D&D 5E DM Quits The Game

[Lanefan]

I'm lost - you are saying it's easy to catch up to the rest of the group in an XP system that inherently has characters of equal XP at differing levels (within a range of about 4, typically)

First off, there's nothing at all wrong with having some level variance within the party; and there's a whole lot of logical reasons why it might happen. A variance of 4 levels is about as wide as I've seen it get (excluding henches and hirelings), but a variance of 2 or 3 is very common. Having everyone always be the same level seems a bit forced.

If the variance is 5 or more there's usually going to be a good in-game reason for it; an example: I'm in a game that unfortunately doesn't get played very often where one of my characters was 5th level and the rest of the party was 8th-11th; my other is 10th. The in-game reasons were twofold: one, he's either betrothed to or already married to (it's unclear which, long story) the 11th-level character; and two, it seems he's for some reason essential for the story.

He's caught up a bit - he's 7th now and the rest are 9th-11th.

it's completely backwards from my experiences, especially once you include the rules for dying and returning to life.

Err...huh? In pre-3e a death-revival cycle didn't affect your level or xp at all other than not getting xp for things that happened while you were dead; but it did cost you a Con point. It was 3e that brought in level loss (well, after a fashion) as a death-revival thing.

Lan-"he even tried to retire when last in town, they had to use magic to haul him along"-efan

 

[Imaculata]

To each his own, as I see it, rewarding group experience doesn’t encourage team work, it discourages individual creativity, and limits the character’s roleplaying contribution to the storyline.

That is absurd. My players feel more encouraged towards individual creativity than ever before, because they know that it isn't a contest between who is the best role player. I don't want them to worry about experience, and want them to focus on the story. This is exactly why I've made exp rewards party wide.

Also, experience variance isn’t a punishment. It’s a differentiation of contribution. You want more xp contribute more, if you don’t care contribute less. Besides, the reality is over time it all balances out, because one day John may be very active, but the next he won’t be. He’ll get lots of xp one day, and the next he’ll get less.

Yes it is punishment. Because the DM judges who has contributed, and who hasn't. So an arbitrary decision causes the players to be at different experience levels. That is a negative reinforcement. You are basically telling your players that they didn't contribute enough to get more experience.

I do the exact opposite, I reward them, rather than using the stick. There's no competition, everyone reaps the same rewards. This allows them to not worry about who is contributing, and who isn't, and simply focus on the story.

Having everyone always be the same level seems a bit forced.

How so? Why would you even want your players to level up at different moments? It takes long enough for players to level up their character. I'm glad that they all level up at the same time in my campaign. It maintains a level playing field.

 

[Sunseeker]

That is absurd. My players feel more encouraged towards individual creativity than ever before, because they know that it isn't a contest between who is the best role player. I don't want them to worry about experience, and want them to focus on the story. This is exactly why I've made exp rewards party wide.

Absolutely! I honestly can't take Demonspell's position seriously. The goal is for the party to succeed. Not for each player to succeed. The success of the player depends on the party, and the success of the party depends on the success of the players. And I sure as heck don't want the DM judging my "creativity".

Yes it is punishment. Because the DM judges who has contributed, and who hasn't. So an arbitrary decision causes the players to be at different experience levels. That is a negative reinforcement. You are basically telling your players that they didn't contribute enough to get more experience.

I do the exact opposite, I reward them, rather than using the stick. There's no competition, everyone reaps the same rewards. This allows them to not worry about who is contributing, and who isn't, and simply focus on the story.

110% agreed. Worse yet, some classes are more capable of contributing to more situations than others. See: Rogue, Druid, Utility Wizard. This turns the game into a race for who can push the button first. Everyone scrambling over each other to get the in and out of game glory. When you reward everyone for a single member's success, it IME leads to parties working more cooperatively. Also the "well you just need to contribute more!" attitude completely disgusts me. Aside from going back to letting the DM determine who "contributed more" and forcing people to lawyer up, it's just rude. The only counter to this is to (to coin a phrase) intelligently design the game to give each party member some time to shine, but then that just feels forced. Plus it puts way too much unwanted pressure on players when the encounter is designed for them and their skills and they don't realize it, or don't know how to solve it.

