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.

View attachment 88552​

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

 

[Lanefan]

Here's the deal though, any player with significant wealth who tries to disrupt the region's status quo is going to have a lot of people looking to maintain it. Being completely honest, that's the kind of change that will have NPCs of completely divergent alignments working together to prevent it. Real world mercantile guilds of massive wealth ran into that problem when nobles simply banished them instead of paying debt, and had the might to do so. There's absolutely zero reason why wealth should be allowed to pool in the first place, players will mess up if challenged in a way they don't plan for.

Yet if the PCs don't go into business etc. wealth is still going to pool around them - the loot from their adventures. (and in the game I'm referring to it didn't help that some of the PCs were the local nobles; in fairness to them they didn't abuse this too badly in their business dealings...but they also didn't run themselves out of town either )

So I'd argue that every DM gets screwed once, then we get savvy.

If by "savvy" you mean flat-out stating that if any such nonsense rears its ugly head ever again someone else will be DMing it because I won't, then yes.

On the point of "same characters avoid risk"

- Create an encounter where the party dies unless the super conservative character takes one.
- Make it obvious but not rail roady - there are tons of ways to do this on a dungeon crawl or exploration mission.
- When the party TPKs the other players will take care of it. When the party succeeds, problem solved.

The world isn't always able to be worked around. If you get blamed for rail roading the character in question, tell them that you can't always avoid everything, even in real life people get cornered into things. If you've got to go meta, there's supposedly tons of examples of the player not pulling weight.

Sounds easy in theory. In practice one of three things happens:

1. The rest of the PCs (or some of them) find and employ a viable exit or avoidance strategy I didn't see coming, and thus save the party; or
2. The usual suspects take lots of risks, some of them die, but some (and the coward) survive; or
3. The coward takes the risk this one time, saves the day, and we never hear the end of it.

In well over 30 years of DMing I've only ever managed one actual TPK (despite several very close calls) and that came because the party's tank in the lead got dominated against the party and mowed them down one by one as they arrived at the bottom of a shaft leading to the encounter. The tank, permanently dominated, was then left to starve...which he duly did, after eating his way through the only available food source: the party corpses.

Lan-"bloody resilient things, these adventuring parties"-efan

 

[Lanefan]

We've had this discussion before. Everything you say here is not true.

Here are four mysteries that were signalled in the actual play reports I quoted in the post you replied to:

* Who killed the veiled alliance contact?

* Who killed 29's master?

* Why are Norhern Lights behaving strangely?

* What is the nature of Lt Li's bioweapons program?​

That's four examples of questions whose answers lie in the secret backstory which the DM knows and the players don't - yet. Seems fine to me.

And to step back from examples to the more general point: imagine if you (Lanefan) read a post saying it was impossible to run a successful D&D campaign that ran for more than 5 years. Or that involved conflict between PCs. You would think those claims were absurd, because your own play experience is of (successfully) running and playing in campaigns that run for more than 5 years, and include conflict between PCs.

I've had those conversations...

Well, that's how I respond to your claim above, which frankly comes across as based purely ignorance. It's not that you've tried to run a game in the way I'm describing and found it hard to have mysteries or complex storylines. You're just speculating. And I'm here to tell you, on the basis of actual play experience, that it can be done and it's not very hard.

This is also just wrong.

Here's something to discover in my Traveller game: what is the nature of Lt Li's bioweaons program? That's unknown. But it's not a secret, because I - the GM - don't know either.

Well somebody has to know, otherwise how can it develop and hope to maintain any internal logic? And, it seems, someone did know...

Here's a more banal example from the same campaign: what sorts of vessels do the bioweapons conspirators have access to? In the first session, all we knew was that they used to have a yacht, but then (as part of his backstory) one of the PCs won it from them gambling. (This was the backstory that explained the noble PCs ownership of a yacht.) Hence the reason that Lt Li had to recruit the players to ferry materials from Ardour-3 to Byron - it was the PCs who had the necessary ship!

OK, so the conspirators don't have a ship. Got it.

In the fourth session, it became clear that the conpsirators also had access to another vessel capable of firing on surface targets from orbits. It was established that this was the laboratory research vessel St Christopher. (Which I had taken from an old White Dwarf adventure, Amber to Red.) I decided to introduce the St Christopher into the game after generating a NPC - an ex-naval forward observer - on my bus ride to the house of my friend hosting the session.

