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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Water Bob" data-source="post: 5533497" data-attributes="member: 92305">It took me a while to get a handle on how much XP to award since, in the Conan RPG, XP is strictly up to the GM.  It's story based, not combat based. You want to be able to give out awards.  I try to do it at the beginning of each game session, giving me time between sessions to digest the previous game's happenings.  You want to make sure your players don't advance too fast, though.  They shouldn't advance as fast as they would in a D&D game (i.e. go into a dungeon on the first game session, play three nights, and come out 3rd level). If you do that, your PCs are going to be high level in no time. What I use as a rule fo thumb:  1000 XP = about what an averge person will earn in one game year. 25 XP and 50 XP are common in my game.  If I'm about to give out a 500 XP award, I ask myself, "Did what they face earn them the same amount of XP that it takes the normal person six months to get?" The answer is usually "no", and I lower my award to 100 XP or so.   OTOH, I will also skip large blocks of time during the campaign.  I might say, "OK, it's one year later, and so-and-so is..." When this happens, I award the PCs XP for all the time we didn't play.  I give them what the common, average character would earn.  If it's a year I skip, then I give them 1000 XP for all the little stuff they would have learned.   It seems a little bit backward, I know, to award the PCs 100 XP for the fight of their lives and then turn around and give the same character 1000 XP for doing nothing but skipping ahead a year. I find the players don't balk too much at it, though.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />  They dig getting the XP.  If someone asks, "I killed a Vanir rader and got only 25 XP, but I simply wait a year and I get 1000 XP?" I'll answer that most people are constantly learning something.  A character may be a hunter, so he's gaining XP here and there, while he's out hunting and such. Most people grow, on average, between 2-3 XP points per day.  Somedays, you get nothing and somedays, you track a  wild boar and learn something from your experience--still getting your 2-3 XP a day.    I don't change the XP awards, either.  The higher a PC grows, the slower he will grow.  The goal is to get into the 4-6 range and play most of the campaign in that range--and still have the players feel like they're not stagnated. So, you want your players to grow...you just don't want them to grow too fast, either.</blockquote>

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