How would you determine if a Character had undergone "personal development"?
I'm not talking about talking in Character, or "acting", or even role-playing by making in-character choices according to a set personality determined under their backstory, but whether or not they had altered that personality?
For those of you who watch Critical Role, you do see that happen a fair amount: look at the Characters of Caleb and/or Beauregard in episode #1 compared to episode #60. The Characters the cast is portraying are evolving and changing - but these are professional Character actors.
How would you evaluate whether or not a regular Player had changed their Character?
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I think that would require the character making a vast majority of their decisions differently than they did earlier in the campaign. I don't know if that would entail paying strict attention to the alignment or having some other mechanic or metric to track what how they've been acting. Even then, I think that I would either have to state at the beginning of the campaign that this could happen or that the player would have to mention to me some time during the campaign that they think that it would be a good story arc for their character. There are enough things that are going on otherwise that I would need a pretty strong motivation in order to really track this type of data since alignment doesn't play a large role mechanic-wise in 5e. But this reminds me a touch of the fallout series and the single player Knights of the Old Republic games (could be something that translated to the MMO but I never played it). You could have a point system that judged the actions and choices that the characters made and gave them a score that determined what their current alignment was.
I look at what choices they are making from session to session. Have they learned from past mistakes? Do they try to negotiate with a threat or go straight into combat? Or do they still murder hobo their way through the game regardless of how the DM reacts to them?
A player doesn't have to be an actor, but they can still see their character grow the more they play. It's great to see and one of my favourite things to observe as a DM.
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Sir, the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to 1!
I thick Matt Coville talks about how development takes place when, on a character's personal journey, they change from going after what they want and acting accordingly and go gradually to recognize what they *need* and act accordingly.
Goes without saying that what they think they need (i.e. want) is different from what they actually need.
I may have phrased this inaccurately, or incompletely.
I'm trying to tie this all back to my goal/policy of "reward the things in game that you want to promote in your game". So, I have rewards not only for combat, but solving situations socially or with skills ( not for making a successful skill roles, but solving the encounter regardless whether it's with a sword or with diplomacy ), and uncovering world lore and locations. This covers off the "three pillars" of Combat, Social Interaction, and Exploration.
I'd also like to promote other things in my game: Creativity, and having an interesting and dynamic Character.
Creativity isn't a problem to reward: if they solve a problem creatively, they get the reward for solving the situation, plus a little creativity bonus frosting on top. If they don't actually solve the problem, they don't get a reward for "clever thinking" - only creative success is rewarded.
In order to make this a concrete game rewards thing, I'm trying to figure out a way to tie something as nebulous as "character development" to concrete measurements and rewards ( and feeling vague ridiculous doing so :P ).
I think your collective feedback has sparked an idea!
Hearkening back to Critical Role, I'm thinking about Nott, here - she had a concrete goal of finding her husband and son. This was a goal rooted in her backstory. If Sam Riegel was in my group ( apart from me passing out ) I would definitely have given Nott a "development bonus" for succeeding at concluding part of her "character arc".
So, that might be an avenue here: Reward the Players for succeeding at their self-selected, in-character, goals. If I reserve the right to "vet" these goals, limit awarded bonuses to goals they select which are rooted in either their backstories, or their adventures, then it's an incentive for them to create a backstory they can mine for personal goals. I can't see vetoing a personal goal unless it was wildly out-of-character. The only intent here is to prevent Players from spamming ludicrous goals out to try and claim personal rewards ( ...uh ... yeah ... my Character has always had an ambition of hitting all the pubs in Waterdeep ... yeah ... ). I could also see allowing Players to retro-actively claim goals, if what they did was unplanned and done in the "heat of the moment", but was thematically significant to their Character concept ( I'm thinking of Beau committing to being part of the Cobalt Soul - it was a moment of Character growth that she hadn't planned on ).
I'll have to kick this around, but - it creates an optional avenue for Players to self-select personal Character goals, be rewarded for achieving them and developing their Character, gives them an incentive to develop backstories, and doesn't require me to continually monitor how the Players are playing their Character and try and evaluate if that Character has changed in a significant way.
