# Why I dislike Milestone XP



## GameOgre (Apr 2, 2018)

Milestone Leveling is a time saver and gets the job done. There isn't a lot of doubt that it's become widely used especially in Adventure paths.

Even so I have a heavy dislike for it. See to me D&D is a role playing game and the PC's should have the freedom to play their characters however they want. This means that the DM shouldn't have preset notions and rewards for doing what the adventure requires. 

If the pc's decide that Dragon flying over the town looks nasty and head the other way then they should have the freedom to do so.

Adventure paths in general are horrible for just that reason. The adventurers lives shouldn't be set and railroaded only on the path the DM sets before them. Also if you were going to build a adventure path and get player buy in why not actually make it work? Why not make the adventure actually contain the amount of XP needed to level instead of just a fraction of it? BAH!

My players love to track their xp and levels and feel a since of accomplishment with their characters when they earn a level up and are not simply given a level up because the adventure requires them to be higher.

Is it really all that hard to award xp? I'm amazed that DM's can build encounters and entire settings and yet balk at the simple task of awarding xp for monsters slain,role playing,creative thinking and good gaming.

Now I can understand it for new DM's since the adventure paths do not contain the necessary xp amounts and creating your own encounters is a skill you pick up over time. So I understand their milestone leveling but im amazed that long time DM's do it. 

One of my player tells me player freedom is simply gone from the game in favor of the amusement park get on here and get off over there style of of play and while it might be more rare surely there are a lot of DM's out there like me that don't run there games that way.

Right?


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## jaelis (Apr 2, 2018)

I don't really understand the conflict here. If the PCs decide to hare off and do something else, you can let them, and then you can provide milestone rewards for whatever they do achieve.


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## Gardens & Goblins (Apr 2, 2018)

Eh.

We stopped bothering with XP years ago. Instead, we play, events unfold, organically and/or guided, depending on the setting and campaign.

Then we level up when we fancy knocking it up a notch. 

On a more practical level, it also helps when folks miss sessions. Not having xp tracked with such granularity means folks going on holiday or missing a session due to whatever reason can hop back in as and when. Sure, some might argue that their character hasn't 'earnt' the experience but really? We don't care - the ease of playing with our fellows as and when is paramount. Besides, we can cook up some story as to where and how an absent character gained their experience, if needs.

So, aye, if folks are only getting experience for certain actions then sure, such a system of experience awarding could constrain freedom. And if an adventure requires players to be X level before they can continue, this compounds the problem. But then again, I also think such a system is somewhat dated anyway. 

Of course, each to their own, as long as folks are having fun.


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## Gardens & Goblins (Apr 2, 2018)

jaelis said:


> I don't really understand the conflict here. If the PCs decide to hare off and do something else, you can let them, and then you can provide milestone rewards for whatever they do achieve.




Yeah, to be honest, a bit confused as to the problem as outlined in the OP o-o

Experience - give it if you need to. Else, don't. Or like, ya know? Forget about it and just bump levels as and when. 

Now if folks love tracking experience then... let them? Unless its blinding babies and causing droughts.. 

I think, and please correct me OP if I'm off here, that the problem is a lack of the feeling of accomplishment because, and this seems to be an assumption of playstyle on the OP's part, the understanding is that at A point in an adventure, players will automatically bumped to Level X. Then, based on this understanding, players could theoretically burn through content/hurtle down the 'adventure path' in order to reach the next checkpoint. The 'problem' being that what they do doesn't matter - they'll get the level boost when they hit the checkpoint. The consequence of such a play style being that little is 'earnt' through play decisions, rather it is given for reaching point A, regardless.

If this is the 'problem', as it were, the I'd say it was one of adventure design. Tho consider, we don't play any pre-scripted adventures at our table, so maybe its symptomatic of their style/design? If so, then... the obvious answer would be, change the design. Or crack on after the checkpoint and simply don't let the players level if they insist on skipping content/burning ahead.

..

_Ack. Really... confuzzled. _


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## hawkeyefan (Apr 2, 2018)

I use milestone xp, although I’ve been doing it longer than that term has existed.

For newer DMs, I think it’s very clear how it may be a good idea. It’s less to track and it allows the DM some control over the pacing of the game. And it works for the adventure books that WotC is aelling.

For me though, it’s about other things. XP isn’t all that difficult to track...but I do find it tedious. I also don’t see it as any more meaningful. The progression in our campaign is actually a lot slower than it would be with XP. So I have no concern about my PCs not having “earned” a new level. I’m using a good amount of the published material for 5E, but not exactly in the way intended. So the fact that the published adventures use a more milestone based method makes it easier for me to adapt that material as needed.


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## iserith (Apr 2, 2018)

GameOgre said:


> Milestone Leveling is a time saver and gets the job done. There isn't a lot of doubt that it's become widely used especially in Adventure paths.
> 
> Even so I have a heavy dislike for it. See to me D&D is a role playing game and the PC's should have the freedom to play their characters however they want. This means that the DM shouldn't have preset notions and rewards for doing what the adventure requires.
> 
> ...




Milestone advancement uses XP. You may be referring to story-based or session-based advancement. See DMG page 261.

An adventure path is not a railroad so long as the players know the adventure is on the path and nowhere else and have bought into that conceit. At that point, the DM is no longer coercing or subverting their choices because they have agreed to follow the path. Milestone or story-based advancement can then be used to reward players for sticking to that path. If they go off the path, they are no longer adhering to their agreement and receive no reward.

Whether or not you like adventure paths is a separate issue. But that's why an adventure path benefits from milestone or story-based advancement design-wise, even if the designers for some inexplicable reason reportedly get the XP amounts all wrong. It's not really about DMs finding it difficult to award XP in their games - it's about which XP method best incentivizes the kind of game play the DM wants for the play experience.


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## Mercule (Apr 2, 2018)

I started using milestone XP when we were going through PotA.

My group is pretty darn good at guerrilla tactics and the "hit and run". We were all having fun, but it made things feel really empty if I didn't restock and strained suspension of disbelief, as well. If I did allow the cults to slowly recruit, I noticed the PCs started sliding ahead and things turned into a cake walk because the published module made certain assumptions. I'm also opposed to the "clean it out and get all the XPs" mentality or screwing players if they come up with a clever way to make it through, say, the water temple without actually having to engage everything (leaving them behind the curve, now).

Thus, I eventually just said: Hey, you beat a "level", so have a level. I did so mainly because I wanted the PCs to be able to do what they wanted to do.

We used milestones for a similar reason in CoS.

Moving to a home brew game, we're using it, as well, but the milestones are defined by the PCs (implicitly -- I don't make the players go through an annual review type process for their PCs). If the group meanders aimlessly, then they won't advance very fast, but that seems perfectly reasonable, to me. Conversely, a focused and productive group should be able to sail through the levels.


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## lowkey13 (Apr 2, 2018)

*Deleted by user*


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## Fanaelialae (Apr 2, 2018)

We use milestone XP in one group. I don't mind it. It's simple and the players role play their characters regardless. 

My other group balked at the idea of using milestones whenever I've proposed it. They love gaining XP; the feeling of steady progression. For them, I came up with a new, simplified system, since I was tired of pulling out the calculator after every combat.

The amount of XP required to gain a level is equal to your current level * 100. So, 100 XP to reach level 2, 200 more XP to reach level 3, 300 more XP to reach level 4, and so forth.

The reason for this (as opposed to a flat 100 per level, which I considered) is that if a level disparity develops, it allows the lower level character to catch up (because an XP gap of 100 means much less at level 10 than it does at level 2).

I reward XP for combat, social, and exploration accomplishments. Combat is self explanatory. Social refers to encounters where characters talk their way through an encounter (convincing an orc warchief to let them pass through the orc tribe's caves to get to whever they're going). Exploration is discovering and overcoming non-combat challenges that advance the adventure (locating the entrance to a dungeon, subverting a dangerous trap, and so on).

The reward is on a scale of 1-10, based on the difficulty, multiplied by the level of the encounter, capped at the party's level + 3.

I also added a rolling bonus to combats in order to encourage the players to push themselves. The rolling bonus increases by 1 for an easy encounter, 2 for a moderate encounter, and 3 for a difficult encounter. Short rests reduce the rolling bonus by 1, while long rests reset it to 0. After the encounter difficulty is determined, the rolling bonus is added to it before multiplying by the level of the encounter.

I also award end game XP, which accounts for good role playing and such. That award is 1 to 5 times 5 times the party level (I like end game to be a sizable chunk of total XP earned).

Ultimately, what this means is that if the players are undertaking level appropriate challenges, that the rating of the encounter is the percentage of advancement it bestows. So a challenge rating of 1 is 1% of a level, while a 10 is 10% of a level. 

There are some circumstances where I rate encounters well below the party level. For example, seeking out a quest giver in the safety of the town is considered a level 1 challenge, meaning that at higher levels it's worth a fraction of a percent (but it's still something).

My players have responded well to it. They enjoy the regular influx of XP. They especially like the rolling bonus, since it gives them an incentive to push on when they might otherwise rest.

I've only used if for a few sessions so far, so I'm not certain the numbers are precisely as I'd like them, but I'm happy with it overall. The goal is to have them leveling somewhere around every other session.


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## Flexor the Mighty! (Apr 2, 2018)

Milestone XP and railroad adventure paths are both the spawn of Hextor.  I fart in their general direction. I will give out Quest XP depending on what it is. But in my upcoming S&W game you bet we will be tracking each rat slain and gold piece pilfered.


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## Ancalagon (Apr 2, 2018)

I think you are mixing two issues together: xp award and railroading. What is your true concern.


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## Caliban (Apr 2, 2018)

I just tell the PC's to level up whenever I think it feels appropriate.  Not at predetermined points, because I don't have a specific path laid out for them in the game I run - just a few goals they can try to achieve, but how they get there is up to them. 

Tracking XP per encounter or quest completion just feels like a gigantic waste of time that I don't feel like dealing with.


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## Hjorimir (Apr 2, 2018)

For me, I like milestone xp if only because without it the only incentive for the players is to solve all problems via combat. I want to run a game where diplomacy or creative thinking can be just as rewarding.


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## Rhenny (Apr 2, 2018)

To me, milestone xp/leveling actually frees up the party and the DM.  It creates a specific goal oriented focus rather than a what can I do to gain more XP approach.  Sure, some DMs and players who use xp can also focus on goals and avoid xp grind, but after using milestones, xp alone does not seem necessary.  Also, with xp counting, sometimes it is hard for a DM to decide how much xp to grant.  Here's an example: if a group runs away from a dragon that is worth 10,000 xp, I always find it difficult to judge how much xp they should gain.  They may not have defeated the foe, but maybe running was the best option.  If they fought and ran, they should gain some experience because they learned something about fighting dragons.  Yet, if you award some xp, and they encounter the same dragon again, do they get full xp for defeating it or does the DM have to amortize the xp gain.  Those types of situations bug me.

One of the knocks against milestone leveling is that players don't feel that their PCs are growing while they chase the next milestone.  To combat this feeling, I like to divide each level into quarters and give out 1/4 milestones after 1-3 sessions when it seems appropriate.  That way, they know if they are 1/2 way to leveling or 3/4, etc.


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## iserith (Apr 2, 2018)

Hjorimir said:


> For me, I like milestone xp if only because without it the only incentive for the players is to solve all problems via combat. I want to run a game where diplomacy or creative thinking can be just as rewarding.




See DMG page 261, "Noncombat Challenges." This gives you guidelines on how to award experience for exploration or social interaction challenges. In my current _Planescape _campaign, players know they can earn XP by engaging with and overcoming combat and social interaction challenges. They receive other rewards for overcoming exploration challenges, often treasure.

In my last campaign which was a rewrite of _Red Hand of Doom_, I used milestone XP - _true_ milestone XP, not story-based advancement which everyone seems to call milestone XP - plus XP for combat challenges because combat and completing quests were the main focus of _that _game.


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## AaronOfBarbaria (Apr 2, 2018)

As iserith has pointed out, milestone XP is more like "1200 XP each for killing that dragon, and another 1000 XP each because you had a reason for doing it" than it is "you only get XP for events I've pre-determined."

And as such, I love to use it because it makes my players want to set clear goals for their characters (whether those goals come from hooks I toss them, or from their own minds as they interact with the world around their characters), and it also allows me to have the pace that the characters level up at tied more towards actually accomplishing things than to number of encounters overcome to do so.

Though I have used story-based or session-based advancement in some campaigns because it was a better fit (because the goals of the campaign were all very straight forward, and the players were choosing not to deviate, so I could then stop doing XP math at all).


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## AmerginLiath (Apr 2, 2018)

I dislike milestone XP because it requires characters to be the same level and be leveling together. That both limits the numbers of characters in play and hastens the approach of those asinine high-levels (which no RPG, much less any D&D edition, has ever done well). Although much has changed since the days of Lake Geneva, my groups and I’ve held to one maxim that the original Gygax players often write of having done (although we realized it ourselves twenty-five years ago): if each player keep subbing out interrelated characters over the course of the campaign, you can constantly change the focus of adventures while broadening a vast storyline that never actually has to end (the plotline of a given character is fulfilled while twenty others go on). Plus, that means you can keep things under level 12 or so because no one set of characters is constantly hogging XP like the usual d20 core four: just figure out what the XP is for whatever set of levels is at the table that night (which might run from 3-10 or something if those are the characters who naturally fit the story or whose characters fit together, but the low-level guys are getting a bonanza). Milestone XP is anathema for these situations, because you’re enforcing a system where a given character is always X levels ahead just to save you doing math (although you end up doing more math when you end up in the drudge of high-level play instead of semi-retiring those guys to domain-type guest-star status in lieu of other mid-level characters like St. Gary intended!).


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## Warpiglet (Apr 2, 2018)

Flexor the Mighty! said:


> Milestone XP and railroad adventure paths are both the spawn of Hextor.  I fart in their general direction. I will give out Quest XP depending on what it is. But in my upcoming S&W game you bet we will be tracking each rat slain and gold piece pilfered.




Ha!  I am with you!  I am unabashedly old school.  This is merely my OCD...but I want to really earn it.  Grind it.  I want levels to be hard fought and not guaranteed.

I want to scream Wheee!  like a giddy school girl when I can actually cast a third level fireball for the first time!  

Granted, we had a hell of a time getting above 9th level or so in first edition, but still.  We switched characters too often as well...but not everyone had a high level character they actually advanced.  Throwing flamestrike was hard earned and fun!


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## Jacob Lewis (Apr 2, 2018)

Wow. Lotta misplaced angst floating around this one. Leveling on a tight schedule? Limiting player agency? Controlling narratives? Playability at higher levels (a failure of ALL editions, no less!)? Wresting control from players and DMs alike? Either "milestone XP"ing is more serious than we think, or I don't think it means what you think it means...

I'm leaning towards the second one.


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## Gradine (Apr 2, 2018)

Ancalagon said:


> I think you are mixing two issues together: xp award and railroading. What is your true concern.




This. I was about to say that this thread should be titled "Why I dislike Adventure Paths" based on the OP, but not even that's accurate. The OP's main concern is with railroading.

Which should have been obvious when they decided to drag that old dead horse "dragon attacking Greenest" scenario to beat on once more.


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## Oofta (Apr 2, 2018)

I haven't tracked XP for a long, long time as a DM and instead level up when it makes sense for the story and the group.  Some groups level quickly, others dawdle at various levels because they're having fun with the types of challenges they are facing that are level appropriate.

What XP and leveling mean for your group is going to vary by group and DM.  Some groups get plenty of sense of accomplishment by finally proving that the sheriff really was corrupt and skimming off the top of the tax collection while shaking people down for other goods and services.  It doesn't matter if they were 2nd level while they were doing it - their level is secondary to the accomplishment.

Others like that feeling of growth by gaining a few extra HP, abilities or spells and there's nothing wrong with that.

Personally, I like to organize my campaigns into "chapters", groups of encounters and challenges usually broken apart by a period of time during which people level up.  While I don't have a hard and fast rule, the breaks between chapters can be months or even years.  To me it feels more natural that the PCs spend downtime in practice and learning instead of the wizard just figuring out how to cast fireball because the group just took out that group of ogres.


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## iserith (Apr 2, 2018)

AmerginLiath said:


> I dislike milestone XP because it requires characters to be the same level and be leveling together. That both limits the numbers of characters in play and hastens the approach of those asinine high-levels (which no RPG, much less any D&D edition, has ever done well). Although much has changed since the days of Lake Geneva, my groups and I’ve held to one maxim that the original Gygax players often write of having done (although we realized it ourselves twenty-five years ago): if each player keep subbing out interrelated characters over the course of the campaign, you can constantly change the focus of adventures while broadening a vast storyline that never actually has to end (the plotline of a given character is fulfilled while twenty others go on). Plus, that means you can keep things under level 12 or so because no one set of characters is constantly hogging XP like the usual d20 core four: just figure out what the XP is for whatever set of levels is at the table that night (which might run from 3-10 or something if those are the characters who naturally fit the story or whose characters fit together, but the low-level guys are getting a bonanza). Milestone XP is anathema for these situations, because you’re enforcing a system where a given character is always X levels ahead just to save you doing math (although you end up doing more math when you end up in the drudge of high-level play instead of semi-retiring those guys to domain-type guest-star status in lieu of other mid-level characters like St. Gary intended!).




I do the multiple-characters-per-player thing because I organize games with a player pool so that we don't often have scheduling issues. If the DM (me) can play, there's a game because of the 12 players in the group, at least 4 (max 5) can play. So that's at least a dozen characters, plus players usually have a backup character in case their main dies. They'll typically play the backup till at least 3rd-level, then focus mostly on the main. Character levels in the party can vary which makes for some interesting choices and tactics. This tends to mean that play stays under 10th level before the campaign ends. I don't like running a single campaign for more than a year. 

Standard XP works well for this kind of setup. Everyone knows what they have to do in order to get their levels when they play and can go get after it!


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## iserith (Apr 2, 2018)

Warpiglet said:


> Ha!  I am with you!  I am unabashedly old school.  This is merely my OCD...but I want to really earn it.  Grind it.  I want levels to be hard fought and not guaranteed.
> 
> I want to scream Wheee!  like a giddy school girl when I can actually cast a third level fireball for the first time!
> 
> Granted, we had a hell of a time getting above 9th level or so in first edition, but still.  We switched characters too often as well...but not everyone had a high level character they actually advanced.  Throwing flamestrike was hard earned and fun!




I have no particular opinion on adventure paths. I just want to know how I can get my XP (or levels) so I can go do that. I'm not at all keen on DMs just awarding levels when they feel like it. I want some goals and direction plus a tangible reward for achieving said goals.

I find in my own campaigns and in the ToA game I'm in, standard XP works great. We get a little dose right after a challenge is completed and it drives everyone onward as we get closer and closer to leveling up. In Friday's game, we were really pushing our luck to get to 6th level before the session ended and fell about 200 XP short dammit! But at least we'll level up after the first challenge next session...


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## Bradley Hindman (Apr 2, 2018)

AmerginLiath said:


> I dislike milestone XP because it requires characters to be the same level and be leveling together. That both limits the numbers of characters in play and hastens the approach of those asinine high-levels (which no RPG, much less any D&D edition, has ever done well). Although much has changed since the days of Lake Geneva, my groups and I’ve held to one maxim that the original Gygax players often write of having done (although we realized it ourselves twenty-five years ago): if each player keep subbing out interrelated characters over the course of the campaign, you can constantly change the focus of adventures while broadening a vast storyline that never actually has to end (the plotline of a given character is fulfilled while twenty others go on). Plus, that means you can keep things under level 12 or so because no one set of characters is constantly hogging XP like the usual d20 core four: just figure out what the XP is for whatever set of levels is at the table that night (which might run from 3-10 or something if those are the characters who naturally fit the story or whose characters fit together, but the low-level guys are getting a bonanza). Milestone XP is anathema for these situations, because you’re enforcing a system where a given character is always X levels ahead just to save you doing math (although you end up doing more math when you end up in the drudge of high-level play instead of semi-retiring those guys to domain-type guest-star status in lieu of other mid-level characters like St. Gary intended!).




The leveling of characters without the tracking of XP isn't necessarily antithetical to troop style play. In my current campaign, each player has multiple characters. One is designated the primary and the others as secondary.  Like a TV show, I organize my campaigns as an inter-connnected series of sessions called seasons. At the end of each season or chapter in the story, every character levels up (primary and secondary). The secondary characters are simply two levels lower than the primaries. If a primary dies, then a secondary can be promoted.

Now, if your group views XP as a reward. This probably wouldn't work for you.


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## pming (Apr 2, 2018)

Hiya!

XP all the way!  Tried the "Level up when...", tried "Milestone..." and a couple other of those kinda wishy-washy methods. Every time we did, everyone felt 'cheated' somehow. I guess it came down to the whole "equality of outcome" vs "equality of opportunity" thing. Without using normal XP methods, it felt like equality of outcome; meaning it didn't matter who did what...the outcome was all pre-determined to be a certain amount for everyone, regardless of their actual accomplishment/quality of play.

I hand out XP a bit differently. I still give XP for monsters, but it's only about half. I give 1:1 xp for GP acquired. This is when I run pretty much all versions of "D&D" other than a pure Hackmaster 4e game where it's handled as per the HM GMG book (well, 97% anyway). The main reason why we do it the 'old skool way' is because we like seeing a reward for stuff that we do in game. It gives a sense of constant improvement and growth to the character. One thing to note is that XP is given out at the beginning of the next session, and not 'as it is earned'. At the end of the session but before the next I sit down and go through everything, total up XP and then at the beginning of the next session hand it out. 

I agree with the OP overall. Just don't like the Milestone or "Chapter based" progression. It's like competing in a 100-m dash were no time is kept, and everyone who crosses the finish line is awarded "Finished!" but no Gold, Silver, or Bronze. Anyone who finishes has no idea if they beat their old personal best time and isn't recognized for where they placed vs others. Bleeaachh! 

^_^

Paul L. Ming


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## MarkB (Apr 2, 2018)

GameOgre said:


> Milestone Leveling is a time saver and gets the job done. There isn't a lot of doubt that it's become widely used especially in Adventure paths.
> 
> Even so I have a heavy dislike for it. See to me D&D is a role playing game and the PC's should have the freedom to play their characters however they want. This means that the DM shouldn't have preset notions and rewards for doing what the adventure requires.
> 
> If the pc's decide that Dragon flying over the town looks nasty and head the other way then they should have the freedom to do so.




I don't really get this example. If you're using a non-milestone-based XP system, would you award the players XP for not fighting the dragon?


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## The Crimson Binome (Apr 2, 2018)

In a game where there is no cost to combat - you're definitely going to win, and any damage you take will be removed after a nap - getting rid of combat XP means that playing through the combat is just a huge waste of time at the table. When there's no positive or negative consequence to combat, fighting is entirely meaningless.

I would be much more accepting of milestone-based XP if the healing rules were changed such that HP recovery was severely limited. It would mean the correct choice is to avoid combat whenever possible, because there's no real reward and the potential resource cost is high, but that's a fine way to play. (Likewise under default 5E rules, you should seek out every fight because there's no real cost and high potential rewards, and that's an alright way to play if you're into that sort of thing.)


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## Gardens & Goblins (Apr 2, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> In a game where there is no cost to combat - you're definitely going to win, and any damage you take will be removed after a nap - getting rid of combat XP means that playing through the combat is just a huge waste of time at the table.




 What if you don't win the combat? 

Unless its a sure win then, I mean, yes, obviously if there are, 'no pros or negative consequences', the fight is meaningless...    ...for example, crushing rats in a barrel or the 14th level caster nipping off to the goblin village to murder everyone.

But they wouldn't get xp even if it was awarded on an individual or task basis, would they? Isn't the entire point to reward characters on overcoming level-appropriate challenges, or something in that area of thinking?

Either its done on a task by task basis or, with milestone, every... mile.. stone, after a bunch of tasks have been successfully overcome. 

Not sure how healing out of combat comes into this. If the fight is meaningless - a sure win regardless - then why bother to play it out at the table? Just do it as a narrative blip. Akin to the 16th level Thief picking the lock to a noble's bedroom, or high-level barbarian winning a tavern brawl with some filthy commoners. 

And certainly don't gain experience. At this level of power/encounter disparity, such actions are roleplaying fluff pieces.


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## Inchoroi (Apr 2, 2018)

My players and I have done both; to a player, they prefer regular XP. I'm a little bit odd as a DM, though, in that I'll give XP for different quest completions, along with killing monsters, and there's a _lot_ of different quests and side-quests for the players to explore.


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## flametitan (Apr 2, 2018)

I generally use experience points, though I'll reward it for various tasks. My players went on an quest to find potatoes, an imported food in my setting, going to the big city and getting some. Since this task was easy, and they were level one, they only got 25 XP, but it's me dipping my toes into giving XP for things other than winning a fight or negotiating out of combat. (and no, I won't give out 25 XP every time they eat a potato, that's asinine)

If I were to skip XP, I'd either do the session based advancement in the DMG, or the "hours played" advancement provided in XGE (either as is or slowed down to better match the pace the DMG recommends for session based advancement).


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## Quickleaf (Apr 2, 2018)

[MENTION=57914]GameOgre[/MENTION] Which ever way you choose, I've never seen a XP or leveling system presented in any edition of D&D that we used "out of the box." It's same same but different.

With XP in 5e, there are precious little guidelines for XP from anything besides defeating monsters. If you really want to encourage player exploration & creativity, then you need to devise your own guidelines.

With milestone leveling in 5e, the guidelines in the hardcover adventures have been pretty minimal, and you'll need to expand on the given guidelines. 

Currently I'm running a modified _Tomb of Annihilation_ (PCs started at 3rd) and opted to handle milestone leveling in a way I feel captures the best of both approaches:

Level 3: Arrival & Port Nyanzaru
Level 3-6: Jungle exploring (“finding and getting to the Lost City”) (+1 level)
Level 5-8: Lost City of Omu (“exploring, dealing with yuan-ti, getting key”) (+1 level)
Level 7-10: Kuluth-Mar (“learning atropal’s identity”) (+1 level)
Level 7-9: Fane of the Night Serpent (+1 level)
Levels 9-12: Tomb of the Nine Gods (+1 level per two dungeon levels)

 (+1 level for every 4 “story significant” sites the PCs explore) Camp Righteous, Ch’gakare’s Tomb, Dangwaru (The Tortle Package, 4-8), The Dawn Warrior, Dungrunglung, Dur Unkush, The Emerald Crater, Firefinger, Fort Beluarian, Heart of Ubtao, Hrakhamar, Jahaka Anchorage, Kir Sabaal, Matolo (5-10), Mbala, Nangalore, Orolunga, Slaver’s Cove, Wreck of the #, Wreck of the Narwhal, Wreck of the Star Goddess, Wyrmheart Mine, Yellyark, X, X

   If the PCs return to Port Nyanzaru between 5th and 10th level, run The Rot From Within trilogy (DDAL07-06 Fester and Burn, DDAL07-07 Rotting Roots, DDAL07-08 Putting the Dead to Rest). If the PCs do nothing, the undead army besieges Port Nyanzaru. The trilogy should fill about two sessions. (+1/2 level)

(+1/2 level each) Heart of the Wild (5-10). Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan “Quomec” (5). Peril at the Port (1-10). Return of the Lizard King (3-4). Ruins of Hisari (11-16). Ruins of Mezro (1-16).


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## kelvan1138 (Apr 2, 2018)

iserith said:


> I have no particular opinion on adventure paths. I just want to know how I can get my XP (or levels) so I can go do that. I'm not at all keen on DMs just awarding levels when they feel like it. I want some goals and direction plus a tangible reward for achieving said goals.
> 
> I find in my own campaigns and in the ToA game I'm in, standard XP works great. We get a little dose right after a challenge is completed and it drives everyone onward as we get closer and closer to leveling up. In Friday's game, we were really pushing our luck to get to 6th level before the session ended and fell about 200 XP short dammit! But at least we'll level up after the first challenge next session...




I appreciate when a DM calculates XP for me. When I DM there is 0 chance of me doing so though, I have too many other things to pay attention to. You level when I say so!


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## Dausuul (Apr 2, 2018)

I will never award XP on the basis of monster kills. Bookkeeping nuisance aside, the last thing I want to do is incentivize the players to pick random fights. If they pick a fight, it should be because the enemy stands between them and some goal, or because they have a beef with that specific enemy.

My current group levels up when the DM says, because no one is interested in tracking XP. If the group did want to track XP, though, I would have no problem with XP awards as long as they were based on accomplishments within the game world, as opposed to pure murderhoboing. They don't have to be the accomplishments I planned out for you, but you do have to accomplish _something_.

I have occasionally toyed with the idea of awarding XP for treasure, 1E-style. That would be well-suited to a campaign with a "treasure hunting" theme; for instance, a swashbuckling pirate campaign. (Though you might only receive the XP when you bury the treasure...) But it'd have to be a campaign where such a focus on plunder was appropriate.


