Experience Points: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

[Ariosto]

Chaosium's method of "skill checks" and training (varying a bit from game to game) did not implicitly assume any particular campaign focus -- although the skills list for a game did that somewhat. It gave a sense of verisimilitude more than any "genre feel." The probabilistic element worked pretty well with a variety of separately tracked factors, but might seem too random if applied to a single heavily weighted factor such as character level. For that matter, some people find it too variable even as applied.

One can change the character of an XP system by changing the award scheme. Dave Hargrave's table (in The Arduin Grimoire) seemed to me to reflect a theme of "memorability" as opposed to the D&D focus on value of treasure.

 

[Ariosto]

XP for treasure in D&D was a way to structure the game. All sorts of things could happen along the way to securing a trove, the placement of which in the environment roughly determined the difficulty of getting it in various ways. If the players identified or created an easier or less risky way than some other, they could get a better return on investment in terms of getting experience levels.

The risk:reward ratio for fighting (especially with Wandering Monsters) was poor, so there was incentive to avoid it if one could come up with less dangerous ways to get big treasures -- which might well include social-interaction role-playing. To the extent that such role-playing was not dangerous to characters, lack of a direct XP award was no strong incentive to avoid it.

People who enjoy role-playing will engage in it. Those who don't might be "forced" to do so for points, but that's hardly conducive to a fun game for them (which may in turn affect the pleasure of others at the table).

 

[Wik]

XP for treasure in D&D was a way to structure the game. All sorts of things could happen along the way to securing a trove, the placement of which in the environment roughly determined the difficulty of getting it in various ways. If the players identified or created an easier or less risky way than some other, they could get a better return on investment in terms of getting experience levels.

The risk:reward ratio for fighting (especially with Wandering Monsters) was poor, so there was incentive to avoid it if one could come up with less dangerous ways to get big treasures -- which might well include social-interaction role-playing. To the extent that such role-playing was not dangerous to characters, lack of a direct XP award was no strong incentive to avoid it.

People who enjoy role-playing will engage in it. Those who don't might be "forced" to do so for points, but that's hardly conducive to a fun game for them (which may in turn affect the pleasure of others at the table).

The big "but" here is that treasure does not give XP in all versions of D&D. in 3e, for example, the bulk of your XP was coming from killing monsters.

In my experience, treasure was not necessary for levelling a character after 1e. In fact, in 2e, treasure was pretty useless at times (you can't buy magic items in the assumed setting, and most of your adventuring gear was fairly cheap. Really, once you hit 5th level or so, every cent of your treasure went towards building that inevitable stronghold, whether you wanted it or not).

 

[Zelligars Apprentice]

* The original Gamma World had no levelling mechanic - PCs improved only through the gear they received, and through mutations they may acquire during play.

Slight nitpick: The first edition of Gamma World DID have a leveling mechanic. You got xp by defeating monsters, getting treasure (maybe, not sure about this one) and figuring out artifacts. Every time you accumulated a certain number of xp (on a chart that looked a lot like an xp chart out of D&D) you got a random benefit (bonuses to various stats, bonuses to hit, etc.).

 

[Lanefan]

XP for treasure in D&D was a way to structure the game. All sorts of things could happen along the way to securing a trove, the placement of which in the environment roughly determined the difficulty of getting it in various ways. If the players identified or created an easier or less risky way than some other, they could get a better return on investment in terms of getting experience levels.

The risk:reward ratio for fighting (especially with Wandering Monsters) was poor, so there was incentive to avoid it if one could come up with less dangerous ways to get big treasures -- which might well include social-interaction role-playing. To the extent that such role-playing was not dangerous to characters, lack of a direct XP award was no strong incentive to avoid it.

You know, before I even started DMing our crew had scrapped the ExP-for-treasure rule, and thus I've never really thought about this as a possible consequence before. Interesting.

The main benefit to removing ExP-for-g.p. was to slow down level advancement. That said, it's probably had a subtle but deep influence on how we approach encounters.

The bulk of the ExP I give out are for combat; there's also infrequently some for overcoming challenges (solving a riddle, picking a particularly tough lock, information gathering, etc., usually dependent on whether I remember to make a note of it at the time); rarely there's some for doing something unusually intelligent or wise as a group; and after each adventure there's a "dungeon bonus" usually based on whether the mission was completed and ratio-ed by how many days you were involved for. But most of it is for combat.

I don't want to put ExP-for-g.p. back in; my players are greedy enough as it is, they certainly don't need any more encouragement! And trying to give straight ExP-for-role-playing would require me to take far more careful notes during the game than I usually do (thus bogging things down); never mind that I worry it'd favour both the louder players and brasher characters more than it should.