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On that note, what if you awarded feats for completion of character arcs? Assuming these are complex, campaign-spanning things and not just single- mission objectives.
I'd think of it kind of like downtime training to unlock one, only instead of doing nothing you unlock it through character growth.
And you, as the DM, maybe can select the feat so it fits thematically (observant for tracking down a kidnapped sweetheart) kinda thing and the player sees it more as something extra they're being rewarded with.
That's a very interesting idea! I like how it ties in thematically to what they've accomplished.
My player bonuses are usually XP - scaled to a standard easy/medium/hard encounter XP for their level. That way there can be a continuum of rewards: solve a minor arc/combat/social encounter/creative endeavor/character arc, get a minor reward; solve a major solve a minor arc/combat/social encounter/creative endeavor/character arc, get a major reward.
Feats are pretty much a "one level reward", so I think I'd have to drop minor rewards, which takes a measure of recognition of Player effort & accomplishment away - although the thematic tie-in aspect of feats is very tempting :)
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There are numerous rewards available to encourage roleplay and character growth (I think it's hard to have one without the other in this context).
You have the inspiration system where you can give them a little bonus incentive to act according to how their character would, be that playing to their traits or revealing their flaws. I quite like the system overall and it certainly has led to my PCs developing their characters and getting the hang of roleplaying. Of course, the drawback to inspiration is when a PC is a little too obvious in trying to get it (last week one of my players read out one of his traits to an NPC in a tavern. Their response was "Why are you talking weirdly like that?" with no inspiration given).
A higher incentive would be for you to use your NPCs and enemies to help the players realise their story, as they'll be best-placed to helping the PCs voice and strive for their goals. In the example of Nott finding her husband and son, yes the player does a great job in fleshing out the character but you also have Matt Mercer taking the idea and running with it. The key here is the DM recognising elements of the PC's backstory and bringing that to the table so that the character succeeds in their goal, or is reunited with their lost loved one after years of searching. Your reward here is giving them access to that story and being able to resolve it in a satisfying way, one that also helps the character to progress.
Another example of this can be found in one of the recent Oxventures when the party are investigating a bewitched forest, an NPC removes their mask and Johnny (DM) asks Luke (half-orc bard called Dob):
Hey Dob, tell me, what did your sister look like again?
A little context: Dob has been looking for this person since being left alone in a forest as a child. The DM manages to reunite a character with someone he has been searching for his entire adult life. It's a group with a very flippant style of play but it's still such a fantastic moment where a character arc is concluded because the DM remembered a key part of the PC's back story. It immediately sees the character go from a bit of a bumbling idiot to quite a touching moment! You can watch the Youtube clip and see what I'm blathering on about: here.
And finally, the unspoken reward for your PCs achieving their goals is that it will lead to the table telling an enjoyable, collaborative story that has well-rounded and fully developed characters. That should be incentive in itself for the PCS, it's why we play the game!
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Sir, the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to 1!
There are absolutely multiple ways to reward players. And what rewards work is likely to change across tables. I agree that I would personally prefer a table where some of those intrinsic story development rewards are meaningful to the Party - but I recognize that not all Players find such rewarding in-and-of-themselves.
I'm going to leave it at that, so we don't end up going down the acrimonious flame war rabbit hole that is discussions of advancement systems in these forums ...
Let's just postulate for now that we have some kind of game rewards for Character development and - for the sake of discussion - let's assume we can scale them ( since you can create a scaling series of rewards out of many different things ).
What I'm trying to hammer is out is how to recognize and scale those rewards to the character development accomplishments.
I think that "realize your own self-selected character-history-related game goals" concept has promise - but, by all means, kick its tires :) I'd like to see what the drawbacks of it are. Or alternatively, if someone has a better proposal.
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There are absolutely multiple ways to reward players. And what rewards work is likely to change across tables. I agree that I would personally prefer a table where some of those intrinsic story development rewards are meaningful to the Party - but I recognize that not all Players find such rewarding in-and-of-themselves.
