	0
2	5
3	11
4	22
5	40
6	57
7	75
8	94
9	120
10	145
11	171
12	198
13	232
14	265
15	299
16	334
17	374
18	415
19	457
20	500

Rationale:

A good experience system is vital to an RPG’s success. The most successful XP system is the one devised by Gary Gygax: you gain XP after defeating foes or challenges (or collecting treasure) and then level up on a chart. It is simple and effective. It encourages a kind of greed on the part of the player and provides an almost Pavlovian commitment to gaining levels.

As RPGs developed, new XP systems arose: BRPs use-of-skills system, which reached its apotheosis in Burning Wheel. The small points that you spend, common in games like Shadowrun or World of Darkness. Savage Worlds uses a similar small points, combined with an implied level chart (in fact, I think if Savage Worlds simply had a level table, it would be even more popular). The Cypher System rewards players for discovery, and for participating in the game well. The GM gives XP in game, and XP is a commodity that can be spent in game or saved for improvement.

Even more abstract, many gamers have discarded the awarding of XP for a “you level when needed” approach. I’ve been experimenting with this system over the last year. I made no major announcement to the players, it just occurred slowly as I forgot to award XP. I think this level of abstract leveling is interesting, as it allows the GM to control the challenge of the plot, and I suspect it occurred because the use of abstract level is a symptoms of a disconnection between plot and development of character. 

The major problem of all editions of D&D is a tendency to grind combat. This is most prominent in post-3e D&D. Paizo’s well-plotted Adventure Paths are great, but I think they suffer from the “grind” problem: in order to level the characters to match the plot, they have to engage in long, sometimes meaningless combats (the second adventure of the Age of Worms 3.5e Adventure Path is a textbook example).

As the post-3e era developed, the designers incorporated quest XP and skill challenges as a way to legitimate non-combat XP sources and allow the game to level faster. But the problem was they never gave enough XP to make them the center of the system, unless the GM modified the XP tables, which I did throughout 3^rd and 4^th edition.

However, there’s another dimension of D&D XP to be considered: it usually awards characters for doing things, but in all the small-point systems, or the “use-based” models, the player is one who’s rewarded. XP is for the player to spend, game, engineer and seek. In D&D, you only seek it as a contribution of the game – some players fixate on it—but you don’t participate in it. Games like Burning Wheel or Numenera actively have players giving away XP to other players, either at the end of a session or in play.

Likewise, the inspiration points of D&D (and the earlier non-D&D ideas of Willpower, Fate Points, Hero Points, Bennies, or Artha) are attempts to mitigate the problems of arbitrary dice and character-to-plot connections. They are a resource players draw on, but do not necessarily control, because the GM gatekeeps it. I’m bad at remembering to give out such points, because my GM style is either bad or ossified. But I think that the solution isn’t to give the GM more at-the-table work, I think the solution is to make the Players or the system itself the gatekeepers of XP.

So, we reorient the Inspiration Point system to be a static source and then we reward players for playing the game. It doesn’t matter what they’re doing with the points – fighting, sneaking, politicking, child-rearing, animal-taming, bird-watching—it only matter that they care enough about success or failure to use the points.

But the points can also be tied to the social contract of the table. So, persona points reward the player who uses them, but the fate points can be more eloquent: you draw from a common pool, reducing your party’s resources and empowering the GM, but you give everyone else XP. This means you want to spend the pool!

I’m going to pitch this to my D&D group and see if it works…Here’s a breakdown of the XP table. I’m assuming a 3-4 hour session. If you play longer sessions, maybe refresh the pool after that time has elapsed or a logical break point in your routine.

Level	Sessions	Fate	Persona	XP Needed	Total XP
1	0	0	0	0	0
2	1	4	1	5	5
3	1	4	2	6	11
4	2	8	3	11	22
5	3.5	14	4	18	40
6	3	12	5	17	57
7	3	12	6	18	75
8	3	12	7	19	94
9	4.5	18	8	26	120
10	4	16	9	25	145
11	4	16	10	26	171
12	4	16	11	27	198
13	5.5	22	12	34	232
14	5	20	13	33	265
15	5	20	14	34	299
16	5	20	15	35	334
17	6	24	16	40	374
18	6	24	17	41	415
19	6	24	18	42	457
20	6	24	19	43	500

The Good, Okay, and Bad of Star Wars: The Force Awakens

This is essentially a rambly series of notes that might be used to make a more detailed essay for the future. 

