What Is an Experience Point Worth?

It seems like a simple question, but the way you answer it may, in effect, determine the metaphysics of your game. Many RPGs use some sort of "experience point" system to model growth and learning. The progenitor of this idea is, of course, Dungeons & Dragons; the Experience Point (XP) system has been a core feature of the game from the beginning.

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Yet what exactly an experience point is remains unclear.

Think about it: can anyone earn an XP under the right circumstances? Or must one possess a class? If so, what qualifies an individual for a class? The 1st-edition Dungeon Master’s Guide specifies that henchmen earn 50 percent of the group’s XP award. In other words, they get a full share awarded, but then only "collect" half the share. Where does the other half go? Did it ever exist in the first place?

These esoteric questions were highlighted for me recently when I recreated a 20-year-old D&D character from memory for a new campaign I’m playing in. All I could remember of this character from my high school days was her race and class (half-elf Bladesinger, because I liked the cheese, apparently) and that the campaign fizzled out after only a handful of sessions. If I made it to level 2 back then, I couldn’t rightly say.

I asked my Dungeon Master (DM)—the same fellow who had run the original game for me back in the days of the Clinton administration—whether I could start a level ahead, or at least with a randomly-determined amount of XP (say, 200+2D100). Being the stern taskmaster that he is, he shot down both suggestions, saying instead that I’d be starting at 0 XP and at level 1, just like the rest of the party. As justification, he said that my character had amassed 0 XP for this campaign.

As the character probably only had a few hundred XP to her name to begin with, I let the matter slide. But it did get me thinking: do Experience Points only exist within the context of individual campaigns? Was my DM onto something?

This sort of thinking can in turn lead down quite a rabbit hole. Are classes themselves an arbitrary construct? Do they exist solely for players, or are non-player characters (NPCs) also capable of possessing classes and levels? Different editions of D&D have presented different interpretations of this question, from essentially statting up all NPCs as monsters, with their own boutique abilities (as in the earliest iterations of the game), to granting NPCs levels in "non-adventuring classes" (the famous 20th-level Commoner of 3rd-edition days).

The current edition of D&D has come back around to limiting classes and XP awards to player-characters only—which brings us back to our original question: are Experience Points, like character classes, meant to function solely as an abstract game mechanic, or are they an objective force within the game world? How do you, the reader at home, treat XP in your campaigns?

contributed by David Larkins

 

[pemerton]

And then what happens????

That depends on the table. If the GM has done his/her job properly, this doesn't come out of nowhere.

But there's no script that tells you how to run a non-scripted game.

 

[Sadras]

That depends on the table. If the GM has done his/her job properly, this doesn't come out of nowhere.

Stating that this grizzly looking man hasn't come out of nowhere, you're tacitly suggesting that the adventure was already in motion and that this individual is going to continue the established storyline.

In your 'lacklustre' example, the hook usually represents the start of an adventure (refer to many published adventures).

I don't see how you can compare these two examples fairly given that they begin at different parts in the story.

But there's no script that tells you how to run a non-scripted game.

You don't need to have a script for either example. Whether you have written down what the grizzly man says/does or make it up on the fly (since he didn't come out of nowhere and the DM did his/her job properly) shouldn't make much of a difference. Whether the agenda of the NPC is scripted or in the mind of the DM, it changes nothing. It is play that determines what actions/words are realised by the NPC.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

By player I assume you mean character?

No, I don't. The player is the one actually making the decision, albeit from the character's perspective and based on what the character observes (i.e. they are role-playing). If the character was capable of independent thought, we wouldn't need the GM to convey that information to the player.

In any event, I'm assuming about something that gets easier, the more cloud there is (eg "I'm a vampire who wants to avoid being burned by the sun: I dodge from shadow to shadow, avoiding patches of sunlight"). If the state of the clouds is already established in the fiction, then it might provide a modifier to the check; but if it hasn't been, then the state of the clouds is one thing that might be read of the check result.

But what are you going to say, when a player asks about the cloud cover? I assume there are metereological measures of degree of cloud cover, but (i) I don't know what they are, and (ii) I wouldn't be able to correlate them to what I can see in the sky on a day-to-day basis, and presumably neither would most PCs. If I tell the player "There's some cloud, but it's not raining and there are patches of sunlight breaking through", what does that mean to the player vis-a-vis his/her PC's clever scheme to exploit the cloud cover?

I see the confusion. That's not where I was going with this. I meant the existence of clouds or not to be a simple observable fact, like whether it's raining or whether there's a tree nearby.

