Role-Playing Bonus XP

[Shadoe's Lady]

When I ran games, I used to have a system where everyone got XP for everything they did. As long as it advanced the game. We're talking anywhere from 5 to 20 points, sometimes 50 for a really good idea, but those points can add up quick, and sometimes a big encounter is either not in the cards for that session, or the players find a way around it. The problem with this is unless you take really good notes you find yourself struggling to remember each and every thing the characters did.

 

[bwgwl]

i don't ever hand out individual XP when i DM. everyone gets the same amount.

i give XP for accomplishing the goals of the adventure. it's the group as a whole which accomplishes the goals, not individuals. so i hand out XP to the group as a whole. (can you tell i used to be in the military? )

i agree with the other posters that handing out individual XP can lead to feelings of competition and resentment. in the D&D game i play in, the DM hands out individual awards and there have already been these kinds of problems cropping up.

in a system like GURPS or HERO, which are "point-build" systems where XP is essentially just more points to build your character, individual awards can be OK. that because the difference between, say, a 150-point GURPS character and a 170-point GURPS character is hardly noticeable in the game.

in D&D, where you have discrete levels instead of a gradual increase in power, individual awards can lead to situations where some characters are a level ahead of the others. this is a significant jump in power and definitely noticeable in the game. which, as has been said, can lead to feelings of resentment.

 

[Mistwell]

My DM gives out 50 xp per level of the character to the best roleplayer each round, voted on in email by all of the players each week. It tends to rotate fairly well without any other rules or outside countrols, and seems to work okay.

 

[Dagger75]

Holy Cow!!!!

I give out tons of experience points. Just last week all 4 of the characters got 2700 Hundres experience. They did fight a 11th level barbarian and his 20 man(?) Gnoll Army, rescued the hostages and made some friends. I am pretty liberal with exp, I like watching the group advance.
At level 9 it took about 4 or so game sessions, thats one month of play and we play every week for like 5 hours, to go to 10th level.

Thats it

 

[Umbran]

In my campaigns, there is no individual xp, nor xp in the strict sense at all. All the PCs advance equally fast, i.e. whenever the group feels like it - roughly every 2 to 3 months - the PCs raise a level. [...snip for brevity...]

I cannot really understand why one should use individual awards - what I like about RPGs is that there is no competition, and no "winner".

One need not give individual awards, I suppose. But most gamers of my acquaintence would find your method unfulfilling. They can gain levels for doing nothing, which seems illogical to me.

Individual awards need not be competition (though some gamers can take it that way). If the DM is being reasonable and fair, individual XP awards are merely a sign of individual character growth. The DM decides, based upon whatever measure he deems fit, how much the character has learned or grown.

There is no reason to assume that characters change at the same rate, so idividual awards make sense to some. However, there's nothign really wrong with removing inter-player competition by always giving everyone the same amount of XP.

I, myself, am not a fan of doing it by ear - the "I haven't actually counted or considered, but I as DM think you should go up a level" leaves me flat. Similarly for your method. They remove much of the feeling that the character is growing because of what he or she has done. My players wouldn't like removing that at all.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

One need not give individual awards, I suppose. But most gamers of my acquaintence would find your method unfulfilling. They can gain levels for doing nothing, which seems illogical to me.

It doesn't seem that way to me. Even if you don't give out role playing awards, characters usually have to advance the story, fight or sneak past monsters, and at a bare minimum, survive, in order to gain levels.

Individual awards need not be competition (though some gamers can take it that way). If the DM is being reasonable and fair, individual XP awards are merely a sign of individual character growth. The DM decides, based upon whatever measure he deems fit, how much the character has learned or grown.

There is no reason to assume that characters change at the same rate, so idividual awards make sense to some. However, there's nothign really wrong with removing inter-player competition by always giving everyone the same amount of XP.

I, myself, am not a fan of doing it by ear - the "I haven't actually counted or considered, but I as DM think you should go up a level" leaves me flat. Similarly for your method. They remove much of the feeling that the character is growing because of what he or she has done. My players wouldn't like removing that at all.

I must agree here. The "DM thinks you deserve a level now" method also has mechanical problems since D&D has a number of spells and item creation feats which cost experience points. If experience points are never quantified, there's no way to quantify the sacrifice that casters make to scribe scrolls, enchant armor, etc.

I also have come to the conclusion that voting for role-playing awards or even on "the best roleplayer" without there necessarily being any tangible rewards (as is sometimes done in RPGA events) is a bad idea. I've seen far too many awards going to the guy whose character concept seems to boil down to "I'm playing a jerk and I'm going to make the game as unpleasant and unfun for everyone else at the table as possible and call it 'role-playing.'" Unfortunately, people seem to see that and say, "yeah he did a good job of pretending to be a jerk, I'll vote for him." And thus the system encourages people to role-play do everything possible to dominate the table (and also offers incentive to play jerks).

 

[JacktheRabbit]

We dont do a RP award. Instead we so a bonus XP amounting to 10% of the required XP to level for journaling a session.

This is them open to each player. The problem still exists that some people are journaling and others are not and right now my character will be hitting 5th level at the same time a non-journal character will hit 4th. Then I will hit 6th before he hits 5th.

 

[Scion]

for my group we had a different process.. at the end of each session I had each person say something that someone else did that they thought was good/unique and that person got a tote.. after everyone was done doing that I gave everyone those totes and extra depending on how well I thought the whole group did..

most sessions people got between 3 and 5.. the totes were good for some general things.. small exp boost, bonus to rolls, even some big things if enough were turned in

but anyway, it worked out pretty well, and I thought it made people pay more attention to what was going on as making someone else happy made it more likely they would pay attention to your deeds in the future

hope that helps!

 

[JacktheRabbit]

We dont do a RP award. Instead we so a bonus XP amounting to 10% of the required XP to level for journaling a session.

This is them open to each player. The problem still exists that some people are journaling and others are not and right now my character will be hitting 5th level at the same time a non-journal character will hit 4th. Then I will hit 6th before he hits 5th.

 

[Nyarlathotep]

May not work for you, but I award experience in the following manner. I calculate the XP that would have been rewarded for the session(s) for combat. I divide that by 3 and award 1/3 of it for monster bashing, 1/3 for story award and the remaining third is a "pool" for awarding role-playing. (Don't forget to divide the 1/3rd totals by the number of players).

I find that this works well for my group. The players who show up and can't be bothered to role-play (the "I'm not sure what I should do... so on a 1-3 I'll attack and on a 4-6 I'll retreat" crowd), still advances, but does so more slowly than the PC's who get involved with the story line. YMMV.