My group has mostly used Milestone leveling in 5E since we tended to chafe at the notion that killing things made you stronger, which tended to lead to situations where players would make moves to gain XP mechanically rather than doing things organically in the moment.
However, we also found that we missed the notion of using XP as a motivational tool the DM could employ. As a result, in recent sessions I have switched to a new method which has gone over extremely well in our group, so I thought I'd share it.
I call it Simple XP. The basic premise is that it always costs a player 100XP to gain a level. We tried 10, but it wasn't quite granular enough to get the desired result.
Players gain XP in-session at the table for doing things that the DM enjoys, respects, or feels was in-character enough for an award. Such things can be good roleplaying, rejecting metagame knowledge because the character wouldn't know the info, coming up with a clever plan, or completing a personal goal. The list goes on, but I think you get the basic idea.
And then at the end of the session, the DM awards a lump sum of XP to everyone based on how much was accomplished in the session. You can tweak this depending on how quickly you like your players to level, but my general rule of thumb is that everyone gets 10XP for showing up to the session, and +10XP for every party goal completed during the session. (maybe 20 or 30 XP for a particularly important goal) This allows the DM a chance to throttle party XP in such a way that they generally end up leveling in line with where the milestones would be anyway, while also offering the psychological bonus of awarding XP.
It's not a perfect system. A couple potential issues have arisen, which have been discussed with my group. The first is that it is possible for a player to level before another player. I think with the way the math works in 5E, this is OK. My table agrees.
Another potential issue is that players who miss sessions might fall behind. I always give XP to any missing players equal to the lowest number that any present player received to keep them in line with the rest of the group.
A third potential issue that we didn't find until we tried it is that players found the bookkeeping annoying - especially the ones who were using tablets for their character sheets on D&D Beyond. After the first session, I pillaged a board game (7 Wonders) for some coin tokens, and placed them into some finger bowls around the table. So now, every time I tell a player, "take an XP," They grab a coin. At the end of the session, they update their sheets with the coins + the session XP. This has completely eliminated the bookkeeping annoyance.
As for the positives, I find it very gratifying as a DM when a player who may have been a mechanics-only bystander in RP-heavy scenes starts to participate because they know that there could be an XP award for taking part. This has led to a lot more inter-party chatter at the table, which has led to a lot of fun moments that otherwise may have been missed.
And as much as players get that psychological endorphin rush from getting XP, I find that as a DM, I get it just as much from giving it out. As this has gone on, I've been awarding more and more for little things as my players have gotten more into it.
Does anybody else have any other alternate XP systems they have used to good effect? Can you explain how they work and why they add to fun at the table?
However, we also found that we missed the notion of using XP as a motivational tool the DM could employ. As a result, in recent sessions I have switched to a new method which has gone over extremely well in our group, so I thought I'd share it.
I call it Simple XP. The basic premise is that it always costs a player 100XP to gain a level. We tried 10, but it wasn't quite granular enough to get the desired result.
Players gain XP in-session at the table for doing things that the DM enjoys, respects, or feels was in-character enough for an award. Such things can be good roleplaying, rejecting metagame knowledge because the character wouldn't know the info, coming up with a clever plan, or completing a personal goal. The list goes on, but I think you get the basic idea.
And then at the end of the session, the DM awards a lump sum of XP to everyone based on how much was accomplished in the session. You can tweak this depending on how quickly you like your players to level, but my general rule of thumb is that everyone gets 10XP for showing up to the session, and +10XP for every party goal completed during the session. (maybe 20 or 30 XP for a particularly important goal) This allows the DM a chance to throttle party XP in such a way that they generally end up leveling in line with where the milestones would be anyway, while also offering the psychological bonus of awarding XP.
It's not a perfect system. A couple potential issues have arisen, which have been discussed with my group. The first is that it is possible for a player to level before another player. I think with the way the math works in 5E, this is OK. My table agrees.
Another potential issue is that players who miss sessions might fall behind. I always give XP to any missing players equal to the lowest number that any present player received to keep them in line with the rest of the group.
A third potential issue that we didn't find until we tried it is that players found the bookkeeping annoying - especially the ones who were using tablets for their character sheets on D&D Beyond. After the first session, I pillaged a board game (7 Wonders) for some coin tokens, and placed them into some finger bowls around the table. So now, every time I tell a player, "take an XP," They grab a coin. At the end of the session, they update their sheets with the coins + the session XP. This has completely eliminated the bookkeeping annoyance.
As for the positives, I find it very gratifying as a DM when a player who may have been a mechanics-only bystander in RP-heavy scenes starts to participate because they know that there could be an XP award for taking part. This has led to a lot more inter-party chatter at the table, which has led to a lot of fun moments that otherwise may have been missed.
And as much as players get that psychological endorphin rush from getting XP, I find that as a DM, I get it just as much from giving it out. As this has gone on, I've been awarding more and more for little things as my players have gotten more into it.
Does anybody else have any other alternate XP systems they have used to good effect? Can you explain how they work and why they add to fun at the table?
