Part of the excitement of playing a character in a role-playing game is getting to develop that character over time by way of the character's in game experience. The Las Vegas chronicle is no different, and it uses a system of experience awards and expenditures to allow the players to improve their characters. The guidelines for earning experience points and improving characters in the V:tM chronicle of Las Vegas are detailed below.

Earning Experience Points
Characters earn experience points based on a system of basic points, awarded for time in the chronicle, and bonus points for outstanding role-playing. The guidelines for each are detailed below.

Basic Experience Point Awards
Characters earn a maximum of five basic points per month, according to the following guidelines.

1. Only characters actually registered with the storytellers will be awarded experience points. To be registered the storytellers must have:
a. Received a character sheet for the character, created according to White Wolf character creation guidelines.
b. Approved said character sheet.
c. Have a valid e-mail address on file for the player. All experience awards will be sent via e-mail.

2. Characters will be awarded one experience point for every two real-time hours of role-play per month, with a monthly cap of five points. The more you play, the more you earn. The cap is in place to encourage people to play more characters, thereby adding greater variation to the game, without playing so many that we never see any of them.

Role-playing Bonus Awards
Storytellers can nominate characters for bonus experience awards. This will be capped at 3 points per month per character, regardless of the storyteller that nominates them. If a storyteller feels a character is eligible for a role-playing award, they should submit a scroll containing the reason, and the proposed award to the other storytellers. Majority rules here, with any ties being decided by the head storyteller. We shouldn't have to say this, but no storyteller can nominate their own character.

Other players may also nominate characters for role-playing awards. Email the scroll to a storyteller, and the process above will apply, as will the cap. Again, players may not nominate their own characters.

Awarding Experience Points
Basic Experience points will be awarded on the 15th of the month following the month in which they are earned. Role-playing experience will be awarded immediately after being approved.

Spending Experience Points and Improving Characters
Experience points may be spent at any time after they are awarded. They may be saved, or used immediately. The following system will be used for counting and documenting the use of experience points in Las Vegas.

Experience Point Costs

Las Vegas Experience Point Costs†

† Some abilities, such a Dark Thaumaturgy follow their own rules - those rules will take precedence over this table.
* Caitiff have no clan based disciplines, just as they have no clan. For them, the cost of raising Disciplines is the current rating x 6 for all Disciplines.
** Increasing a Virtue through experience does not increase Traits based on that Virtue (Humanity, Willpower, etc).

Documenting Experience Point Usage

Players must submit Experience logs with any required scrolls, via E-Mail, to a Storyteller to document how points are spent. This must be done before any change will be recognized to a character in Las Vegas. The Storyteller in charge of updating character sheets will record the amount of Experience spent and what it was spent on, and make the appropriate change in the official sheet. Once this has been done, the player will be notified, and the new or improved ability may be used. Ideally Storytellers should take no more than 48 hours to approve changes and apply them to a sheet or ask for clarification from the player. Real-life may, as always, interfere with this.

A Note about Role-playing Improvements
There are a lot of good arguments both for and against role-playing improvements to characters, otherwise known as training. What they break down to in reality is - role-playing out the improvements makes for good back-story. It also takes a lot of time away from other role-playing. However, no one can sit down and teach themselves everything, especially if they have no idea where to begin. There must be learning somewhere, at least at the beginning. Therefore, Las Vegas will use the following guidelines for improving Traits.

Current Rating: Zero to Two Dots
Characters at this stage of their development in a Trait have limited knowledge and ability to develop the Trait on their own, with some exceptions (noted below). They usually require training, of some kind, directed either by training materials, or by a character that already possesses the knowledge. A character can improve some Traits at this level on their own, and even learn certain new ones, but, in most cases, it requires a greater investment, reflected by an increased experience cost. For some Traits, self education at this level is impossible. The upside to self-education is that the learning process doesn't necessarily have to be role-played out - it can be assumed to occur during down time.

Attribute and Virtues (incl. Willpower and Humanity)
Attributes can never be learned from someone else - these are always self taught. No one can teach you to be stronger, or smarter, or more adept. These are things that, while you can certainly acquire teaching aids (or, for Strength for instance, a personal trainer) no one can "teach" you how to be smarter - you have to do it all on your own. Therefore, attribute improvement does not have a point penalty for being self-taught.

