Player Character Progression

I've been thinking about how to handle Player Character progression in Legends of Alba. My initial inclination had been to pretty much ignore it. This stance mostly came from my personal preference (as a player or a GM) for low-level play. A group of Player Characters are equal to the challenge of, say, half a dozen bandits. If those bandits are backed up by a heavy hitter, an ogre or a ferocious beast, the PCs are going to have to get creative. Facing a dragon head on is certain death, but defeating one is definitely possible: You'll need to make the most of what's on your character sheet but you also need a plan.

I desperately want to avoid what I've seen in plenty of 5E games where PCs get up to Level 10+ and it's  as though each Character is lugging around a heavy chest full of highly situational, minor, or otherwise forgettable 'ride-along' abilities. The game feels heavy, and everything takes ages. It actually breaks the core loop of the game in which the GM describes the situation, the players describe their Characters' actions, then the GM narrates the result. I've been in the situation as a player myself where, between the first 2 steps, when the GM throws it over to the players "What Do You Do?", I'm looking down in panic at this Character sheet crammed with abilities and bonusses and asterixis and page references thinking "What can I do?". I've stepped out of the fiction of the game. For Legends of Alba, I want to stay in the fiction as much as possible.

So why am I thinking about progression? I've had a chance to play a few different systems over the last year: Mork Borg (through Cy-borg); Into The Odd (through Mythic Bastionland); and Break!!. All three of them take a different approach to progression:

Mork Borg, as you'd expect, is super minimal. The rules for progression take up less than half an A5 page! There's actually a decent chance your Character gets worse when you level up, because of course there is. It's Mork Borg! Are you actually expecting your Character to live long enough to level up?!

Into The Odd doesn't really have progression, but Mythic Bastionland sorta does. Knights have Glory, which is more a reflection of their standing in the world than a mechanical benefit. I quite like Glory (keeping it in the fiction). They might get more Guard through scars. They also age, which usually sees young Knights improve as they reach maturity but with their Virtues failing as they cross into old age. I liked what this brought to the story of our game and its very fitting for a game about Knights in which part of being a Knight is considering your legacy.

Break!! has progression through the Callings, which are that game's take on classes. They go as far as Level 10, and although each Calling uses a different advancement table, they all get something each Level. Usually it's an Attribute increase or select an Ability from their Calling. 

So it's been interesting trying these out, seeing how they went down around the table and catching up with my players during and after games about it. I think most players in my group would look for some progression if they were playing a system for anything more than a couple of sessions. I know as well that players definitely notice the shift of how light a Mork Borg Character is to a 5E one. Hardly surprising - these are totally different games. These games that have lighter Characters don't expect you to be with a Character for long, so it's no problem if they feel a bit thin or one-dimensional and if a player is not writing pages of background lore for their Character between sessions. But it's made me think about what sort of experience is Legends of Alba closer to, and it's closer to 5E than I thought. I want players to invest in their Character, use them an an anchor to the setting, and go on a weird long mythic journey with them. 

So I'm starting to think more along the lines of something like Break!! (also looking to Shadowdark though I've not played that one yet!) for progression in Legends of Alba. 10 levels is plenty, and alternating level up rewards between getting a new ability and 'number go up' feels like a good starting point. So I've been messing around with a few ideas in that vein, and will post them here if I get them into a decent shape!

-Till next time.