Cry Foul or Fair?

[DWARF]

Well, I don't know if it's advice or not, but here's my little story.

I DM'ed a lot, nearly exclusively for a few years, burned out once or twice but always came back later. Then I ran a really good game, currently on hiatus for the summer, and managed to get myself into a game as a player. Now we play every week or two and it's great.

I have a lot of DM skills that I've used to build my character. I have a huge backstory, not so much detailed and overblown as realistic, IMHO. I keep a fairly long journal, two pages per session usually. Heck, I even made a leather bound, wood panelled book for my character's journal and add the printed sheets (with a handwriting font) every time I have new entries.

Now I've done all this and do you know how much more Xp I get because of it? 0, None. I'm not doing this to gain more Xp or have a stronger, better character. I'm doing all this because it makes the game more fun for me, I have more invested in it. Now if the DM wants to know what date so-and-so happened, I can pop my book opn and look it up. Now I have a book that sits on the table, that I can write in as we go. Heck, if I get killed, or someone goes through my things, they could even read it.

So I guess my advice for Kastil would be to ask yourself WHY you're writing journal entries for the DM. Are you doing it to better immerse yourself in the game, or are you just doing it for the Xp?

 

[drnuncheon]

As to the Diplomacy thing....seems 3.5E says it takes a full minute to do. GAH!

You can do it faster, but at a -10 penalty.

J

 

[S'mon]

Personally I give out variable XP for all kinds of stuff and I'm ok with a level gap of 3 levels or so. D&D 3e's exponential power gradient does make GMing for varying-level parties difficult, though. If a DM gives everyone the same XP (or even just levels them all up arbitrarily) and that's the known policy, fair enough. Saying he gives varying XP and then not doing it is wrong, though.

 

[billd91]

Personally I give out variable XP for all kinds of stuff and I'm ok with a level gap of 3 levels or so. D&D 3e's exponential power gradient does make GMing for varying-level parties difficult, though. If a DM gives everyone the same XP (or even just levels them all up arbitrarily) and that's the known policy, fair enough. Saying he gives varying XP and then not doing it is wrong, though.

As DM, I too don't like giving out differing XPs to the PCs though it inevitably happens when players can't make it to a session or two. I try to keep them within a level or two of each other, absolutely. I don't want people badly falling behind because it makes my job worse and, given the relatively brittle nature of characters in 3E compared to earlier editions, makes it hard on the lower level characters as well.

But, if a DM sets the players' expectations and fails to see it through, that's not fair. He should reset the expectations if he doesn't intend to follow through or decides, ultimately, that it's bad for the party as a whole to continue to follow through.

 

[Zogg]

Three words:

Too. Much. Meta.

Frankly, it sounds like Kastil needs to be a DM. Even more frankly, I think she's a control freak. She really has no right to know about everyone else's XP and unless her DM is handing her a quality assurance survey she needs to keep the unsolicited whining to a minimum. Furthermore, airing your dirty laundry on a webpage that you know your DM will visit is bad form.

Judgment for the Defendant, Demmero.

 

[Cybern]

I both play and DM, and we've had these problems before. In 2e, the more monsters you killed, the more XP you got. We usually used a % of dam / % of XP system, wich in the long run favored wizards... until Combat and Tactics.

Now we use the 3/3.5 XP/CR system, but until Star Wars D20 came out, I had no idea how to put a CR on non-combat situations. Since we played other games (white-wolf, shadowrun etc.), we started giving XP based on good roleplaying. It seems that when you give XP on RP bases, some player will get many while some won't. I never encouraged 3rd person RP (My character tells him ...), and my NPC often respond to these sentences (What character? 'You nuts?). Some people can talk in strange ways, use accents, move around as their characters, while others sit still and talk in a monotonous tone. Good in-game RP gets XP IMC. I once had a player who did a mute character, so he wouldn't loose time RPing. Cutting back on XP didn't deter him from his style, and never would I have given him his equal share of the xp.

Also, thinking IN CHARACTER gets XP. A player who don't want to act charmed while charmed gets a penalty IMC, and I don't wait until the end of the session to tell him (You just lost 500 there, you are charmed, so don't treat the goblin like a monster).

However, I never gave XP based on some journal or somesuch, my girlfriend always finds time to write journals and lengthy background, and she never got 1xp for it. Why? Some of us struggle each week to find time to game, and are not to be penalized IMC for this. If you like it that way, fine, but the XP gotten for it must NOT overshadow the XP for good roleplaying/thinking in-character/showing up motivated/...

I think that if you don't give XP bonuses for RPing, but assign CRs to some situations (let go of him, he's innocent), then some PC will start to filter useless scenes and CR'ed scenes. Bad, I say bad.

just my .02 CAN $

 

[Bagpuss]

I don't XP for RP and yet my group can still spend the whole session without seeking out monsters to kill for XP. It is a roleplaying game we are playing after all not a hunt the XP game.

 

[Cybern]

I don't XP for RP and yet my group can still spend the whole session without seeking out monsters to kill for XP. It is a roleplaying game we are playing after all not a hunt the XP game.

Yeah, but in our games, we sometime come to long in-party arguments, and we seem to have the most fun when our characters argue, while all the players agree. So, if after a 4h-long session the DM says:

"We all had a great time, let me calculate the XP.... no XP, since there was no CR. See you next time".

How would players react? I pretty much prefer to get XP for RP rather than for rolling dices.

Maybe I shouldn't have played non-D&D games....

EDIT: Or should the DM cut in the players when they talk (IC) too much, so the "game" gets going ? (... )

 

[billd91]

"We all had a great time, let me calculate the XP.... no XP, since there was no CR. See you next time".

How would players react? I pretty much prefer to get XP for RP rather than for rolling dices.

I think your DM deserves a wedgie for this (or, dare I say it, the Dreaded Rear Admiral). Any time the players show up and play, I think, they deserve some experience points. Maybe not as much as if you'd actually gotten something accomplished, but I'd send you away with something. If you all had a good time but got absolutely nothing out of it in game, then you might as well have been having a good time over a pitcher of beer instead of gaming.

 

[Demmero]

Three words:

Too. Much. Meta.

Frankly, it sounds like Kastil needs to be a DM. Even more frankly, I think she's a control freak. She really has no right to know about everyone else's XP and unless her DM is handing her a quality assurance survey she needs to keep the unsolicited whining to a minimum. Furthermore, airing your dirty laundry on a webpage that you know your DM will visit is bad form.

Judgment for the Defendant, Demmero.

Aw, she's not that bad.... Our game is an online one, and I email everyone their own XP totals separately. Kastil's player's XP total was in the 3,050 range (just leveled up to 3rd), and the other player in question reaped a large XP award from the battle-heavy session I ran while Kas & the hubby were on vacation. Perhaps the players compare notes on their own (and that's their prerogative IMHO), but I think Kas just noticed that all of a sudden this other character (who never posts to the MB for extra XPs) was rolling 3rd-level hps, which meant that player was likely even or maybe even ahead of her in XPs. I can understand her reaction to that.

Still, I appreciate the judgment in my favor. You should've suggested levying a fine, though; -500 XPs sounds pretty appropriate...