Goodman Games

DCC system for experience and advancement seems to focus a lot on expenditure, cost, effort, and loss - how much damage was taken, how many spells faded away, how many single-use items spent, how many characters dead. This is fine and all, a simple and functional system that makes sense and that I rather like, but I feel that one rather large factor of things has been completely overlooked - the role of luck.

You've all had a theoretically imposing and powerful final boss brought low in two turns without managing to hit anything, failing all his spell checks, and getting critted by like three party fighters. Many of you may have seen a simple, unassuming mook, last several turns and land many blows through awesome rolls on his part and terrible rolls on the party's. And then there are the moments of absolute binary, where you are either lucky or dead, such as a save-or-die trap.

How would you apply the DCC experience rules to all these? Is it still worth some experience just boldly exposing yourself to terrible danger and yet managing to clear it up without a scratch? Or should you receive less or none at all, your incredible luck holding you back and keeping you from learning anything by your own effort? Would the humble little shrooman named Neoconyd, who opened an unexpected can and utterly destroyed a high-level party, be worth a great deal of experience because of the hit point and spell loss you are suddenly forced to deal with, or just a tiny amount because you really should be able to deal with this guy by now? Is the decapitating scythe trap worth nothing at all just because the entire party somehow managed to dodge it?

Survival is its own reward. If you managed to luckily kill a hard mob easily it means you wasted far less resources - hit points, luck, potions, spells. This also means you can manage another encounter or two, which will also give you XP. I award at least 1 XP for every encounter and trap by the way.

I've awarded XP based on what actually happens. Never mind relative/comparative power levels or what could have happened... Did Asmodius go down like a chump? That's chump experience. Was Hacksaw, the single HD mook taking down two party members before they managed to bring him down? That's probably a lot of XP.

This is because for me, the numbers on the character sheets and GM notes don't have any reality in the game-world. No one knows what their own Save or to-hit bonus is, they don't even have a concept of what that is... If a guy was tough, he was tough, regardless of how I statted him out. If he's tough, he's worth more XP.

I do the same thing GnomeBoy does. If an encounter was really easy for my players, either through lucky rolls or good planning, I don't give them much XP, no matter how hard the encounter was supposed to be in theory. But if they bleed for it, yeah, I'm going to award them more. Yeah, it means 5 skeletons is worth no more than 1 skeleton but that's not what it's all about. I'll also award more XP if the players come up with unique ways to avoid combat or even recruit enemies as allies. One of my players just did that this last Friday. She convinced the leader of a group of monsters to participate in a drinking contest with her. She used her magic to rig the game and drank the leader under the table. Then she became the leader. It was a fun session and it will have interesting repercussions for the next session. So I awarded more XP.

Max_The_Judge wrote:It was a fun session and it will have interesting repercussions for the next session.

Always the aim.

GnomeBoy wrote:I've awarded XP based on what actually happens. Never mind relative/comparative power levels or what could have happened... Did Asmodius go down like a chump? That's chump experience. Was Hacksaw, the single HD mook taking down two party members before they managed to bring him down? That's probably a lot of XP.

This is because for me, the numbers on the character sheets and GM notes don't have any reality in the game-world. No one knows what their own Save or to-hit bonus is, they don't even have a concept of what that is... If a guy was tough, he was tough, regardless of how I statted him out. If he's tough, he's worth more XP.

+1