Hi I had a few thoughts on this,

> Advancement as written is a simple matter of gaining a couple points
> every adventure or so, and distributing those to increase die caps and
> Traits (or buy new Traits).

This is great if you can make it work, but given the narrow 2-5 range
of stats it always seemed a bit wrong to toss a few more points in
there. I have tried once to give someone a new trait as part of the
shuffle around of stats between adventures. Stingy GM that I am I made
them drop a point for it ;) .

> --- In wushurpg@..., "reverendbayn" <dan@b...> wrote:
> > I've always found that the key to running long term games
> > is to get he players to invest in changing the setting, rather
> > than their character sheets.

I tend to agree here with the padre 'o' wushu here. My only proviso is
that when you have a group of ex-D&Ders or a bunch of white-wolfers
its hard for them to let go of xp. Or if you're trying to slowly
reform some power-gamers.

The rule I use tries to balance these two. This is shamelessly taken
from the wushu wiki and I think from something related in marvel
universe (?). Anyway every session a character gets to write down
something memorable and specific from within the session. "Its always
easier the second time" comes to mind here. The PC can cash in this
past experience once per session to add a die to their die pool for
free as long as it is loosely related to this past experience.

For example, in a Fantasy campaign, Grok the Destroyer (sigh, yes the
actual name), performed a grisly decapitation on an orc leader,
stunning his warband enough that they failed to respond to a hidden
group of archers. He wrote down something along the lines of, "No
respect for decorum - warchiefs don't need heads." Since then my
player has used this twice, once to behead a captain of the guard, and
another time as part of intimidating another orc leader. As long as
its close to the original act.
This leads to some signature moves, which fits the genre as long as it
doesnt lead to repeating the same series of actions again and again. I
like this a lot better than unbalancing things by adding lots of
points after every session and adds a sort of memoir or book of
exploits. Those tavern stories arent just to wow the locals.

Let me know your thoughts,
-w