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Message: <blockquote data-quote="John Quixote" data-source="post: 8122085" data-attributes="member: 694">1E and 0E gave out XP mainly for loot and a little bit for killing things. 2E defaulted to ad hoc XP (the DM makes up the award based on how quickly they feel the players should be advancing and how well they feel the players role-played), with optional rules for quest-completion XP ("saving the baron's daughter is worth 1,500 XP") and class-specific XP (thieves get 100 XP for picking a lock, mages get 500 × spell level XP for inventing a new spell, etc.). In fact 2E devoted one small paragraph to XP-for-treasure, saying that DMs could optionally do that instead, but cautioning against it since it "tempted DMs to hand out too much treasure." (The text of 2E could sometimes feel very passive-aggressive about the way 1E did things.)I would award no XP for the session. In old-school games, XP is supposed to be objective and (at least for treasure XP) tied to a number that exists in the fiction as well as at the meta level. That's what's so great about it: if the party found 3,683 GP, it's perfectly clear why they've earned 3,683 XP (plus or minus prime requisite adjustments). It puts the players' collective eyes on the prize.That said, classic D&D isn't entirely without options. The Rules Cyclopedia has a provision for awarding XP for story-related activities or exceptionally good role-playing. Such awards are supposed to be infrequent and should never amount to more than one twentieth of the amount of XP a character needs to gain a level (so e.g. for a 1st or 2nd level fighter who needs 2,000 XP to level up, a story award should never be greater than 100 XP). You can do that if you really want to, but it does somewhat compromise your stated goal of playtesting the adventure.</blockquote>

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