"There's some cloud, but it's not raining and there are patches of sunlight breaking through", would be a very reasonable answer to the question of whether or not clouds are visible. Other good answers would be "It's overcast", or "There are some very nice cumulonimbus over to the east, but it's otherwise mostly clear", or even "No, there are no clouds visible right now".

As the GM, it's (generally speaking) not your job to worry about how that the environment may affect any scheme that the players may or may not have. Your job is to describe the environment, play the NPCs, and adjudicate uncertainty in action resolution. If the player needs more detail before deciding whether or not to attempt something, they can ask for clarification about what they observe, or even ask your opinion on whether the character might think that it's a reasonable course of action (if they think that the limiting factor in choosing a course is in your description). For example, if they want to climb a wall, they may ask what it's made from in order to determine whether it's feasible, and then ask you if you think think the character would think it's climbable (if your description otherwise does not address that point).

It can never be determined by internal causality from past events, because fictional events exert no causal power in the real world (only imaginary causal power in the imagined world).

If the GM assigns probabilities and rolls, then the reason for outcome (1) rather than (2) - say, a bounty hunter seeking strangers rather than a bounty hunter seeking the PCs - is not internal causality either. The reason is (i) the GM's decisions about odds, (ii) the causal forces that operated on the dice, and (iii) the GM's decision to give effect to the rolled result.

If the GM is honest in their assigning of the odds, and not simply attempting to further some ulterior motive, then the results of the die roll should be indistinguishable from internal causality for all practical purposes.

So then the question is - why is a game in which the GM makes determinations based on assigning odds and rolling dice per se a better RPG than on in which the GM makes decisions based on what's interesting? Here's one reason it might be better: the players can't make predictions about the future game state based on knowldege of what is interesting and engaging to them. Here's one reason it might be worse: it's more likely to produce a boring experience, which is not a virtue in a game.

Neither has any particular connection to roleplaying, as neither is about the players' play of his/her PC.

A game based on random chance and the GM's interpretation of internal causality allows the players to engage with the game through role-playing, by pretending to be their characters, rather than worrying how their actions may retro-actively change details of the world which should have been previously established if the world had been following internal causality. When the GM meta-games in order to make interesting things happen, the players are forced to treat the game as a game in order to play it.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Isn't evaluation of narrative causality from a player's perspective verboten (for you) metagaming?

Meta-gaming, in the colloquial sense, only refers to how things outside the game world affect what happens within the game world. Evaluation of meta-gaming is something that occurs entirely outside of the game world.

How about this. In human history there is an enormous cross-section of people who see "narrative causality" underpinning much/most/all of everything that happens to us. The metaphysical hand of a deity (or deities), fate, destiny, design. These all are profound components of "the human cognitive bias toward narrative."

I'm going to cut my response short, since it might otherwise be taken as a personal attack against certain people, but suffice it to say that the real world does not operate on narrative causality, and suggestions to the contrary will not be entertained.

 

[Lanefan]

I see the confusion. That's not where I was going with this. I meant the existence of clouds or not to be a simple observable fact, like whether it's raining or whether there's a tree nearby.

"There's some cloud, but it's not raining and there are patches of sunlight breaking through", would be a very reasonable answer to the question of whether or not clouds are visible. Other good answers would be "It's overcast", or "There are some very nice cumulonimbus over to the east, but it's otherwise mostly clear", or even "No, there are no clouds visible right now".

As the GM, it's (generally speaking) not your job to worry about how that the environment may affect any scheme that the players may or may not have.

Agreed, though if a DM knows why a player is asking about something she can put the response in terms that speak to the reason behind the question, if only to answer further questions before they are asked. As an example, regarding the question "What is the weather doing?" asked for different reasons which the DM already knows about, here's some possible DM replies:

1. (asked because character needs to avoid sunlight) "There's some cloud, but it's not raining and there's patches of sunlight breaking through which it might be difficult to avoid if you're in the open for any length of time."
2. (asked because character needs a cloud for casting a spell) "There's some cloud - more than enough to use for your spell - but no rain, and there's patches of sunlight breaking through."
3. (asked just to set a backdrop to the day) "There's some cloud, but it's not raining and there's patches of sunlight breaking through. Not much wind, and warm without being too hot. A pleasant day to be outside."

Your job is to describe the environment, play the NPCs, and adjudicate uncertainty in action resolution. If the player needs more detail before deciding whether or not to attempt something, they can ask for clarification about what they observe, or even ask your opinion on whether the character might think that it's a reasonable course of action (if they think that the limiting factor in choosing a course is in your description). For example, if they want to climb a wall, they may ask what it's made from in order to determine whether it's feasible, and then ask you if you think think the character would think it's climbable (if your description otherwise does not address that point).

