Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="jmartkdr2" data-source="post: 8170017" data-attributes="member: 7017304">I voted story-based as most of my groups use that method. Tracking specific xp awards isn't really needed or useful if the players already do the stuff you want them to do - we already fight monsters, talk to npcs, gather treasure, and complete quests - so extra incentives to do those things aren't really helping (just adding math). Story-based also allows the dm to adjust for the pace of encounters, which can get slowed down a lot of roleplaying among the party.I am in one game that give xp per session, but for a bunch of different things - monsters, yes, but also solving puzzles and exploring and just roleplaying (engagement, really). As long as you show up and do stuff on your turn, you get points. How much you do sometimes affects how many points you get, but some sessions we just all get the same amount.XP is a great tool for focusing players on doing certain things - that's why xp for gold is such an interesting rule. It gets the players focused on a specific activity, and encourages creative ways to do that (ie go around monsters to get to the treasure, or even bribe them if the ROI is good enough). But it also limits the kinds of things you can do (ie it fails to reward pursuing any motive other than 'get rich'), which might not be the kind of fun you want. If players are engaged anyways, xp isn't a solution to a problem you actually have, and therefore best left alone. Another place where xp is really helpful is open-table games, like Adventurer's League (although I've been in a couple that aren't so official). Since you don't have a consistent party or players, and people join at an ongoing trickle rather than all at the start you can't really just level up everyone at once. You need to track each character's progress individually - and xp is just a quantified way to do that.In terms of the game going forward - I don't think they'll ever remove xp entirely. It's too much of a brand identity element. It may drift into 'variant rule' status, although I expect it will remain the default method with story-based as technically a variant the way feats are in 5e.</blockquote>

Verification