Goodman Games

Hi everyone,

While reading the "Portal Under the Stars" and browsing "Gnole House" for XP information I couldn't find any so I went back to the rules and read that it's the Judge who determines how much XP is awarded, yet it's still vague to me as I'm discovering this system and not very experienced with tabletop rpgs in general.

Do you have any advice in defining an encounter difficulty ?

Is it usually guessed prior to the game by reading the encounter/stat blocks or do you observe first how the players complete the encounter in game to determine its worth in XP ?

Thanks for helping out !

Karim.

xKRIMxGLUEx wrote: Is it usually guessed prior to the game by reading the encounter/stat blocks or do you observe first how the players complete the encounter in game to determine its worth in XP ?

I would say the latter. Did the PCs minimally interact with the threat and bypass it? Did they rush in and attack? Did they make a plan and execute it well? There are many ways for the players to succeed.

Think from the player's perspective. If we accomplished something truly great, we should get more XP, right? And if the encounter was easy or mostly avoided, we shouldn't expect much.

It's a judgment call, and you as a judge have the opportunity to reward the kind of play you like to see at your table. There's no wrong way to do your XP, but it's better to be consistent in how you dole it out.

Thanks Thogard, that sounds more than fair and it's a good way to embrace the system's flexibility.

Cheers.

Karim,

Speaking just in reference to Portal and/or funnels, make it easy on yourself and simply level up the survivors at the end of the adventure, per Joseph Goodman's advice here:

http://www.goodman-games.com/forums/vie ... 91#p106791

goodmangames wrote:I have run Portal Under the Stars dozens of times at cons. It usually finishes in just under 4 hours. I have also run Sailors a couple times. It has more encounters and player choices. If the players are lolly gagging I usually adjust the encounters on the fly to speed up the timing.

Don't level up mid-game! That is not the intent of the rules. I almost always play with the "optional rule" (which I suppose in retrospect should be a real rule) that leveling up from 0 to 1st level simply requires surviving the funnel. I don't track anything for 0-levels other than "did they survive?"

Definitely let the players roll up their 0-levels. Assume 15 minutes at start of session for this. Players enjoy it and it gives them more attachment to the characters.

Hope this helps. Have fun!

Thanks a lot for sharing that advice Rick, it actually clarifies my doubts.

While searching the forum to find an answer to my initial question, I came across the Advancement thread with disparate views on leveling mid game of after, for the latter I believe too that it adds challenge to the funnel.

Can't wait to run that !

Cheers.

Also - while I understand that you're working with Quick Start Rules, it might help for later consistency to understand the premise of the XP system. Underlying it all is the following text (from Core Rules page 26 for those following along):

Each encounter is worth from 0 to 4 XP, and those XP are not earned merely by killing monsters, disarming traps, looting treasure, or completing a quest. Rather, successfully surviving encounters earns the characters XP in DCC RPG. A typical encounter is worth 2 XP, and the system scales from 0 to 4 depending on difficulty.

Add this to the table for advancement, which for the first two levels looks like:
Level 0: 0
Level 1: 10
Level 2: 50
Level 3: 110
Etc.

So...what I did for my group - currently 3rd level - is I assigned a difficulty to each encounter (all purchased modules strung together) and then, at the end of each adventure, awarded that to anyone who participated and survived the encounter. Take Portal Under The Stars as an example. I assigned them as follows:
Area 1-1: 1 XP
Area 1-2: 2 XP
Area 1-3: 2 XP
...and so on. Any character that participated in the Area 1-2 encounter and survived gained 2 XP. For me there was a total of 13 XP in Portal. You may rank them differently.

Take it all with a grain of salt. This is how I chose to do it. It's really up to you how you want to do it...

Hi Jim, that's an interesting way to break down XP, as I'm barely scratching the surface in just planning the game using these lightweight rules, that will come in handy when I'll (hopefully) run these entry level adventures more than once.

I should be able to run that next month with some PFS people, I'll try to refrain from using a mat to see how that plays and shake those habits.

Thanks for this insight !

A cake-walk is worth 0-1 XP.

A slog of great difficulty is worth 4-5.

Either of those could be a goblin with a sling, or a dragon. If the dragon's dice are cold, and the player's hot, that dragon might not be "worth" much, in XP terms.


Also, remember to hand out Luck at the end of an adventure or every so often (depending on how you play). It's a reward, like XP, and keeps the game going.

Thanks GnomeBoy, and I didn't think about handing luck, I thought this was something that could only be recovered after a full rest, again I'm only using the Quickstart rules.

xKRIMxGLUEx wrote:Thanks GnomeBoy, and I didn't think about handing luck, I thought this was something that could only be recovered after a full rest, again I'm only using the Quickstart rules.

Luck used is gone, except for the Thief and the Halfling, who have Class abilities that cover getting it back.

But it is absolutely a reward. Without quoting a chunk of the rule book, it advises handing out 1 to 3 points of Luck at the end of an adventure. It also talks about giving out a +1 Luck or taking away 1 Luck, on the spot, such as a Cleric fulfilling an oath, or a Lawful character flaunting an authority figure...

That's a good tip, thx GnomeBoy !