D&D 5E The Illusion of Experience Points that Everyone Disbelieves

[Ahnehnois]

[MENTION=6690511]GX.Sigma[/MENTION]
"Plot-driven". Well, it still might not be clear to everyone what it's getting at, but it's admittedly better than any term I have.

 

[Cadence]

Going back and collecting things I missed...

What is the purpose of experience points?

What are Experience Points in D&D?
1. First they are your score for playing your class through the length of the campaign (a single play of the game).
2. They measure how much personal experience/learning in the campaign you as a player have shown and...
3. They measure the accumulated class experience for a character, PC or NPC, in the campaign.

I kind of like this break-down. I guess I don't usually think of (1) explicitly, but a lot of uses of XP I like might make sense here. Several DMs have given small awards of a hundred or few-hundred XP for a particularly insightful solution or example of excellent role-playing (maybe one is given once every few sessions... and its usually for one of those moments where everyone at the table is like whoa about an idea or happening). Another DM would encourage character development by giving similarly small amounts for people who would do something like bring in a picture of their character or fill out parts of their background.

(2) makes me want to go back and reread the pages in the 1e DMG where Gygax talks about how players get more experienced and figure things out. Also makes me want to go dig up my old characters from the 80s downstairs and see what goofy things I used to do.

No. Those are the games treating D&D as a game. A game where score should be tracked because the players are playing to objectives, like collecting experience points for one. Story following games as D&D have been very popular too and I don't discount them. But no one needs to track the score in those games.

Viewing a lot of what goes on being a shared world/story might be why I don't really think of (1) above as explicitly being a reason for xp. It seems strange in retrospect that it isn't more at the front of my consciousness about it though - it was common that you'd want the xp to level and we'd grouse about how short we were... and the parallel to Bard's Tale and things where it was blatantly about getting the points couldn't be more obvious.

In the story game you can still use (3) though to advance the characters along at a controlled rate.

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"But experience points are an illusion". No, they're not. In my last session, characters had a very difficult fight, and remembering their XP from memory only, I expected some of them (I also track evolution individually for each character) to advance by the end of the session. In other words, if I was playing by "level when you want to", they would have leveled. By then end of the session, though, nobody advanced. I felt tempted to add a "completing a challenging mission" XP reward to help them reach the magic number, but in the end I decided against it, exactly because I didn't want it to be an illusion, I want it to be a mostly objective goal.

That's how I like to DM, that's how I like to play. I love D&D, I hope they keep "XP to level up" as the core advancement rule forever.

In some other threads there is a divide between those who want each scene to be framed and then run as written versus those who are more open to fudging/adjusting on the fly if it suits the story. Is there something of an analogy to that here for the XP giving? Is giving the XP for particular accomplishments (monster, trap, treasure, story goal) kind of like letting the scene play out as written, where giving levels when it feels right kind of like the fudging?

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Not only that but the DMG for 1e AD&D had a table to show what monsters should be on each Dungeon Level which were supposed to map roughly to character level as well. Each level was carefully populated with a mix of easy, medium and hard encounters for the appropriate level.

I mean, the idea was supposed to be that players could go to Dungeon Level 2 even at first level if they wanted to, but they'd get higher risk and should know this in advance.

I have the same memory as @Balesir here - you didn't go to the next level until you finished off the one you were on unless you wanted it to get really ugly really fast. I'm trying to remember where I first learned that though and I can't recall. I mean, presumably it isn't some innate cultural memory.

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D&D Next is going to have a rough time accommodating not just game styles to satisfy different players. Complexity be damned, some players want to game the game world, while others want to take turns creating a shared story/world. Those are two seriously opposed games objectives. Not that those are the only two reasons to play D&D, but these two do not work in concert with each other. The first requires serious effort to create a code behind a screen for players to test their gaming acumen against with more nuance and game play than any Chess game could afford. The other begins as an empty page and is added to at every step with rules designed to support that. Personally I don't see the two existing at the same table as a DM as referee or a DM as story leader has extraordinarily different jobs to do. For instance in one you would never want to improvise (like in Mastermind), while in the other all they may ever do is improvise.

