Hi. I'm looking for a specific type of game that I'm not sure really exists. It's one where you don't control the abilities you gain when you level up, but rather they're determined by environment and consequences experienced during gameplay.
I saw this most recently on the board game Kingdom Death. In one example of play, a character had a child die, and they gained the Rage ability. All Character growth is done organically, where the player doesn't decide, but rather abilities are gain based on decisions amd events the occur in game.
Another example I've read in the LitRPG novel series Phantom Server, where the choices the character made in game determined the abilities they gained upon level up.
Is there a table top RPG that has this sort of leveling up scheme? Where the players can't really choose how they grow in power, but rather it's dictated by the choices made in game? Is there even a name for this type of system? Organic character development, maybe?
Thanks for your help.
Ars Magica had a restriction where experience could only be spent on abilities, etc. that were actually used during the "adventure" awarding it. On the other hand, "adventuring" was generally not very useful in improving a character when compared to practice, study, or training in that system.
Also, it's not level-based. Level-based systems are usually designed to award improvements in set amounts, without much variance.
I guess you could institute house rules to track which abilities are used in between "leveling up" and base the gains that each character gets from what they did, but I'm not sure the benefit is worth the extra work.
Thanks for the input.
I saw a review of Kingdom Death, and I really loved the seemingly random growth of the characters (or rather, growth out of experience, where abilities gained are directly related to said experience), but I didn't want to pay $400 for the game. Also, it's a bit too dark for me.
I really like the idea of playing a character where as a player, I get to discover what my character becomes, rather than dictate what my character becomes.
But I'm not sure such a system exists.
Villains and Vigilantes IIRC used something similar. CoC/BRP uses an organic growth in skills, you'd need to check out some of their other offerings (if they still exist) for something for more 'goodies' besides skills.
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GURPS had a fanzine named Pyramid that had an interesting article about something they called stochastic experience (or something like that, it was probably decades ago...), which seemed to go that same round. Points gained could only be spent on skills used, and critically succeeding skills could gain extra XP to spend on that specific skill, but it seemed like a huge pain in the butt to track. (And it would be entirely possible for one or more game sessions to go buy without affording you an opportunity to use the skill or spell or attribute you want to improve, making it annoying for the players and the ST/GM.)
These are all great ideas for me to look into. Thank you for your input!