But wait...now it seems the conspirators do have a ship; which means they had said ship all along in hindsight, making it an element of a secret backstory that you-as-DM chose to reveal during session 4. (and introducing some inconsistency if said ship could also have been firing on them or doing anything else relevant (including something as simple as just being noticed to be present at all) during sessions 1-3)

I was driven by two thoughts - I thought it would be fun to test out the directed fire rules; and I thought having a NPC call down directed fire onto the PCs would drive some action and decision-making, which would prevent the game bogging down in investigation and indecision at the bioweapons outpost the PCs had taken over at the end of the previous session - and the debates at the wind-down of that session had made be a bit worried that the players might get bogged down. As it turns out, my plan to force some decision-making worked; and at least a couple of the players also found the "drive our ATVs across the barren world trying to avoid getting blown up by laser fire being called in from an orbiting ship" epsiode exciting.

OK, though I-as-player might have been annoyed that we didn't get the chance to investigate the outpost and decide on our own what to do next without being forced.

Then, in the most recent session, as the PCs were departing from their orbit around the world that is the source of the bioweapons conspirators' pathogen, the starship encounter roll turned up an encounter with a pirate patrol cruiser. The PCs decided to intercept this cruiser's communications (I can't now remember why - I think the players were supsicious of a cruiser turning up on a fairly isolated world uninteresting for anything but this pathogen) and learned that it had jumped from Olyx, Lt Li's base world and the PCs next intended destination. The decision to have the "piratical" nature of the cruiser be its connection to the bioweapons conspiracy was mine, as GM - made on the basis of the principle "Always go where the action is." It established that the conspirators also have access to a patrol cruiser (not too surprising given the strong involvement of Imperial marines, naval and scouts personnel that had already been established in play); and it prompted discussion over what will probably be the main focus of next session: do the PCs try and take control of this cruiser for their own purposes?

And...so now the conspirators have two ships, one of which is a fast patrol ship. So, as again they've in hindsight had this ship all along and thus could have used it to ferry the stuff from Ardour-3 to Byron (and hidden the ferrying as part of a normal patrol, even!), what did they need the yacht for again?

This is where the DM knowing at least some of this stuff ahead of time is invaluable: you can avoid these sort of plot holes and inconsistencies.

The general point: there can be systems and methods for introducing new content into the game that don't require the GM to have authored it in advance.

Yes, but the DM has to be bloody careful when doing this. The more solidly things are nailed down in advance, the easier it is to introduce new elements on the fly and have them remain consistent and fit in.

This is very obvious. Notice also that I don't have to decide anything about the NPCs at that particular moment of play in order to do this.

Though I maintain you should, so that if one of 'em gets charmed and questioned (a common enough occurrence) you've already got the answers and backstory ready to go and can thus be consistent with your answers without worrying about talking yourself into a corner.

I have never said any such thing.

Actually, you have. From post 68, this thread:

That doesn't mean that backstory is unimportant - it's crucial, because it establishes the infiction logic/rationale/context of the events the GM is describing. But the backstory that plays this role isn't secret from the players. In fact, it is able to play this role excatly because it is known to the players!

Soounds to me like that's saying the players know the backstory.

To give a concrete example: when the player wants to spend a resource to establish (in the scene) a giant shaman who is sympathetic to the PCs' cause, under my principles I'm not allowed to veto that action declaration on the basis that there is no giant shaman there.

Well, if you want to give away your world like that, more power to ya. Far as I'm concerned it's the DM's world and she can veto anything she flippin' well wants to - as long as she's internally consistent.

Here's an example of some backstory that wasn't know by the players until they discovered it in play: Lt Li is a bioweapons conspirator (the players discovered that when the PC spy seduced her, and successfully interrogated her, and I had to make up some stuff for her to tell him); the bioweapons conspiracy is based on the planet Olyx (I can't remember excalty when I made this up, but I think it was introduced after the PCs took over the research outpost on Byron and interrogated the people they had captured there); the bioweapons conspirators have access to the various vessels I menteiond above.

OK, but how does this agree with what I quoted above from post 68 where the players know the backstory?

