D&D General Experience Matters - The benefits of XP

[iserith]

No, but being forced to complete a specific quest in order to level up is. As in, the DM lets it be known the next milestone will come when the princess is rescued, which means that no matter what else they do - or might want to do - sooner or later they have to rescue the princess if they ever want to level up.

That's only true if the DM represented their game as a sandbox, but is actually running a plot-based game, and tricks or coerces the players to stay on the plot even though they would choose otherwise. If the players know it's a plot-based game, and agreed to play it, then there's no railroading going on. They find a reason for their characters to want to rescue the princess because that's the game.

I don't really care for running or playing plot-based games because I find them a little weird at the table, especially when the DM "hides" the plot and makes it harder to see that the next plot point is. But it's simply not railroading except in particular circumstances as mentioned above. And the DM could do worse than using milestone XP or story-based advancement to reinforce the agreement to stay on the plot for that particular game.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I've adopted the simplest and IMO most rewarding "XP" system I've ever tried:

Level 1 lasts 1 session. Level 2 lasts 2 sessions. Level 3 lasts 3 sessions... etc.

Want to level up your character? Show up to the game.

Yes, this means that you'd have to play 19 sessions at level 19 before you hit level 20. I don't see a problem with that. (And I doubt I'd ever do it anyway - most games end in the early teens after all.)

So far, I like it.

 

[Clint_L]

I've adopted the simplest and IMO most rewarding "XP" system I've ever tried:

Level 1 lasts 1 session. Level 2 lasts 2 sessions. Level 3 lasts 3 sessions... etc.

Want to level up your character? Show up to the game.

Yes, this means that you'd have to play 19 sessions at level 19 before you hit level 20. I don't see a problem with that. (And I doubt I'd ever do it anyway - most games end in the early teens after all.)

So far, I like it.

So 55 games to get to level 10, which is as far as the vast majority of campaigns make it - seems about right, though I find that I like slightly more even distribution after the first few levels, and sometimes the players want to go faster than that.

210 games to get to level 20 would be a lot, I think, though compared to some of Lanefan's campaigns that would be child's play, I suspect.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

So 55 games to get to level 10, which is as far as the vast majority of campaigns make it - seems about right, though I find that I like slightly more even distribution after the first few levels, and sometimes the players want to go faster than that.

210 games to get to level 20 would be a lot, I think, though compared to some of Lanefan's campaigns that would be child's play, I suspect.

Yeah, it might need to ease up in the 'teens, but I haven't used it that high level yet. In the single-digits it takes about the same amount of time to level up as calculating XP does, without the tracking.

One idea might be to have it reverse at Level 10 and start counting back down. So you'd only play 2 sessions at level 19 and ONE BIG FINAL SESSION at Level 20. I kinda like that idea, actually. A little over 2 years of weekly sessions for a whole PC career.

 

[S'mon]

I try not to proliferate the use of Forge waffle, which I believe that is.

Eh? No, AFAIK it was the Quantum Ogre article that popularised the term Illusionism. It's obviously a different thing from Railroading, which requires force. Illusionism is about creating an illusion of choice, if successful players don't spot it, and it's widely advocated for.

 

[payn]

So 55 games to get to level 10, which is as far as the vast majority of campaigns make it - seems about right, though I find that I like slightly more even distribution after the first few levels, and sometimes the players want to go faster than that.

210 games to get to level 20 would be a lot, I think, though compared to some of Lanefan's campaigns that would be child's play, I suspect.

I liked PFS organized play in which you needed 3-4 sessions of 3-4 hours to level. That pace seemed about right. Also, it allowed folks to jump characters in and out like some folks value highly.

 

[ad_hoc]

Yeah, it might need to ease up in the 'teens, but I haven't used it that high level yet. In the single-digits it takes about the same amount of time to level up as calculating XP does, without the tracking.

One idea might be to have it reverse at Level 10 and start counting back down. So you'd only play 2 sessions at level 19 and ONE BIG FINAL SESSION at Level 20. I kinda like that idea, actually. A little over 2 years of weekly sessions for a whole PC career.