Didn't B/X and 1e let people do both of these things? Our group certainly got a lot of story out of 1e and you got a lot of game? Are we just more consciously aware of what's going on behind the scenes? Did we ever worry about anything like the 3-pillars or choosing useless feats back then? (How did I not notice for all those years how absolutely atrocious thieves were at all the thieves skills until they had quite a few levels under their belts? How did we not mind at all having nothing for our characters to do for large chunks of the dungeon crawl if we were in the middle back of the marching order but didn't have offensive spells?)

 

[howandwhy99]

In some other threads there is a divide between those who want each scene to be framed and then run as written versus those who are more open to fudging/adjusting on the fly if it suits the story. Is there something of an analogy to that here for the XP giving? Is giving the XP for particular accomplishments (monster, trap, treasure, story goal) kind of like letting the scene play out as written, where giving levels when it feels right kind of like the fudging?

Referees in basketball only award a basket if the players actually put the ball through the hoop. That's what is gaining players/characters points in D&D. The referee doesn't fudge that a last point buzzer shot went in when it didn't, even though it would make a better story, because games aren't storytelling.

I have the same memory as @Balesir here - you didn't go to the next level until you finished off the one you were on unless you wanted it to get really ugly really fast. I'm trying to remember where I first learned that though and I can't recall. I mean, presumably it isn't some innate cultural memory.

Like anything hidden behind the screen it's trial and error learned through playing the game.

Didn't B/X and 1e let people do both of these things? Our group certainly got a lot of story out of 1e and you got a lot of game? Are we just more consciously aware of what's going on behind the scenes? Did we ever worry about anything like the 3-pillars or choosing useless feats back then? (How did I not notice for all those years how absolutely atrocious thieves were at all the thieves skills until they had quite a few levels under their belts? How did we not mind at all having nothing for our characters to do for large chunks of the dungeon crawl if we were in the middle back of the marching order but didn't have offensive spells?)

How abysmal early games were, huh? I still don't see how running D&D as a game for the players to game is ever going to mesh with players looking to tell a story.

 

[Thyrwyn]

Referees in basketball only award a basket if the players actually put the ball through the hoop. That's what is gaining players/characters points in D&D. The referee doesn't fudge that a last point buzzer shot went in when it didn't, even though it would make a better story, because games aren't storytelling.

But D&D is not a sport, it is not a competitive endevour. There are no teams and neither side is trying to beat the other - it is a cooperative undertaking. Has it been played that way? yes. Is that the norm or the default? I would say no.

I still don't see how running D&D as a game for the players to game is ever going to mesh with players looking to tell a story.

If you run D&D as a game for players to game, then you will lose the players who are invested in the story. But the rules don't have to require running the game that way. I, for one, haven't run D&D that way in over 30 years. I haven't played that way either.

 

[howandwhy99]

But D&D is not a sport, it is not a competitive endevour. There are no teams and neither side is trying to beat the other - it is a cooperative undertaking. Has it been played that way? yes. Is that the norm or the default? I would say no.

The difficulty is the game the players play to succeed against, or at least learn about enough to achieve their own objectives within. Player play to improve or beat a module just as I believe most video gamers play.

If you run D&D as a game for players to game, then you will lose the players who are invested in the story. But the rules don't have to require running the game that way. I, for one, haven't run D&D that way in over 30 years. I haven't played that way either.

If you run D&D as a shared activity for the players to tell a story, then you lose the players who are invested in it for the game. The rules haven't been clear on how to run it for sometime and its not unusual today to see all sorts of play styles for this one game being played in the same hobby store - no matter how well the rules support them. But it wasn't always so.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

The difficulty is the game the players play to succeed against, or at least learn about enough to achieve their own objectives within. Player play to improve or beat a module just as I believe most video gamers play.

