# What's my motivation?!



## Hand of Evil (Oct 2, 2013)

XP...took me a second that this was not a windows thread.  

Use it by whatever name it may be called.


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## pemerton (Oct 3, 2013)

I use XP by the book in a 4e game, which means it's not really an incentive at all - basically as long as you are engaging the ingame situation, you get XP at about the rate of one encounter's worth of XP per hour or so (whether via combat, or skill challenge, or the DMG2 free roleplaying awards, topped up by quest XP here and there). Playing session of 3-4 hours, it takes my group 3 to 4 sessions to level up.

A far as I can tell, the actual motivation for the players to play their PCs in interesting ways is generated via (i) presenting them with interesting and challenging ingame situations and (ii) using a system, and adjudicating within that system, in a way that rewards rather than punishes the players for engaging ("say yes", "fail forward" and the like).


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## Dannyalcatraz (Oct 3, 2013)

How I award XP depends on what Game we're playing and the people at the table.  Sometimes, its by the book, be it individually tracked or group awards.  Other times, its more like the scoring system in a _Top Gear_ challenge.


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## Ahnehnois (Oct 3, 2013)

I don't use XP. I just level up characters at some arbitrary point when there's a break in action.

It has very little effect on my game, other than greatly reduced bookkeeping. Even when I used XP, I did so in ad hoc fashion. Players didn't pay it much mind. Using the XP system in the rules never made any sense and was never on the table; I imagine if I did use it, it could only create a distraction from the game I'm running.


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## Storminator (Oct 3, 2013)

I have bailed on XP. I'm trying (with various levels of success) to devolve game responsibility to my players. One of the things I've handed over is leveling. My players tell me when they level up. Generally that's as soon as they get tired of their powers and want more.  

In another campaign, the monthly Mutants and Masterminds game I started and Piratecat took over, there's no character advancement at all. There's also basically no plot advancement. It's also among the best RPG "campaigns" ever. People really bring their A game every night. I'm pretty sure that once you get a good group of players that all want to make the game night as good as possible DMing becomes pretty simple. 

PS


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## Jhaelen (Oct 7, 2013)

I stopped granting XP when I started DMing D&D 4e. I still use them internally, though, i.e. to calculate encounter difficulty.


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## Umbran (Oct 7, 2013)

In Classic Deadlands, there aren't XP and levels - the system is point buy.   So, I don't have the easy out of just saying, "You go up a level."  What's more, the points are linked to the systems action point mechanic. 

Players draw chips from a pool (and more chips may be handed out by the GM for a variety of reasons).  Chips that don't get used in action can be traded in for Bounty Points - the points used for character advancement.  And that makes some sense - chips can be used to make you awesome, either by giving you permanent advancement or by altering die rolls and such.  

I've found the system to be rather flawed for my group.  You draw from the pool at the beginning of every session (a refresh), and then the GM can give out more chips.  But, that's really designed for the traditional six to eight hour session.  I'm running short weeknight sessions, so in effect the players are drawing ships about twice as often as the system really intends.  My solution has been to drastically reduce (almost eliminate) chips given out in play.  My other basic choice would be to only draw from the hat once every other session, but that seemed to be a greater bookeeping burden.


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## dd.stevenson (Oct 8, 2013)

One of the features of early D&D is that different classes level up at different XP values. Thus, I can't say, "OK, everyone's level 2 now" because a thief and a wizard level up at different xp values and putting them together would strip a balancing mechanism from the game.

Luckily, everyone in the group is fine spreadsheeting it. It wouldn't be so bad if not for the polynomial increases as the levels rise--that's one thing that a lot of OSR games have fixed.


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## Lwaxy (Oct 27, 2013)

Umbran I give out chips whenever a certain in-game time has passed AND they have been doing something and not just sitting around.

I generally avoid XP, too


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## Argyle King (Oct 27, 2013)

Many of the games I play don't have levels or XP in the same way that D&D does, so I'm not entirely sure how to answer.

GURPS does have character points, and I suppose that would be something akin the XP.  The Dungeon Fantasy series does give a general guideline about rewarding CP based on challenges faced.  Though, with it being a point buy system, it's hard to say "ok, just level up."  I suppose I could say "ok, everybody add 20 points worth of abilities to your character."  

In a few GURPS campaigns I've run, I've played without CP at all, and the way characters gained things was by seeking out those things in play.  For example, if you wanted to gain the Ally Advantage, you would do so by engaging the in-game world; choices you'd make could gain you allies (or enemies.)  Likewise, if you wanted to learn a secret martial arts technique, you'd have to seek out someone who knew that and spend time learning it.  That doesn't mean the group would necessarily play out all the downtime; it simply means there were times when I'd say something like "ok, you guys have two months before you need to go visit the king, what do you do until then?"  Alternatively, it may be the PCs who choose to take some downtime and hone their skills instead of charging right into the next dungeon crawl.

In a similar fashion, Star Wars Edge of The Empire is also a point buy system.  Points aren't tied to level and combat encounter in the same way they are for D&D.  The system is built in such a way that the story tends to be where your points do come from.  Certainly there are times when the story involves combat, and there are rewards for that, but, in general, I find the system seems to flow very smoothly.

Why I mention both of those first is because I find that many of the times when I have played D&D and have done so without XP, it was done in an effort to make things appear more story appropriate rather than feeling so beholden to XP, levels, and the various other elements of D&D's metagame.  It helped to fix some of the problems I had with D&D and play expectations of D&D, but, after playing D&D, I've found that those problems were somewhat unique to D&D.  I didn't need to drop character points and other forms of advancement in other games because they already seemed to be built in such a way to help facilitate what I was trying to do.

What exactly I do when I run a D&D game depends upon the group and what manner of game I want to run.  If it's with a group who expects D&D style advancement or if I'm running an off the cuff game, I usually keep XP and the normal way of doing things.  I keep it because there is a subset of D&D players who prefer a tangible amount of "money" to measure character power, success, and progress with.  In an "off the cuff" game, I keep it because it's a shared baseline to help me get an impromptu game moving in a direction which is easily recognizable by everyone in the group.  I'll also say that I tend to use XP in a D&D game when I don't have a solid story in mind; in those cases, I use the structure of the game to guide me toward what elements to use (appropriate challenges for the PCs) and then make an attempt to extract a story from those choices to string everything together.  

In general, I find D&D style XP to be a form of linear measurement.  In a game which is expected to be somewhat linear, it helps and makes sense.  If the group or GM wants something less linear, it helps to break away from XP as an important part of the game.  In systems which are built around different ideals, D&D style XP doesn't really make sense at all, and, usually, the points or whatever those games use are built in such a way to reflect different needs.

Anyway, to answer the OP:  Yes, I play without XP quite often.


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## WayneLigon (Oct 28, 2013)

The last few times I've done Pathfinder, I've stopped bothering with XP and use the kind of rough estimates you see in the Paizo adventure paths (by the time the PC's are ready to tackle x, they should be y level). 

In the past, I've noticed a much decreased emphasis on combat once the older players (as in, how long they've played games) stop doing a rough mental tally of where they are, XP-wise.


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