Character Advancement as Story

The role of game designers? Obviously, to design a fun experience.

What happens when they fail? Obviously, a game that isn't fun anymore. We had this problem with D&D 4, and it shook our trust in games from big publishers. The game was great in some ways, but in others they let excess, bloat, and repetition ruin the game. And the bad parts outweighed the good. I flip through page after page of the same magic item, +1 to +6, one or two abilities each, a few of them the only good ones, and ask myself why?

D&D 4 was a card game printed in book format and it sucked. The tactical battle chess parts we loved.

I had this article this week where it felt too negative, so I kept rewriting it, but the problem wasn't one particular game or one feature, I felt it was more a systemic problem with the empowerment of those who play the game - versus the control the game designers exert over players. This isn't within the game as characters, but in a larger sense as players outside the game and our ability to change and improve the game.

With commercial games under closed licenses, you are stuck buying a new version of the books every couple years giving the game designers "another chance" to get it right this time. Or to simply "refresh mechanics." You are very much in a Mac/Windows situation, where the companies can drop support for hardware, force you to buy new hardware, change things at-will and invalidate characters, control the multi-player experience, and own exclusive access to the official rules.

Yes, third party publishers fill a lot of the gaps, but they are still dependent on the core game not breaking features for their products to still work correctly a few years down the road. Third-party products are also hard to sell at times to those unfamiliar, so I feel they are a patch to broken designs at best.

B/X is Linux

And Linux/Unix is great. Just ask your phone. Or iOS. Or cloud services. Or anything except Windows, but even they have made some great steps towards integrating, so props to their team for making things work together.

B/X is like the Unix/Linux world. You are free to switch distributions at any time. Anyone can come up with something. You are free to come up with your own system. You can make it as compatible or not with other B/X material, your choice. If a version of B/X goes "stale" (whatever that means) you can switch to another, but honestly, there is nothing stopping you from playing and enjoying something that isn't the "hot new!"

My Labyrinth Lord books are still good 20 years from now, just as fun, just as interesting, and they still work. Yes, Old School Essentials is the cool new kid on the block and I love that game, but there is room for everyone and honestly, no one really gets left out. I could take a character from either game and get them working in another in about 5 minutes, the monsters and magic items at 99% compatible, and the adventures just work as-is, with possibly a few very small tweaks here and there.

Mind you older versions of copyrighted games still work 20 years from now, but they will be forever locked in the same state. New content difficult to produce and acquire, updates and other creations near impossible, and remixes out of the question. As a matter of choice I prefer supporting open games with open publishing licenses when I have a choice, but there are some exceptions.

I feel B/X is a good thing for the hobby as a whole, even for the big commercial games, because it keeps people from dropping off the map and quitting pen-and-paper games entirely if they are not interested in the big publisher games. It sustains a lot of interest in the market interested in free and experimental gaming. A rising tide lifts all boats.

Big Box Classes

Here is where my thoughts take a huge swerve, and this is what I was having trouble with. Games, especially ones with "big box" character classes designed by the game design teams, run into a lot of post-launch issues. I remember the Pathfinder 1e rogue and the D&D 5 ranger being the "least exciting" classes to play, and those class getting entirely redesigned during the game's release cycle to "patch" them.

Supposedly, hundreds of thousands of people play-tested these games - and those classes - before release? That is what I see in the marketing material. Why weren't these issues caught, or were they late-game problems that were never really play-tested all that well? There is probably a thousand reasons why and this isn't a road I want to go down with my thinking, to be honest.

And also, play-testing the high-level games of any major commercial release - even in the MMO world - is never an easy or certain thing. If there is one thing about the playtesting the marketers tout, it is probably 90% done at the lower levels and very lightly where it matters most - the highest endgame levels.

And then I recently got this book:

This is the B/X Options book that lets you custom design character classes for all B/X style games. This is a great tool, and it even has a ton of classes designed with plenty of variants to keep a group interested for a good long time. I see this book as one of my essential books when playing Old School Essentials, either Basic or Advanced, since it gives me the tools to custom hack a class, give a player uninterested in the selection a few more options, or build a new class for an NPC just for fun.

I love the book, I love the toolbox it gives me, and this is going to be a keeper and highly recommended to anyone interested in B/X gaming. But this is also a book that got my interest in GURPS or Hero System 6th Edition rekindled.

I know, but you love this book, why switch?

I get this feeling where if I am finding myself having to design rigid character classes to fit my archetype characters, or changing my characters to fit a character class, something bigger is wrong here.

Point Buy Systems

Why design classes? With GURPS or Hero System, I get XP, and I directly spend those points on powers, abilities or skills as I level. I am not "pre designing" my experience as I level and running the risk my design sucks at level 20 and is unfun to play.

I know, these are closed systems for the most part, and I am still looking for that mythical point-buy creation and improvement open license game. I have not found it yet. So for now, GURPS and Hero System are good choices for me and have a lot of content to play with.

If my character starts out a rogue, sneaks into a wizard school and impersonates a student, learns magic, goes on a long boat trip, ends up shipwrecked on a desert island and has to be a survivor, ends up being a barbarian freedom fighter for local tribes after they learn their homeland was an evil empire, plays noble pirate for a while raising the evil empire's shipping, learns shamanistic spirit magic from the lizardfolk tribes, and returns to their home kingdom as an ambassador for the new world and negotiates a peace treaty as a diplomat...well, that is my character class when all is said and done.

That character is a mess, but they are a mess written by an interesting story, and they reflect their experiences in who they are. Their skills, powers, and abilities are all reflected by their background, and as I played them, that unique experience of "who they are" is directly reflected on that character sheet.

Does multiclassing do that well? Rogue 2/Wizard 3/Naturalist 3/Barbarian 2/Pirate 4/Shaman 3/ Diplomat 3? A level 20 character that could never negotiate with a pure level 20 Diplomat, or even a level 10 one. Then again, in a world that is changing and reflecting people's diverse backgrounds and cultures, why limit ourselves to "one set path in life" and tell ourselves "a game designer's intentions have decided who we are and what we will be before we explore the world and find ourselves?"

I wish B/X had point-buy character advancement.

Character Advancement as Story

I like it when a story shapes the character's development rather than the other way around. I feel if a class limits the character's story, we have a fundamental problem. At least in how I want to play solo games and sustain my interest in them. I do admit when I am playing with others, classes are a shortcut that directs people's roles around a table and brings some order to the chaos.

But when playing solo, part of the unknown for me lies in character advancement. I don't want to know what path they take, and I want that to change depending on the direction I take. As the fog of war of the character's future is revealed as I play, and I have no idea where they are going.

I don't get that in games with classes, B/X, Pathfinder, or D&D. For the most part, I know how their character is growing in skills, abilities, and powers. Multiclassing is my only option for change in the character's future, and that is a sub-optimal solution.

When I am in a game where something different happens, and my character has to buy new skills and powers to do well in this new situation, I never expected that. My road warrior needs to be a mechanic. My astronaut needs to be a medic. My ranger needs to be a wizard. Can they with their current ability scores? What do they need to do to make it happen? Is there a build that enhances what they already do?

I am surprised, my build is organic and fluid, and the story is reflected in the final character. I still like my B/X games with classes, and those are wonderful, tight, Monopoly-like designs and fun packages. For stories I tell solo, I like systems that give me complete control over my character's past, present, and future.