My rant will start with number crunching, but get into design theory and philosophy before I'm done. The part where numbers turn into theory will be marked by a picture of Odysseus amongst the stars - why, 'cause it's a picture I can conveniently upload. And it gives a visual clue to those who want to skip the parts of my rant that deal with math and the specifics of the Scion RPG experience system.
Where it begins: Some RPGs use point-based character creation systems. In the abstract, it's my preferred character gen ideology, since it gives so many options to the player. However, sometimes the execution has problems...
Often times that problem is that the system uses a different type of point for character creation and character advancement. If it was just semantics, two functionally identical points with the same name, it would be perhaps a tad silly but not troublesome. The issue comes when the points work differently.
Let's look at Scion, a game I love and am having a blast GMing/Storytelling. In Scion, you get multiple types of points. First there's "dots" that you get in various categories, such as Attributes and Epic Attributes or Boons. Then you get "bonus points" that can be used to buy things from any of those categories at the end of character creation. And later you get "experience points" at the end of each session. Even later, if you become a Demigod, you get a second round of "dots" and additional "bonus points". Dots vary by category and occasion, bonus points come in a cluster of 15, and xp arrives about 4 to 6 per session.Raising an Attribute from level 2 to 3 costs 1 dot, 4 bonus points, or 8 xp.
Raising an Attribute from level 4 to 5 also costs 1 dot or 4 bonus points, or it costs 16 xp.
Note that it's the same cost in dots or bonus points, but double the cost in xp.
Conclusion #1: Mechanically, you're encouraged to raise your most important attributes only at character creation and ascension to Demigodhood. But the attributes that only matter a little to your character concept you can put at really low during character creation and then bump up to mid-level with xp.
Conclusion #2: Effectively you get a price break if you focus heavily at character creation and then use xp to just cover your self-inflicted weaknesses. If you had to choose between having three attributes at 2, 2 and 5 or having them both all at level 3, you're better off going with 2, 2, and 5. It will save you xp in the long run.
Epic Attributes do the same thing:
Epic level 0 to 1 costs 1 dot, 4 - 5 bonus points, or 8 - 10 xp
Epic level 1 to 2 costs 1 dot, 4 - 5 bonus points, or 4 - 5 xp.
Epic level 2 to 3 costs 1 dot, 4 - 5 bonus points, or 8 - 10 xp.
Conclusion #3: Conclusions 1 and 2 also applies to Epic Attributes.
Conclusion #4: Since getting to 1 from 0 costs more xp than getting from 1 to 2, you are also encouraged to take at least one level in any Epic you plan on ever being interested in. Doing so saves you 4-5 xp, which is about an entire session's worth.
Conclusion #5: At the end of character creation, each Epic should be rated at 0 or 3, rarely at 1, and never at 2 (0 if you'll never be interested in it, 3 if you plan to use it at all, and 1 only if you really wanted it at a 3 but ran out of points to get there).
But there's this other category of powers called Boons.
A level 1 Boon costs 1 dot, 4-5 bonus points, or 4 - 5 xp
A level 2 Boon costs 2 dots, 8-10 bonus points, or 8 - 10 xp
A level 3 Boon cost 3 dots, 12-15 bonus points, or 12 - 15 xp
Note that while dot cost remains in ratio with bonus point cost and xp cost.
Conclusion #6: Conclusions 1 through 4 don't apply to Boons. There's no way to get an effective xp break on Boons. If you had to choose between three level 1 Boons and one level 3 Boon, either is an equally good choice from a point of xp. So, you'd choose based on personal desire for one big flashy power or the versatility of multiple little powers.
Now's where it gets interesting. Epics and Boons come out of the same pool of Dots. Let's compare them:
Epic level 0 to 3 costs 3 dots, 12 - 15 bonus points, or 20 - 25 xp.
A level 3 Boon cost 3 dots, 12-15 bonus points, or 12 - 15 xp.
Note the same cost in dots or bonus points, but Epics cost nearly twice as much in xp / Boons cost just over half as much in xp.
Conclusion #7: Mechanically, your best move is to spend all those dots on Epics. Leave the Boons for your experience points later. Provided you eventually get them all to the same level, doing so saves you 8-10 xp (nearly two session's worth) for each Epic you buy at character creation instead of a Boon.
So, conclusions paraphrase: Your best call during character creation is focus on a few high Attributes and a few high Epics. Leave everything else at their starting/base level. You should never buy Boons with dots or bonus points, only with XP.
Conclusion #8 (Drawn from that paraphrase): Focused, narrowly specialized characters will eventually be much better than jack-of-all-trades generalists. They have vulnerabilities if the opening sessions of the campaign, but they will compensate for them much faster (for fewer xp) than the generalist evenly spent PC will be able to catch up with the specialists best moves and powers.
(For those who scrolled down to this picture to start, what you missed is an in-depth analysis of the Scion RPG experience and character creation systems, some quirks in said systems, and how to maximize your character by drawing conclusion from those quirks) The rest is observations, theory and philosophy...