The difference between authoring in advance and authoring in response to player action declarations and other discussion and interaction at the table is that the former is (in my view) railroading, as it is the GM who establishes all the possibilities and outcomes of investigation and action; whereas the latter is a collective endeavour ini which the fiction that emerges contains elements resulting from the contributions and participation of everyone at the table.

You have a particularly harsh definition of railroading, it seems. Of course the DM establishes the possiblities and outcomes (and odds, etc.) of investigations and actions - that's part of her job as the builder and maintainer of the game world.

That's a statement of preference - you would rather have the GM read you his/her notes than participate in jointly creating a shared fiction - but it doesn't show that the latter can't be done. (By the way, I don't really follow "Schroedinger's Universe". The imaginary universe doesn't become more "real" because it was written yesterday rather than today. The Schroedinger phenomenon in particle physics is interesting and surprising because one generally takes the real world to have an existence and character that is independent of human interaction with it. But no one but a child would suppose that imaginary worlds exist indpedently of their human creators.)

One of the first things I do when designing a world is draw a map of some of it. Once that map is done to my satisfaction it gets "locked in". I might add minor elements to it later, but nothing will ever come off it unless game events dictate that it should e.g. a city gets wiped out. That map makes the world much more "real" than if there was no map; it's something concrete that I and others can look at and glean the same information from. And, as world design is strictly the purview of the DM, the players don't share in the making of said map. It's long done before any players ever get near it.

Well, they might tell the difference because they can see that their contributions are having an effect on the content of the shared fiction. In any event, I don't know why you would do this, given it seems to contradict the very strong preference you state in the sentence I quoted just above.

Making stuff up on the fly happens, usually when the players throw me a curveball and go somewhere or do something I simply haven't prepped and-or didn't see coming. Some of the time I can make it look like nothing's different - they still think I'm running off my notes etc. - but sometimes it's obvious I'm winging it, usually because I talk my way into inconsistencies; greatly annoying myself in the process.

But even when I'm winging it I'm rarely if ever using elements introduced by the players or PCs. What I will do sometimes is if I hear a good idea from a player I'll make a note and sit on it for long enough (several months, usually) that the player whose idea it was has forgotten about it. Then I'll use it, giving credit afterwards if asked.

Lanefan

 

[pemerton]

In a spirit of response which I hope is not too combative!

An experience point is an arbitrary amount of work given out to represent learning on the part of a character during an adventure.

This claim is already controversial - that is, it takes a stand on an issue of game design where other stands are possible. To give concrete examples: I think it is largely true of XP in Rolemaster. I think it is largely false of XP in classic D&D, which are awarded to represent skill and success on the part of the player. (Hence, Gygax in his DMG explains that novice players should ideally begin at 1st level so as to get the full learning experience; but experienced players who have already undergone that learning experience, and raised PCs above 1st level, may wish to begin PCs at levels higher than 1st. They have already undergone the requisite learning and demonstrated the requisite skill in raising other PCs from 1st level.)

If all XP are used for is to benchmark how close you are to gaining a level, then there are better ways to go about level advancement. It's just another fiddly bit that doesn't need to be calculated. Just gain a level when you hit a milestone.

This also takes stands on issues that can differe across RPGs.

What is a "milestone", for instance? In Cortex+ Heroic, two milestones are defined for each character - eg Wolverine's "Old Friends, Old Enemies" milestone earns him 1 XP for identifying a character (PC or NPC) as an old foe or old ally, and 10 XP when he declares his old ally to now be an enemy (or vice versa); Captain America's "Mentor the Hero" milestone earns hims 1 XP when he chooses to aid a specific hero for the first time, and 10 XP when he either gives leadership of the team to his chosen hero or forces his chosen hero to resign or step down from the team.

In our MHRP game, Nightcrawler completed his "Romantic"milestone (the 10 XP trigger is "10 XP when you either break off a romantic relationship, or seek to enter into a more
permanent partnership and ask your love to marry you" - in our case, Nightcrawler proposed to his lover in order to manipulate her for other purposes, and then left her jilted on top of the Capitol building). He spent some of the XP earned to replace his "Devout Catholic" trait with a new trait, "The Devil Within", to reflect the direction the player was taking the character in; and took a new milestone that I wrote up, in discussion with the player, to fit with this change of direction: 1 XP when he deliberately does a bad thing; 10 XP when either he brings an ally to his own state of disillusionment, or when an ally bring him back to the side of righteousness.

