D&D 5E What Single Thing Would You Eliminate

[Charlaquin]

The goals and rewards happen in the game, not the meta-game. There's a rumor of a roving band of ogres? The PCs save the day by defeating the ogres or working out something so they leave without combat? There's a celebration in their honor. They decide not to follow up on the rumors or run away instead of staying to fight? When they return to the village it's been destroyed and that nice bartender blames them for his wife's death.

That’s all well and good. But meta game rewards happen whether you want them to or not.

On the other hand, I don't want to reward a particular style of play.

Right, but what I’m getting at is that you do, whether you want to or not.

I want the world and it's inhabitants to react to the PCs based on what I think is most logical from the inhabitant's perspective. Do they ambush the ogres? Bribe them? Figure out why they left their homeland and work out a deal? Help the villagers prepare better defenses? Not up to me to encourage one way or another.

This is in no way mutually exclusive with awarding experience points.

I can't tell you whether our brains notice, but I view my job as DM to set the stage with interesting actors and props. What the players do with it is largely up to them. I've been doing this and it's worked well for the past couple of decades.

And that’s fine. If it works for you, have fun. I’m not trying to tell you your approach is wrong. If you’re having fun, it’s right for you.

 

[Lanefan]

Lots of things in D&D are left to DM fiat. Milestone leveling frees the DM up from tracking XP, and tracking XP is a deal-breaker for some DMs.

Can't see why, as it's trivially easy to do.

The trick is that during the session all you track is who got in on what (see below), which takes maybe 10-15 seconds per encounter, and then rather than stopping the session to work out the actual numbers do that sometime during the week.

How I do it during the session looks something like this: (all the dashes are just for spacing)

- - - - - - - - - - - - 4 Orcs - - sec door - - trap - - hydra 6hd - - [etc.]
Aloysius - - - - - - - XX - - - - - - - - - - - -XX - - - - XX - - - - -
Bjarnni - - - - - - - - XX - - - - - - XX - - - - - - - - - -XX - - - - -
Coriander - - - - - - 1/2 - - - - - -XX - - - -XX - - - - XX - - - - -
Dumystor - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -(died)
Eohyl - - - - - - - - - XX - - - - - - - - - - - -1/2 - - - - XX - - - - -
Falstaffe - - - - - - - XX - - - - - - XX - - - - XX - - - - XX - - - - -

Pre-session I've listed the characters. During the session all I need to do is note what the encounter was with, and ticks for who got involved (or 1/2-notatoons for those with peripheral involvement, etc.), and this takes no time at all during play. During the week I'll go through, work out the numbers, divide them down, and write the results next to each tick. Here, each tick under the "4 Orcs" heading might have "23" written next to it, while the "1/2" would have "12".

Once I give out these xp - let's say I give them out at this point - I'd draw a big thick line down the page under where it says "[etc.]" to show me where the next batch begins.

Here, Falstaffe would ge the most as she got in on everything. Dumystor wouldn't get any, as his only contribution to anything was to die.

One of the advantages of milestone leveling is that it levels the playing field between players who are very social and proactive/aggressive and players who are less so.

Call me cruel, perhaps, but I see that as more of a bug than a feature; in that it rewards passive behavior rather than trying to change it.

 

[Charlaquin]

I won't argue that getting points feels good, but: it doesn't always feel better than the cost, and isn't always the most fun way to run a game. That's probably why so many people having stopped using them.

What cost? Writing a number down once a week? I think a lot of groups have stopped using them because their value is not intuitively obvious and their cost is. But I do think it creates a subtly but significantly better player experience, at only a minor bookkeeping cost to the DM.

The reward is the fun they have roleplaying, fighting, joking around, and otherwise playing the game. If the game itself isn't fun adding points won't fix that. If it isn't fun, points don't add much.

Obviously experience points won’t fix a game that isn’t otherwise fun. They also won’t take the fun away from a game that is. What they will do is make a subtly, but significantly, more psychologically rewarding experience. But yes, the game still needs to be fun. Figured that went without saying.

 

[Lanefan]

Maybe. In any case, I really chafe against the "you level when I say you level" aspect of milestone XP.

What also bugs me is that ether the PCs always have to be the same level (boring!) or if one gets ahead or falls behind that disparity become slocked in - there's no mechanism for catching up, so to speak. Really plays hell with situations where PCs cycle in and out, meaning some get played more than others.

