Advancement in the driver's seat? And Hi!

Hello everyone! I am Jeff, and will be posting here from time to time. I role play frequently with Lee, Ed, and the ever elusive Ebo.

Anyone who has role played with the same group for some time can quickly place their friends into different roles that they tend to play in the game. I'm not speaking of damage dealer or healer, but of how they go about engaging the game itself.

I find this to be the general breakdown:

1-2 People actively engage the plot and story of the game.

1 Person actively engages their own plots that have little to do with the game (my apologies to my GMs).

2-3 People sit back and wait to be called on.

It is the last category that concerns me, and I am often interested in how I can move those players to "get into the game".

Now, we have a long standing tradition of playing a lot of DnD and a lot of White Wolf. In both games, at the end of the session you get experience points. It is easy enough to kick back, roll the dice on your turn, and collect your reward at the end of the evening.

Recently, however, you may have read that we tried a session of Burning Wheel. I was immediately impressed by how much everyone got into their characters. I, myself, was dumbstruck by this and remained silent throughout most of the evening. People who would normally sit back and let the game go by were role playing their butts off. They were also actively trying to accomplish things.

Some of this is probably due to the game being new to us, but I suspect the advancement in the game plays a key role as well. To summarize, the advancement in this game is based on two things:

1. The actions you take during the game. Each time you do something, you might gain progress towards being better at it.

2. Role playing. Good or otherwise entertaining role playing can award you with points that eventually help to advance your character.

When you look at this, you realize that there is no bank of XP that is awarded to the group at the end of the night for being good sports. So, if you want your character to get better, you have to engage the game. This may not be a friendly approach for very new or very casual gamers (GFs and the like), but it seemed to be quite effective when we played.

So maybe we were all just excited to play the new game. I do wonder, though, if it's the power gamer deep down inside all of us that makes us realize that when we play Burning Wheel, we have to sit up, pay attention, and engage the game.