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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Greg Benage" data-source="post: 6974720" data-attributes="member: 93631">I used it when I was learning to DM, but ditched it by the time I ran my first real campaign in 1981. These days I just award levels after a certain number of sessions. I try to run a sandbox game (or at least a sandbox with a lot of choose-your-own-adventures in it), and I don't want leveling rewards driving player decisions. They can sit in the tavern drinking and gambling, if that's what they want to do (they don't). In practice, they have their own interests and goals and they pursue them.What I do care about is campaign pacing, and session-based leveling works great for that. Even in OSR forums, I see a lot of threads of the "how much treasure should I place to provide enough XP for a well-paced campaign?" variety. That seems bass-ackwards: why not run a well-paced campaign and place the amount of treasure that makes sense for the campaign world?Pacing may not be your primary concern. Awarding levels for milestones makes sense in a plot-based "adventure path" campaign, where you want to directly incentive players to pursue the goals of the adventure path. Awarding levels for discoveries and areas explored makes sense in an exploration-focused campaign, where you want to directly incentivize players for exploring. Awarding levels for contacts made, alliances formed, rivals vanquished or backstabbed might make sense in a social- or intrigue-focused campaign.Arneson appears to have innovated the XP concept from unit-upgrade mechanics in wargames so his players could keep playing the same heroes over extended campaigns, as opposed to individual scenarios. It was a natural progression and a good idea at the time.</blockquote>

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