I definitely don’t think it’s just lazy folks who dislike it. I just think the benefits, though significant, are easy to overlook, and the drawbacks, though minor, are very obvious. But of course, everyone has their own preferences, nothing wrong with that.
6 by my count. 6 medium encounters, anyway; it would be fewer if you mix some hard and/or deadly ones in there, and more if you mix in some easy and/or trivial.
It can be any kind of encounter with or without XP. And counting encounters functionally is XP, it’s just a less granular XP system.
My count is 6 to get to levels 2 and 3, 12 to to level 4, 15 to get to levels 5 through 11, and 10 to get to levels 12 through 20. Assuming all Medium encounters for the party’s level. The benefit of the more granular XP system of 5e compared to this is that it takes more encounters if they’re easier and fewer if they’re hard.
Even tho I feel it is better to count encounters for the purposes of players leveling, I still use creature rating as a DM to estimate a level appropriate combat encounter.
Could you elaborate on some of those obvious benefits and drawbacks? I'm drawing a blank.
Surprisingly, the results of the math can vary slightly, depending on method. But all approximate each other well enough that the ballpark is clear. And the DM can and should modify the number of encounters according to taste. We like to zoom thru level 1 and the apprentice tier. But stretch out tiers 5-8 and 9-12.
Yes, exactly, counting encounters is effectively counting xp.
We kinda talked about this in the other game -- if you have XP triggers that are misaligned with what you want from the game, it will be, well, misaligned. Realign your triggers and you'll see better results. It's all about the incentives.
Yeah, that definitely works. I still like the greater granularity of XP, but this is a solid alternative.
For me, it's "for best results, remove XP entirely."
Im cool with jettisoning levels too. They are great for that good ol D&D feeling, but not necessary.
Well, the benefits of XP, which I would argue are not obvious (or, to be more precise, not apparent - they’re easy enough to understand theoretically, harder to directly observe their impact on the experience) are that it provides a highly effective incentive structure, and that it gives players a clear indicator of progress towards advancement, which is deeply viscerally satisfying. The former is I think more obvious but also more controversial - I’ve seen people say “I don’t want to incentivize the players towards or away from anything in particular,” and while that viewpoint is very strange to me, it’s a perfectly legitimate preference to have. The latter benefit I think is far less apparent, but also far more impactful. You may not notice much direct benefit from the progress bar effect, but your brain will.
And, as we discussed, you still moved the triggers for leveling, you just removed the player facing information system (XP) when you did so. So, in talking about removing XP you're doing really only one thing, removing information from the player's side of the game. Again, as we discussed in that other thread, this can be absolutely for the good, but, as with any change, it should be considered. Then you have the changing the incentives. What you described doing removed the immediate feedback information channel from the players (THIS action gets THIS reward incentive loop) and then changed to "I, the GM, think they've done enough" as the incentive structure. That incentive structure moves the players' incentives from specific actions in game (kill monsters, get XP) to a more general "follow what the GM wants." Again, as I said before, this can absolutely lead to good outcomes if it's something the table enjoys. And I've absolutely run, fairly recently, 5e in exactly this style -- I don't hand out XP, but I tell you when you've leveled, and that's when you've crossed the selected story thresholds (I ran SKT like this).
Yeah, this is what bugs me about the “I don’t want to incentivize or disincentivize anything in particular” position. Everything you do is going to create incentives, whether you want it to or not. Better, in my view, to be intentional with the incentives you’re creating. And maybe that does mean story-based advancement. Certainly if you want players to follow the story, that’s a good choice. Or maybe session-based advancement, if you just want to incentivize players to show up to the game every week and do as they will in-game. But still, better to make that choice consciously and intentionally.
Again, everything you do creates incentives whether you want it to or not. May as well choose what you incentivize.Some folks need to be lead by a nose I guess.
This is an interesting statement, given how, in the other thread, we discussed and agreed that moving to a milestone or story award system reduces agency for players. This is simply because moving to one of these systems obfuscates what earns rewards (levels) and so makes it harder for players to make meaningful choices with regard to taking actions toward earning those rewards. It's a small decrease, and I think one that absolutely can be worthwhile, especially if it's traded for increased tightness on story and pacing if that's what the table wants (ie, good story and exciting pacing). But it's a reduction in agency. So it's hard to see how a game that features XP systems -- that gives clear indicators of how and why a player can earn the rewards of leveling (or whatever) can be said to be leading players by the nose for giving them clear vision of the incentives of the game. It's not like story awards remove incentives, they just move them around and essentially make them "get to the arbitrary line the GM has set." This latter is really just teaching players to follow plot hooks and plots. Which is fine, again, and can be tons of fun. When I used milestone/story award levelling, it was absolutely to encourage following the plot hooks because levels came from resolving/advancing those.Some folks need to be lead by a nose I guess.
They'd be more motivated, but in the wrong way: they'd start playing specifically to level up rather than just play and have level-up occur as an occasional side effect.
I do, I incentivize everything by removing XP entirely.
It reduces the paths forward for the players. They focus on what gives XP and minimize what doesn't. It just so happens that what doesn't can squeeze into the grand canyon in D&D XP through the editions.
To me the clearest and greatest benefit of (individual) xp is that the characters who do the most (and-or take the greatest risks) earn the most and thus advance a bit quicker than the characters who don't do as much and thus don't earn as much. This one thing alone is why I'll keep using xp as long as I'm DMing.
Well, either that or you're incentivizing nothing; and IMO it's a very open question which result removing xp would lead to.
This assumes - perhaps rightly in some cases - that the players' main reason for playing is to level up their characters. In a game where level-ups happen frequently, I can see how this mindset would arise; but in games like mine where advancement is very slow and level-ups are merely an occasional pleasant side effect of play, the main reason for play becomes instead the simple enjoyment of the day-to-day play.
