[Torg] Any ever thought of or tried reversing/altering Torg's Metapower vs Advancement struggle?

[Scott Schultz]

To sum up my previous post more succinctly - TORG has a resource management game built into it where XP is not just a reward, it's a resource. How you manage it directly affects how you play the game. Your friend's complaint and your proposed changes are designed to remove the resource management aspect from the game while preserving the benefit. No risk, all reward.

Your claim that the current system has a "disincentive of giving up advancement in helping a fellow player with an issue" is technically true if all players are completely selfish and 100% goal oriented, where advancing their character is their primary goal. In other words, power gamers.

My experience playing with my friends and with others is that this situation is seldom, if ever, actually true. Players join a RPG group because they want to socialize and work together as a team. I cannot recall ever experiencing a moment where one or more players refused to help the team succeed or refused to help a teammate succeed or felt robbed because they were "forced" to do either of those things at their own expense. 

In the end, playing the game and having fun running the adventure and using possiblities to accomplish downright outlandish things at times is what it was all about. The XP aspect was really the incidental part most of the time.

This is my experience. IMO, you're attempting to solve a problem that only exists as a thought experiment and that represents an outlier on the graph of player concerns about the game. Most players, IMO, will not worry much at all about their stats and instead be happy that they can leap a chasm and grab a bush that saves them from certain death as they chase Dr. Mobius across the desert. IMO, the fact of possiblities as a game mechnic is the more important aspect and the XP the less important aspect. 

In the end, you have to decide about which is most important to you. Take away that decision and you've taken away a big chunk of the gameplay of TORG.