A small houserule at my tables is concerning the uses for XP arose since my players often end up with a lot of projects (and wanton XP), but not a lot of time. EDIT: So I’ve been letting players spend XP in exchange for LTP ticks on a 1-for-1 basis.
Observations: This has a side effect of slowing advancement in favor of a surplus in stuff – basically adding another angle of play (“I benefited from my time training by making headway on personal projects instead of personal training”).
Thoughts?
Makes sense to me.
In D&D I always found it jarring how “character advancement” happened when you leveled up and got new spell slots, abilities, skills etc. – but most of the time you’re playing session after session and accumulating XP without levelling up. During that time period, there’s no real way to increase your PCs abilities – except by collecting items. So, unsurprisingly, searching for loot – especially magic weapons – is a large part of that game.
BitD is a little like that, in the sense that you can do a long term project to get or create new items, which improves the options available to that PC.
To me, it seems like spending XP to get access to that cool-new-item isn’t a problem. It lets the player pick between getting that explosives demolition pack item, or getting a higher wreck skill, with a similar mechanical (but maybe fictionally different) outcome.
I see no problem with allowing the players to decide where they want to put their xp advancements, as long as it doesn’t result in them doing an end-run around the actual RP in your game.
The idea actually came to me after noticing that projects are another mechanism to gaining abilities and upgrades, so I figured why not let XP be spent on either as well?
re: “end-run around the actual RP”
Yea, one way I ensure the fiction doesn’t get skipped is that it only improves the results of a roll (which requires action).
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Works well if the crew is aiming for retirement and want to stash it away quick
hmmm… 1 coin can earn you 2XP if you have the crew training upgrade… that’s the only potential for trouble I see
Elaborate please Bryan Lotz 1 coin can do this regardless of what I did (I didn’t mess with how coin works). I guess you mean I make some aspect of that worse from what I am doing, but I must be missing it
Sounds like an interesting tweak. What sort of fictional effect would this have? If XP equals character effort/investment, perhaps it represents the character putting more of herself into the project so that it completes faster. Maybe she’s burning the candle at both ends to meet her deadline, or going undercover to find out exactly how extensive the Bluecoat’s intelligence network is, etc. I’d like this to have an impact on the story rather than just a purely mechanical effect.
Well… you can turn 1 coin into 2XP… and then with your house rule, then turn that 2XP into two upgrades on a downtime action… when 1 coin would normally only buy 1. It’s not without limit… you can only train any given XP track once per downtime… and you need the crew upgrade to get the 2XP… Maybe all that is OK, but it’s an additional, unintended shift to the coin/rep/xp/downtime action/etc. to keep in mind.
It’s worth noting I later changed this houserule so they can do this transfer whenever makes fictional sense (usually downtime, but perhaps freeplay). So now my players spend XP earned on LTP ticks on a 1-for-1 basis.
They just spend them there as they want after they have them. And what you describe, Bryan, is still possible. I actually don’t care to avoid that. This is meant to be a headnod to the fact that LTPs are a lot like XP tracks, since they are called out in the text as a way for players to get whatever they want (including things XP would usually buy), even if that circumvents the rules. So I don’t really care if they can get 2 ticks for a coin instead of 1 for a coin if they have the appropriate upgrade. They earned this benefit and what I am doing doesn’t make it any worse.