So milestones are devices, worked out between GM and player, for setting defined paths of character exploration/development; and meeting the milestone triggers earns XP that are used to build and rebuild the PC.

That's not a system for PC advancement that everyone would want in every RPG.

As I understand it, "milestone" advancement in 5e means earning a level when the GM thinks the relevant point in "the story" has been reached. That might work where the main aim of play is for the players to work through the GM's story, and the main aim of levelling is to keep up with the challenges in the GM's story; but it obviously won't suit a Cortex+-type game, where the focus is more on exploring the character's development (eg it's Captain America's player who is expected to decide whether to hand over leadership to his chosen hero, or kick that hero out of the team - that's not the GM's decision!).

Those sort of milestones won't work in a Gygaxian game, either, where there is no "story" but rather a dungeon to be explored and looted, and XP are a measure of how skilled a particular player is in obtaining that loot.

So replacing XP with GM-determined milestones might suit some RPGing, but not all RPGing.

They're not worth as much if they're given out like candy, and they're worth a lot more if they're given out frugally. Same with any other currency that you use to buy something (levels)

This is true only assuming that levels are valued by the person accruing the XP (as you note, and unlike actual currencies, XP are not a universal medium of exchange that is useful whatever it is one wishes to acquire), and that levels are scarce.

If levels are not valued by players, then they may not care particularly about whether they earn many or few XP. If levels are not scarce (eg they are a 4e-style pacing device, not a Gygaxian-style measure of player skill) then players may sometime want fast pacing and sometimes slow pacing, depending on varying taste and mood.

If XP are so rare that gaining levels ceases to be a signifcant element of play then players may shift their focus to other aspects of gameplay, resulting in XP not being valued even though they are frugally awarded.

I think the above two paragraphs aren't just hypotheticals but describe actual things that have happened in various RPG groups over the years (including some I've participated in).

When you gain enough expeirence you gain a level. Maybe instead of that level you want a new relationship/contact that can affect the game. Maybe you want a magic item. There are many examples of this sort of thing if you look around and find other game systems that are less level based; however, there's plenty of ways to house rule things.

Different games use different sorts of PC build "currencies", and different ways of accruing it.

In points buy games, points can be used to buy all sorts of stuff (depending on the details of the game). At least in some such systems, gear and gold is something you buy with points, rather than something independent that your character can collect.

In Cortex+ Heroic, XP can be used to improve existing attributes, or add new ones - and (some) attributes in that system are the basis for relationships. Also, it is another system where is no such thing as "gear" or "wealth" independent of PC attributes.

There can also be multiple currency systems in a game. 4e, for instance, uses XP to set PC level, which in turn sets hp, defences, skill and attack bonuses, feats, and powers; and then it uses gold (which is awarded by reference to level) primarily to acquire magic items, which are a parallel source of powers and feat-like abilities.

In classic D&D gold isn't really a separate currency for PC building, as there is not much you do with it and magic items aren't generally for sale, until you get to high levels and use your savings to build a castle and thereby enter the name level endgame.

In 5e there seems to be recurrent uncertainty as to exactly what the function of gold is as a seemingly parallel but independent system for improving one's PC.

In a system with two different currencies, it may make sense to allow them to be exchanged, but not always. That would break the basic 4e design, for instance, and not generate much of a return that I can see.

Xp aren't very simulationist and are probably best just left that way. They do work as intended if used as individual character rewards based on what a character does, to measure the mechanical advancement of characters as they progress through the game.

Well, if you want to reward fighting, they will work. If you want to reward (say) forging diplomatic alliances, the default presentation of them won't work. You'll have to adapt, or make up, some variant.

My bottom line: different XP systems achieve different things. And it's a mistake in game design to emulate another game's XP system "just because" that's how it's been done in the past. (And in case my other posts haven't made it clear, I think that 2nd ed AD&D, 3E and probably 5e are guilty of this mistake, retaining aspects of Gygax's XP system but for no particularly clear purpose given the typical way they seem to be played.)

 

[pemerton]

From a practical standpoint, creating a world requires a lot more work than creating a character,

<snip>

The main benefit of having the GM pre-establish the facts of the world instead of inventing everything as the story unfolds, aside from issues with consistency, is that it prevents the possibility of meta-gaming on their part.

