Congratulations! You've received XP, gained a level, learnt a new skill. You're better, faster, stronger... or maybe not? Chances are you'll suddenly find out that all of the computer systems have been upgraded, that all the guards are better trained and all the diplomats are better liars. Not a lot better, only a bit — just enough to counteract the upgrades you have just gotten yourself.

It happens quite often. The players are given the opportunity to improve the abilities of their characters, and they gladly do so in order to make the character better at what he does — the fighter improves his fighting ability, the thief improves his ability to break locks etc. But does it actually help? Chances are that it doesn't. The GM simply increases the difficulty of the opposition appropriately. For every +1 to my attack I manage to get, the enemy will get +1 to his defence. And one can't blame the GM — he's supposed to present us with challenges, after all. So what's the point in all of that?

One possible answer could be "you have to advance in order to stay in place" — that is, the GM is intending to increase the difficulty either way, so we mustn't fall behind. However, in most cases this is a wrong approach. Unless we're dealing with a GM who enjoys seeing his players fail, or it's some sort of mess the players have gotten themselves into by their own hand, the conflicts will likely remain "balanced" — exactly at the level where the players can adequately handle them.

So, the question arises, why do we want a system for character advancement? And once we answer that, we can see what can be done to make the character advancement system more interesting and have it achieve our goals.

Why Advance?

Indeed, it isn't always necessary to have a system for character advancement, and like with everything else, there needs to be some reason to include such a system in the game. Here are several reasons why we might want a system for character advancement.

Power Escalation

The classic use of character advancement is to create an escalation of power in the challenges the characters face. First we dealt with bandits in the village, then we dealt with an army trying to conquer the kingdom, finally we deal with demons trying to take over the world. This is the classic story of farm boy turned world saviour, which is often the focus of fantasy games (such as D&D).

Variety

Another reason to add character advancement is in order to add variety. As the game progresses, players often want to try out new things, and they can get the feeling that they're doing more or less the same thing over and over again. Of course, character advancement isn't the only way to fix this problem, but it can help.

Feeling of Achievement

Finally, character advancement can be used to create the feeling of achievement — that past events in the game have a direct effect on the character. Of course, "achievement" is a general term here — past events aren't necessarily positive, and their effect on the characters can represent the learning from mistakes rather than actual past achievements.

How to Make Advancement Meaningful

Having discussed why we might want character advancement, we'll now discuss how to create such a system so that it is meaningful and achieves the above goals.

Static Elements

Static elements are things within the game world whose ability is not determined in accordance to the characters' abilities — rather, they are an integral part of the setting. We could know, for instance, that the city guards are all level 1, that the vizier is a very good liar and isn't going to get better at it any time soon or that navigating within the Star of Death is rated "very difficult".

In this case, the players are presented with the difficulties of various challenges in advance, and thus it makes sense that they would want to improve their characters in order to overcome these challenges.

This is often the case where the setting or adventure being played are premade. This is also the case when the game provides with a predefined set of conflicts and challenges, out of which the GM chooses, depending on the players and the situation — for instance, books detailing various monsters, such as the Monster Manuals in D&D.

Static elements can help us mainly if we want to create escalation of power — since the players can compare their characters to static elements in the gaming world, they can actually see and feel the advancement of their characters. Many fantasy games focus on the characters growing in power and dealing with progressively tougher challenges — and indeed, many of those games include a static set of monsters and the like, which can help the progress feel more meaningful.

Of course, the mere fact that those static elements exist out there isn't enough for the advancement system to feel meaningful. For this to happen, the players should always be aware of those elements and always be able to compare their characters to those elements. For instance, the same NPCs may return many times during the campaign, having the same abilities, and thus the players will see their characters' improvement in action when they are compared to those NPCs.

Ensuring that this works well, however, is usually the job of the GM and not the system — even if the system provides with the static reference elements, it is the GM who needs to incorporate them properly into the game. Thus, as game designers, it's not advised to rely solely on such static elements. (Though, of course, it is possible to devise a mechanic, perhaps unrelated to the advancement system per se, which will encourage the correct use of static elements.)

Gaining New Abilities

Instead of having the characters get better at what they already can do, it is possible to have them learn to do entirely new things. They learn to pilot a plane, learn to read an ancient language, gain the ability to fly etc. This allows the players to be able to handle new challenges and to handle the old ones differently, perhaps more efficiently. This also allows the GM to present the players with a wider range of problems, but it can also make some of the old problems irrelevant. In other words, the game may actually change as the characters progress, which is something both the GM and the players need to be aware of.

