Persistant Games, Persistant Growth

My views on roleplaying, not infrequently, conflict with tashiro's. Conversation today brought back up our difference of opinion on capping character advancement. He holds fold memories of an extended D&D game that saw his character into divinity and beyond. I think that's great, and works in some cases, but I find myself favoring actual limits and caps in some cases - specifically, the persistant world that Furryfaire is.

I've discussed some of these things before. I've voiced through about character advancement directly. I've talked about some systems handle power escalation and experience points. And I'm sure I've made other posts about elements as well.


In most RPGs, there's a form of character advancement. Characters that have been played for a long time will have a notable edge over those that are new. The degree of difference depends on the game, and there are exceptions out there. I'm going to set those aside for the moment, though.

So how do existing games handle this?

- In a tabletop game, it depends on the group, really. A new character may have to start from scratch, or may be given an XP boost to match the rest of the party, or something in between. But such a game tends to handle character advancement by tailoring the game to it.
Generally, the game world and the NPCs therein are a fascade. They exist for the purpose of the game. Opponents at level 1 are usually going to be about the same level. When the PCs are level 10, the opposition probably will be too. At any point, the characters may go to Town A and interact with a local lord, NPC A, and he will be pegged at a level based on what purpose he serves against the PCs. If he's meant to be unimportant, he might be low level. If he's meant to be a foil or enemy, he may be about the same level. If he's meant to be the "big bad end guy," he'll probably be notably higher level. What he is depends on what the PCs are at the time they go to him.
Some GMs try to modify their setting in a way that's more internally logical, and less PC-based, but let's face it - no GM really has the time to do that with a whole world. No, generally only what's around the PCs will be fleshed out in full, and it will change based on the needs of the game to challenge/support them, not based on how much XP the NPCs would be earning on a daily basis.
The upper limit for PC abilities depends entirely on the group and game. As long as they're having fun, the GM might provide challenges all the way up into immortality and godhood. If it stops being fun, typically the game will end.
And this usually works fine. Usually, the gaming group is focussed on the story of the PCs. Usually, it doesn't matter that NPC A could have taken over a nation of 0th level peasant single-handedly, because that's not part of the story.

- In most CRPGs, they have to take a different tactic. Of course, there is some scaling in newer ones (Oblivion and Fallout 3 make different attempts at this), but the typical approach is simply to funnel players in a linear fashion into zones with higher-level opposition at a pace that keeps it challenging.
Some games may cut off earlier zones. Some keep them accessible, but even so the reward for beating up lower-level enemies usually declines sharply. Players are urged ahead with increased reward and continuing storylines.
There's usually a level cap, whether due to coding limitations or story parameters. How hard it is to hit depends on the game, but since the game is built with that in mind, it usually doesn't break anything.
This works fine too (unless they screw up the pacing). In this way, it again doesn't matter that the PC could, after a few levels, have totally fended off the army that burned his home town because he's way past that in the story when he has that ability.

- MMORPGs (and I'l mostly use WoW as the pattern here) are a little more complicated, and in some ways I think companies are still fiddling with the formula in search of the best answer.
Like more traditional CRPGs, they tend to have challenges that scale with zone, guiding the player from one to the next, giving new levels and equipment as they go along. Older zones are usually still accessible, but offer lesser rewards to the point of being trivial, encouraging players to take action in zones that are "at" their level.
Unlike those CPRGs, PCs interact with one another, and new ones are being made all the time. Various mechanisms have been tried for high-level characters assisting low-level ones. This can lead to some ridiculous overkill, but these games are usually not so involving that it detracts overly much. More often than not, players are limited in their interactions with the world to talking and/or killing NPCs. Since there's no deep roleplaying or breaking of this framework, it doesn't really matter that much that spiders from Zone 3 could totally obliterate the town in Zone 1 - it's enough to know that they don't go there. So far, I've seen no good way to scale everything to the level of rising PCs specifically because both high and low level PCs function in the same game world.
Level caps exist because they have to, more or less. As above, you can't very well make content to challenge max-level PCs if there is no max-level... because you can't scale everything infinitely.
Now... as I said, game companies are tinkering with this formula. There are games that will artificially alter a PCs level when grouped with other PCs of different levels. There has been use of "phasing" zones that can provide different challenges in the same "physical" area. Where all this goes remains to be seen.
So far, none of these systems seems "perfect." I think WoW is pretty good, and provides enough area at any given level to be entertaining and challenging. Even so, at high levels, earlier zones become trivial to the point of being ignored, and that's not actually ideal for a persistant game world.

So that's a summary of how various games handle the situation from my perspective. So what's the problem? Well... Furryfaire isn't any of those games. Furryfaire is a persistant roleplaying world. It's like MMORPGs, but worse.

It's persistant, but there's no zone structure. All the players exist in the same world at the same time. If a Level X creature shows up in town, everyone there can be affected/involved, whether they're Level X-100 or Level X+1000. This makes it impossible to properly challenge the PCs unless an acting GM compartmentalizes a section of the player base for a scene, and even then it's likely to be really hard.

There are no level caps. There's a maximum you can increase traits to based on your Growth - unless you use one of several ways to bypass that. There's a maximum to your Growth - only there isn't, because PCs can (and do) become divinely empowered and such, which tosses that limit out the window. Pretty much everytime I've seen a "maximum" show up in the rules, there's been some way to bypass it.

The roleplaying aspect means freedom of action, for good and ill. While a CPRG character may get an ultimate spell that does insane amounts of damage, all they can ever do with it is blow up "bad guys." In a tabletop game, a GM can tailor a response or (say, if the result blows up all the other players and major NPCs) end the campaign. Here... PCs have the freedom to do whatever they want, and (unless it's staff vetoed, which almost never happens or is given a chance to happen) the rest of the player base is stuck dealing with the fallout.

The nature of the game involves some emotional investment from most players. Huh? Well, people get attached to their characters when they play them for months/years. Many players seem to be playing personal avatars almost as much as actual characters. This just means PCs can and will do stupid, thoughtless things when their players are emotionally wrought - for whatever reason.

Basically, there's all the freedom of a tabletop game with none of the oversight.

And this is exactly why I'm in favor of more mechanical limitations. Because wiz oversight is spotty and inconsistant, I'd rather there be some things characters simply couldn't do. I'm in favor of that because it's the only way I see to generate a playing field where a spread of PCs can be challenged and players can't/won't spontaneously ruin the game for everyone else just because they're having a bad day. I wish everyone were mature enough that rule limitations weren't the only way to accomplish that, but I've seen time and again that this isn't the case.