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## Fanaelialae (Apr 2, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> In a game where there is no cost to combat - you're definitely going to win, and any damage you take will be removed after a nap - getting rid of combat XP means that playing through the combat is just a huge waste of time at the table. When there's no positive or negative consequence to combat, fighting is entirely meaningless.
> 
> I would be much more accepting of milestone-based XP if the healing rules were changed such that HP recovery was severely limited. It would mean the correct choice is to avoid combat whenever possible, because there's no real reward and the potential resource cost is high, but that's a fine way to play. (Likewise under default 5E rules, you should seek out every fight because there's no real cost and high potential rewards, and that's an alright way to play if you're into that sort of thing.)




I agree that if there are zero consequences to a combat then what's the point, but that's rarely the case IME, even when not using XP. 

For example, we recently went after a beholder (because the drow had some information we needed and they weren't going to part with it willingly unless we killed this encroaching beholder for them). The beholder was using some monsters to guard its lair (primarily trolls). We avoided what we could, but in the cramped confines of the cave system we stumbled into a few groups (our rogue had his brain eaten by an illithid a while back, and we've been bereft of a scout since). Hence, we had to fight our way through to achieve our ultimate goal. Our resources were whittled down, and the beholder was that much harder as a result (if we could have avoided those trolls, we gladly would have). We certainly didn't want to make camp in that lair and have the beholder surprise us.

Overall, I would say it has reduced the number of combats overall, but that isn't a bad thing IMO. In one of our earlier adventures, we had to rescue some townswomen who had been taken by yuan-ti. After we slew their leader, we negotiated with his second in command (a priestess of some kind) and reached an accord. We leave them alone, and they'll leave the townsfolk be. Their numbers were heavily reduced by our incursion, but the amount of resources we had left made us finishing them off very dicey. Instead, after a tense negotiation, everyone walked away satisfied and we still leveled up even though we technically only cleared about half the dungeon.


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## Fanaelialae (Apr 2, 2018)

flametitan said:


> I generally use experience points, though I'll reward it for various tasks. My players went on an quest to find potatoes, an imported food in my setting, going to the big city and getting some. Since this task was easy, and they were level one, they only got 25 XP, but it's me dipping my toes into giving XP for things other than winning a fight or negotiating out of combat. (and no, I won't give out 25 XP every time they eat a potato, that's asinine)
> 
> If I were to skip XP, I'd either do the session based advancement in the DMG, or the "hours played" advancement provided in XGE (either as is or slowed down to better match the pace the DMG recommends for session based advancement).




Seems like small potatoes.


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## Wiseblood (Apr 2, 2018)

Leveling is weird and has weird effects on the way the game plays and is played.

Leveling is about getting better. Most of us want to get better. The how, in this case, is xp or fiat. That is not really important though except to the tastes of the players and DM. Timing seems to be more important than the how.


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## jasper (Apr 2, 2018)

GameOgre said:


> Milestone Leveling is a time saver and gets the job done. There isn't a lot of doubt that it's become widely used especially in Adventure paths.
> 
> Even so I have a heavy dislike for it....



Milestone is so last century American. I either use Kilometerstone or StoneStone leveling.


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## flametitan (Apr 2, 2018)

Fanaelialae said:


> Seems like small potatoes.




Well they almost made it hard on themselves by the socially awkward cleric trying to sell her rope to the owner (an especially burly elf woman), telling them it would help lose weight, getting the party kicked out with no potato. Luckily, it was a decently sized city (11k inhabitants or so) so they found another place that sold potatoes.


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## jasper (Apr 2, 2018)

Flexor the Mighty! said:


> Milestone XP and railroad adventure paths are both the spawn of Hextor.  I fart in their general direction. I...



Quote from Hextor, "Forgive my conjoined twin. He is mad because I get the booth babes. And hey, that fart was a wet one. Time to change pants."


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## cmad1977 (Apr 2, 2018)

I use both and have no issues with ‘railroad’ adventures. The issue of railroading is a DM issue and not an AP issue.


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## The Crimson Binome (Apr 2, 2018)

Gardens & Goblins said:


> What if you don't win the combat?



That's not a 5E thing. At least, it's not a thing past level 3 or so. In any case, a TPK is also not an interesting outcome. (If everyone dies to some random encounter, then that's going to feel like everything leading up to it was a waste of time.)

As a general rule of game design, you don't _want_ there to be a significant chance of TPK in _most_ encounters, or else statistically a TPK _will_ happen due to random chance. _Most_ encounters are guaranteed wins for the party, with the only question being how much it costs them, because running out of resources means they have to run away and/or might actually die.


Gardens & Goblins said:


> Not sure how healing out of combat comes into this. If the fight is meaningless - a sure win regardless - then why bother to play it out at the table? Just do it as a narrative blip. Akin to the 16th level Thief picking the lock to a noble's bedroom, or high-level barbarian winning a tavern brawl with some filthy commoners.



If you remove free healing from the equation, then any fight _matters_ as long as anyone takes _any_ damage. If that goblin gets a lucky shot and your barbarian takes ten damage, then that reduces their margin of error against the end boss, later on. If the barbarian recklessly charges into every fight and takes a _lot_ of unnecessary damage, then they will eventually need to hang back and start tossing javelins instead of swinging their greataxe; and you _really_ don't want them to be reduced to that, if things start going badly or a boss shows up unexpectedly.

Unfortunately, while 5E is _nominally_ built on the attrition model (compared to 4E, which was built on the above-mentioned every-encounter-might-possibly-kill-you model), they've thrown in _so much_ free healing that attrition takes _forever_ before anyone starts to feel it. You can have six encounters in a day, with the party taking damage in every encounter, and they'll _still_ be at full power when they get to the boss.


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## iserith (Apr 2, 2018)

kelvan1138 said:


> I appreciate when a DM calculates XP for me. When I DM there is 0 chance of me doing so though, I have too many other things to pay attention to. You level when I say so!




It's a common way of doing things, I just don't prefer it myself as I like to know the things that will get me levels so I can orient my play in that direction, then be rewarded for doing so.

I DM most of the time and, while it's there's plenty to do in that role, I don't find calculating XP interferes with other DMing tasks. I tell the players, they record it on their sheets, and we move on. I don't keep track of anything - that's the players' responsibility.


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## Caliban (Apr 2, 2018)

iserith said:


> It's a common way of doing things, I just don't prefer it myself as I like to know the things that will get me levels so I can orient my play in that direction, then be rewarded for doing so.
> 
> I DM most of the time and, while it's there's plenty to do in that role, I don't find calculating XP to interfere with other DMing tasks. I tell the players, they record it on their sheets, and we move on. I don't keep track of anything - that's the players' responsibility.



That's why I don't use XP.  

It incentivizes players to stop doing things because it's something their character would naturally do, and instead do things to maximize XP.  

You stop role-playing your character and just follow a checklist of actions that will allow you to increment a few numbers on your character sheet faster.

Play to enjoy the game, not to update your character sheet.


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## iserith (Apr 2, 2018)

Caliban said:


> That's why I don't use XP.
> 
> It incentivizes players to stop doing things because it's something their character would naturally do, and instead do things to maximize XP.
> 
> ...




Since I control my character and what my character "would" do is whatever I say it will do, I can both play my character _and _do the activities that are incentivized by XP. Those things don't have to be in opposition unless a player chooses them to be. And why would they? That doesn't seem like a good idea to me.


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## Gardens & Goblins (Apr 2, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> That's not a 5E thing. At least, it's not a thing past level 3 or so. In any case, a TPK is also not an interesting outcome. (If everyone dies to some random encounter, then that's going to feel like everything leading up to it was a waste of time.)
> 
> As a general rule of game design, you don't _want_ there to be a significant chance of TPK in _most_ encounters, or else statistically a TPK _will_ happen due to random chance.




Hmm. Different experiences then. For example, just last session we had our wizard go from the age of 49 to the age of 89, which promptly caused them to drop out of play. They were still part of the group, but were weezing and coughing, generally acting traumatised. The party eventually succeeded, tho at great cost _(party member)_ and in so doing, procured the support of a powerful asset _(said ghost)_.

Before that, not too long ago, the cleric of another group decided to jump through an open portal mid-combat. I have no idea why _(or rather, I do know why... I just don't understand why!)_ which meant the party went on the back foot and ended up retreating.

So, while most encounters are not designed to wipe the party, there seems to be enough swing in the system - and the sanity of our players, at least - to make a mess/challenge out of what some might call the mundane.

Should they have avoided these encounters? Maybe? Though they weren't 'combat' encounters, rather just encounters.. that ended up with some/in combat. In retrospect I'm sure they would have loved to done things differently!

But back to milestone experience - does it really discourage fights? I guess it depends on the milestones, and again, the expectations of the players. There's also something to be said about player-knowledge based actions and character-knowledge based actions, but that's another box of kaboodles altogether.

I guess it comes down to encounter design*. Personally, I'm not one for worrying too much about 'balance'. Challenge, sure, but that can consist of a variety of elements _(including, apparently, open dimensional portals that only an idiot would.. ah never mind...)_ and be presented in with all manner of additional contexts. 

Of course, if the point of a combat is to simply 'kill the thing' and the players have invested the time and resources into tipping things to their favour then sure, it can be a foregone conclusion. We've had groups sneak onto pirate ships and ghost everyone whilst sleeping. Did we make any dice rolls? Sure, a few but otherwise it was a given and the conclusion obvious. Job done, things move on and no xp awarded as it wasn't a challenge for this certain group**.

However, such a setup was still interesting and meaningful. They put a lot of resources and effort into the planning. The win was hard earnt. And I'm not sure how either a milestone or otherwise experience reward system would have influenced the party's desire to engage with said encounter.

I do agree that many modules and adventures seem to be designed around attrition and that designing around attrition is a tool in the designer's tool box. I wouldn't say its inherently a bad or good thing, mind - just a tool, though obviously, like any tool, if its used too often it can become tired and worn. Its also not a tool that is unique to 5E, being a narrative technique in many a book and awesome movie. Die Hard would be my classic example. John McClane whittled down those terrorists and was whittled down in turn, leading to a fantastic showdown. Did he try to avoid fights? Sure.. until he couldn't or had the upper hand. I'm not sure if John was clocking up the xp per terrorist kill or if he was awarded it per arc but hey! 

Hmm. Where we at? Fighting = bad? Ye..ah. Sure. If resources, such as time, health or what have we are not tight supply, totally agree. Tho I believe its also a matter of play style - if players are lead to believe that an adventure will follow a series of combats, each designed to whittle down their resources, before encountering a BIG BAD, then yeah, this will naturally lead to fights being avoided. But this is also a failure on the designer's part. They have used one tool, and in a certain pattern, too often. And now have a great oppertunity to challenge expectations.


 _*And as I mentioned in my original post, we don't award experience based on.. anything other than a general consensus, so naturally my experience is going to be coming in at a different angle.

**Tho the 'milestone' of removing the pirates from the bay? Sure, recognition and rewards!
_


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## Mistwell (Apr 2, 2018)

GameOgre said:


> Milestone Leveling is a time saver and gets the job done. There isn't a lot of doubt that it's become widely used especially in Adventure paths.
> 
> Even so I have a heavy dislike for it. See to me D&D is a role playing game and the PC's should have the freedom to play their characters however they want. This means that the DM shouldn't have preset notions and rewards for doing what the adventure requires.




You don't have to do it for what the "adventure requires" however. In the homebrew campaign I was running, it was when the players achieved a major goal THEY set out to achieve. 



> If the pc's decide that Dragon flying over the town looks nasty and head the other way then they should have the freedom to do so.




Sure. And if they head to the great dwarven enclave of Baklava and encounter a series of challenges along the way and finally make it to the enclave in one piece after facing adversity, then they've achieved a milestone. Because that was their goal - to get out of that other place with the dragon and to this place without the dragon.  



> Adventure paths in general are horrible for just that reason. The adventurers lives shouldn't be set and railroaded only on the path the DM sets before them.




WOTC has been really good for the past couple of years to NOT create railroad driven adventure paths however. 

For example, we're going through Strahd right now...and nothing about this adventure is a railroad. We're free to go and do whatever we choose, and there are quest opportunities all over the place and massive variation everywhere we go and nothing so far felt required by the adventure. So it's not "adventure paths" that do this, it's "the railroad heavy adventure paths". And WOTC seems to have handled this objection really well lately (even if they did not earlier in the edition's cycle).


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## Caliban (Apr 2, 2018)

iserith said:


> Since I control my character and what my character "would" do is whatever I say it will do, I can both play my character _and _do the activities that are incentivized by XP. Those things don't have to be in opposition unless a player chooses them to be. And why would they? That doesn't seem like a good idea to me.



Whatever floats your boat.  Some people play for the enjoyment of the game, others enjoy competing with their fellow players ( and getting more XP is one way if competing), others get addicted to the small pulses of dopamine their brain produces when they get to increment a number on their character sheet (gold, XP, a new magic item, a new level - anything that indicates progress or improvement).  

Everyone has their own way of enjoying the game.


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## Gardens & Goblins (Apr 2, 2018)

Caliban said:


> Everyone has their own way of enjoying the game.




*BEGONE DEVIANT!!1 *


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## iserith (Apr 2, 2018)

Caliban said:


> Whatever floats your boat.  Some people play for the enjoyment of the game, others enjoy competing with their fellow players ( and getting more XP is one way if competing), others get addicted to the small pulses of dopamine their brain produces when they get to increment a number on their character sheet (gold, XP, a new magic item, a new level - anything that indicates progress or improvement).
> 
> Everyone has their own way of enjoying the game.




Sure, let me put it another way to clarify what I meant. I probably wouldn't create, say, a pacifist homebody with crippling social anxiety disorder if the game I'm playing tied level advancement to combat, exploration, and social interaction. That doesn't seem like it would be a very good adventurer who bolt confronts deadly perils on the regular. Instead, I would create the sort of character who gets after it, who goes on adventures and overcomes challenges in order to advance in capability while pursuing character goals. This, to me, seems like a better fit for that sort of game. My character and the means of advancement would thus not be in conflict.


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## Caliban (Apr 2, 2018)

iserith said:


> Sure, let me put it another way to clarify what I meant. I probably wouldn't create, say, a pacifist homebody with crippling social anxiety disorder if the game I'm playing tied level advancement to combat, exploration, and social interaction. That doesn't seem like it would be a very good adventurer who bolt confronts deadly perils on the regular. Instead, I would create the sort of character who gets after it, who goes on adventures and overcomes challenges in order to advance in capability while pursuing character goals. This, to me, seems like a better fit for that sort of game. My character and the means of advancement would thus not be in conflict.



But when presented with a choice between killing someone and negotiating with them, you naturally choose to fight because that is how you get XP and magic items.


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## iserith (Apr 2, 2018)

Caliban said:


> But when presented with a choice between killing someone and negotiating with them, you naturally choose to fight because that is how you get XP and magic items.




I see killing as a form of negotiating that goes 100% my way. 

I think many DMs under-utilize the guidelines for non-combat challenges. In my current campaign, you get XP for combat or social and exploration is where you get treasure (usually).


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## Caliban (Apr 2, 2018)

iserith said:


> I see killing as a form of negotiating that goes 100% my way.
> 
> I think many DMs under-utilize the guidelines for non-combat challenges. In my current campaign, you get XP for combat or social and exploration is where you get treasure (usually).



Thank you for proving my point.


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## iserith (Apr 2, 2018)

Caliban said:


> Thank you for proving my point.




Do you mean in regards to how I see killing? As a player, I like getting into fights regardless of the advancement method because I like tactical combat. It's nice when my bloodlust is rewarded though!


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## Warpiglet (Apr 2, 2018)

iserith said:


> Do you mean in regards to how I see killing? As a player, I like getting into fights regardless of the advancement method because I like tactical combat. It's nice when my bloodlust is rewarded though!




Hell yeah!  Its at least 50% of why we play!  Mysteries and exploration are cool too.

I think part of this discussion hinges on the relative importance placed on creation of story vs. playing of a game.  In our group it has just never been an issue.  We get into it, make decisions and then go for it!  Sometimes we run, sometimes we talk, sometimes we fight.  And we enjoy fighting...

I recently gave experience for the avoidance of a large tactically unsound fight.  My rationale is simple: what does experience represent?  In very abstracted form, I think it represents skill at overcoming challenges in the adventuring environment.  How you do it is not particularly important to me as long as there is some metric for the difficulty.

In the scenario I mention, it would have been a tough fight--fatal if no tactics were used.  (Does anyone do that anyway?).  Conversely, the party could choose a choke point or try to piecemeal the bigger force by sneaking past some of it and attacking the leaders.

They chose the latter.  Why not reward the better choice?  

It just does not seem hard to me to make this call.  Nor is it less immersive...and each choice had some risk...so its not a gimme either...


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## Fanaelialae (Apr 2, 2018)

Caliban said:


> But when presented with a choice between killing someone and negotiating with them, you naturally choose to fight because that is how you get XP and magic items.




That's only true if you reward players exclusively for combat rather than social encounters.

In a previous campaign, my druid encountered some kind of Earth fey with an interesting looking magic pipe. While I could have just beaten him down and taken it, that character was a nice guy and therefore wouldn't do that. We talked, and not only was my druid able to convince the fey to trade his pipe (I think it was in exchange for some gems) but he also taught my druid to wildshape into a statue. I got XP for the encounter, the magic pipe, and a cool new trick. While I could have gotten the first two by going all murder hobo, I would have lost out on the third. The reward was actually better because I chose the diplomatic approach. As an added bonus, I felt that I had real agency in the world, since my character was able to take an uncertain encounter and make a new friend.


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## iserith (Apr 2, 2018)

Fanaelialae said:


> That's only true if you reward players exclusively for combat rather than social encounters.
> 
> In a previous campaign, my druid encountered some kind of Earth fey with an interesting looking magic pipe. While I could have just beaten him down and taken it, that character was a nice guy and therefore wouldn't do that. We talked, and not only was my druid able to convince the fey to trade his pipe (I think it was in exchange for some gems) but he also taught my druid to wildshape into a statue. I got XP for the encounter, the magic pipe, and a cool new trick. While I could have gotten the first two by going all murder hobo, I would have lost out on the third. The reward was actually better because I chose the diplomatic approach. As an added bonus, I felt that I had real agency in the world, since my character was able to take an uncertain encounter and make a new friend.




"...after I got the item and learned the new trick, I beat him to death with his own magic pipe and double-dipped in his XP. Good times."


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## Fanaelialae (Apr 2, 2018)

iserith said:


> "...after I got the item and learned the new trick, I beat him to death with his own magic pipe and double-dipped in his XP. Good times."




Murderhobo


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## Gardens & Goblins (Apr 2, 2018)

A character can only use so many magical items at a given time...

... and their army of loyal adventure pals, gained through their long travels can collectively make use of so many more.

Lawful Good Social Gods - they run things around here. _Around everywhere!_


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## The Human Target (Apr 2, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> In a game where there is no cost to combat - you're definitely going to win, and any damage you take will be removed after a nap - getting rid of combat XP means that playing through the combat is just a huge waste of time at the table. When there's no positive or negative consequence to combat, fighting is entirely meaningless.
> 
> I would be much more accepting of milestone-based XP if the healing rules were changed such that HP recovery was severely limited. It would mean the correct choice is to avoid combat whenever possible, because there's no real reward and the potential resource cost is high, but that's a fine way to play. (Likewise under default 5E rules, you should seek out every fight because there's no real cost and high potential rewards, and that's an alright way to play if you're into that sort of thing.)




I'm beginning to think you might not like the 5e healing rules.


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## Shiroiken (Apr 2, 2018)

I am not a fan of non-XP leveling variants, but part of that is my enjoyment of a sandbox environment. Milestones work well for adventure paths, because it guarantees the party is the right level at the right time, but that's about it. I tried the XP per session, but that can reward the wrong behavior (taking longer to complete an adventure to level before the end). The idea of just giving out a level whenever I feel like it is just anathema to me.

The only thing I don't like about XP, at least since 3E, is that it is primarily awarded for killing stuff. In my current game I've cut the XP for monsters by half, and grant XP for exploration and social encounters, plus successfully completing adventures (i.e. quest XP). This rewards characters for overcoming non-combat obstacles, and does not punish characters for avoiding fights. In addition, successfully completing the adventure is worth a good chunk, which rewards perseverance.


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## Rod Staffwand (Apr 2, 2018)

Presenting 20 Alternate Advancement Systems for 5E!

1. Millstone Advancement. The party gains 1 level for every millstone they carry with them.
2. Saison Advancement. XP for buying the DM slightly fruity beers. [This one is a personal favorite].
3. Story-Based Advancement. You gain a level if you tell the DM a really entertaining story on how and why your PC should level.
4. XP for GP. You gain 1xp per 1gp acquired as treasure. Sp, cp, pp, ep and all other forms of treasure do not count. Only gp.
5. Random Advancement/Regression. Roll 1d20 at the beginning of the session. That's your level.
6.  Facebook Advancement. Gain 1xp for every NPC friend your PC makes.
7. The One Advancement. Kill a series of alternate dimension dopplegangers to advance in levels.
8. 1-Minute Advancement. Quickly level your PC when the DM shouts "DING!". If you don't complete the update in 60 seconds or less you fail to level and everyone laughs at you.
9. Player Fiat Advancement. You play your PC at 20th level and hope the DM doesn't notice.
10. Advanced Advancement. Every possible action your PC takes is worth some fractional xp total (say .00001 for taking a step or .00025 for eating a ham sandwich). Please keep meticulous notes.
11. Gold Star Advancement. Your PC doesn't advance, but the DM gives you a gold star for your character sheet whenever you do something cool. These have no in-game effect, but you can take it home and maybe mommy and daddy will put it on the refrigerator and say, "Little Timmy is doing a great in D&D this year!"
12. Survivor Advancement. Each session every player votes as to who should level. Least amount of votes is up for elimination! I hope your PC found the immunity idol hidden in the dung pit.
13. Lazy Advancement. You don't bother to level but force to make everything in the world weaker to compensate.
14. Anti-Advancement. You start at level 20 and the DM removes levels when you irritate him.
15. Bingo Advancement. Every PC gets a bingo card with relatively common adventuring incidents on them: "Killed orc" "Avoided treasure chest trap" "Parlayed with duke". Filling out a row gets you a level and a new card. [Actually, I kinda like this one...].
16. Merit-Based Advancement. Your PC needs to pass an examination testing their competency of current level abilities including an extensive oral examination of procedures and methods by higher-level practitioners of your class. In addition you should collect no less than ten letters of recommendations from pillars of the community with whom you've adventuring for or with over the course of the level. Final, you need a 10000 word easy, written by the player, entitled "Why [Insert PC Name Here] Should Be [Insert Next Higher Level Here]." Please weight 3 to 4 months for a response from the review board.
17. A Different Sort Of Milestone Advancement. PCs level on their birthday! Hurray and huzzah!
18. Anime Advancement. PCs can only level in the midst of boss combats, usually to the disbelief of the boss. "Impossible! I thought they were only level 5..."
19. Level Advancement. You gain a level every time you get to a deeper dungeon level.
20. Zen Advancement. You understand that levels are only a state of mind. Numbers on a sheet. You are both player and PC. Controller and avatar. All things are simultaneously possible and impossible.


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## Gradine (Apr 2, 2018)

I've been recently branching outside of D&D; my partner has decided to start running Monster of the Week (a Powered by the Apocalypse game), and we stumbled across the original rules before finding the revised rulebook. Each take a different approach to XP (and XP, I think we can mostly agree, exists as a game mechanic primarily to encourage particular styles of play). The original rules had this setup where another player picks one of your stats, the GM picks another, and you gain an XP every time you performed an action requiring you to roll one of those two stats. And this, I suppose, is a kind of way of encourage particular behaviors, especially on the GM side (if the GM was highlighting Tough for most people, for instance, that would indicate that they are wanting us to get into a lot of fights, while highlighting Sharp would indicate this adventure is more focused on investigation), but it ended up getting too fiddly. The revised rules instead give you an XP every time you fail a roll, which as I understand is how Dungeon World (the most D&D-adjacent Apocalypse-esque game) also does it. Which is an entirely different style of player encouragement (specifically, encouraging players to attempt things they're more likely to fail at). Which makes a kind of sense for a system that is more narrative focused (and particularly MotW, which is clearly not designed with character longevity in mind). There are also other, class-specific ways to gain XP that encourage playing towards their archetype (the Mundane has a move to gain XP for getting captured and rescued, while the Flake has a move to gain XP for getting someone else's advice, and then _refusing_ to follow it). 

This has made me think more about why I don't bother using XP in D&D, and haven't since at least 3.5 (I did run one campaign where I tried it out, and it had absolutely zero impact beyond making my job more difficult). Part of it is that the math is simply way too complicated and convoluted. In MotW you level up every time you gain five XP. Easy to track. Numbers ranging into the thousands? Not so much. And the tables and the multipliers and modifiers and all the little variables to track, in basically any modern edition of D&D, is just too much. But there's also the fact that the default rules don't encourage the type of gameplay me and my players are most interested in: combat. I hate that I have to hack the game to get it encourage different styles of play.

And I don't think "quest XP" is an answer either. Absent a specific system, this usually amounts to an arbitrary fiat by the XP (just like story-based or milestone), and doesn't encourage... really any kind of thing at all, really. Show me the D&D party that needs to be encouraged to accept quests, please. All it does is add one more number for both me and my players to keep track of. And I understand that a not-insignificant player base within D&D likes watching their numbers go up. And if that's worth the extra effort for them, more power to them, I say.

It'd be interesting to see what a more DW/MotW-esque XP system would look like D&D. Something with smaller numbers to track, maybe based less on failed rolls and more on playing to class archetypes (which, as I understand, older editions of D&D/AD&D did have in some form).


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## guachi (Apr 3, 2018)

I give XP at the end of sessions except on rare occasions. It takes about 60-90 seconds of my time to total XP and divide by players.

It's not really a big deal to me. I like giving XP every session as it rewards players who show up consistently, among other things.


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## guachi (Apr 3, 2018)

The Human Target said:


> I'm beginning to think you might not like the 5e healing rules.




I'm with Saelorn on my dislike of the default 5e healing rules. I hate them so much I find games that use them not really that fun to be a PC in.


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## Swarmkeeper (Apr 3, 2018)

guachi said:


> I give XP at the end of sessions except on rare occasions. It takes about 60-90 seconds of my time to total XP and divide by players.
> 
> It's not really a big deal to me. I like giving XP every session as it rewards players who show up consistently, among other things.




Very much this.  

PCs end up being at different levels when you award XP only to those players who are present but in my eyes that only adds to the flavor of the party.

I give XP for:
- defeating monsters/enemies (which isn't always killing them)
- avoiding monsters/enemies in clever ways (same XP or even a slight 10% or 20% bonus)
- successful social interactions/puzzle solving/trap disabling (based on complexity)
- side-quest completion
- major story arc components completed

What's that?  You were told there would be no math??  Even with all these variables, it still only takes a short amount of time after each session to total up XP and divvie it out.


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## JonnyP71 (Apr 3, 2018)

I dislike milestone xp, it feels like a bit of a lazy cop out, often used to compensate for poor adventure design.

My players sit and gaze at me like eager spaniels at the end of each gaming session, pencils and erasers at the ready, waiting for their xp award.  I love it when one of them cheers excitedly to signify they have enough xp to gain a level.

I give xp for 'dealing with dangerous situations', not just killing monsters.  If they avoid an encounter using stealth/diplomacy/trickery they get full xp as if they had killed the enemies - as long as a tangible threat was there.  If they RP well they get bonuses, these can vary from player to player and from session to session.  On the other hand they get zero xp for unnecessary killing or enemies that posed no real threat - such as NPCs, civillians or a lone goblin scout.

XP also rewards regular session attendance, the players know that 'no show means no xp'. I have no problem whatsoever with characters being of different levels.


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## Phasestar (Apr 3, 2018)

I'm also not a fan of the idea of milestone XP vs. traditional XP, though I think it is probably "good enough".

To be fair, I have not yet tried milestone XP, only read about it, but my players love the traditional system when combined with bonus XP for roleplaying, quest/story completion, etc.  I see milestone XP as easier for the DM, but less interesting and exciting for the players.  I think the higher resolution system I'm used to using gives players more incentives for just about anything they do and they know that the amount of reward is fairly predictable even when they are acting outside of a planned or prepared story.

Of course, I'm also the guy who loves playing in Fantasy Football Leagues that have Individual Defensive Players and points based on 100 point scales that include normalized rewards across player positions for just about every possible thing a player can do on the football field.  It's fun to see "your" player accumulating even a single point or a half point when they are on the field, just like it's cool to know that that extra goblin raiding group you went out of your way to defeat, even though it was not part of the main storyline, was not in effect completely worthless because the milestone reward for getting to the next story milestone was the same whether you stopped those particular goblins or not.


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## jaelis (Apr 3, 2018)

JonnyP71 said:


> I give xp for 'dealing with dangerous situations', not just killing monsters.  If they avoid an encounter using stealth/diplomacy/trickery they get full xp as if they had killed the enemies - as long as a tangible threat was there.  If they RP well they get bonuses, these can vary from player to player and from session to session.  On the other hand they get zero xp for unnecessary killing or enemies that posed no real threat - such as NPCs, civillians or a lone goblin scout.




