I have a question about Scum and Villainy. Do people think it could be used to a long term campaign? I’m thinking 3+ years? My concern is that you’re going to max out your character rather quickly.
I have a question about Scum and Villainy.
I have a question about Scum and Villainy.
I ran a vanilla blades game weekly that took over a year to max out the characters. However, you’re going to get a LOT done in that time. You may not need 3 years.
Second, the game’s about the crew more than the individual. Swap out PCs as old ones retire and work them in as treasured cameos.
Third, S&V explicitly has endgame conditions once you reach max status with a friendly faction. End on a high note!
But really I think it won’t be a problem.
I have a Blades and Apocalypse World game that are each well over a year old, almost two. AW started to see maxed out characters earlier. Blades is not even close, yet.
My fix for AW is to double (or triple) the xp needed to advance. It’d be very easy to rescale a Blades hack similarly.
I think maxing out is a problem in a long Blades games. In both of my long-running campaigns the characters started to feel stupidly overpowered once the PCs got their forth action dots in their main actions. The more crazy a character is the faster this problem starts (because of the Desperate XP). My suggestions:
-cancel forth action dots and cap them at three. three action dots is awesome as it is.
-talk to your player before the campaign about character’s death and retirement, and find ways with them to switch characters around once in a while
-late game: try to challenge your players with adversaries that are a threat even if the players don’t roll a single 1-3 result, and work with shitload of clocks to prevent them from just steamrolling any challenge with few sixs.
Roe Portal My friend is running Killjoys we’re currently playing with Gurps (ugh) and looking for a different system. We tend to play 3+ year games with mostly the same characters we stared with. I suppose I could suggest a slower xp rate.
Scott Squires That’s definitely my style too. Our group LOVES long campaigns with single characters and lots of long plot arcs and character development. Just scale your XP growth appropriately, and you’ll be fine. My rule of thumb is “make it close to impossible that anyone will ‘max out’ their character’ before we’re all old and grey.” Another thing to consider, if you’re hacking your own system, is to think about introducing multiple XP economies: low-cost, limited-impact things that players can develop quickly to feel growth, and very slow growth, long-term investments that a multi-year campaign can actually expect to see.