What is the essence of D&D

[Garthanos]

My intention was more to address what I felt was a mischaracterization of my play style.

That's cool no problem. You only jumped to doing it to mine once. I felt the implications of gold reward did make greed the dominant motivation and it was enumerated many times by Gygax and co that was actually the goal in a sense to get characters to act like Conan and Grey Mouser and so on.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Heh, I am soooo glad that back in the day, the people I played with were never so pedantic as to read that paragraph about treasure "recovered" and presume that meant that reward treasure wasn't part of xp.

Couldn't "recovered" also imply taken or lost, first. So the monster has to steal your gold, first, then you get exp for recovering it, right?

 

[Garthanos]

Couldn't "recovered" also imply taken or lost, first. So the monster has to steal your gold, first, then you get exp for recovering it, right?

Or maybe recovered from the aristocracy wh is keeping those bar maids from being a source of experience

Sorry had to phrase it that way

 

[Lanefan]

The average number of combats in a day out there in the wild is 2 based on WOTC own polls. Now sure it wouldnt be for the trivialities of 2 orcs in a room.

My own experience tells me that (other than 1st level) the higher level a party gets the fewer combats per day it has; largely I think because the foes higher-level parties tend to face often proportionally drain more resources out of the party per battle.

 

[Lanefan]

You see if in an adventure you to rob a trinket ... say you were counting coup on some adversary (political perhaps) you might get zero experience points in 1e or Oe for a very interesting adventure.

This doesn't entirely parse but I think you're trying to say that in a system where xp can come from treasure and-or combat there'll be some adventure types that stand to produce little to no xp for the characters - do I have that right?

If yes, I posit this might not always be a bad thing (for example, it slows down advancement for those as wants it slower); and if it is a bad thing the DM can always find another means of granting some xp to the party be it by a 'mission bonus' or some random-but-not-random magic effect or whatever.

And I think 1e has a system whereby some xp can be earned for good and-or in-alignment roleplay...I say 'I think' as even though I've run a 1e variant for 35 years I've never used that system and probably only read its write-up in the DMG once or twice.

 

[Lanefan]

For my games, experience is supposed to be a measure of the challenges faced by the party.

When you look at treasure types, the more powerful monsters typically have more valuable treasure types. Likewise, the dungeon stocking rules place stronger monsters on lower levels and more treasure as a result.

I don't use xp-for-gp but even if I did I still wouldn't tie treasure and challenge level that tightly together.

Sometimes a weak group of monsters has a great treasure (and often don't know what they have!). Other times a spectacularly powerful monster might have no treasure at all. Other times yet a monster's treasure might be tens if not hundreds of miles from where said monster is encountered by the PCs - classic examples are dragons (who keep their treasure in their lairs) and raiders or pirates (who keep their non-combat-aiding treasure at home base).

 

[Tony Vargas]

My own experience tells me that (other than 1st level) the higher level a party gets the fewer combats per day it has; largely I think because the foes higher-level parties tend to face often proportionally drain more resources out of the party per battle.

Or because such foes are literally fewer and further between.

And I think 1e has a system whereby some xp can be earned for good and-or in-alignment roleplay...I say 'I think' as even though I've run a 1e variant for 35 years I've never used that system and probably only read its write-up in the DMG once or twice.

I used a % bonus to earned exp system for RP. I don't recall where I saw it.

I also gave 1/2 exp for avoiding or escaping a monster... the first time... then half of that...etc...
...the balance when you finally got around to killing it.