Naturally, the game designer needs to have some control over what new abilities are gained and how they are gained. Luckily, this control can be easily achieved, as will be discussed shortly.

The gaining of new abilities can help achieve all three of the mentioned reasons for having character advancement. Variety is always achieved — new abilities give players new things to do and help keep the game fresh.

Escalation of power can be created if the new abilities to be gained can actually change the way the game is played. For instance, if at some point the characters gain the ability to teleport wherever they want, it seriously affects the sorts of challenges they can be presented with: suddenly, getting into the enemy's fortress, reaching the king before the assassins do, escaping the planet before it collapses — all become trivial. This is, to an extent, the case in D&D — for instance, spell casters at higher levels gain spells which allow them to fly, teleport to large distances etc. Finally, the feeling of achievement can be created if the new abilities gained are connected to past deeds, or if certain events within the campaign "unlock" certain abilities. One example of such a thing is Don't Rest Your Head, in a way — it has a mechanic of "scars", where certain important events can be written down and later called upon when appropriate in order to gain a certain bonus. These "scars" can be seen as abilities which are connected to specific past events in the game.

Controlling New Abilities

We'll now discuss how to control the gaining of new abilities — what sort of new abilities the players purchase, and whether they focus on gaining new abilities or on improving old ones. This can be done with the use of negative feedback, which we've discussed in "I Fell and I Can't Get Up".

If we put a negative feedback on advancing abilities — that is, the more you improve in an ability, the harder it is to improve yet more — then the players will have an incentive to gain new abilities rather than improve the old ones. This is done in GURPS, for instance, where improving a skill costs more points the higher the skill is rated.

On the other hand, if we put a high initial cost on new abilities, the players will prefer to focus on the abilities they already have. This is the case in Mutants & Masterminds — the price of a new power is usually quite high, unless it is based on an existing power, in which case its price is low. A new power can be based on an old one if there is a thematic connection between them — for instance, a hero with powers of ice can take the power to lock his enemies in ice, basing it on the power to create a wall of ice. This helps create characters that are based around a single, unifying theme, which perfectly fits the genre of super heroes that the game emulates, while still allowing them to gain new abilities, thus giving meaning to character advancement.

Additionally, it is possible to put a negative feedback system on buying new abilities. In other words, the first new abilities are cheap, but buying new abilities gets progressively pricier as the character gains more and more abilities. This encourages the players to create characters with a limited set of abilities. This may be useful if we want characters to be good at several different aspects, but still without allowing them to be able to do everything.

Last but not least, it is possible to achieve an even stricter control over what abilities the characters gain through the use of character templates — classes, career paths etc. This means that the player needs to choose what sort of template his character will use before the game begins, and this template limits his future choice of new abilities. The template may entirely predetermine what abilities are gained over time or it may merely limit the range of new abilities out of which the player can later choose. Obviously, within the range of abilities that are still available to the player after choosing a template, all of the above guidelines on pricing still apply.

The Meaning of Price

Above we've discussed the pricing of abilities. While the obvious example of what this means is that there are some points, such as Experience Points, which are literally paid in order to purchase new abilities, this isn't necessarily the case — the price of new abilities can come in many forms. It can come in the form of time required to wait, whether in-game time, real-life time or narrative time. (More on the methods of measuring time can be found in the article "When the Juice Runs Out".)

It can come in the form of something that needs to be done by the character within the world of the game — some quest to complete, perhaps. This is especially useful if the abilities are meant to create a feeling of achievement. For instance, the 3rd edition of D&D includes some prestige classes which require certain in-game events, such as specific rituals to be performed, in order to take levels in them. Other examples can be provided, but the bottom line is that "price" can mean many different things, and we shouldn't limit ourselves to the obvious interpretation when implementing character advancement.

Use in Character Creation

It should be noted that even if the game does not include character advancement whatsoever, the above discussion on pricing abilities can still be applied to the process of character creation.

Summary

The main thing to remember here is that in itself, having everything improve as the game progresses is quite meaningless. When making a system for character advancement, first we need to decide why we want to have such a system to begin with — possible reasons are escalation of power, adding variety and creating the feeling of achievement.

Having decided that, we need to create a system that is meaningful and achieves our goals — this can be done through static elements in the game world and the possibility to gain new abilities.