Experience Points, SAPs and GPCs

When a player checks out at the end of each game day, records are made on their character sheet for three things: Experience Points (EPs), Service Activity points (SAPs) and Game Participation Credits (GPCs)

Experience Points

Experience points are accumulated to advance your character's level in the game. The typical experience bonus at a game day is 100 experience points. This 100 points assumes that you've at least worn a tabard over your street clothes in an attempt to look the part. If you adventure wearing nothing but sweats and a beer-logo tee shirt, you'll get half experience points. If you wear a particularly nice costume, the game committee may award you 10% or 20% extra base experience.

Two day events have a base experience level of 250 experience points, modified as above.

Completing certain parts of the plot of a given game day will result in gaining additional experience point awards, ranging from 10 to 30 additional points.

Service Activity Points

On game days that players NPC, they gain 100 Service Activity Points (SAPs). Service Activity Points can be used to match experience points on a one for one basis, helping to increase the speed with which your character advances in levels.

Service Activity Points can also be used to buy additional life levels if your character has died. Additional life levels cost 100 SAP for every 5 levels your character has attained. Thus, if you're a 4th level character, and die, it will cost 100 SAP to buy a replacement life level. If you're a 5th level character and die, it will cost you 200 SAP to buy a replacement life level.

Additional service activity points can be gained by doing work for the game. The suggested rate is 10 SAP per hour of work. Large projects (such as this web page), should be assigned a flat SAP value. Likewise, making donor weapons for NPCs to use is worth 10 SAP per weapon, and 20 SAP per shield.

Monstering for a two day game is worth 250 Service Activity Points. Staffing for a game (coordinating the way monsters go out and making sure that the timing of events comes off) is worth a 50% bonus in SAPs, and committing to play a recurring NPC over two or more consecutive game days will result in a bonus of 20% on the SAPs.

For those people interested in starting up other chapters using the Magic Horizons rules system, it's recommended that the game committee hand out SAP liberally.

Game Participation Credits

The third item that is tracked on your character sheet is Game Participation Credits. Every day that you monster, you gain 3 GPCs. Every day that you play, you expend 2 GPCs. No character can go below -2 GPCs without prior permission from the game committee. Characters start out at 0 GPCs when they start play. If there are an insufficient number of monsters available, players with negative GPCs will be drafted to play NPCs.

What GPCs do is force people to rotate through monstering and playing, monstering 40% of the time, and playing 60% of the time.

Special Case: Split Days

The third option is to PC for 1/4 of the game day, and NPC for the remainder. This is called running a split day. Characters running a split day may do whatever production they need to have done, and still may use abilities that can only be done at checkout (such as Merchant). They get their normal player Experience point levels, and their GPCs remain unchanged.

Special Case: Game Committee Members

For every month with a game day that a player is on the Game Committee, he gains 75 experience and 125 SAP, while gaining +3 GPCs. Serving on a 6 month board seat will result in a bonus of 4 GPCs and serving on a year-long slot will result in a bonus of 8 GPCs.

Special Case: Chapter Officers

Chapter officers gain a bonus of 50 SAP per month that they actually do something in. Chapter officers are defined by each chapter according to their needs. Typical officers include a banker, a chapter safety marshal, a public relations officer, and a prop director/quartermaster.

Problems with the page? Email Ken Burnside.