I'm going to leave it at that, so we don't end up going down the acrimonious flame war rabbit hole that is discussions of advancement systems in these forums ...
Let's just postulate for now that we have some kind of game rewards for Character development and - for the sake of discussion - let's assume we can scale them ( since you can create a scaling series of rewards out of many different things ).
What I'm trying to hammer is out is how to recognize and scale those rewards to the character development accomplishments.
I think that "realize your own self-selected character-history-related game goals" concept has promise - but, by all means, kick its tires :) I'd like to see what the drawbacks of it are. Or alternatively, if someone has a better proposal.
I think that the how would be a semi collaborative system that you work out with your players. You'd have to work out whether they wanted some of those milestones to be private things and if they wanted some of them to be more public. For things that would be rewarded with exp, gold, items, feats, or the like, I think that would have to be something more public and could take the form of an NPC appearance, a special scene, or some other similar event. The more private things could be something like a quick text, email, private message, or a physical note (possibly hand written) that would be a note indicating progress in the personal quest. These would be something that wouldn't be expected to be shared with the rest of the party, but could be.
I think that the how would be a semi collaborative system that you work out with your players. You'd have to work out whether they wanted some of those milestones to be private things and if they wanted some of them to be more public. For things that would be rewarded with exp, gold, items, feats, or the like, I think that would have to be something more public and could take the form of an NPC appearance, a special scene, or some other similar event. The more private things could be something like a quick text, email, private message, or a physical note (possibly hand written) that would be a note indicating progress in the personal quest. These would be something that wouldn't be expected to be shared with the rest of the party, but could be.
I do like the call out where some of these goals would likely be private.
The more I kick this around, the more I think it really ends up being rewarded no differently than any other story goal - just that it's a much more restrictive award ( open to one Player only ). Did they kill a gremling or did they find a crucial clue in tracking down their long lost sister? It's still an achievement award.
What I find interesting is that the Players are setting their own personal goals, rather than have be external in the adventure situation - and it rewards Players who are willing to develop their Characters.
I'm a bit concerned that I would "leave out" Players who are not comfortable, or do not wish to, create backstories and set personal Character goals - but there are other possible rewards for them to chase ( like creative problem solving awards ).
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I would Reward the player with an appropriate reward for the goal/achievement. For example if they have finally found a long lost sibling, the sibling may information to discover a magical family heirloom, answers to a mystery they have long wished revealed, a map to the BBEG lair or a title to a deed of land. If the character finally retrieves the last mystical book from a library that was stolen out from under their noses as a youthful apprentice, perhaps they are gifted a magical tome and unlimited access to all the library's knowledge (+5 to knowledge checks will researching in the library). If the party exact revenge on their cultist parents who killed their sister, then they get closure, magical items and their secret diary.
I think the reward should fit the goal and the length of time to achieve it. I wouldn't allocate XP myself because I feel it makes the players feel that is the only type of reward they can achieve. I would mix it up but again, its totally up to you.
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I didn't address the pitfalls. Clearly, someone who is much more eager to tie in backstory could get much more attention than someone who isn't as eager, which could undermine the goal of the exercise for those players. You may have to find appropriate "goals" for the less involved and you may have to take the eager beaver aside and explain that you are happy that they are taking such interest in their character but that you'll have to space out some of their future rewards in order to include the others. Perhaps you can have a limit for a few different degrees of rewards for each tier to help balance this.
As for the players that are giving lots of less challenging goals, you might be able to avoid that (or at least the abuse of that) by announcing that shallow goals will be rewarded by red herrings, cursed items that are weak on strengths and strong on weaknesses (which can channel their focus into meaningful growth by trying to overcome the cursed items), and other consequences.
How concerned are you with the personal questing overtaking the "main quest"? I could foresee the wrong crowd abandoning the main narrative in favor of the personal quests, particularly if they feel that the rewards are strong enough to merit it. I had considered this in a campaign I developed and left the third tier content open for more of this type of campaign content in an effort to strengthen the party in preparation for the 4th tier/BBEG. Setting that expectation from the beginning will ease any concerns that they may have about getting it all done now.
