Alternate Play-Styles

How about this, instead of earning just UP in a game, you also have the option of leveling up your cards as you go. People would have a character deck that wouldn't exceed 40 cards, and for players to employ higher level abilities, they have to invest time and energy into leveling them up. This way you can have 100 UP characters all around the board and even if they all had the same character deck, they'd all be totally different! While one character could take the UP and have tons of low-level powers, you could have one character with very little UP but high level abilities.

The idea comes up as a limiter for tactical players. Will you upgrade your spell or your soul? Also, it's kind of strange that folks tend to always be the same UP. What happens when a runt enters your game or if you encounter a tough beastie? With planned leveling players will hopefully be more aware of their cards and what they can do.

I'm not really following your example - how is it different from a regular game?

Also, you said:
"Also, it's kind of strange that folks tend to always be the same UP."

This, I think, is only the case of con games, to keep things on the level. In my home game, folks have vastly different UP, as I reward folks for doing things in game, such as role-playing, power-usage, cool combos, etc.

Ok, let's put it this way.

Frank and Fred both have Lesser Regeneration 1. After an event, Frank and Fred both gain a reward. Frank decides to take the UP reward, and Fred decides to forego the UP to ALLOW his Lesser Regeneration 1 to be Lesser Regeneration 2. So Frank has more UP to spend, but Fred can activate Lesser Regeneration 2 while Frank cannot.

Basically, if you want to be able to use more advanced forms of the abilities you already have, you have to earn them.

Wouldn't Frank just be able to buy lesser regen 2 with the UP if he wanted?

Seriostar said:
"Wouldn't Frank just be able to buy lesser regen 2 with the UP if he wanted?"

Right - that's my whole point. :P

But the limiter would be that higher level skills have to be earned. This is an alternate play-style so these aren't the standard rules. Basically you can HAVE any initial level skill, but players aren't allowed to equip the upgraded version of it until they earn it. Sort of like an exceptional emphasis on the story swap idea.

Let me point out again. This is alternate play-styles so the goal is to think of how to play the game without going by the basic rules supplied. Mine is a mild deviation but you could go so far as to turn Untold into a kind of poker game.

OH! I get it now.

So the basic idea is UP can be used to buy powers but not upgrade them.

I think you may have the idea reversed? Here, I'll just show you next time we hang out. It's not a hard concept, but it doesn't really seem to be hitting home.

Although what you're thinking could be fun too.

Yeah, that would probably be best. I'll see you tomorrow probably.

Ok, so essentially what you are saying is that in your alternate play style, players can keep earning UP until they die, but you can only add new, low level powers. You cannot upgrade your current powers unless you opt to not earn the UP at some point and instead opt to upgrade one power from say level 1 to level 2. Am I understanding that correctly?

If you understand it correct then he misunderstood my understanding of it, so let's find out :P

LOL! I was just curious about what he was thinking. But he gave me a great idea for a really cool alternate style of play that Ben thinks might be fun to try out.

What is it?

I'll try to explain this as best I can, and this may be what M3 was trying to say, and if so, I apologize, I wasn't trying to steal his idea.

Essentially, everyone would start out at the same UP (we'll use 15 UP as the example) and Level 1, which means you can now use all Level 1 powers and abilities. If you want to move up and use Level 2 powers, you will have to pay (we'll say 10 UP, but this is just an example). So after you've earned, say 5 UP, so you now have 20 UP, you can say that you want to spend 10 UP to UPgrade your character to Level 2, so now all Level 1 and Level 2 powers and abilities are open to you. But you only have 10 UP to spend since you gave up 10 UP to open up the Level 2 powers.

Essentially, everyone starts out at the same UP and the same Level. As you earn UP, you can use it to buy powers so you can keep adding Level 1 powers to your character. Or, you can spend UP (that you cannot get back) to open up higher levels for your character. This would open up new powers and abilities as well as allow you to UPgrade current powers and abilities (or Aspects). To play this way, you would simply need to set the point cost of opening up a new level for each character and keep track of what level your character is at, which can be done on your QRC somewhere.