I think the number of GMs who wrote all the backstory in advance of actual play is zero, or very close to that.

Just to give one example: many GMs, especially of D&D, use random encounters. When a random encounter occurs, the being in question needs to be given beliefs, backstory, motivation, etc. I've never heard of a GM who worked out all this stuff ahead of time.

And the idea that it's bad GMing to give the random encounter an interesting motivation is one that I think is unique to you, or very nearly. I've never encountered anyone else who espouses it.

It does become an objective place, though, which is important. It exists the way that it exists, free of interference from outside of that universe. It demonstrates basic linear-time causality. I don't have to be afraid of changing its past, based on any of my actions in the present (short of time travel).

I think the number of gameworlds that exhibit this property is very close to zero also.

One example: the PCs meet a peasant. They ask the peasant what she ate for breakfast that morning. The GM probably has to make something up. So the actual causation of the authoring of the world (the GM writes something now in response to a question) does not mirror the ingame direciton of causation.

I think examples like that are pretty common in RPGing.

And in that sense, it does become more real. It may never be entirely real, because it's still just an imaginary universe, but at least it becomes a believable imaginary universe. Every conceivable universe worth exploring must demonstrate internal causality, and if you don't even have that, then what remains is not worth buying into.

"Internal causality" is itself purely imaginary - ie the imagined causal connections between imagined events. And there is no reason at all for it to track real world causality.

Here is an example that makes the point:

I can imagine now a peasant telling me what she ate for breakfast in the past, and I can imagine that her telling me that is caused by her past event of having eaten that breakfast - the imagined events have an imaginary causal structure - eating breakfast then causes the peasant to tell me now what she ate then - that is not mimiced by my process of imagination - ie I imagine first what she tells me, and then - because of that first imagining - go on to imagine that her telling me so is caused by her past breakfast eating.

That is a completely unremarkable - even typical - example of the imaginative process. It is very apt to produce believable worlds. The idea that the world becomes unbelievable because the GM doesn't have a record of the peasant's breakfast, and makes that up only because a player's action declaration forces a bit of the gameworld's past to be authored, is one that I have never heard espoused by anyone but you.

 

[pemerton]

Well somebody has to know, otherwise how can it develop and hope to maintain any internal logic?

The same way as any other serial fiction.

OK, so the conspirators don't have a ship. Got it.

But wait...now it seems the conspirators do have a ship; which means they had said ship all along in hindsight, making it an element of a secret backstory that you-as-DM chose to reveal during session 4. (and introducing some inconsistency if said ship could also have been firing on them or doing anything else relevant (including something as simple as just being noticed to be present at all) during sessions 1-3)

<snip>

And...so now the conspirators have two ships, one of which is a fast patrol ship. So, as again they've in hindsight had this ship all along and thus could have used it to ferry the stuff from Ardour-3 to Byron (and hidden the ferrying as part of a normal patrol, even!), what did they need the yacht for again?

It's not secret backstory. A secret is something that one person knows and another doesn't. A piece of fiction that no one knows because it hasn't been written yet isn't secret from anyone.

As to the alleged inconsistency - there's 101 reasons why the conspirators need a ship on Ardour-3 and the ones they have aren't available (eg the lab ship is undergoing reparis, and they don't want to be seen in a military vessel so far from their base with no obvious military reason to be there). If it comes up in play - and it may or may not - no doubt one of the 101 possible reasons will become established as the reason.

the DM has to be bloody careful when doing this. The more solidly things are nailed down in advance, the easier it is to introduce new elements on the fly and have them remain consistent and fit in.

The risks of inconsistency are, in my experience, grossly exaggerated.

If I could run games half as compelling as Raymond Chandler stories, I'd be pretty pleased with myself. But Chandler himself didn't know the reason for one of the murders in the film version of The Big Sleep.

Having all the backstory be pre-known by the players

I have never said any such thing

From post 68, this thread:
Soounds to me like that's saying the players know the backstory.

In the post you refer to, I said "backstory is . . . crucial, because it establishes the infiction logic/rationale/context of the events the GM is describing. But the backstory that plays this role isn't secret from the players. In fact, it is able to play this role excatly because it is known to the players!"