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I didn't address the pitfalls. Clearly, someone who is much more eager to tie in backstory could get much more attention than someone who isn't as eager, which could undermine the goal of the exercise for those players. You may have to find appropriate "goals" for the less involved and you may have to take the eager beaver aside and explain that you are happy that they are taking such interest in their character but that you'll have to space out some of their future rewards in order to include the others. Perhaps you can have a limit for a few different degrees of rewards for each tier to help balance this.
As for the players that are giving lots of less challenging goals, you might be able to avoid that (or at least the abuse of that) by announcing that shallow goals will be rewarded by red herrings, cursed items that are weak on strengths and strong on weaknesses (which can channel their focus into meaningful growth by trying to overcome the cursed items), and other consequences.
How concerned are you with the personal questing overtaking the "main quest"? I could foresee the wrong crowd abandoning the main narrative in favor of the personal quests, particularly if they feel that the rewards are strong enough to merit it. I had considered this in a campaign I developed and left the third tier content open for more of this type of campaign content in an effort to strengthen the party in preparation for the 4th tier/BBEG. Setting that expectation from the beginning will ease any concerns that they may have about getting it all done now.
Agreed. There's a couple of possible pitfalls here - Players who won't participate, Players who want to participate but struggle with it, and Players who participate too much.
I think the way to control all these is DM "spotlight control". As Fishfingerrosti pointed out, if we're using Critical Role as a template for Characters which are evolving as Characters, then the major Character developments to date have usually been driven by Matt Mercer as much as the Players. Beauregard's induction into the Expositors was externally triggered by Matt, Fjord's visions of Uk'otoa ( ... uk'otoa ... ) were triggered by Matt. Yasha's visions of the Storm Lord are ... triggered by Matt, etc.
It's not perfect control, but the DM can definitely exert influence over when the Characters have an opportunity to grow/be rewarded. This should help control "eager beavers" from spamming personal development quests and scenes, to the detriment of the main quest.
There's definitely been some purely Player driven development in Critical Role - the evolving friendships between the Characters, and the Character on Character interplay ( Beau and Caleb, Jester & Nott, Fjord and Caleb ), but I would reward these as minor to moderate bumps. These shouldn't be able to overpower the major Character development opportunities, or the rewards from the main adventure line.
People who are having troubles engaging with Character development - well, the DM can help with that as well, by triggering those possibilities unilaterally and externally ( I'm thinking of Fjord again ). By structuring and playing out those encounters carefully, and with the Player comfort level in mind, the DM can make those opportunities less painful for the people struggling/learning. Hopefully, they eventually get "up to speed".
The tricky bit here is Players who really don't want to participate - in which case they may have to find other ways to close the gap. I'm already giving Character rewards for creative problem solving, exploration, and uncovering world lore, so they may have to suffice by finding their niche in some other manner, plus I don't see this being a huge reward source. Ideally, just enough to encourage Character development from Players, and no more.
But essentially, by controlling the frequency of Character growth possibilities in such a manner that everyone who wants to participate, has an equal opportunity to do so, and that the opportunities don't overpower the main adventure rewards, I think these risks can be mitigated.
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How would you evaluate whether or not a regular Player had changed their Character?
Throughout your campaign, there should be moments of conflict, where the characters, or sometimes just individual characters have to make interesting choices. How often these occur are up to you (as well as up to the brownian-motion of NPC interactions :) . Over time, try to establish if the choices a character makes begins to change, the choice itself may not change, but the justification could.
The important bit is that you are helping frame the situation, but the PC makes the choice -- and try to make some of those "interesting".
As a rude example, let's say you have a PC that is a telepath, but they are against reading people's minds because that's an invasion of privacy etc. Over a few sessions, in combat or elsewhere this character gets attacked, and begins to have to choose whether reading an "enemy" mind is worth it to help prevent or reduce combat. Perhaps over time this justification becomes easier and easier, so that now they do this regularly. At each point, and each encounter, the player has a choice as to how their character acts and why they act that way. See if this changes, and create situations that incite the issue.
