The many types of Sandboxes and Open-World Campaigns

[dragoner]

Those aren't the same thing.

Indeed they are.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Im still curious about the guiderails here. What does rulebook XP have to do to keep the game in check? Talk to people, disarm traps find secret doors, kill stuff. It's all generic. The only conclusion I can come to is to make sure players stay in the dungeon, doing some things over others, which feels a bit railroady. I'm not saying it is be default, I'm just curious what folks mean by this?

I'm not saying standard D&D experience setups would do it; just that I can quite picture experience award structures that would. Say "X experience for each new hex explored, X more for each mystery investigated, so on, so forth."

 

[Reynard]

Indeed they are.

You can have rewards that aren't XP. In fact I've never seen a real world game that didn't have non XP rewards, from basic treasure to magic items to social standing to allies, and on and on.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Or maybe the dm just decides at an arbitrary point when everyone levels up. To me, milestone implies that there is a central plot, and PC's advance as they complete aspects of the story. Which is not a railroad, but does lend itself to the DM just presenting the next bit of content and the players sort of agreeing to match their character's motivations to that content, IME.

Milestone advancement has become kind of a term-of-art here; while originally used as based on character motive aspect steps, its kind of used now for any advancement scheme that doesn't use experience points or skill ticks or the like. There's probably a better term for it, but its commonly used for advancement based on sessions or adventures.
Edit: Sorry aboutt he dangling sentence there; Firefox did something--creative.

 

[payn]

A very different example is Blades in the Dark. One of the ways you get XP is by making a "desperate" roll, basically attempting to do something when you are not in a good position to have a great effect. So, normally players might want to avoid that kind of situation because they are playing it safe. And that's mostly the case, but one of the pieces of advice for players is to "fall in love with trouble," because BitD is a game about characters who do not play it safe--that's where the drama comes in. So basically it's a way to reward doing a sub-optimal thing for the sake of the story. This isn't the only way to get xp, but for a storygame there is a very tight advancement system that my players quite like.

Ok, yeah I can definitely see a bespoke system that rewards a specific style of play. For me that is a dialed in experience that I can dig. I dont see D&D that way, however, its more of a general fantasy system. For those who like a specific D&D, thats probably a bummer. I know folks think D&D can/should do anything and being king of the hill has sort of forced it into that space.

You can have rewards that aren't XP. In fact I've never seen a real world game that didn't have non XP rewards, from basic treasure to magic items to social standing to allies, and on and on.

Right, I focus entirely on non-XP rewards in my games. Unless its a bespoke system, I really want players to have the freedom to pursue goals any way they would like.

Milestone advancement has become kind of a term-of-art here; while originally used as based on character motive aspect steps, its kind of used now for any advancement scheme that doesn't use experience points or skill ticks or the like. There's probably a better term for it, but its commonly used for

I think so too. I have not seen any term used other than milestone though.

 

[dragoner]

You can have rewards that aren't XP. In fact I've never seen a real world game that didn't have non XP rewards, from basic treasure to magic items to social standing to allies, and on and on.

XP is a reward by definition, however.

 

[Reynard]

XP is a reward by definition, however.

I think there was a misunderstanding. I was originally responding to when I thought you said "Only XP is a viable reward." Obviously XP is A reward.

 

[dragoner]

I think there was a misunderstanding. I was originally responding to when I thought you said "Only XP is a viable reward." Obviously XP is A reward.

It is a primary one, and I don't think it, or any other reward needs to be used as a lever to get the players to do what the GM wants them to do. That sort of breaks the whole idea of a sandbox, which I had not thought of GM's doing that, and people being against it, even if it makes sense now, that is what is happening.

 

[Aldarc]

Milestone advancement has become kind of a term-of-art here; while originally used as based on character motive aspect steps, its kind of used now for any advancement scheme that doesn't use experience points or skill ticks or the like. There's probably a better term for it, but its commonly used for

Mother-May-I-Level?

 

[Thomas Shey]

Mother-May-I-Level?

No. As you can see, I got cut off. Its usually based on time, or if a formal adventure is in use, a certain point in process (though certainly MMI is entirely possible too). As an example I used earlier, Fragged Empire has you level every three session/levels. I've occasionally had it drag out to four from sessions cut short, but its not really discretionary in any general term.