How so? Why would you even want your players to level up at different moments? It takes long enough for players to level up their character. I'm glad that they all level up at the same time in my campaign. It maintains a level playing field.

Having players be at the same level is simplified bookkeeping for me, but honestly I find that only dramatic differences actually matter in real play. A level 1 with a bunch of level 3's? Not a big deal. A level 3 with a bunch of level 12's? MAJOR deal. Plus, such a stark difference in levels is contradictory to the concept of "contribute more!"...they literally can't they have less HP, are more likely to die and have fewer class features. It's like telling the poor kid he needs to bring more snacks to the game but not paying him for them.

 

[Orlax]

Absolutely! I honestly can't take Demonspell's position seriously. The goal is for the party to succeed. Not for each player to succeed. The success of the player depends on the party, and the success of the party depends on the success of the players. And I sure as heck don't want the DM judging my "creativity".


110% agreed. Worse yet, some classes are more capable of contributing to more situations than others. See: Rogue, Druid, Utility Wizard. This turns the game into a race for who can push the button first. Everyone scrambling over each other to get the in and out of game glory. When you reward everyone for a single member's success, it IME leads to parties working more cooperatively. Also the "well you just need to contribute more!" attitude completely disgusts me. Aside from going back to letting the DM determine who "contributed more" and forcing people to lawyer up, it's just rude. The only counter to this is to (to coin a phrase) intelligently design the game to give each party member some time to shine, but then that just feels forced. Plus it puts way too much unwanted pressure on players when the encounter is designed for them and their skills and they don't realize it, or don't know how to solve it.


Having players be at the same level is simplified bookkeeping for me, but honestly I find that only dramatic differences actually matter in real play. A level 1 with a bunch of level 3's? Not a big deal. A level 3 with a bunch of level 12's? MAJOR deal. Plus, such a stark difference in levels is contradictory to the concept of "contribute more!"...they literally can't they have less HP, are more likely to die and have fewer class features. It's like telling the poor kid he needs to bring more snacks to the game but not paying him for them.

Even worse the whole contribute more thing is possibly forcing people to act in a manner that are uncomfortable with. We have a player in one of my games, I've been playing with them for years, and they just don't contribute a lot outside of mechanically, they like playing the games, and even get into their character (when we talk about characters after game they clearly get as into their character as everyone else) they just happen to be a bit of an introvert. Every so often we try to throw the spotlight on them (because we realize they haven't said much in the past 20 minutes and we don't want to just ignore their presence), and they just don't seem to like it, they laugh awkwardly and look around in a panicked manner and try to get out of the spotlight as quickly as possible. They just don't seem to want to contribute in that manner, but are more than pleased to pick locks, scout ahead, and absolutely murder the heck out of anything they shoot. This whole contribute more to level faster thing would outright penalize this player just for being who they are. I know that's why I don't like it.

 

[S'mon]

I'm lost - you are saying it's easy to catch up to the rest of the group in an XP system that inherently has characters of equal XP at differing levels (within a range of about 4, typically), and cite the trait of that XP system which is responsible for extremely slow default level gaining pace as the reason why that's true... it's completely backwards from my experiences, especially once you include the rules for dying and returning to life.

What rules for dying and returning to life are you thinking of?

Extremely slow default levelling - IME only the over-levelled PC in the lower level group
levels slowly. In my Classic D&D game my son's veteran MU8 took ages to get to MU9 (150,000 to 300,000 xp) in a group where the rest of the PCs were new players and working up from 3rd* to 6th (from 4,000 to 32,000 xp for the Fighters). By the time he reaches MU10 at 450,000 xp the other PCs will be around 8th level I expect, maybe 9th. We play weekly for about 2.5 hours and the lower level PCs are
curently levelling up about every 5-6 sessions, which is about in line with Mentzer &
Allston's recommended progression rate. Tuesday's XP award was 4805 each, (to 4 6th level PCs, 1 9th)
and the Thief reached 7th level at 40,000 xp. It's definitely slower than 5e but not extremely slow.

