D&D 5E Wandering Monsters 01/29/2014:Level Advancement...

[DMZ2112]

That's kind of the opposite of irrelevant. That doesn't mean that you haven't raised some important caveats about the assumptions used to develop the approximation. But that's all that means.

Maybe I'm being too theory-bound. Let me try another approach.

Joe and Jack are both dungeon masters. Joe is still in college and has dedicated players and flexible free time, so his campaign meets as many as four times a week for an average of two hours each time. We all hate Joe.

Jack is a manager at a bank and arguably has more free time than Joe (no homework) but the slow loss of his soul makes motivation on weeknights (and sometimes weekends) a real challenge for him. What's more, some of his middle-aged players have been so foolish as to get married and even spawn. His campaign meets every two weeks for four hours, officially, but misses a lot of sessions.

Mike is the head developer of a popular fantasy roleplaying game. In an attempt to assist less experienced judges refereeing his game, he has published a guideline for players' accumulation of experience points.

This guideline says that gaining a level requires 2,500 XP, that an equivalent-level encounter should award 250 XP, and also that extensive playtesting has demonstrated that an encounter should take about 1 hour to adjudicate. Given an average session length of four hours and a session frequency of one session per week, Mike concludes that 20th level in his RPG is achievable within 1 year (50 weeks).

Now you're expecting me to do math. Ha ha, no, it's a fake out. My question is more simple than that: what value does the following information have to either Joe or Jack?

Given an average session length of four hours and a session frequency of one session per week, Mike concludes that 20th level in his RPG is achievable within 1 year (50 weeks).

What value does this information have to /anyone/ with a schedule even slightly different than one 4-hour session per week? Why should Joe or Jack care?

Level/XP, yes. XP/encounter, yes. Encounters/hour, maybe. But how does any information about hours/session or sessions/(time) help /anybody/ except the imaginary average people?

 

[steeldragons]

Nice try, but tractors don't serve to transport people. Your analogy would have been better if you'd used a picture of a bus.

I thought about it. But thought the tractor showed the more obvious, and yes, I suppose an "extreme" example to get the point across. Since soup to pot pie was too murky. And sure they transport! You can get on a tractor in one place, drive it, get off someplace else. How do you define transport?

But it still doesn't work, because your description--separate from the pictures of tractors--actually describes exactly what has happened to cars. Other than at a very superficial, high level view, there is not one detail that remains the same as it was on the Model T.

...uh...ok, guess I'm looking from a "high level view."

In particular, you're hanging your hat on how XP is awarded and how characters progress, which hasn't even been the same in any version of D&D ever. Why you'd home in on that and say that "it's not D&D anymore if this changes" would therefore seem odd;

OH! I didn't intend to hang my hat on anything. The XP issues simply happen to be the topic of the thread. But I don't believe anywhere I indicated that it was the only change that would change the game into something other than D&D. No. It would be/take many different alterations to different elements.

as the thread has demonstrated, that seems to indicate that starting with 2e (at least) D&D already wasn't D&D anymore, because it got rid of the XP for gold paradigm. Specifically referencing role-playing XP awards is so far off the reservation from the original paradigm that you can't even call it the same system anymore at all.

But if that were the only thing to be changed you might be able to call it "cream of D&D soup" or "D&D stew."

And how about me? Yeah, you said it's totally fine that I play at my table with ad-hoc XP awards and "OK, now it's time to level up" paradigm. Thanks for that, by the way. You have no idea how much it was worrying me that people thought I might be making a mistake somewhere on the internet with how I approach my hobby. But you don't even connect your own dots. Am I not playing D&D anymore, then?

I don't think that's called for. You seem to be inferring some kind of condescension that I certainly wasn't intending.

As to how you play "being/not being D&D", if you're doing that in your own game and, for you and your group, you're playing D&D? Great! It's no skin off my back. For that to be what is in the book, as the default of how XP should be...then no. No moreso than the houserules I've incorporated over the years make up a perfect vision of "D&D" for me and my table should be labeled as "the default way to run D&D."

I think few of the people who do leveling and XP that way would accept that label; that their game is now not-D&D because of a rather minimal impact house-rule that they've adopted.

I get your point that if you change too many things, then it's not recognizable as the same game anymore. Sure.

All analogy fun and ported images aside, that's all I'm trying to say...I think. Which, granted, is a more "big picture"...or "high-level view" as you put it...than simply a "how to do incorporate XP" issue.

