Willow's Roleplay Perks Guide #1: Experience & Leveling Systems

[Absyinthe_Artica]

[bg=#2A734F]Introduction To Roleplay Perks[/bg]

• Welcome to a continuous series of workshops that center around how to spice up your forum role-play with various perks. In today's workshop, we will be discussing about using experience points and leveling systems and how you can easily incorporate them into a forum based role-play. All questions and suggestions are welcome for this series!
  
• I have found, in my time as a GM, that roleplay perks such as a Leveling & Experience Points system, help keep long-standing interest in the roleplay. To move onto the next level, your player's will need to gain a certain amount of experience points(usually number values). Each level should have some form of incentive for the player to want to level up. This could be anything from a slot in their inventory, to a rare item in the world of the roleplay.
  
• Usually, I have seen this system work well in any type of fantasy role-play. One in which it allows the Player Character to earn unique items and skills that will aid them in furthering the plot. However, action and adventure roleplays are quite compatible with this system as well. I believe that any roleplay that is capable of incorporating incentives for leveling up, and offering IC tasks to earn experience points will have an easy time using this system. This system is better for group roleplays mostly. One x One's tend to be all powerful in respects and the character's could easily already be an experienced person in the world. With this system you are aiming for a lot of character development, by starting the player character's off at a low level they have plenty of time to learn about who they are and what their purpose is in the plot of your role-play.

[bg=#2A734F]Experience Points[/bg]

• For a forum based roleplay, I find it best to have the player's gain experience by their posts. By setting certain IC tasks to gain a set amount of experience points, you will allow the character plenty of ways to level up. In the beginning, the GM can set how many experience points you get per general character post. I would generally keep this experience gain small, as it will happen often . In my belief, player's shouldn't level up too often because once they hit a certain level, it can potentially make the character too powerful in the role-play. I feel that if one character is all powerful, it can lead to several chances for god-modding, auto-hitting, and so on. However, this is just my opinion, if you feel like you want the high levels in your role-play, by all means you can allow the players to gain levels quickly. I just feel that slower character progression can lead to a lot of development for the role-play plot. What I mean by general character posts is a post that does not include the character doing something like an occupation, event, or other important situations.(These situations would be key points in furthering the plot of the role-play.) However, these general posts will consist of idle living the character does daily.
  
• Let's say, I have set general character posts to 10 EXP. This is the type of post you would make to gain this amount: " Elizabetha stood closely to her vanity, with the gold plated brush in her palm. She squinted hard into the mirror before running the bristles through her blonde hair. She was eager to attend the ball later on that week, but her hair was so unruly because of the weather, she dare say she shouldn't attend. "
  
• Something pretty vague in events, but normal life that would happen in a more humanoid roleplay. These posts would not be important to the main plot of the roleplay but perhaps important to the player character, instead. This would also include non-specific dialogue as well, and example of this could be: "The two girls sat next to each other as they held their lunch trays. Amy turned towards her new friend and spoke, "Well, I hope you are enjoying the new weather here. Was your move tough?" Sarah, the new girl at Royale High, bit her lip and nodded shyly at Amy. "Yes, the packages were so heavy." She half smiled and ate her pizza."
  
• We could say the main plot of this example is to become prom king or queen at Royale high. This dialogue has nothing to do with that, so it belongs in the general character post category.

[bg=#2A734F]Leveling Systems[/bg]

• Depending on your role-play, you can start your characters at a lower level or a higher one. I feel as though if you had tougher situations, you would want experienced characters going into your roleplay. This would allow for higher leveling throughout the plot. However, I feel as though lower leveling will allow for plenty of character development for the plot. I suggest that the beginning level should not include any additional special rewards. When the character(s) gain enough experience to the next level, they should be rewarded somehow. This reward is entirely up to the GM, however, in later workshops I will discuss the perks that can correspond to how you reward the characters for leveling up.
  
• In this series, I will explain how each level up can be enjoyable and beneficial for spicing up your role-play. To give you a hint to the future, there will be; classes, knowledge & ability points, occupations, inventory slots, and much more!

• In this series, I will discuss all about how each level up can be enjoyable and beneficial for spicing up your role-play. To give you a hint to the future, there will be; classes, knowledge & ability points, occupations, inventory slots, and much more!

[bg=#2A734F]Extra Information[/bg]

Do you need some where to keep your character's information organized? Well look no more! I am offering my coding services for free to any of you who were kind enough to read this workshop. I can make your character profiles themed and custom made for any and all of your characters! Just let me know if you need my services.

 

[Kestrel]

My main question here is... Why?

Welcome to a continuous series of workshops that center around how to spice up your forum role-play with various perks. In today's workshop we will be discussing all about using experience points and leveling systems and how you can easily incorporate them into a forum based role-play. All questions and suggestions are welcome for this series!

What are the perks of experience and levelling systems? What kind of RP is it a good fit for? What kind of RP doesn't match?

For a forum based roleplay, I find it best to have the player's gain experience by their posts.

Why? Is this a fair way of distributing points? Does every player post equally often? Can every player post equally often? Should you enforce posting rules?

I would generally keep this experience gain small, as it will happen often.

See, this is a step in the right direction. However, the question then becomes; why shouldn't people level up often?

What I mean by general character posts is a post that does not include the character doing something like an occupation, event, or other important situations. These posts will consist of idle living the character does daily.

Give examples of posts that should be awarded with experience. Be more concrete. This is very vague and positive examples are far more effective than negative ones.

As the character(s) gain experience through posting, you the GM will need to set how much it will take to gain a level. I suggest as the levels get higher, so should the amount of experience needed to reach them.

Why? What purpose does this serve? Doesn't this depend on the effect of levelling? Like if you can gain one strength per post, while keeping the same amount of posts required to level up, every level up is going to be worth less than the previous because of scaling. Going from 1 to 2 is a 100% increase, 2 to 3 a 50% increase. At 10 to 11 you're looking at a 10% increase.

When starting your role-play, you'll want to decide whether the character(s) will start out at level 0 or Level 1.

Why? What is the difference between zero and one? What does level zero mean? You're an average citizen who never held a sword in his hand? You are still an apprentice swordsman? You are a swordsman who has never seen battle? What about replacing swordsman with baker, for some kind of coffeeshop RP. How likely is it that a coffeeshop will hire ~4 new characters at level zero of experience?

I know you want to elaborate later on, but there is such a lack of actual content that I don't think this guide will help anyone at all. You really want to elaborate and give this some meat, because if I were looking to learn about levelling systems, this doesn't give me incentive to wait for your next guide. This barely even makes the cut for an introduction. I know I sound mean and I can see you put a lot of effort into the formatting, but I think you should really look back and think of what you want to convey to your readers.

 

[Absyinthe_Artica]

Thank you for the insightful feedback, Kestrel. I have updated the guide. Hopefully it is more clear, this time!~