Careful here, lest you stir the slumber of those to whom the "Mother may I" play style is strictly verboten. (I'm not one such; what you say here is perfectly reasonable to me)

A game based on random chance and the GM's interpretation of internal causality allows the players to engage with the game through role-playing, by pretending to be their characters, rather than worrying how their actions may retro-actively change details of the world which should have been previously established if the world had been following internal causality. When the GM meta-games in order to make interesting things happen, the players are forced to treat the game as a game in order to play it.

This right here is the whole crux of the discussion: the risk in a make-it-up-as-you-go-along game of retro-actively changing or adding details of the game world which, had they been established sooner, would have or may have caused earlier events and decisions in play (by both the DM and the players!) to have been made differently than they were at the time.

Lanefan

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Now consider the idea of atheism in a D&D setting. Its absolutely preposterous! Consequently, it seems to me that nearly universal belief in narrative causality (of course this isn't a coincidence...its a test/reward/punishment/a sign!) would only be sensical. Accordingly, players disputing situation framing under the auspices of "narrative causality foul(!)" would not only be metagaming themselves in tendering the consideration (for shame!), but also behaving in an extremely atypical fashion if channeled into the characterization of their PC (which I think [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] also has an issue with because it damages the world simulation).

Maybe we read different fiction, but in the books I read, the first response of any character to their suspicion that the gods/fate/whatever are toying with them is to become indignant. Protagonists know, in-character, that all of their actions are meaningless if it's going to happen anyway just because destiny says so. They may go along with it, because they have no choice, but there's going to be a lot of eye-rolling.

So while that is certainly a way that you could run a game, and it may even be possible to do it well, it would be more of a deconstruction of an RPG than anything else.

 

[Nagol]

That's the long and short of it.

I'm an atheist. As an atheist, I don't believe in a metaphysical narrative underpinning the actions of each and everyone and everything in the universe.

However, I'm an extreme minority in my country. I'm an even more extreme minority amongst the world's collective population.

If you consider me against the 250-300 k history of humanity...I'm so remote that I'm barely there.

Humans have an evolved need for meaning underlying their existence, for purpose and metaphysical heft to their actions and their connections with their loved ones (and others).

Now consider the idea of atheism in a D&D setting. Its absolutely preposterous! Consequently, it seems to me that nearly universal belief in narrative causality (of course this isn't a coincidence...its a test/reward/punishment/a sign!) would only be sensical. Accordingly, players disputing situation framing under the auspices of "narrative causality foul(!)" would not only be metagaming themselves in tendering the consideration (for shame!), but also behaving in an extremely atypical fashion if channeled into the characterization of their PC (which I think [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] also has an issue with because it damages the world simulation).

Denying that an ultra-powerful creature has presumed to take the role of the god X would be preposterous since it is standing right over there. Denying that it actually is a god appears not to be: the Athar in Planescape hold that view, for example.

 

[pemerton]

No, I don't. The player is the one actually making the decision

Well, you said:

In most cases, the player would look at the observable fact (whether or not there are clouds), and then choose to make the attempt or not depending on the state of that variable.

But the imaginary clouds aren't an observable fact the player can look at. That's why I assumed you meant "character".

If you're talking about the player, the player looks at the table, the dice, the GM, the words written on some bits of paper, etc. And though some combination of such things arrives at the (shared) state of imagining a place with clouds in its sky.

As the GM, it's (generally speaking) not your job to worry about how that the environment may affect any scheme that the players may or may not have.

That sounds odd - as GM I take it that if certain whether is established in the fiction, then I have to adjudicate that as a possible factor in action resolution (depending on the details of the particular RPG system).

Your job is to describe the environment, play the NPCs, and adjudicate uncertainty in action resolution. If the player needs more detail before deciding whether or not to attempt something, they can ask for clarification

<snip>

If the GM is honest in their assigning of the odds, and not simply attempting to further some ulterior motive, then the results of the die roll should be indistinguishable from internal causality for all practical purposes.

The player wants to climb a wall. In the fiction, it's not established how smooth the wall is (eg it might have very well-maintained mortar between its blocks, or be poorly maintained with lots of grippable gaps).

As GM, I could roll a die to determine that before the player makes the climb check. Or the player could roll the check, and if it fails the lack of gaps could be part of a narration of the failure.

