What does XP mean to you?

[Mallus]

I agree with Mallus...

Hey, we agree on something... cool.

 

[Mallus]

Actually, strictly by the DMG (page 49), the party should be running into a variety of encounters ranging from Easy to Overpowering.

I can honestly say I've never seen an overpowering encounter used intentionally, outside of ye olde Tomb of Horrors.

Sure, if all your encounters happen to be 'typical'. But in a more varied game, where 'typical' is just a rough midpoint amidst challenges of widely varying nature and difficulty, it might be nice to make your awards a little more individual too.

My point was that the advancement rate is pretty much set, and level, by design.

Again you're assuming "succeed or die".

No, I'm not. Really.

Even in campaigns where the party has generally been successful there have been some things they didn't do as well as they could have done, which cost them XP.

The only way for players in my campaign to 'not do as well as they could have' is if they end up disenganged and bored at the end of the session.

If you're used to games in which the PCs never actually fail, I can see how you'd start seeing XP as automatic.

I run, and play, in games where success and failure, reward and punishment, are handled in-game, outside of the XP system.

But in campaigns which hold the possibility of characters trying, failing, and still living to try again, that failure will reduce the XP earned, which will in turn highlight the fact that it is a reward.

Let me say it again, mechnaically speaking, I reward success and failure equally. Interesting failure is encouraged, at least, it isn't penalized. I want PC to 'just react' to each situation at hand, without giving a second though to metagame concerns like XP.

Which isn't to say they always succeed, or never face the consequences of their failure. Hell, they have to face the dire consequences of their success from time to time.

 

[Rackhir]

I’ve found some serious benefits to this approach to XP. Not only does it save me a lot of time, but it makes my players think about combat a lot more like their characters do. Since combat provides no OOC benefit (namely, XP), the only reason for getting into combat is because the characters think it’s a good idea, and they’re much more likely to consider other options than they would in a game using standard XP gain methods.

Actually a lot of time (60-80%) we fight because we're not given a choice in the matter. There's no alternative or option to avoid the fight like with most of the battles when we were travelling across Skull Island. We were constantly ambushed with seemingly no chance to detect or avoid the fights.

One of these days we are going to just simply state that we are locking ourselves in a room for enough sessions to level. Which is the flip side of not getting XP for doing stuff since it essentially removes the incentive to actually do something. Why bother going and fighting the dragon when not doing so gets you the same reward and at a much lower risk level and expenditure of resources.

 

[Quickleaf]

True, but it's the DM who gets to make the definition, as he's the one doing the awarding.

This is where I totally ditched the D&D system in favor of "The Shadow of Yesterday" (www.anvilwerks.com ) style approach. In my game, the players define what success means for their character. As the GM I determine their success according to the spectrum they define.

 

[Markn]

Our group has played without XP for the past 3 years. Essentially, we have set a limit of 2-4 sessions before a level is gained. We time it for the module or adventure that the DM is running so that the group does not get ahead or fall behind in the adventure we are playing.

Other times, the pace has been quickened or slowed depending on the length of the campaign or other extraneous factors.

At any rate, we find it works great. Everyone knows the pace of levelling, no more XP calculations and so forth. Now, how do we handle XP expenditures? Weill, if you ever spend more than 1000XP times your level you have lost a level. We have even gone so far as to figure out a time frame that a player has to play to gain that level back and catch up to the group (after all characters of lower level gain more XP and should catch the rest eventually).

Its not a perfect system, but it works for us and speeds up game play.

 

[Wombat]

Xp is a measure of experiences -- memories, collective knowledge, actions taken, muscle/metaphysical memory, the things that have happened to bring you to this point. This has always been how I have interpreted XP.

As such, when one gives up XP, one loses part of one's path or background, part of what makes them them.

Therefore magical items, a la D&D, are powered by the very experiences of our lives -- you must give up something to gain something.