But in this case, you seem to be drawing an extremely arbitrary line in the sand around XP awards and leveling. There's plenty of ways to do that. Heck; the fact that it's a subsystem that has been modified and played around with and tweaked with literally every single new edition or version of the game suggests that it's a subsystem that hasn't quite settled into its place yet, either because it does a poor job of meeting its original design intent, or the design intent has changed due to changing priorities amongst the gaming community at large. Or at least the developers perception of such change.

Well, I'm not drawing any lines in any sand, but I agree it is a result of changing priorities, real and/or perceived. I have no issue with XP being presented in a variety of optional forms/sub-systems...and given the alleged purpose and design direction of 5e, they will want to present a number of alternatives so the divergent playstyles can do what they want at their individual tables.

There's no reason XP can't be a list of options, like many of D&D elements over the years, the distribution of treasure suggestions from BECM or AD&D comes to mind, not to mention ability score generation .

Distributing XP in 5e:
Method 1: XP for treasure only.
Method 2: XP for treasure & monsters slain.
Method 3: XP for treasure and adventure challenges (monsters, traps, disease, etc...etc...) defeated .
Method 4: XP for goals/quests achieved.
Method 5: XP for [I dunno] roleplay only.
Method 6: No XP. Level up = Encounters X over Sessions Y...[and take the square root of roleplay.]
Method 7: No XP. Level whenever you [the DM] decide it makes sense for the story.
Method 8: Build Your Own XP System by doling out various % of XP for any or all of the following criteria:
Slay a monster. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Achieving plot arc. . . . . . . . .DM's discretion of enjoyed [by the majority] humor at the table.
Defeat (not necessarily slay) a monster. . . .Defeat a non-"monster" challenge.
1 XP per GP value y. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Defeat of the adventure mastermind/BBEG.
Achieving personal character goal. . . . . . . .DM's discretion of exceptional roleplay. . .
Successful NPC interactions (whatever that entails)....whatever else they can come up with as XP-worthy elements.
Method 9: XP Roulette. XP is doled out or not, level up or not, depending on the session/whatever happens.
Method 10: No XP. Level up whenever you whine to your DM for a minimum of X minutes over Y hours of game time. Electronic complaints (emails, texts, etc...) count as 30 seconds.
etc...etc...etc...

 

[I'm A Banana]

But my point is that this measurement can't possibly be /accurate/. You do need accuracy, because without accuracy you /will/ miss your target. You might as well just make numbers up, which is essentially what the developers would be doing by picking an arbitrary session length and frequency.

First, this presumes that there is a "target" that you must "hit." This is incorrect: there is no target. It's more of a description of a baseline.

Second, the chosen numbers are not arbitrary, but likely represent the market research that WotC has put into their game that tells them things like "length of time spent playing one session."

Forgive another pithy one-liner, but if a measurement is neither accurate nor precise, it's not much of a measurement. If the purpose of the XP/month assumption is not to estimate the amount of XP awarded in a month of my campaign, what purpose is it supposed to serve?

It's a measurement by which you can then calibrate what you do so that you are consciously choosing a pace, or at least become aware of the fallout of the pace you do choose.

 

[Uller]

Level/XP, yes. XP/encounter, yes. Encounters/hour, maybe. But how does any information about hours/session or sessions/(time) help /anybody/ except the imaginary average people?

My 4e group played once per week over lunch and once per month at someone' house. So we played roughly half the "average". In order to allow my players to feel like they were making reasonable progress, I increased xp awards by 50% so we could level up at least every 6 weeks...it worked out okay (or would have except combats took more than an hour). So...I found it useful...not necessary.

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

We do mot use xp at all in my campaign. I tell them when they should advance. I think xp is helpful for non-home campaigns and beginners.....but I do not get why anyone with years of experience cares for xp rules.

I don't get why anyone with years of experience cannot understand that not all groups care for for the same things while playing. In the sandbox style of game we enjoy, XP is a measure of personal power and each player tracks it individually. This is only possible when it's measured objectively, though. To us, people who don't like level as a mechanic for story pacing, and often run games where you can have a level 3 character adventuring side by side with a level 5 one, consistent XP rules are very important.

Cheers,

 

[Savage Wombat]

In the sandbox style of game we enjoy, XP is a measure of personal power and each player tracks it individually. This is only possible when it's measured objectively, though. To us, people who don't like level as a mechanic for story pacing, and often run games where you can have a level 3 character adventuring side by side with a level 5 one, consistent XP rules are very important.

I'll ask you then, since you're a sandboxer. How do you feel about 3e/4e's "treasure by level" rules? Are they something that fits with your game-style or not?

It has occurred to me that the way in which old-school XP is a "reward" for good play is that it gives you the opportunity to overcome harder challenges, which have better rewards in treasure and magic. If an appropriate level of treasure is assumed at every level, your incentive to actively pursue harder challenges is reduced.

