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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 8237080" data-attributes="member: 7006">I fall into the camp of preferring milestone leveling because for me and my players... we don't see Experience Points as a reward in and of itself.  XP isn't a prize.  For us... our reward for adventuring is the narrative we've been a part of, and the character personalities and relationships we have built up and grown with.  The story is the reward, not the mechanics.  And leveling up is merely the game mechanic that gives us new abilities that allow us to interact with the story going forward in new and different ways.  So the point of milestones for us is that we've concluded a part of the story where we've interacted with it in a certain manner with certain game mechanics to push that interaction along... and now can be the time for us to get new mechanics that will allow us to interact with this next part of the story slightly differently.Gaining pass without trace changes the story of our adventures, because now our party is more likely to be able to sneak into places successfully, where it might not have been possible before.  How we now interact with the narrative is new and different, because we have gained an ability that changes it.  And that new story is what me and my players find rewarding, not just gaining XP or gaining gold, or gaining magic items.  Those things are nice, sure... but again, they are only there to let us spend them on new ways to interact with the story.And in case someone was wondering... yes, we absolutely could play the game with no leveling whatsoever, all characters remaining at 1st level for the entire campaign.  We don't really need to have all those new mechanics that allow us to change the narrative... we could just change the story ourselves.  But because a significant part of the game of D&D is the combat board game... having new ways to play that part of D&D is important., because D&D combat is... fine... but isn't particularly compelling on its own.  There are plenty of other board games I find better and more fun as games... and it's only by adding or changing the game mechanics and the story and narrative surrounding the D&D combat that keeps us truly engaged with it.</blockquote>

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