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Character Advancement and Experience

Points
by Nathan | Jul 4, 2016 | Rules | 6 comments

Currently, the FU rules do not provide details on advancement through experience points,

instead suggesting to change descriptors and make adjustments to characters in a more ad-
hoc manner. It is a small step, however, to reward play with experience points and tie this to
character change or development.

Introducing experience points (XP) to games of FU is straightforward. You will need to come
up with a list of things that characters (and/or players) earn XP for, and then a way for
players to spend this experience.

What will earn XP?

Games have di erent expectations for both character action and player interaction
depending on the theme, tone, genre and a variety of other factors. A good XP system will
reward preferred actions in order to encourage players to behave in the desired manner.

When determining what things will earn XP in your own games, take into account what your
story is about, the desired interactions of players and the frequency of such events.
What is important in your game/story?
The rst thing you need to do is decide what kinds of actions, activities or interactions you
want to promote in your games. Experience points are a reward for playing in a particular
way, so you need to know the expectations. I would make a short list of what the game is
“about”. Is your game, at its core, about killing monsters, solving puzzles, defending the weak
from dastardly villains or stopping nefarious organisations from destroying the world?
Maybe its about exploring relationships, amassing wealth, or learning the truth of a
particular time, place or event.

Whatever you decide your game is about, make a short list of 1 – 3 things that you would
expect characters to do or achieve during their adventures.

What player behaviour do you want to reward?

Experience points can also be used to reward player action as well as character action. This is
the reward for “good roleplaying” or “staying in character”, but might also extend beyond
that, too.

Add to your list any speci c behaviours you want to promote. This might be “roleplay”, or
just “participate” or even a bonus for the person who brings the snacks!

Estimate the frequency of these achievements

Make an estimate of how often characters/players will achieve each thing on your list. Some
stu you would expect to happen every time you play a session, while others will only occur
every couple of sessions or at the end of a dramatic and exciting adventure. It is good to
have a variety on your list so players have something to work towards and strive for.

Example XP Lists
Here are some ideas for experience rewards to get you started. Personally, I would look to
use 2 – 4 items from the Generic XP rewards list and then add a number of genre / story
speci c rewards. In total, aim for about ve items that can earn a character XP.

Generic XP rewards:

Participation – thanks for playing, here’s some XP!

Overcoming a major challenge – defeating a “big boss” or some other major obstacle
Goals – successfully achieving one or more group / party goals
Drives – pursuing and/or achieving a personal goal
Weakness – a personal weakness or aw causes signi cant trouble
Catering – bringing the Mountain Dew and other munchies this week

Fantasy Dungeon Delve:

 Defeating a mighty foe – you killed the beast, so reap the reward! (Decide if it has to be
the killing blow, or if everyone who participates gets the reward.)
Carousing – spending all your wealth on living large (great for sword and sorcery games!)
Liberating the treasure – when you nd a mighty treasure, whether it is a relic,
culturally signi cant or just a huge pile of gold

Super Heroes:

Defend the weak – you protect the weak and innocent from harm, at great personal cost
Innovation – you use a super power in a unique or surprising way to overcome an
obstacle
Team-up – you have con ict with a character before nding common ground and teaming
up
Justice – you do the right thing, but at great personal cost

Space Opera:

Go boldly – you discover an important location/civilisation

The Directive – you overcome a potentially hostile challenge without resorting to
violence
One purpose – you have a meaningful connection with another character

Earning that experience

When your XP list is created, communicate it clearly to all players. Perhaps you discussed it
as a group as it was  created (great idea!), but if not, ensure everyone knows the kinds of
things that will earn their character XP.

At the end of each session of play reward characters with experience points. Give a
character one experience point for each item on the list they achieved. It is important to be
clear before play about whether actions are individual, or if everyone in the party gets the
reward for doing something. An e ective list will have some “whole group” reward
opportunities along with individual rewards.

Only award each item once per session. It doesn’t matter how many “major challenges” a
group overcame, or the number of times they actually did the required action, each XP can
only be earned once per session.

Here is my list for a game of pulp adventure:

Participation – thanks for playing, here’s some XP!

Overcoming a major challenge – defeating a “big boss” or some other major obstacle
Drives – pursuing and/or achieving a personal goal
Stunts – using the environment in an interesting way to overcome an obstacle
Exploration – when you discover something important about the supernatural world
The Overcoming a major challenge and Exploration rewards are given to the whole group
when such an event occurs, while the others are individual rewards. My expectation is that
Participation and Stunts will be rewarded every session, while Drives, Exploration and the
Overcoming reward will be given as they occur.

Spending those experience points

Players may spend their XP at the end of a session of play. Every N experience points will
“buy” one advance for a character. What N is equal to depends on your group and the rate of
advancement is really up to how quickly you want to see characters improve. Personally, I’m
happy to see some movement every two or three sessions, so set N to equal 10XP, but you
might want to make this number lower or higher.

