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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="delericho" data-source="post: 8663138" data-attributes="member: 22424">Yeah, that's close to what I do.For each campaign I run, I define a "side dish" (to go with the Orc&Pie) - for one campaign it was about uncovering secrets, for another it was about finding unattended treasures, my next will be about making peaceful contact with other civilizations. And I make sure the players know what the current "side dish" is, of course. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I then award XP for four things:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">When they complete an encounter they get an award (actually a fixed amount based on their level - the difficulty of the encounter doesn't affect that).</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">When they complete a quest, they get an award (the same as for an encounter).</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">When they completely exhaust any magic item (except a potion of healing, since they can buy those), they get a one-quarter award.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">And when they complete the task associated with the "side dish", they get a one-quarter reward.</li> </ul>This has the effect of encouraging, but not forcing, the players to interact with the "side dish" of the campaign, which goes a long way towards differentiating my campaigns. And, since the "side dish" is always based in either the Exploration or Interaction pillars (or, sometimes, both), it helps the game avoid just being a never-ending combat.</blockquote>

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