So I thought I'd post a little summary of the 4E Eberron campaign I've been running for the past six months. My players are all veterans of several editions of D&D and comfortable with 4E mechanics and battle tactics. In order to speed up level progression, we all came to an agreement:
We do not count experience points.
Instead, I simply notify the players when their PCs have earned enough experience to advance. We've had 14 play sessions and the PCs are level 7, so the average is roughly one level per two sessions. Everyone seems happy with this increased rate of advancement. Absent players, instead of missing XP, simply don't get whatever treasure is found during the session they miss. They can accept hand-me downs, but that's all. (This particular party contains an artificer who simply "melts down" unusable or unwanted magic items and creates new ones to order. This also has the great side effect of keeping me from having to do as much tailoring of treasure to specific PCs.) I am open to the idea of having PCs advance even faster than once every other session if the group's exploits warrant it.
We've managed to complete three full adventures to date: the introductory adventure in the 4E Eberron Campaign Guide, Seekers of the Ashen Crown, and a conversion of "Steel Shadows" from Dungeon #115. Currently they are knee-deep in "Heart of the Forbidden Forge" from Dungeon #167. I did strip out some of the superfluous encounters from Seekers- generally all of the 4E WotC module packages benefit from this treatment- but still allowed the PCs to be level 5 for the finale (they moved to 6th upon its completion). All worked decently well.
The biggest difference in play seems to be that players sometimes prone to "XP greed" are much more likely to seek parley or other non-combat solutions to problems. This helps both play variety as well as speed.
I was wondering if anyone else has run a no-XP campaign. It's pretty much a system-agnostic concept. For those who have, were there any negative side effects? What worked well for you?
We do not count experience points.
Instead, I simply notify the players when their PCs have earned enough experience to advance. We've had 14 play sessions and the PCs are level 7, so the average is roughly one level per two sessions. Everyone seems happy with this increased rate of advancement. Absent players, instead of missing XP, simply don't get whatever treasure is found during the session they miss. They can accept hand-me downs, but that's all. (This particular party contains an artificer who simply "melts down" unusable or unwanted magic items and creates new ones to order. This also has the great side effect of keeping me from having to do as much tailoring of treasure to specific PCs.) I am open to the idea of having PCs advance even faster than once every other session if the group's exploits warrant it.
We've managed to complete three full adventures to date: the introductory adventure in the 4E Eberron Campaign Guide, Seekers of the Ashen Crown, and a conversion of "Steel Shadows" from Dungeon #115. Currently they are knee-deep in "Heart of the Forbidden Forge" from Dungeon #167. I did strip out some of the superfluous encounters from Seekers- generally all of the 4E WotC module packages benefit from this treatment- but still allowed the PCs to be level 5 for the finale (they moved to 6th upon its completion). All worked decently well.
The biggest difference in play seems to be that players sometimes prone to "XP greed" are much more likely to seek parley or other non-combat solutions to problems. This helps both play variety as well as speed.
I was wondering if anyone else has run a no-XP campaign. It's pretty much a system-agnostic concept. For those who have, were there any negative side effects? What worked well for you?