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

I'll ask you then, since you're a sandboxer. How do you feel about 3e/4e's "treasure by level" rules? Are they something that fits with your game-style or not?

Whenever I see any "treasure by level" rules in rules systems I run, I make sure to completely ignore them.

Cheers,

 

[pemerton]

in the game we call D&D, XP is what/how you measure advancement. It's the framework on which the game is built.

This is already not true.

4e, for instance, uses XP first and foremost as a measure of encounter difficulty in combat encounter design. In the DMG, it then explains how these XP measures of monster/trap strength can then be translated into rules for PC level gain, but it also flags the option of simply having the players level after X encounters/Y sessions.

The first time I encountered "level when the GM feels like it" was in a 2nd ed AD&D game over 20 years ago. I don't know where that GM got the idea, but he wasn't the greates innovator of all time in other aspects of his play, so I'm guessing that he didn't make it up from whole cloth. (In a game where classes and multi-classing are balanced across varying XP charts there are obvious issues with this, but I don't think they bothered this GM. And he was in good company here: plenty of classic D&D modules said "You'll need X levels worth of PCs to play this module", without noting that a level of paladin costs about twice as many XP as a level of thief.)

XP as a measure of advancement is crucial for Gygaxian play. It can also be important for certain simulationist sensibilities, in which XP earned reflects experience gained by the PCs within the fiction, and hence reflects (in some loose fashion) the learning that the PCs have undergone. But these styles of play haven't been exhaustive of approaches to D&D for probably over 30 years.

is it possible to throw it out and just level when "makes sense"? Sure it is. And as has been stated over and over, many people choose to do so. That's all well and good as that's the joy of table-to-table preference. It's also possible to level up "whenever the DM says so" or [completely foreign to my sensibilities] "when the players say so/want to." That's what folks want to do in their games, that's their [completely valid] choice. That does not translate to "it's what the game should default to do."

The question of what the game should default to is, I would have thought, basically a marketing issue. How should WotC present their game so as to maximise the likelihood of uptake and play by their target market?

This is an empirical question to which I, at least, don't have the answer. But it seems to me that the range of approaches to XP is one of the higher-variety aspects of play, based on the posts I read. (In this respect it seems to resemble alignment - lots of different approaches regularly get expressed in posts - and differ from the core combat mechanics of roll to hit, roll to damage, subtract from hp - I think there is a clear default here of doing it the same way its been done from Gygax through to 4e inclusive.)

People that don't want hard and fast XP charts say "the game shouldn't have XP charts or tell me to use XP this way" whereas the people who do use and want XP charts say they need them. The former will insist "it's easier to add than subtract" which, whether or not a relevant argument for mathematics, is not the same thing when talking about game elements.

I'd be gobsmacked if there was no XP advancement chart in D&Dnext. I would also be gobsmacked if the chart is not uniform across classes. But that doesn't mean that the use of the chart can't be optional, and the rationale for using it or choosing not to use it be set out in a senisble discussion of approaches and playstyles, as is the case in 4e.

I have no questions or qualms with players expecting their characters to advance. That is, after all the whole POINT of the game.

<snip>

I also have no questions or qualms about the players wanting/feeling/expecting that their PCs will be the driving force of the story.

<snip>

My issue is the idea that players want/feel/expect to be entitled to dictate WHEN their PCs should get more cookies and medals.

<snip>

I very much want the latter to be removed from the game.

I'm not sure what it is you're asking to have removed.

For instance: if defeating an orc is worth 100 XP; and the 5 players know that they need 1000 XP each, or 5000 XP in total, to gain a level; then they know that if they defeat 50 orcs they can gain a level. If the PCs then scout out the Caves of Chaos and work out that, in cave X, there are 50 orcs, then they can decide to assaul those caves. And if things go according to plan, they will get their level.

In otherwords, in any situation in which (i) a certain achievement has a certain XP value, and (ii) players are in a position to have their PCs aim at those achievements, then (iii) players are in a position to dictate their XP acquisition.

I don't see how you can remove this from a game in which the players and their PCs are the driving force of the story, unless you remove the players' knowledge of the value of achievements, so that they can't make plans around that information.

I firmly believe this [entitlement] is a cultural computer-age (which yes, includes video games/MMOs) attitude that has arisen to the status of "cultural norm" in the past couple of decades. In that view, it is not a D&D or RPG thing, but runs far deeper and simply exhibits itself in RPGs as a result.

