Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Malmuria" data-source="post: 8648351" data-attributes="member: 7030755">Compare a dungeon crawl in a dnd game where XP is for a) gold piece, b) killing monsters, or c) milestone.&nbsp; None of them are better than the others nor wholly determinative of what actually happens in the game.&nbsp; But (a) and (b), for example, can lead to a very different approach by players.&nbsp; Gold for xp implies a game where monsters can (or should) be avoided but treasure sought out, so the game becomes about that risk/reward trade off.&nbsp; Do you risk spending a turn trying to find a secret door that may lead to hidden treasure, knowing than an (unbalanced) group of monsters might be right around the corner?&nbsp; Whereas, if you get xp for killing monsters, the goal might be to &quot;clear&quot; the dungeon, going to every room and killing everything; even if there is no treasure, it was still worthwhile.&nbsp; If it's milestone, my question would be what constitutes the milestone.&nbsp; It might be solving whatever plot-related problem the dungeon provides (maybe it's being used as a secret base for an evil cult,&nbsp; so the goal is defeating the cult, etc).&nbsp; Or maybe the dm just decides at an arbitrary point when everyone levels up.&nbsp; To me, milestone implies that there is a central plot, and PC's advance as they complete aspects of the story.&nbsp; 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.A very different example is Blades in the Dark.&nbsp; One of the ways you get XP is by making a &quot;desperate&quot; roll, basically attempting to do something when you are not in a good position to have a great effect.&nbsp; So, normally players might want to avoid that kind of situation because they are playing it safe.&nbsp; And that's mostly the case, but one of the pieces of advice for players is to &quot;fall in love with trouble,&quot; because BitD is a game about characters who do not play it safe--that's where the drama comes in.&nbsp; So basically it's a way to reward doing a sub-optimal thing for the sake of the story.&nbsp; 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.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Malmuria, post: 8648351, member: 7030755"] Compare a dungeon crawl in a dnd game where XP is for a) gold piece, b) killing monsters, or c) milestone. None of them are better than the others nor wholly determinative of what actually happens in the game. But (a) and (b), for example, can lead to a very different approach by players. Gold for xp implies a game where monsters can (or should) be avoided but treasure sought out, so the game becomes about that risk/reward trade off. Do you risk spending a turn trying to find a secret door that may lead to hidden treasure, knowing than an (unbalanced) group of monsters might be right around the corner? Whereas, if you get xp for killing monsters, the goal might be to "clear" the dungeon, going to every room and killing everything; even if there is no treasure, it was still worthwhile. If it's milestone, my question would be what constitutes the milestone. It might be solving whatever plot-related problem the dungeon provides (maybe it's being used as a secret base for an evil cult, so the goal is defeating the cult, etc). 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. 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. [/QUOTE]

Verification