All that being said, I think you'll want some buy-in from your table. Make sure that your players are interested in creating and working through story arcs for their characters. Some players may just want to keep things simple, roll dice, and not really change. Perhaps their backstory already encompasses the earlier development.
I'm also on the fence with regards to "reward" in this case. The player's know their characters and the backstorys better than I. To a GM it may "look" like a character hasn't changed, but under the hood the player may have updated a background, filled in a blank, or come to a stronger opinion on their backstory. Some players want a personal character arc, others like deciding it as they go, and others aren't interested in it at all as they engage with the game differently.
My gut reaction is to say encourage the RP and character decisions, but I think you may be getting a bit fine-grained in terms of rewards. For some players, good RP is its own reward, and having a story about how player XXX did YYY in some situation where that wasn't expected makes for a lot of fun.
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How would you determine if a Character had undergone "personal development"?
I'm not talking about talking in Character, or "acting", or even role-playing by making in-character choices according to a set personality determined under their backstory, but whether or not they had altered that personality?
For those of you who watch Critical Role, you do see that happen a fair amount: look at the Characters of Caleb and/or Beauregard in episode #1 compared to episode #60. The Characters the cast is portraying are evolving and changing - but these are professional Character actors.
How would you evaluate whether or not a regular Player had changed their Character?
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
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I think that would require the character making a vast majority of their decisions differently than they did earlier in the campaign. I don't know if that would entail paying strict attention to the alignment or having some other mechanic or metric to track what how they've been acting. Even then, I think that I would either have to state at the beginning of the campaign that this could happen or that the player would have to mention to me some time during the campaign that they think that it would be a good story arc for their character. There are enough things that are going on otherwise that I would need a pretty strong motivation in order to really track this type of data since alignment doesn't play a large role mechanic-wise in 5e. But this reminds me a touch of the fallout series and the single player Knights of the Old Republic games (could be something that translated to the MMO but I never played it). You could have a point system that judged the actions and choices that the characters made and gave them a score that determined what their current alignment was.
I look at what choices they are making from session to session. Have they learned from past mistakes? Do they try to negotiate with a threat or go straight into combat? Or do they still murder hobo their way through the game regardless of how the DM reacts to them?
A player doesn't have to be an actor, but they can still see their character grow the more they play. It's great to see and one of my favourite things to observe as a DM.
Sir, the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to 1!
Never tell me the DC.
I thick Matt Coville talks about how development takes place when, on a character's personal journey, they change from going after what they want and acting accordingly and go gradually to recognize what they *need* and act accordingly.
Goes without saying that what they think they need (i.e. want) is different from what they actually need.
I appreciate the feedback :)
I may have phrased this inaccurately, or incompletely.
I'm trying to tie this all back to my goal/policy of "reward the things in game that you want to promote in your game". So, I have rewards not only for combat, but solving situations socially or with skills ( not for making a successful skill roles, but solving the encounter regardless whether it's with a sword or with diplomacy ), and uncovering world lore and locations. This covers off the "three pillars" of Combat, Social Interaction, and Exploration.
I'd also like to promote other things in my game: Creativity, and having an interesting and dynamic Character.
Creativity isn't a problem to reward: if they solve a problem creatively, they get the reward for solving the situation, plus a little creativity bonus frosting on top. If they don't actually solve the problem, they don't get a reward for "clever thinking" - only creative success is rewarded.
In order to make this a concrete game rewards thing, I'm trying to figure out a way to tie something as nebulous as "character development" to concrete measurements and rewards ( and feeling vague ridiculous doing so :P ).
I think your collective feedback has sparked an idea!
Hearkening back to Critical Role, I'm thinking about Nott, here - she had a concrete goal of finding her husband and son. This was a goal rooted in her backstory. If Sam Riegel was in my group ( apart from me passing out ) I would definitely have given Nott a "development bonus" for succeeding at concluding part of her "character arc".