*They were adventuring separately for the first few levels, as the GM advice recommends PCs be no more than 5 levels apart.

Edit: I use a single party XP tally in my 3e/PF and 4e games, and it's a perfectly reasonable approach in 5e, but not necessary in 5e the way it is in 3e-4e. I use individual XP in 5e the same as in my Classic D&D game and have not seen any problem, the Cleric-6 can contribute fine alongside the Barbarian-9.

 

[Lanefan]

How so? Why would you even want your players to level up at different moments? It takes long enough for players to level up their character. I'm glad that they all level up at the same time in my campaign. It maintains a level playing field.

Well for one thing I run a system where not all classes bump at the same number of xp. For another, my game has level loss as an unfortunate side effect of getting hit by the wrong type of undead or from a few other rare effects. It also has unexpected level or xp gains sometimes via wish or deck of many things or other odd effects; do you not allow these either?

Also, even if I gave out xp like you do there'd still end up being differences in the long run: you don't get xp when you're dead, for example; nor if-when you retire to gain a skill or research a spell or whatever; nor if you're sitting in a cell somewhere waiting to be rescued, and so on. And, if a character dies in your game does its replacement come in at exactly the same xp?

Absolutely! I honestly can't take Demonspell's position seriously. The goal is for the party to succeed. Not for each player to succeed. The success of the player depends on the party, and the success of the party depends on the success of the players.

Are you saying player but meaning character here? I don't care if the players succeed, but if their characters succeed then the party (in theory) succeeds right along with them...assuming, of course, that the goals of every character are the same as the goals of the party; not always the case. However, to me even that is looking one step too far.

The goal for each character is to survive.

Lan-"some play D&D as sport; I play it as war"-efan

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

A bit of column A, a bit of column B. I know he works on Saturdays sometimes. I also know he is also just plain late to things all the time.

But really, in the grand scheme of things, there are DMs that have to deal with much worse problems at the table, so I'm not going to sweat things to much. I gripe, but really, getting to game with friends is an awesome thing.

Do you know why that player is normally 2 hours late?

If it was because he had a pre-existing commitment (i.e. his work shift doesn't finish until 7pm, he has to pick his kids up from basketball practice, he has a university class that finishes late on game night) that's cool. It's annoying and I'd try and find another night to game if possible that worked for everyone, but at least you know and can plan for it.

If it was simply because his time-management skills were so poor that he was just late I'd be asking him to find another group.

 

[Demonspell]

That is absurd. My players feel more encouraged towards individual creativity than ever before, because they know that it isn't a contest between who is the best role player. I don't want them to worry about experience, and want them to focus on the story. This is exactly why I've made exp rewards party wide.

Again, to each his own, and every party is different. At one time, I was exactly like you, I gave party experience and divided it evenly amongst everyone. Then one player ruined it, he would show up, and he would do a little roleplaying, but he was never very active. He usually sat back and allowed everyone else in the party to handle combat. It something came up that needed his special skills he would step in, but otherwise he stayed in the shadows.
As the other players put it, he simply followed them around and “stole” their experience. At that point I decided that I would REWARD my players not on their existence in the game, but on their contribution to the story. Once he realized he no longer received experience for showing up, he became more active, and everyone was happy.

Yes it is punishment. Because the DM judges who has contributed, and who hasn't. So an arbitrary decision causes the players to be at different experience levels. That is a negative reinforcement. You are basically telling your players that they didn't contribute enough to get more experience.

In my opinion, experience should ALWAYS be used as a carrot not a stick. If you are announcing their experience rewards publicly you are hitting them over the head with it and telling everyone who is contributing less. That is a stick. I do not do that.
I communicate constantly with all of my players and all advancement communication is kept confidential. I won’t even talk to them about how they want to advance their character in front of the other players. They can approach me afterward if they have questions, but again I insist that no one else is involved. Each player advances their character the way they want to, preferably without the input from other players. My ONLY exception to that is new players; in that case asking advice is encouraged, and I usually solicit advice from the party when the player asks me questions.