I guess my idea of milestones is just a little different than some peoples', because what you describe sounds like my idea of milestones.

I consider it a milestone any time the party accomplishes something significant. If you have to beat a monster to get into the castle, then beating the monster is a milestone and you would get XP. If you manage to get into the castle without beating the monster, I would give the same XP. If you decide you don't want to visit the castle and instead rout the bandits in the forest, then finding the bandits would be a milestone and defeating them another. If you just randomly attack a bear in the woods, I wouldn't consider that a milestone. If you defeat the monster at the castle but then decide to tackle the bandits, then you don't get a milestone.

So someone explain the more constraining concept of milestones that people are railing against?


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## The Human Target (Apr 3, 2018)

guachi said:


> I'm with Saelorn on my dislike of the default 5e healing rules. I hate them so much I find games that use them not really that fun to be a PC in.




I think they are a bit clunky.

I just don't think they have anything do with milestone xp.

Not that the OP really does either, but still.


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## iserith (Apr 3, 2018)

Gradine said:


> This has made me think more about why I don't bother using XP in D&D, and haven't since at least 3.5 (I did run one campaign where I tried it out, and it had absolutely zero impact beyond making my job more difficult). Part of it is that the math is simply way too complicated and convoluted. In MotW you level up every time you gain five XP. Easy to track. Numbers ranging into the thousands? Not so much. And the tables and the multipliers and modifiers and all the little variables to track, in basically any modern edition of D&D, is just too much. But there's also the fact that the default rules don't encourage the type of gameplay me and my players are most interested in: combat. I hate that I have to hack the game to get it encourage different styles of play.




I think there's plenty of good reasons to criticize XP, but c'mon man, doing so on the basis of not wanting to do simple math or just opening up the calculator app on one's phone to do a little elementary-level multiplication, addition, and division is just a little hard to swallow. Are other methods easier? Sure. Is D&D's method hard? No. I don't mean to pick on you specifically either. Similar comments have been made before.



Gradine said:


> And I don't think "quest XP" is an answer either. Absent a specific system, this usually amounts to an arbitrary fiat by the XP (just like story-based or milestone), and doesn't encourage... really any kind of thing at all, really. Show me the D&D party that needs to be encouraged to accept quests, please. All it does is add one more number for both me and my players to keep track of. And I understand that a not-insignificant player base within D&D likes watching their numbers go up. And if that's worth the extra effort for them, more power to them, I say.




For milestone XP, the rules give guidelines on how much to give for achieving specific goals. A major milestone is like a hard encounter. A minor milestone is like an easy encounter. I wouldn't say it's arbitrary, especially since milestones are tied to certain events or challenges in the adventure design. There's a purpose to it - to incentivize the players to engage with the prepared content.

And I've seen plenty of players in my day who need to be encouraged to accept quests. I call them "defective adventurers." It's a player problem mostly, but it's a human universal in my view that if you want people to do a thing, _recognize_ it when they do it so that they will do it again in the future. (This works for more than just accepting quests in D&D. Try it.) XP does exactly that, for whatever you set the XP to reward. Even people who are going to do it anyway (like me) will appreciate it in my experience.


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## Sunseeker (Apr 3, 2018)

GameOgre said:


> Even so I have a heavy dislike for it. See to me D&D is a role playing game and the PC's should have the freedom to play their characters however they want. This means that the DM shouldn't have preset notions and rewards for doing what the adventure requires.



I'm not here to be your Xbox.  Being DM takes time and prep and ya know, WORK.  So if I set down after taking that time and prep and work and the player's response is "Hey we're gonna go kick chickens for 4 hours."  You can find another DM. 



> If the pc's decide that Dragon flying over the town looks nasty and head the other way then they should have the freedom to do so.



I am SO ANGRY right now and this just PISSES ME OFF.

You know why there's a pretend dragon flying over your pretend heads in your pretend town?  Because the DM set down beforehand and said "Hey, you know what the players might have fun dealing with, a dragon?  I mean, it's in the name of the game right?"  So for you to sit there and act like this isn't somehow part of the DM's plan for things for you to deal with absolutely infuriates me.



> Adventure paths in general are horrible for just that reason. The adventurers lives shouldn't be set and railroaded only on the path the DM sets before them. Also if you were going to build a adventure path and get player buy in why not actually make it work? Why not make the adventure actually contain the amount of XP needed to level instead of just a fraction of it? BAH!



Adventures aren't sandboxes because they're probably about 50 pages long.  You can't put infinite content into that.  Jesus this is like Grade-A ignorance of game design 101.



> My players love to track their xp and levels and feel a since of accomplishment with their characters when they earn a level up and are not simply given a level up because the adventure requires them to be higher.



Okay.  Lots of people like different things.  



> Is it really all that hard to award xp? I'm amazed that DM's can build encounters and entire settings and yet balk at the simple task of awarding xp for monsters slain,role playing,creative thinking and good gaming.



What we balk at is players being disrespectful and acting like we are their personal entertainment systems who must bend to their every ridiculous desire.



> One of my player tells me player freedom is simply gone from the game in favor of the amusement park get on here and get off over there style of of play and while it might be more rare surely there are a lot of DM's out there like me that don't run there games that way.
> 
> Right?




WRONG.


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## flametitan (Apr 3, 2018)

Rod Staffwand said:


> 2. Saison Advancement. XP for buying the DM slightly fruity beers. [This one is a personal favorite].




Is this 1 XP per penny spent, or 1 XP for every dollar?


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## Immoralkickass (Apr 3, 2018)

I actually started with Milestone leveling before moving on to the standard XP gains. My DM somehow preferred XP. But its not like you can't mix the two; my DM did instantly push us from level 9 to 10 for the final session of the season. We will be starting season 2 at level 11. 

Milestone does provide the DM with absolute control over the players progress, and it can be abused. I heard a story of a player who was level 3 after playing for one whole year of weekly playing. When I asked how long he was at level 1, he said 4 months. I nearly spit out my coffee.


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## GameOgre (Apr 3, 2018)

shidaku 


> I'm not here to be your Xbox. Being DM takes time and prep and ya know, WORK. So if I set down after taking that time and prep and work and the player's response is "Hey we're gonna go kick chickens for 4 hours." You can find another DM.




DMing should be fun and not work. If you don't enjoy it don't do it. My players are not there for me to tell them what fun is. They tell me what their characters want to do and I build (sometimes on the fly) a adventure for them. Will things turn out like they thought? Maybe ..maybe not. Beleive it or not if you give players a little freedom they will often end up creating their own epic story better than anything you could have pre-thought up. Your idea that they would want to stand around kicking chickens underscores your issue.



> If the pc's decide that Dragon flying over the town looks nasty and head the other way then they should have the freedom to do so.
> I am SO ANGRY right now and this just PISSES ME OFF.




You should not post when your so upset I am however sorry your got upset that is not my goal in the least.



> You know why there's a pretend dragon flying over your pretend heads in your pretend town? Because the DM set down beforehand and said "Hey, you know what the players might have fun dealing with, a dragon? I mean, it's in the name of the game right?" So for you to sit there and act like this isn't somehow part of the DM's plan for things for you to deal with absolutely infuriates me.




I don't care to play a game to be a part of someones else's plan. I don't expect my players to either. How about You try to just inform them of whats going on and give them meaningful choices and let THEM TELL YOU what they want to do? Sure it takes a little more effort at first and perhaps a little more skill to do it well, but the end result is a game that moves in ways no one expected! Best of all the players get to plan and think and set their own goals. If you tell them pirates have been attacking up and down the coast and the mayor wants to hire them to hunt the pirates down but instead the players want to up and leave and head back to check on some other adventure hook from three sessions ago....LET THEM! The pirate's can become more of a scourge and the next time the pc's come that way maybe they find a sacked town! Meanwhile you can use that old adventure hook from three sessions ago that they ignored and now it has grown even bigger!



> Adventures aren't sandboxes because they're probably about 50 pages long. You can't put infinite content into that. Jesus this is like Grade-A ignorance of game design 101.




I just glanced at one of the adventure paths paths. 256 pages. The first 5 or 6 levels is only a few pages because you are supposed to just run them through it fast and give them tons of unearned XP so they are high enough for the rest of the adventure path. Why not just make the adventure path 6-12th level instead on 1-12th and crapping out a silly 6 levels in 3 seconds flat? It seems to be a much better way to do adventure design.





> What we balk at is players being disrespectful and acting like we are their personal entertainment systems who must bend to their every ridiculous desire.



Wow! A player wanting to use XP for advancement is disrespectful and acting like you are a game system? Man, sounds like you have been through the ringer of late and maybe having a hard time. If so please understand that every DM has been in that same spot from time. Sometimes it's just our awesome epic adventure fell flat, sometimes its we don't mesh with out players and sometimes it can even be we are dealing with problem players or even our own issues are clouding our judgment. Sometimes it might just be that we failed to read the fine print on a monster and forgot to use its special ability that would have made it a epic fight and instead the party one rounded it 8) and it was out big bad!

Whatever is going on plenty of folks here have been through it and could offer some good advice( and maybe a little bad advice as well! ) 

Edited to remove the snarky unhelpful comment at the end because it wasn't helpful and wasn't what i was really trying to say.


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## AaronOfBarbaria (Apr 3, 2018)

shidaku said:


> <snipped for space>



It sounds like you've been DMing for too many players that don't mesh with your style. I say that because you are coming off as believing that the players not taking the hooks you've planned out is a personal disrespect to you and your efforts as a DM... where I, and possibly many other DMs, would simply see that as having chosen the wrong hook for the players in question (i.e. one they aren't into, and it's totally okay for people to be into different things) or otherwise not at all a problem because there are more hooks to toss them and see which they'll take.

It's like you are saying either you get your way and the campaign goes to plan and you have fun, or the players try to take the lead and shape the campaign and you don't have fun - if you were playing with a compatible group of players, the outcome would be everyone having fun whether the player's took your lead or you took theirs, because you'd be all intentionally be heading to the same place.

Or maybe you just need to cut back how much prep-time you spend so that you aren't so emotionally invested in a dragon flying over town that you get angry if the players don't feel like dealing with a dragon at the moment, because as GameOgre says, DMing should be fun, not work.


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## JonnyP71 (Apr 3, 2018)

jaelis said:


> So someone explain the more constraining concept of milestones that people are railing against?




I've played in 2 games where the DM has used Milestone xp, or rather milestone levelling, as xp has not existed as we know it.

At the end of a 'chapter' of the game the DM has simply said - 'you have all gained a level'. There's no differentiation between characters that have been present for all the sessions of the chapter and those that have maybe only been in the party for 1 or 2 sessions.

It is lazy, it is forced, it's a clumsy way of keeping everyone at the same level.

It just doesn't 'feel' remotely right to me.


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## Imaculata (Apr 3, 2018)

AaronOfBarbaria said:


> Or maybe you just need to cut back how much prep-time you spend so that you aren't so emotionally invested in a dragon flying over town that you get angry if the players don't feel like dealing with a dragon at the moment, because as GameOgre says, DMing should be fun, not work.




I guess it depends on whether the campaign revolves around killing the dragon. If the dragon is just a plothook, but not the entire goal of the campaign, then I see no issue with the players completely ignoring it. If however the campaign is about killing said dragon, and the players agreed to play that campaign, then that seems like something to discuss with your players.

I currently run a sandbox campaign, in which the players have complete freedom to do as they like, as long as it is within the confines of the region that I've prepared for them. That last part is something I agreed upon with  my group. I told them: _"This is the setting, and this is the region in which we play. Although there is obviously far more world beyond the confines of the map, this is the region in which I want to restrict this campaign (but it may be expanded later on)"_. With this minor restriction agreed upon by my players, we've had no issues what so ever, because everyone is on the same page. I also discussed with them the goal of the campaign, and towards what kind of ending I'm hoping to steer it eventually (a huge naval battle of some sort). I explained to them that the campaign could easily take them to high level, or maybe even epic level if we continue playing it, but that there is also an ending that I have in mind for it.

And that's all you need really. As long as everyone understands what kind of campaign you're running, then its all good. If you expect your players to follow the plot hooks, then you should make it clear to them that they are playing a linear campaign.

*On milestone xp*

I'm not a fan of it to be honest. I understand the convenience of it, but it feels less earned when my character just gains an instant level at the end of a quest. I like earning bonus exp with killing high level monsters, and from good role playing, because it feels like we as players are being rewarded for our efforts. I like it when the DM does not know if the exp from an encounter will level up our characters or not, because I like being surprised as a player when we either barely reach the next level (or not). It creates anticipation and a feeling of accomplishment.

Take for example our last session, where the players managed to beat a very large battle. Not only did the xp level up their characters, but it took them pretty far towards their next level as well. And so it feels like all that effort is reflected in the exp.


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## KenNYC (Apr 3, 2018)

D&D should go back to XP for GP.   I know it doesn't make sense from a logic standpoint but it promotes good gameplay because there is a constant incentive to adventure, and also a very real incentive to be wise in choosing your fights.  Just awarding xp for fighting sort of demands a party attack everything, but there is something to be said for discretion and valor.  It also allows things like charisma and charm, or just plain old role playing, to have a decent impact on what happens.  

The more I play 5e the more I see the wisdom of 1e and OD&D.    I also don't see the advantage of every class advancing equally.  With all due respect to circus performers, pickpockets and slick talkers, a 20th level wizard learning how to stop time and grant wishes should have to work a lot harder to get there than say a 20th level rogue.  

Milestone xp seems a little railroady.   Suppose I am not interested in your milestone and want to take my character in a different direction?   Or what if I turn left instead of right?


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## JonnyP71 (Apr 3, 2018)

XP for GP actually makes quite a lot of sense if you use some form of downtime/training level advancement.  

It just needs a slight mindshift away from 'you get better at adventuring due to your experiences' and towards 'you get better at adventuring because you pay someone who is more skilled than you to teach you'.


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## Imaculata (Apr 3, 2018)

KenNYC said:


> I also don't see the advantage of every class advancing equally.  With all due respect to circus performers, pickpockets and slick talkers, a 20th level wizard learning how to stop time and grant wishes should have to work a lot harder to get there than say a 20th level rogue.




To me, D&D is all about team work. So if the entire party receives group exp, then the rules and the reward cycle support the idea of teamwork; everyone works towards the collective exp pool.

To me the warrior that kills a dragon, helps his party just as much as the rogue who gathers important information at the local tavern. And so both contribute to the party's exp pool.

I guess it all comes down to what sort of atmosphere you're aiming for in your campaign. Are the players a team, or are they individuals?


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## 5ekyu (Apr 3, 2018)

Ok so about advancement... To me first you need to figure out why you all want characters to advance, then let that guide how characters advance and when.

If you want characters to advance to give the GM influence over player choices , then xp only given for choices GM approves is great.

If you want characters to advance to punish players who cannot play as often, then big xp losses for missed sessions is great.

In our last game, it was supers and they started at like 10th and advancement was minimal... A few xp now and again. Half the players never spent their xp. It was not important. I think they got a level a year.

Our current game is scifi and the advancement pace we are using is 8 sessions per level at tier 2, then 12 at tier 3.  

Faster levels means more "keeping up" more trying to figure out new stuff, less time to get used to and see your stuff in play before you get settled in... For us at least.

I find with my players if i lay out diverse stuff, they find fun stuff to do with it. Sometimes its more fun than what i had planned. 

Maybe part of this comes from me working their characters elements and background into the things, people, places and events around them but i dont need or see it as beneficial to say to them which choices will be rewarded with advancement.

The purpose of advancement in our games is to produce the style of escalating adventure with greater and greater adversaries and challenges.

The modified session xp system is just an efficient implementation of that, giving players and gm a way to measure time left.

Next campaign, if it is similar, i plan to double levels. 

As in you level up half as often but gain two levels.

I think this cuts down on the incremental workload, makes each level more dramatic and more breakthru while giving everyone time for a long stretch to explore ther stuff.


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## Bradley Hindman (Apr 3, 2018)

JonnyP71 said:


> I've played in 2 games where the DM has used Milestone xp, or rather milestone levelling, as xp has not existed as we know it.
> 
> At the end of a 'chapter' of the game the DM has simply said - 'you have all gained a level'. There's no differentiation between characters that have been present for all the sessions of the chapter and those that have maybe only been in the party for 1 or 2 sessions.




I am slightly baffled by this mentality (which seems to be rather commonly held).  Our group feels that missing out on the fun of a gaming session is sufficient punishment that an XP penalty isn't required. Is this idea that players should be rewarded for being present a result of using XP as an incentive? Do some tables really need to incentivize showing up? Does the mentality have something to do with a table that enjoys inter-player competition?  Some other option that I can't think of?



> It is lazy, it is forced, it's a clumsy way of keeping everyone at the same level.




I used to award and track XP. But, I stopped when I realized that the story awards that I was compiling were just a complicated and opaque way of using milestone advancement.  As I said earlier in the thread, I now just level characters up at the end of story chapters.  Unlike how some in this thread have characterized milestones, I don't decide weeks in advance which conclusions to a story arc will be rewarded.  Instead its organic. The players set their own goals and the chapter ends when it feels dramatically appropriate to do so. Usually that means those goals have been reached.  But sometimes not.


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## Imaculata (Apr 3, 2018)

5ekyu said:


> If you want characters to advance to punish players who cannot play as often, then big xp losses for missed sessions is great.




Why would you ever want to do that? And why would it ever be 'great'?

Being unable to play as often as you'd like, due to real life, is enough of a bummer. But then the group also punishes you for having a real-life obligation, by denying you exp? Having your character get more and more behind on other characters, is not going to make those real-life obligations magically go away.


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## jaelis (Apr 3, 2018)

JonnyP71 said:


> I've played in 2 games where the DM has used Milestone xp, or rather milestone levelling, as xp has not existed as we know it.
> 
> At the end of a 'chapter' of the game the DM has simply said - 'you have all gained a level'. There's no differentiation between characters that have been present for all the sessions of the chapter and those that have maybe only been in the party for 1 or 2 sessions.
> 
> ...




Huh, I would not have called that milestones then, I would describe it as free-form level advancement. I'm not particularly opposed to that either, and I guess I can see how they are related, if you just call each chapter one big milestone. But whenever I've used milestones they've come in smaller amounts with more per level. To me the point is to reward progress toward your goal (whatever goal you have decided on), not just reaching the goal. And not just mechanical activities like fighting or finding treasure.


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## iserith (Apr 3, 2018)

JonnyP71 said:


> I've played in 2 games where the DM has used Milestone xp, or rather milestone levelling, as xp has not existed as we know it.
> 
> At the end of a 'chapter' of the game the DM has simply said - 'you have all gained a level'. There's no differentiation between characters that have been present for all the sessions of the chapter and those that have maybe only been in the party for 1 or 2 sessions.
> 
> ...




It's also not terribly important to keep the PCs all the same level in terms of survivability, at least not in D&D 5e. Because in my last three campaigns players always start characters at 1st level even after PC death or joining the campaign late, I've played a number of games where characters were up to 7 levels apart and it went fine. The lower-level PCs had to be a little choosy about how to engage combat challenges at first, but quickly gained levels and toughness after just a couple challenges were completed.

Also, what you're referring to is story-based advancement or session-based advancement. Milestone advancement uses goals and XP.


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## iserith (Apr 3, 2018)

KenNYC said:


> Milestone xp seems a little railroady.   Suppose I am not interested in your milestone and want to take my character in a different direction?   Or what if I turn left instead of right?




It's not "railroady" though. A clever DM will have explained to you the kind of game he or she is going for and how you will get XP, then asked for your buy-in. If you agreed that achieving certain goals put before you is how you earn XP in the game, then you are not being railroaded because of your agreement. If you then turned left instead of right so to speak, you'd be going against your agreement and thus the one at fault. And you'd earn no XP. Ideally, in my view, there'd be a number of milestones and you could pick and choose the ones you'd want (and pay a price for ignoring some when that made sense), but that's not always how a DM sets up his or her game.

If the DM instead told you it was a sandbox, but you only ever got XP for completing particular goals and he or she always steered you toward those goals despite your best efforts, then yeah, it might be said to be "railroady." That DM made the mistake of not being upfront with you regarding the expectations of the game and is coercing, negating, or subverting your choices.


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## Sunseeker (Apr 3, 2018)

AaronOfBarbaria said:


> It sounds like you've been DMing for too many players that don't mesh with your style. I say that because you are coming off as believing that the players not taking the hooks you've planned out is a personal disrespect to you and your efforts as a DM... where I, and possibly many other DMs, would simply see that as having chosen the wrong hook for the players in question (i.e. one they aren't into, and it's totally okay for people to be into different things) or otherwise not at all a problem because there are more hooks to toss them and see which they'll take.
> 
> It's like you are saying either you get your way and the campaign goes to plan and you have fun, or the players try to take the lead and shape the campaign and you don't have fun - if you were playing with a compatible group of players, the outcome would be everyone having fun whether the player's took your lead or you took theirs, because you'd be all intentionally be heading to the same place.
> 
> Or maybe you just need to cut back how much prep-time you spend so that you aren't so emotionally invested in a dragon flying over town that you get angry if the players don't feel like dealing with a dragon at the moment, because as GameOgre says, DMing should be fun, not work.




Not all campaigns are free roaming do-whatever-you-want sandboxes.


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## iserith (Apr 3, 2018)

Bradley Hindman said:


> I am slightly baffled by this mentality (which seems to be rather commonly held).  Our group feels that missing out on the fun of a gaming session is sufficient punishment that an XP penalty isn't required. Is this idea that players should be rewarded for being present a result of using XP as an incentive? Do some tables really need to incentivize showing up? Does the mentality have something to do with a table that enjoys inter-player competition?  Some other option that I can't think of?




I think it's a little much to say it's a "punishment" not to get XP for a game in which you didn't play. It _is_ reasonable in my view to say that because of the plot-based game you choose to run, you use story-based advancement and you prefer to keep all the characters the same level for some reason and thus, if you don't show up to a session, your character levels up anyway. That's a good tool to use in a plot-based game. But other games are not structured that way. In a sandbox game, for example, there is no plot in the same sense and thus another advancement tool simply works better than the story-based advancement you use.


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## Oofta (Apr 3, 2018)

Bradley Hindman said:


> I am slightly baffled by this mentality (which seems to be rather commonly held).  Our group feels that missing out on the fun of a gaming session is sufficient punishment that an XP penalty isn't required. Is this idea that players should be rewarded for being present a result of using XP as an incentive? Do some tables really need to incentivize showing up? Does the mentality have something to do with a table that enjoys inter-player competition?  Some other option that I can't think of?
> 
> 
> 
> I used to award and track XP. But, I stopped when I realized that the story awards that I was compiling were just a complicated and opaque way of using milestone advancement.  As I said earlier in the thread, I now just level characters up at the end of story chapters.  Unlike how some in this thread have characterized milestones, I don't decide weeks in advance which conclusions to a story arc will be rewarded.  Instead its organic. The players set their own goals and the chapter ends when it feels dramatically appropriate to do so. Usually that means those goals have been reached.  But sometimes not.




I agree on both counts.  First, missing a game sucks and is usually out of the control of the person missing the game.  It may not "matter" if people have different levels but it feels like a punishment for having the flu and not wanting to get everyone else at the table sick as well.

For the latter, I think one of my biggest goals is to make a campaign feel as much like an organic story and as little like a board game as possible.  We're not playing Monopoly, the dragon doesn't have to land on Boardwalk for me to collect rent XP.

Besides, if the PCs do something completely unexpected and train the villagers to fight for themselves while helping construct defenses and scouting out the weak points of the invading orc tribe instead of diving straight into combat, why should that not count as winning the day?  I run a fairly sand-boxy game (a topic for another thread) so I don't care how the PCs achieve goals.  

If people complain about PCs being murder hobos and then only reward them for being murder hobos they don't have much ground to stand on.  You get the type of play you encourage.


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## Flexor the Mighty! (Apr 3, 2018)

We don't have a problem with PC missing XP if the player is out, someone else will just run that PC along with their character.  Now if you insisted your PC stood back and did nothing while you are out then I guess you would fall behind.


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## Gradine (Apr 3, 2018)

iserith said:


> I think there's plenty of good reasons to criticize XP, but c'mon man, doing so on the basis of not wanting to do simple math or just opening up the calculator app on one's phone to do a little elementary-level multiplication, addition, and division is just a little hard to swallow. Are other methods easier? Sure. Is D&D's method hard? No. I don't mean to pick on you specifically either. Similar comments have been made before.




<looks at this post>
<looks at DMG's encounter building tables>
<looks back at this post>
<looks back at DMG>

I think that you and I have very different definitions of the word "simple", my friend.

And, here's the thing, it's not that I'm math-allergic by any means. I do fairly complex statistical analysis at my day job. I do not want to spend what little free time I have doing _work._ If your game math requires me to consult multiple freaking tables, for _every encounter I build_, that is _work_ to me, not fun.

I don't doubt that some people do find that work fun or enjoyable, and once again more power to them.

And I'm not saying that I think D&D should have simpler XP math either; I don't need D&D's default XP system to conform to my expectations because even if it were simpler, it still incentivizes the wrong kind of gameplay for me.



> For milestone XP, the rules give guidelines on how much to give for achieving specific goals. A major milestone is like a hard encounter. A minor milestone is like an easy encounter. I wouldn't say it's arbitrary, especially since milestones are tied to certain events or challenges in the adventure design. There's a purpose to it - to incentivize the players to engage with the prepared content.




Okay, well in that case let me consult those DMG tables for just a sec...



Sorry, my eyes just glazed over from boredom. I think I'll pass on that.



> And I've seen plenty of players in my day who need to be encouraged to accept quests. I call them "defective adventurers." It's a player problem mostly, but it's a human universal in my view that if you want people to do a thing, _recognize_ it when they do it so that they will do it again in the future. (This works for more than just accepting quests in D&D. Try it.) XP does exactly that, for whatever you set the XP to reward. Even people who are going to do it anyway (like me) will appreciate it in my experience.




I neither need nor want game mechanics designed specifically to deal with problem players, because I already have a mechanic to deal with problem players, and it's called the door.

And I recognize that neither me nor my players quite align to either of the classical, more "mercenary" and/or "sandbox" styles of D&D play, where this kind of XP system makes much more sense; we're definitely more narrative-heavy players. I don't need to incentivize them to do the content I've prepared; they've already signed up for that. Buy-in is not something I am ever really concerned about. 

What I want to incentivize is great play, in the moment, and D&D's XP system doesn't really allow for that kind of ad-hoc reward structure (see also: tables). I'm sure there's a way to hack it to be able to do that, structurally (rather than arbitrarily) and simply, but I'm not invested enough to put that work in, because great play is not something I _really_ have to worry about too much from my players either.


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## Swarmkeeper (Apr 3, 2018)

An argument for granting XP (or partial levels, if that's your thing) for those that show up:  you are running a West Marches style campaign with a bunch of players.  Whoever can make it that particular game night plays.  

As you may or may not know, in a West Marches campaign, there is an overarching theme of exploration and most adventures are succinct, one-session jaunts that end up back in the town/village that is the base.  That makes it easy to "plug and play" any combination of characters.

For example, say you have a dozen players.  Only 5 can make it this week for game night.  Only those 5 characters that are being played get the XP for that session (assuming they survive!)  It is not a punishment for the other 7 players or their characters.  It's just the reality of the style of play.  In fact, players can have multiple characters and choose which one goes on the adventure on any given session.  The PC they "leave behind" is not being punished, it just isn't part of the adventure that day and so does not earn that session's XP.  This style of play can be augmented by leaning on the downtime rules quite a bit - those PCs who aren't on the adventure that session could certainly still be doing some interesting things that benefit the character.  Heck, the DM could even choose to give out some XP for that PC completing a downtime activity.


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## Bradley Hindman (Apr 3, 2018)

iserith said:


> I think it's a little much to say it's a "punishment" not to get XP for a game in which you didn't play. It _is_ reasonable in my view to say that because of the plot-based game you choose to run, you use story-based advancement and you prefer to keep all the characters the same level for some reason and thus, if you don't show up to a session, your character levels up anyway. That's a good tool to use in a plot-based game. But other games are not structured that way. In a sandbox game, for example, there is no plot in the same sense and thus another advancement tool simply works better than the story-based advancement you use.




True.  "Punishment" was probably poor word choice. In any event, we agree. The advancement system should match the tastes of the group and the nature of the campaign.


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## iserith (Apr 3, 2018)

Gradine said:


> <looks at this post>
> <looks at DMG's encounter building tables>
> <looks back at this post>
> <looks back at DMG>
> ...




Here's a useful tool for you: Kobold Fight Club. Now you don't need to crack the DMG for encounter design.

But chiefly, my response was aimed at what I perceived as your objection to not using standard XP _because of not wanting to do math at the table to give the players the XP they earned_. It now seems you're referring to encounter design which is a separate issue and, in my view, not relevant to this discussion.



