Subsidized Buy-in -> Subsidized Hold-Back

[Panpiper]

I have been greatly enjoying the wealth of resources on Killer Shrike's massive Hero System site. Among the resources there are some very interesting ideas on various ways to make the awarding and spending of XP more interesting for everyone. One in particular caught my eye, the Subsidized Buy-in. In this system of XP awards, a player may at his own option decide not to spend some of his awarded XP and instead give it to the GM, deposited as it were into an XP savings account. In reward for deferring this immediate gratification, the GM gives a bonus of one XP for every two deposited by the player (the bonus is also deposited). Furthermore, the XP in the account grows by ten percent every time a new opportunity presents itself for the players to spend XP (end of an adventure, or whatever).

 

Now as a player, I love the idea of more XP, and I see this positively as a way of massively ramping up the long term growth of my character. Unfortunately as a GM I see this negatively as a way for players to massively ramp up their power growth, possibly to the long term detriment of my ability to keep the game challenging enough to be fun.

 

I've given this dichotomy some thought and believe I've struck upon an ideal solution, one that permits a player to see a potentially much greater growth of their character, without it creating nightmares for the GM in maintaining campaign balance. I'm calling it Subsidized Hold-Back just to keep the nomenclature in sync with the other XP variants on Killer Shrike's site.

 

Allow players the option of depositing unspent XP into an account with the GM. They may always elect to spend their XP normally on their own, but any XP put into the GM account for their character is no longer available to them. The XP is subsidized, just as is the regular Subsidized Buy-in system, with a bonus XP given for every two XP deposited. And indeed, the XP in the player's GM account does grow by ten percent at the end of each XP spending opportunity. The difference between the system on Killer Shrike's site and my variation is simply this; The player cannot spend the XP in the GM account, ever. Only the GM can spend this XP on the player's character.

 

The GM decides when and how to spend this XP. They grow the player's character in ways that benefit the campaign as a whole and in a way that is conducive to the balance of the campaign. This could well mean that the GM might beef up the combat capacity of the character if he felt that the character was lagging behind the rest of the group. But if that were not the case, the GM might elect to grow the character in other interesting, and possibly unexpected ways. The player might stumble upon something that bequeaths to them a new power. A player that has been playing a stalwart warrior might suddenly find themselves blessed by their deity, perhaps even turning into a paladin. A mage might discover new and more flexible ways to use their magic. And so on.

 

The disadvantage for the GM of course is that this is more work. Personally though, this would be the sort of work I would most enjoy as a GM. The players might not like the idea of loosing control of their XP, but this is optional, nothing prevents a player from keeping and spending any or all of their XP on their own. A player who has deposited XP might feel slighted if the GM is biding his time about spending it, but the player needs to also keep in mind that as long as the GM is not spending it, it is accruing interest! And the interest compounds! The GM is saving up for something big! If you are impatient, deposit more XP! Were I a player, I would get more and more excited every time the GM did 'not' spend my XP in the Hold-Back account, because it meant that whatever it did get spent on later, would be all the bigger of a surprise present.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Subsidized Buy-in -> Subsidized Hold-Back

 

So, basically, you are proposing a hybrid of Subsidized Buy-in and GM's Hold-back. Sounds like a viable combo to me. I could type it up and post it if you like.

 

 

Also, you might want to check out the original polls here to see what others thought of the ideas:

 

Buy-in

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=73037

Hold-back

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=73044

 

 

 

All of the alternate XP concepts were a response to someones complaint that progress in HERO tends to be linear and it can be hard to do the sort of periodic powerups found in some literature and source material. So I posted half a dozen different ways or so to manage periodic power ups in direct and indirect ways, which turned into polls, and finally into documents.

[Panpiper]

Re: Subsidized Buy-in -> Subsidized Hold-Back

 

So' date=' basically, you are proposing a hybrid of Subsidized Buy-in and GM's Hold-back. Sounds like a viable combo to me. I could type it up and post it if you like.

 

By all means, type it up. Thank you KS.

 

In fact when I started writing this post, the first draft talked about it being an amalgam of the two ideas; Subsidized Buy-in and GM's Hold-back. Then upon re-reading it I decided it was more just an evolution of Subsidized Buy-in. It is completely optional whether or not a player participates, unlike GM's Hold-back. Also very importantly, in GM's Hold-back, the player is still deciding how to spend their XP. Really the only significant difference with my version and the two systems of Subsidized Buy-in and GM's Hold-back, is that my version is identical to Subsidized Buy-in with the caveat that only the GM gets to spend the XP in the XP savings account. And so I rewrote the post, not mentioning the GM's Hold-back.