But that doesn't mean all the backstory is known to the players. Because, over time, new backstory will emerge, establishing new context, new significances, new twists, etc. A story is dynamic in that sense - it unfolds over time. A story is also written over time. In the sort of play I am describing, the two events are concurrent - the writing of the story occurs with the learning of it.

As I posted, that also doesn't mean that the GM doesn't have ideas. As soon as I started running the Traveller game, I had the idea of the PCs being stuck on an airless world in their ATV. But one person's idea is not backstory; it's not part of the shared fiction.

Here's an example of some backstory that wasn't know by the players until they discovered it in play: Lt Li is a bioweapons conspirator (the players discovered that when the PC spy seduced her, and successfully interrogated her, and I had to make up some stuff for her to tell him); the bioweapons conspiracy is based on the planet Olyx (I can't remember excalty when I made this up, but I think it was introduced after the PCs took over the research outpost on Byron and interrogated the people they had captured there); the bioweapons conspirators have access to the various vessels I menteiond above.

OK, but how does this agree with what I quoted above from post 68 where the players know the backstory?

None of those things were true in the gameworld before they became announced by me at the table, and hence known to the players. I authored them as part of the process of adjudicating player action declarations - eg they interrogate their captives; their captives therefore tell them stuff about the conspiracy; so I make up some stuff about the conspiracy. These are therefore established as backstory, and able to inform subsequent events and provide them with context and meaning.

Well, if you want to give away your world like that, more power to ya. Far as I'm concerned it's the DM's world and she can veto anything she flippin' well wants to - as long as she's internally consistent.

<snip>

You have a particularly harsh definition of railroading, it seems.

A game where the GM vetoes PC action declarations on the basis that she has already decided (privately, in secret) that they can't succeed - what else is that but a railroad? It is the GM who is deciding where the action goes and what the outcomes are?

Of course the DM establishes the possiblities and outcomes (and odds, etc.) of investigations and actions - that's part of her job as the builder and maintainer of the game world.

<snip>

One of the first things I do when designing a world is draw a map of some of it.

<snip>

as world design is strictly the purview of the DM, the players don't share in the making of said map. It's long done before any players ever get near it.

So if a player wants to come from a village of fisherfolk, but there isn't one on your map, then they can't?

That sort of GM story-telling is one way to run a RPG, but it's not the job of a GM. It's one way of being a GM. It's very far from how I like to GM.

 

[Kobold Boots]

Yet if the PCs don't go into business etc. wealth is still going to pool around them - the loot from their adventures. (and in the game I'm referring to it didn't help that some of the PCs were the local nobles; in fairness to them they didn't abuse this too badly in their business dealings...but they also didn't run themselves out of town either )

If by "savvy" you mean flat-out stating that if any such nonsense rears its ugly head ever again someone else will be DMing it because I won't, then yes.

The furthest I've gone down the nobility track with players has either been "ok it's around 15th level and you're the nobles" or "ok it's 1st level and you're all the second/third sons and daughters of nobility". But as far as mercantile stuff goes, I've had more than a couple players open a "magic shop" with spare stuff they didn't want or couldn't use and expand into other things like mercenary armies. The harder you play the game, the bigger the opposition gets. Until you get an LN Imperial Prince and evil Blackguard each with significant resources/armies annoyed at you, you haven't lived as a player. Especially when one of your other players has significant ties with an Assassin's guild and the church needs to stride the middle to maintain power. Good times. Death everywhere.

Sounds easy in theory. In practice one of three things happens:

1. The rest of the PCs (or some of them) find and employ a viable exit or avoidance strategy I didn't see coming, and thus save the party; or
2. The usual suspects take lots of risks, some of them die, but some (and the coward) survive; or
3. The coward takes the risk this one time, saves the day, and we never hear the end of it.

In well over 30 years of DMing I've only ever managed one actual TPK (despite several very close calls) and that came because the party's tank in the lead got dominated against the party and mowed them down one by one as they arrived at the bottom of a shaft leading to the encounter. The tank, permanently dominated, was then left to starve...which he duly did, after eating his way through the only available food source: the party corpses.