Gradine said:


> I neither need nor want game mechanics designed specifically to deal with problem players, because I already have a mechanic to deal with problem players, and it's called the door.
> 
> And I recognize that neither me nor my players quite align to either of the classical, more "mercenary" and/or "sandbox" styles of D&D play, where this kind of XP system makes much more sense; we're definitely more narrative-heavy players. I don't need to incentivize them to do the content I've prepared; they've already signed up for that. Buy-in is not something I am ever really concerned about.
> 
> What I want to incentivize is great play, in the moment, and D&D's XP system doesn't really allow for that kind of ad-hoc reward structure (see also: tables). I'm sure there's a way to hack it to be able to do that, structurally (rather than arbitrarily) and simply, but I'm not invested enough to put that work in, because great play is not something I _really_ have to worry about too much from my players either.




First, XP is not "designed specifically to deal with problem players." It is designed to incentivize particular behavior via rewarding it. You asserted essentially that _players_ don't need encouragement to accept quests. You didn't say _your_ players. My counter was that _some_ players _do_ need encouragement and XP is a good tool for that in addition to dealing with problem players by other means.

There are many ways to handle character advancement in D&D. I side with no particular way because I change the way I do it based on the type of game I'm running and for which players are playing. Others it seems, runs one game, one way most or all of the time, probably for the same players, and I would hope they recognize that others don't do that and that standard XP, milestone XP, story-based, or session-based advancement are all different tools to support different play experiences.


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## iserith (Apr 3, 2018)

DM Dave1 said:


> An argument for granting XP (or partial levels, if that's your thing) for those that show up:  you are running a West Marches style campaign with a bunch of players.  Whoever can make it that particular game night plays.
> 
> As you may or may not know, in a West Marches campaign, there is an overarching theme of exploration and most adventures are succinct, one-session jaunts that end up back in the town/village that is the base.  That makes it easy to "plug and play" any combination of characters.
> 
> For example, say you have a dozen players.  Only 5 can make it this week for game night.  Only those 5 characters that are being played get the XP for that session (assuming they survive!)  It is not a punishment for the other 7 players or their characters.  It's just the reality of the style of play.  In fact, players can have multiple characters and choose which one goes on the adventure on any given session.  The PC they "leave behind" is not being punished, it just isn't part of the adventure that day and so does not earn that session's XP.  This style of play can be augmented by leaning on the downtime rules quite a bit - those PCs who aren't on the adventure that session could certainly still be doing some interesting things that benefit the character.  Heck, the DM could even choose to give out some XP for that PC completing a downtime activity.




Yep, that's how I run my current campaign (not the downtime bit though). The upside to this play is that if I can DM, there's a game since I can always get at least 4 players out of 12 to play. Which is GREAT for me.


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## AaronOfBarbaria (Apr 3, 2018)

shidaku said:


> Not all campaigns are free roaming do-whatever-you-want sandboxes.



Who said they were?


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## Caliban (Apr 3, 2018)

JonnyP71 said:


> I've played in 2 games where the DM has used Milestone xp, or rather milestone levelling, as xp has not existed as we know it.
> 
> At the end of a 'chapter' of the game the DM has simply said - 'you have all gained a level'. There's no differentiation between characters that have been present for all the sessions of the chapter and those that have maybe only been in the party for 1 or 2 sessions.
> 
> ...




Thank you for posting this.  Sometimes I forget how lucky I am to have players who aren't continually trying to compete with or one-up the other players.  (Their characters do stuff like this all the time, but the players don't - an important difference.) 

Then I read things like this and I really appreciate the fact that my players don't act like judgmental, spoiled children.


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## BookBarbarian (Apr 3, 2018)

iserith said:


> I think there's plenty of good reasons to criticize XP, but c'mon man, doing so on the basis of not wanting to do simple math or just opening up the calculator app on one's phone to do a little elementary-level multiplication, addition, and division is just a little hard to swallow. Are other methods easier? Sure. Is D&D's method hard? No. I don't mean to pick on you specifically either. Similar comments have been made before.




I've made those comments before and I'm here to make them again.

Once I saw the chart that should how much XP is expected over a typical adventuring day per level I immediately decided to abandon XP and just have the PCs level up passed on how many adventuring days had passed. It was the difference between me doing a little bit of Math once or a little bit of math over and over and over again. That seemed a simple choice to me.

It wasn't a matter of how hard it was as much as how much value XP was bringing to my game. To me the answer was not enough to justify doing that stupid simple math as often as is necessary to make it work.

As a bonus I no longer worry about making my encounters all that balanced. Some might be too easy, some too hard, but it will probably average out. Also some days might have too few encounters and some too many, but I don't have to sweat that either. It will probably average out too.

And while I think there are good reasons to use XP, as has been outlined by the AngryGM, I find that Inspiration does a good enough job of giving that type of reward for my game.

And speaking as one lazy SOB. I'll take good enough with minimal effort over better with more effort almost every time.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 3, 2018)

Imaculata said:


> Why would you ever want to do that? And why would it ever be 'great'?
> 
> Being unable to play as often as you'd like, due to real life, is enough of a bummer. But then the group also punishes you for having a real-life obligation, by denying you exp? Having your character get more and more behind on other characters, is not going to make those real-life obligations magically go away.



I do not know why someone would want to punish foljs for not showing up by hitting their asvancenent but some really seem to be into it. 

The basic xp system does it... Miss a session lose out on xp... and there are plenty of post already in this thread about that abd others.

To me if my players dont want to show, they shouldnt.
If my players want to show and cant, no need to whanmy them.
If a players attendance is a problem, i will deal with it ftf, personal, not by smacking their ability to play when they can make it.

As for great... I did not say it was grwat to do this... Just that if it was your goal, that is a great way to achieve it.

I tend to see weakening a character as a punishment for the group, so i am hurting everyone not just the target.

But then, to me, the only penalty for not showing up i see as mattering  is you missing out on the fun.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 3, 2018)

jaelis said:


> Huh, I would not have called that milestones then, I would describe it as free-form level advancement. I'm not particularly opposed to that either, and I guess I can see how they are related, if you just call each chapter one big milestone. But whenever I've used milestones they've come in smaller amounts with more per level. To me the point is to reward progress toward your goal (whatever goal you have decided on), not just reaching the goal. And not just mechanical activities like fighting or finding treasure.



At least some 5e products refer to end of chapter leveling as milestone. Iirc one was literally "at the end of each chapter except r gain a level." 

So the term is used by 5e a couple ways depending on product.


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## iserith (Apr 3, 2018)

BookBarbarian said:


> I've made those comments before and I'm here to make them again.
> 
> Once I saw the chart that should how much XP is expected over a typical adventuring day per level I immediately decided to abandon XP and just have the PCs level up passed on how many adventuring days had passed. It was the difference between me doing a little bit of Math once or a little bit of math over and over and over again. That seemed a simple choice to me.
> 
> ...




As I mention upthread, my understanding of the objection was to simple math in calculating and handing out XP during the session. This objection you lay out is outside the scope of my response.

How does your adventuring day per level advancement system work? What kind of play does it incentivize?


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## fjw70 (Apr 3, 2018)

BookBarbarian said:


> I've made those comments before and I'm here to make them again.
> 
> Once I saw the chart that should how much XP is expected over a typical adventuring day per level I immediately decided to abandon XP and just have the PCs level up passed on how many adventuring days had passed. It was the difference between me doing a little bit of Math once or a little bit of math over and over and over again. That seemed a simple choice to me.
> 
> ...




I also chucked the encounter building/XP guidelines. I just eye encounters as close enough and let the players decide on how to handle the encounters. 

I typically do session leveling. For my new campaign I have tweaked it so now I give out a certain amount of XP per session. The XP is strictly based on ho fast I want the PCs to level. My plan is to do 1 level each of the first couple sessions and the it will take two sessions to level afater that. I am hoping the XP will give the players some sense of advancement even f they don’t gain a level that session (I.e. they see they are getting closer to the next level). Only through the first two sessions so we will see how it goes.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 3, 2018)

"I think that you and I have very different definitions of the word "simple", my friend."

This is a common put down.

In hero system, complaints about the amount of math draw similar rebukes oft with "simple addition subtraction multiplication division - like 3rd grade stuff" follow-up.

Like 5e xp blah blah its "just" that 3rd grade stuff but as you ststed, its time.

Do i gain anthing from doing that, spending that time instead of more time on setting and scene?

Do my players gain anything from keeping track encounter after encounter or session after session?

Do i EVER want to hear players say "yes but if our characters do it this way we get more xp, so lets do it this way"? (Using it to incentivize the choices i want them to make)

My answer to all of those is no, so i dont do it and i dont do it to them.

I really want them to make in-character, in-game choices for in-game reasons, not meta-game where the xp boxes are.

Obviously other GMs feel differently.


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## toucanbuzz (Apr 3, 2018)

Jumping in late, but it might help to look at exactly why XP was invented in the first place.

In the original D&D boxed set, you got XP for getting gold, and adventures were set in maze-like dungeons. It didn't matter whether you killed the monster or used cunning. It was also an incentive. You don't show, you don't get XP.  It's a early customer-rewards, loyalty-based system. You show up, you get a perk. You play the game (as it was originally designed, dungeon crawls), you get a perk. If you show up and play a character, everyone (hopefully) has a good social outing. 

When AD&D rolled out, this concept of robbery = experience went away under the idea it was the act of robbery, not the amount stolen, that increased the skill. And, this put an end to an unexpected style of play: players would backstab others, especially in tournament play, to get the gold and get the level. Anti-social play wasn't the point of a roleplay game. 

So AD&D changed it to kill monsters & play your class, get XP. Ultimately, it gave the best advice for DMs as to how to dole out XP: *"Let experience be your guide."* Clever. If your players want a slow game, socializing and so on, then slow down the XP or alter how much it takes to get a level. Fast? Do the opposite. Does this sound more like milestone (level up whenever the heck you want?) Absolutely!

So fast forward to 5E and my "experience" with Out of the Abyss. In the 2nd half, there wasn't anywhere close to the XP amounts required for killing stuff and completing quests to get the finale levels. When you're on a major quest to save the world and you have to wander the Underdark hoping for random encounters to bump a level, it sucks. Milestone for completing a chapter & getting a step closer to stopping the bad guys made more sense. Others might artificially boost the story XP for getting the items, but all you're doing is fudging numbers to get players to a certain level. Which is Milestone.

When I tried PF society play, XP was rewarded for participation (e.g. 3 sessions = 1 level). 

In summary, "let experience be your guide." It's a good saying. At its core, XP is a reward system for showing up and playing a certain way. So for a DM, it's not about the math; it's about finding what works and being consistent. If you were so inclined, you could use a "gold for XP" system, giving your players an incentive to explore every nook and cranny of every dungeon and ruin. If you all prefer playing an epic storyline, then perhaps milestone achievements (1 level for every artifact gem you find to close the portal Tiamat has opened..) works. It rewards you for showing and gives your incentive to achieve the storyline goal.

Or, as I'm doing, a hybrid in _Curse of Strahd,_ wherein players get advancement towards levels for completing quests and defeating/solving major bad guys, minor advancement for exploring and finding unique magical items, and major advancement credit for finding major artifacts tied to the primary storyline. In this system, except for any loot, random encounters and many combats aren't worth anything at all. It's okay to run away, avoid, and circumvent, whereas a straight XP system could encourage the party to slaughter every foe they find.


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## BookBarbarian (Apr 3, 2018)

iserith said:


> As I mention upthread, my understanding of the objection was to simple math in calculating and handing out XP during the session. This objection you lay out is outside the scope of my response.




Fair enough.



iserith said:


> How does your adventuring day per level advancement system work? What kind of play does it incentivize?



 Broken down it takes between 33 Adventuring days to go from level 1 to level 20 based on the 5e guidelines. Typically between 1 and 3 days to go to the next level. So I mostly just inform my players when they have advanced to the next level. sometimes I might say, you're about one more adventure (my "campaign" is mostly one shots that take the course of an adventuring day) away from the next level, or something like that.

I'm not sure yet what play style it incentivises one its own, that can be heavily influenced by what I reward through other means. Survival Maybe? Except if a PC dies and isn't resurrected I have no problem just letting the Player roll up a new PC at the same level. Showing up maybe? But I'm not hard core about every player being their every time. I guess it just flatly rewards being a part of the game. So I have no idea what it incentivizes  except that it incetivises me to not get burned out to tedious things I hate 



fjw70 said:


> I also chucked the encounter building/XP guidelines. I just eye encounters as close enough and let the players decide on how to handle the encounters.
> 
> I typically do session leveling. For my new campaign I have tweaked it so now I give out a certain amount of XP per session. The XP is strictly based on ho fast I want the PCs to level. My plan is to do 1 level each of the first couple sessions and the it will take two sessions to level afater that. I am hoping the XP will give the players some sense of advancement even f they don’t gain a level that session (I.e. they see they are getting closer to the next level). Only through the first two sessions so we will see how it goes.




Yeah this works too.

i could really just think of it as the other way from what I'm doing now. Just give the players the XP a typical adventuring day would have. They would probably enjoy writing the numbers down at least, and I still wouldn't being doing math i consider to be pointless or if not pointless not worth it to me (YMMV).

I'll try this next time.


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## iserith (Apr 3, 2018)

I'm not a big video game player, but I bet many of you are. Do you know of any video games wherein you advance in the game by leaving the game cartridge or disc on the shelf and doing something else? Do video game producers get angry letters from their customers about how they are being punished for not advancing in the game when they're not actually playing it?

This isn't a criticism of leveling everyone up at the same time even if they don't play. That certainly works if you think there's value in having all the PCs be the same level. It's just perhaps a way to look critically at the assertion that not getting levels when you don't show up is some kind of punishment. Why might it be seen this way in D&D, but perhaps not in a D&D-like video game?

It seems to me there are good reasons to want to level everyone up even if they don't play and this supports particular play experiences. But to say doing otherwise is some kind of punishment seems like a very weak argument to me. I think you can make the case for your particular approach without it.


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## Caliban (Apr 3, 2018)

iserith said:


> I'm not a big video game player, but I bet many of you are. Do you know of any video games wherein you advance in the game by leaving the game cartridge or disc on the shelf and doing something else? Do video game producers get angry letters from their customers about how they are being punished for not advancing in the game when they're not actually playing it?
> 
> This isn't a criticism of leveling everyone up at the same time even if they don't play. That certainly works if you think there's value in having all the PCs be the same level. It's just perhaps a way to look critically at the assertion that not getting levels when you don't show up is some kind of punishment. Why might it be seen this way in D&D, but perhaps not in a D&D-like video game?
> 
> It seems to me there are good reasons to want to level everyone up even if they don't play and this supports particular play experiences. But to say doing otherwise is some kind of punishment seems like a very weak argument to me.




A) This is not a video game, so this is a false equivalency. It is completely irrelevant to people who don't want to treat D&D like a video game. 

B) Yes. There are in fact video games where your character can be assigned tasks to be done while you are offline and not actively playing.


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## iserith (Apr 3, 2018)

Caliban said:


> A) This is not a video game, so this is a false equivalency. It is completely irrelevant to people who don't want to treat D&D like a video game.




I know it's not a video game, nor do I suggest people should treat it that way. I still think the criticism of that particular argument stands.



Caliban said:


> B) Yes. There are in fact video games where your character can be assigned tasks to be done while you are offline and not actively playing.




And for those games that do not allow for that to be done, is it a punishment that you aren't getting ahead when you're not playing?


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## Caliban (Apr 3, 2018)

iserith said:


> I know it's not a video game, nor do I suggest people should treat it that way. I still think the criticism of that particular argument stands.



And I do not.  So there.  



> And for those games that do not allow for that to be done, is it a punishment that you aren't getting ahead when you're not playing?




I'm not the one talking about "punishment".  You and some other posters are.   

But if it's a team based game and level advancement is tracked from session to session, then it would certainly seem to be less enjoyable for the person who cannot make every game session and falls farther and farther behind the rest of their team.    Not a "punishment" per se, but certainly a less enjoyable play experience for both them, and possibly for their team. 

Now if you are one of those hyper-competitive people who are always measuring themselves against their friends and teammates, then it probably is more enjoyable for you to be able to lord your extra progress over the people who can't play as often as you.  Dealing with that could be seen as "punishment" for your lower level teammates, I suppose.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 3, 2018)

Two players get the flu.

One stays home for 2 session.
One comes to the group for two session anyway.
At the session, they do fun stuff and get loot and such.
Third week both those players are there... Others arent cuz they caught the flu...possibly at the game.

Play who stayed home now is also a level down.

Out loot, out fun, level down - made right call.

Well hey, lets not call that punishment but a feature???


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## iserith (Apr 3, 2018)

Caliban said:


> I'm not the one talking about "punishment".  You and some other posters are.




You could still answer the question from your point of view. Do _you_ see that as punishment?



Caliban said:


> But if it's a team based game and level advancement is continues from session to session, then it would certainly seem to be less enjoyable for the person who cannot make every game session and falls farther and farther behind the rest of their team.    Not a "punishment" per se, but certainly a less enjoyable play experience for both them, and possibly for their team.
> 
> Now if you are one of those hyper-competitive people who are always measuring themselves against their friends and teammates, then it probably more enjoyable for you to be able to lord your extra progress over the people who can't play as often as you.  Dealing with that could be seen as "punishment" for your lower level teammates, I supposed.




I think it could be seen as less enjoyable by some people, but I would not say it was certain. I would also say, as I do upthread, that it's not as important mechanically that every PC be the same level. It was in D&D 4e, for example, but D&D 5e is much more forgiving in this regard and catching up is pretty fast in my experience. But there may be other good reasons why the group may want everyone the same level. Any ideas on why that may be?

My experience with the standard XP system and a player pool (and character pool) is that character levels vary a bit and that players of higher-level characters help the lower-level characters out with resources and equipment to get them on their feet. I haven't seen any of this "lording" extra progress over others. I don't doubt it happens though, given how nasty some gamers can be.


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## Bradley Hindman (Apr 3, 2018)

iserith said:


> I'm not a big video game player, but I bet many of you are. Do you know of any video games wherein you advance in the game by leaving the game cartridge or disc on the shelf and doing something else? Do video game producers get angry letters from their customers about how they are being punished for not advancing in the game when they're not actually playing it?
> 
> This isn't a criticism of leveling everyone up at the same time even if they don't play. That certainly works if you think there's value in having all the PCs be the same level. It's just perhaps a way to look critically at the assertion that not getting levels when you don't show up is some kind of punishment. Why might it be seen this way in D&D, but perhaps not in a D&D-like video game?




Perhaps because many (players & DMs) view D&D primarily as a cooperative social game instead of a competitive one.  Players succeed or fail as a group. To such players singling out any character to receive less of the spoils seems like a punishment. A system where XP are given only to those who show up can be equally viewed as a reward or as a punishment.  Just depends on the personality and viewpoint of the player in question.


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## iserith (Apr 3, 2018)

Bradley Hindman said:


> Perhaps because many (players & DMs) view D&D primarily as a cooperative social game instead of a competitive one.  Players succeed or fail as a group. To such players singling out any character to receive less of the spoils seems like a punishment. A system where XP are given only to those who show up can be equally viewed as a reward or as a punishment.  Just depends on the personality and viewpoint of the player in question.




Is it actually competitive though to reward XP only to players who show up? It still seems like a cooperative game to me even with that being the advancement system in place. What makes it competitive between the players when standard XP is used as the approach?


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## Bradley Hindman (Apr 3, 2018)

iserith said:


> Is it actually competitive though to reward XP only to players who show up? It still seems like a cooperative game to me even with that being the advancement system in place. What makes it competitive between the players when standard XP is used as the approach?




Let me turn the question around. If it isn't a competition, why are we keeping track?  I don't necessarily advocate this position.  But, I can understand why some would feel that way.


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## iserith (Apr 3, 2018)

Bradley Hindman said:


> Let me turn the question around. If it isn't a competition, why are we keeping track?  I don't necessarily advocate this position.  But, I can understand why some would feel that way.




I would say the burden of proof is on those making the assertion. 

I don't assert that standard XP somehow makes the game into a competition between players. Nor do you, I guess. It's on those who do to show this. My position is that there are some good reasons to use other means of character advancement, but the assertion that standard XP somehow turns the game competitive instead of cooperative or that it's a punishment for non-attendance are bad arguments that should probably be abandoned.


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## Satyrn (Apr 3, 2018)

iserith said:


> "...after I got the item and learned the new trick, I beat him to death with his own magic pipe and double-dipped in his XP. Good times."




Reminds of that one time I paid a cleric to heal my wounds, then trampled him to death under my horse's hooves and took my gold back . . .


. . . never has D&D felt more like a video game!


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## Mercule (Apr 3, 2018)

iserith said:


> Is it actually competitive though to reward XP only to players who show up? It still seems like a cooperative game to me even with that being the advancement system in place. What makes it competitive between the players when standard XP is used as the approach?



It's punitive to withhold XP from the player whose wife is at home vomiting or who got sucked into mandatory overtime, this week. There's no fun in being forced to miss your recreational activity and to then be penalized by your friends for missing it, as well.

If you've got players that don't show up for your game because they've decided to go see the latest movie or because their WoW guild decided to do a raid (true story) or otherwise treat showing up to the game as something other than a commitment to the others at the table, then, by all means, feel free to withhold the XP. Better yet, give them the boot. As a general rule, I don't play with flakes. 

Otherwise, you treat the others at the table with respect and accept that life sometimes happens.


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## JonnyP71 (Apr 3, 2018)

Caliban said:


> Thank you for posting this.  Sometimes I forget how lucky I am to have players who aren't continually trying to compete with or one-up the other players.  (Their characters do stuff like this all the time, but the players don't - an important difference.)
> 
> Then I read things like this and I really appreciate the fact that my players don't act like judgmental, spoiled children.




And neither do I, nor my players (as I DM far more than I play).

Our game is very episodic, usually short 2-3 session adventures - we ware working towards a big finale gradually.

My players each have a 'pool' of 4 characters. All characters begin at level 1. No exceptions. They choose which they want to use for each adventure/session... those present get xp for that session.  If a character dies they get nothing for the session, and are unavailable to the player until the characters is raised. Current available PCs range from level 4 up to level 11.  Very simple, it works just fine.

This is the way D&D was played in the 'olden days', this is how I prefer my D&D still to be...


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## 5ekyu (Apr 3, 2018)

Sometime me and my friends get together to play munchkin. We dont consider who should start at level 1 and who should start at level 2 or 3 based on previous absences.

Sometimes we get tigether to play poker. We dont decide who gets two hole cards and who gets one based on recent attendance.

Sometimes we get together for movies. We dont decide who can stay and watch the full film and who has to leave 15m before the end based on recent experience.

Sometimes we get together and play rpgs. Care to guess whether we see it as right to decide who plays at what level based on attendance?

In none of those other activities do we see dividing into haves and have lesses based on attendance as a plus.

In none of those  activities do we see "if you show up this week, we will give you more than others for next week" as a needed or helpful "incentive" or "punishment."

Now of course, some might say its not a big thing, hardly a thing at all, to be a level down or up... But then that undercuts the whole incentive thing.

If it helps tour activities - great.

But for some/many it doesnt.


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## Staccat0 (Apr 3, 2018)

I have been using milestones for over a decade but recently came back around to XP. In my newest campaign XP has been a pretty useful carrot and has created interesting decision points. It's pretty specific though. My players are members of a school that awards XP and requires tuition (GP) to level up. Caring about gold also means caring about gear so we started using a light encumbrance system. There are also bonuses for finishing quests quickly so we track time using a light system I have cooked up. 

It wouldn't work in every campaign, but in my campaign the players (who all started with 5e and previously never had to care about XP, GP or encumbrance) have really enjoyed it and have talked a lot about how now every decision matters a lot. Even random encounters with a patrol of skeleton guards feel like they matter. 

"Do we wanna fight? We have plenty of XP for this next level, but we're short on gold. Let's figure out if they have gold before they engage. We don't have time for a long rest, so we need to play it safe. Maybe we shouldn't have bought a donkey."

My initial instincts were that tracking stuff would bog things down, and that my players (who mostly just wanna make jokes and get into shenanigans) would hate it. I've found though that it's made the game feel like an adventure again.


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## Satyrn (Apr 3, 2018)

iserith said:


> I think there's plenty of good reasons to criticize XP, but c'mon man, doing so on the basis of not wanting to do simple math or just opening up the calculator app on one's phone to do a little elementary-level multiplication, addition, and division is just a little hard to swallow. Are other methods easier? Sure. Is D&D's method hard? No. I don't mean to pick on you specifically either. Similar comments have been made before.



Having to reference the XP by CR and Party Level table in 3e was irritating. Like, it was the one bit of 3e that had that 1st edition feel, but not even 1e made us look up a table to hand out XP!


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## JonnyP71 (Apr 3, 2018)

iserith said:


> My experience with the standard XP system and a player pool (and character pool) is that character levels vary a bit and that players of higher-level characters help the lower-level characters out with resources and equipment to get them on their feet. I haven't seen any of this "lording" extra progress over others.




And that's precisely how it works in my experience - it promotes teamwork, not competition.


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## MarkB (Apr 3, 2018)

iserith said:


> I'm not a big video game player, but I bet many of you are. Do you know of any video games wherein you advance in the game by leaving the game cartridge or disc on the shelf and doing something else? Do video game producers get angry letters from their customers about how they are being punished for not advancing in the game when they're not actually playing it?



In many MMOs, including World of Warcraft, there's the concept of 'rest' XP. If you leave your character in a safe place - such as a city or inn - when you log off, you build up a buffer of time during which, when you next play the game, your characters' actions will all earn XP at an increased rate. It's there for precisely the purpose of providing a way of helping players with busy schedules to not fall too far behind their friends who are able to dedicate more time to playing the game.

There are also social options for helping players catch up - players who are members of a guild may ask higher-level allies to help them through game areas or quests that they're under-leveled for, to quickly boost them up to match their team-mates.

The 'punishment' for being underleveled in an MMO is participation - particular dungeons or PvP areas have prescribed level requirements, and if you lag far enough behind to not meet the requirements, you quite simply cannot join your friends in that activity.



> This isn't a criticism of leveling everyone up at the same time even if they don't play. That certainly works if you think there's value in having all the PCs be the same level. It's just perhaps a way to look critically at the assertion that not getting levels when you don't show up is some kind of punishment. Why might it be seen this way in D&D, but perhaps not in a D&D-like video game?



There aren't a lot of really D&D-like video games - not in the sense of being games where groups of players get together with a particular set of characters and play purely co-operatively across a wide range of power levels. The only examples I can think of off-hand are very old titles such as Baldur's Gate or Neverwinter Nights, or the more recent Divinity Original Sin II with its DM Mode. Given that the latter game uses DM-granted XP rewards for advancement in DM Mode, the choice of group or individual leveling is up to the DM.

The older titles (and we're talking up to 20 years old for some of those) pretty much relied upon full 6-character groups, and if a player didn't turn up, their character would be taken over by the hosting player as I recall, so it wasn't an issue. But you could technically bring in a much lower-level character to one of those - and I can tell you, it'd feel like a pretty darn hefty punishment to have to play that character. The NPC AI does not discriminate between characters, and a significantly under-leveled character would have a life expectancy measured in seconds in most of those combat encounters.



> It seems to me there are good reasons to want to level everyone up even if they don't play and this supports particular play experiences. But to say doing otherwise is some kind of punishment seems like a very weak argument to me. I think you can make the case for your particular approach without it.



The thing is, whether or not it feels like a punishment is going to vary from individual to individual. And if someone hasn't been in that position before, they themselves may not know the answer in advance. It'll only be when they're actually sitting there with a character a couple of levels behind the rest of the group that they'll really find out whether they perceive it as a challenge, or a punishment, or simply irrelevant.


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## iserith (Apr 3, 2018)

Mercule said:


> It's punitive to withhold XP from the player whose wife is at home vomiting or who got sucked into mandatory overtime, this week. There's no fun in being forced to miss your recreational activity and to then be penalized by your friends for missing it, as well.
> 
> If you've got players that don't show up for your game because they've decided to go see the latest movie or because their WoW guild decided to do a raid (true story) or otherwise treat showing up to the game as something other than a commitment to the others at the table, then, by all means, feel free to withhold the XP. Better yet, give them the boot. As a general rule, I don't play with flakes.
> 
> Otherwise, you treat the others at the table with respect and accept that life sometimes happens.




Is giving XP for choosing not to play for one reason or another a sign of respect? Or is it a sign of disrespect to not give XP when they don't attend for a reason I don't like?

Or is it possible I can respect my friends and still have a standing rule everyone agrees to that says you don't get XP if you don't play?

Can getting XP for showing up be seen as an incentive to show up without being seen as a punishment for _not_ showing up?


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## The Crimson Binome (Apr 3, 2018)

Bradley Hindman said:


> I am slightly baffled by this mentality (which seems to be rather commonly held).  Our group feels that missing out on the fun of a gaming session is sufficient punishment that an XP penalty isn't required. Is this idea that players should be rewarded for being present a result of using XP as an incentive? Do some tables really need to incentivize showing up? Does the mentality have something to do with a table that enjoys inter-player competition?  Some other option that I can't think of?