It might be kind of a fun twist on what powers and abilities your character has available to it. It would be hard for the powers that are currently only available at high levels. But I think it could be done and might actually be kind of fun for a new twist to a new game. Kind of like advanced playing for advanced players.

That would make things interesting.

LOL! I would say so, since everyone would start the same, but everyone would spend their points differently, allowing them to level UP or add cards. And since how people gain UP varies, no one would stay the same for long. A Level 20 Churl with only 30 points to spend might be in the same game as a level 5 Klik with 120 points to spend.

I have the feeling that I would actually be in that game as the klik and my friend, Will, would be the Churl lol.

Are you a fellow Klik lover? Tripod or Roller?

I enjoy the Rollers. I need to experiment with the other classes though. If we play it this weekend I probably will try out a L'na of some sort.

Dovebear got what I was trying to say, but I like her play-style suggestion better.

I actually did understand you then, I just didn't relay it correctly then. :)

I'll see you tonight k

Here's an idea I've toyed around with enforcing on my group sometime. Each player gets a set number of cards (say 10) and they cannot exceed them. They may spend so much UP to exchange one of their cards for another card.

I have an interesting idea to make horror games more edgy for the heroes (and possibly increase the number of Improvised Weapon Masters in a party). Have your ammo based weapons exhaust ammo after x uses (trying to come up with a simple formula for low MAG weapons to have more ammo than high MAG ones). GM offsets with weapon caches and new Weapons strewn all throughout the map/adventure. This is for making Resident Evil type games that cause the players to make every shot count.

I would make magic have a similar energy exhaust that recharges slowly over time--if you give the players magic, anyway. ;)

So I've always felt a bit cheapened by the overcome system. I'll work and work to get someone to the helpless stage only to have them recover almost instantly. Also, all (that I have seen) overcomes are never higher than 20, meaning that in higher levels, even the ridiculous bane-inducing powers are not a very strong investment. So, to help that, here's my alternate rules for banes and overcomes.

Mostly, the biggest issue is that fun little word 'cumulative'. As I understand the rules, this basically means that each time the player resists it, he gets a +1 to the next overcome roll. But as I said before, this makes it way too easy to recover from most banes (in my opinion) and really undoes a whole avenue of strategy. So here's how I'll likely wind up treating that word. Cumulative means what it says. The bane accumulates from use. So let's say you're hit with a power that causes immobile with an overcome of 12. You have body 2 and roll an overcome roll of 5. 5 + 2 = 7. So now the cumulative overcome is 12 - 7 or 5. After your turn, the person hits you with that power again, and it still has that overcome of twelve. 5 + 12 = 17 making the required roll be 17. It's a bit more number-crunchy but I think it works out better. There are other powers I've seen as well that have listed on the power that repeated hits increase the overcome, but it doesn't tend to be a very high number and as such a good chunk of that bonus is diminished simply from the 'cumulative' effect. However the rule is written so to plug it into this alternate style, it simple means that hitting them again can only add that much.

For example I've seen a power that causes immobile and has a base overcome of 20. For every additional hit with this power the overcome is increased by two and it's cumulative. In the alternate method of playing, this basically translates that the first hit can deliver full MAG, but hits after that can only add a maximum of two instead of full MAG.

The other bits such as 'hour' etc. can simply be read as the maximum amount of time the ability can last without being refreshed.

Then you have banes which have a straight overcome that aren't cumulative, meaning they can't be reinforced, but the afflicted player must simply make a raw overcome. A player can roll under it all they want, but since it's not cumulative, the rolls don't reduce the amount required to roll above.

The only thing I have to really figure out in terms of balance is how to make powers with ascending banes work. You could just play them out as it states I guess. It makes sense. Insanity should be harder to overcome than demented even if hit with the same power.