D&D General The Old "Boil an Ant Hill" Problem

[Fauchard1520]

Well then. I'm nothing if not consistent.

I swear to Gygax, I need to run a "three panel" contest at some point and ask folks to make a coherent story out of multiple comics.

 

[Iry]

Part of this is because our rule here is that character sheets stay with the DM between sessions, so that if you for some reason don't make the next session your character can still be played (our adventures always take more than one session, thus we often end in mid-adventure and sometimes even in mid-combat).

Keep backup copies! Especially in Dropbox/Google Drive/Whatever.

 

[Lanefan]

Keep backup copies! Especially in Dropbox/Google Drive/Whatever.

You think our character sheets are digitized?

Pen and paper all the way here, my friend.

 

[Bawylie]

For those of you that use XP rather than milestone leveling: How do you deal with the issue of players wanting to earn the final few XP to level up?

I have a standing policy to allow "extra credit" projects for bonus XP. Stuff like in-character journaling, painting your mini, and for-the-good-of-the-order options like buying a new set of wet-erase markers or building a new initiative tracker all count. I find that preferable to going out and murdering the nearest wolf just to ding, but I suspect there are simpler ways to address the issue.

How do you guys handle it at your table?

(Comic Related. Also, Munchkin card related.)

Gotta start with adventure design.

First, you figure out how much XP to give as a reward for each thing the PCs do. And that’s easy enough because you just turn to DMG pg 82, find the party’s Average Level and look at the XP threshold for a medium encounter. That’s the basis I use for a basic XP reward.

Then you assign values to actions. Generally, I do it like this: a planned encounter is worth the average reward; a milestone, boss encounter, or quest completion is worth double the average reward; random encounters and tangential discoveries are worth half the average reward.

(Ex - a party of level 1 characters earns 50 XP for overcoming each obstacle I put in their way between them and their goal. They earn 100 XP for completing the quest. They earn 25 XP for each random encounter or discovery.)

Now that you have rewards with values, you design your adventure content (in broad strokes) with these in mind. At level 1 and 2, each adventure should be relatively short and end with them getting a level.

The level 1 adventure will have a goal, probably 3 planned obstacles, and has space for 2 of the half-rewards (random encounters or discoveries). Now I’m gonna design 2 random encounters that I may not use and 2 discoveries that they may not find. It is likely they’ll hit at least 2 of these possible 4. And nobody will be upset if they go over and get 3 or even all 4.

So what happens if they come up short? If my level 1 party overcomes the three obstacles I set (50 XP each) and completes the quest (100 XP) and only has one random encounter (25 XP)? They have 275 XP and are only 25 XP from level 2!

That’s a judgment call. You have to weigh their accomplishments. Since (in my example) they did all the main quest stuff and merely avoided a random encounter, I’m inclined to just give them the XP as a bonus. But if they hadn’t completed the quest and instead had all 4 of the half-reward stuff, I’d keep them short of their level.

Essentially, an active group that does stuff gets the benefit of generosity while a group that looks for anthills to boil gets a reminder that XP is for adventuring.

 

[Baron Opal II]

You can train spending 2gp for 1xp, up to 1,000xp per week. This is also handy if someone misses a big session, the party can spend some cash to catch everyone up. This also gives other characters something additional to do while the spell casters are making scrolls and potions.

 

[Eltab]

My table requires level-up-work to be done between sessions, so if you are ju-u-ust short this week you should be good after next week. Since we have some players with irregular attendance, everybody is at a different point in the cycle.

 

[Lanefan]

Gotta start with adventure design.

First, you figure out how much XP to give as a reward for each thing the PCs do. And that’s easy enough because you just turn to DMG pg 82, find the party’s Average Level and look at the XP threshold for a medium encounter. That’s the basis I use for a basic XP reward.

Then you assign values to actions. Generally, I do it like this: a planned encounter is worth the average reward; a milestone, boss encounter, or quest completion is worth double the average reward; random encounters and tangential discoveries are worth half the average reward.

(Ex - a party of level 1 characters earns 50 XP for overcoming each obstacle I put in their way between them and their goal. They earn 100 XP for completing the quest. They earn 25 XP for each random encounter or discovery.)

Now that you have rewards with values, you design your adventure content (in broad strokes) with these in mind. At level 1 and 2, each adventure should be relatively short and end with them getting a level.

The level 1 adventure will have a goal, probably 3 planned obstacles, and has space for 2 of the half-rewards (random encounters or discoveries). Now I’m gonna design 2 random encounters that I may not use and 2 discoveries that they may not find. It is likely they’ll hit at least 2 of these possible 4. And nobody will be upset if they go over and get 3 or even all 4.