You're not _losing_ anything by not showing up. You also don't get anything _just_ for showing up. The XP mechanic represents the in-game reality of your character learning through the process of overcoming challenges; if you don't _do_ anything, then you don't _earn_ anything. That's the way that the world works. If it was possible to gain XP by not doing anything, then the first step of any campaign would be to take a break until everyone was level 20.

Remember also: Every challenge has an associated risk. If you fight a dragon, then there's a non-zero chance that your character (and all of their gear) will be devoured and not recoverable. If you fight a dragon, then success gives XP (and probably loot), while failure quite possibly means that the character's adventure has ended unceremoniously.

Why should I risk everything on the possibility of earning some XP and loot, if I could get that same benefit _without_ taking any risks?


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## Flexor the Mighty! (Apr 3, 2018)

So I guess from most of the posts when a player is out their PC is out?    So you know that there is a huge fight this week against Frank the Evil badguy and you are out so your PC stays home and your buddies fight alone. Yet you want a full share?


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## iserith (Apr 3, 2018)

MarkB said:


> In many MMOs, including World of Warcraft, there's the concept of 'rest' XP. If you leave your character in a safe place - such as a city or inn - when you log off, you build up a buffer of time during which, when you next play the game, your characters' actions will all earn XP at an increased rate. It's there for precisely the purpose of providing a way of helping players with busy schedules to not fall too far behind their friends who are able to dedicate more time to playing the game.
> 
> There are also social options for helping players catch up - players who are members of a guild may ask higher-level allies to help them through game areas or quests that they're under-leveled for, to quickly boost them up to match their team-mates.
> 
> ...




Thanks for this. My knowledge of video games is severely lacking. (A lot of games make me dizzy, as much as I want to play them. Totally sucks.) As for WoW, I think D&D actually has this feature to some degree. If a character is a few levels behind and the party is going after higher-level challenges, that PC levels up very quickly. Bounded accuracy sees to it they can still participate while behind. As the DMG says, "...you might end up with a level gap between the characters of players who never miss a session and characters belonging to players who are more sporadic in their attendance. Nothing is wrong with that."



MarkB said:


> The thing is, whether or not it feels like a punishment is going to vary from individual to individual. And if someone hasn't been in that position before, they themselves may not know the answer in advance. It'll only be when they're actually sitting there with a character a couple of levels behind the rest of the group that they'll really find out whether they perceive it as a challenge, or a punishment, or simply irrelevant.




Sure. I think the better position to be in here is to say why your preferred method works for the particular kind of game you're running rather than say that other methods are punishments, disrespectful, or create competition where none existed before. It's easier to substantiate the former claim whereas the the latter claims can easily be knocked down.


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## iserith (Apr 3, 2018)

Flexor the Mighty! said:


> So I guess from most of the posts when a player is out their PC is out?    So you know that there is a huge fight this week against Frank the Evil badguy and you are out so your PC stays home and your buddies fight alone. Yet you want a full share?




Hell yeah, it's way safer that way.


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## The Crimson Binome (Apr 3, 2018)

MarkB said:


> In many MMOs, including World of Warcraft, there's the concept of 'rest' XP. If you leave your character in a safe place - such as a city or inn - when you log off, you build up a buffer of time during which, when you next play the game, your characters' actions will all earn XP at an increased rate. It's there for precisely the purpose of providing a way of helping players with busy schedules to not fall too far behind their friends who are able to dedicate more time to playing the game.



Of note, during initial development, this mechanic was presented in the opposite manner. Instead of characters earning rest by not-playing, they accrued fatigue _by_ playing; so instead of characters earning increased XP after _not_ playing, they earned _decreased_ XP after playing _too_ long.

From what I recall, the math worked out the same either way, but players were happier with being rewarded for taking a break than they were with being penalized for playing too much.


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## Caliban (Apr 3, 2018)

All I can say is that I've played with XP (still do in Adventure League) and without XP.   

For me personally, when I'm the DM running my own campaign, I don't use XP.   I've experienced exactly zero problems as a result, and for me gained a huge benefit - I don't spend any of my valuable time on an activity that I consider kind of pointless.   This automatically defeats any arguments against "milestone advancement" as far as I'm concerned.   Full stop, debate is over.   Telling me it is "forced", or "lazy" or "contrived" or whatever doesn't change anything other than my opinion of you. 

If you as a DM see value in calculating and distributing XP to your players, go for it.   That's the only thing that matters.


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## Satyrn (Apr 3, 2018)

Flexor the Mighty! said:


> So I guess from most of the posts when a player is out their PC is out?    So you know that there is a huge fight this week against Frank the Evil badguy and you are out so your PC stays home and your buddies fight alone. Yet you want a full share?




Yes.

Because of the way my group plays, I find I have more fun when all of us have the same XP. Right now, one guy's levelling up a couple sessions after the rest of us, and it takes away some of the fun for me. Not a lot, but what's taken away is a net loss of fun compared to if he'd just been given the XP he missed.


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## Flexor the Mighty! (Apr 3, 2018)

Satyrn said:


> Yes.
> 
> Because of the way my group plays, I find I have more fun when all of us have the same XP. Right now, one guy's levelling up a couple sessions after the rest of us, and it takes away some of the fun for me. Not a lot, but what's taken away is a net loss of fun compared to if he'd just been given the XP he missed.




I guess to me its strange that when a player isn't' there his PC wandered off or something.  In 30 years of D&D we have always done it where he is a party NPC for that session.  So we have never encountered this issue, well outside of making a new PC that comes in at a different level.  And then I've never had a player complain about it.   Bottom line is other groups are strange.


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## Stormdale (Apr 3, 2018)

Satyrn said:


> Yes.
> 
> Because of the way my group plays, I find I have more fun when all of us have the same XP. Right now, one guy's levelling up a couple sessions after the rest of us, and it takes away some of the fun for me. Not a lot, but what's taken away is a net loss of fun compared to if he'd just been given the XP he missed.




Really?

My group ranges from 5th-10th level doing ToA. Nobody is less useful or having less fun because they on't all have exactly the same xp. The 10th level PC has missed 1 session out of about 60, the other players have missed sessions, had their PC killed, or in one case retired them to play something else, and none has refused to play/is having less fun  because they don't have the same XP total as the guy who has made 59 out of 60 sessions. 

Stormdale


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## MoominT (Apr 3, 2018)

Milestone XP sucks! unarguable fact... for me. But I have had a great gaming group with great DM's who have a similar play style to me and award XP. It works and is fun and rewarding.
I do have to say that all my group are Mature players, you miss a session because life gets in the way, you get the same rewards as those who turned up. You missed the fun of a gaming
night I am not going to punish you anymore than that.

I play in a separate group as well that is using Milestone xp and The first DM that used it running Storm Kings Thunder, kind of gave the expression of oops I have forgotten to level  you up for a while, Ding level up!
robbed me of any sense of achievement the way he did it. The other adventure played the DM said he likes to level up every 3 sessions, again this for me robs  me of any sense of achievement. I do have to admit my perspective does put it in a bad light, I do not gain experience from a fight, so therefore as a clever character I am going to do my best to avoid all fights, but I play d&d for the epic fights.

You enjoy what you enjoy, I enjoy xp rewards.


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## Satyrn (Apr 3, 2018)

Stormdale said:


> Really?
> 
> My group ranges from 5th-10th level doing ToA. Nobody is less useful or having less fun because they on't all have exactly the same xp. The 10th level PC has missed 1 session out of about 60, the other players have missed sessions, had their PC killed, or in one case retired them to play something else, and none has refused to play/is having less fun  because they don't have the same XP total as the guy who has made 59 out of 60 sessions.
> 
> Stormdale




The point where I have a little less fun comes when we're all levelling up at the table . . . except that one guy.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 3, 2018)

"Why should I risk everything on the possibility of earning some XP and loot, if I could get that same benefit without taking any risks?"

If the only thing at stake is xp then you shouldnt.

In my games, xp are never at stake, yet somehow, my players send their characters into harms way frequently. See, in my games, they are running characters, not moving chess pieces, and for those characters, there is often a lot at stake and they never heard of xp.

I expresdly never want to hear players weighing decisions their characters have to make on things like "we got xp..." or "we need xp".

So i choose not to link them.


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## cmad1977 (Apr 3, 2018)

I award xp and use milestone xp depending on what seems more appropriate at the time. My PCs don’t know the difference.


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## iserith (Apr 3, 2018)

MoominT said:


> Milestone XP sucks! unarguable fact... for me. But I have had a great gaming group with great DM's who have a similar play style to me and award XP. It works and is fun and rewarding.
> I do have to say that all my group are Mature players, you miss a session because life gets in the way, you get the same rewards as those who turned up. You missed the fun of a gaming
> night I am not going to punish you anymore than that.
> 
> ...




Perhaps considering it from another angle will help. Milestone XP is supposed to be tied to specific events and challenges. If you overcome those challenges, you get the XP. What would that do for your sense of achievement compared to standard XP?

Story-based advancement is also tied to accomplishing significant goals in the campaign, except it doesn't use XP. The DM just awards levels. In theory, you don't get those levels if you don't accomplish those significant goals. How do you feel about the sense of achievement there, assuming there was ever a possibility you could fail?


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## Sunseeker (Apr 3, 2018)

AaronOfBarbaria said:


> Who said they were?




The OP.  Pretty much everyone who supports the idea that the players should be able to do whatever they want and get XP for it.


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## AaronOfBarbaria (Apr 3, 2018)

shidaku said:


> The OP.  Pretty much everyone who supports the idea that the players should be able to do whatever they want and get XP for it.



No, and no.

"whatever they want" is to play some D&D, and yeah, they get XP for doing it. That doesn't mean every campaign is or has to be any particular way.

Also, it's still not clear to me why you quoted me mentioning it seemed like you have too much experience with players that don't mesh with your DM style and made your counter to a claim that no one appears to have made.


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## Swarmkeeper (Apr 3, 2018)

Flexor the Mighty! said:


> I guess to me its strange that when a player isn't' there his PC wandered off or something.  In 30 years of D&D we have always done it where he is a party NPC for that session.  So we have never encountered this issue, well outside of making a new PC that comes in at a different level.  And then I've never had a player complain about it.   Bottom line is other groups are strange.




I've done this with our 4 player Curse of Strahd campaign.  If only 3 players can make it, we still play and the 4th PC is along for the ride as an NPC with one of the other players handling the rolls.  All players level at the same pace (and I am using XP - and not just for killing things - rather than milestones).

OTOH, for our 8 player homebrew campaign, we have set it up from the start that if a player can't make it, the PC is doing something mundane like guarding the camp or foraging or whatever makes sense until the player can rejoin.  It just works - no one gets bent or feels punished that their character didn't "earn" XP while they weren't actually playing that night.  The varied PC levels at the table are fine and no one is competitive about it - it's a cooperative party and everyone is glad for the contributions that each other can make.  If a PC should die, the player can roll up a character at 2 levels lower than current.

So yeah, I've experienced that different methods for different tables can still be fun.


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## Warpiglet (Apr 3, 2018)

Flexor the Mighty! said:


> I guess to me its strange that when a player isn't' there his PC wandered off or something.  In 30 years of D&D we have always done it where he is a party NPC for that session.  So we have never encountered this issue, well outside of making a new PC that comes in at a different level.  And then I've never had a player complain about it.   Bottom line is other groups are strange.




This is how we do it as well...with player consent.  We take general instructions and play as they have.  If they don't charge into melee range we won't make them.  If they die, they die.  But we are grown ups and look out for eachother's fun.  In many years I can only remember someone complaining about losing some items when pickpocketed while not present.  Oh well.


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## Sunseeker (Apr 3, 2018)

AaronOfBarbaria said:


> No, and no.
> 
> "whatever they want" is to play some D&D, and yeah, they get XP for doing it. That doesn't mean every campaign is or has to be any particular way.
> 
> Also, it's still not clear to me why you quoted me mentioning it seemed like you have too much experience with players that don't mesh with your DM style and made your counter to a claim that no one appears to have made.




Maybe you should re-read the OP so that you're clear on what he is talking about, and don't confuse it with whatever you think you're talking about.

Because the OP called out DMs who don't give players XP for doing whatever the players want to do as incompetent.


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## MoominT (Apr 3, 2018)

iserith said:


> Perhaps considering it from another angle will help. Milestone XP is supposed to be tied to specific events and challenges. If you overcome those challenges, you get the XP. What would that do for your sense of achievement compared to standard XP?
> 
> Story-based advancement is also tied to accomplishing significant goals in the campaign, except it doesn't use XP. The DM just awards levels. In theory, you don't get those levels if you don't accomplish those significant goals. How do you feel about the sense of achievement there, assuming there was ever a possibility you could fail?




Good points and if your game was fun to play in, I would be a happy camper! but its too easy for milestone xp to seem/feel wrong, in the hands of a less than great DM. For me that perosn could always give out xp and I would be happy regardless.


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## AaronOfBarbaria (Apr 3, 2018)

shidaku said:


> Maybe you should re-read the OP so that you're clear on what he is talking about, and don't confuse it with whatever you think you're talking about.
> 
> Because the OP called out DMs who don't give players XP for doing whatever the players want to do as incompetent.



No reason to be rude. You think I'm failing to read something properly, maybe quote it for me instead of making vague claims about it that don't appear to have back up from facts - I don't see the word "incompetent" nor any of its synonyms anywhere in the OP, nor anything that supports your earlier claim that the OP said "all campaigns are free roaming do-whatever-you-want sandboxes." or something to that effect.


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## iserith (Apr 3, 2018)

MoominT said:


> Good points and if your game was fun to play in, I would be a happy camper! but its too easy for milestone xp to seem/feel wrong, in the hands of a less than great DM. For me that perosn could always give out xp and I would be happy regardless.




Yes, as I mentioned upthread, I think milestone XP or story-based advancement works better when it is tied to concrete events, challenges, or goals that the players know in advance. Many times in story-based advancement the feeling is that you level up whenever the DM feels like it and that can, for some, detract from the feeling of achievement. Myself, I like to know what I have to do, what I get for doing it, and that I have a chance to fail. That's ideal for me. But I've also been in games where none of things are apparent and because of the group I still have fun.


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## The Crimson Binome (Apr 3, 2018)

5ekyu said:


> In my games, xp are never at stake, yet somehow, my players send their characters into harms way frequently. See, in my games, they are running characters, not moving chess pieces, and for those characters, there is often a lot at stake and they never heard of xp.



That sounds more like they're in it for the loot, then. I'm not saying that's exactly it, but it's a similar form of risk/reward dynamic. Maybe you want to rescue your brother from the clutches of an evil cult, as an example. You risk your life, and perhaps you save him. If you could save him without risking your life, then you would obviously do that instead.

Everyone optimizes. It is what makes us human. The only difference between making decisions as an individual, and moving a chess piece, is that the world you live in and a game of chess follow different rules.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 3, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> That sounds more like they're in it for the loot, then. I'm not saying that's exactly it, but it's a similar form of risk/reward dynamic. Maybe you want to rescue your brother from the clutches of an evil cult, as an example. You risk your life, and perhaps you save him. If you could save him without risking your life, then you would obviously do that instead.
> 
> Everyone optimizes. It is what makes us human. The only difference between making decisions as an individual, and moving a chess piece, is that the world you live in and a game of chess follow different rules.



But the difference i see is that goals like getting more gold andcssving brother etc are ones in game that the characters have, while getting more xp by doing it one way vs the other is out of game world decision making.


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## GameOgre (Apr 3, 2018)

shidaku said:


> Maybe you should re-read the OP so that you're clear on what he is talking about, and don't confuse it with whatever you think you're talking about.
> 
> Because the OP called out DMs who don't give players XP for doing whatever the players want to do as incompetent.




Not in any way did I say that.


----------



## Phasestar (Apr 3, 2018)

In my campaign, we award XP as follows and have been doing so for many years (since the 90s) and it has worked very well:

- Monsters defeated/slain
- Major obstacles overcome / quests completed / non-combat achievements
- Roleplaying in character
- Special bonuses for especially noteworthy accomplishments, can include completing an entire story arc for example.

If you miss the session, your character plays as a NPC and your character earns half XP for that session (with none for roleplaying of course).

The RP XP is usually awarded for just making an effort to be in character with extra bonuses if you really pulled off a great RP moment or two.

The obstacle/quest rewards are a sort of milestone XP, but I find that without the other award areas to give more resolution, the incentives are not setup for the players to get the kind of play I would like to see and players are not as excited.  I do generally let players know how much XP was gained from each category.  The calculating and handing out of XP takes me about 10 minutes at the end of each session.  Entirely milestone would of course be quicker, but I believe it's worth the time.


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## The Crimson Binome (Apr 3, 2018)

5ekyu said:


> But the difference i see is that goals like getting more gold andcssving brother etc are ones in game that the characters have, while getting more xp by doing it one way vs the other is out of game world decision making.



Not if the world actually works that way. If you would get more experience from killing zombies with a sword than you would from trapping them in a hole and dropping rocks on them, then that's simply a truth about how the world works, and the characters should recognize it.

Pretending that the world doesn't actually work that way, in spite of evidence to the contrary, would be meta-gaming.


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## Shasarak (Apr 3, 2018)

GameOgre said:


> Milestone Leveling is a time saver and gets the job done. There isn't a lot of doubt that it's become widely used especially in Adventure paths.




I think you hit the nail right on the head.


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## Patrick McGill (Apr 3, 2018)

My preference would be an XP system, but not the one we currently have. Game and player expectation is to be the same level, for encounters to roughly correlate in challenge to their party level, with each character leveling at the same speed regardless of what that character does/doesn't do. Because of this, Milestones in 5e work just as well as the XP system because it's essentially the same thing only in short hand. Why even bother with XP if the game is set up for PCs to level as a group?

This is why I was so excited for that Unearthed Arcana that Mike released with the 100 XP every level system, in which you got like 1-3 per battle/obstacle/role play success/etc. I would much prefer to award PCs as individuals for their actions and just not care that people weren't all the same level. I also frankly would prefer asynchronous xp goals for each class though I think that particular thing is gone forever.


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## Fanaelialae (Apr 4, 2018)

I think it ultimately doesn't matter whether you award XP to absent players or not, provided that the players are on board. 

My newbie group is has several people I work with. Unfortunately, their jobs require them to travel to clients somewhat regularly, and we have clients all over the continental U.S. and a few outside it. As such, it would be unreasonable for me to expect them to attend every session. Since it's essentially luck of the draw, I don't want them to fall behind just because they had to work. Therefore, we just assume that they were off having adventures of their own during this time. As it is, unless the group is feeling unusually generous, they still miss out on treasure.

With my other group, we've gone back and forth. Some campaigns players only earn XP if they are present, other times we just go with group XP. It works fine both ways. The latter is slightly easier however, since only one player needs to track XP (though typically at least two of them do it anyway).

One thing I've considered doing is requiring absent players to tell me what adventure their character had while they were away from the group. I've never tried it, but I kind of like the idea since it would give me additional threads to weave into the campaign.


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## Swarmkeeper (Apr 4, 2018)

Patrick McGill said:


> Game and player expectation is to be the same level, for encounters to roughly correlate in challenge to their party level, with each character leveling at the same speed regardless of what that character does/doesn't do.




Sorry, this is not true. Check out page 82 of the DMG which discusses Evaluating Encounter Difficulty.  Here’s an excerpt:


> For example, if your party includes three 3rd-level characters and one 2nd-level character, the party's totaled XP thresholds would be as follows:



 etc etc

I’m not saying it’s wrong to have everyone level together (I do that at one of our tables), but I am saying it certainly isn’t “Game Expectation”.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 4, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> Not if the world actually works that way. If you would get more experience from killing zombies with a sword than you would from trapping them in a hole and dropping rocks on them, then that's simply a truth about how the world works, and the characters should recognize it.
> 
> Pretending that the world doesn't actually work that way, in spite of evidence to the contrary, would be meta-gaming.



Correct, which is part of the reason i dont implement xp for kills and such.

Maybe if it was some necromantic essense setting or like The One or Highlander where killing gave you juice, but the leveling system as a whole breaks most of the cause effect imo too much to make that a plausible in world decision making addition.

It just doesnt make our games better to twist some in game construct for "xp are real" to be a thing.

Easier and more intuitive for advancement to remain divorced from their in game choices and let their in-game choices feed of more intuitive elements of risk and gain.

For us... Not for everyone.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 4, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> I think you hit the nail right on the head.



Yup and i think it again comes down to group by group what does the mathy xp add? 

As some have seemed to say here, its sometimes needed to get their players to even risk their characters.

My suspicion is that many using milestone xp have not got those players.


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## Shasarak (Apr 4, 2018)

5ekyu said:


> Yup and i think it again comes down to group by group what does the mathy xp add?




Mathy XP adds the Game to RPG.

Otherwise its just funny voices and Monthy Python jokes.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 4, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> Mathy XP adds the Game to RPG.
> 
> Otherwise its just funny voices and Monthy Python jokes.



Huh?

Xp is the game? 

Huh.

Tries to think how many decades its bern since used mathy xp for kills blah blah.

WoD?
Hero?
Travellers?
Cortex?
Cyberpunk?
Amber?
Fudge?
OTE?
Cthulu?
Savage Worlds?
Buffy?
Missing some for sure...

Honestly so many variations, so many editions - no idea which of the above did like kills from chart xp advancement. I dont remember any? 

Good to know they were all wrong about them being RPGs.

Learn something new every day... 

Thanks.


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## Shasarak (Apr 4, 2018)

5ekyu said:


> Huh?
> 
> Xp is the game?
> 
> ...




I honestly could not tell you enough about those games to give an opinion on their RPGness.  I am sure they must use some kind of leveling up mechanic, well except Cthulhu does that game even support recurring PC's?



> Learn something new every day...
> 
> Thanks.




Welcome


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## AaronOfBarbaria (Apr 4, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> I am sure they must use some kind of leveling up mechanic, well except Cthulhu does that game even support recurring PC's?



Call of Cthulhu both supports (and assumes, just like most RPGs) recurring player characters and has mechanics for characters improving their capabilities over time (though it does so without experience point tracking of any sort, as that is neither a requirement to be considered a "leveling up mechanic" nor to be considered a game, of the role-playing sort or otherwise).


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## 5ekyu (Apr 4, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> I honestly could not tell you enough about those games to give an opinion on their RPGness.  I am sure they must use some kind of leveling up mechanic, well except Cthulhu does that game even support recurring PC's?
> 
> 
> 
> Welcome



Well see its been a long time for some but...

Some of the Travellers realky did not have leveling up. After chargen you basically did not keep escalating stats ot avilities. You could get/find/huy/steal better gear and there were some downtime activities for hiring tutors but those were not at all the normal course of thing.

For others, like hero for supers level, its going to depend on setting and gm choices but a default scale could start you at say 400xp then award 1-2xp per session... Which yes is mostly trivial and ceetainly not "the game" as far as what goes on. Other variations included not leveling at all. 

Many others -- much more milestone based approaches instead of mathy winning xp "games".

But the upshot is that for many of  these things which call themselves and have been called RPGs, the mathy encounter based xp systems (contrasted to milestone, chapter, session etc) have not been required to be considered a "game."

Until now, i guess.

I have oft recommended that GMs are well served to run (or at least play in) a diceless ftf rpg game.

Maybe now i should add trying a non-xp one too.


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## Mercule (Apr 4, 2018)

iserith said:


> Is giving XP for choosing not to play for one reason or another a sign of respect? Or is it a sign of disrespect to not give XP when they don't attend for a reason I don't like?



Well, I guess it depends on your group. If someone in my group has to run his kid to the hospital, I'm definitely not going to see that as a reason for him to not advance at the same time as the other PCs. It's also not a unilateral decision on "a reason I don't like". It's the group's social contract.

Whatever social contract works for your group is appropriate for your group. I used to use the "no XP if you don't show" methodology and had no issues with it, at the time. I'd use it again, for a different group, too.

I think we moved to standardized XP, several years back, when several players -- none of whom had missed any sessions -- all had different totals written down. We assumed people had misheard, picked up their stuff before I'd awarded XP, or something similar, and just picked a total to assign to everyone. After that, the group got really casual about XP and some folks slowly stopped bothering to track it, since there were a couple of really anal-retentive types in the group. I'm sure players missed sessions, but it would have been for things that didn't bother anyone at the table. Ultimately, we just decided to track group XP, rather than character XP. It's pretty similar to how we moved from having all new/replacement PCs start at 1st level, to having them start at prior -1, to "just keep the same XP because losing a character sucks enough".

Now, moving from group XP to milestone actually was a GM call, on my part. I did it for reasons I explained in my first post. But... I ran it by the players and there were no objections. If there had been, we would have talked it through.


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## tardigrade (Apr 4, 2018)

AaronOfBarbaria said:


> Call of Cthulhu both supports (and assumes, just like most RPGs) recurring player characters




*Technically*, but the only system we played where PCs had a shorter life expectancy was Paranoia 

Actually, for a more serious contribution: for CoC 5e the progression was skill only (no hp), although you might learn new spells and get better equipment. IIRC the mechanic was: any skill you passed a check on during a session got a mark, at the end of the session you rolled for all skills with a mark, and any you *failed* improved. It was fairly simple and meant skills improved most slowly at low and high levels. I liked it.


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## Dausuul (Apr 4, 2018)

KenNYC said:


> Milestone xp seems a little railroady.   Suppose I am not interested in your milestone and want to take my character in a different direction? Or what if I turn left instead of right?



Then I, the DM, pick new milestones depending on what your PC is currently trying to accomplish. You don't have to chase the goals I create for you; you can chase any goal you like, and you'll be rewarded for progress toward it. What matters is that you _have_ a goal within the game world.

It's the same as any other XP award system: Reward the behavior you want to see from the players. "XP for kills" rewards players who seek out combat, and punishes players who avoid fights. "XP for gold" rewards players who look for opportunities to get rich, and punishes players who don't care about plunder. "XP (or levels) for milestones" rewards players who set goals and try to accomplish them, and punishes players who bumble around doing random stuff.


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## GameOgre (Apr 4, 2018)

Caliban said:


> All I can say is that I've played with XP (still do in Adventure League) and without XP.
> 
> For me personally, when I'm the DM running my own campaign, I don't use XP.   I've experienced exactly zero problems as a result, and for me gained a huge benefit - I don't spend any of my valuable time on an activity that I consider kind of pointless.   This automatically defeats any arguments against "milestone advancement" as far as I'm concerned.   Full stop, debate is over.   Telling me it is "forced", or "lazy" or "contrived" or whatever doesn't change anything other than my opinion of you.
> 
> If you as a DM see value in calculating and distributing XP to your players, go for it.   That's the only thing that matters.




XP isn't for the DM. FULL STOP do you have anything to say? oh you were wrong? happy you admit it. Your sorry and now going to use XP all the time? Well GREAT! FULL STOP DEBATE OVER! 

Gee man your right if you just act like you control the argument in your post ...everything works out much better.


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## Caliban (Apr 4, 2018)

GameOgre said:


> XP isn't for the DM.



 XP isn't "for" anyone.  It's a tool used or not used by the DM as they choose.  It's simply one possible way of tracking progress. 



> FULL STOP




Restart!  



> do you have anything to say?



  Yup



> oh you were wrong?



 Not that though. 



> happy you admit it. Your sorry and now going to use XP all the time? Well GREAT! FULL STOP DEBATE OVER!




Impressive bit of delusional hyperbole there.  One thing though.  *YOU *don't get to tell *me * how my game should work.  You literally have zero input on the matter.  Sorry not sorry.



> Gee man your right if you just act like you control the argument in your post ...everything works out much better.




I am right - because everything I said only applies to me personally and the home game I run.   You know, the D&D campaign I actually do control, since I created the setting, the cosmology, and run all the games for.   

You are right about one thing though - everything has worked out much better for me since I stopped using XP.    

If you want to do it differently in a game you are running, then by all means.   I only said the debate was settled *for me* not for everyone else.   

Remember kids - Reading is Fundamental!


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## GameOgre (Apr 4, 2018)

Caliban said:


> XP isn't "for" anyone.  It's a tool used or not used by the DM as they choose.  It's simply one possible way of tracking progress.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




My entire post poking fun at you went right over your head.


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## Caliban (Apr 4, 2018)

GameOgre said:


> My entire post poking fun at you went right over your head.




Well, if by "poking fun" you mean "being entitled and whiny" - then no, not at all.  I got the message loud and clear.


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## Imaculata (Apr 4, 2018)

GameOgre said:


> XP isn't for the DM. FULL STOP do you have anything to say? oh you were wrong? happy you admit it. Your sorry and now going to use XP all the time? Well GREAT! FULL STOP DEBATE OVER!




Is there a frowny face emote? Or just one with a really high raised eyebrow?