The best parts of the movie at those that are put into motion by the characters motives. This is basic storytelling 101, that is: tie the character to the plot, not vice versa. When the movie focuses on the “finding Skywalker” main plot, it becomes an excellent film (a bit like how Episode II: Attack of the Clones is a solid Obi-wan mystery plot juxtaposed with a horrible Anakin romance/mass murder plot). The use of an A and B plot mangles the third act, but we’ll get to that below.

Here’s what I thought was good:

Rey: I think Rey was the best thing about this movie. Obviously, the actors have been freed up by a direct who like actors (and usually strives for melodrama, but my dislike of Abrams aside, the actors are working very hard in this movie). This character was handled with skill, her nature, plot, and background were delivered smoothly in short bursts of sometimes subtle, but present exposition and her movement through the film and her development was compelling. Daisy Ridley was stellar, especially as she keeps the plot moving in the most interesting directions and a lot rested on her performance. (please don’t let her be a skywalker, please don’t let her be a skywalker).

Kylo Ren: I will immediately cop to thinking Ren was a liability going into the theatre. Star Wars has a bad habit of raiding the same trophes or narrative structures, and the “black armored Vader-worshipper” was making me doubt the film. I was pleasantly won over. The character is three dimensional, and while I admit the emo-Ren jokes are probably, I think it’s a misread of the character. He’s not an adolescent moping, he’s a villain tempted by the light. After years of “dark heroes” in comics and SF/Fantasy movies (Aragorn has to be conflicted in Jackson’s films, Batman’s what Gotham deserves in Nolan’s movies, etc) , this was a nice and complex twist. His lack of control and his failures make him a villain like Richard the III or Macbeth, that is a villain that you either sympathize with or want to succeed. Adam Driver was very credible in every scene and I felt the combination of Ren and Rey (please no siblings, please no siblings) could easily fill out two more movies.

The Han/Leia relationship: If anyone needed reminding, Harrison Ford is able to do more with a smirk than anyone other than Michael Douglas. Ford’s charm aside, The Han/Leia relationship was mature, complex and subtle. Much like the way Rey or the Force was handled, there wasn’t heavy-handed exposition, just well-chosen words and well-acted scenes. One bought the mature, no-longer together relationship, and it set the right tone for the movie’s climax.

The Force: After the ridiculousness of midi-clorians and the hyperactivity of Force usrs in the prequels, Clone Wars, and even Rebels, it was nice to see the Force returned to a more limited and patient element of the movies. The scenes are so nicely paced when Rey is learning from Ren, and so well-done. I felt the Jedi mind-trick wasn’t fore-plotted well enough (Rey should have either asked Solo about it or observed Ren using it), but the interrogation and final battle sequence were willing to take their time and develop the exchange instead of rushing for wish-fulfillment instant success. Likewise, the use of Han Solo to confirm the Force was a good choice.

Character was the best thing about the movie. If the later movies can focus on these new characters and let them drive the plot, it will be a very strong trilogy.

  

What was Okay

Some the the characters failed to really engage the plot, or the setting was present, but either running on routine or in need of new ideas.

Finn: Finn was compelling, but the plot arc was too heavy handed at the start. I also felt that Finn was a little too quick-witted in his jokes and irony for someone just “deprogrammed” from a violent training regime. Still, John Boyega held his own against Ford, and the character added humor and energy to the plot. I’m interested in seeing how he’ll develop in later films, but right now he’s a bit distant from the main arc. The return to human/alien Stormtroopers, and the brief lines between the General and Ren were great.

Maz: or, the new “Yoda.” I was interested in a more social, less hermit “little wise alien” and I was sad to learn she’d been cut out of later scenes. Still, I originally listed her as a “good” but in hindsight she became an okay. As a character, there’s potential, but the film squanders her and makes her a plot device instead of a character.

The First Order: I liked the way the story foregrounded that the Imperials are space-Nazis. I hope everyone who dresses up like Stormtroopers might start to think deeply about why they want to be space-Nazis (I’m not being censorious or funny here: there is a  serious discussion to be had about why the Imperials are so compelling to fans of Star Wars and it’s one people keep avoiding – the appeal of totalitarianism and Fascism might be purely aesthetic, or it might be far more complex). Either way, I liked the fact that the military leader assumed a more “Grand-Moff-Tarkin” like role in the movie, not simply filling in as background. That particular element was well cribbed from A New Hope.  

