OSR How Do You Award XP?

[Retreater]

I'm coming off a "milestone-only" XP philosophy to playtest an OSR adventure, which has XP awards as a staple of the system (even down to classes needing more or less XP to go up in level based on their perceived power level).

I ran a typical 2 hour session last night, and we wrapped up before the first combat of the evening. The night was spent with roleplaying, exploration, mystery investigation, etc., just not collecting gold and killing monsters.

So how would you give XP for this session? I'd hate to give them nothing for their characters, especially when even the quickest advancing character at the table will need 10+ sessions to get to level 2 based on our current rate.

 

[Ath-kethin]

A decent system is equate the challenges they overcame to monsters, when use those monsters' XP values.

So for example, was the exploration worth a kobold? Then grant kobold XP. Was the social interaction worth a hill giant? Then grant hill giant XP.

It won't be an exact system; it can't be. But doing it that way will at least give you XP values that won't look arbitrary (even though they are completely arbitrary).

3.x did something similar by assigning encounter challenge ratings that granted XP the same as a monster challenge rating. I find it a useful way to gauge different situations for XP purposes.

 

[zarionofarabel]

If it's truly "old school" only award XP for monsters defeated and gold looted.

 

[Bacon Bits]

Today we just do milestone. You gain a level when the DM says you gain a level. The party is always equal level. Levels are always awarded at the end of a session. Hit dice rolls are then witnessed, and players are expected to do their leveling decisions before the next session. Holding up play to level your character is always considered bad form. The DM is spending a couple hours on prep every week. You can do it once every month or so.

When we did old school XP, we awarded XP at the end of every session. Frankly, it's way too easy to forget XP if you don't do it this way. Bonus XP awards were awarded immediately. With few exceptions, we still did not allow leveling to take place during a session. At the end of the session, anyone who had reached the next level could roll their hit die and was then expected to make their leveling decisions and update their character sheet before the next session.

As far as determining how much XP to give out as a DM, I'd just do some napkin math to peg where I wanted the PCs to be and how quickly I wanted them to be there there. There would be ~25 encounters in the adventure plus some random ones or boss encounters that should count double or triple, and the fighter or magic-user needs to go from 3rd level to 6th level at the end which is XX,000 XP they have to earn. XX,000 / 30 = XP per encounter. Often I'd give a big XP bonus at the end of an adventure to get them part way into the next level, and the players always seemed to love that. I'd always key off where I wanted the level of the fighter or magic-user because those are the two classes where level matters the most. If there were no single-class fighters or MUs in the party, then I imagined that there was one and estimated the amount of XP from there. A mage/thief and a fighter with the same XP have very different power levels, but at the time the game insisted that they didn't so who was I to argue?

You'll note that I didn't look at the XP in each encounter at all. I hated doing that math for every encounter, partially because I tend to ad hoc the combats so I tried to avoid it. At first players felt cheated by that so I did the encounter math and then gave a big XP bonus to put them where I wanted them for the next adventure anyways. As time went on the players seemed to care less and less, I think because they could tell I was giving out pretty fair XP or that I just wasn't tracking it tightly. I know some players want to feel like there's a strict accounting for every point of XP, but I'm just not willing to do that as a DM. It just doesn't matter that much. They're like points in "Whose Line is it Anyway?" They're made up and don't really mean anything.

In 3e I went much more by-the-book because the magic item creation made me feel like I had to, but I didn't DM 3e that much and when I did I just ran modules by the encounters listed in published adventures. Looking back I really didn't enjoy DMing 3e very much. Too much work to get to the parts of the game I liked (creating monsters, encounters, items, set pieces, NPCs, etc.).

 

[LordEntrails]

What do the rules say for the system you are using?

In general I would do something like what @Ath-kethin said. But it's also that I would in general be doing from a quest perspective. Set a quest XP and then give them that XP when they achieve the quest/goal, regardless of what they kill.

 

[Retreater]

Yeah. I would use milestone if given the opportunity, but cannot since we're doing a playtest and I want it more accurate than whatever I feel like.

The actual rules give nothing unless it's for killing/defeating/avoiding monsters and collecting treasure. By the book, they get nothing for the session, but I hate to do that.

 

[iserith]

Award XP for the type of play you want to incentivize, particularly as it pertains to the campaign's theme or setting.

I almost never do milestone XP or story-based XP because I don't like running games with pre-determined plots. What I will tend to do is either award XP for killing monsters or turning certain monsters/NPCs friendly. This rewards engaging with the combat and social interaction pillars. Then I put all treasure behind exploration challenges to incentivize engagement with that pillar.

For some games, particularly games that will focus on dungeon delving with some downtime (including the Training downtime activity), then I will have it be where you pay for XP with gold 1:1.

 

[Iry]

Milestone. That's not a helpful answer in your situation, but I have too many unpleasant memories of XP being divided based on who kills what and how much treasure you find. It's practically low-end PTSD these days.

 

[Monayuris]

When I run OSR games, in that situation they would get zero XP.

But, If players are doing a lot of role-playing, exploration, and investigation, then in my experience, a lot of this effort often results in players gathering information that may lead to finding greater treasures next time.

One of the tenets of old school play is that rewards are objective and are a measure of effectiveness. Sometimes you delve into the dungeon and come back with nothing more than some broken spear shafts. It could have been due to bad luck, or making a bad choice in where to explore, or some other event that pops up in play.

A lot of this falls on the hands of the players. Doing things like identifying potential treasure hoards, staying on task, avoiding distractions and unnecessary encounters are all player choices that can lead to more success. I've been in groups that had a goal but then decided on the fly to do something else... usually, in such a situation, the rewards are poor.

But this assumes an open-ended dungeon/wilderness exploration format. Where the act of exploration is the focus of the game.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

For OSR play, I'd probably throw 50-100 XP at each PC for a two-hour session with zero combat, treasure acquisition, or other activities that would net XP by the book. Slower level progression is a big part of evoking old school play, but I also don't want to tell people "no, no XP for you," especially if it was a session that had some quality play in it.