----------



## Flexor the Mighty! (Apr 4, 2018)

DM Dave1 said:


> I've done this with our 4 player Curse of Strahd campaign.  If only 3 players can make it, we still play and the 4th PC is along for the ride as an NPC with one of the other players handling the rolls.  All players level at the same pace (and I am using XP - and not just for killing things - rather than milestones).
> 
> OTOH, for our 8 player homebrew campaign, we have set it up from the start that if a player can't make it, the PC is doing something mundane like guarding the camp or foraging or whatever makes sense until the player can rejoin.  It just works - no one gets bent or feels punished that their character didn't "earn" XP while they weren't actually playing that night.  The varied PC levels at the table are fine and no one is competitive about it - it's a cooperative party and everyone is glad for the contributions that each other can make.  If a PC should die, the player can roll up a character at 2 levels lower than current.
> 
> So yeah, I've experienced that different methods for different tables can still be fun.




I'm going to be starting up a 6 player S&W Rappan Athuk campaign next month and I'll probably do something similar, though PC's are so simple in that editions its no real effort to run 2.


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## Dausuul (Apr 4, 2018)

GameOgre said:


> My entire post poking fun at you went right over your head.



Looks like it went over a lot of heads. Mine included.

If you had some kind of humorous intent there, you might want to work on your comedy skills. And brush up on Poe's Law.


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## GameOgre (Apr 4, 2018)

Dausuul said:


> Looks like it went over a lot of heads. Mine included.
> 
> If you had some kind of humorous intent there, you might want to work on your comedy skills. And brush up on Poe's Law.




When someone in their post says things like 







> This automatically defeats any arguments against "milestone advancement" as far as I'm concerned. Full stop, debate is over.




in a thread about why someone else hates something and asking other DM's if others dislike it as well and seeking others who feel the same, you don't think that comes across as hilarious? He automatically defeats all arguments! I mean he said so! If someone says so it must be true! That is why I said the things in my post to show how funny it was,

Also as far as I could tell no one said 







> Telling me it is "forced", or "lazy" or "contrived" or whatever doesn't change anything other than my opinion of you.



to him at all. It would be like me claiming "Anyone who says they cant so simple math and award xp by monsters slain and role playing is being dishonest"

See nobody said that. I'm putting words into other peoples mouths and then making comments on them! 

I thought my post was pretty obviously poking fun since he didn't actually state anything I said he did.

Here I will add a


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## Caliban (Apr 4, 2018)

GameOgre said:


> Also as far as I could tell no one said
> to him at all. It would be like me claiming "Anyone who says they cant so simple math and award xp by monsters slain and role playing is being dishonest"




Except for this, of course: 







JonnyP71 said:


> I dislike milestone xp, it feels like a bit of a lazy cop out, often used to compensate for poor adventure design.



  Reading is Fundamental!

They didn't say it directly to me, but was actually said - and similar sentiments have been expressed by other posters.   I was responding to those general comments with my own comment.  Kind of like this was a forum where people respond to comments made by other people.  




> See nobody said that. I'm putting words into other peoples mouths and then making comments on them!
> 
> ... I thought my post was pretty obviously poking fun since he didn't actually state anything I said he did.
> 
> Here I will add a




Ah, so you were flat out lying.  You're right, that smiley face makes it all better.


----------



## Shasarak (Apr 4, 2018)

Caliban said:
			
		

> For me personally, when I'm the DM running my own campaign, I don't use XP. I've experienced exactly zero problems as a result, and for me gained a huge benefit - I don't spend any of my valuable time on an activity that I consider kind of pointless. This automatically defeats any arguments against "milestone advancement" as far as I'm concerned. Full stop, debate is over. Telling me it is "forced", or "lazy" or "contrived" or whatever doesn't change anything other than my opinion of you.




Of course you have experienced no problems when you are the DM.  DMs are not the point of XP.


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## Oofta (Apr 4, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> Of course you have experienced no problems when you are the DM.  DMs are not the point of XP.




For what it's worth, I've never experienced a problem whether I'm a player or DM.  I prefer milestone advancement when I play because I never have to pause and think "Am I going to lose out on XP because I'm doing what my character would do?" 

The other thing that bugs me is the really fun RP session that means you get effectively penalized for doing something other than being a murder hobo which is something I hit recently in an AL game.  

The main issue I have with this thread is the general tone of some XP advocates saying that people are "lazy" or "what's the point" simply because different people have different goals and expectations while valuing different aspects of the game.


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## Caliban (Apr 4, 2018)

Players aren't the point of XP.  Even characters aren't the point of XP.   XP in and of itself should not be the goal.  (In my opinion. YMMV.) 

XP is simply a method of tracking character advancement.   It's a tool for the DM to use, or not use, as they choose.   

If some players see XP as a kind of Pavlovian reward mechanism to the point that it becomes the only reason to play the game...well, that's not the type of game I want to run.   

If that's the type game you like to play, then you should absolutely use XP.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 4, 2018)

Dausuul said:


> Then I, the DM, pick new milestones depending on what your PC is currently trying to accomplish. You don't have to chase the goals I create for you; you can chase any goal you like, and you'll be rewarded for progress toward it. What matters is that you _have_ a goal within the game world.
> 
> It's the same as any other XP award system: Reward the behavior you want to see from the players. "XP for kills" rewards players who seek out combat, and punishes players who avoid fights. "XP for gold" rewards players who look for opportunities to get rich, and punishes players who don't care about plunder. "XP (or levels) for milestones" *rewards players who set goals and try to accomplish them, and punishes players who bumble around doing random stuff.*




And so a character say like a whimsical cleric of the jester god of trickery... needs a to set a goal (or goals) to advance in your games?

Understand, i am not in disagreement with you... however... part of the reason i stopped with the "chapter" or "gaol" driven Xp was to allow for players who have characters who are fun to play and not planners, not "heading towards this thing" but actually just out and about and seeing where the wind carries them. their bumbling around is a great vehicle for lots of fun and enjoyment for many games i have seen. 

It is my experience that *some* players like "backgrounded" characters, where the now and tomorrow is hinged on and drives them towards/away elements from their past. their "story" starts in media res.

it is also my experience that *some* players enjoy or prefer what i call "frontgrounded" characters where their past is mostly not all that interesting and the player hopes to see the character get into a story ahead of them. Their "story" starts now, as the campaign starts. 

Both of those can be great (or horrible) as can lots of the area between.

So, long while back, i stopped lasering in "advancement is tied to goals and objectives" and doubled down on letting the enticements for actions and choices stay and be highlighted in the game world itself. 

help show them reasons to want to stop the goblins or benefits that can come from it or even gains to be had from helping the goblins. then let them choose based on that... not "what gives me xp.

Works for me at least. my players seem to have liked it.

Can be simple too... take every second you would spend on running xp numbers and turn it into seconds thinking about and adding in signs of neat and cool stuff that will be consequences of choices.


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## Shasarak (Apr 4, 2018)

Oofta said:


> The other thing that bugs me is the really fun RP session that means you get effectively penalized for doing something other than being a murder hobo which is something I hit recently in an AL game.




I dont really get it.  You say you had a really fun RP session but you feel penalized?  Is the fun not the whole point of Roleplaying?


----------



## Bradley Hindman (Apr 4, 2018)

5ekyu said:


> And so a character say like a whimsical cleric of the jester god of trickery... needs a to set a goal (or goals) to advance in your games?
> 
> Understand, i am not in disagreement with you... however... part of the reason i stopped with the "chapter" or "gaol" driven Xp was to allow for players who have characters who are fun to play and not planners, not "heading towards this thing" but actually just out and about and seeing where the wind carries them. their bumbling around is a great vehicle for lots of fun and enjoyment for many games i have seen.




You have just described one the major archetypes in Westerns, the drifter. And I agree, they are fun to play.  It's also true that such characters may not have an overarching, long-term goal.  But, you can't say that they don't have short-term goals.  They must. Otherwise they would never strive for anything, and what is the fun in that.  "Chapters" in your collective story can be big or little depending on the type of game you are playing.


----------



## Caliban (Apr 4, 2018)

Another way to look at it is there can be competing reward systems  - playing in order to gain the reward of XP, or playing in order to gain the reward of a fun time playing your character. 

Ideally, they are in synch and you feel equally rewarded for pursuing both, and can pursue both at the same time - playing your character in a fun way also gains you XP.   

But sometimes they are not.  Activities that generate the most XP are not as enjoyable as the activities you most want to pursue with your character - so now you have to decide.  Short term benefit - play your character for fun, but get less XP and fall behind on whatever advancement schedule you consider desirable.   Or do things that reward you with the most XP, but now playing your character feels more like a job and less like a fun activity.  

One way to address this is to make sure to award XP for non combat activities that the players enjoy, so that there no competition between the reward systems.  

Another way is to simply eliminate XP altogether and the reward is solely from playing your character and achieving whatever goals you decide are desirable - and you still get to level up as if you'd been gaining XP.   This can become a problem if the players feel that the level advancement isn't frequent enough, or even if it is too frequent.   Or if they just feel the need for XP's like a strung out junky needs their next fix.


----------



## Dausuul (Apr 4, 2018)

5ekyu said:


> And so a character say like a whimsical cleric of the jester god of trickery... needs a to set a goal (or goals) to advance in your games?



The _character_ doesn't have to be moving toward a goal, but the _party as a whole_ does. Milestones are party-level, not character-level. If the party spends several sessions chasing down the wizard's personal nemesis, they all level up, not just the wizard.

Also, nobody is required to set a goal. I will supply plot hooks for anybody who wants them. You can pursue my prefab goals, or invent your own, and I'm fine either way. What I _don't_ want is a party that spends the entire session faffing around in town doing nothing in particular. I find that excruciatingly boring. Players who want to do that should find themselves another DM.

(And I might add that such a party will be punished just as hard by any other advancement scheme. XP-for-kills and XP-for-gold are not generous to whoso faffeth around in town.)


----------



## The Crimson Binome (Apr 4, 2018)

Oofta said:


> I prefer milestone advancement when I play because I never have to pause and think "Am I going to lose out on XP because I'm doing what my character would do?"
> 
> The other thing that bugs me is the really fun RP session that means you get effectively penalized for doing something other than being a murder hobo which is something I hit recently in an AL game.



Honestly, that just sounds like the risk/reward model of the game is poorly calibrated. If fighting something gives you free XP at no real cost, but avoiding a fight gives you nothing, then gameplay would logically degenerate into a series of combats.

While milestone advancement could help you bypass the worst of that, that's really just an obvious patch that doesn't fix the underlying problem. A proper solution would involve increasing the risk of combat (or reducing the reward) to such a point that you don't feel like you're missing out, regardless of whether or not you fight.


----------



## Oofta (Apr 4, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> I dont really get it.  You say you had a really fun RP session but you feel penalized?  Is the fun not the whole point of Roleplaying?




So now I have to qualify everything?   OK ... yes the game was fun.  However, I am to a certain degree also motivated by characters advancement in AL games.  I'm going to be going to an epic soon and had hoped to level up before then (I'm now 75 points short of 5th).  I dislike the fact that if we had just gone in blades-a-swinging that I would have leveled.  I feel penalized for not being a murder hobo.

This has never been an issue in a home campaign, but in AL, part of my motivation is gaining levels.  If that makes be not 100% consistent, so be it.  I enjoy AL and home games for different reasons and I get different things out of both.

IMHO anyone that is even partially motivated by gaining levels is "penalized" for doing anything other than hunting down the next enemy to kill if all you are given XP for is killing your enemy.


----------



## Oofta (Apr 4, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> Honestly, that just sounds like the risk/reward model of the game is poorly calibrated. If fighting something gives you free XP at no real cost, but avoiding a fight gives you nothing, then gameplay would logically degenerate into a series of combats.
> 
> While milestone advancement could help you bypass the worst of that, that's really just an obvious patch that doesn't fix the underlying problem. A proper solution would involve increasing the risk of combat (or reducing the reward) to such a point that you don't feel like you're missing out, regardless of whether or not you fight.




I'm not following.  In XP based system, you normally only get XP for defeating creatures.  In the vast majority of cases that means killing them.  Spend an hour on social intrigue or making alliances?  No XP for you!  

For anyone motivated (even partially) by leveling handing out XP rewards combat and only combat.

It has nothing to do with the risk of combat or lack of risk therein.


----------



## Shasarak (Apr 4, 2018)

Oofta said:


> So now I have to qualify everything?   OK ... yes the game was fun.  However, I am to a certain degree also motivated by characters advancement in AL games.  I'm going to be going to an epic soon and had hoped to level up before then (I'm now 75 points short of 5th).  I dislike the fact that if we had just gone in blades-a-swinging that I would have leveled.  I feel penalized for not being a murder hobo.
> 
> This has never been an issue in a home campaign, but in AL, part of my motivation is gaining levels.  If that makes be not 100% consistent, so be it.  I enjoy AL and home games for different reasons and I get different things out of both.
> 
> IMHO anyone that is even partially motivated by gaining levels is "penalized" for doing anything other than hunting down the next enemy to kill if all you are given XP for is killing your enemy.




I can not really speak to AL games, the only ones that I am familiar with are Starfinder and from what I have seen they give you XP equivalents for completing missions and you level after completing a certain number of missions.

But in any case I really dont see being 75 XP short of leveling as a bug, that is an incentive to go back the next time to get your 75 XP.  If the DM just levels up your character whenever you want to level up then there is no incentive.  If you want to level up before your epic then you will be looking for another game to play.  I just dont see the penalty here.


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## Fanaelialae (Apr 4, 2018)

5ekyu said:


> "gaol" driven Xp




Characters who don't earn enough XP are imprisoned? Sounds hardcore!


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## iserith (Apr 4, 2018)

Oofta said:


> The main issue I have with this thread is the general tone of some XP advocates saying that people are "lazy" or "what's the point" simply because different people have different goals and expectations while valuing different aspects of the game.




Yeah, comments like that from "XP advocates" are just as poisonous as comments from others like:



Caliban said:


> Or if they just feel the need for XP's like a strung out junky needs their next fix.




Those folks aren't bringing anything to the discussion. Ignore them, I say. Block them if you must.

There are many ways to do character advancement and that is because different games want to emphasize different things. I don't use the same advancement system from game to game. It changes based on what I'm trying to incentivize as DM. None is better than another except as it pertains to that. So I can argue for or against any given system, but I have to do that in the context of a _particular_ game.


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## The Crimson Binome (Apr 4, 2018)

Oofta said:


> I'm not following.  In XP based system, you normally only get XP for defeating creatures.  In the vast majority of cases that means killing them.  Spend an hour on social intrigue or making alliances?  No XP for you!
> 
> For anyone motivated (even partially) by leveling handing out XP rewards combat and only combat.
> 
> It has nothing to do with the risk of combat or lack of risk therein.



I'm saying that the real mechanical benefit of making an alliance (or engaging in subterfuge, whatever) should be equivalent to the real mechanical benefit of fighting. If fighting gives you 500xp, then the benefit of not-fighting should also be worth ~500xp. But in a system where levels measure how good you are at fighting, and XP is awarded for fighting, the mechanical benefit of not-fighting would _not_ be XP. Instead, the benefit would be that you don't waste resources (such as HP and spell slots).

Imagine two possible paths for Jim the Ranger:

Going down Path 1, Jim kills everything in his path. Two hours later, he has earned 500xp, found 400sp, and has a +1 longsword. But, he's also down to 12hp, and only has one spell slot left.
Going down Path A, Jim avoids confrontation, through a mixture of stealth and diplomacy. Two hours later, he has earned zero xp, found 100sp, and doesn't have a +1 longsword. But he still has 100hp and 7 spell slots left.

At this point, Jim comes across the Big Bad who had orchestrated this whole scheme, and they aren't willing to negotiate. They are going to battle with Jim, to the death.

If Jim 1 wins, then he goes home with the grand prize: everything he looted earlier, plus XP and loot from the boss, and he's saved the day.
If Jim A wins, then he goes home with a lesser prize: some XP and loot from the boss, plus 100sp, and he's saved the day.
If either Jim loses, then he gets the consolation prize: death, and none of the loot or XP from before.


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## Caliban (Apr 4, 2018)

iserith said:


> Y
> Those folks aren't bringing anything to the discussion. Ignore them, I say. Block them if you must.




Nicely passive aggressive.  That specific sentence was a joke.  Sadly, you chose to ignore all the constructive things I actually did say that preceded it.  

Oh well, cherry picking things to be mad about seems to be par for the course around here.


----------



## iserith (Apr 4, 2018)

Caliban said:


> Nicely passive aggressive.  That specific sentence was a joke.  Sadly, you chose to ignore all the constructive things I actually did say that preceded it.
> 
> Oh well, cherry picking things to be mad about seems to be par for the course around here.




It was the closest comment of that sort I had at hand. I didn't want to search out other pages of your other similar comments in this thread. I'll follow my own advice at this time.


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## Oofta (Apr 4, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> I'm saying that the real mechanical benefit of making an alliance (or engaging in subterfuge, whatever) should be equivalent to the real mechanical benefit of fighting. If fighting gives you 500xp, then the benefit of not-fighting should also be worth ~500xp. But in a system where levels measure how good you are at fighting, and XP is awarded for fighting, the mechanical benefit of not-fighting would _not_ be XP. Instead, the benefit would be that you don't waste resources (such as HP and spell slots).
> 
> Imagine two possible paths for Jim the Ranger:
> 
> ...




It's hard to "waste" resources in 5E considering how forgiving it is of resource expenditure.  You regain all HP and spells with a long rest.  While you _may_ have some other resource that take longer to recover (HD) or you _might_ use some potions that's not very typical.

But in any case, in most games I've played that reward XP, you only get XP for killing things or at least beat them up until they are defeated.  This is particularly true in organized play where the DM has less latitude.  YMMV.


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## Oofta (Apr 4, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> I can not really speak to AL games, the only ones that I am familiar with are Starfinder and from what I have seen they give you XP equivalents for completing missions and you level after completing a certain number of missions.
> 
> But in any case I really dont see being 75 XP short of leveling as a bug, that is an incentive to go back the next time to get your 75 XP.  If the DM just levels up your character whenever you want to level up then there is no incentive.  If you want to level up before your epic then you will be looking for another game to play.  I just dont see the penalty here.




I agree it's working as designed.  I think it's just a poor design.  Had we run around killing things instead of talking to people I would have been rewarded by gaining a level.  In my book, lack of reward is a penalty.


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## iserith (Apr 4, 2018)

Here are the advancement systems I used in the last three campaigns:

*The Delve*, a town-to-dungeon campaign. PCs earned XP by defeating enemies in combat challenges. PCs earned bonus XP at the end of the session by answering some questions related to genre-appropriate achievements: Did they defeat a notable monster? Did they acquire an interesting treasure? Did they make an ally out of a potential foe? Did anyone nearly die while boldly confronting deadly perils? And so on. (Can't remember all of them offhand.) If they could honestly say "Yes" to those questions, they got the bonus XP. So the players were incentivized to murder things and to achieve particular goals that made sense in context for the focus of that game.

*Host of the High Chieftain*, an adventure path (Red Hand of Doom, rewritten). Combat challenges and achieving set objectives appropriate to the adventure path were how PCs earned XP. It was a campaign focused on war, so I wanted to incentivize smashing skulls whenever possible; however, the campaign was on a tight timeline and I wanted the players to feel that pressure, so one of the ways I did that was to make wandering monsters worth no XP. This made them not worth the time and effort and worth avoiding in favor of tackling the major set-pieces and quests. Whereas in the previous campaign they would sometimes seek out random monsters to level up lower-level characters, in this campaign it wasn't worth it to do that, so they didn't. This also made them stick close to their caravan (which was a whole other thing that was a big part of the campaign) while they moved around the setting because wandering monsters wouldn't trouble the caravan. So that XP rule reinforced the theme further.

*Unity of Rings*, a Sigil-based Planescape campaign. Since they mostly interact with intelligent creatures, combat and social interaction challenges are how they earn XP. That way they can decide, based on their current priorities, whether they want to destroy or ally with particular groups (usually other factions). I therefore set up scenes so that either is a possibility in many cases. So far, they do still tend toward violence, but this seems largely due to the players enjoying a good fight, plus the characters themselves tend toward the more Chaotic factions. But it seems to be working fine.

So, really, unless you're running the same basic game over and over again, it's a good idea in my view to examine what's important in the campaign and then structure the advancement system around that. It's just another way to drive the play experience you're aiming for.


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## Shasarak (Apr 4, 2018)

Oofta said:


> I agree it's working as designed.  I think it's just a poor design.  Had we run around killing things instead of talking to people I would have been rewarded by gaining a level.  In my book, lack of reward is a penalty.




I dont see lack of reward as a penalty.  If I have something and you dont that is not a penalty, a penalty would be if I take something from you.

I also have no problem with the idea that players who take more risk earning more reward.  That just seems logical to me.  Which could explain why I never got to games like Call of Cthulhu which penalises players that take risk.


----------



## iserith (Apr 4, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> I dont see lack of reward as a penalty.




Agreed. That is a bad perception to have in my view, especially if you _know_ what you have to do to get the reward.


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## Gardens & Goblins (Apr 4, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> That just seems logical to me.  Which could explain why I never got to games like Call of Cthulhu which penalises players that take risk.




 Unless you consider, _'Everyone you love and everything you know is destroyed by a hideous ancient cosmic entity' _something worth taking a risk to prevent, and its prevention* the reward for taking said risk.

Heck, even if they don't pay off, dying horribly or having terrible things happen is part of the appeal. Not a reward for the characters but rather, one for the players! 

_*...well, for now. Until next time. Ok, we're basically screwed regardless but hey. Beer?_


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## Caliban (Apr 4, 2018)

Gardens & Goblins said:


> Unless you consider, _'Everyone you love and everything you know is destroyed by a hideous ancient cosmic entity' _something worth taking a risk to prevent, and its prevention* the reward for taking said risk.
> 
> Heck, even if they don't pay off, dying horribly or having terrible things happen is part of the appeal. Not a reward for the characters but rather, one for the players!
> 
> _*...well, for now. Until next time. Ok, we're basically screwed regardless but hey. Beer?_



Yeah, but you don't get XP.  And as we all know, that is the only reward that really matters.


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## The Crimson Binome (Apr 5, 2018)

Oofta said:


> It's hard to "waste" resources in 5E considering how forgiving it is of resource expenditure.  You regain all HP and spells with a long rest.  While you _may_ have some other resource that take longer to recover (HD) or you _might_ use some potions that's not very typical.



I agree. It is unfortunate. Unless you do something significant to address those issues, the XP mechanic falls into exactly the trap you mentioned.

It's like, they had all these great ideas to bring back the things that made AD&D so great, but then they made a bunch of changes that directly negated those aspects of the game. They should have picked one way or the other, instead of trying to walk a middle path that fails at everything.


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## Shasarak (Apr 5, 2018)

Gardens & Goblins said:


> Unless you consider, _'Everyone you love and everything you know is destroyed by a hideous ancient cosmic entity' _something worth taking a risk to prevent, and its prevention* the reward for taking said risk.
> 
> Heck, even if they don't pay off, dying horribly or having terrible things happen is part of the appeal. Not a reward for the characters but rather, one for the players!
> 
> _*...well, for now. Until next time. Ok, we're basically screwed regardless but hey. Beer?_




As far as I am aware, CoC was specifically not a game of "preventing everyone you love and everything you know being destroyed by a hideous ancient cosmic entity", it was "this strange thing is happening in a fishing village and....OMG Deep Ones" or "your Uncle dies leaving you the deed to his old Mansion and...OMG Cthulhu".  Where investigating the old Tomb meant being killed by Ghouls and where reading the Necronomicon to find the Shogoths weakness meant that when you actually encountered it you were more likely to go mad.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 5, 2018)

Dausuul said:


> The _character_ doesn't have to be moving toward a goal, but the _party as a whole_ does. Milestones are party-level, not character-level. If the party spends several sessions chasing down the wizard's personal nemesis, they all level up, not just the wizard.
> 
> Also, nobody is required to set a goal. I will supply plot hooks for anybody who wants them. You can pursue my prefab goals, or invent your own, and I'm fine either way. What I _don't_ want is a party that spends the entire session faffing around in town doing nothing in particular. I find that excruciatingly boring. Players who want to do that should find themselves another DM.
> 
> (And I might add that such a party will be punished just as hard by any other advancement scheme. XP-for-kills and XP-for-gold are not generous to whoso faffeth around in town.)



Party wnats to blow off a night carousing in town...great. Can be magnificent time to introduce characters, hooks, etc and help them get more invested.

Or, if its not that, it can be "ok, so you had a fun night and lots of fun was had... Now..." 

As for equally punished... Session advancement does not equally punish this. You would advance regardless. 

In my game, for instance, a session spent carousing around Auridon would be the same advancement as one chasing down leads and goals... Both hopefully fun... But each would have substantially differenr in-game results.


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## Oofta (Apr 5, 2018)

iserith said:


> Agreed. That is a bad perception to have in my view, especially if you _know_ what you have to do to get the reward.




Right.  You have to be a murder hobo.


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## Oofta (Apr 5, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> I dont see lack of reward as a penalty.  If I have something and you dont that is not a penalty, a penalty would be if I take something from you.
> 
> I also have no problem with the idea that players who take more risk earning more reward.  That just seems logical to me.  Which could explain why I never got to games like Call of Cthulhu which penalises players that take risk.




And again...the implication is that in order to advance as a PC you have to kill things. Sometimes the riskiest thing is to go into enemy territory and try to negotiate peace.  Which in most games (not all of course) will net you 0 XP.

If that's what you want, more power to you.


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## GameOgre (Apr 5, 2018)

Xp Awards for Defeating things is a big part of my games. You gain just as much XP from killing something as sneaking by it or negotiating with it so that it doesn't hinder you.
Xp Awards for Social dealings are a big part of my game.  Typically because social encounters take a lot more time they receive a greater XP amount IF the pc's efforts pan out.
Xp Awards for Discovery are a part of my game. This part is less than the others but I do reward the player characters for discovering new locations.

*Xp awards for Role Playing are hit and miss. If a PC role plays his character when it would be better if he didn't(the uncouth Fighter tells the duchess she is hot because that's just how he is) then they do gain a pretty hefty amount.


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## Shasarak (Apr 5, 2018)

Oofta said:


> And again...the implication is that in order to advance as a PC you have to kill things. Sometimes the riskiest thing is to go into enemy territory and try to negotiate peace.  Which in most games (not all of course) will net you 0 XP.
> 
> If that's what you want, more power to you.




It will net you 0 XP and a great RP experience for 0 risk.  I have no problem with that.


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## iserith (Apr 5, 2018)

Oofta said:


> Right.  You have to be a murder hobo.




Choosing to engage in combat challenges does not make one a "murder hobo." You have to be also impoverished.

But seriously, it's fair to say "I wish that the game rewarded other things..." I _don't_ think it's fair to call lack of a reward a penalty. You presumably knew what you had to do to get XP. You chose not to do that. Take responsibility for your choices.


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## iserith (Apr 5, 2018)

GameOgre said:


> *Xp awards for Role Playing are hit and miss. If a PC role plays his character when it would be better if he didn't(the uncouth Fighter tells the duchess she is hot because that's just how he is) then they do gain a pretty hefty amount.




I think Inspiration is best for a reward when a player portrays his or her character in a way consistent with established traits. A fighter with a flaw along the lines of "I come off as uncouth at the worst times..." might get Inspiration for doing what you suggest. This way everything is spelled out and the player of the fighter knows concretely what he or she must do to get the reward. I find, in my experience, "roleplaying XP" is handled a bit to "squishy" for my tastes - it's like getting XP for entertaining the DM. Okay for some, just not my cup of tea. Plus that's a particular definition of "roleplaying" with which I don't agree, but that's a separate matter.


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## Caliban (Apr 5, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> It will net you 0 XP and a great RP experience for 0 risk.  I have no problem with that.



Because people only learn from their experiences if their life is at risk.


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## Oofta (Apr 5, 2018)

iserith said:


> Choosing to engage in combat challenges does not make one a "murder hobo." You have to be also impoverished.
> 
> But seriously, it's fair to say "I wish that the game rewarded other things..." I _don't_ think it's fair to call lack of a reward a penalty. You presumably knew what you had to do to get XP. You chose not to do that. Take responsibility for your choices.




Right.  Instead of seeking alliances and attempting to find out more about what was going on to try to minimize casualties of innocent people we should have just kicked down the door and taken out everything in sight.  Kill 'em all and let the gods sort it out.  Instead of attempting to make a neutral party an ally we could have just wiped them out.  Yeah XP!


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## iserith (Apr 5, 2018)

Oofta said:


> Right.  Instead of seeking alliances and attempting to find out more about what was going on to try to minimize casualties of innocent people we should have just kicked down the door and taken out everything in sight.  Kill 'em all and let the gods sort it out.  Instead of attempting to make a neutral party an ally we could have just wiped them out.  Yeah XP!




Let's be clear here: I have no criticism of your criticism that the particular game you were playing did not give XP for "seeking alliance and attempting to find out more about what was going on to try to minimize casualties of innocent people." Maybe it should have. But it didn't, apparently.

My criticism of your statement is that you see a lack of reward as a penalty when you presumably knew what you needed to do to get the reward. That's a weak argument worth abandoning in my view.


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## JonnyP71 (Apr 5, 2018)

A DM who only awards XP for killing monsters is not a good DM, period.  DMing like that encourages murderhobo behaviour.