The problem is that you seem to claim that all players do this. I don't. I play to have my PC act in the persona that I have created for him. This may not always be the best gameplay choice. It may not allow me to succeed at an objective or beat a module. It may even lead to my character's death. I'm not playing to beat something or "win." I'm playing to interact with a fantasy world as if I were my character. Do I do this within a rules framework? Yes, of course. But I'm not trying to break the code behind those rules to win, not by a long shot. I have other players that play the game for the same reason. We also have other players that are more like you describe. Both types play at the same table and we don't lose one type for the other.

If you run D&D as a shared activity for the players to tell a story, then you lose the players who are invested in it for the game. The rules haven't been clear on how to run it for sometime and its not unusual today to see all sorts of play styles for this one game being played in the same hobby store - no matter how well the rules support them. But it wasn't always so.

I have other players that play the game for the same reason I do. We also have other players that are more like you describe. Both types play at the same table and we don't lose one type for the other.

I've been playing for 31 years. And each table I played at back then through all the ones I play now have had different styles. I has always been so, unless you go back to the point when there was only one table running the game.

 

[howandwhy99]

The problem is that you seem to claim that all players do this. I don't.

I'm not claiming what the players in our hobby do. I'm suggesting the original game design was constructed for purposes other than what everyone uses it for, even long ago.

I have other players that play the game for the same reason I do. We also have other players that are more like you describe. Both types play at the same table and we don't lose one type for the other.

That's is good and I've seen every type of the GNS players satisfied at the same D&D table, but in general the game supports only a limited number of playstyles. There are games available now that simply better support others. Should the next version of D&D include multiple options for play? Of course, but I don't think co-op competition gaming will work with pure story trading gaming in the same campaign without routinely losing the consequences of the previous player's actions.

I've been playing for 31 years. And each table I played at back then through all the ones I play now have had different styles. I has always been so, unless you go back to the point when there was only one table running the game.

That's true for me too.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

I'm not claiming what the players in our hobby do. I'm suggesting the original game design was constructed for purposes other than what everyone uses it for, even long ago.

I think one can only really speculate what the original game design was constructed for. If the original designers wanted to continue to play a pattern-recognition game I believe they would have just continued to expand the wargame line. By moving into the field of becoming your character they broke new ground and created something beyond mere game-solving as had been played to that point. And the same two broad types of players we're discussing probably sat together at that first table. I think the game was designed to be ever-growing and led either directly or indirectly to the large spectrum of games we have today.

 

[Thyrwyn]

I'm not claiming what the players in our hobby do. I'm suggesting the original game design was constructed for purposes other than what everyone uses it for, even long ago.

And thankfully, it has evolved

That's is good and I've seen every type of the GNS players satisfied at the same D&D table, but in general the game supports only a limited number of playstyles. There are games available now that simply better support others. Should the next version of D&D include multiple options for play? Of course, but I don't think co-op competition gaming will work with pure story trading gaming in the same campaign without routinely losing the consequences of the previous player's actions.

I don't believe that anyone here has suggested that D&DNext should be/support "pure story trading gaming". I certainly haven't - at least not intentionally. Nor do I want a game that requires competition. I have no qualms if the game supports competitive styles of play - I just don't want it to be the mandated, default style of play. I don't want the players to have to compete against the DM, each other, or the game itself. I want a game that allows the DM to create/run challenging, engaging scenarios - and, while I want the game mechanics to be engaging, I do not want them to be so challenging as to get in the way of, or take away from, the scenarios created.

I don't need the game to tell us how to tell or create a story - if the people, the game, and the scenarios are engaging and interesting, then stories will be the happy accident of their interactions. D&D 3.X (which I play and enjoy) requires so much focus on the game mechanics, that it interferes with the other interactions at the the table - players, DM, and even the scenario are required to overly-engage the game mechanics and the penalty for failure is un-fun. If the players don't build their characters to be sufficiently combat-effective, if the encounter has not been properly balanced, or if the DM runs the encounter "incorrectly", the results are either tedious, frustrating, or catastrophic.

 

[Umbran]

I'm suggesting the original game design was constructed for purposes other than what everyone uses it for, even long ago.

Setting aside how accurate that suggestion might be....

Who cares? In this context, original intent is an historical curiosity. It does not speak to or limit what the design could be used for today.