Names: Generally speaking, the names were well chosen, except for Finn and Poe. I kept waiting for an Ahab or Gatsby to wander in, or a Captain Melville or Whitman to show up. Jedi Master Whitman the great Force user, singing the Song of Myself or "I Hear Jakku Singing" as he lifts the Millennium Falcon out of a sandpit…"The force is like the leaves of grass, my young apprentice, like leaves of grass."

Design: Generally speaking the film had strong design, but that’s never been a problem for Star Wars. I felt the ships looked even more dense or chunky, but that may work aesthetically with the prior six movies.  

Dialog: “that’s one hell of a pilot” is the worst case of having the “niave” character tell the audience how to react to a scene they’ve just watched. Please, let’s have no more of that. The majority of the script was good, if it did crib too much from the Joss Whedon “clever witty lines that reverse the context” trick that he developed in Buffy and Firefly.

Climax: If the movie had remained focused on the “find-Skywalker” plot, then the climax would have been gold. The space battle dragged it down and didn’t add much to the narrative. I will avoid being too spoilerish, but this was a brilliant scene between Ford and Driver (although why no hand-rails, I mean who does health-and-safety on these places).

Dénouement: The final scene was nicely done, quiet and unresolved. I though the circling shot was pulled us out of the characters too much and so marred the moment. It was rushed into, but we’ll get that below.

Luke Runs-away: By now, there’s a repeated pattern: Jedi’s are bad teachers and when they fail they run away. It felt tired. I liked the idea of Luke retreating though…it makes a kind of Taoist find-the-hidden-master plot that worked well. The idea that Ren and Rey would be racing to find him was compelling. As an A-plot, it was new and interesting. The idea needed a little more complexity…why couldn’t Ren fall after Luke had left? Then you’ve got Luke’s regrets lived out in on-screen narrative time in the second movie, and the scenes would write themselves…

Generally speaking, the use of minor characters was fine, the monsters on the ship were okay, maybe too post-anime/manga, but let’s forgive that for now. The design and the use of specific settings – Jakku, Maz’s bar, etc was dealt with efficiently, with nice call outs to Miyazaki’s Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind in Rey’s introduction on Jakku.  

What was Bad

The movie hits the ditch bad whenever the Resistance starts to drive the plot.

World-building: Simply put, the world-building – Resistance, First Order, New Republic—made no sense. Any time I attempt to but together some kind of realistic framework for the polticis of this setting, it falls apart. This is not the case for the first six movies – at every point, the political frame of the setting’s background makes sense, even when it isn’t dealt with in much detail (the briefing scene on the Death Star in A New Hope that mentions the “senate” and the “emperor” was clear to a 7-year-old Canadian boy in Edmonton, so I think it works). There is no sense of the setting beyond the scene, and so the mass desctrution of billions of people on multiple planets is utterly meaningless and approached bathos. The universe beyond Rey and Ren is meaningless, and that’s not the way it should be.

Leader Giant-Hologram-Voldemort: This character was awful and probably unnecessary. He was boring and the visual design distracting and, oddly, poorly done. I thought he looked like an early Harry Potter version (that bad CGI) of that Orc general Peter Jackson inserted into Return of the King, toned down for kiddies and then plopped in. My wife’s immediate reaction was “oh, it’s Voldemort” which is equally fair. No more evil emperors training the dark-armor-villain guy please. Ren would be so much better with out him, and the First Order way more evil if it was just a group of people being monsters. We don’t need the deranged ugly hologram.

Starkiller: the weapon seemed dumb, and only seemed to exist because of a perceived need to blow up a big weapon. It was a lazy crib from the A New Hope, and never added to the plot. The Death Star is a real thing in A New Hope – the destruction of Alderan is driven by the characters, the characters then have to escape it, and then they blow it up. It created an entirely unrelated B-plot that produced unnecessary drag on the A-plot.

Poe Dameron: He was compelling for the first ten minutes and then was the figurehead of the B-plot dragging the plot into the ditch. I thought he’d be there more, but he wasn’t, and as a result, he’s totally disconnected from the other characters, no matter how many times he pats Finn on the shoulder.  