I do the exact opposite, I reward them, rather than using the stick. There's no competition, everyone reaps the same rewards. This allows them to not worry about who is contributing, and who isn't, and simply focus on the story.

I am sure you have never had a player that simply mooched off the party for advancement. Once you do the rest of the players will do one of three things:

• Quit due to the unfairness of your system
• Force the other player to quit
• Insist on a change to the system

When this happened to me, I had several players threaten to quit unless I changed the system and I did. It had a positive effect on the group and now everyone contributes. The contribution varies on a weekly basis, but overall it ends up being fairly even.
I notice that you ignored my statement regarding my experience in a contribution based experience system. My players, except for those that have lost level due to loss of experience due to any number of reasons, are all fairly close in experience.
This happens because even though John doesn’t contribute much this week, next week he contributes in a big way. Same thing happens with Sally, and Jack as well. Even Michael, who tended to mooch off the party under the even experience system still has his good days and his bad days and still manages to keep up with everyone else.
This happens because I REWARD them according to how they help the party (and the story) advance.

How so? Why would you even want your players to level up at different moments? It takes long enough for players to level up their character. I'm glad that they all level up at the same time in my campaign. It maintains a level playing field.

I think you are confused about how Contribution based experience really works. Except for those players that have been hit with negative level effects, died (and created new characters or were brought back in some way) the PCs in my group manage to level up fairly close together. I think currently the biggest gap in experience among characters that have been with the party since the beginning is about 300 xp, which means they usually level within a session or two of each other.

 

[Demonspell]

Absolutely! I honestly can't take Demonspell's position seriously. The goal is for the party to succeed. Not for each player to succeed. The success of the player depends on the party, and the success of the party depends on the success of the players. And I sure as heck don't want the DM judging my "creativity".

Again, you clearly do not understand contribution based experience distribution. I use it based on how well the player helps “the party to succeed.” I am not worried about what the player thinks…beyond the fact that they demanded a change that encouraged everyone to work toward that goal. In my case, using the contribution based system, over even distribution, encouraged a player that didn’t initially contribute to start to consider party success important. He stopped free-loading off the rest of the party for experience and started actually doing something to earn it. Which is what my players wanted, because they were collectively tired of him refusing to help the party out.

110% agreed. Worse yet, some classes are more capable of contributing to more situations than others. See: Rogue, Druid, Utility Wizard. This turns the game into a race for who can push the button first. Everyone scrambling over each other to get the in and out of game glory.

Again, you misunderstand the system. It’s not about who does what first, but about who helps the party (and the story) out. I use a lot of factors in determining distribution.

• Encounter experience - Usually distributed evenly, though any character that doesn’t take part in the encounter doesn’t get experience for that encounter.
• Roleplaying – everyone does this differently, and some are better than others; however, everyone always does something, and everyone has days when they do better than others.
• Story Contribution – This varies from session to session as well.
• Participation – Yes, I know this sounds corny, but it someone is just sitting there letting everyone else make decision while he plays on his iPhone, he is getting less experience that the rest of the party.

When you reward everyone for a single member's success, it IME leads to parties working more cooperatively.

Or, just as likely, it leads to one, or several players realizing that their contribution doesn’t matter so their contribution to the party decreases. This can happen because players don’t see the advantage to their character’s action, because they get the exact same thing no matter what they do.

Also the "well you just need to contribute more!" attitude completely disgusts me.

I am fine with that, I honestly would have agreed with you, until my players became disgusted with a player that managed to level up with them and never contributed to the party at all. It forced a change in my thinking, and my group is better for it.

Aside from going back to letting the DM determine who "contributed more" and forcing people to lawyer up, it's just rude.