 

[shilsen]

Actually a lot of time (60-80%) we fight because we're not given a choice in the matter.

That generally happens after the PCs enter an area which they know is dangerous, like in Xen'drik or in/around Yarkuun Draal.

There's no alternative or option to avoid the fight like with most of the battles when we were travelling across Skull Island. We were constantly ambushed with seemingly no chance to detect or avoid the fights.

Actually, IIRC, there were two successful ambushes on Skull Island, i.e. the forest trolls and the dragon. The singing tree was heard at a distance, the dinosaur swarm spent two rounds sitting around and chirping before attacking, the hill giant group was heard coming and ambushed by you guys, the drider + dolgrims and the PCs went at each other the same time, the hill giants + fire giant got ambushed by the PCs, and so on.

Player memories are notoriously unreliable things

One of these days we are going to just simply state that we are locking ourselves in a room for enough sessions to level.

Would you really prefer to do that rather than all of the things that occur in one session? If you are serious, which I hope you aren't, I think you might be overestimating the chances of the other players/PCs agreeing with you/Nameless about it.

Which is the flip side of not getting XP for doing stuff since it essentially removes the incentive to actually do something. Why bother going and fighting the dragon when not doing so gets you the same reward and at a much lower risk level and expenditure of resources.

The way I figure it, one does stuff in the game because it's fun. My PCs go out there and encounter people, travel to strange places, and fight a bunch of weird things because they're all fun to do. And since the fun is often existing on a metagame level, I create PCs who have in-character reasons to actually do the things that will be fun for me as a player.

I'm betting that if you ask the other players whether they want to (a) spend six hours sitting around the table just talking among themselves with nothing occurring in-game and get 5000 XP for it and (b) having one of our normal sessions and getting 1000 XP for it, they'll pick the latter.

Of course, I could be wrong.

 

[Mallus]

The way I figure it, one does stuff in the game because it's fun. My PCs go out there and encounter people, travel to strange places, and fight a bunch of weird things because they're all fun to do.

Right. It strikes me as absurd to suggest that players need some added incentive for playing the game.

Its like wanting a quarter to come out of the Pac-Man machine after you press the 1P button.

I'm betting that if you ask the other players whether they want to (a) spend six hours sitting around the table just talking among themselves with nothing occurring in-game and get 5000 XP for it and (b) having one of our normal sessions and getting 1000 XP for it, they'll pick the latter.

Now I really wonder what my CITY players would choose...

 

[Lanefan]

Experience points are called that because they represent experience...things learned via doing whatever it is you do...in an abstract yet surprisingly elegant way. The game simply then assumes that the PC's and other adventuring types accumulate ExP far faster than the general populace...fine by me.

The question of ExP for killing vs. ExP for avoiding has always bothered me for this reason: if the party takes pains to avoid an encounter and gets the requisite ExP on the way in to the dungeon, but then decides to engage and kill said encounter later on the way out, do they get ExP again? Logic says they should, at least to some extent, but canny players will soon figure out this double-dip scam and make sure to adopt an avoid-then-kill strategy whenever possible.

As for who gets what ExP, most of the time it's pretty cut and dried: if you take part in a given encounter, you get ExP for it. If your involvement was peripheral, or if you died during it, you get half. If you weren't involved at all, you get none. At the end of each adventure, I give out a bonus based on whether the mission goal was achieved or not, how much of the adventure (usually gauged by days) you were around for, and an occasional fudge factor e.g. if all the significant parts of the adventure happened right at the end, someone who came in halfway through might get more than half bonus.

You level up ("bump") whenever; you don't gain most of the new level's benefits until you train.

It seems so simple.

Lanefan

 

[ThirdWizard]

Our group has played without XP for the past 3 years.

I would stop using XP completely if it weren't for the item creation rules and XP cost for spells that we use a lot. I know, I know, there are alternate rules-sets (that I hear are good) for that stuff, but I'm lazy enough that the system as-is is good enough for me.