That is almost exactly the way the 5e XP chart works.

Quick to get to level 5.

Then slows down considerably until 11.

Then speeds up considerably and faster until 20.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

That is almost exactly the way the 5e XP chart works.

Quick to get to level 5.

Then slows down considerably until 11.

Then speeds up considerably and faster until 20.

All the better, then! AND it is playstyle-agnostic. If the players want to spend a whole session RPing or exploring the countryside and flipping over every rock or rustling every bush (well, those would probably lead to combat encounters, but I mean "exploration for exploration's sake", whatever that looks like), then they CAN, without any XP penalty.

I suppose the drawback is that there's no incentive to keep the game moving forward at all, but I think the game ought to be it's own reward, so I'm not too worried about that (by itself).

 

[Clint_L]

Yeah, it might need to ease up in the 'teens, but I haven't used it that high level yet. In the single-digits it takes about the same amount of time to level up as calculating XP does, without the tracking.

One idea might be to have it reverse at Level 10 and start counting back down. So you'd only play 2 sessions at level 19 and ONE BIG FINAL SESSION at Level 20. I kinda like that idea, actually. A little over 2 years of weekly sessions for a whole PC career.

That is a clever suggestion and I've never seen it before - and I thought I'd seen almost all the experience/levelling systems there were.

 

[Lanefan]

I'm going to argue against this because, Risky Mission B is as much of a milestone as Risky Mission A is. Someone applying it as milestone XP should be giving it on both situations, not just situation A. How is that a hard-coded milestone? DM just goes "Yeah, you've completed the appropriate challenge, ding"

I'm referring to situatuions where the DM has a) decided and b) told the players that the milestone is Risky Mission A, period.

I agree with you that - if one must use this system - either A or B should be good enough.

As compared to individual XP which is... Literately just MMO XP where the incentive instead becomes "How can I easily get XP" and trying the oft-mentioned silly tactics of "Oh I just mass-killed some things through an inventive tactic, how much XP do I get for the mass-murder" with all of the grace of a frost mage AoE farming gnolls to hit level 60 the fastest. Milestone XP is "You get XP from completing Appropriate Tasks, so do quests and tasks to level", whereas individual XP instead becomes "Whoops my brain regressed into all that time I spent in Runescape, WoW and FFXIV, time to de-populate this beach full of hobgoblins because they're the quickest way to level blue mage to 70 because I go from level 1 to 17 in a single kill and my warrior friend is keeping them all aggroed and murdered"

First off, IME individual experience doesn't lead to that sort of thing, but then none of us have that MMO background. Also, ideally xp are awarded for getting through encounters by means which can include things other than all-out murder e.g. negotiation, stealth, trickery, and so on; and are also awarded for getting past things you can't just kill e.g. traps, puzzles, and so forth.

Second off, if a player's main (or only, I've seen this) goal and focus of play is just to level up a character and get all those kool powerz, then the question "How can I easily get xp" simply changes to "How can I easily level up" and you're right back in the same boat. The only way around that is to somehow change that player's focus away from levelling and on to other aspects of the game - story, non-mechanical character development, the day-to-day run of play, whatever - with levelling seen as no more than an occasional pleasant side effect.

An extreme option would be to have a campaign where the characters never level up at all, but IMO that's probably overkill.

Third off, who gets to define what qualifies as "Appropriate Tasks"? If it's just the DM, that risks restricting not only what the players can have their characters do but to some extent how those things get done.

The other problem I kinda have with purely mission-based xp is that it highly encourages a commando style get in-get it done-get out MO from the party (the extreme of which is 3e-style scry-buff-teleport in-do it-teleport out), instead of encouraging/rewarding deeper exploration of the adventure site beyond just the fastest route in and out. This is perhaps the one redeeming feature of giving xp for treasure: it encourages exploration of the whole site if only to find any spare change lying around.