So, that might be an avenue here: Reward the Players for succeeding at their self-selected, in-character, goals. If I reserve the right to "vet" these goals, limit awarded bonuses to goals they select which are rooted in either their backstories, or their adventures, then it's an incentive for them to create a backstory they can mine for personal goals. I can't see vetoing a personal goal unless it was wildly out-of-character. The only intent here is to prevent Players from spamming ludicrous goals out to try and claim personal rewards ( ...uh ... yeah ... my Character has always had an ambition of hitting all the pubs in Waterdeep ... yeah ... ). I could also see allowing Players to retro-actively claim goals, if what they did was unplanned and done in the "heat of the moment", but was thematically significant to their Character concept ( I'm thinking of Beau committing to being part of the Cobalt Soul - it was a moment of Character growth that she hadn't planned on ).
I'll have to kick this around, but - it creates an optional avenue for Players to self-select personal Character goals, be rewarded for achieving them and developing their Character, gives them an incentive to develop backstories, and doesn't require me to continually monitor how the Players are playing their Character and try and evaluate if that Character has changed in a significant way.
Thoughts?
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
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On that note, what if you awarded feats for completion of character arcs? Assuming these are complex, campaign-spanning things and not just single- mission objectives.
I'd think of it kind of like downtime training to unlock one, only instead of doing nothing you unlock it through character growth.
And you, as the DM, maybe can select the feat so it fits thematically (observant for tracking down a kidnapped sweetheart) kinda thing and the player sees it more as something extra they're being rewarded with.
That's a very interesting idea! I like how it ties in thematically to what they've accomplished.
My player bonuses are usually XP - scaled to a standard easy/medium/hard encounter XP for their level. That way there can be a continuum of rewards: solve a minor arc/combat/social encounter/creative endeavor/character arc, get a minor reward; solve a major solve a minor arc/combat/social encounter/creative endeavor/character arc, get a major reward.
Feats are pretty much a "one level reward", so I think I'd have to drop minor rewards, which takes a measure of recognition of Player effort & accomplishment away - although the thematic tie-in aspect of feats is very tempting :)
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
There are numerous rewards available to encourage roleplay and character growth (I think it's hard to have one without the other in this context).
You have the inspiration system where you can give them a little bonus incentive to act according to how their character would, be that playing to their traits or revealing their flaws. I quite like the system overall and it certainly has led to my PCs developing their characters and getting the hang of roleplaying. Of course, the drawback to inspiration is when a PC is a little too obvious in trying to get it (last week one of my players read out one of his traits to an NPC in a tavern. Their response was "Why are you talking weirdly like that?" with no inspiration given).
A higher incentive would be for you to use your NPCs and enemies to help the players realise their story, as they'll be best-placed to helping the PCs voice and strive for their goals. In the example of Nott finding her husband and son, yes the player does a great job in fleshing out the character but you also have Matt Mercer taking the idea and running with it. The key here is the DM recognising elements of the PC's backstory and bringing that to the table so that the character succeeds in their goal, or is reunited with their lost loved one after years of searching. Your reward here is giving them access to that story and being able to resolve it in a satisfying way, one that also helps the character to progress.
Another example of this can be found in one of the recent Oxventures when the party are investigating a bewitched forest, an NPC removes their mask and Johnny (DM) asks Luke (half-orc bard called Dob):
Hey Dob, tell me, what did your sister look like again?
A little context: Dob has been looking for this person since being left alone in a forest as a child. The DM manages to reunite a character with someone he has been searching for his entire adult life. It's a group with a very flippant style of play but it's still such a fantastic moment where a character arc is concluded because the DM remembered a key part of the PC's back story. It immediately sees the character go from a bit of a bumbling idiot to quite a touching moment! You can watch the Youtube clip and see what I'm blathering on about: here.
And finally, the unspoken reward for your PCs achieving their goals is that it will lead to the table telling an enjoyable, collaborative story that has well-rounded and fully developed characters. That should be incentive in itself for the PCS, it's why we play the game!
Sir, the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to 1!
Never tell me the DC.
There are absolutely multiple ways to reward players. And what rewards work is likely to change across tables. I agree that I would personally prefer a table where some of those intrinsic story development rewards are meaningful to the Party - but I recognize that not all Players find such rewarding in-and-of-themselves.