So what happens if they come up short? If my level 1 party overcomes the three obstacles I set (50 XP each) and completes the quest (100 XP) and only has one random encounter (25 XP)? They have 275 XP and are only 25 XP from level 2!

I give xp for what the PCs do, period, which means this sort of pre-planning would become pointless as soon as play began.

They get appropriate xp for defeating wandering monsters, for example. which can't really be "budgeted for" as it's random not only what they'll meet but how often - if at all. Or, for all I know they'll find a way of avoiding a large chunk of the adventure via (often by sheer luck) going straight to the goal and then straight back out. (I try to avoid linear-design adventures that force parties through every encounter - how dull) Or one or two characters will die halfway through, meaning each survivor's share of the xp for any subsequent encounters will be higher.

Couple that with individual xp rather than group, and I've no real way of knowing exactly when anyone's going to bump. If I see there's a bit of a backlog of xp waiting to be given out, I'll just ask if anyone's close to bumping and if someone is, I'll give 'em out.

 

[Bawylie]

I give xp for what the PCs do, period, which means this sort of pre-planning would become pointless as soon as play began.

They get appropriate xp for defeating wandering monsters, for example. which can't really be "budgeted for" as it's random not only what they'll meet but how often - if at all. Or, for all I know they'll find a way of avoiding a large chunk of the adventure via (often by sheer luck) going straight to the goal and then straight back out. (I try to avoid linear-design adventures that force parties through every encounter - how dull) Or one or two characters will die halfway through, meaning each survivor's share of the xp for any subsequent encounters will be higher.

Couple that with individual xp rather than group, and I've no real way of knowing exactly when anyone's going to bump. If I see there's a bit of a backlog of xp waiting to be given out, I'll just ask if anyone's close to bumping and if someone is, I'll give 'em out.

Pre-planning is never pointless. I do it so that I have a rough idea of what kind of content to prep for. And then making that content available so that the time we set aside to play is filled with content instead of grasping for filler.

And yeah, wandering monsters and random encounters absolutely can be budgeted for. I do it all the time. I know the rate at which I expect random encounters to happen and I know how much time I have in a scheduled play session, so I can prep what I need based on that rate and time slot.

Merely because I have prepared these things in advance does not mean they are encountered in a linear fashion during play. In practice, by forecasting the size and scope of the adventure, I prep the content I need to fill the space I have, I manage the pace of the game (at the adventure and campaign levels), and stay on top of power creep. It’s quite easy.

 

[Iry]

You think our character sheets are digitized?

Pen and paper all the way here, my friend.

I think you should have copies of your sheet, digital or paper. I'm getting flashbacks of ruined sheets just writing this.

 

[Lanefan]

Pre-planning is never pointless. I do it so that I have a rough idea of what kind of content to prep for. And then making that content available so that the time we set aside to play is filled with content instead of grasping for filler.

Planning content doesn't - to me, anyway - involve planning xp rewards.

The content is what it is, and whatever xp they get out of it, they get.

And yeah, wandering monsters and random encounters absolutely can be budgeted for. I do it all the time. I know the rate at which I expect random encounters to happen and I know how much time I have in a scheduled play session, so I can prep what I need based on that rate and time slot.

Again, that's far more fine-tuning than I'll ever do.

I have an adventure. I've no idea how many sessions it'll take 'em to get through it, nor how they'll approach it, nor how much of it they'll end up engaging with, or whether they'll succeed or fail at whatever mission or reason it might be that's taken them there.

Merely because I have prepared these things in advance does not mean they are encountered in a linear fashion during play.

Of course. Unless the adventure itself is linear (and far too many published ones are!) you've no way of knowing what they'll hit and-or in what sequence.

In practice, by forecasting the size and scope of the adventure, I prep the content I need to fill the space I have, I manage the pace of the game (at the adventure and campaign levels), and stay on top of power creep.

In this statement I see three things that to me are quite unrelated.

Prepping the content you need to fill the space you have - that's fine, though unless you're going through an entire adventure per session this shouldn't ever be a big problem. That, and if they're in free-form downtime you're completely in react mode anyway - hard to prep for that.

Managing the pace of the game - pace of play is (or probably should be) largely determined by the players, as if your setting is at all engaging and-or interesting they'll want to spend time exploring it and interacting with it, be it on a micro (e.g. room by room) or macro (local-regional-national) scale. All of this takes time above and beyond that spent adventuring. Further to this are downtime activities, treasury division, character interactions (with each other or with NPCs) and so forth, all of which are driven by the players and all of which take an unpredictable amount of time.

Stay on top of power creep - power creep is something determined by the system and-or any houserules, and in theory is something you can see coming from miles away: sooner or later they're going to level up, and the system tells you what to expect when they do.