It’s no secret, because I say this every time, that I love campaign games. So much of that revolves around the story of the game. But that is not the only element that I really enjoy in a campaign game. I also enjoy the aspect of the game where I level up my character. But how you level up your character can vary a fair amount. I’m going to breakdown three of the most common ways that you can level up in a campaign game.

Level Up

Story Based

The first one, and I have an example for each, is what you get in Stars of Akarios. In Stars of Akarios there are prescribed spots where you get things. So when you get a new pilot skill or a co-pilot, when you can upgrade the Sparrow, things like that. It is at a specific interval based on the story.

Now this might not sound like it gives you much choice. But it is not as strict as I made it sound. Sometimes it is fairly specific, like with the co-pilot, the option is limited to what you’ve done. Or the attack and flight patterns you start picking from are limited. But you select from those groups. And you have specific tracks that let you modify your draw deck or ship stats which does give you choice.

But the whole idea is that you don’t gain experience (XP) or anything like that. That is not what determines when you level up. It is in the story that determines when you level up and no matter how you’ve done, when whether you snuck by or succeeded no problem, you get that level up.

XP Based

The next way I consider to be XP based leveling. Though, I break that down into two areas. This one is just about gaining XP to unlock specific skills. And the example I think of for XP based leveling is Gloomhaven.

In Gloomhaven you play cards and complete missions to gain XP. Once you obtain a specific amount of XP you move up to the next level. For Gloomhaven you get new cards and potentially more health. But those are doled out when you gain a specific amount of energy. You unlock it only then and you keep adding to that pool to unlock future levels.

This is common in other games as well. Sword & Sorcery offered a similar system, so tweaked slightly. And for something like Dungeons and Dragons, this is the normal way to level up. So it is the closest to that RPG like experience. But it is less dynamic. You unlock specific things, in Gloomhaven it’s a choice between cards. There are other ways that you can use XP that are more freeing which we will get to next.

XP Spending

The final way is through spending your experience points. And my example for this one is Roll Player Adventures. But there are other games, Arkham Horror LCG for example, which do this as well. This is the idea that as you gain XP, instead of having a specific number you hit to gain stuff, you gain stuff at specific points. Not based on story, but on how you spend your experience points.

Let’s look more at Roll Player Adventures to see how it works there. Throughout each story section you gain experience points. Those experience points don’t do anything for you throughout that story. You collect them and that is it. It is only at the end of the story that you use them. But it isn’t a standard, use them and get a new level and the bonuses that come with that.

In Roll Player Adventures what you spend your XP on can vary. You use it to level up character stats, increase the dice pool for combat, increase card play, or level up health. Each of those cost an amount of experience points. So you reduce how many you have in order to get new things which offers a more specific choice in the game. And can create a more widely branching path.

What do I mean? I play a sorcerer character in Roll Player Adventure. I start with no strength and I still have no strength. My charisma is amazing, however. Or, if I had wanted, I could build in the complete opposite direction. Another example is that we could have put all are points in health to make sure the party never dies. Leave our stats and dice pool lower, but just make sure we can survive, that’s a choice you can make.

Final Thoughts

Now, some of the systems might sound better to you. Maybe you want that freedom and flexibility that a XP spending based system gives you. Maybe you prefer to have fewer times where you level up, but possibly bigger shifts from a story based or XP based system. And maybe you don’t want to track XP at all and a story based system would be perfect for you.

Each of them offers it’s own benefit. In Gloomhaven you might level up after being soundly defeated in a scenario. In Stars of Akarios that won’t happen as likely. But each of them offers their own flavor to do really the same thing. And that is get you better at what you do in the game as you go. It is about what flavor you prefer.

Which way do you like best for a board game or an RPG system?

Send an Email
Message me on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here
Support us on Patreon here