D&D 5E Do you use XPs or Milestones?

[iserith]

What other definition of metagaming is there? What do you mean "until everyone agrees". It seems like a clear definition in every place that defines the term. Seems like it's already universally agreed what it means.

Experience over the decades that this topic has been discussed has shown that people come to the table with different ideas of what that means, ranging from the definition you offered to "That thing you do that I don't like." So, if there's to be a discussion about "metagaming" - and for the love of god, why would we want that - it's helpful to agree on a definition before moving forward.

In any case, the poster you quoted wasn't talking about "metagaming." He or she was talking about the "metagame."

 

[Stoutstien]

Well, we thankfully have a definition:

Metagaming is a term used in role-playing games, which describes a player's use of real-life knowledge concerning the state of the game to determine their character's actions, when said character has no relevant knowledge or awareness under the circumstances.

Therefore, metagaming isn't using a character sheet or rolling dice. It's basing your PC actions on knowledge they would not have that you do have. Like automatically using fire against trolls if that's the first time your PC ever encountered or saw one.

so how much HP is something your character knows to the exact amount is not meta knowledge? number of spell slots? whos turn it is? what a turn IS? reactions? movement speed?

the troll example is always a bad one because you bring up the issue of who gets to determine what knowledge the player has overlaps with the charterer's.

and yes i was refering to the meta-game(noun) which i will probably use that from now on to avoid this issue. thanks for the good idea.

 

[prabe]

so how much HP is something your character knows to the exact amount is not meta knowledge? number of spell slots? whos turn it is? what a turn IS? reactions? movement speed?

the troll example is always a bad one because you bring up the issue of who gets to determine what knowledge the player has overlaps with the charterer's.

So all game rules are metagame? It sounds as though that's what you're saying, and that's not a position I've encountered before. That doesn't make it invalid, but it will make any conversation along these lines difficult and probably not-helpful.

 

[atanakar]

Please stay on topic. Thank you ! If you must talk meta-gaming please start a new topic or find an old one and resurect it!

 

[Stoutstien]

So all game rules are metagame? It sounds as though that's what you're saying, and that's not a position I've encountered before. That doesn't make it invalid, but it will make any conversation along these lines difficult and probably not-helpful.

I never understood why meta-gaming every became a catch all term for bad player behaviors. I know it very unlikely to change but i try to keep my expressions of my views in clear cut and dry way.

Metagaming is a term used in role-playing games, which describes a player's use of real-life knowledge concerning the state of the game to determine their character's actions, when said character has no relevant knowledge or awareness under the circumstances.

I don't see how the game rules don't fall into this definition.

back on the topic at hand the history of how DnD has handled XP is fascinating. in some regards its like a currency which was exactly how it was handles in the red box/chainmail days

 

[ART!]

I don’t think it’s a question of if story-based advancement works or not. Clearly it works, but is it the best system to use given your goals? And the answer may well be yes for you and your group. For me it’s no.

Well, yeah - obviously it works. By "works for us" I mean it has proven to be preferable - for us - to other approaches, including XP-based.

I was the first 5E GM for our group, and initially went with XP-based, but found it to be too much work to decide how much XP every significant thing was worth. I gave up on that, tried story-based, and that's much more my speed.

Four of us have DMed since then, and we've all used story-based. There's never been so much as a whisper of a mention of going back to XP-based, or to any other method. It's less work and it emphasizes major goals. There's no lack of RPing going in our group, so rewarding that kind of thing with fiddly XP is just unnecessary and an unwanted burden on the DM.

 

[Oofta]

Please stay on topic. Thank you ! If you must talk meta-gaming please start a new topic or find an old one and resurect it!

The whole meta-game conversation came into play because of the purpose of XP and how people gain levels. XP means nothing to a PC, it's only meaningful to the player of that PC.

Unless of course the following is correct:

 

[Stoutstien]

for those who like Xp but hate fiddling around with math a simple solution is to just use flat Xp values. so easy-medium encounters are worth X and harder is worth Y. can work for all three pillars without dealing with the whole XP budget mess. so if the party just turned to level 2 you could make the easy encounters/ milestones worth 50 XP each and the hard+ worth 100 XP. could toss in some bonus XP on the side for saving all the orphan orcs or what not. i use 25 XP for those.
so if i want to set up a session to get them half way to lv 3 i know my budget of 450 XP and go to work.

 

[Oofta]

for those who like Xp but hate fiddling around with math a simple solution is to just use flat Xp values. so easy-medium encounters are worth X and harder is worth Y. can work for all three pillars without dealing with the whole XP budget mess. so if the party just turned to level 2 you could make the easy encounters/ milestones worth 50 XP each and the hard+ worth 100 XP. could toss in some bonus XP on the side for saving all the orphan orcs or what not. i use 25 XP for those.
so if i want to set up a session to get them half way to lv 3 i know my budget of 450 XP and go to work.

Or not. I know there are a lot of solutions, but I don't break my game down into concrete "encounters". Frequently PCs are running around town talking to different people, achieving different goals. Sometimes they split up to accomplish different goals because they're trying to overcome multiple obstacles or reacting to some challenge that has arisen.

But even then, I still want to control leveling based on what makes sense for the story and my player's enjoyment. I don't want or need an artificial out of game world yardstick.

 

[Stormdale]

I am like the original poster in that I have set a weekly amount of xp, doesn’t matter what you do, kill monsters & take their stuff or sit round quoting Monty Python, simply turning up= getting the weekly base award. I do reward story awards on top of that and also do add combat bonuses at times as well.

It is worked out that it so that takes several weeks of game play to gain a level- it’s the journey not the end point (i.e. reaching x level) that the game is all about so sit back and enjoy the ride. Our sessions are 3 hours long about half of which I’d estimate is spent playing the rest it ambling from one random conversation to the next while I try to herd the cats (players) back on track.

I have played games where players thought the only way to play was by killing every monster in the dungeon room by room to get maximum xp and have no interest in encouraging that type of play. These days our games are fairly low combat more often than not and so a weekly base award allows things to tick along. Here is my base xp/ week chart.

Level​	XP Required per level​	Increase to reach the next level​	Base xp/week​
1​	0​	+300​	​
2​	300​	+600​	150xp​
3​	900​	+1,800​	250xp​
4​	2,700​	+3,800​	500xp ​
5​	6,500​	+7,500​
6​	14,000​	+9,000​	1000xp​
7​	23,000​	+11,000​
8​	34,000​	+14,000​
9​	48,000​	+16,000​
10​	64,000​	+21,000​	1500xp​
11​	85,000​	+15,000​
12​	100,000​	+20,000​
13​	120,000​	​

Stormdale