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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sunseeker" data-source="post: 7364682">Part of the potential disconnect between you and some of this conversation seems to be you talking about "your game" which you admit is something of a different beast than "the game" which is the stuff that comes printed in the books.If you say a "Class" is a banana and I say a "Class" is a tomato, and the book says a "Class" is a watermelon then we're going to have a problem with our discourse since only one of these definitions is actually accurate: the books.  The only problem I have with generic things like "class goals" is that they imply certain things.  That there is a universality to common elements of the game.  Does that mean there are "race goals"?  What do characters who are uninterested in these universal goals do?  Are they punished for not seeking them out?If you are interested in other people's answers, in short, yes, for 3 reasons.1: Shared experience points mean that when others win, you win.  It puts "group" over "individual" which I think is important in group-based gameplay.  2: Class, working off above as defined by the book, says little about your character beyond what you are good at.  You may want to get better at it, you may want to discover new ways of doing things.  Those sorts of decisions should be made by the players, not their choice in race, class, background or other mechanical elements.3: Participation is difficult to judge.  If everyone comes to the table ready to play and Joe and Frank roll several lucky crits and the bat guys roll several unlucky misses and combat goes smoothly, James the healer may not need to do any actual healing.  Or, maybe Joe and Frank roll some terrible misses and the enemies get several lucky crits, but when James goes to roll his healing dice, it all comes up very low.  Do we reward James less in the second scenario because his dice rolled poorly?  Do we reward James less in the first scenario because his services were not needed today?I dislike this argument for many, many reasons, most of which cannot be discussed here as they are political in nature.Fundamentally, it hinges on player greed as a motivating factor to succeed.There are plenty of things to motivator players to be outstanding, and IMO, few of them are "more experience points".  Here's an example: In the game I'm in, way back when, my PC gained 2.7 million experience points.  Just me.  The DM was doing individual XP at the time.  How did I achieve this ridiculous number of experience points?  I slapped a boss monster with a black hole.  Why did I do this?  Well, it wasn't because I wanted the spotlight or because I wanted to be amazing, but it was because the the boss monster was an on-again off-again ally with our group, generally treating our characters poorly while demanding we undertake extreme quests and risk death for little reward and said quests got my character killed once (It was only a setback!), so my character had a bone to pick with this guy.  We came across some "black hole stuff" which I stole a small container off and then threw it in this guy's face (I crit, yay!).  He died, I gained 2.7 million XP (we were like, level 10 and he was some insane class level +ancient dragon nonsense, it was a gonzo campaign, but still).  The incentive of "getting this guy back" was a completely in-game developed incentive, having no bearing on XP at all.  I would have been happy if I had gained no XP for it if just for the fact that I showed him what for! But back to the greed thing.  Greed is a motivator for some, but makes role-playing non-greedy characters difficult.  If every character is out there to step on the others just to get their extra helping of XP, you're going to end up with a very disfunctional party.  And what of the guy who just wants to be a generally good-natured helpful sort?  That guy for whom greed and more time in the spotlight does nothing for?  Do they just get nothing while Greedy Joe steps on everyone else to get ahead?That doesn't to me, seem to generate a very positive play experience.</blockquote>

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