I don't agree with this at all. The players dictating when they got their cookies and medals was at the core of Gygaxian play, as described by him in his PHB: as players, first you scout out and work out what treasures (= XP, in that edition) are where; then you plan expeditions to go and get it. And assuming you play well, your expeditions will succeed and you'll get the treasure (= XP, in that edition) that you were aiming for.

In Gygaxian play, only unskilled players don't try and dictate their own rate of progression and leave it up to random chance - for instance, by simply fighting whatever they encounter, by not using divination magic and sages to work out where the best treasures are, etc.

4e removes the "skilled play" aspect of this, because it removes the "scouting" aspect of play and simply mandates that certain treasures (= player power-ups without the intermediation of XP, in that edition) is accrued per level. But I don't think hat has anything to do with "entitlement". As [MENTION=2205]Hobo[/MENTION] said, it's about changing sensibilities in fantasy RPGers - since some time in the late 70s and early 80s, a good number of them - perhaps even the majority - have not been wargamers, and so aren't that interested in the "skilled play" idea.

 

[pemerton]

You might as well just make numbers up, which is essentially what the developers would be doing by picking an arbitrary session length and frequency.

As [MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION] has said, I think they'll be using market research, not just making it up.

If the game is constructed that it takes that long...then that's how long it takes. But maybe another group can settle the encounter in half the time...or needs twice the time!

<snip>

How is "helpful description of the assumptions...help[ing you] anticipate the rough shape [you] can expect..." not a "guideline for advancement"?

<snip>

Again, how is "Approximate information [that] is still helpful for planning" not, similarly, a "guideline"?

If I am planning to walk from A to B, and ask someone who has already done the walk how long it took them, that is helpful information. It's not a guideline, though: it's not a normative rule for conduct. It's information about someone else's experience which can help me make predictions about my own likely experiences.

For instance, if the rulebooks say that the typical group games once a week for 4 hours, and that such a group is likely to progess to 20th level in a year-and-a-half of play, then I can work some things out straight away: eg if I game every fortnight, and I'm only planning to run the game for a year, and I want to get to 20th level, I might need either to start the game around 10th level or to double the rate of advancement from whatever the default is. That's useful information.

Joe and Jack are both dungeon masters. Joe is still in college and has dedicated players and flexible free time, so his campaign meets as many as four times a week for an average of two hours each time.

<snip>

Jack is a manager at a bank and arguably has more free time than Joe (no homework) but the slow loss of his soul makes motivation on weeknights (and sometimes weekends) a real challenge for him. What's more, some of his middle-aged players have been so foolish as to get married and even spawn. His campaign meets every two weeks for four hours, officially, but misses a lot of sessions.

<snip>

This guideline says that gaining a level requires 2,500 XP, that an equivalent-level encounter should award 250 XP, and also that extensive playtesting has demonstrated that an encounter should take about 1 hour to adjudicate. Given an average session length of four hours and a session frequency of one session per week, Mike concludes that 20th level in his RPG is achievable within 1 year (50 weeks).

Now you're expecting me to do math.

<sip>

What value does this information have to /anyone/ with a schedule even slightly different than one 4-hour session per week? Why should Joe or Jack care?

Level/XP, yes. XP/encounter, yes. Encounters/hour, maybe. But how does any information about hours/session or sessions/(time) help /anybody/ except the imaginary average people?

If the purpose of the XP/month assumption is not to estimate the amount of XP awarded in a month of my campaign, what purpose is it supposed to serve?

Two responses.

First, and hoping not to be too blunt (or rude) I think to some extent you're splitting hairs here. In a game intended to be played in a somewhat open-ended fashion, with the participants expected to make significant real-time commitments over an extended period of play, the more ways the rules find of communicating those expectations the better: so tell us encouters per hour, and some idea about typical level gain per year (to save me doing the maths and giving me another perspective on the overall issue), etc. As in my example above (and [MENTION=413]Uller[/MENTION] gives an example from actual play experience) I can use the model of play in the rulebook to make predications and adjustments for my own play if I want to.

But second (and related, and probably more important) I think having the designers tell me how long they expect a campaign to last overall, in real time, can be helpful. It tells me how the designers expected their game to be played. For instance, if they expect encounters to last for an hour, and I find at my table that they're lasting more than that, I know that I might have to take steps either (i) to speed things up, or (ii) to find ways to make encounters more interesting than the designers are defaulting to, because they have to hold the interest of the group for longer.

Or if, looking at the desinger's numbers and description, I learn that they expect the typical published module to last one month, so you'll get through 10 to 12 per year; but I can work out that for my group we'll probalby be spending half the year in the same module; then I know that I better choose the most interesting, varied module out there because my group won't be getting the novelty of changing modules regularly that the designers assumed would be the case.