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## iserith (Apr 5, 2018)

JonnyP71 said:


> A DM who only awards XP for killing monsters is not a good DM, period.




I disagree. What if I wanted to have a blood-soaked game of pure carnage set on the Iron-Shod Battle Plane of Acheron where spilling guts and ascending the ranks by the number of ears you collect is the order of the day? Where armies clashed eternally and the living envy the dead? Why does that make me "not a good DM, period" instead of a DM with a very focused campaign who rewards the players for playing to that theme? I'd play in that game. It sounds fun as hell to me.



JonnyP71 said:


> DMing like that encourages murderhobo behaviour.




What if that's the outcome the DM _wants_ to encourage? What if that's the game the players bought into?

That may not be the game for you, but I don't think you can fairly say the DM is no good.


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## cbwjm (Apr 5, 2018)

When i was DMing we used party XP. Since everyone has the same XP requirements to level there wasn't a need to track it separately. Rather than individual  XP awards, I'd use inspiration for rewarding individual player actions.

I like this better than milestone levelling and it doesn't require players tracking individual experience. New players come in at the same XP total as the others. I'd also use story rewards of 5% of the total XP needed to reach the next level which gets added to the party total at the end of the session.


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## Oofta (Apr 5, 2018)

iserith said:


> Let's be clear here: I have no criticism of your criticism that the particular game you were playing did not give XP for "seeking alliance and attempting to find out more about what was going on to try to minimize casualties of innocent people." Maybe it should have. But it didn't, apparently.
> 
> My criticism of your statement is that you see a lack of reward as a penalty when you presumably knew what you needed to do to get the reward. That's a weak argument worth abandoning in my view.




IMHO, lack of reward is a penalty.  There is a tradition (right or wrong, not universally) in D&D of rewarding only violent solutions to problems.  That's why I prefer ignoring XP and advancing based on story and overall achievements.

It has nothing to do with my not accepting responsibility, not wanting my PC to face risks or any of the other BS.  I simply think my PC should be rewarded for doing what they would do, even if sometimes being a hero means not killing everything that moves.


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## iserith (Apr 5, 2018)

Oofta said:


> IMHO, lack of reward is a penalty.  There is a tradition (right or wrong, not universally) in D&D of rewarding only violent solutions to problems.  That's why I prefer ignoring XP and advancing based on story and overall achievements.
> 
> It has nothing to do with my not accepting responsibility, not wanting my PC to face risks or any of the other BS.  I simply think my PC should be rewarded for doing what they would do, even if sometimes being a hero means not killing everything that moves.




Yeah, that's fine. As I've said several times now, I think it's fair that you would _like_ the game to reward you for non-violent approaches to problems and to _choose_ to do that in your own games. I do that in my own game, depending on what I'm going for. _But that's not the game you were playing, right?_ In my opinion, if your goal was to gain a level, then the smart play was to do the things that allow you to level. _Not_ doing those things and then complaining about being penalized is, to me, pretty weak provided you were aware of what you needed to do.

Maybe instead of going to work tomorrow and being rewarded for doing so with a paycheck, I will sit home, get no paycheck, then loudly proclaim that I've been penalized.


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## taelisin (Apr 5, 2018)

In my opinion, if the players don't feel sense of accomplishment, from either their own self directed goals, progession in the narrative, or a mix of both, then it isn't a very successful game, however you provide levels or xp. Levels and XP can't provide this accomplishment on their own however you shake it, at best they are a secondary incentive; icing on the cake if you will.

XP likewise can't make combat meaningful. There needs to be in world logical consistency and motivation for the conflict  to acheive this. This can, and should, be extrapolated to all conflict, not just potential combat.

If you are not providing this sense of accomplishment, then XP is simply a dissassociated game mechanic. If you are, at best it should be a (distant) secondary consideration, at worst meaningless.


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## Oofta (Apr 5, 2018)

iserith said:


> Yeah, that's fine. As I've said several times now, I think it's fair that you would _like_ the game to reward you for non-violent approaches to problems and to _choose_ to do that in your own games. I do that in my own game, depending on what I'm going for. _But that's not the game you were playing, right?_ In my opinion, if your goal was to gain a level, then the smart play was to do the things that allow you to level. _Not_ doing those things and then complaining about being penalized is, to me, pretty weak provided you were aware of what you needed to do.
> 
> Maybe instead of going to work tomorrow and being rewarded for doing so with a paycheck, I will sit home, get no paycheck, then loudly proclaim that I've been penalized.




We're just talking past each other.  I knew what I needed to do to get XP.  My point is that I don't like the default assumption that you only get XP for killing.

I don't blame my DM, he was just following the rules.

And it's more akin to going to work, putting in a full day and not getting paid because there was a storm and no customers showed up so you prevented damage to the store while doing maintenance that was overdue, necessary, and part of your job.


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## Swarmkeeper (Apr 5, 2018)

Oofta said:


> We're just talking past each other.  I knew what I needed to do to get XP.  My point is that I don't like the default assumption that you only get XP for killing.
> 
> I don't blame my DM, he was just following the rules.




I'm not convinced that giving XP just for killing monsters is "following the rules".  How do you explain all the WoTC adventures that encourage milestone leveling?

We're coming at it from several different angles, but I think it's safe to say that most DMs here would agree that awarding XP just for killing enemies - and only for killing enemies - would not be our chosen way to run a campaign.


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## iserith (Apr 5, 2018)

Oofta said:


> We're just talking past each other.  I knew what I needed to do to get XP.  My point is that I don't like the default assumption that you only get XP for killing.
> 
> I don't blame my DM, he was just following the rules.




Is it a default assumption though? I'm not sure about AL-specific rules, but the DMG leaves the question open and provides guidance on giving XP for things other than combat, plus systems for not using XP at all.


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## iserith (Apr 5, 2018)

DM Dave1 said:


> We're coming at it from several different angles, but I think it's safe to say that most DMs here would agree that awarding XP just for killing enemies - and only for killing enemies - would not be our chosen way to run a campaign.




Depends on the theme of the campaign, I would say.


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## Oofta (Apr 5, 2018)

DM Dave1 said:


> I'm not convinced that giving XP just for killing monsters is "following the rules".  How do you explain all the WoTC adventures that encourage milestone leveling?
> 
> We're coming at it from several different angles, but I think it's safe to say that most DMs here would agree that awarding XP just for killing enemies - and only for killing enemies - would not be our chosen way to run a campaign.




It is when you're judging for AL games, unless the mod is written with milestones.  There are several alternatives to granting XP or advancing without using XP, but defeating monsters is presented as the default.  Unless the mod is written otherwise, it's the only option an AL judge has.

At a certain point if you're rewarding XP for everything why bother with XP?  It's just extra overhead.  Some people enjoy it, I personally don't see the point and if games are run using just the default it rewards combat and only combat.


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## Shasarak (Apr 5, 2018)

Oofta said:


> Right.  Instead of seeking alliances and attempting to find out more about what was going on to try to minimize casualties of innocent people we should have just kicked down the door and taken out everything in sight.  Kill 'em all and let the gods sort it out.  Instead of attempting to make a neutral party an ally we could have just wiped them out.  Yeah XP!




So you did not get penalised with no reward, you actually got an Ally as a reward.


----------



## Oofta (Apr 5, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> So you did not get penalised with no reward, you actually got an Ally as a reward.




There are supposed to be 3 pillars of D&D: exploration, social interaction and combat.  But unless you are following these rules or using a mod that has it built in as modules, you only get XP for combat.

In a home campaign I probably wouldn't care as much.  But AL is not a home campaign and as much as I plan on continuing at the same table with the same DM and character there's no guarantee.  Therefore the only reward for my character (not me personally) I can count on from game to game is XP, GP and items.


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## iserith (Apr 5, 2018)

Oofta said:


> There are supposed to be 3 pillars of D&D: exploration, social interaction and combat.  But unless you are following these rules or using a mod that has it built in as modules, you only get XP for combat.
> 
> In a home campaign I probably wouldn't care as much.  But AL is not a home campaign and as much as I plan on continuing at the same table with the same DM and character there's no guarantee.  Therefore the only reward for my character (not me personally) I can count on from game to game is XP, GP and items.




See DMG page 261 for rules on noncombat challenges, plus non-XP rewards (under Milestones).


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## Caliban (Apr 5, 2018)

iserith said:


> See DMG page 261 for rules on noncombat challenges, plus non-XP rewards (under Milestones).



Wow, you really don't get it.  None of that matters - he's talking about AL, where the possible XP is predetermined for each adventure ahead of time.   If the mod only gives XP for combat, that's all you are going to get XP for.

This is a weak argument.  You should probably consider dropping it.


----------



## Oofta (Apr 5, 2018)

iserith said:


> See DMG page 261 for rules on noncombat challenges, plus non-XP rewards (under Milestones).




I've read the DMG, I'm familiar with the rule.  As [MENTION=284]Caliban[/MENTION] already pointed out for me, it doesn't matter in AL.  Unless the mod specifically spells out XP for non-combat encounters it is not granted.

The rules for rewarding XP for non-combat encounters is also presented as alternative options, with the default being XP for combat and only combat.


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## iserith (Apr 5, 2018)

Oofta said:


> I've read the DMG, I'm familiar with the rule.  As [MENTION=284]Caliban[/MENTION] already pointed out for me, it doesn't matter in AL.  Unless the mod specifically spells out XP for non-combat encounters it is not granted.
> 
> The rules for rewarding XP for non-combat encounters is also presented as alternative options, with the default being XP for combat and only combat.




I have that poster blocked for reasons I hope are obvious, so I'm not able to see the post you reference.

However, in the post I quoted, you mention the three-pillar experience rule or something about mods that did not appear to be in reference to AL. My comment was directed as that specifically, not to your later comment regarding AL. If it was all about AL, please disregard.

I still take issue with your position on a lack of reward being a penalty in any case.


----------



## Oofta (Apr 5, 2018)

iserith said:


> I have that poster blocked for reasons I hope are obvious, so I'm not able to see the post you reference.
> 
> However, in the post I quoted, you mention the three-pillar experience rule or something about mods that did not appear to be in reference to AL. My comment was directed as that specifically, not to your later comment regarding AL. If it was all about AL, please disregard.
> 
> I still take issue with your position on a lack of reward being a penalty in any case.




We'll have to agree to disagree.  Lack of [XP] reward for similar effort is a penalty.  It shouldn't matter if that effort falls under combat, exploration or social.

It's like showing up for work at the widget factory, where you are told you have to make red, white and blue widgets but you only get paid for red widgets yet are required to produce all three.  When the only orders come in are for white and blue widgets and you don't get paid I think most people would feel penalized.

Of course you _could_ have produced red widgets anyway, even though they weren't called for but that isn't really a solution, that's just gaming the system.

When combat is the only way to gain XP, people are incentivized to prioritize combat.  Reward XP for things other than combat in equal measure?  Then what's the purpose of XP?


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## iserith (Apr 5, 2018)

Oofta said:


> We'll have to agree to disagree.  Lack of [XP] reward for similar effort is a penalty.  It shouldn't matter if that effort falls under combat, exploration or social.
> 
> It's like showing up for work at the widget factory, where you are told you have to make red, white and blue widgets but you only get paid for red widgets yet are required to produce all three.  When the only orders come in are for white and blue widgets and you don't get paid I think most people would feel penalized.
> 
> ...




I don't disagree that XP is a good incentive and reward for more than just the combat pillar, depending on the type of game the DM is going for. I do disagree that if you knowingly signed up for a game that only incentivizes and rewards one pillar that you have any justification to call it a penalty when you get no reward for doing anything other than that pillar.

I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with prioritizing one pillar over another via XP or other rewards. That is one way the DM can structure the game to get at a particular theme.


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## Oofta (Apr 5, 2018)

iserith said:


> I don't disagree that XP is a good incentive and reward for more than just the combat pillar, depending on the type of game the DM is going for. I do disagree that if you knowingly signed up for a game that only incentivizes and rewards one pillar that you have any justification to call it a penalty when you get no reward for doing anything other than that pillar.
> 
> I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with prioritizing one pillar over another via XP or other rewards. That is one way the DM can structure the game to get at a particular theme.




I'm tired of arguing semantics, and sometimes you don't have a choice on the game you join.  My PC will _never_ advance if I never play. I enjoy AL for a variety of reasons, that doesn't mean I don't find certain aspects annoying, or that I have a choice to join a different game meets my other goals.

To summarize:  I prefer games that reward more than just combat and I feel that XP is an unnecessary meta-game construct that just adds unnecessary overhead while serving no real purpose.


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## Bradley Hindman (Apr 5, 2018)

iserith said:


> I still take issue with your position on a lack of reward being a penalty in any case.




Arguing this point (however true or untrue) is unlikely to change anyone's opinion. Whether its viewed as a reward for some or a penalty to the others is all about personal perception and personality type instead of logic.  As an example, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away my group was going to play SAGA edition Star Wars. Without giving it a try, a couple players vehemently complained about the condition track because of the penalty that it would impose on their rolls.  I must admit I was a bit annoyed at the complaints BEFORE we even tried the system.  So, I announced that instead of applying a penalty to the character's rolls, the condition track would modify the DC of what was being attempted.  To my utter shock, they were happy with that solution.  The end result was identical, but for some reason it mattered whether their rolls would be penalized or the difficulty augmented.  People are weird and illogical.  But fun isn't about logic, its usually based on emotional impact.


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## Imaculata (Apr 5, 2018)

Oofta said:


> When combat is the only way to gain XP, people are incentivized to prioritize combat.  Reward XP for things other than combat in equal measure?  Then what's the purpose of XP?




I'm having trouble following this line of reasoning. Why would rewarding the players in equal measure for the other pillars of the game invalidate the purpose of XP?


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## iserith (Apr 5, 2018)

Oofta said:


> I'm tired of arguing semantics,




I don't think we are "arguing semantics." Explain what you mean by those words.


----------



## iserith (Apr 5, 2018)

Bradley Hindman said:


> Arguing this point (however true or untrue) is unlikely to change anyone's opinion. Whether its viewed as a reward for some or a penalty to the others is all about personal perception and personality type instead of logic.  As an example, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away my group was going to play SAGA edition Star Wars. Without giving it a try, a couple players vehemently complained about the condition track because of the penalty that it would impose on their rolls.  I must admit I was a bit annoyed at the complaints BEFORE we even tried the system.  So, I announced that instead of applying a penalty to the character's rolls, the condition track would modify the DC of what was being attempted.  To my utter shock, they were happy with that solution.  The end result was identical, but for some reason it mattered whether their rolls would be penalized or the difficulty augmented.  People are weird and illogical.  But fun isn't about logic, its usually based on emotional impact.




Sure, I don't think I'll convince Oofta. But I'm not trying to. I'm trying to convince everyone else who is reading the exchange who has not publicly stated a position on the matter. It's much easier to reverse oneself if one hasn't already taken a stand aloud.


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## Bradley Hindman (Apr 5, 2018)

Imaculata said:


> I'm having trouble following this line of reasoning. Why would rewarding the players in equal measure for the other pillars of the game invalidate the purpose of XP?




I believe the argument is that if all is rewarded equally, then nothing is incentivized. At which point you should ask yourself why are you bothering to award XP when there are simpler ways to decide when a character should gain a level.


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## Caliban (Apr 5, 2018)

iserith said:


> Sure, I don't think I'll convince Oofta. But I'm not trying to. I'm trying to convince everyone else who is reading the exchange who has not publicly stated a position on the matter. It's much easier to reverse oneself if one hasn't already taken a stand aloud.



Wow.  Someone is certainly impressed with their own opinion.


----------



## Oofta (Apr 5, 2018)

Imaculata said:


> I'm having trouble following this line of reasoning. Why would rewarding the players in equal measure for the other pillars of the game invalidate the purpose of XP?




I just think it's a clunky hold-over from previous editions that has it's roots in advancing levels because you loot defeated enemies based on it's war game roots.

The only official rules we have for how much XP to reward are for defeating monsters.  Anything else is just fluffy made up numbers that have no shared meaning or value.  In the past when I made up those numbers I basically did it based on how quickly I wanted the characters to advance.  I quickly realized that for me it was meaningless.

At a certain point you're deciding that PCs should gain levels based on _N_ numbers of encounters, possibly adjusting the reward slightly based on difficulty, risk or some other variable.  So I cut out the middle man and turned it around since it added no value to the game.  It's easier for me and my players.

Want to use XP?  Go for it. Want to reward PCs for how many times they say the word "blue" in context in the game?  More power to you.  Want to award levels based only on combat?  Have fun, a lot of people do it and I did it for years.

All of this is just, like, an opinion man.



iserith said:


> I don't think we are "arguing semantics." Explain what you mean by those words.




You don't consider lack of reward a penalty, I do.  It's semantics.


----------



## iserith (Apr 5, 2018)

Bradley Hindman said:


> I believe the argument is that if all is rewarded equally, then nothing is incentivized. At which point you should ask yourself why are you bothering to award XP when there are simpler ways to decide when a character should gain a level.




That argument appears to be based in the idea that all pillars should be rewarded equally with XP, which I don't take to be a given. I don't think the DMG does either. It's left up to the DM. My take is that the DM is well-served by giving out XP to the pillars that are most important to the particular campaign and possibly give out other rewards for pillars that are not rewarded with XP. Then the players have a meaningful choice between what they want to pursue.


----------



## Oofta (Apr 5, 2018)

iserith said:


> That argument appears to be based in the idea that all pillars should be rewarded equally with XP, which I don't take to be a given. I don't think the DMG does either. It's left up to the DM. My take is that the DM is well-served by giving out XP to the pillars that are most important to the particular campaign and possibly give out other rewards for pillars that are not rewarded with XP. Then the players have a meaningful choice between what they want to pursue.




I guess that's where I disagree.  I don't need or want a carrot (or a stick) in the form of XP to motivate my players.  The campaign should grow and evolve based on what's most engaging and fun for the group.  I set the scene, the players tell the story and tell me (sometimes literally) if they want more or less of any given pillar.


----------



## 5ekyu (Apr 5, 2018)

Bradley Hindman said:


> Arguing this point (however true or untrue) is unlikely to change anyone's opinion. Whether its viewed as a reward for some or a penalty to the others is all about personal perception and personality type instead of logic.  As an example, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away my group was going to play SAGA edition Star Wars. Without giving it a try, a couple players vehemently complained about the condition track because of the penalty that it would impose on their rolls.  I must admit I was a bit annoyed at the complaints BEFORE we even tried the system.  So, I announced that instead of applying a penalty to the character's rolls, the condition track would modify the DC of what was being attempted.  To my utter shock, they were happy with that solution.  The end result was identical, but for some reason it mattered whether their rolls would be penalized or the difficulty augmented.  People are weird and illogical.  But fun isn't about logic, its usually based on emotional impact.



Well, in the realm of semantics... Some argue against the word prnalty, sone exhort incentives... Maybe to get beyond the nomenclature-warriors the term "disincentive" could be used to more neutralky express what both seem ro be saying... Providing xp for one and not the other is likely **where xp or advancement matters** to disincentivize the choices that dont yield xp since it will leave the ones going that way lower levels.

In cases where xp doesnt matter, it wont incentivize either.

The default 5e position is what it is, but variants are available for when those arecpermitted, both in 5e products and without.

For me, i dobt use xp to incentivize any selected action so i dont have any of those issues.


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## iserith (Apr 5, 2018)

Oofta said:


> I guess that's where I disagree.  I don't need or want a carrot (or a stick) in the form of XP to motivate my players.  The campaign should grow and evolve based on what's most engaging and fun for the group.  I set the scene, the players tell the story and tell me (sometimes literally) if they want more or less of any given pillar.




It's rather bold to state how a campaign "should" be rather than, say, make that claim for your own campaign and no other. I'd have to know more about _your_ particular campaign to examine how I would set up the advancement system for such a game.

What system do you use now?


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## Satyrn (Apr 5, 2018)

Oofta said:


> It's hard to "waste" resources in 5E considering how forgiving it is of resource expenditure.  You regain all HP and spells with a long rest.  While you _may_ have some other resource that take longer to recover (HD) or you _might_ use some potions that's not very typical.



Spark of inspiration! (Also, completely off topic) 

I've been "grittying up" the resting rules in prep for a megadungeon crawl. I've been adding requirements of food and water (or substitute a level of exhaustion) in order to recover the limited use features like ki points, superiority dice and spell slots - and hit dice, too.

Long rest healing is only done by spending hit dice just like a short rest. And just like a short rest, the character must be tended to with a successful Wisdom (healing kit) check to be able to spend those hit dice.

That spark of inspiration was ignited by your "you _might_ use some potions that's not very typical" line. 

I'm gonna introduce a healing potion that skips the healing kit - so the players can have something that will let them get in some guaranteed healing when they absolutely must. Thanks!


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## Oofta (Apr 5, 2018)

iserith said:


> It's rather bold to state how a campaign "should" be rather than, say, make that claim for your own campaign and no other. I'd have to know more about _your_ particular campaign to examine how I would set up the advancement system for such a game.
> 
> What system do you use now?




Overly sensitive much?  A thousand apologies if it wasn't clear I was talking about my campaign and preferences.  Do I have to put a "run your campaign the way you want" disclaimer on every single post?

I don't want to use tools to artificially push/pull/prod/incentivize players _in my campaign_ towards a specific style of campaign or play style, it's not my preference.  If I and my players want a specific style of campaign, I'll set up the necessary environment.

Campaign about warfare and conflict?  I'll plonk them into the middle of a war.  Intrigue and mystery? It will probably be a city with a dark underbelly.  Dungeon delving?  Part of my world with no major conflicts, but plenty of dungeons to loot.  What the group does in that environment is up to them, I simply describe the world, they tell me what they do in that world.  I then do my best to have the world and events respond in a logical fashion.

As far as leveling, as I've stated before it's based on story, logical advancement, and what the group is enjoying.  I've had games where we had several sessions at 1st level (or below) and sessions where we skipped levels and had people fill in what happened between levels.

_Disclaimer: I'm not saying doing it other ways is wrong, or that I have the one true way of running a campaign.  e.g. Run your campaign the way you want.   _


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## iserith (Apr 5, 2018)

Oofta said:


> Overly sensitive much?  A thousand apologies if it wasn't clear I was talking about my campaign and preferences.  Do I have to put a "run your campaign the way you want" disclaimer on every single post?
> 
> I don't want to use tools to artificially push/pull/prod/incentivize players _in my campaign_ towards a specific style of campaign or play style, it's not my preference.  If I and my players want a specific style of campaign, I'll set up the necessary environment.
> 
> ...




Do you have a particular setting that you use for all of your campaigns?

In terms of leveling up, is that basically when you as DM decide it's time? Do the players have any notion as to when that might be in advance?


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## 5ekyu (Apr 5, 2018)

Oofta said:


> Overly sensitive much?  A thousand apologies if it wasn't clear I was talking about my campaign and preferences.  Do I have to put a "run your campaign the way you want" disclaimer on every single post?
> 
> I don't want to use tools to artificially push/pull/prod/incentivize players _in my campaign_ towards a specific style of campaign or play style, it's not my preference.  If I and my players want a specific style of campaign, I'll set up the necessary environment.
> 
> ...



Hey you said "I dont need..." "The campaign..." and another "i set the scene" and "they tell me" after it in one paragraph. . How could anybody think you saying "the campaign" in the middle of all those "i" and "me" meant you were talking about your game and not every game ever played??

;-)


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## Oofta (Apr 5, 2018)

iserith said:


> Do you have a particular setting that you use for all of your campaigns?
> 
> In terms of leveling up, is that basically when you as DM decide it's time? Do the players have any notion as to when that might be in advance?




I've run in my own home/shared campaign world for the last ... umm ... long, long time.  When was the blue box released?

As far as how quickly the group levels, it's something I discuss with the group during the session 0 and have an ongoing discussion as the campaign progresses.  It's also linked to story achievements and goals (not necessarily the ones I initially set, they tend to grow organically).

For example in the last campaign I ran we basically leveled every other game session.  Others?  We dawdled along at lower levels, basing leveling on what made sense for the story.  Later on we skipped levels at higher levels because while the story was interesting and they wanted to see it through to the end (and get to 30th level in my 4E campaign) but it was becoming kind of a slog.  At lower levels they were fighting the local corrupt law enforcement, at higher levels they were trying to stop Ragnarok and bouncing around planes of existence.

So I certainly have more flexibility than, say someone that runs canned mods.


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## iserith (Apr 5, 2018)

Oofta said:


> I've run in my own home/shared campaign world for the last ... umm ... long, long time.  When was the blue box released?
> 
> As far as how quickly the group levels, it's something I discuss with the group during the session 0 and have an ongoing discussion as the campaign progresses.  It's also linked to story achievements and goals (not necessarily the ones I initially set, they tend to grow organically).




So it sounds like story-based advancement to me or some variation of it, as defined in the DMG.



Oofta said:


> For example in the last campaign I ran we basically leveled every other game session.  Others?  We dawdled along at lower levels, basing leveling on what made sense for the story.  Later on we skipped levels at higher levels because while the story was interesting and they wanted to see it through to the end (and get to 30th level in my 4E campaign) but it was becoming kind of a slog.  At lower levels they were fighting the local corrupt law enforcement, at higher levels they were trying to stop Ragnarok and bouncing around planes of existence.
> 
> So I certainly have more flexibility than, say someone that runs canned mods.




It sounds like you've played in various editions. What's the edition you've played the most? In what edition did you decide to stop using standard XP as the advancement system?


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## Oofta (Apr 5, 2018)

iserith said:


> So it sounds like story-based advancement to me or some variation of it, as defined in the DMG.
> 
> 
> 
> It sounds like you've played in various editions. What's the edition you've played the most? In what edition did you decide to stop using standard XP as the advancement system?




Edition I played most?  Hard to say.  Hours played?  DMed?  Duration of campaign?  I'd guess 3.5 which is also when I stopped bothering with XP soon after I started rewarding XP for non-combat encounters.  I've been playing/DMing 5E since it was released.

The way I do things may not work for everyone, but I've never had anyone complain about it either.


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## iserith (Apr 5, 2018)

Oofta said:


> Edition I played most?  Hard to say.  Hours played?  DMed?  Duration of campaign?  I'd guess 3.5 which is also when I stopped bothering with XP soon after I started rewarding XP for non-combat encounters.  I've been playing/DMing 5E since it was released.
> 
> The way I do things may not work for everyone, but I've never had anyone complain about it either.




That sounds about right. In almost all cases, people I've talked to about when they stopped doing standard XP awards was in D&D 3e or 4e. Those who played multiple editions, that is. Chiefly because D&D 3e was a bit cumbersome and D&D 4e because it became a significant problem when characters weren't all the same level or close to it. (I think 3e was the same in that regard as well.) So they either assumed those were both still problems in D&D 5e or didn't remember why they abandoned it in the first place and kept on doing so. That's not always the case with everyone, but there might be something to it.

D&D 3e did have "story awards" for noncombat challenges. Interestingly, it notes: "As a rule, you probably don't want to hand out a lot of experience for these kinds of encounters unless you intentionally want to run a low-combat game." It goes on to remark that unless the PCs do something "impressive," there should be no reward. I think this means that sufficient difficulty must have been overcome to be deserving of a reward as opposed to a "roleplaying award" which is given to players for "playing a role well" - whatever that means - in a way that "enhances the game." These awards seem a lot more ad hoc than the guidelines provided in D&D 5e. The more ad hoc something is, the more easily it can be dismissed as unnecessary it seems to me.

Can you confirm that you are doing something like story-based advancement in your campaign, as defined in the DMG? I don't want to make assumptions.


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## Oofta (Apr 5, 2018)

iserith said:


> Can you confirm that you are doing something like story-based advancement in your campaign, as defined in the DMG? I don't want to make assumptions.





Why does it matter?  As I've stated before, I do leveling based on "chapters" or roughly on number of successful encounters.  Depends on the group preference and the campaign.  But I've been doing it for a few years now, I'm not concerned about the category.  

My only goal/logic/method is to level up in a way that makes sense for the story we're telling.  For me, that means ignoring XP.


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## iserith (Apr 5, 2018)

Oofta said:


> Why does it matter?  As I've stated before, I do leveling based on "chapters" or roughly on number of successful encounters.  Depends on the group preference and the campaign.  But I've been doing it for a few years now, I'm not concerned about the category.
> 
> My only goal/logic/method is to level up in a way that makes sense for the story we're telling.  For me, that means ignoring XP.




Why does it matter? Because this is a discussion and I'm trying to understand your method better and to see if and how it aligns with established approaches. I'm interested in the topic of advancement systems. It's why I'm in this thread.

Story-based advancement in the DMG doesn't use XP and is based on awarding levels for accomplishing "significant goals." That sounds like what you're doing. I'm interested in how you define "encounters" as well.


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## Oofta (Apr 6, 2018)

iserith said:


> Why does it matter? Because this is a discussion and I'm trying to understand your method better and to see if and how it aligns with established approaches. I'm interested in the topic of advancement systems. It's why I'm in this thread.
> 
> Story-based advancement in the DMG doesn't use XP and is based on awarding levels for accomplishing "significant goals." That sounds like what you're doing. I'm interested in how you define "encounters" as well.




