GURPS, Time, and Experience

+Douglas Cole blogged about 10,000 hours and GURPS. This brought to mind an old post I wrote about applying some of the lessons of Runequest to GURPS.

The problem of using the recommended method of GURPS experience is that for certain types of campaigns the character can unrealistically become very experienced in a short amount of time. I have had campaigns where characters went from 100 points to 200 points in two months of game time!. Part of the problem is that the way I run campaign results in the player doing things nearly every hour of every day. So a session may cover only a day or two of game time. 60 days of game time could wind up being 15 to 20 game sessions with award of 2 to 4 cp each. And there many times when a game days takes two or three sessions to resolve.

One fix is to run the campaign differently with down time in the game. I don't like this as the problem is not the players pushing their character unrealistically to operate 24 hours a day. The problem results from the characters getting involved in the life of the campaign. Something I want to happen and have no desire to change.

I feel that Runequest has a better XP system to handle this type of situation as outlined in the Applying Runequest to GURPS Article. We didn't use the system in the article. What we went with is this.

• Like Runequest if you use a skill in a situation with consequences and succeeded you placed a tick mark.
• You can convert the tick mark to a roll for XP with a day rest. If you roll a over your skill you get a character point. If you rolled a 17 or 18, (18 if you skill is 17 or higher) you get 2 points.
• If you rolled a critical success during the game you get 1 xp in that skill.
• You get 1 xp for every 45 days as "On The Job" training.
• You get 1 free cp at the end of every session and another for achieve a significant goal (personal or party).

Over all it worked out better than the flat award every session.

What I did for the 1xp per 45 days of On the Job Training is assume that the characters while living their life (i.e. adventuring) are "On the Job" for 16 hours out of 24 hours. This equates to 4 hours of learning per day. This meant 200 hours would occur every 50 days 4 hours of on the job. I also assume that a small number of hours per week would be spent training. When multiplied out over a number of days resulted in the final figure of 45 days per 1 xp award.