A long time ago, when I was more invested into TTRPGs, I grew increasingly frustrated with the system of only distributing advancement/experience points at the end of a session.
This always made me think that certain challenges could be better dealt with if the players could access/develop abilities as the game progressed in real time.
At some point, I started to divise a play system that relied on a split experience atribution system, with players being able to automatically rack experience points from directly using their skills/habilties, while the DM would keep a tally of points from goals/missions achieved, distributable at session end.
A practical example: a burglar would have the lockpick skill. The skill would be tiered, with each tier having 100 points to max it out, and the higher the tier, the less experience would be given by making use of the skill, as the skill would be further and further refined and new breakthroughs in its understanding become harder to achieve. But DM attributed XP could either be spent towards maxing out the skill faster or gain a new or linked one, like disarming booby traps.
I drifted away from TTRPG and simply let my idea sit in a drawer in a notebook. Today I found my notes again as I was rummaging through the junk and the it brought some nostalgia.
To those with more experience in TTRPGs: would this be feaseable? Or enticing? Interesting?
Not all games use that type of system. Masks, for example, along with a few other PbtAs give players Exp/Potential when they fail a roll. That’s an incentive for trying riskier actions, as well as not power-gaming and only use the attributes/labels you excel at since failure has its own reward - besides being fun.
When you’re trying to think about how to distribute/grant exp, its not just about how characters are growing, but also why. Sure, you can have that TES-like system where you need to train Lockpicking, but how many opportunities will a GM have to present enough situations where a player can lockpick for Exp? Imagine every time someone played Skyrim and forged a hundred daggers because they needed to level up blacksmithing and how that would translate to a ttrpg (or not, since its a particularly bad system by itself)
I believe RPGs often benefit from narrative exp, and to use your Burglar example, they could have exp triggers that involve deception, forgery, stealing, etc. So whenever they lie to someone for self-profit, use their skills for ill gain, steal without clear necessity and such, they’d gain Burglar exp, and eventually perfect those moves or learn new ones.
I used that specific example because I had just read my notes on it but yes, your intuition is correct.
Even D&D derivatives use a system like that, like Flee Mortals’s Level 0 adventures. You start with no proficiencies, and whenever you succeed on a check or save you can gain proficiency in it (within reasonable limit)