I can see that if XP and leveling is not a significant driver of play it wouldn't matter,

It's not a real big thing in our games but I suspect milestone levelling would still go over like a lead balloon were someone to suggest it.

 

[Charlaquin]

Most players don’t know how much XP reward they’re going to get from visiting a precise location. They don’t know exactly what’s there, what it’s CR is and what else they might face. So I don’t believe XP does factor into PC decision making. As CR is arbitrary according to the DMs whim, so is XP.

I mean, that shouldn’t be the case. There’s a system. Let the players know how it works.

 

[Lanefan]

I dunno. At least in my games, players are there to play. There's an assumption that if they play and adventure, the DM will reward them at appropriate intervals. I've never seen the issue of "the players won't take risks, because they know they'll level anyway even if they do nothing." I've never had a player that valued survival over actually engaging.

Your level of in-fiction risk must be low enough that it's not an issue, then.

I expect survival to be priority number one at all times, and not in the least guaranteed. It's not that some characters might die, it's that some characters WILL die; and thus I prefer that risk to be shared equally and let the luck fall where it may. Adventuring is a very risky trade.

 

[Charlaquin]

I dunno. At least in my games, players are there to play. There's an assumption that if they play and adventure, the DM will reward them at appropriate intervals. I've never seen the issue of "the players won't take risks, because they know they'll level anyway even if they do nothing." I've never had a player that valued survival over actually engaging.

My issue with story based advancement isn’t that players are encouraged not to take risks. It’s that there’s no clear association between an action the player can perform and progress towards leveling up. There’s no sense of agency, of knowledge that you can actively pursue leveling up. You just have to blindly follow the plot and hope the DM gives you a level for doing so.

This is not a problem with session-based advancement. In session-based advancement, you can pursue leveling up by attending as many sessions as possible. That’s fine, and in my opinion probably the best option for those folks who say they don’t want to encourage any particular style of play. Personally I prefer experience as a player because it ties advancement to in-game actions instead of the meta-game action of attending the game. But I’ll accept it, if the alternative is story-based advancement.

 

[Lanefan]

XP is redundant if the players are already doing stuff because it's fun. If players do stuff because playing the game is fun, the added reward of points for doing so adds very little, and requires a lot of bookkeeping.

This is especially true if the dm doesn't want to encourage any particular kind of play: I want my players to engage with the setting, but I don't care how. They can go for treasure or glory or power or justice or whatever they like. They can do this by fighting or talking or stealing or whatever clever plan they want. My players know that if they don't engage with the setting, no game happens, so I don't feel any need to make them act.

Therefore, for my style of play, any xp system would need to perfectly balance every possible approach - which in a ttrpg means I need good, balanced, non-arbitrary numbers for stuff I haven't thought of. How much xp should I give for a course action I can't imagine yet? It's much easier for me to simply give them a level once they hit some downtime, after they've had enough time to use all the new toys they got at the last level-up.

Now - that's still only one context. In open table games, I honestly can't think of an alternative to xp (in general) that could work. Do whatever you want with the numbers, you need a system to calculate when pcs advance.

Your open-table point tangentially gets at my main objection to milestone levelling: how do I-as-DM reward the characters that take the risks and-or drive the action and not reward those who don't, and at the same time avoid accusations of favouritism?

Answer: a coded and somewhat transparent reward system granular enough to make these character differentiations at the by-encounter or by-event level. Also known as xp.

 

[Charlaquin]

Yeah, that’s why I don’t like XP rewards. Because D&D is geared towards extremely confrontational behaviours. Usually kill (or incapacitate) the enemy.

Particularly in a megadungeon where you’re clearing for loot and XP.

I’m not saying it’s bad fun, just that it doesn’t work as well in the mystery/intrigue game set in a city or small kingdom.

For a mystery game I would probably award XP for clues discovered and cases solved.

 

[TwoSix]

I mean, that shouldn’t be the case. There’s a system. Let the players know how it works.

Are you actively communicating that to the players in the metagame? Or are they inferring it from the narrative? ("Well, the fiery tower full of demonspawn is probably way more XP than the idyllic village down the river.")

I guess I just don't see the utility outside of dungeon crawls and sandboxes, which aren't really how I play. If you tell me site A is moderately challenging and worth 5,000 XP, and site B is hard and worth 10,000 XP, my choice is always going to be "whichever site has more relevance to my character."