D&D General Experience Matters - The benefits of XP

[payn]

Doesn't that then just become another railroading technique - the players have to stay on-mission or on-script because if they don't they won't level?

No thanks.

Or the players set the goal and drive their own progress.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Doesn't that then just become another railroading technique - the players have to stay on-mission or on-script because if they don't they won't level?

No thanks.

Yeah, in my view the players should earn xp for what they do, not how well they followed the plot.

 

[Lanefan]

Lots of DMs do level up the PCs whenever they feel like it and call it "milestone." That doesn't really incentivize going after particular goals, sticking to the plot, or engaging with certain thematic challenges, which was my point. It doesn't really incentivize not caring about leveling up, which I believe was your assertion. I'm all for actual milestone XP which is a concrete goal, and it's best in my view if it's transparent to the players so they can align themselves to it and make decisions accordingly. When the game goal of leveling up is aligned with the characters' fictional goals, the game tends to work better in my experience.

If the players meta-know what the milestone is then they're quite naturally going to go for that milestone; which acts as a very strong discouragement to their exercising their agency to have their characters go and do something else.

In other words, a soft-coded design-level railroad.

 

[Lanefan]

Another potential positive for classical EXP is that it becomes its own little sub-game. Tracking your EXP, estimating how long to the next level, figuring out how to maximize it - that becomes its own thing.

The "figuring out how to maximize it" piece comes up surprisingly rarely in our games, and we've always used individual xp.

 

[iserith]

I'm almost always for DM Fiat but here on this subject I'll tell you. Most DM's use milestone leveling to keep thier table at the correct level they think they should be for whatever Boss fight is coming. It's lazy, Arbitrary and unrewarding.. I know everyone doesn't do it that way but IME most do. EP awarded after encounnters, or Milestone's where players get thier accumulated EP at certain gated points woks because they know exactly what they got and why. It just feels more organic and fair.

I don't think I would characterize it as lazy, except perhaps in those instances where someone can't be bothered to do simple addition and division, but often I find that to not be the actual reason they don't do it, just a smokescreen for some other objection to calculating XP.

For me as a player, it's about knowing what I'm supposed to DO in the given game because every game's a bit different. If I'm supposed to boldly confront deadly perils, then give me an incentive to do that. If I'm a DM, it's about communicatingt his very thing to the players. This game is about X. If you do X, you get Y. This ensures everyone's moving in the same direction and getting regular feedback in the form of XP that reinforces this behavior.

What I sometimes see are the same people who decry "DM empowerment" also hand out levels whenever they want instead of making it clear to the players what they need to do to level up. I don't see how these two thoughts are compatible. A standardized system agreed upon before the game is a lot more fair and less arbitrary - and less about "DM empowerment" - in my view than the DM giving out levels whenev's.

 

[Lanefan]

Or the players set the goal and drive their own progress.

If they railroad themselves it's still a railroad.

This also assumes the players know what the goals are; and while they might have individual goals for their characters, this sort of levelling speaks to party goals which a) might not initially be obvious and b) can - or at least ought to be able to - change over time as the fiction develops.

 

[Lanefan]

Yeah, in my view the players should earn xp for what they do, not how well they followed the plot.

Allow me to tweak this slightly:

The characters should earn xp for what they do in the fiction, not how well they followed the plot.

 

[iserith]

If the players meta-know what the milestone is then they're quite naturally going to go for that milestone; which acts as a very strong discouragement to their exercising their agency to have their characters go and do something else.

In other words, a soft-coded design-level railroad.

It's not a railroad if nobody's being coerced or tricked. If we all agree to follow the plot of Hoard of the Dragon Queen to the best of our ability and get XP for doing that, that consent and behavior means there's no railroading going on. If we all agree that stealing the throne of the kobold king to make it into a toilet for our guildhall is what we want to do and we get XP for it, same deal. I think some in this hobby have an overly-broad idea of what railroading is to their own detriment.

 

[payn]

If they railroad themselves it's still a railroad.

This also assumes the players know what the goals are; and while they might have individual goals for their characters, this sort of levelling speaks to party goals which a) might not initially be obvious and b) can - or at least ought to be able to - change over time as the fiction develops.

FFS, I dont even know how you play the game.

 

[Lanefan]

It's not a railroad if nobody's being coerced or tricked. If we all agree to follow the plot of Hoard of the Dragon Queen to the best of our ability and get XP for doing that, that consent and behavior means there's no railroading going on.

I disagree with that last bit; there's certainly railroading going on, only as everyone has agreed to riding said rails it's not a negative thing.

If we all agree that stealing the throne of the kobold king to make it into a toilet for our guildhall is what we want to do and we get XP for it, same deal. I think some in this hobby have an overly-broad idea of what railroading is to their own detriment.

If it denies me the ability to make fictionally-reasonable choices for my character (which could include talking the party into going way off the ranch) it's a railroad. Whether or not I've meta-agreed not to make such choices doesn't change this.