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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Malmuria" data-source="post: 8647765" data-attributes="member: 7030755">Justin Alexander talks about this in terms of the "default" action of various kinds of games.  XP can be a good way of communicating the basic game structure to players--basically, when in doubt, do x.  There is a meta-level there in that it sort of expresses what the game and the characters are 'about,' but as long as you are doing some kind of xp and levels-progression that's always there.  Now, I don't think that XP is the only determining motivation for players, and some players might not even care.  For example, if you are running a mystery-type scenario, getting clues and figuring out information might be its own reward.I think the standard trad dnd structure is mystery/investigation that results in dungeon crawl, on repeat.  But that can fail at many points, because the players know they are supposed to be searching for clues, but they either don't know where to search or can't put together the clues they do have, and the DM often thinks they have provided all the information the players need.  So it's good to have an action that the players can always default to if they get stuck (and fwiw, I think "get treasure" is less disruptive than "kill stuff")[URL unfurl="true"]https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/15140/roleplaying-games/game-structures-part-3-dungeoncrawl[/URL]</blockquote>