Most RPG Systems have a method of ‘getting better’. After some time playing as the person they established at the beginning of a game, change happens to that character. Be it spending some points, picking specific upgrades, rolling against used stats or adding a level in some class or other with preset choices, most games are designed to mechanically chart the change in a hero. Have we ever looked at why this set of mechanics exists? What we are doing when we level up, and why it is important to think about?
Join me for a deeper look at Advancement so we too can level up our knowledge and reach advancement of our own.
Following The Fiction
From a fiction perspective, when we level up, we’re serving what we all feel should happen from observation: a person doing a thing lots of times gets better at it. While in real life it might be more complex than, say, adding a set level just like everyone else, we’re trying to mimic that fact to model a part of real life into a game.
But we’re also serving the fiction we are taking part in. D&D gives us levels this way because part of its core identity, like the fantasy stories it apes, is the journey ‘from zero to hero’. Some games opt for a more granular experience of advancement, allowing players to spend points where they wish. Those games are less concerned with a rocket-like progression, instead being interested in how a character changes as specific choices about where those points go are altered.
Some games struggle here. I have loved Mutants & Masterminds for years, but it always seems like the few points they give you here and there are only really top-ups, or suddenly allow you to create new random powers. But this is an issue with superhero stories and advancement. Wolverine or Superman are basically the same as they were when they were designed years ago. They might go through periods of changing something about them radically for a while as the story demands, but eventually they’ll revert to their archetype. This means that games based on supers have to struggle with advancement, they have to both meet radical redesign when a story demands it (Gambit is a Horseman of Apocalypse now? Ok, how does that look mechanically?) or remain unchanging and still provide…something.
But in that case, why bother with advancement at all? In those cases, shouldn’t we just say, ‘let’s just tell the story and not bother with it, the genre doesn’t reflect it’. Well, we have a problem, and that is…
The Function Of Reward
Most RPGs not only use advancement as a way of copying a genre, but also as a player reward system. I’ve seen it, that dopamine hit of getting a level or a few more points. It’s a sort of validation moment. ‘I have been playing this game correctly!’ And players will chase those improvements. The PBTA movement has kind of shown that if nothing else, we can sort of condition people to make a bad choice if advancement is granted through it. Those games are like a feedback loop of ‘generate drama, gain advancement, deal with problem, status quo returns, repeat’.
What I’m saying is that people expect to gain advancement. They’re playing a game that in theory, nobody can win. Sometimes survival isn’t enough of a reward; we need to feel like this story is Going Somewhere. As humans, we can see that a plot is progressing through change, and sometimes the most concrete example of change is my mobility stat going from 2 to 3.
So we just need to keep advancing in most games. Those games that ignore it usually tag a negative mention in any review of them. If people can’t see a way to change, there better be a reason. So do we just hand out advancement like candy as often as possible? Well, it really depends on another thing.
Escalation Limiting
We can all agree that if, on day one of a Dungeons & Dragons campaign, each player can take on a dragon alone, the game is fairly different, and our planning is a lot different to that of a group of level 1 PCs who nearly die in a tavern bar fight.
What we have here is an example of purposeful limiting of story escalation. Sometimes, as GMs, we just want the players to have to deal with a warband of orcs in the local area and struggle against it, not just be like ‘We’ve got this’ and steamroll the bad guys in a couple of combat rounds. Instead, we want them to have to stop and think their way around a problem. We know as a runner of the game that this is going to be a more memorable adventure.
What stops players from being able to just choose to solve a problem every time, if often the advancement track? It allows us to understand that there’s an escalation of threat that the players can comfortably deal with and pitch the game at that. I’m not talking about fair encounter balance, but I am talking about what we can expect players to judge as something they need to get help from, rather than meet head-on. My vampire players, for example, might be able to gain enough advancement to catch some established vampires off guard with new discipline powers, but they know to take out an elder, they’re gonna either need to play for a hella long time, or think up something very clever.
It’s another reason superhero stories often suffer. Often, even Hawkeye can keep up with Thor in the same story against Eldritch horrors and that ‘appropriate escalation of threat’ doesn’t really happen. You are able to fix the problem from day one in a lot of supers games. It’s about how and where that problem gets solved. By contrast, in Mork Borg-based games, it’s possible you can get worse. It’s interested in letting you get more powerful, but only so much more powerful. Those aren’t games about how you become world shapers.
So clarity about this is often important to spell out to players. In a recent Dungeons & Dragons game, I explained to the players that I’m unlikely to go beyond level 8. I have a story I want to tell, and I’m delivering it as is. This has allowed me as a GM to know I don’t need to escalate the story any further, and my players to understand that this isn’t going to keep spiralling upwards into a universe-destroying threat like my high-level ending games. We all feel like we know how far our advancement is going to go and how high we are going to climb. As I’ve mentioned before in my ‘Spoiler Police’ article, sometimes knowing a destination can make it fun to fill in the blanks about how we get there.
I think it’s worth including a little bit about advancement mechanics in any session zero document you’re writing out for a group. Explaining that in Call Of Cthulhu you’re going to get progressively worse while sharpening a few specific skills or how in Feng Shui we’ve uncoupled player action from advancement by making it more like a game element are totally worth making clear.
Just thinking and talking with your group about expectations around advancement and escalation can save you a lot of problems later on and allow you to plot where everything is going while keeping your players happy, they’re in the loop. I hope this discussion of advancement helped you understand and look at what you’re doing in your game and make choices for your group.
Creative Commons image credits: Dwarf by ncorva, Zimbabwean Superhero by JamesMagwenzi, and Chinese Dragon by arvalis.
