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<blockquote data-quote="Willie the Duck" data-source="post: 9597624" data-attributes="member: 6799660">1XP=1GP was a an incredibly elegant solution Gary stumbled upon for the fun little treasure-hunting game he and Dave cobbled together. In hindsight a simple lesson -- use your incentivization structure to reinforce the central gameplay loop that you expect people to enjoy about playing the game.The only real problem is that it breaks down* if you want to play something other than a treasure-hunting game. You can play something that looks like The Hobbit or Conan/Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories easily, but doing something like a faux Lord of the Rings means you are deliberately forgoing treasure (and the advancement mechanic associated with it) to go save the not-shire from not-Sauron. Early Alarums and Excursions indicate that people were doing that long before things like the Dragonlance modules came out. As always, no one right way to game, but also easy to see how one advancement mechanism has trouble accommodating all styles.*or at least advancement and incentivization mechanisms break down.I think AD&amp;D 2e had a good starting notion -- set up multiple possible XP paradigms. It just needed to spell it out more, explain what each choice did for your game, etc. Just saying 'here's a bunch of options, find one that works for your game' didn't help 15 year old me who hadn't clicked in with what gp=xp did for my game, much less what I wanted out of it. Mind you 2e was perhaps the worst about what to do with wealth, especially if you didn't go gp=xp -- similar issue as 5e, but with ginormous treasure piles after a few levels.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Willie the Duck, post: 9597624, member: 6799660"] 1XP=1GP was a an incredibly elegant solution Gary stumbled upon for the fun little treasure-hunting game he and Dave cobbled together. In hindsight a simple lesson -- use your incentivization structure to reinforce the central gameplay loop that you expect people to enjoy about playing the game. The only real problem is that it breaks down* if you want to play something other than a treasure-hunting game. You can play something that looks like [I]The Hobbit[/I] or [I]Conan/Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser [/I]stories easily, but doing something like a faux [I]Lord of the Rings[/I] means you are deliberately forgoing treasure (and the advancement mechanic associated with it) to go save the not-shire from not-Sauron. Early [I]Alarums and Excursions[/I] indicate that people were doing that long before things like the [I]Dragonlance [/I]modules came out. As always, no one right way to game, but also easy to see how one advancement mechanism has trouble accommodating all styles. [SIZE=2]*or at least advancement and incentivization mechanisms break down.[/SIZE] I think AD&D 2e had a good starting notion -- set up multiple possible XP paradigms. It just needed to spell it out more, explain what each choice did for your game, etc. Just saying 'here's a bunch of options, find one that works for your game' didn't help 15 year old me who hadn't clicked in with what gp=xp did for my game, much less what I wanted out of it. Mind you 2e was perhaps the worst about what to do with wealth, especially if you didn't go gp=xp -- similar issue as 5e, but with ginormous treasure piles after a few levels. [/QUOTE]

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