The Gaming Den

In early D&D, experience rewards mainly came from retrieving treasure, and experience rewards for fighting monsters were a pittance, to encourage goal-oriented play and avoidance of unnecessary fights. That's all well and good, but getting filthy rich isn't a goal that makes sense for all types of characters, and even when it does, this system encourages looting everything that isn't nailed down, then coming back with a crowbar for the nails. The metric of "getting out of the dungeon with the loot" before experience points are rewarded also makes it very clear that experience points are an entirely meta reward, not connected to the characters' actual experience in any but the most tenuous way.

In 3.x and PF, experience rewards primarily come from fighting monsters, with rewards for non-combat goal accomplishment mostly arbitrary. 4e uses about the same system as 3e, but with a slightly more formalized system of quest rewards. This system encourages people to seek out fights, rather than avoid them and "miss out" on experience, which the rules tried to adress by "clarifying" that exp ought to be rewarded for "overcoming" encounters whatever the means (stealth, monsters fleeing, diplomacy etc.) Unfortunately, these "clarifications" were generally vague and about as clear as mud, leading to weird corner cases related to guerilla tactics and monster motivations.

I think we can all agree that it is a good thing for players to know what they get exp for, and at least have an idea of how much exp is at stake in any given situation. That helps them make informed decisions about what to do. Tying exp strictly to spesific in-game actions like getting treasure or defeating monsters does this, and works fairly elegantly. Experience rewards for characters' actions are determined by a straightforward application of the rules, with a minimum of metagame-level discussions or decisions that could be contentious or distract from play. However, these systems contain perverse incentives towards "grinding" and Greyhawking, which I don't think it's possible to remove without taking away the straightfowarwardness and transparency which are the strengths of those systems.

I want a system that is transparent for the players, relates experience rewards to in-character action (with the possibility of failing, and missing out on rewards) and does not contain perverse incentives.

For storyline-oriented play, I think a system similar to the MHRP Milestone system would work well -each character comes with a short table related to his goals or character development, detailing what actions he gets exp for, and the GM supplies one for the current adventure or arc as well. But for a more sandbox-oriented game, where PCs set their own goals, and usually in a more short-term or ad-hoc manner, I don't think this system would work as well. Maybe it could, if the focus was on the character's own Milestone and the GM only supplied an "adventure Milestone" when the whole group had an agreed-upon common goal, but even then I think you'd have problems with character Milestones either being too spesific to be applicable in the variety of situations the PCs could end up in, too general to be interesting, or too gameable so that the PCs could essentially give themselves exp at will with negligible risk.

I suppose the best thing to do in sandbox play would be to have the players declare their PCs' goals, then the GM responding with how much experience accomplishing that goal will be worth. But in order for this not to be completely arbitrary, a few things would need to be determined:

There would have to be a structure for the GM to appraise the "value" of various goals. There's almost certainly going to be a high degree of player-GM negotiation and GM leeway in any such structure, but that's okay, really -we just need a source of numbers for exp that's more consistent that the GM's ass, and some guidelines on how to apply it. We could say "level x 100 x1-5 depending on magnitude of the goal" as a starting point, for the sake of argument, but what is a "magnitude 2 goal", and how do you distinguish it from a magnitude 1 or 3 goal?

There would also have to be a structure for the players' goal declaration. How many goals can be pursued at once? Probably more than one per character, but there would have to be some limit. And when could they be changed? Probably not completely at will, but sometimes situations -and thus goals- really change in a hurry. And sometimes people just change their minds. I would like to avoid a setup where goal declaration became a minigame in itself, with timing rules and metagame resources.

Thoughts?

Thought 1: If you're going to use an acronym that isn't as basic and common as GM or XP then you need to spell the thing out first. I'd rather chastise you for being a lazy jerk than look up MHRP, though I think you meant WHRP anyway.

Thought 2: The game session seems like the best way to determine the value of a goal. If accomplishing the goal takes up the amount of time you have to play one game session, it's a magnitude 1 goal. If the players make their own goals something they're going to have to accomplish anyway (like "I want to find a raxx thistle." "Oh, like the ones growing all over the fields you're about to travel?" "Uh, yeah."), they should know the GM is probably not going to give them XP for all of those, and how much is given really can just be a judgement call. Beyond that, examples clarify.

Anyway, that's the XP system I'm using in my game. Most of it comes down to throwing XP at the players when they have a sense of accomplishment for something big enough, and aiming for about 1 XP per session, but I tell them it's more formalized than that.

