Thoughts on XP

[goodmangames]

I've been thinking about the XP system. Some random thoughts here; please ruminate with me:

1. I'd like advancement to happen at 1974 levels, which means about half the 3E rate. So I plan to make the XP thresholds pretty high between levels.

2. For slaying monsters, no complex or variable XP rewards based on level-to-creature ratios. For example, in 3E a 4HD monster was worth more or less XP depending on the party's level. Too complicated! I'd like a simple system where an orc XP is an orc XP is an orc XP.

3. Simple XP rewards for avoiding/disarming traps and puzzles.

4. Tavis and I were talking about awarding XP for recouping treasure. His similar-but-opposite idea, which I like, is related to spending treasure (not acquiring it). Not sure of the math yet, but generally a fighter who spends gold on training, equipping retainers, building an army, or constructing a fort would earn XP from that gold spent. Similarly, clerics earn XP from donating to a temple (or building one), mages from spell research, and thieves from bribery, networking, and spending to acquire blackmail-eligible information.

5. Another idea is XP for exploration. Could go two ways: XP per mile explored in overland travel, and XP per room explored in dungeons. I like this idea because it encourages exploration.

Thoughts??

[Harley Stroh]

1. Slow advancement: agreed! Although after my sessions at SaurusCon, I confess I was just telling the players when their PCs went up level.

2. Agreed.

3. I think we just assign XP at the end of each trap stat block, ala (Atk fire ward + 0 melee; Dmg 1d10; XP 150). Heh ... maybe it doesn't even need to be disarmed in order to receive the XP ... you can also learn your lesson by setting it off. ("Never touch the idol's jeweled eyes again!")

4. I'm 100% behind XP earned for spending! It doesn't even need to be justified in game ... I desperately want poor PCs looking for their next adventure, to get loot to earn their next "level." This is *awesome*. 1 GP erased from the character sheet = 1 XP. The justification depends on the class.

5. Less excited about this. If the adventure begins with, "You have traveled to the source of the North Winds in search of the polar worm," do I have to calculate the PCs XP? Naw.

XP is earned by blood and coin!

And bloody coins!



//H

[goodmangames]

Maybe it doesn't even need to be disarmed in order to receive the XP ... you can also learn your lesson by setting it off. ("Never touch the idol's jeweled eyes again!")

Cool. I like this too!

[Tavis]

1) Sounds fine; in Red Box discussions we've been doing a lot of trying to reconcile what people in the early '70s reported as their relatively rapid rates of advancement vs. the glacially slow rates you get from the rules and published modules. (The key may have been that people played a lot more often back then.) But that's an easy thing to tweak (either by reducing the level caps or by giving out more treasure, see below).

2) Agree. In my game I use the pre-supplement 100 XP per monster hit dice, and ignore the thing about dividing it based on the ratio of dungeon level to PC level. It works out fine; at higher levels the PCs can fireball a lot of orcs, but since the # of XP to advance is non-linear the % of their XP from combat remains roughly similar.

3) I'm OK with this - in theory you'd get a situation where the players would be incentivized to go around disarming/springing every trap, just like combat XP give them a reason to scour every room and leave no monster unkilled, but as long as neither combat nor traps provide the bulk of the XP awarded the likely lethality of these approaches will outweigh the fact that they're rewarded by XP.

4) A discussion of precedents for XP from spending GP is here. Some things to consider:

- In my game, I both give 1 XP for every GP safely brought out of the dungeon, and then give 1 XP for every GP spent pursuing the character's special interests. I like this because a) both types of XP-for-GP have good historical precedents back in the day and b) it gives an immediate reward to characters who are hoarding their gold for some big purchase, while further rewarding those who, like Conan or Fafhrd, start the next adventure only after they've frittered away the haul from the last one.

- Arneson and "Orgies, Inc." both limit the XP gain from spending to things specifically related to the PC's class. In my game, I just say that if you're spending it on something not directly useful in a dungeon, it counts. In practice, as long as there aren't magic item shops, you could even do away with this limit - there isn't enough "useful" spending to make it a problem. This works for me because a) I don't want to argue about what is or isn't class-related and b) the big benefit of XP-for-spending in my campaign has been letting players get involved in the setting by choosing what they want to spend their gold on; channeling all clerics' spending into temples, and all magic-user's into spell research, would have prevented a lot of really interesting developments in play. I'd recommend giving a list of sample activities for each class, to give the flavor of what each one might want to spend it on, but not writing the XP rule to prevent awarding for other kinds of spending - that way it's up to the individual group.

- The process of spending can become a fun mini-game in itself. Arneson says in First Fantasy Campaign that if your special interest was wine or pleasure slaves or whatever, the process of getting the caravan carrying them through the wilderness to your home base was risky, and many adventurers got killed going and trying to rescue the goods they'd spent money on from the wandering monsters that captured the wagons! I use a mini-game based on Jeff Rients' carousing rules. I like this because it makes the spending into an adventure - the things that the players want to spend on define what they care about, but the possibility that it can go dangerously wrong makes it part of the game instead of just an extension of the character's backstory that doesn't come into play. I also think it fits well with other DCCRPG mechanics like spell casting checks, where an element of randomness makes things more exciting.

5) There's been a lot of enthusiasm for XP for exploration among the old-school blogs, but I think that one of the strengths of tying gold to XP is that you can do this kind of thing in a more concrete and possibility-rich way. Compare:

finding a location ---> getting XP ===> looking to the DM to provide other locations that are worth experience; haggling about which kinds of discovery do or don't qualify

to

finding a location ---> selling a map of it to a Cartographer's Guild ---> getting paid ---> earning XP (directly via GP=XP and/or indirectly via spending=XP) ===> starting a bidding war over a particularly desirable map; trying to drum up buyers for maps of locations you already have or need to go to anyway; breaking into the Guild to steal maps of places you want to go; getting in trouble with the Guild for selling false maps; etc.

[Harley Stroh]

Great links, Tavis. I hadn't read those posts before.

Regardless of which direction you decide to take it, Joseph, I'd strongly suggest only awarding XP for GP once, not twice. But that's just an preference, not something I can back up with game design.

//H