In my experience, players will generally fall into one of three categories:
Category A: "I made those conclusions the first time I looked at the Scion rulebook. My character is all the better for it. I'm here to game."
Category B: "I made those conclusions at some point, but had a cool character concept that was fun to play even if it meant a few suboptimal decisions at character creation. I'm okay with lagging behind in XP because my character does really neat things right out of the gate and is a lot of fun to play. I'm here to roleplay."
Category C: "I'll never notice. All this math isn't my thing. I'm here to have fun."
Now, I wish everyone fell into category B. Oh, the games we'd have then! But my experience is that the real distribution amongst gamers is 45% A, 30% C, and only 25% B. And that's after years of gaming and self-selecting my gaming groups.
Back when I was in junior high, and only 3 people in town role-played, it was a very clear 33%A, 66%C, 0%B breakdown. For the record, I was group C. And when I figured out that one person in our little clique was Type A, I was pretty rude to him. "Point Weasel" was I called him, but I think "Munchkin" and "Twink" are the accepted (but no less harsh) terms these days.
But I wasn't being fair. (And wherever you are, dude, my apologies) The game system we were using had the same flaws, I just couldn't see them yet. He did, and he took advantage of it. The books were (and generally are) written to reward you for figuring out the math behind the systems, but that math is almost never (in the books) put into language that could possibly make a Type C player get it. That language, in Scion, would have been something along the lines of my 8 conclusions, above. Just conclusion #8 and the paraphrase directly preceeding it would have done it. 2 extra paragraphs added to a 330-page book would have benefited hundreds of gamers.
The same thing is what contributes to the main criticisms of D&D 3.x and the OGL. All those feats and prestige classes and 3rd-party supplements mean you min-max and penny-pinch or tweak your character for days.
The Category A's think there's nothing wrong with it, and the rulebooks clearly agree with them. For a subset of this Category, figuring out how to get the most out of the system is part of the fun.
The Category C's often think it's cheating, and many get as rude as I used to about it. Even if they don't call it cheating, it'll often rip the fun out of the game for them, because they don't want to crunch numbers, they want to play and socialize.
The Category B's can go either way. Some will be happy with a character that's fun and unique, and others will slowly grow resentful of their Cat A buddies till it wrecks the group.
Nowadays, I'm pretty clearly in the B category. Concept is most important to me, but I'll analyze a system to make sure there's nothing that's really holding my character back. If I notice something (like the above 8 conclusions) before character creation is done, I'll point them out to the rest of the group.
After character creation, it's a lot less useful, but I still get pretty offended at the subset of Category A players who horde the secrets of the system to themselves. Sometimes it's about ego, they want to have the most powerful PC at the table. Sometimes it's about not trusting the GM, pulling a fast one because your so fearful the GM will kill your character.
But the thing I need to keep in mind is that most of the time, for most of the Cat A's, it's a much more innocent reason: "Huh, that looks like it might be better. I'll try it out. If it proves to be really broken, everybody will notice and the GM will house-rule it. But if turns out just a little better than my other options were, then nobody gets hurt and it's all a-o-k. Next time we're making characters, since I'll know how well it works by then, I can tell everybody about it."
The game that opened my eyes was 7th Sea. We were several hours into character creation for the first time, and everyone was nearly done but me. We were all really tired. I was trying to decide whether or not I really could stretch my points to be both a Swordsman and a Full-Blooded Mage. Weighing it in my mind, I decided to look at the XP charts to see how long it'd take me to regain things I might cut from my character sheet to make room for it. Suddenly I realized that the base Swordsman and Mage placeholders were all I needed, that and the Attribute called Panache. All the Advanced Knacks dropped off the character sheet, 'cause I'd get them all cheaper by experience a couple sessions down the road. Sure, I'd roll less dice in the first few combats, but since Panache let me act so quickly, it'd be sure to hit at least once a round. It was late, I was tired, and I didn't think to explain this to my fellow players, who had already finished their characters.
Three sessions later people were pissed at me (And here's another apology, for a different group of people: Sorry I didn't speak up the night we made our characters, I really should have) because I got twice as many actions as them, had made up for most of their initial dice lead, and had Magic and Swordsman tricks too. I felt horrible, but it was too late to do anything about it.
My advice to game designers and developers: the lessons to be taken from this are ones that Monte Cooke has already called out a couple years back. I'm mostly seconding what he said. We need to step down from our Ivory Towers and meet the people. We need to make sure the character creation sections of our rulebooks include simple approachable statements about the math behind our game systems. We need to ensure it's possible to get the most out of your character without 2 hours of math and multiple thorough reads of the rulebook.
Don't worry too much about losing those for whom the dissecting of the rules is a big part of the fun. We can still debate the merits of whether an low-damage area-effect power is better than a high-damage single-target ability. And you can make the high-end powers (that starting characters don't get) have all the depth and subtlety that requires analysis - by the time a player gets to worrying about those they're pretty invested in the game and already know what they're doing.
Make sure the most basic math of your system is spelled out where (and in a way that) the non-scientists can get their hands on it. It'll improve everyone's first experience with your game. Thanks.
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