From the point of view of mechanical gameplay, there seems to be no special benefit in making two rolls rather than one. From the pont of view of "inhabitation" of the PC, having the player make the roll, and (in failing) "discover" that the wall is too gapless for him/her to climb, might actually be superior, as the player lives through the uncertainty of his/her PC's experience, and the discovery of the difficulty of climbing.

The phrase "ulterior motive" seems misplaced, by the way. An "ulterior" motive is hidden. When the GM frames the players into some situation that engages them (via their PCs), the motive is not hidden. It's transparent.

A game based on random chance and the GM's interpretation of internal causality allows the players to engage with the game through role-playing, by pretending to be their characters, rather than worrying how their actions may retro-actively change details of the world which should have been previously established if the world had been following internal causality. When the GM meta-games in order to make interesting things happen, the players are forced to treat the game as a game in order to play it.

Is your last sentence based on experience or conjecture?

Here's my description, based on my actual play experience: if the game is played based on the GM's interpreation of internal causality and decisions about what s/he thinks is interesting to make salient (given that the gameworld is a story/fiction related to the players by the GM), then the players have to engage with what the GM thinks is interesting, whatever s/he wants to do with his her PC. If the GM makes an effort to follow the players' leads, as evinced through their build and play of their PCs, then the players get to actually explore and express their characters as they conceive of them.

the risk in a make-it-up-as-you-go-along game of retro-actively changing or adding details of the game world which, had they been established sooner, would have or may have caused earlier events and decisions in play (by both the DM and the players!) to have been made differently than they were at the time.

I could equally say - the risk in a preauthored game is that it is (i) a railroad and (ii) boring. Presumably you take steps to make sure your game isn't boring. Well, likewise, the risk you are afraid of is not one that troubles my games.

the real world does not operate on narrative causality, and suggestions to the contrary will not be entertained.

Suppose that to be true (board rules preclude speculating about that) - it doesn't follow that the same is true for the imagined fantasy world.

in the books I read, the first response of any character to their suspicion that the gods/fate/whatever are toying with them is to become indignant. Protagonists know, in-character, that all of their actions are meaningless if it's going to happen anyway just because destiny says so.

In providential literature (eg LotR), the protagonists don't feel they're being toyed with - they either have faith in the divine plan for the world (and in this context, the greatest sin is a lack of hope - eg Denethor), or they rebel against that plan (and in this context, the greatest sin is hubris - eg Saruman). Eithe way, choices aren't meaningless because they contribute to the plan ("even Gollum may have a part to play, before then end").

 

[pemerton]

Stating that this grizzly looking man hasn't come out of nowhere, you're tacitly suggesting that the adventure was already in motion and that this individual is going to continue the established storyline.

In your 'lacklustre' example, the hook usually represents the start of an adventure (refer to many published adventures).

I don't see how you can compare these two examples fairly given that they begin at different parts in the story.

Here's an example that illustrates the difference:

I GMed my first Burning Wheel session earlier today.

<snip>

One of the players had bought rulebooks and built a BW PC (a noble-born Rogue Wizard inspired by Alatar, one of Tolkien's blue wizards of the East).

<snip>

Writing up beliefs took a little while. The rogue wizard, Jobe, had a relationship with his brother and rival. The ranger-assassin, Halika, had a relationship, also hostile with her mentor, and the player decided that was because it turned out she was being prepared by him to be sacrificed to a demon. It seemed to make sense that the two rival, evil mages should be one and the same, and each player wrote a belief around defeating him: in Jobe's case, preventing his transformation into a Balrog; in Halika's case, to gain revenge.

<snip>

each also wrote up a immediate goal-oriented belief: I had pulled out my old Greyhawk material and told them they were starting in the town of Hardby, half-way between the forest (where the assassin had fled from) and the desert hills (where Jobe had been travelling), and so each came up with a belief around that: I'm not leaving Hardby without gaining some magical item to use against my brother and, for the assassin with starting Resources 0, I'm not leaving Hardby penniless.