I'm going to leave it at that, so we don't end up going down the acrimonious flame war rabbit hole that is discussions of advancement systems in these forums ...
Let's just postulate for now that we have some kind of game rewards for Character development and - for the sake of discussion - let's assume we can scale them ( since you can create a scaling series of rewards out of many different things ).
What I'm trying to hammer is out is how to recognize and scale those rewards to the character development accomplishments.
I think that "realize your own self-selected character-history-related game goals" concept has promise - but, by all means, kick its tires :) I'd like to see what the drawbacks of it are. Or alternatively, if someone has a better proposal.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
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I use milestone leveling. Whenever anyone hits a milestone, everyone levels up.
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" -- allegedly Benjamin Franklin
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Sure - but let's concentrate on when/how/if/"how much" to reward Character development, and not get hung up on what.
We have other threads that are in meltdown over that already.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
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I think that the how would be a semi collaborative system that you work out with your players. You'd have to work out whether they wanted some of those milestones to be private things and if they wanted some of them to be more public. For things that would be rewarded with exp, gold, items, feats, or the like, I think that would have to be something more public and could take the form of an NPC appearance, a special scene, or some other similar event. The more private things could be something like a quick text, email, private message, or a physical note (possibly hand written) that would be a note indicating progress in the personal quest. These would be something that wouldn't be expected to be shared with the rest of the party, but could be.
I do like the call out where some of these goals would likely be private.
The more I kick this around, the more I think it really ends up being rewarded no differently than any other story goal - just that it's a much more restrictive award ( open to one Player only ). Did they kill a gremling or did they find a crucial clue in tracking down their long lost sister? It's still an achievement award.
What I find interesting is that the Players are setting their own personal goals, rather than have be external in the adventure situation - and it rewards Players who are willing to develop their Characters.
I'm a bit concerned that I would "leave out" Players who are not comfortable, or do not wish to, create backstories and set personal Character goals - but there are other possible rewards for them to chase ( like creative problem solving awards ).
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
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I would Reward the player with an appropriate reward for the goal/achievement. For example if they have finally found a long lost sibling, the sibling may information to discover a magical family heirloom, answers to a mystery they have long wished revealed, a map to the BBEG lair or a title to a deed of land. If the character finally retrieves the last mystical book from a library that was stolen out from under their noses as a youthful apprentice, perhaps they are gifted a magical tome and unlimited access to all the library's knowledge (+5 to knowledge checks will researching in the library). If the party exact revenge on their cultist parents who killed their sister, then they get closure, magical items and their secret diary.
I think the reward should fit the goal and the length of time to achieve it. I wouldn't allocate XP myself because I feel it makes the players feel that is the only type of reward they can achieve. I would mix it up but again, its totally up to you.
I really don't know how to make it any clearer that I'm not interested in what is rewarded. Really not.
I'm interested in the plausibility and pitfalls. I'll choose what I give out, thanks.
I know what my Players will think, and what my Players have expressed interest in, as rewards.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
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I didn't address the pitfalls. Clearly, someone who is much more eager to tie in backstory could get much more attention than someone who isn't as eager, which could undermine the goal of the exercise for those players. You may have to find appropriate "goals" for the less involved and you may have to take the eager beaver aside and explain that you are happy that they are taking such interest in their character but that you'll have to space out some of their future rewards in order to include the others. Perhaps you can have a limit for a few different degrees of rewards for each tier to help balance this.
As for the players that are giving lots of less challenging goals, you might be able to avoid that (or at least the abuse of that) by announcing that shallow goals will be rewarded by red herrings, cursed items that are weak on strengths and strong on weaknesses (which can channel their focus into meaningful growth by trying to overcome the cursed items), and other consequences.
How concerned are you with the personal questing overtaking the "main quest"? I could foresee the wrong crowd abandoning the main narrative in favor of the personal quests, particularly if they feel that the rewards are strong enough to merit it. I had considered this in a campaign I developed and left the third tier content open for more of this type of campaign content in an effort to strengthen the party in preparation for the 4th tier/BBEG. Setting that expectation from the beginning will ease any concerns that they may have about getting it all done now.
