I used to think giving our xp for good roleplaying was a good idea, but one day it just hit me that the DM has no business telling me if I've played my character well, because it's akin to him telling me how to play my character correctly. And if the DM has to make the decision as to who out of four or more players has played their character most "correctly", on top of everything else the DM has to do, most likely it will be the person who got the most attention from the DM without being annoying. So individual xp favors spotlight seekers. I doubt this is a good thing.
Too true. Don't play an introverted character - it's hard to demonstate you're role playing such a character. And make sure your character'spersonality is one the DM likes to see in play. I've seen at least one DM who felt that the "best" role playing was taking actions that impeded the rest of the group, so make a character whose goals conflict with the party to max out xp.
I can sum up my x.p. style in saying that players earn x.p. You have to do something to get it, it's not yours by merit of just showing up at the table. I reward participation and effort.
I give out individual x.p. awards, generally based on what the characters actually do over the course of a session (not necessarily "achieve," I'm looking for basic interaction and effort). The big reason is to give players an incentive to participate in the session. I'm just tired of seeing players that show up and bury their noses in a smartphone/laptop/comic book/whatever and roll dice when prompted.
I'm torn. It is poor role playing for an introverted character to become a social butterfly because tonight's session involves chatting people up at the bar. But I expect the player to be engaged. If his nose is in the whatever, he's really an absent player. On the other hand (I think that's three hands so far), why is this player in the game if it doesn't interest them? Maybe they should stay home and putz on the laptop instead of dragging the game down. And, if that player's enjoyment comes from rolling dice when prompted, and the goal is to reward what players find fun, why is this player's fun wrongbad? Isn't this better than badgering the other players, who are enjoying NPC interaction, to "hurry up and get to the dungeon and the fighting"? Phone Guy isn't impeding anyone else's fun.
I've tried having discussions about this, but the only method I've ever seen that consistently makes people pay attention to what's going on in the game is to only grant the characters x.p. for encounters/challenges they participate in. Have your rogue hang back instead of checking for traps? Fine, but the fighter at the front of the party that blunders into the trap gets the x.p. for finding and surviving it.
So now the rogue wants to be at the front, checking every 10 feet for traps. The game drags to a miserable crawl. Meanwhile, the fighter wants to rush ahead (so he gets xp for all those traps) and the cleric's OK with that since he gets xp for healing up the fighter, so the rogue remains 1st level forever.
Absent characters generally get no x.p. Since I'm adjusting the encounters to compensate for the absence of the character, it's perfectly fair to adjust the amount of x.p. that goes out as well. There's also a world of difference between a player that gets stuck at work or with family issues than someone who misses the game because it's just not a priority for them... Someone that misses a game or is late because of unavoidable situations or "real life" sometimes gets x.p. Since everyone has one of these moments every now and then, it's common for a player to miss about one session out of every six or seven in my experience, and it evens out over time.
"Sometimes gets xp" seems to have a lot of room for favortism. Is missing a game for the kid's soccer game, or so the wife can visit her sister, or because of work demands more or less meritorious than car failure or illness?
I don't give awards for roleplaying. It's a roleplaying game, so I assume that's going to happen. If by "roleplaying" you mean social interaction... I consider social challenges a type of encounter and award experience accordingly. Describing your character's heraldry? Not really x.p. worthy, that's something you should do as part and parcel of designing your character. Convincing the duke to send troops to defend an important mountain pass? That's an encounter really, it just doesn't involve initiative and attack rolls--definitely worth some x.p.
By the same token, isn't it also a combat, trapfinding, spellcasting and interaction game? Those things are also going to happen, right? As has been noted above, a lot, every xp system shows a bias to a certain playstyle.
Some would hold that "roleplaying" is a detailed description of your actions. Just rolling the dice to hit and damage isn't enough - describe your character's combat style. And rolling diplomacy isn't enough - you have to 'role play' the discussion with the duke. RESULT: Verbose players get more xp.
I also don't give x.p. awards for backgrounds. I expect a certain amount of this to happen by merit of the game's nature. I also don't feel that the character's past should be as cool as what they are doing right now, and I don't want to read novellas for first-level characters. I'm happy with half a page (or less) that includes a basic explanation of the character's family situation, how they got their class skills, why they decided to become an adventurer, and at least two "loose ends" that I can exploit for future adventures. The reward that you get for writing a background is in seeing that background incorporated into the ongoing game.
Certainly valid. Then again, should the player with no background get extra xp for making it so easy for the GM to insert a bit of backstory and bring his character into the action? For me, I like a character whose background isn't so much about history as about personality. What makes this guy tick?
For things like people bringing sodas to share, hosting the game and so forth, I give out one re-roll during the session. That encourages people to do it on a regular basis without skewing the experience progression.
While I could ask why this would skew progression but your other differentiations don't, I perceive a differentiation here of "out of character gets rerolls; in character gets xp", which is certainly a logical division. Except it's not the character who spends the session posting on Enworld either.
I
award x.p. during the week, between sessions, and send them out through email. Players handle leveling up on their own time, away from the table. Sometimes I use training rules, but most of the time I just require a player to explain why they got new abilities that aren't directly related to the game's narrative. A fighter wants to take a level of cleric? Why? Did you have a religious experience? Barbarian? Why? Does your character have anger issues or something? Wizard? Why? What order of wizards accepted and trained you?
Gosh, that seems a lot like requiring a background between levels, rather than as a 1st level character. That said, I like my characters to have some reasoning behind them, rather than "this dip gives me that power which has nice synergy with this feat". But then, that's my game style preference coming into play.
Why should I have to provide a more detailed explanation of the class taken at 5th level than the class taken at 1st level? What caused my cleric to be trained as such, and what order accepted and trained by L1 wizard?
So I decided to scrap that system. Now, players get experience for recovering loot and bringing it back to a safe place, and for accomplishing quests/missions. They get exactly 0 experience for killing a monster or disabling a trap. Monsters and traps are obstacles they have to figure out how to overcome, not the goal of the quest. This frees me up to do all sorts of things like put in monsters that are too strong for the party, and the party must either sneak or talk their way around them. The fact that the party also has this option and they know that this will not reduce the amount of XP they get on a given adventure also frees them up to find more clever or role-playing based ways to get around a given set of obstacles.
So your concern was that player behaviour was affected by xp for kills (they focused on killing). Isn't it now focused on treasure-gathering? Would most parties decide it's more important to get this bulky loot to safety than to press onwards and rescue the princess? If they leave that heavy loot behind to carry back an honoured fallen comrade, they lose xp. Greedy characters advance faster, and noble characters advance slower, so we've just changed the focus from bloodthirst to greed.
Experience is always awarded to whichever living characters make it back to a safe place when they get there. Whatever treasure the party recovered from the dungeon (treasure they brought in there doesn't count)
Can I take treasure in and buy treasure from the dungeon occupants? I get xp for anything new I bring out, right? I'll be back next week to trade again!
For example, if a poor farmer asks the PCs to kill a local dire bear that has been eating his cows, neither the farmer nor the dire bear is going to have any treasure for the PCs but if the PCs are good-aligned they should realistically consider taking the quest and be rewarded with XP at least when they complete it.
Just like bringing the princess back alive should have been more appropriate than chasing down that random owl bear, right?
For greater certainty, I'm largely playing devil's advocate above. I don't see a "right" or "wrong" system. I think most systems can be gamed in some manner or another, while "you level up when I say you do" can be seen as arbitrary. It depends on the group's playstyle. A narrativist group likely prefers "get levels when story demands" where a competitive gamist group wants fixed rules and individual xp. The best system is the system that most enhances your group's enjoyment of the game.