Lan-"bloody resilient things, these adventuring parties"-efan

1. Viable exit strategies done on the fly allow the enemies to plan better next time. Just let one of them live to come after them later with more knowledge of the party's capability and congratulate the players. They'll feel good, until they don't.
2. Cowards that live get reputations. Have one of the new player characters secretly be a relation of one who died saving him with a strong opinion of who is at fault. The coward either proves himself and lives or mystery meat shows up at the campfire the next morning for breakfast.
3. This is what I like to call the "Your Savior has Arrived" moment. (Thor: Ragnarok) It's classic for role-playing. Let them have fun with it. If I was the coward player, I'd try to commission a bard and have a statue built in the party's hometown later in the campaign. Preferably with funds that someone else got me. I'm like that.

For me
5E - Only run a few games with no TPK. We were just trying to figure out the rules so not a campaign yet.
All others - TPK about once a module. Mostly due to good use of tactics and players not coordinating efficiently at all times, plus I've got good luck with dice (all rolls in front of players)

Important to note about my TPK's. When a TPK is going to happen, my regular players can smell it and generally start acting smart while trying to retreat. When they don't manage to do so themselves, I do allow at least one, usually two players to escape just so we have game continuity if we're in the middle of a module. If we're at the big blow off at the end of a module, I don't let up and deaths do happen. It's up to the group to take precautions to afford whatever version of raise dead they can get their hands on.

Just because it's hard to kill players doesn't mean it can't be done regularly. Figure out what the game's standard difficulty is and if it doesn't suit your preferred playstyle, make it more dangerous.

BTW, the shaft la machine is great and gave me a good laugh this morning. Thanks.

KB

(edit: Yes I realize that near TPK is not actually TPK, but in the event my players have to run away it's a major shock to their system, moreso than rolling up the new characters to replace those who aren't raised. Raise magic is not widely available as it's considered heresy by most major religions in my world - Thus the differentiation. TPKs are nasty.)

 

[Manbearcat]

Making stuff up on the fly happens, usually when the players throw me a curveball and go somewhere or do something I simply haven't prepped and-or didn't see coming. Some of the time I can make it look like nothing's different - they still think I'm running off my notes etc. - but sometimes it's obvious I'm winging it, usually because I talk my way into inconsistencies; greatly annoying myself in the process.

But even when I'm winging it I'm rarely if ever using elements introduced by the players or PCs. What I will do sometimes is if I hear a good idea from a player I'll make a note and sit on it for long enough (several months, usually) that the player whose idea it was has forgotten about it. Then I'll use it, giving credit afterwards if asked.

Lanefan

I think the number of GMs who wrote all the backstory in advance of actual play is zero, or very close to that.

Just to give one example: many GMs, especially of D&D, use random encounters. When a random encounter occurs, the being in question needs to be given beliefs, backstory, motivation, etc. I've never heard of a GM who worked out all this stuff ahead of time.

And the idea that it's bad GMing to give the random encounter an interesting motivation is one that I think is unique to you, or very nearly. I've never encountered anyone else who espouses it.

I think the number of gameworlds that exhibit this property is very close to zero also.

One example: the PCs meet a peasant. They ask the peasant what she ate for breakfast that morning. The GM probably has to make something up. So the actual causation of the authoring of the world (the GM writes something now in response to a question) does not mirror the ingame direciton of causation.

I think examples like that are pretty common in RPGing.

"Internal causality" is itself purely imaginary - ie the imagined causal connections between imagined events. And there is no reason at all for it to track real world causality.

Here is an example that makes the point:

I can imagine now a peasant telling me what she ate for breakfast in the past, and I can imagine that her telling me that is caused by her past event of having eaten that breakfast - the imagined events have an imaginary causal structure - eating breakfast then causes the peasant to tell me now what she ate then - that is not mimiced by my process of imagination - ie I imagine first what she tells me, and then - because of that first imagining - go on to imagine that her telling me so is caused by her past breakfast eating.

That is a completely unremarkable - even typical - example of the imaginative process. It is very apt to produce believable worlds. The idea that the world becomes unbelievable because the GM doesn't have a record of the peasant's breakfast, and makes that up only because a player's action declaration forces a bit of the gameworld's past to be authored, is one that I have never heard espoused by anyone but you.

On (reverse engineering) internal causality (and post-hoc justification), random encounters, and GM-side ad-libbing:

How many AD&D and BECMI GMs have run their games as below (as I always have):

1) Make a map w/ a vague town or two (themed and roughly geographically and politically laid out) w/ random urban encounters keyed to it/them.