Actor service: The “minor” pilots and Resistance command staff were dominated by familiar actors. It broke verisimilitude and generally produced a sense of Hollywood-back-patting that didn’t help the already bad B-plot.  

R2-D2: This was the biggest gaff. The fact that R2-D2 was going to wake up and have the missing piece of the map was completely obvious and the heavy handed C-3PO lines were tiresome. When he just conveniently powered-up and got things going so the plot could dénouement was lazy. If the latter half of the film had been a race to R2-D2 (maybe Ren captured him with Rey and they had to go back…), then the plot could have avoided the Starkiller and made the R2 scene meaningful, but it felt like the writing was on auto-pilot. The fact that J J Abrams has later tried to clarify this moment means it wasn’t handled well in the film.

The Resistance: As I mentioned above, the Resistance makes no sense politically as it is explained in the film. When the Resistance shows up, we do get the great scenes with Han and Leia, but we also get the B-plot and a lot of narrative drag.

Plot was a problem for the movie. The first half of the movie works on all engines, then it develops a conflcit between that it thinks the plot has to include and what the characters need to be doing to move the plot forward. This is largely the result of too much was cribbed from the first movie. Some of it could be easily forgive (Maz’s bar, Jakku) because it was similar, but different and it linked to the characters in clear, meaningful ways (e.g. Jakku links to Ren, her scavenging, and her memories of being abandoned). The B-plot can’t be considered a success because it isn’t developed in tie with a character, not is it developed into a narrative need.

The movie was not as good as any of the classic trilogy films, except perhaps for moment in Return or Lucas’s less confident direction of actors in A New Hope. It is better than the prequel movies though and if the writers can develop new ideas and focus on character, there’s a good chance for stronger movies in the future. The move away from Abrams will likely be a good thing (I don’t care much for him as a director or writer…I pitched an idea to my wife tonight that he’s essentially a geek Michael Bay).

Played Review: Minecraft Card Game?

A Christmas present to the Apprentice, the Minecraft Card Game? is a good family game.

Minecraft is a potent force in late-elementary these days, akin to marbles and Pokemon of the past. There is, of course, a lot of “stuff” associated with it, some “official,” some “unofficial.” This means there is a real range of quality in Minecraft ephemera, which is a long-winded justification to a bias against this game. The fact that my son insists that one of the formulas to make an axe is incorrect made me leering about playing this game with a kid who’s too “in universe.”* The use of a question mark at the end of the title is inexplicable and deeply troubling to the part of me that reviews grammar with first-year university students every year.

A 2-4 player game, it claims to be good for 8+ and makes no claim on the package about how long it takes to play a game. The game involves “mining” resources and then exchanging those resources for tools, like axes and shovels. The tools give you victory points and a special ability. In play, all the players are racing to break a victory point threshold that ends the game.

We played this as a family game, so Mom, Dad, Apprentice, and Junior Apprentice (who’s four) all played. The game was simple to get, corner rules (tool abilities, special cards) were intuitive and easily sourced from the rulebook in play. The cards are easy to read and well-designed, all keeping with the publisher, Mojang via Mattel’s, aesthetic of low-grade pixel art. No actual knowledge of Minecraft was needed to play.

After a turn everyone was on board and the game ran smoothly. Junior Apprentice lost interested after a few turns and needed more coaching, so the age description of 8+ is probably fair, though I could see younger kids staying the course and enjoying it in the 4+ range. Our game took 35 minutes or so, and was pleasurable. The only really slow part was the need to reshuffle the mining cards into five new piles when the discard pile was full. 

The special abilities were interesting, although they could become potentially abusive if someone in a group is prone to power-gaming or jerk-like play. That said, none totally block a player (you can only lose half a turn) and the ones that have milling effects on the card stacks don’t really benefit the player too much, so I think the game looks balanced. It was quick and fun. It could have replay value, but unlike other games we’ve tried this year (Forbidden Island, Castle Panic, Dominion) this didn’t produce a burning need to replay.

That said, this game is better than I expected it to be and won me over. If you have kids who like Minecraft, this is a nice way to get them at a table and a good, quick game. It's also playable without an adult and so is useful to kids beyond the "family" context of this review.

Two Stars

*like seeing a Star Wars, Star Trek, or Lord of the Rings film with me. I’m too “in universe” and so get grumpy about things some of the audience won’t care about. I’m still pissed about those elves showing up at Helm’s Deep.