Depending on the game, I more-or-less figure out how many combat encounters it would take to level and then consider social and exploration activities as encounters.  I use the same rough logic, a simple social encounter may be a few bluff checks and some RP, a hard social encounter all the PCs at different points, perhaps a few spells and other resources.  

It depends to a certain degree if the group _wants_ an overarching story and goals or just wants to be more carefree and just seeking adventure wherever it may be.  So the former was my "the world is going to end Ragnarok" scenario, the latter was just a "we're in a city, much of which was destroyed during the Ragnarok campaign, lets just have a fun non-linear campaign".


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## Shasarak (Apr 6, 2018)

In my Starfinder campaign last night the Party got:

+400xp for investigating who hired the Downside Kings to kill their Starfinder Society contact, 

+400xp for managing to finesse their way past a couple of guards to get into the Downside Kings nightclub and

+600xp for defeating three gang thugs.

They got 3 Laser pistols, 3 Clubs and 450 Credits.

They were penalised with -2 Laser pistols, -2 Clubs and -300 Credits.


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## Lanefan (Apr 6, 2018)

Imaculata said:


> I guess it all comes down to what sort of atmosphere you're aiming for in your campaign. Are the players a team, or are they individuals?



The PCs, you mean?

They're both.  They're individuals who are, for the time being, part of a team.  Just like players on a football team.


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## Lanefan (Apr 6, 2018)

First off, there seem to be a lot of people here that see xp as a player reward (e.g. no xp for a PC whose player doesn't show up for the game) rather than a reward for what the PC does in the game.  I see xp as purely a PC "reward" for what it does in the game...which means that if a PC does nothing in a given encounter it gets no xp for it.

I almost never stop a session mid-flight to calculate xp unless I know someone's right on the verge of bumping.  Usually I work them out between sessions, or while waiting for the players to arrive on game night; it doesn't usually take very long at all.  And the PCs don't get xp until the in-game morning after they earned them.

PCs without a player for the session are still in the party, and still contributing.  Like [MENTION=6689161]Warpiglet[/MENTION] does, we run such characters as party NPCs (we call them QPCs: Quasi-Player Characters) for that session.

Varying PC levels within a party isn't a problem if you are not playing 3e or 4e (or any derivative thereof).

Lanefan


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## Imaculata (Apr 6, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> The PCs, you mean?




No, I really meant the players. Are they playing together towards a common goal, or is it every man for himself?

And so for me the context is different. Rather than XP being a reward for things the character did, its a reward for things the team did. 

Since I play 3rd edition (3.5 to be precise), keeping all players on the same level is more important for the sake of balance. However, I also don't want any of my players to feel like they are missing out on XP, just because they aren't that good at roleplaying, or they didn't have a good roleplaying moment that the DM wanted to reward with XP. There should be no pressure to be a good roleplayer, just have fun, and if you have a cool moment, the whole group is rewarded. This makes it less of a competition in my opinion. It also creates a nice atmosphere where both the players and the DM reach a mutual agreement regarding what were the roleplaying highlights of the evening.


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## iserith (Apr 6, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> First off, there seem to be a lot of people here that see xp as a player reward (e.g. no xp for a PC whose player doesn't show up for the game) rather than a reward for what the PC does in the game.  I see xp as purely a PC "reward" for what it does in the game...which means that if a PC does nothing in a given encounter it gets no xp for it.




The rules on experience points refer to it as both a reward for the player and character.

In my current campaign, if someone is absent, the character is either not present or fades to the background and gets no XP.


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## iserith (Apr 6, 2018)

Oofta said:


> Depending on the game, I more-or-less figure out how many combat encounters it would take to level and then consider social and exploration activities as encounters.  I use the same rough logic, a simple social encounter may be a few bluff checks and some RP, a hard social encounter all the PCs at different points, perhaps a few spells and other resources.
> 
> It depends to a certain degree if the group _wants_ an overarching story and goals or just wants to be more carefree and just seeking adventure wherever it may be.  So the former was my "the world is going to end Ragnarok" scenario, the latter was just a "we're in a city, much of which was destroyed during the Ragnarok campaign, lets just have a fun non-linear campaign".




Are the players aware ahead of time of approximately how many "encounters" they must overcome before gaining a level?


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## Oofta (Apr 6, 2018)

iserith said:


> Are the players aware ahead of time of approximately how many "encounters" they must overcome before gaining a level?




We always talk about leveling and XP during a session 0 when discussing the type of campaign we want to run.  I don't show them a chart of encounters per level or anything, just let them know that they get gain levels for significant encounters whether they are combat, exploration or social if we decide to use that option.  We also discuss (and revisit) basic concepts such as how quickly they want to advance.

Some people prefer lower level campaigns, others want to have all the fun toys that come with higher levels so I don't have a hard-and-fast rule.


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## iserith (Apr 6, 2018)

Oofta said:


> We always talk about leveling and XP during a session 0 when discussing the type of campaign we want to run.  I don't show them a chart of encounters per level or anything, just let them know that they get gain levels for significant encounters whether they are combat, exploration or social if we decide to use that option.  We also discuss (and revisit) basic concepts such as how quickly they want to advance.
> 
> Some people prefer lower level campaigns, others want to have all the fun toys that come with higher levels so I don't have a hard-and-fast rule.




So in theory by knowing that leveling is tied to number of encounters overcome (if not a specific number), I could modify my play to engage with more encounters per session in order to speed up character advancement.


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## Oofta (Apr 6, 2018)

iserith said:


> So in theory by knowing that leveling is tied to number of encounters overcome (if not a specific number), I could modify my play to engage with more encounters per session in order to speed up character advancement.




Well, yes and no because it depends on how you define encounter.  If you talk to the butcher, the baker and the candle stick maker that doesn't not mean you just had 3 significant encounters.  If I track it at the encounter level, I just jot down some summary notes after the end of the game.  I may have some set pieces/encounters in mind when the game starts but that's no guarantee of what direction the players will take the game.

Much like the pirate's code, it's more of a guideline really.  Being that fuzzy about how things work won't work for everyone of course, but for campaigns that don't have real story arcs it was the simplest solution I could come up with that rewards all pillars of D&D.


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## iserith (Apr 6, 2018)

Oofta said:


> Well, yes and no because it depends on how you define encounter.  If you talk to the butcher, the baker and the candle stick maker that doesn't not mean you just had 3 significant encounters.  If I track it at the encounter level, I just jot down some summary notes after the end of the game.  I may have some set pieces/encounters in mind when the game starts but that's no guarantee of what direction the players will take the game.
> 
> Much like the pirate's code, it's more of a guideline really.  Being that fuzzy about how things work won't work for everyone of course, but for campaigns that don't have real story arcs it was the simplest solution I could come up with that rewards all pillars of D&D.




Right, you defined what you meany by "encounter" upthread, so assuming the players have some notion as to that, plus the fact that getting through more such encounters will result in character advancement, I'm essentially incentivized to seek out those kinds of situations as quickly as possible. Assuming leveling up at a good clip is my goal.


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## Oofta (Apr 6, 2018)

iserith said:


> Right, you defined what you meany by "encounter" upthread, so assuming the players have some notion as to that, plus the fact that getting through more such encounters will result in character advancement, I'm essentially incentivized to seek out those kinds of situations as quickly as possible. Assuming leveling up at a good clip is my goal.




You have to resolve the encounter, so what difference would it make?  You can't just say "Talking to the leader of the rogue's guild is an encounter so I'll check that one off."  You have to find the leader, convince his lackeys you're worth talking to, have a discussion with them, negotiate a price for the information you seek and so on.  Just barrelling into his quarters (assuming you know where they are) saying "hi!" and then leaving doesn't buy you anything.

If by "seek out those kind of situations" you mean play the game in a way that advances the story for the group, then yes.  Guilty as charged.  I want people actively engaged in building the story.


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## iserith (Apr 6, 2018)

Oofta said:


> You have to resolve the encounter, so what difference would it make?  You can't just say "Talking to the leader of the rogue's guild is an encounter so I'll check that one off."  You have to find the leader, convince his lackeys you're worth talking to, have a discussion with them, negotiate a price for the information you seek and so on.  Just barrelling into his quarters (assuming you know where they are) saying "hi!" and then leaving doesn't buy you anything.
> 
> If by "seek out those kind of situations" you mean play the game in a way that advances the story for the group, then yes.  Guilty as charged.  I want people actively engaged in building the story.




Sure, but things like, say, spending session time on shopping or hanging around taverns ordering breakfast are worth nothing in terms of advancement (in general), so my goal would be to get to it in order to advance as quickly as possible. Assuming that's my goal which I think is reasonable one.


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## Satyrn (Apr 6, 2018)

Oofta said:


> If by "seek out those kind of situations" you mean play the game in a way that advances the story for the group, then yes.  Guilty as charged.  I want people actively engaged in building the story.




 [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION], are you trying to encourage Oofta to formalize this method? I can see the foundation of one in what I just quoted.

Like, give 1 XP per "significant encounter,"  and a level every 5-10 XP (or whatever)



. . . perhaps 2 XP for "surviving a hostile encounter without resorting to violence."


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## Caliban (Apr 6, 2018)

iserith said:


> Sure, but things like, say, spending session time on shopping or hanging around taverns ordering breakfast are worth nothing in terms of advancement (in general), so my goal would be to get to it in order to advance as quickly as possible. Assuming that's my goal which I think is reasonable one.



If he can't "game the system" to advance faster, he won't enjoy it.  He doesn't want to engage in the story, he just wants to "win".   

 Which is a valid playstyle,  but one that will likely be frustrated with milestone or chapter based advancement - because it will feel like they have no influence over that aspect of their character.


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## Satyrn (Apr 6, 2018)

Caliban said:


> If he can't "game the system" to advance faster, he won't enjoy it.  He doesn't want to engage in the story, he just wants to "win".
> 
> Which is a valid playstyle,  but one that will likely be frustrated with milestone or chapter based advancement - because it will feel like they have no influence over that aspect of their character.




In milestone or chapter based advancement, wouldn't his influence over that aspect of his character would come with his choice to pursue a milestone or end a chapter as quickly as possible?


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## iserith (Apr 6, 2018)

Satyrn said:


> [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION], are you trying to encourage Oofta to formalize this method? I can see the foundation of one in what I just quoted.
> 
> Like, give 1 XP per "significant encounter,"  and a level every 5-10 XP (or whatever)
> 
> . . . perhaps 2 XP for "surviving a hostile encounter without resorting to violence."




No, just trying to think about how I would perceive the described approach as a player in that game. What am I being incentivized to do? How would I prioritize my goals to optimize character advancement? etc. I don't even favor one method over another, just one the players can understand and that supports the goals of play of the given game. I'm even find with session-based advancement as long as I know how many sessions I need to show up to in order to make the next level. (I'd probably create a nerdy character going for the Perfect Attendance Award.)

I tend to set up my own games to be very strong on theme and whatever mechanics I'm using for the given campaign (including character advancement) are set up to reinforce the theme so as a player in my games, you'd be incentivized to play in a way that further reinforces it. The effect is cumulative in my experience. Like in my Planescape game, it's the _most Planescapey game I've ever played_ (having been a fan since the 90s) - and this despite _none _of the players knowing anything about the setting at all - because I've tweaked the dials of D&D 5e to encourage those outcomes. 

I'd be interested to hear who else does this sort of thing so we can compare experiences.


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## iserith (Apr 6, 2018)

Satyrn said:


> In milestone or chapter based advancement, wouldn't his influence over that aspect of his character would come with his choice to pursue a milestone or end a chapter as quickly as possible?




I don't recommend accepting people's assumptions about how people they don't know actually play.

It's certainly very possible to both optimize one's character advancement and also be "engaged in the story," whatever that means. If the advancement system and "the story" are in sync, it works even better. 

I would have no issue with milestone XP or story-based advancement so long as I was aware of the which events or challenges gave out milestone XP or which significant goals resulted in levels when completed.


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## Caliban (Apr 6, 2018)

Satyrn said:


> In milestone or chapter based advancement, wouldn't his influence over that aspect of his character would come with his choice to pursue a milestone or end a chapter as quickly as possible?




It's a matter of feeling in control.  Unless the DM is running one of the books where the milestones are set in stone and you can predict them, you can feel a lack of control because only the DM knows for sure what qualifies as a "significant encounter" or a "milestone" or "end of chapter" event.   You can't really track your progress, you have to trust the DM to give you level ups.  Some people have no problem with this, while others do.   

He strikes me as someone who very much wants to be in control of things, and automatically tries to assume control.   Telling other people how they should debate (i.e. "that's a weak arguement, you shouldn't use it" or "these people aren't contributing to the discussion in way I like, you should block them"), or the way he has been interrogating Oofta and trying to get him to quantify the level advancement in a game he's not even playing.   

It's all pretty typical of a "Win the game" attitude instead of a "play the game" attitude.   For some people it's all about the race to the end, and not the journey itself.   Different styles of play.


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## Lanefan (Apr 6, 2018)

Imaculata said:


> No, I really meant the players. Are they playing together towards a common goal, or is it every man for himself?
> 
> And so for me the context is different. Rather than XP being a reward for things the character did, its a reward for things the team did.



Which means you're using xp to incentivize teamwork.  Nothing wrong with that provided everyone pulls the rope equally, which doesn't always happen.



> Since I play 3rd edition (3.5 to be precise), keeping all players on the same level is more important for the sake of balance.



Yeah, that's a significant failing of both 3.x and 4e - the power curve is too steep.


> However, I also don't want any of my players to feel like they are missing out on XP, just because they aren't that good at roleplaying, or they didn't have a good roleplaying moment that the DM wanted to reward with XP. There should be no pressure to be a good roleplayer, just have fun, and if you have a cool moment, the whole group is rewarded. This makes it less of a competition in my opinion. It also creates a nice atmosphere where both the players and the DM reach a mutual agreement regarding what were the roleplaying highlights of the evening.



For the most part I've found giving out xp for straight roleplaying (kind of like what's advocated in the 1e DMG) or on any other DM-discretion basis is just bad news waiting to happen, mostly because it's too easy for the DM to play favourites for whatever reason.  It could be the DM likes or dislikes a particular player at the table (I've seen this!), it could be the DM likes or dislikes a particular character, or class(es) e.g. a DM might always tend to give more xp to the martial characters just because she likes martials and wants to overtly or covertly discourage people from playing casters.



			
				iserith said:
			
		

> The rules on experience points refer to it as both a reward for the player and character.



Rulings, not rules.   That's a reference I've chosen to ignore since day 1.



> In my current campaign, if someone is absent, the character is either not present or fades to the background and gets no XP.



While I know there's lots of tables that do it this way, for me it just doesn't make in-game sense that Falstaff is front-and-center most of the time but every so often kinda fades out or wanders off.

Most of the time our sessions end at whatever convenient stopping point we can find - sometimes (like this week) at the end of a round but still in mid-combat!  I already know I'm down a player for next session but that doesn't mean his PCs (some players run two, it's allowed) are suddenly going to stop fighting once next session gets underway.  And so if I get instructions from that player they'll be followed as best they can within reason, and if not then those PCs are at the mercy of whoever ends up playing them...this is a well-known standard procedure in our crew and has been for decades.

Lanefan


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## Satyrn (Apr 6, 2018)

Caliban said:


> It's all pretty typical of a "Win the game" attitude instead of a "play the game" attitude.   For some people it's all about the race to the end, and not the journey itself.   Different styles of play.



I really don't know how you can conclude that it's all about the race to the end for [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] when he spams the board with quotes from the game's books like "if everyone had a good time and created a memorable story, they all win."


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## Oofta (Apr 6, 2018)

iserith said:


> Sure, but things like, say, spending session time on shopping or hanging around taverns ordering breakfast are worth nothing in terms of advancement (in general), so my goal would be to get to it in order to advance as quickly as possible. Assuming that's my goal which I think is reasonable one.




From that perspective, I guess you are correct.  I don't think spending in-game time shopping or ordering breakfast is particularly good use of game time.  Unless there's something unique about the situation such as trying to purchase an item that is particularly difficult to obtain or it's part of the story general housekeeping is done off screen.

I don't see any more need to RP ordering bacon and eggs than I would see a need to RP the visit to the latrine after your morning coffee.  Well, unless there's an oytugh hiding in the latrine of course.  

I haven't done the math for 5E yet but in the past IIRC I broke encounters down into easy, medium and hard with values 1,3,6 respectively. Most non-combat encounters were easy or medium, although sneaking behind enemy lines could count as hard especially if I expected the group to use significant resources in terms of consumables, spells or calling in favors.  Level after you get around 30 points (less for initial levels in 5E).

If I wanted to, I could have a multiplier for different aspects of the game, but like I said I'd rather do that organically by setting up situations than rewarding behaviors I want.


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## Caliban (Apr 6, 2018)

Satyrn said:


> I really don't know how you can conclude that it's all about the race to the end for [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] when he spams the board with quotes from the game's books like "if everyone had a good time and created a memorable story, they all win."




You can quote lots of stuff from books. Doesn't mean you believe it.   He has repeatedly stated he wants to focus on things that advance his character, and not spend time on other things.  Sounds like if he doesn't get rewarded with a tangible sign of character advancement (i.e. XP or a clearly defined "milestone" or level up) he doesn't want to spend time on it.   He's been pretty clear on that. 

In my opinion, of course.  YMMV.


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## Satyrn (Apr 6, 2018)

Caliban said:


> You can quote lots of stuff from books. Doesn't mean you believe it.   He has repeatedly stated he wants to focus on things that advance his character, and not spend time on other things.  Sounds like if he doesn't get rewarded with a tangible sign of character advancement (i.e. XP or a clearly defined "milestone" or level up) he doesn't want to spend time on it.   He's been pretty clear on that.
> 
> In my opinion, of course.  YMMV.




Are there 2 iseriths here? It's like you're describing a completely different guy than the one I see.


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## Caliban (Apr 6, 2018)

Satyrn said:


> Are there 2 iseriths here? It's like you're describing a completely different guy than the one I see.




Whatever you say mate.  He's done everything I've mentioned - it's all here in the forum history for you to read.  I'm not making anything up.  Obviously your mileage has indeed varied from mine.


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## iserith (Apr 6, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> Rulings, not rules.   That's a reference I've chosen to ignore since day 1.




I think the rules are correct. The character increases in power as a result of doing certain things, and the incremental advance toward that increase in power is the reward for the player for having the character do those things.



Lanefan said:


> While I know there's lots of tables that do it this way, for me it just doesn't make in-game sense that Falstaff is front-and-center most of the time but every so often kinda fades out or wanders off.
> 
> Most of the time our sessions end at whatever convenient stopping point we can find - sometimes (like this week) at the end of a round but still in mid-combat!  I already know I'm down a player for next session but that doesn't mean his PCs (some players run two, it's allowed) are suddenly going to stop fighting once next session gets underway.  And so if I get instructions from that player they'll be followed as best they can within reason, and if not then those PCs are at the mercy of whoever ends up playing them...this is a well-known standard procedure in our crew and has been for decades.
> 
> Lanefan




One of the good things about a game that is about storytelling and shares elements with childhood games of make-believe is that the fiction is very mutable. It's therefore typically very easy in my experience to come up with a plausible in-game reason a PC is absent, if you need one, or how the PC fades to the background and is still making the odd comment and helping in various scenes, but isn't mechanically impacting anything (or being impacted mechanically).

Due to using a player pool system to run my campaign, my player roster can change from week to week as can the characters. So I have a lot of experience dealing with this. Tonight, in fact, the insane dwarf clown bard who was with the party last session will not be with the party this session and his seat was taken by a paladin who thinks he's becoming a god. So the clown, Bo Low, will either fade to the background or we'll just say he couldn't stand another moment in the idyllic pastoral community of Ecstasy and had to get back to grimy Sigil. Carl Lagerbelly, the paladin, meanwhile will just turn up from Sigil having caught up with the party and he'll have a reasonable excuse for why he was delayed and missed the debate and battle in the Philosopher's Court. Bo Low will earn no experience tonight, but he also has no chance of being slain by the lurking villain in Ecstasy, nor any of the bad guys and monsters in the Gate-Town of Curst, while the player has no control over him.


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## iserith (Apr 6, 2018)

Oofta said:


> From that perspective, I guess you are correct.  I don't think spending in-game time shopping or ordering breakfast is particularly good use of game time.  Unless there's something unique about the situation such as trying to purchase an item that is particularly difficult to obtain or it's part of the story general housekeeping is done off screen.
> 
> I don't see any more need to RP ordering bacon and eggs than I would see a need to RP the visit to the latrine after your morning coffee.  Well, unless there's an oytugh hiding in the latrine of course.




As an aside, I'm actually writing a short-form scenario that lampoons the breakfast-ordering trope. I've seen so much time getting eaten up on vodcasts (even some very popular ones) with this sort of thing, that I thought I'd create an actual exciting challenge that revolves around ordering breakfast. My working title is "You Fool, You Killed Us By Ordering the Sausage!" I'll post it up once I'm done with it.



Oofta said:


> I haven't done the math for 5E yet but in the past IIRC I broke encounters down into easy, medium and hard with values 1,3,6 respectively. Most non-combat encounters were easy or medium, although sneaking behind enemy lines could count as hard especially if I expected the group to use significant resources in terms of consumables, spells or calling in favors.  Level after you get around 30 points (less for initial levels in 5E).
> 
> If I wanted to, I could have a multiplier for different aspects of the game, but like I said I'd rather do that organically by setting up situations than rewarding behaviors I want.




I think it probably works fine without the points and would only need firming up (to my tastes anyway) with regard to the specific number of encounters and how something was identified as an encounter that counted toward the goal.


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## Satyrn (Apr 6, 2018)

iserith said:


> As an aside, I'm actually writing a short-form scenario that lampoons the breakfast-ordering trope. I've seen so much time getting eaten up on vodcasts (even some very popular ones) with this sort of thing, that I thought I'd create an actual exciting challenge that revolves around ordering breakfast. My working title is "You Fool, You Killed Us By Ordering the Sausage!" I'll post it up once I'm done with it.




Ha! Like the players will stop singing long enough to accomplish anything.


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## Oofta (Apr 6, 2018)

iserith said:


> As an aside, I'm actually writing a short-form scenario that lampoons the breakfast-ordering trope. I've seen so much time getting eaten up on vodcasts (even some very popular ones) with this sort of thing, that I thought I'd create an actual exciting challenge that revolves around ordering breakfast. My working title is "You Fool, You Killed Us By Ordering the Sausage!" I'll post it up once I'm done with it.




Isn't _"You Fool, You Killed Us By Ordering the Sausage!"_ already a country western song? Be careful of copyright infringement!  



iserith said:


> I think it probably works fine without the points and would only need firming up (to my tastes anyway) with regard to the specific number of encounters and how something was identified as an encounter that counted toward the goal.




Yeah, now that I think on it a little more I probably have my total off.  I haven't used the method in 5E yet.  If I get a chance this week I'll run the numbers again.


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## iserith (Apr 6, 2018)

Satyrn said:


> Are there 2 iseriths here? It's like you're describing a completely different guy than the one I see.




The thing is, one can be in total control of one's character, be relentlessly pursuing the things that allow the character to advance, and still be making the game fun for everyone, and helping to create an exciting, memorable story in the doing. These things don't have to be in opposition. With the right advancement system in place, everything can be moving in the same direction towards the goal of winning D&D as the rules define it.


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## Caliban (Apr 6, 2018)

iserith said:


> The thing is, one can be in total control of one's character, be relentlessly pursuing the things that allow the character to advance, and still be making the game fun for everyone, and helping to create an exciting, memorable story in the doing. These things don't have to be in opposition. With the right advancement system in place, everything can be moving in the same direction towards the goal of winning D&D as the rules define it.



See?  Even he agrees.  Just do things to his liking and you won't have any problems.


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## Lanefan (Apr 6, 2018)

iserith said:


> One of the good things about a game that is about storytelling and shares elements with childhood games of make-believe is that the fiction is very mutable. It's therefore typically very easy in my experience to come up with a plausible in-game reason a PC is absent, if you need one, or how the PC fades to the background and is still making the odd comment and helping in various scenes, but isn't mechanically impacting anything (or being impacted mechanically).
> 
> Due to using a player pool system to run my campaign, my player roster can change from week to week as can the characters. So I have a lot of experience dealing with this. Tonight, in fact, the insane dwarf clown bard who was with the party last session will not be with the party this session and his seat was taken by a paladin who thinks he's becoming a god. So the clown, Bo Low, will either fade to the background or we'll just say he couldn't stand another moment in the idyllic pastoral community of Ecstasy and had to get back to grimy Sigil. Carl Lagerbelly, the paladin, meanwhile will just turn up from Sigil having caught up with the party and he'll have a reasonable excuse for why he was delayed and missed the debate and battle in the Philosopher's Court. Bo Low will earn no experience tonight, but he also has no chance of being slain by the lurking villain in Ecstasy, nor any of the bad guys and monsters in the Gate-Town of Curst, while the player has no control over him.



If you're doing a weekend-warrior episodic sort of thing where the party ends up in town at the end of each session then sure, this works well and is easy to explain in-game, as you've done here.

But if you're in a game where each adventure takes multiple sessions and they'll only hit town every few real-world months or so, it ain't so easy to explain in the fiction.


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## Lanefan (Apr 6, 2018)

iserith said:


> The thing is, one can be in total control of one's character, be relentlessly pursuing the things that allow the character to advance, and still be making the game fun for everyone, and helping to create an exciting, memorable story in the doing. These things don't have to be in opposition. With the right advancement system in place, everything can be moving in the same direction towards the goal of winning D&D as the rules define it.



 'Winning' D&D?

That's a thing now?

Did I miss a memo somewhere?


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## iserith (Apr 6, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> 'Winning' D&D?
> 
> That's a thing now?
> 
> Did I miss a memo somewhere?




Basic Rules, page 2: "There’s no winning and losing in the Dungeons & Dragons game—at least, not the way those terms are usually understood. Together, the DM and the players create an exciting story of bold adventurers who confront deadly perils. Sometimes an adventurer might come to a grisly end, torn apart by ferocious monsters or done in by a nefarious villain. Even so, the other adventurers can search for powerful magic to revive their fallen comrade, or the player might choose to create a new character to carry on. The group might fail to complete an adventure successfully, but if everyone had a good time and created a memorable story, they all win."

So yeah, you can "win D&D." You just have to make sure everyone had a good time and created a memorable story. Which is certainly possible while being in control of what your character does and pursuing the things that allow you character to advance. And can even be possible in the face of the characters being defeated or killed trying.


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## iserith (Apr 6, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> If you're doing a weekend-warrior episodic sort of thing where the party ends up in town at the end of each session then sure, this works well and is easy to explain in-game, as you've done here.
> 
> But if you're in a game where each adventure takes multiple sessions and they'll only hit town every few real-world months or so, it ain't so easy to explain in the fiction.




Eh, I've done it in games that are like the ones you describe, too. There are plenty of fictional "outs," if you want them, though I'm not saying you have to.


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## Oofta (Apr 6, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> If you're doing a weekend-warrior episodic sort of thing where the party ends up in town at the end of each session then sure, this works well and is easy to explain in-game, as you've done here.
> 
> But if you're in a game where each adventure takes multiple sessions and they'll only hit town every few real-world months or so, it ain't so easy to explain in the fiction.




I've hit that once or twice.  I decided there was a terrible curse and people were randomly transformed into small forest animals until the next session they were able to attend.  One guy missed several sessions in a row and was followed around for quite a while by a particularly noisy squirrel ... and then by a noisy squirrel with baby squirrels in tow.  

One of the goals of the campaign became breaking the curse.


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## Psikerlord# (Apr 8, 2018)

I agree with the OP. I think AP's are the bane of RPGs. I am very much in favour of unrelated, episodic adventures, and letting the PCs roam free in a sandbox (well, you can pull parts of an AP out and drop them into a sandbox, that's cool, but actually running them from level 1 - 20 is just nope nope nope).

As for leveling I like incremental advances/session advances the best. Ie at the end of a session (or every couple of sessions or whatever), the PC gains (choose or determine randomly) one increase from their next level. 

Otherwise I prefer milestones, or xp for gold. And last xp for monsters (only because, ultimately, it encourages killing everything).


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## Li Shenron (Apr 9, 2018)

jaelis said:


> I don't really understand the conflict here. If the PCs decide to hare off and do something else, you can let them, and then you can provide milestone rewards for whatever they do achieve.




This.

I don't know the details of milestone XP rules but obviously if the PCs don't pick up a quest, they'll get XP from another. 

It's also definitely possible to use both milestone XP and monsters XP in the same game, in case the PCs are giving up too many quests.


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## Delazar78 (Apr 9, 2018)

Got rid of XP a few years back, can't be bothered with the fiddly math. When I run an AP, I give levels as mentioned in the AP. When I run sandbox, I give a level every X sessions. It works for us.

level 2 after 1 session
level 3 after 2 more sessions
level 4 after 3 more sessions
then it's one level every 4 sessions, until level 20
then it's one epic boon every 4 sessions


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