Ring - The Scoring System

[cloudy97]

This discussion reminds me of discussions on a NWN PW I played on and was quite involved in. The server was focused on RP, but it's much easier to give XP for a kill than for roleplaying. The MDM (master DM) didn't want to bribe players to roleplay by giving out XP for it, it should come naturally - because it was an RP server.

So the hack&slash people leveled several times faster than those who preferred to chat and intrigue in the town (the quests were like Ryzom: no XP) which lead to roleplayers questioning if the server was really aimed for roleplayers. After several attempts to distribute XP in different ways, we decided for flat rate. One RL hour in the game gave 200 XP.

The result was that because the hack&slashers couldn't control their XP flow they got bored and stopped logging on, and the server got too deserted for the RP'ers to roleplay in and the project sort of died after that.

So, while I can say clichés like "RP is a reward in itself" (which is true) rewards are important for the Ring to succeed. But it is a tricky question, because there are as many styles to play as there are players.

How would it work if the Adventure Master gained some XP (or cats) per player joining the scenario to distribute to the players in his/her adventure? Then it would be up to the AM to give a player who roleplay or who does something clever to bonk the player with some XP, to encourage (or bribe) him to continue.

I don't think the rewards need to be great, but they should be there.