So what other measures might there be? (I'm talking 1e here, but this is probably an edition-neutral question)

Lanefan

 

[Ariosto]

One thing I like about treasure is that it's an "XP token" easy to relate in terms that make some sense as being existent and desirable even from the characters' perspective. Protagonists in sword-and-sorcery fiction may not have much practical use for material wealth -- pretty typically, they end one adventure with a king's ransom only to start the next penniless (and, perhaps not coincidentally, hungover) -- but piles of gold and gems as big as your fist are the stuff of glorious tales. They're better, anyway, than "I Survived The Dungeons of Doom And All I Got Was This T-Shirt."

It works nicely to take assignment of XP to individual players out of my hands. The players themselves divvy up treasure.

All you really need is some way (A) to spread "packets" of XP around the milieu, and (B) to convey their locations and (at least approximate) values to players.

Perhaps by "original Gamma World," Wik meant 1st. ed. Metamorphosis Alpha.

 

[Wik]

Slight nitpick: The first edition of Gamma World DID have a leveling mechanic. You got xp by defeating monsters, getting treasure (maybe, not sure about this one) and figuring out artifacts. Every time you accumulated a certain number of xp (on a chart that looked a lot like an xp chart out of D&D) you got a random benefit (bonuses to various stats, bonuses to hit, etc.).

I was under the belief that those tables were an optional rule add-on? Maybe I'm wrong.

I sort of assumed they were not "core" rules, but were more along the way of "weapon types vs. armour types" in 2e, for example.

 

[insanogeddon]

Awards

"There are games though that want PCs to do one thing but reward XP for other things. Or the game totally doesn't get what people want to do when they play the game and reward the characters for the wrong actions. "


I think in some ways you need not reward what is already expected/the case.

In 1st ed it WAS story oriented. Playing in character, weaving your way into the DMs story made you part of the tapestry of fate and severly increased you chances of survival as well as the rewards the story brought.

Story already had a reward system.

Combat did not. It needed its own reward system: XP.

XP for story/creative play was initially viewed as something that if tied to an XP system would lead to less colourful, less creative, less role playing.
I wonder if time will show them as visionary?

 

[Ariosto]

Role-playing can mean different things, but the one I think is most central to D&D is simply the way one plays the game -- in the sense that pushing cardboard chits across a hex grid is the way one plays Rise and Decline of the Third Reich. Either it's so fundamental that the notion of making it something to be judged separately seems silly, or the game has been transformed into something that won't feel like D&D to me.

The more "thespian" meaning can be either delightful or a drag. That goes both for a given player and for the others either treated or subjected to the performance. That his character happens to be a Bard does not make a player Shakespeare!

 

[Calabar]

My outlook on this may be a bit skewed. Though members have come and gone, I’ve been gaming with basically the same group since 1979. As such my experience may well be different from the typical gamer. When we first started playing RPGs XP was a big deal. When we leveled we gained new skills, new spells and in general were better able to kick ass. But even at the height of our focus on XP I don’t remember having any problems with the system such as were listed in the original post.

* Experience points are rewarded only for certain actions in game. this reinforces a certain play type.*
While this was true, it certainly didn’t discourage us from enjoying lots of different activities that didn’t directly award experience.

* The actual spending of Experience points (or levelling up, in many cases) interrupts game play.*
This was rarely an issue for us and generally only happened if someone forgot to level up between game sessions. And often that someone would choose to level up on the fly as we continued adventuring.

* Some settings are really not served by experience points.*
While this may be true, those settings usually don’t use XP to start with so that’s not been an issue for us either.

* As the game progresses (or sometimes, even at the start), the number of experience points awarded increases.*
As long as we wrote down how much XP the GM gave us this wasn’t an issue either, as the math itself certainly wasn’t a problem.

*in a game where XP are spent to improve your character, the costs are never really balanced, which will favour certain builds over others.*
As none of the games we played had the players attacking each other this hasn’t been an issue either. We always play as a group trying to achieve mutual goals. If one character was more powerful than another it really didn’t mater. In fact, we have sometimes piled as many magic items on a single tank like character as we could and used him as a battering ram. I’m sure it made the GM’s job harder, but it was a lot of fun. I think our GM regretted giving our party that minotaur NPC when we started giving him most of the magic items we found to toughen him up. *smiles*

For the last few campaigns, experience points haven’t really mattered. We played 3.5 D&D, Paizo’s beta D&D system and we are currently playing a Warhammer Fantasy RPG campaign. In all three games we’ve basically had fun with our characters and our GM has given us XP when he feels he needs to. This has worked out well for us and hasn’t really changed how we play. Just as before we have game sessions where one combat can take the entire night, sessions where combat dice are never rolled and more often than not we have a mixture of both. Experience points are useful for allowing our characters to progress, but they aren’t the focal point of our gaming.