The After Sundown character advancement system is fairly organic, and has characters gaining real power with each Chapter (session?); however, that assumes you're using some sort of Shadowrun/World of Darkness style character sheet and mechanics.

My two cents:

Any "Roleplay-derived" XP in DnD that isn't given in terms of fractions of a level (i.e one tenth, one fifth, etc.) is a waste of time doomed to irrelevance beyond level 1.

Well, obviously. Fortunately, a level is always 1000 exp x current level, and equal CR monster exp is already 300 exp x current level, so there's no reason not to make any other rewards follow the same paradigm of meaningful reward N = N exp x current level.

Put randomised piles of XP in the game, and when players find them, they get XP. Done. Promotes exploration and container-opening. Also pixel-bitching if you're too fussy about "finding".

The randomisation should get players to keep doing whatever they happened to be doing when they found the XP, like Skinner's chickens. You could likely use that notion to place XP intelligently, by putting it where you expect players to be doing something useful.

For game purposes, dress up your XP piles as whatever seems appropriate to the genre. Inside lost tomes of arcane knowledge, under the talking sword, in the blood of the goblin big boss, in the joyful tears of a rescued princess, whatever.

Why use XP at all?

Because D&D is a level-based system, which precludes more discrete advancement, and as mentioned, I want to relate advancement to in-character actions, with a possiblity of missing out. So I don't want to hand out levels by DM fiat.

I could hand out "exp" in level-sized chunks only, which would at least save some accounting although I think some players would be a bit irked by the loss of a "carrot", but I would still need a reward system for when and how often to do so.

I liked Shatner's ELO (Early Levelling Oppurtunity) system.
http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=303573#303573

Essentially an advancement point is handed out each session. It takes 3 to level.
BUT each advancement point also allows you to buy a piece of your next level ... NOW.

It's explained in the spoilered section.

Dogbert wrote:My two cents:

Any "Roleplay-derived" XP in DnD that isn't given in terms of fractions of a level (i.e one tenth, one fifth, etc.) is a waste of time doomed to irrelevance beyond level 1.

I think that a better solution is to calculate it based on the encounters avoided as a result of good roleplay.

So, if the PCs talk down a CR X encounter; and don't fight it, they got XP as if they had defeated such a challenge.

I've been able to run entire campaigns where almost every encounter was up to the PCs whether they would run, engage, or negotiate. They tended to negotiate quite often; and with the way Tomes handles minor magic items, having the players give away +2 items (old school pre-BoG Tomes) or minor scaling magic items doesn't hurt them in the long run, since they can either have a bunch as trade goods, or restock at their home base at the end of the adventure.

Ultimately, it's carrot-and-stick on the MC's part.

If the MC doesn't reward things they want to see happen; then they're not going to keep happening. Likewise with things they don't want to see happen being talked about. Keep punishments to a minimum, and rewards visible. Chastisement alone is usually enough, and rewards should be known by all, so that all know what you're looking for.

The Karma reward system in AS is also good because players get some karma for themselves; and some to give to other players for good actions. The MC shouldn't give any freely in that case, yet doing so is certainly possible.

I'm kind of over the idea of XP.

Having a mini-game for power advancement for defeating challenges really only powers up people who already have enough power to meet the challenges they are facing.

The good RPer doesn't need an incentive for good RP. He/she is going to do it anyway. The same goes for the min-maxxer and the tactics guy who leverages small amounts of power into combat success.

Negative reinforcement doesn't work much better. The guy who lost a level because he missed a few sessions has as much reason to abandon the campaign as he does to show up more.

People seem to want XP to reward shy people to RP and to reward bad tactics guys for success, but that can't really work if you also reward the skilled people too.

I've often advocated that the "XP" that people get is just some resource that can be spent on RP and campaign rewards. Leave the actual power advancement to some fixed rate like one level per three adventures.

While 3e D&D tells you to hand out XP for overcoming challenges, it only has a chart for defeating CR x (which most people read as monster with CR x). Thus many games only hand out XP for killing monsters.
Basically, any time you write down, you get XP if you do this, people read it as, you can only gain XP by doing this.

And XP in D&D is not a even a reward in the first place. Your level just indicates what kind of adventures or other things you can do.

I prefer just using MTP and hand out XP whenever your group does something awesome and wants to feel some progression.

Climbing towards a new level is a nice feeling in and of itself for some people, including me, so I'm a fan of retaining XP, but always completely disregard the amounts the books suggest I give out. Instead, I attach XP to quests for completing them, in any way, and rig it so that each level lasts about as long as I want to.