experience

[calighis]

I enjoy giving at least as much XP for role play as i do for combat.
Recently a player complained that it's alot like christmas when XP is given at the end of a session. I agree. I'm thinking about cutting down the amount of XP derived from cobat by 1/3 to allow more room for RP awards.

 

[Michael Silverbane]

One thing that you should do, if you're going to be awarding a lot of RP experience, is to make it clear to your players what type of role playing you consider to be 'good' or worthy of a reward.

Later
silver

 

[Infiniti2000]

We dropped XP entirely in our most recent game and it's been mahvelous. No, really, I highly recommend tossing XP out the window. No more feelings of XP Christmas and no more metagame desires for the PC's to get into fights for more XP. Of course, just plain removing XP is not so simple, but consider it sometime.

What this means to you specifically is that you should feel free to alter the XP awards however you see fit. Michael gives some good advice and, to generalize even more, make sure the whole group is on board with whatever method you devise.

 

[Piratecat]

I've also completely removed xp. I handle item creation and xp-linked spells by linking the costs to action points. It's worked beautifully for us; I'll dig up the rules if you want to see them.

 

[Bacris]

I'll dig up the rules if you want to see them.

I'd love to see these rules, because I've always hated XP for item crafting and the 1-level-behind gravy train syndrome.

 

[irdeggman]

I give standard xp for enclunters.

I also give two other types of xp awards.

Role-playing and "fun" bonuses.

Out group started using the "fun" bonus a while ago to give a sort of reward for "showing up" at a session, even if there was no base xp awarded.

In general people like to get something when they show up - although it shouldn't be Christmas time, IMO.

My awards tend to be tied to character level instead of a flat number so that the Rp and fun awards will "scale" somewhat when the PCs get higher levels - otherwise they are "huge" at low levels and pretty much insignificant at higher levels.

My awards run from 25 - 100 xp/character level for role-play and fun.

I do not award fun bonuses every time (although I do give it out most of th time) and use it as a sort of award for a generally "fun" session. That is I use it to reflect how much everyone (myself included) enjoyed themselves at the session - regardless of whether or not an xp award encounter/situation happened. Everyone in the group gets the same "fun" award (tied to each's character level) while the role-playing award I reserve for those who stay in character (and consistently have their PC act in ways that they have established in prior sessions).

 

[shilsen]

One more vote for dropping XP, or at least divorcing XP awards from in-game stuff (combat, roleplaying, you name it) as much as one possibly can. That's one of the best decisions I made in my game.

 

[roguerouge]

In my one-PC campaign, I like xp because it reminds me to include action sequences, as we tend to spend a several sessions character-building, doing romance plots, and world-exploration.