The Seasoned Adventurer: (Experience and Advancement system for Fighting Fantasy)

[MortiS-the-Lost]

Warlock_04_Expanding_FF.pdf

Here's a simple but rather effective Experience and Advancement system for the Basic Fighting Fantasy RPG and should also work with Advanced Fighting Fantasy too. Also, anyone writing their own home-brew might want to give these rules a look when they are thinking about their own EXP system. These rule were written by Graeme Davis and originality published in Issue 4 of Warlock.

[Billiam Babble]

This is great (I think I have Warlock 4 somewhere, my precious....).

I really think Steve Jackson misses the point here:

3. Personally, I am not in favour of L U C K being included in an
Experience points system. I see L U C K as an unchanging characteristic;
you are born either Lucky or Unlucky. Even in a fantasy world, I do
not envisage characters 'becoming luckier' as they go through life.
S K I L L and M A G I C can be improved through training, experience and
use; L U C K is not like that. It is not possible to ‘practise your L U C K ’. I
would keep the Experience system for S K I L L and M A G I C only.

Luck in FF (prior to AFF) was essentially a saving throw and skills check.  Anything which wasn't based on (combat) SKILL and STAMINA (strength) or pure MAGIC (if that attribute is used) was reduced to a Testing Luck roll.  In fantasy worlds, an adventurer's luck would be a reflection of whether or not very active gods approved of their continuing success and survival, their honed jack-of-all-trades savvy and nouse, not to mention the fact that its possible to start a FF game (in book form or RPG) with a miserable 7 Luck. It's poison - roll the 2 dice, and even if you succeed we'll still reduce your Luck to 6.  Where are the rewards?!
Ooh, silly man.

(It's okay, it was a long time ago, and you eventually completed at least some of the game books....)

[MortiS-the-Lost]

Yea, I wasn't sure quite what Mr Jackson was getting at there either. LUCK is normally regained in  the game books after solving a puzzle or  defeating a particularly tricky enemy. Also 'Potions of Fortune' which restores your LUCK to it's initial value +1 were available in some books (in his own books!). So yes you can become more lucky as you go. IMHO luck dosn't need to be part of the experience system because the GM should be rewarding it directly in-game in the same way the books do, maybe that's what he meant to say.

On a similar (if some what off subject) note, in my home brew system Fate (which serves a similar function to LUCK) is tied directly to EXP and a new Fate Point is gained for each 5 EXP.    

Also worth of note is that in Myriador's FF D20 books Luck is treated as an extra Ability Score - Initially between 1 and 18 and regained at a rate of 1 per day just like other Abilities Scores in D20.

An Experience and Advancement system is vital to a long running campaign and I feel this one does the job for FF and AFF.