Progression
Goals
In GnG the way that you character progresses is tied mostly to your characters goals. These can be smaller goals that provide equally small bonuses, such as restoring a destroyed church providing a bonus to faith, or much larger goals that provide extreme rewards such as killing a dragon and gaining a level-up.
Goals can be individual or group goals, and they are set with discussion by both the players and the GM.
Talent Trees
The primary way to gain abilities in GnG is through talents in talent trees, you can gain these through completing goals or levelling up. Each talent tree will have a theme/focus but some trees may be connected to one another. For example the “Spellcasting” tree is tied to a collection of other talent trees called “Source” trees, these trees provide a source of magic which you must take before you can begin the spellcasting tree (Such as arcane study, faith or nature).
Min-Maxing
Nothing guaranteed when levelling except XP and RP. Choose to gain HP, increase stats, proficiency etc.
In GnG you are guaranteed almost nothing when you level up except for Rest points, and Experience. Rest points are used to recover when you rest, you gain 1 per level, and Experience is used to buy Talents, Proficiencies, Stat increases, and HP etc when you level. If you don’t invest in these things they wont increase, so you have to ensure that you are balancing everything or you might end up in trouble.
Min-maxing as a term generally has a negative connotation however in GnG it is completely acceptable, that is because by the fact that you are specialising into a specific field you will need your fellow player to specialise in the other areas to help you. However, we know that designing GnG like this is risky as if any area is inherently weaker than the others it will be forgotten and thrown to the wayside, so we went to great lengths to ensure that all of the competing areas for progression have their own unique bonuses and negatives.
Training
In GnG we wanted to ensure that your characters could get stronger outside of levelling, that way everyone is rewarded for actively participating in the game rather than just being dragged along. Training is when your character takes time to learn a skill they don’t know or improve on a skill they already have. This can be done on your own or with a tutor but either way it will take time and effort, but when you finish you actually get the mechanical benefits to show for it.
Companions
Progression doesn’t always focus on your character you can also progress through companions. There are two types of companions there are animal companions and sidekicks. Both act semi-independently and grow in level along side you. Things like goals and training can also be focus on making your companion stronger instead of you.
Animal companions, these are creatures that follow your command. You can learn combo moves with them for combat, ride on them, or even send them as small scouts.
Sidekicks are people just like your character although usually weaker, they follow your lead but have a fully independent thought process and may ignore you.
Items
Collecting or crafting items will massively change the strength of your character. Items were intentionally designed to grant access to new types of abilities and overall increase the characters strength in meaningful ways, that way players who invest in finding/making these items will be rewarded for their effort.
We also created a system where magical items can bond with a character and as they progress together the bond grows stronger unlocking or enhancing abilities, that way your character doesn’t have to throw away the ancient family heirloom that they started the campaign with as soon as they find a +1 sword.
Strongholds
Building, expanding, and maintaining strongholds is 1 way for your character to grow much more powerful. This takes your characters influence from the individual to the communal. With strongholds you can build specialised training/crafting rooms, attract soldiers and companions, and even use it as the seat of power when launching an invasion of your neighbours.
Balance
Across the many methods of progression some will be easier in different styles of campaign. They don’t all rely on the same resource, whilst some rely on game resources like XP others rely on world resources like time and gold, this means that the GM has complete control over how much the players can progress in any of these fields, and if there is an element that isn’t suited to that campaign it can be removed without effecting the balance of the other areas.
When it comes to talents, which are the most fundamental form of progression, we knew that not all talents would be equal in their strength so instead of a 1 size fits all approach we made their XP cost vary appropriately.