Advances
When a player spends N XP they get an advance. One advance will let a player add a single
new element to their character. This might be:

A new descriptor
Unlock a single meta-tag for a pre-existing trademark (if using trademarks)
A new item of gear
An additional drive
Some other signi cant new feature of the character

Depending upon the game you are playing there might be other ways to improve a
character.

Balance
Keep a record of how many advances a character has achieved. If a character has
signi cantly less advances than other players, consider giving them a bonus FU point at the
start of a game session. What constitutes “signi cantly less” is going to depend on whether it
is just one character behind the rest, or if there is a spread and so game masters are
encouraged to test things out. I would consider if a character has less than half the number of
advances of the most experienced character they should be given a bonus FU point.

Groups might decide to cap the maximum number of advances a character can have. After
six or so advances they will have a very large number of descriptors/meta-tags/gear with
which to overcome challenges and things may begin to become very predictable. This does
depend on choices the player makes and how narrow or broad they make their choices and
therefore every group will be di erent.

 
There you have it – introducing experience points to your
games of FU. What do you think? Do you already use XP, is it
 something you might use, or do you just “hand wave” it all
anyway?
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6 Comments
Tina on July 6, 2016 at 12:55 pm

I like it! I’ve previously tried to do this (in my Mouse Guard hack) with
accumulated FU points because I didn’t want to track so much stu . But
simply tabulating everything at the end of the session shouldn’t be too much
bookkeeping, I think, and reminds me of the mechanism used in Blades in the
Dark. I seem to remember that you’re a Blades backer, so I’m guessing it may
have been some inspiration?

Other thinks I’d like to try porting over from Blades in the Dark are progress
clocks ( lling in a segment on No, and; Yes, but until e.g. the guards arrive) and
the Flashback mechanism. I would use this similar to creating an advantage in
FATE, so you state some fact that you want to make true retrospectively (“well
of course I planted a concealed dagger here!” or “It turns out I happen to know
about programming robots because I’ve smuggled some in the past…” and the
GM decides how plausible this is and gives you a FU point cost (at least 1) you
need to pay to make it true (and maybe ask you to roll to see how well it
turned out).

Reply

Nathan on July 7, 2016 at 6:47 am

I was totally inspired by Dungeon World for this, which is based on

Apocalypse World, which is the basis of (wait for it…) Blades in the
Dark! So yes, you are absolutely correct!
To be honest, Dungeon World is currently my gaming crush. It takes
the wonderful Apocalypse World engine and presents it in a manner
that was far more accessible to me than the original AW rules were.
For the guys I currently play with it is a great balance between the
crunch they like and the very exible story-driven play that I enjoy.
Dungeon World did dump some of the cool Apocalypse World features
(like progress clocks) which I am now exploring in more detail through
games like Blades. It’s a crazy circle.

Tina on July 15, 2016 at 11:02 pm

I also couldn’t quite get into Vincent Baker’s writing in AW, but have
found Avery Alder’s Monsterheart to be an excellent intro to PbtA
games, even more so than DW. I may never play in this teen monster
setting, but it’s extremely accessible in its explanations of moves and
freeform roleplaying in general.

Nathan on July 15, 2016 at 11:16 pm

I’ve not read Monster Hearts, but might have to check it out!
 Rafael Carrasco on July 1, 2018 at 4:47 am

Hi! I’m new to FU (haven’t played it yet, but really itching to), and I’m trying to
update myself about these new rules — all of which I nd amazing. I just had
an idea and want to share it: what if a player can spend XP in order to buy
new trademarks? Suppose for example the trademark Mage. If this character
has enough XP, he could be able to buy the Fighter trademark, and be
something like a D&D multiclass.

If this idea works, another change is that maybe some trademarks could
demand that you possess a certain number of meta-tags in a given trademark.
For instance, to buy Legendary Mage the character has to posses every regular
Mage meta-tag. This complicates things a lot, because it will be harder to
come with trademarks and meta-tags on the y, but I believe some groups
would enjoy using a pre-de ned set of Trademarks.

Other example, to be an Ancient Cainite, you have to have two Ancillae meta-
tags, which requires two Neonate meta-tags.

Reply

Nathan on July 1, 2018 at 8:36 am

Hey Rafael! Thanks for the feedback. I think if players and game
masters are willing to spend some time “building” prede ned sets of
Trademarks and meta-tags, this could work well. In fact, the original
idea partly came from a desire to convey unique settings to players
through pre-built Trademarks.
My gut feeling for having pre-requisites in order to take a new
Trademark is you need 2 out of the 4 listed or some such. This will still
give a player exibility to make the character their own.
I hope you get to play FU soon! I would highly recommend playing the
“basic” rules to see how it goes, maybe with just one or two added bits
from this website. The original rules are very smooth and elegant (if I
say so myself!).
Let me know how your games go!

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