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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Argyle King" data-source="post: 7653273" data-attributes="member: 58416">Many of the games I play don't have levels or XP in the same way that D&D does, so I'm not entirely sure how to answer.GURPS does have character points, and I suppose that would be something akin the XP.  The Dungeon Fantasy series does give a general guideline about rewarding CP based on challenges faced.  Though, with it being a point buy system, it's hard to say "ok, just level up."  I suppose I could say "ok, everybody add 20 points worth of abilities to your character."  In a few GURPS campaigns I've run, I've played without CP at all, and the way characters gained things was by seeking out those things in play.  For example, if you wanted to gain the Ally Advantage, you would do so by engaging the in-game world; choices you'd make could gain you allies (or enemies.)  Likewise, if you wanted to learn a secret martial arts technique, you'd have to seek out someone who knew that and spend time learning it.  That doesn't mean the group would necessarily play out all the downtime; it simply means there were times when I'd say something like "ok, you guys have two months before you need to go visit the king, what do you do until then?"  Alternatively, it may be the PCs who choose to take some downtime and hone their skills instead of charging right into the next dungeon crawl.In a similar fashion, Star Wars Edge of The Empire is also a point buy system.  Points aren't tied to level and combat encounter in the same way they are for D&D.  The system is built in such a way that the story tends to be where your points do come from.  Certainly there are times when the story involves combat, and there are rewards for that, but, in general, I find the system seems to flow very smoothly.Why I mention both of those first is because I find that many of the times when I have played D&D and have done so without XP, it was done in an effort to make things appear more story appropriate rather than feeling so beholden to XP, levels, and the various other elements of D&D's metagame.  It helped to fix some of the problems I had with D&D and play expectations of D&D, but, after playing D&D, I've found that those problems were somewhat unique to D&D.  I didn't need to drop character points and other forms of advancement in other games because they already seemed to be built in such a way to help facilitate what I was trying to do.What exactly I do when I run a D&D game depends upon the group and what manner of game I want to run.  If it's with a group who expects D&D style advancement or if I'm running an off the cuff game, I usually keep XP and the normal way of doing things.  I keep it because there is a subset of D&D players who prefer a tangible amount of "money" to measure character power, success, and progress with.  In an "off the cuff" game, I keep it because it's a shared baseline to help me get an impromptu game moving in a direction which is easily recognizable by everyone in the group.  I'll also say that I tend to use XP in a D&D game when I don't have a solid story in mind; in those cases, I use the structure of the game to guide me toward what elements to use (appropriate challenges for the PCs) and then make an attempt to extract a story from those choices to string everything together.  In general, I find D&D style XP to be a form of linear measurement.  In a game which is expected to be somewhat linear, it helps and makes sense.  If the group or GM wants something less linear, it helps to break away from XP as an important part of the game.  In systems which are built around different ideals, D&D style XP doesn't really make sense at all, and, usually, the points or whatever those games use are built in such a way to reflect different needs.Anyway, to answer the OP:  Yes, I play without XP quite often.</blockquote>

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