<snip>

I started things in the Hardby market: Jobe was looking at the wares of a peddler of trinkets and souvenirs, to see if there was anything there that might be magical or useful for enchanting for the anticipated confrontation with his brother. Given that the brother is possessed by a demon, he was looking for something angelic. The peddler pointed out an angel feather that he had for sale, brought to him from the Bright Desert. Jobe (who has, as another instinct, to always use Second Sight), used Aura Reading to study the feather for magical traits. The roll was a failure, and so he noticed that it was Resistant to Fire (potentially useful in confronting a Balrog) but also cursed. (Ancient History was involved somehow here too, maybe as a FoRK into Aura Reading (? I can't really remember), establishing something about an ancient battle between angels and demons in the desert.)​

That's a starting session. But the build of the PCs allows the GM (me) to frame an opening situation in response to those builds (in the circumstances, a peddler of trinkets rather than an old man in a tavern), where "the adventure" is not something I, the GM, have settled on and want to "hook" the players into - but, rather, is something that unfolds out of their responses to my take up of their "hooks" (eg the belief about finding magic items to help confront the demon-possessed brother).

To connect that to the overall discussion with [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] - in Saelorns' game, the player is expected to have a PC who is interested in whatever it is that the GM throws up (so if it's kidnapped elves, the player has to get on board with that), and the fact that the player writes a PC whose main concern is freeing his brother from balrog possession doesn't generate any guaranteee that that will actually come up in play; in Lanefan's game there might be six plotlines to choose from, but in respect of each of them the situation is the same as for Saelorn - there is no guarantee that what the player cares about will matter in the game.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

But the imaginary clouds aren't an observable fact the player can look at. That's why I assumed you meant "character".

If you're talking about the player, the player looks at the table, the dice, the GM, the words written on some bits of paper, etc. And though some combination of such things arrives at the (shared) state of imagining a place with clouds in its sky.

The state of the sky is an observable fact within the game world, which the characters can observe, and which the players can observe second-hand through descriptions from the GM. If the GM is doing their job, then the players will know whether there are clouds before they decide whether the character will attempt the plan.

That sounds odd - as GM I take it that if certain whether is established in the fiction, then I have to adjudicate that as a possible factor in action resolution (depending on the details of the particular RPG system).

Exactly. It only matters to the GM when it comes time to resolve the action. Before they decide to do the thing, the possibilities of how the environment might influence that thing are irrelevant to the GM.

The player wants to climb a wall. In the fiction, it's not established how smooth the wall is (eg it might have very well-maintained mortar between its blocks, or be poorly maintained with lots of grippable gaps).

As GM, I could roll a die to determine that before the player makes the climb check. Or the player could roll the check, and if it fails the lack of gaps could be part of a narration of the failure.

The vast majority of the time, the player will ask you to describe the wall before they commit to the plan of climbing it. They won't even attempt to climb a wall if they don't think they have a chance to succeed, or if the consequences for failure seem especially dire. (If you describe that most of the wall is covered with razorthorns, or the wall is above a pit of acid while acid is also streaming down it in an irregular pattern.)

You must determine the nature of the wall before the attempt is made, or else the player is incapable of taking its nature into consideration before choosing to make the attempt. Your method violates the basic process of play, by describing the environment after adjudicating the resolution of uncertain actions.

The phrase "ulterior motive" seems misplaced, by the way. An "ulterior" motive is hidden. When the GM frames the players into some situation that engages them (via their PCs), the motive is not hidden. It's transparent.

I was assuming that you were playing an RPG, with role-players, who would rightfully kick you out of the game if they discovered you were cheating in such a malicious manner. If you aren't playing an RPG, with role-players, then you may not have to hide your true motive... but neither would that be relevant in any way to a discussion of role-playing games.

Is your last sentence based on experience or conjecture?

Both.

Here's my description, based on my actual play experience: if the game is played based on the GM's interpreation of internal causality and decisions about what s/he thinks is interesting to make salient (given that the gameworld is a story/fiction related to the players by the GM), then the players have to engage with what the GM thinks is interesting, whatever s/he wants to do with his her PC. If the GM makes an effort to follow the players' leads, as evinced through their build and play of their PCs, then the players get to actually explore and express their characters as they conceive of them.

Yes, if the GM tailors the play experience to what the players think is interesting, then they can collaborate together to tell a story instead of role-playing at all. While true, it also has nothing to do with role-playing or role-playing games.

I could equally say - the risk in a preauthored game is that it is (i) a railroad and (ii) boring. Presumably you take steps to make sure your game isn't boring. Well, likewise, the risk you are afraid of is not one that troubles my games.

It can't possibly be a railroad if the GM doesn't plan for the actions of the PCs, or enforce them. Whatever the GM may expect the PCs to do, they will probably do something else, and thus the "story" will go in a different direction; which is why it's beneficial to not expect them to do anything in particular.

If you're afraid that the game might be boring, then that's something to address during setting creation. As long as the players have their characters, and the GM isn't going out of their way to mess with them, things generally turn out okay.