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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Reynard" data-source="post: 5263827" data-attributes="member: 467">This is just the thing though. Gold=XP was a very efficient method of providing a goal without mandating how it be made -- whether the PCs ran roughshod through every lair, slaughtering every goblin child, in search of the coppers, or they sneaked there way through and nary drew a blade, was up to them. The result was the same: fortune gathered, XP gained. The question of whether the PCs got the XP for monsters they avoided was essentially irrelevant -- that's not where the XP was to be found. Of course individual DMs would vary, some demanding blood for XP and some giving awards for clever thinking, but in the end the lions share of the XP came from a tangible, *countable* source (although, at least in AD&D, poorly guarded treasure might be worth only 1/5th its GP value, but I don't recall anyone I ever played with actually doing that -- probably mostly because DMs never left such hoards "poorly guarded").If you take out the gold=XP aspect, suddenly the question of what constitutes a "victory" is very important, and both stingy and overly generous DMs are likely going to create problems in their campaigns as well as with their players. In the day and age of the Adventure Path, it probably doesn't matter too much since Chapter Two is for 3rd level characters and if you want to play (or run it), 3rd level the party will be. But outside of Adventure Path, in either the open sandboxy campaign or the exploratory dungeon crawl, where the XP comes from and how it is earned is an important matter and has a real and tangible effect on game play.</blockquote>

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