Topic: An idea: Sideways levelling

[Thot]

When you are in a new situation, it may happen that you have to learn new things relatively quickly, and maybe forget other things in exchange for the new things. Say, you are stranded on a island in the Pacific, and your 21 levels as an office clerk don't really help you much there.

And just learning new skills as you level might take troo long to survive the new situation, becuse people (usually) don't level over night all the time.

So, here's an idea to solve such situations: Sideways levelling!

You don't gain a level. Instead, you level one level down and then one level up again. How does this work?
duce skills as per your level cost: The first rank you give up costs you the first cost in your learning cost, the second rank in that skill you go down ghives back the second value in DP. So, say you are a Fighter with 20 ranks in Melee stranded on Superpeaceful Island, and you take a month of time, give up 2 of your melee skill ranks (cost 1/2) for a total of 3 DP. You repeat this with other skills until you have accumulated the usual amount of DP for that level (usually 60). Each skill can only be chosen for two ranks of reduction. Then, you spend those 60 DP on new skills (such as playing the harp, which is quite popular on Superpeaceful Island) as if going up a level. You level stays the same, but your skills change a bit.

This process might take some time (like a month), require special situations (like stranding in a very alien environment), etc. You could repeat it as often as you like, provided you invest what needs to be invested.

This might give player characters (and NPC's, if you care) a way to adapt to new situations without having to wait for a level up. What do you think?

[Thot]

Typos. Is it my eyes getting worse, or my brain? Or both...

[MisterK]

That sounds similar to a FATE character evolution mechanism, where you do not gain more skill points but can shuffle some around.

The main issue relative to RM standard rules is that RM does not handle specialised on-the-job learning particularly well. Basically, in order to learn something, you must gain a level (or more). Which is, as you said, not always believable.

I must admit that I would have a bit of trouble saying "well, you can re-develop a couple of levels, forgetting the ranks you gained (and potentially used) and developing new ones".

I'd rather simply give ranks in skills the characters are supposed to learn because they have to. This can apply to survival skills like in your example, but can also apply to very specific learning (say, the characters are stuck in a house somewhere and are given crash courses in the geography, history, social structures and languages of a region they have never visited, because they will be sent there afterwards). Giving a level or two seems odd. Giving ranks in the specific skills they are taught seems more reasonable.

In the end, the more situations like this one you face, the more you realise that you've switched to another game paradigm, one less like RM or D&D, where experience is generic and comes mainly from adventuring because that's what characters are supposed to do, and more like Bushido, where experience is specific and comes mainly from training and learning, with adventure experience being the icing on the cake, RQ being in the middle of the road (experience is specific, but characters develop mainly by actual use of skills during play).

But to come back to what you suggest, I'm not sure I like it, probably because it clashes too much with my view of what a level is, and because I think you learn things more quickly than you forget them. It seems a bit too much like trying to shoehorn a non-level based development situation in a level based development system. I'd rather simply go around level-based development in this case (and have actually did it in the past).

[nash]

Generally I've allowed characters to spend some of their DP for the next level in such situations.  In the desert island case I'd allow a character to buy a couple of specific skills early after appropriate time or with appropriate timing.

For instance in one campaign the characters were sailing a long distance.   One of the characters did some training with a local sailer (fisherman I believe) and then spent a few DP from next level on getting their first couple of ranks in the appropriate boating skill.

It generally is only an issue for the first couple of ranks in a skill (the +30 bonus for the first rank), and a +5 bonus a little early rarely breaks anything.

[cdcooley]

Originally D&D had the idea that you gain experience during an adventure then you go home and train up skills and potentially gain a level to get ready for the next adventure. Rolemaster inherited the idea of levels and changing levels between gaming sessions. But for Rolemaster, level and the spending of DP in a batch is just a mechanic to minimize the amount of calculations needed in an era where everything was done with just a pencil and some paper.

I've always preferred the idea of handing out DP proportional to experience as you go (while ensuring that DP use is linked to appropriate in-game experience, training, or study). With spreadsheets and other character management tools, it's no longer time intensive to recalculate skill bonuses every time you change skill rank or governing statistics so there's no reason to delay a character's skill changes until the next "level up" event.

If you get thrust into a new culture using a new language, it would make sense that you can gain a few language ranks, a few culture ranks, etc. prior to your next level change. If you're running a story-driven, immersive campaign, then the timing of gaining those skills should be based on in-world events not the arbitrary game mechanic. And as long as you then require the appropriate DP to be spend as part of the next level change, you really haven't fundamentally changed anything.

So, like nash, I would say the easiest solution here is to just allow an appropriate mount of DP to be spent based on the activity involved and let the character get the benefits immediately. If the characters are spending significant, focused, story-driven time to develop skills then that activity itself should be generating some experience towards the next level and there is no harm in letting them get the benefits "early". And that idea matches the spirit of the optional RMU  Intense Training rule.

[rdanhenry]

Actually, that's more like the "Development Points as Experience" optional rule.

[cdcooley]

Thanks for pointing that out. Handing out DP over time based on experience points is an old idea. I hadn't actually read that last part of that DP as EP rule in RMU. I had assumed it was just about getting rid of the experience points after reading the first paragraph. So this is now an official option and even if you don't use that rule all of the time, it makes perfect sense to use it for special cases.