There are many ways to “level up” in RPGs. Most of the time, it’s via class-system, where you get a package of level-ups. Like, at Level 3, you get a class feature, a new spell, and at level 4 you get a bonus to-hit and a feat or attribute increase; whatever.
GW later attempted to retrofit classes, but I think it’s difficult to do that with the wildly variant setting that is GW. I think a point-buy kind of system would work best, where you spend your earned points (in the 100’s or the 1000’s, or smaller, such as 30 pts. at 3rd level, etc.) on improving whatever feature you want (some may cost more to improve than others possibly). And I think “reputation scores” should definitely be a part of that, especially given the emphasis that Cryptic Alliances play and the whole SimVillage style of play. Improvement in mutations (scores in some versions), status within one’s village, improved skill checks (particularly with technology charts), are others. There are so many possible “Aspects” (my universal term for those feature categories) that one could specialize in, and that come with a cost of *not* improving the other standard improvements. In the classes system, at higher levels, it seems to level everyone out, and “blandify” play. It would be fun if your Achilles heel *stays* an Achilles heel, and you are the cock-of-the-walk amongst the Seekers, despite your high tech score, (or some other contradictory pair of Aspects to your self), because you teach Seekers how tech made people lazy, or corrupt, or just plain evil – using a FarmBot separated one from the need of people to work the land, the internet made people lazy researchers, and The Bomb was well, The Bomb. Amongst the Archivists, this means you can teach them how to worship the tech. Amongst the Voice, you become a Seer, skilled interpreting the delusional AI. But amongst the Restorationists, you’re a heretic, because you have such a good relationship with all of those Luddites (when in reality you just never spent the points with that CA, and had few times to interact with them to gain special favor. Want to be a true Skill Super-monkey? Go for it. Sociologist-of-the-Stars because you have good Reputation scores with a bunch of Cryptic Alliances? Sure! The Tankiest Tank who ever Tank-Tanked? Booyah! The story-telling aspects of specialized Aspects only increases the potential story-telling. In contrast, everyone in a classes system becomes “insert <generic demigod archetype> here” at 15th level.
The key is figuring out all the different game-mechanical Aspects that can improve over “level” progression, and how much they would cost in XP, and the balance amongst them. Care must be taken to make sure that spending all of your points in one Aspect doesn’t make the player unplayable or game breaking at higher levels. I particularly like options 1 and 3 on your shopping list. With 1, it would be any Attribute, skill score, or Mutation score, with a set cost per point. Option 3 is your best one, with tech level and rarity as multipliers. Number 2 I’m not fond of, as I think it forces a GM’s hand to railroad the story to fulfill the “roll.”
I forget exactly which issue it is right now, but there is a Dragon article on Tiers of Reputation (and levels of access) with the CAs, and 4th edition allows PCs to join CAs for the first(?) time. Such Tiers can be a combination of standard improvements (at Tier 5, you know who the Mysterious Leaders are by name, but it takes Tier 6 to know them personally), and unique bonuses per CA, such as a Breeding certificate amongst the Zoopremists.
Treatmonk just finished an exhaustive study of the Racial choices for D&D, and he attempted to quantify the Racial Features to Tier Rank the species’ choices. It’s a lot of watching time, but well worth it, if only to see how to something like this.
Well that was more of a Wall of Text than I’d intended, but I’m at the bottom of the page. So I am spending my last ten words on “well, what do you think, too much?”
