Experience Points? Who Needs 'Em? My 4E Eberron Campaign

[Delgar]

I don't track xp for the online eberron game I'm running right now, and I didn't track xp for the eberron game I ran back in 3.5.

I do however us XP totals to plan encounters, but I tend to push my players to the limit, because well I'm a bastard that way. One of the more recent encounters I ran in a lumber mill the players were complaining and whining in the first round about how many enemies were ambushing them.

Just recently we've started to do some role-playing via e-mail to help fill in the gaps between sessions which I'm now trying to get down to once every 2 weeks, hopefully I can hold that schedule. It's tough to corridinate 6 people in 3 different time zones.

I just recently started up a thread in the story hour section about it, it's not really your typical story hour, just a collection of cut scenes I've put together a brief overview of my characters progress and some role-playing that the characters have done via back in forth e-mails. I should probably upload some character backgrounds and maybe throw there character sheets up in the rogues gallery at some point.

Anyway, for some reason with Eberron I tend to focus on the stories, the enemies and screwing my players over at ever turn.

 

[Daern]

I still give them XP, but I more or less give them enough to level every three sessions. This seems like a good number for playing with the level and then being ready for more. Also, like the OP, I've found that modules have extraneous battles, so giving more XP while dropping encounters keeps the party just about on track for the level/story.

 

[Merkuri]

I played in a World's Largest Dungeon campaign once where the DM stopped tracking XP and just had us level up every X sessions (forget how many). I had mixed feelings about it. It did take some of the fiddly record-keeping out of the picture, but it gave me a little bit of a sense that what we did during the session didn't really matter.

When giving out XP for individual encounters some sessions we would get a little XP and some sessions we would get a lot of XP. Those sessions where we got a lot of XP felt like we had accomplished something big, that we had got a lot done. With a no-XP session there wasn't any difference between the sessions where we accomplished a lot and the sessions where we accomplished a little. It made the "boy, that was a hard fight!" sessions seem less rewarding.

Perhaps this would have been different in a more "balanced" campaign (WLD being very hack-n-slash heavy). I'd be willing to try it again if the DM decided to go in that direction, but my preference is to track XP.