As I see it, the DM has an idea, and the players are there to help make that idea into a story. There is no one in the group that is better able to “judge” each player’s contribution to the story beyond the DM. My players usually judge how each other roleplayed, and I use their input in making my experience distribution for that.
We have had entire sessions where the party didn’t actually encounter anything beyond the fire they were sitting around, and I rewarded experience based on roleplaying and how well the character’s actions fit the story they were telling. After all, the party didn’t want to adventure today, they wanted to spend the session around the campfire, I am cool with that, and they made a good story together.

The only counter to this is to (to coin a phrase) intelligently design the game to give each party member some time to shine, but then that just feels forced. Plus it puts way too much unwanted pressure on players when the encounter is designed for them and their skills and they don't realize it, or don't know how to solve it.

That is always an option, but that is also a lot of work for me to do. There are, however, portions of every module where every character has a chance to shine. Whether the players recognize that or not is a different story and I don’t really think that matters. What matters is how well the character’s reaction to events, and how the player handles it.

Having players be at the same level is simplified bookkeeping for me, but honestly I find that only dramatic differences actually matter in real play.
I don’t do the bookkeeping for my players. I email them their exp, and let them track it. I don’t really care what they do with it after I give them the information. Now, I did have one time where a player leveled up his character several sessions before everyone else, and that didn’t seem right to me. I had to go back through my emails and made him verify what he had with my number. It turned out he transposed two number giving him several hundred more exp than he actually had, but my players are usually honest.

A level 1 with a bunch of level 3's? Not a big deal. A level 3 with a bunch of level 12's? MAJOR deal. Plus, such a stark difference in levels is contradictory to the concept of "contribute more!"...they literally can't they have less HP, are more likely to die and have fewer class features. It's like telling the poor kid he needs to bring more snacks to the game but not paying him for them.

First a level 3 with a party of level 12 would never happen even in a contribution based experience system. Each character contribution is going to vary from one session to the next and while their experience may be different it is usually fairly close together. Sure, you might have a player leveling up one session, and another leveling up the next, while the rest of the party levels up in the third, but other time it will, more than likely, even out. One of those players that leveled up last may actually level up before the rest of the party next. I have NEVER had a single character be more than a level behind the rest of the party.
It would be more like a party made of up characters ranging from 10 to 12… and in that case, they can all still contribute fairly evenly.

 

[Demonspell]

Even worse the whole contribute more thing is possibly forcing people to act in a manner that are uncomfortable with.

That may be the case; however, contribution is a very broad term. Again, when I am looking at contribution, I want to see how the player involves their character in the storyline. How is that character helping the party out? Every action the character takes impacts the game in some way, and those actions are their contribution. They have to be considered.

We have a player in one of my games, I've been playing with them for years, and they just don't contribute a lot outside of mechanically, they like playing the games, and even get into their character (when we talk about characters after game they clearly get as into their character as everyone else) they just happen to be a bit of an introvert.

I have a couple of players like this in my group as well. But when they finally speak up, they always use their character in a manner that improves upon the narrative of the story, and this is what I award experience for. They can spend huge parts of the session being quiet and introverted, but contribution doesn’t have to mean involvement in the conversation. It should be a determination of how well the character benefits the party.

Every so often we try to throw the spotlight on them (because we realize they haven't said much in the past 20 minutes and we don't want to just ignore their presence), and they just don't seem to like it, they laugh awkwardly and look around in a panicked manner and try to get out of the spotlight as quickly as possible.

I would never suggest putting a player or her/his character on the spot. That is a sure fire way to make them uncomfortable and possibly push them to quit. Evaluating their contribution doesn’t have to mean spotlighting them in anyway.

They just don't seem to want to contribute in that manner, but are more than pleased to pick locks, scout ahead, and absolutely murder the heck out of anything they shoot.

Aren’t those contributions? Shouldn’t they be rewarded for doing that?

This whole contribute more to level faster thing would outright penalize this player just for being who they are. I know that's why I don't like it.

It’s not about leveling faster, it’s about encouraging active participation and involvement in making the story a success. My campaigns aren’t about combat. Most of the time, there is a creative non-combat solution to every scenario. If someone in the party figures that out, and takes that path, they get more exp than those that attempted to fight it out instead.