In most role-playing games, character progression is tied to adventuring, whether that is through the accumulation of experience points or the successful use of skills.
However, some d100 games (e.g. RuneQuest, Call of Cthulhu) have a secondary mechanism for character improvement, namely training in the downtime between adventures.
On the face of it, this seems plausible. Why shouldn’t study or practice be a route to improvement? However, equally, in the interests of an exciting game, training shouldn’t become the primary route for character development.
As such, training in Hack100 will be an optional rule with some conditions attached. These conditions aim to ensure that the opportunity to train must be earned (in one way or another) rather than taken for granted. Specifically:
- All training requires a teacher. The more specialised the training, the harder it will be to find suitable tuition. Locating the provider of training might form the basis of an adventure in its own right.
- All training must be paid for in some way. There might be a straightforward monetary cost. Or the teacher may insist upon a favour or some other obligation from the would-be student.
Only one Ability or Specialism may be trained at a time. Each block of training lasts one month. At the end of the month, the trained Ability/Specialism is increased by 1d5%. No Ability or Specialism may be increased to more than 70% through training.
Training should never get in the way of adventuring. It is something to be done in downtime. If necessary, the Referee can control access to training through the non-availability of teachers – they might be busy with other students, sick, away, or otherwise preoccupied.