So you are looking to create a chart/table with XP rewards based on the significance and challenge difficulty of the goal fulfilled?
I'm looking at not discussing reward structures at all.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
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Agreed. There's a couple of possible pitfalls here - Players who won't participate, Players who want to participate but struggle with it, and Players who participate too much.
I think the way to control all these is DM "spotlight control". As Fishfingerrosti pointed out, if we're using Critical Role as a template for Characters which are evolving as Characters, then the major Character developments to date have usually been driven by Matt Mercer as much as the Players. Beauregard's induction into the Expositors was externally triggered by Matt, Fjord's visions of Uk'otoa ( ... uk'otoa ... ) were triggered by Matt. Yasha's visions of the Storm Lord are ... triggered by Matt, etc.
It's not perfect control, but the DM can definitely exert influence over when the Characters have an opportunity to grow/be rewarded. This should help control "eager beavers" from spamming personal development quests and scenes, to the detriment of the main quest.
There's definitely been some purely Player driven development in Critical Role - the evolving friendships between the Characters, and the Character on Character interplay ( Beau and Caleb, Jester & Nott, Fjord and Caleb ), but I would reward these as minor to moderate bumps. These shouldn't be able to overpower the major Character development opportunities, or the rewards from the main adventure line.
People who are having troubles engaging with Character development - well, the DM can help with that as well, by triggering those possibilities unilaterally and externally ( I'm thinking of Fjord again ). By structuring and playing out those encounters carefully, and with the Player comfort level in mind, the DM can make those opportunities less painful for the people struggling/learning. Hopefully, they eventually get "up to speed".
The tricky bit here is Players who really don't want to participate - in which case they may have to find other ways to close the gap. I'm already giving Character rewards for creative problem solving, exploration, and uncovering world lore, so they may have to suffice by finding their niche in some other manner, plus I don't see this being a huge reward source. Ideally, just enough to encourage Character development from Players, and no more.
But essentially, by controlling the frequency of Character growth possibilities in such a manner that everyone who wants to participate, has an equal opportunity to do so, and that the opportunities don't overpower the main adventure rewards, I think these risks can be mitigated.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
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Hi Ved,
I'm going to "try" to focus on this bit:
Throughout your campaign, there should be moments of conflict, where the characters, or sometimes just individual characters have to make interesting choices. How often these occur are up to you (as well as up to the brownian-motion of NPC interactions :) . Over time, try to establish if the choices a character makes begins to change, the choice itself may not change, but the justification could.
The important bit is that you are helping frame the situation, but the PC makes the choice -- and try to make some of those "interesting".
As a rude example, let's say you have a PC that is a telepath, but they are against reading people's minds because that's an invasion of privacy etc. Over a few sessions, in combat or elsewhere this character gets attacked, and begins to have to choose whether reading an "enemy" mind is worth it to help prevent or reduce combat. Perhaps over time this justification becomes easier and easier, so that now they do this regularly. At each point, and each encounter, the player has a choice as to how their character acts and why they act that way. See if this changes, and create situations that incite the issue.
All that being said, I think you'll want some buy-in from your table. Make sure that your players are interested in creating and working through story arcs for their characters. Some players may just want to keep things simple, roll dice, and not really change. Perhaps their backstory already encompasses the earlier development.
I'm also on the fence with regards to "reward" in this case. The player's know their characters and the backstorys better than I. To a GM it may "look" like a character hasn't changed, but under the hood the player may have updated a background, filled in a blank, or come to a stronger opinion on their backstory. Some players want a personal character arc, others like deciding it as they go, and others aren't interested in it at all as they engage with the game differently.
My gut reaction is to say encourage the RP and character decisions, but I think you may be getting a bit fine-grained in terms of rewards. For some players, good RP is its own reward, and having a story about how player XXX did YYY in some situation where that wasn't expected makes for a lot of fun.
"An' things ha' come to a pretty pass, ye ken, if people are going to leave stuff like that aroound where innocent people could accidentally smash the door doon and lever the bars aside and take the big chain off'f the cupboard and pick the lock and drink it!"