OSR 1 Gp vs 1xp?

[Zardnaar]

BitD my first campaign was BECMI KotBL and the DM did not use the 1xp for 1 gp rule.
Took us a year to hit level 4.

Since then I have used it but I'm playing Castles and Crusades which also does xp for magic items.

Abd I'm running a 1E adventure with 1E levels of loot.
Any advice this level of xp is a bit different from what I'm used to eg 2E.

 

[GreyLord]

I like it better than having to kill everything. You can place higher and more dangerous monsters watching treasure which your party needs to learn how to obtain without engaging the treasure's guardian. You can have other ideas about treasures and things when the objective is to get the gold...not kill it's guardian.

It also allows the DM to control the speed of leveling for the players. You want to slow down how fast they level...reduce how much treasure they are getting. Want to speed it up...increase the amount.

The rules for treasure is sort of like the rules for pirates...

More like...guidelines...if you will.

 

[TerraDave]

It creates an objective but still interesting incentive. It also requires handing out thousands and thousands of gp. You can divide every thing by ten. You can add magic items or milestone awards (which is what I moved to).

But what I recommend is xp for spending. Training, donations, carousing, etc.

 

[FrogReaver]

It creates an objective but still interesting incentive. It also requires handing out thousands and thousands of gp. You can divide every thing by ten. You can add magic items or milestone awards (which is what I moved to).

But what I recommend is xp for spending. Training, donations, carousing, etc.

I like the idea of xp for spending.

 

[Gus L]

Personally I only give XP for "Treasure recovered from the dungeon or wilderness and treasure granted as a bounty or reward" on a 1GP to 1XP basis. I don't give XP for magic items, or overcoming monsters.

If find this keeps my games more focused on finding gold, rather then fighting, though of course the players always quickly find their own goals in the world ... and sometimes that's hunting down monsters.

I am fairly generous with treasure placement, and one needs to be - remember that for a party of six to advance to level 2 they need to recover approximately 12,000 GP (Likely more). To level 3 it's another 12K, Level 4 it's 24k an level 5 it's 48K... so getting a party to level 5 assumes no deaths and around 100K in GP recovered! The question is how long do you as a table want that to take? It becomes especially tricky if you are using cn based encumbrance and coin hordes because I character can usually only manage to carry out about 1000cn in weight per dungeon crawl. If they are carrying silver that's 100 XP... So really treasure logistics and finding gems and jewelry matter a lot.

I've running XP for spent GP before - and it's good, but it does require a more active world and things like training costs or allowing the players to bank gold for larger projects (like strongholds) that still give XP.

 

[overgeeked]

It creates an objective but still interesting incentive. It also requires handing out thousands and thousands of gp. You can divide every thing by ten. You can add magic items or milestone awards (which is what I moved to).

But what I recommend is xp for spending. Training, donations, carousing, etc.

Came here to say this. XP for spending gold works great. It mirrors the sword & sorcery stories D&D is, in part, based on. The PCs earn a heap of money and spend most of it, then in desperation go out and seek more. The key I’ve found is it needs to be non-mechanical stuff, i.e. nothing that would normally go on the character sheet. Rations, weapons, armor, horses, hirelings, etc doesn’t count as XP. Bribes, gifts, donations, tithes, taxes, training, carousing, etc all count as XP.

 

[Zardnaar]

Personally I only give XP for "Treasure recovered from the dungeon or wilderness and treasure granted as a bounty or reward" on a 1GP to 1XP basis. I don't give XP for magic items, or overcoming monsters.

If find this keeps my games more focused on finding gold, rather then fighting, though of course the players always quickly find their own goals in the world ... and sometimes that's hunting down monsters.

I am fairly generous with treasure placement, and one needs to be - remember that for a party of six to advance to level 2 they need to recover approximately 12,000 GP (Likely more). To level 3 it's another 12K, Level 4 it's 24k an level 5 it's 48K... so getting a party to level 5 assumes no deaths and around 100K in GP recovered! The question is how long do you as a table want that to take? It becomes especially tricky if you are using cn based encumbrance and coin hordes because I character can usually only manage to carry out about 1000cn in weight per dungeon crawl. If they are carrying silver that's 100 XP... So really treasure logistics and finding gems and jewelry matter a lot.

I've running XP for spent GP before - and it's good, but it does require a more active world and things like training costs or allowing the players to bank gold for larger projects (like strongholds) that still give XP.

Xp for treasure is kinda new for me but wanted to try it.

1E and C&C do it slightly differently. More book keeping.

 

[Simon Miles]

Rather than handing out XP for GP we run the option of spending GP on training and getting 1gp per XP, this slows progress, but that suits us, but also makes the Guilds more important, keeps the PCs poor (and desperate) and so on. We play OSR/1st edition. We've done it for a LONG time now and we're pretty happy with how it goes. I find XP for GP and the generosity of published Dungeons (like TSR) make advancing too quick and promotes power-gaming over role-playing. Slow progress gives more opportunity for character development, I think.
I also play in a 5th Ed game. The DM in this uses the milestone technique. This means everyone progresses at the same rate which is fairer but, erm, kind of removes some interesting tension in the party...
Just my view though - not promoting it as a fix-all. There's more about it in the Players' Guide to Dunromin.

 

[Mr. Lahey]

I also play in a 5th Ed game. The DM in this uses the milestone technique. This means everyone progresses at the same rate which is fairer but, erm, kind of removes some interesting tension in the party...

Heh, back in my 1e/2e days the discrepancy in character level was definitely something that came up. We didn’t use 1:1 gp for xp, but between the xp amounts needed by different classes, and the different activities that gave xp, it would always create gaps. That’s something I do not miss.

My group and I are the worst kind of grognards and we’d never accept milestone experience, but we always get exactly the same xp in our 5e game.

 

[CleverNickName]

I like the idea of xp for spending.

I don't remember who wrote it or where I found it, but I remember an RPG that had an interesting mechanic for spending XP. Instead of gaining levels, you spent your XP to "buy" things like feats, hit dice, and skill proficiencies. Like, if you wanted an extra d6 of sneak attack damage, you could spend 2,000xp for it...if you wanted another spell slot, they were 1,000xp per level. Or something like that.

I thought it was an interesting way to do a "level-less" RPG.