It seems like a simple question, but the way you answer it may, in effect, determine the metaphysics of your game. Many RPGs use some sort of "experience point" system to model growth and learning. The progenitor of this idea is, of course, Dungeons & Dragons; the Experience Point (XP) system has been a core feature of the game from the beginning.
Yet what exactly an experience point is remains unclear.
Think about it: can anyone earn an XP under the right circumstances? Or must one possess a class? If so, what qualifies an individual for a class? The 1st-edition Dungeon Master’s Guide specifies that henchmen earn 50 percent of the group’s XP award. In other words, they get a full share awarded, but then only "collect" half the share. Where does the other half go? Did it ever exist in the first place?
These esoteric questions were highlighted for me recently when I recreated a 20-year-old D&D character from memory for a new campaign I’m playing in. All I could remember of this character from my high school days was her race and class (half-elf Bladesinger, because I liked the cheese, apparently) and that the campaign fizzled out after only a handful of sessions. If I made it to level 2 back then, I couldn’t rightly say.
I asked my Dungeon Master (DM)—the same fellow who had run the original game for me back in the days of the Clinton administration—whether I could start a level ahead, or at least with a randomly-determined amount of XP (say, 200+2D100). Being the stern taskmaster that he is, he shot down both suggestions, saying instead that I’d be starting at 0 XP and at level 1, just like the rest of the party. As justification, he said that my character had amassed 0 XP for this campaign.
As the character probably only had a few hundred XP to her name to begin with, I let the matter slide. But it did get me thinking: do Experience Points only exist within the context of individual campaigns? Was my DM onto something?
This sort of thinking can in turn lead down quite a rabbit hole. Are classes themselves an arbitrary construct? Do they exist solely for players, or are non-player characters (NPCs) also capable of possessing classes and levels? Different editions of D&D have presented different interpretations of this question, from essentially statting up all NPCs as monsters, with their own boutique abilities (as in the earliest iterations of the game), to granting NPCs levels in "non-adventuring classes" (the famous 20th-level Commoner of 3rd-edition days).
The current edition of D&D has come back around to limiting classes and XP awards to player-characters only—which brings us back to our original question: are Experience Points, like character classes, meant to function solely as an abstract game mechanic, or are they an objective force within the game world? How do you, the reader at home, treat XP in your campaigns?
contributed by David Larkins
Yet what exactly an experience point is remains unclear.
Think about it: can anyone earn an XP under the right circumstances? Or must one possess a class? If so, what qualifies an individual for a class? The 1st-edition Dungeon Master’s Guide specifies that henchmen earn 50 percent of the group’s XP award. In other words, they get a full share awarded, but then only "collect" half the share. Where does the other half go? Did it ever exist in the first place?
These esoteric questions were highlighted for me recently when I recreated a 20-year-old D&D character from memory for a new campaign I’m playing in. All I could remember of this character from my high school days was her race and class (half-elf Bladesinger, because I liked the cheese, apparently) and that the campaign fizzled out after only a handful of sessions. If I made it to level 2 back then, I couldn’t rightly say.
I asked my Dungeon Master (DM)—the same fellow who had run the original game for me back in the days of the Clinton administration—whether I could start a level ahead, or at least with a randomly-determined amount of XP (say, 200+2D100). Being the stern taskmaster that he is, he shot down both suggestions, saying instead that I’d be starting at 0 XP and at level 1, just like the rest of the party. As justification, he said that my character had amassed 0 XP for this campaign.
As the character probably only had a few hundred XP to her name to begin with, I let the matter slide. But it did get me thinking: do Experience Points only exist within the context of individual campaigns? Was my DM onto something?
This sort of thinking can in turn lead down quite a rabbit hole. Are classes themselves an arbitrary construct? Do they exist solely for players, or are non-player characters (NPCs) also capable of possessing classes and levels? Different editions of D&D have presented different interpretations of this question, from essentially statting up all NPCs as monsters, with their own boutique abilities (as in the earliest iterations of the game), to granting NPCs levels in "non-adventuring classes" (the famous 20th-level Commoner of 3rd-edition days).
The current edition of D&D has come back around to limiting classes and XP awards to player-characters only—which brings us back to our original question: are Experience Points, like character classes, meant to function solely as an abstract game mechanic, or are they an objective force within the game world? How do you, the reader at home, treat XP in your campaigns?
contributed by David Larkins
