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Why I dislike Milestone XP
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<blockquote data-quote="Gradine" data-source="post: 7386130" data-attributes="member: 57112"><p>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 <em>refusing</em> to follow it). </p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Gradine, post: 7386130, member: 57112"] 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 [I]refusing[/I] 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). [/QUOTE]
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