Virtues simply cannot be learned from someone else. You can watch others, and attempt to be more like them, but to put it simply, no one can impart Humanity on another. You either have it, or you don't. No one can impart Self Control - a character must learn to discipline himself in order to acquire it. Virtues, like Attributes, can only ever be self-taught, and therefore also do not have any experience point penalty for self-education.

Disciplines
Disciplines, the unique abilities that distinguish Canite clans, are slightly more complex than most other traits. A Kindred guards his or her powers jealously, and rarely displays their full measure, unless circumstances are very dire indeed.

New Disciplines and Paths
It is impossible to learn a new discipline without having been taught it by someone that already knows it. The gift of each clan of Canites is different, and the Gift of the blood manifests itself in many different ways, some of which can be quite alien to Kindred who have no experience with these abilities. Thus, a character must be taught, in game, the first dot of any Discipline by someone who already possesses the Discipline.

Clan Disciplines and Paths
Additionally, characters cannot raise their dots of a clan Discipline through self-teaching at this level of experience in the discipline, because they lack the raw understanding of the discipline itself to make any noticeable progress. They must learn these abilities from someone else, usually their sire, or another of their clan.

Non-Clan Disciplines and Paths
Out of Clan Disciplines present a special problem all their own. As stated before, Canites jealously guard the secrets of their clans, especially the body of work that makes up their Clan's lore. Because of this, it is nearly impossible for a character to teach themselves non-clan disciplines, or to improve in them on their own. Characters must find someone else who knows the Discipline, and are willing to teach them, in order to improve these Disciplines at any level.

Caitiff and Disciplines
A Caitiff character cannot self-learn a Discipline improvement - simply put, they have no body of lore to learn from, and so must be taught by others at every step of the game. Should they be accepted into a clan, however, this restriction is automatically lifted. At this time, they would use the appropriate guidelines for the current number of dots the character possesses in that discipline.

Abilities (Knowledges, Talents, and Skills)
Abilities are those things that a character can learn and improve on his own, even if he currently possesses zero dots in the ability. Correspondence courses abound for most things, and libraries or the Internet can provide a host of training materials that the character can use in the comfort of his own haven. In the range of zero to three dots, a character may either be taught the ability by someone else at normal costs, or teach himself at double the normal cost. Self-tutelage can be done in "down" time for the character and doesn't require role-playing of the actual training in the way that learning from another character does, but it's harder to, a fact which is reflected in the additional experience point cost.

Three Dots and Beyond
Once a character has three dots in any Trait, barring the exceptions as noted above for Non-Clan Disciplines and Paths and Caitiff and Disciplines, the character may begin teaching themselves at no additional experience cost. He is assumed, at this level of expertise, to posses enough general knowledge of the subject to know where to look for answers without doing a lot of meaningless searching. He has enough of a grasp of the subject to pursue a directed study that will more quickly lead to the desired results.

As stated above, Non-Clan Disciplines always require an instructor, and Caitiff will always require a teacher for any Discipline related increase.

Being Trained by another Character
In order to be taught a Trait by another character, the teacher must have the Trait being taught with at least the one more dot than the number of dots the student currently possesses. In other words, a vampire who possesses Firearms 2 and wishing to learn Firearms 3 must be taught by a vampire that already possesses at least that many dots in Firearms. He isn't going to learn a stinking thing from someone who only knows as much as he does - or less. In addition, once he has learned Firearms 3, he would have to find a new teacher to learn Firearms 4 from, or learn it on his own, unless his current teacher learns Firearms 4 in the meantime.

Other games
In order to protect the game balance of the Las Vegas chronicle, experience points from other games will not be admitted into Las Vegas, once the character has been approved by the Storytellers. If a player wishes to take his character to another game, he should advise the Storytellers, who will perform any last adjustments needed to the character, including any final Experience Point awards, and then "cash the character out" of the game. If the player wishes to bring his character back to Las Vegas in the future, he will need to resubmit the character for approval, along with a log of any experience points earned and spent, and the character will need to be approved by the Storytellers, the same as any new character entering the game.