Can you earn experience points for your comrades?

Lanefan said:

What stops the party from kicking you out is that by the time this becomes apparent you're probably one of the senior party members; meaning you've become a large part of the deciding factor around who stays and who goes, should it ever get to that point.

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Well, I meant "kick you out" in the sense of "They stop working with you to go off and adventure on their own, without you in charge." IE: desertion. I suppose you could try to kill them? That'd be a kinda jerk move unless it was more of a mutiny/rebellion. I suppose you could become an antagonist? That might be fun. But this hinges on the DM wanting to run a "split party", which is generally frowned upon.

Unless you go with them and hang in the background.

But even half a share every time is going to add up rather nicely.

Lanefan

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And I posit this because as a player, it really wouldn't bother me. I like to kill things and loot stuff just fine. If you're having fun making plans that make the killing go faster and the looting go smoother, we're all winning right?

But I mean fundamentally this is why I use group XP. If everyone holds up their niche, we all win. Individual XP falls down into minor variations ie: "luck of the dice", which as a DM, I don't feel worth tracking. If the difference between Joe and Bob is 100xp out of 2000, I'm not terribly concerned with that difference. Ideally if everyone is pulling their weight, they'll all earn about the same anyway. So, might as well just divvy it up evenly.

5ekyu said:

Lanefan said:

* - a simple example might be a vital-to-pass door known or assumed to be trapped, all attempts at disarming it have failed, and the party have no means of summoning anything to set it off or opening the door remotely meaning a PC has to do it.

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So players and GM have created a situation where there is only one option, "vital" removing the go do other stuff, to what they can now do and are arguing over who does this "one true thing that must be done" and somehow a different XP system is the key to preventing this?

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An xp system that somewhat rewards those who take the risk over those who do not might encourage someone to take the plunge, yes.

What happened to "dont put one way only" as a vital thing as an option?

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Sometimes there's alternate means of achieving the same end. Sometimes there are not. And sometimes the party only think there are not because they've flat-out failed to notice that there are.

How many of your party key decisions or impasses in character do you want chosen by out of character player side "this way gives more xp"?

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Ideally none, but it's probably unavoidable that it'll happen now and then. That said, if the way that looks like it'll produce more xp also has - or appears to have - more risk attached then the choice both in and out of character simply becomes one of whether or not to take the risk.

DMMike said:

Ideally, a player would have some sort of character in mind to play, and choose a class goal that he agrees with. So there's no punishment involved - the class goal is something the player sees his character doing in any event.

No, there would be no race goals, because being a race is not something that you improve (although it's possible).

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To me that's a bit of an odd concept, effectively restricting role-playing in ways I wouldn't enjoy. Playing a fighter grown weary of battles, only relying on combat as a last resort? "Not in my game, sir!".

Having said that, there's precedent to that line of thinking: In Earthdawn, all player characters are 'adepts'. They don't choose their discipline (aka class), they're chosen by it! They have magical talents allowing them to excel in the activities they are meant to perform. Here's a good description of this idea. To quote the most important aspects of it:

Each discipline is also a philosophy, a way of life - truly requiring dedication and focus to follow. Each expression of that philosophy is personal, though often passed from master to apprentice. What this means is that there are certain behaviors which are expected and those which are largely prohibited. Falling outside of these expectations will put the adept into a crisis where their talents will begin to fail them.

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Now this is a more palatable concept for me that actually serves as a source of good roleplaying: It turns playing conflicted characters into an interesting challenge and rewards coming up with clever combinations of disciplines with some synergistic goals.

The Earthdawn rules also feature sources of individual xp (but afair, not the concept of gaining xp for comrades). It's okay, though, since xp are actually expended for a variety of things, not just increasing talent ranks, and thus they don't always translate into a higher circle (aka level). So, it's possible to keep a party at the same 'level' despite widely different amounts of xp earned.

Lanefan said:

An xp system that somewhat rewards those who take the risk over those who do not might encourage someone to take the plunge, yes.

Sometimes there's alternate means of achieving the same end. Sometimes there are not. And sometimes the party only think there are not because they've flat-out failed to notice that there are.

Ideally none, but it's probably unavoidable that it'll happen now and then. That said, if the way that looks like it'll produce more xp also has - or appears to have - more risk attached then the choice both in and out of character simply becomes one of whether or not to take the risk.

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"That said, if the way that looks like it'll produce more xp also has - or appears to have - more risk attached then the choice both in and out of character simply becomes one of whether or not to take the risk."

In character "this option is riskier"

Out of character " this way is riskier but provides more xp"

Thats not two choices about taking risk as much as its hoping players make in game in character choices for out of game reasons. In many cases, that is not normally deemed a desirable role playing system goal.

"Lets take the riskier choice" would parabus etcetera be consider the bad choice, not the one deserving of out of character reward (exception noted for character personality etc)

Now, that is of course different from in-game, in character having the riskier goal **also** result in more in-game results, like say rescuing hostages and stealing the macgufgin, where you have the in-gane rewards as the in-character yemptation and no XP bonus is needed to "encourage" obe course over the others. Maybe they take a, maybe they take b... each provides different levels of risk and outcome the character can weigh without need for the player to step out of character to decide.

I have found with advancement totally divorced from choices and decisions and paths... Its no problem at all as GM to provide tough choices, rish-v-reward, etc etc etc given the characters and settings having motivations, goals, objectives, needs, energencies and even fears - even if it does for some boil down to greed.

I would suggest that your obe way vital door whammy debate/arguement is more a case of no in-game ties between that vital door and character specific interest. Add in an NPC one character wants to impress or a clear case of "best guy for the job" ( Joe is resistant to that damage), a history of blessings in-game given by gods of courage and sacrifice or even just a setup of "will get first crack at whats on the other side" and a reason that would scratch a character or twod itch...

I recall a discussion with the designer of Amber, diceless, where he was asked "how resolve equal scores" and his response was "why give yourself that headache. Dont give equal scores. Problem avoided."

So, similarly, if the need for xp out of character bonuses is to encourage one to step up to resolve impasses where the situation is both vital **and** has no in-character elements to encourage one or the other... I suggest the better approach is to save that development time and game by game implementation time for the sub-system and use it to add more "personal to characters" flavor to these situations.

I have myself rarely if ever found the need to resort to put of game incentives to push outcomes along ways i want.