2) Make a few themed/stocked/keyed dungeons/adventuring sites.

3) Make wilderness random encounters for the travel in-between the two.

Between Wandering Monsters, Random Encounters, and Monster Reactions, I'm spending well over the majority of gameplay ad-libbing causality (via reverse engineering and post-hoc justification) as required (if it even comes up) due to the randomized nature of content introduction.

My guess is this isn't procedurally too far afield from a healthy cross-section of present and past OSR GMs.

So why does a gaping hole in the integrity of "internal causality" or continuity (temporal, geographic, thematic) suddenly emerge when, instead of (nearing) thematically neutral content introduction, when the dice are rolled in (say Dungeon World), outcomes are to be derived by fidelity to play principles that are centered around hooking into the (a) the thematic portfolio of the PCs and (b) dangerous action/adventure that propels the game ever forward.

I guess that is when it becomes "contrived" because outcomes aren't absent of thematically-relevant material? "So my brother, who is my hero, seems to have fallen short of his oaths...well of course he has!...I put 'my older brother is my hero' as one of my foundational (Relationship) PC build components! How contrived!" Seems a pretty metagame-ey mental framework for any player at the table to be holding onto! And also seems mildly dysfunctional in a game with Relationships as central PC build components!

 

[Kobold Boots]

In a spirit of response which I hope is not too combative!

Not combative at all, we're just having a discussion. Appreciate the concern though.

After going through much of what you've written, what I'll say is this.

1. I don't think my stance on XP is really controversial. I'm not sold on the difference between Gygaxian experience and modern experience points in D&D. Reason why is simply that whatever Gary wanted something to be is much different from what it was actually used for in any given person's game. "Player skill" is correlated to experience points but in no way are xp in any way causal of player skill. Just my opinion.

2. Like the XP response above, I don't see any difference between a story milestone that provides an experience award or level up, and doing it when a party goes through a very linear dungeon crawl and makes it to the next level of the dungeon after clearing the previous. If you have a clear delineation point; you can use a milestone to level up. If the party takes a shortcut and moves to the next part of the story without doing sufficient work, they don't level.. then they TPK when they make it to the next area without the XP. GM call

3. Of course different systems achieve different things, I'll agree tactically with that statement. Strategically, the point of all XP systems is to advance within the framework of any given game. Making strategic changes to an XP system to suit your game isn't a bad thing.

Peace
KB

 

[The Crimson Binome]

So why does a gaping hole in the integrity of "internal causality" or continuity (temporal, geographic, thematic) suddenly emerge when, instead of (nearing) thematically neutral content introduction, when the dice are rolled in (say Dungeon World), outcomes are to be derived by fidelity to play principles that are centered around hooking into the (a) the thematic portfolio of the PCs and (b) dangerous action/adventure that propels the game ever forward.

The short answer is that this is narrative causality, which is an absurd principle for any world to operate on. If a game world demonstrates narrative causality, such that things happen because it's just a story, then nothing that happens actually matters in any way -- because it's just a story.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Just to give one example: many GMs, especially of D&D, use random encounters. When a random encounter occurs, the being in question needs to be given beliefs, backstory, motivation, etc. I've never heard of a GM who worked out all this stuff ahead of time.

The job of the GM, in such a case, is to figure out what these things should be based on what they already know about the world. This is a case where you need to trust the GM to not meta-game. Whatever the backstory of this random encounter, it is based on events that happened in the past, and certainly not on who the PCs are or what would be "interesting" for the players.

If a player asks whether there are clouds visible, then the most important thing about the existence or non-existence of those clouds is that it is not influenced by the fact that the player asked or whether they have a clever idea that is contingent on there being or not-being clouds visible. If the GM has been tracking the weather patterns lately, then great. If not, then rolling randomly is still infinitely better than the alternative.

"Internal causality" is itself purely imaginary - ie the imagined causal connections between imagined events. And there is no reason at all for it to track real world causality.

It doesn't need to track how the real world works, except in that we want players to be able to understand how the world works. Most games take place in some sort of fantastic world with magic in it, and that's mostly fine.

What's explicitly not cool is when things happen based on what the player or GM wants or doesn't want to happen; or what they think is or is not exciting or dramatic. Those perceptions and opinions are factors which are external to the game world, and taking them into consideration at any point would be an act of meta-gaming.