This is some of the stuff that I think can be helpful if the designers tell me about the default assumptions around which they've designed. (A contrast: Gygax built his time rules around the assumptions (i) that the players would have a stable of PCs, though this was no where spelled out except with some hints in the intro to the PHB, and (ii) that the GM would be running the campaign every day, with those able to play turning up and doing so, although this was not spelled out at all. Being ignorant of these assumptions for my first 20 or so years of playing, I simply could never make sense of Gygax's rules on the passage of time, nor other aspects of his advice on campaign design. D&Dnext shouldn't be making these sorts of rookie mistakes.)

 

[GMMichael]

Mike is the head developer of a popular fantasy roleplaying game. In an attempt to assist less experienced judges refereeing his game, he has published a guideline for players' accumulation of experience points.

I'm flattered. But it's not popular, yet.

This is already not true.

4e, for instance, uses XP first and foremost as a measure of encounter difficulty in combat encounter design. In the DMG, it then explains how these XP measures of monster/trap strength can then be translated into rules for PC level gain, but it also flags the option of simply having the players level after X encounters/Y sessions.

The first time I encountered "level when the GM feels like it" was in a 2nd ed AD&D game over 20 years ago. I don't know where that GM got the idea, but he wasn't the greates innovator of all time in other aspects of his play, so I'm guessing that he didn't make it up from whole cloth. (In a game where classes and multi-classing are balanced across varying XP charts there are obvious issues with this, but I don't think they bothered this GM. And he was in good company here: plenty of classic D&D modules said "You'll need X levels worth of PCs to play this module", without noting that a level of paladin costs about twice as many XP as a level of thief.)

XP as a measure of advancement is crucial for Gygaxian play. It can also be important for certain simulationist sensibilities, in which XP earned reflects experience gained by the PCs within the fiction, and hence reflects (in some loose fashion) the learning that the PCs have undergone. But these styles of play haven't been exhaustive of approaches to D&D for probably over 30 years.

The question of what the game should default to is, I would have thought, basically a marketing issue. How should WotC present their game so as to maximise the likelihood of uptake and play by their target market?

This is an empirical question to which I, at least, don't have the answer. But it seems to me that the range of approaches to XP is one of the higher-variety aspects of play, based on the posts I read. (In this respect it seems to resemble alignment - lots of different approaches regularly get expressed in posts - and differ from the core combat mechanics of roll to hit, roll to damage, subtract from hp - I think there is a clear default here of doing it the same way its been done from Gygax through to 4e inclusive.)

I'd be gobsmacked if there was no XP advancement chart in D&Dnext. I would also be gobsmacked if the chart is not uniform across classes. But that doesn't mean that the use of the chart can't be optional, and the rationale for using it or choosing not to use it be set out in a senisble discussion of approaches and playstyles, as is the case in 4e.

I'm not sure what it is you're asking to have removed.

For instance: if defeating an orc is worth 100 XP; and the 5 players know that they need 1000 XP each, or 5000 XP in total, to gain a level; then they know that if they defeat 50 orcs they can gain a level. If the PCs then scout out the Caves of Chaos and work out that, in cave X, there are 50 orcs, then they can decide to assaul those caves. And if things go according to plan, they will get their level.

In otherwords, in any situation in which (i) a certain achievement has a certain XP value, and (ii) players are in a position to have their PCs aim at those achievements, then (iii) players are in a position to dictate their XP acquisition.

I don't see how you can remove this from a game in which the players and their PCs are the driving force of the story, unless you remove the players' knowledge of the value of achievements, so that they can't make plans around that information.

I don't agree with this at all. The players dictating when they got their cookies and medals was at the core of Gygaxian play, as described by him in his PHB: as players, first you scout out and work out what treasures (= XP, in that edition) are where; then you plan expeditions to go and get it. And assuming you play well, your expeditions will succeed and you'll get the treasure (= XP, in that edition) that you were aiming for.

In Gygaxian play, only unskilled players don't try and dictate their own rate of progression and leave it up to random chance - for instance, by simply fighting whatever they encounter, by not using divination magic and sages to work out where the best treasures are, etc.

4e removes the "skilled play" aspect of this, because it removes the "scouting" aspect of play and simply mandates that certain treasures (= player power-ups without the intermediation of XP, in that edition) is accrued per level. But I don't think hat has anything to do with "entitlement". As @Hobo said, it's about changing sensibilities in fantasy RPGers - since some time in the late 70s and early 80s, a good number of them - perhaps even the majority - have not been wargamers, and so aren't that interested in the "skilled play" idea.

This is a good example of why I didn't include experience points in Modos RPG.