Why Calculated XP is Important

[Ariosto]

Celebrim nailed it: XP are a way to "keep score" in an old-style game.

There's a strategic, long-term aspect to play. Luck is a significant factor, especially in producing character mortality. High-level characters have a buffer of hit points to offset some of that, but are still vulnerable to poison and level drains. So, part of the game is how many characters perish before one attains level X.

Balancing risk and reward is a player skill, as is finding ways to avoid dependence on chance. All this is par for the course in war-gaming, the original cultural context of D&D. The existence of a victory condition implies defeat conditions. If you can't lose, than it's meaningless to speak of winning.

That's pretty definitive of a "game" in the conventional sense. There is a trend to make RPGs something else, which can be confusing because the terminology raises certain expectations. The mechanics tend also still to cater at least superficially to those, which can lead to "fudging" (what would in other contexts be called cheating).

That potential for confusion is the real problem I see. There's nothing wrong with Group A enjoying one pastime and Group B enjoying a different one. Trouble can arise when people not "on the same page" try to play together -- essentially playing different "games" while under the impression they're playing the same one.

In my experience, that tends to get sorted out pretty quickly in real life. A forum such as this, though, attracts folks with widely disparate concepts of what "D&D" is all about.

 

[I'm A Banana]

It's great to get something every session, but that "something" shouldn't be tied so integrally to absolute character power that, if you miss out more than a few times, you're the party's glorified henchman.

I use consumable magic items for this, normally. Potions, alchemical weapons, ritual scrolls, things that don't up the overall party power at all, but that might give the people who get them a little something extra to do.

FFZ does items, gil, and AP; FFZ also easily accommodates "side quests" and other diversions that don't necessarily have to have much continuity from session to session.

In broad terms, it should be horizontal character advancement, not vertical character advancement. More things to do, not more powerful things to do.

 

[Ourph]

The existence of a victory condition implies defeat conditions. If you can't lose, than it's meaningless to speak of winning.

Oh, I agree with this. Once we eliminated XP we had to come up with some other way to punish players who were impertinent enough to get their characters killed. For a while we experimented with indian burns or purple nurples. At one point we even discussed caning, but I was afraid we'd get blood spatters on the Doritos. We finally settled on forfeits. When Ted's Cleric got ripped apart by a Girallon last week, he had to kick Bishop Brennan up the arse before we would let him roll up a new character and get back in the game.

/joking

 

[Ariosto]

Well, you're on to something: Even if they're given XP, dead characters are usually not much fun to play!

At-will Powers: Tell No Tales, Rot, Stink ...

This can be a problem when "the party" is like the regular cast of a TV show, each player taking always the same role.

It's a bit different if you're playing but one character per session but have more than one in the campaign. Then, you can rotate so that different members of your "stable" are within a level or two of each other.

A single character played more often can advance more quickly, but that depends not only on not getting killed but on having the opportunity for adventure. Hit point recovery is one thing that (pre-4E) could take up a fair bit of game time. Meanwhile, other characters could be using both that game time and real time to get more XP.

Practical considerations of time and energy (especially the DM's) come into all this. Plus, some people simply prefer the "TV show" model to the old game of strategy.

Experience points, and indeed the whole scheme of going from 1st to nth level, are a "legacy" of the original concept. If one is really interested in a different kind of entertainment, then it might be worthwhile to re-examine that legacy. It's possible a different approach might work better.

The very basic assumption that a toss of the dice can kill a character might not fit so well with some new-style expectations. If going up a level is considered some sort of entitlement, then what about the prerequisite of survival?

(I think it's pretty sensible at least to cut back the frequency of character mortality as the time needed to a generate a new character increases. The degree to which a game is simultaneously "about" combat and long-term character development is another factor.)

The designers of 4E looked at a lot of questions and came up with radically different answers than the designers of the original game. That does not necessarily mean they came up with your or her radically different answers!

My own view of what D&D is "about" is pretty old fashioned. I don't have problems with a lot of things that may bother people trying to transform the old game into something quite different.

 

[Lanefan]

Taken as a whole, I can't believe what I'm reading in this thread! (except Celebrim; your ExP are in the mail)

1. Do all of you have it that when a player misses a session, their character(s) also somehow magically vanish? Player or no player, the character is still with the party and can reasonably be expected to contribute as if it had a player attached. Just get someone else to do the rolling, and if the absence is pre-planned, make sure you as DM get some instructions from the player.

2. Those many of you who don't even give out ExP and instead just level the party up, how do you account for characters who just don't do their part? Or who missed a significant part of an adventure (got captured, wandered off, lost their mind, etc.)? And, how do you account for developments that cause someone to *gain* a level e.g. lucky pull from a Deck of Many Things?

Maybe this is all an issue with the faster level advancement of 3e-4e games; where missing out a few batches of ExP can quickly put you a level or two behind. (then again, a death-revival cycle in 3e has the same effect) I find in 1e that giving out ExP individually by encounter tends to separate the wheat from the chaff over the long run; those characters that get in there and give 'er do better than those who stand back and watch, and justice is served.

I also give out what I call a "dungeon bonus" at the end of each adventure; this is to generically make up for all the picky little things I should give ExP for at the time but can't be bothered to, and is usually time-based on how much of the adventure the character was present and alive for; along with the relative size and-or importance of the adventure or mission.

The other assumption I'm making here (and I'll guess I'm making it in error, given what I've read so far) is that one of the things you're doing as DM is keeping notes during a session of exactly who got involved in what. This makes it easy to figure out ExP later; just divide the total available ExP for each given encounter by the number of characters involved in it, and repeat for each encounter. But you have to keep the notes...

Lan-"worried about the state of the DMs' union"-efan

 

[Mr. Wilson]

Crazy idea for mature bunch of players:

At the end of the adventure, give each player a fixed amount of xp which then can award to other PCs (not their own) as a sort of MVP/most entertaining player moment.

or to bring up to par a PC who is languishing with lower hp

Yup, I do that. 250 bonus xp for the party member voted session MVP by the other players. I split the XP if it's a tie between the PCs with the most votes.

 

[FireLance]

[SBLOCK]"OK, Dwarven Defender... Sit Up! Role Over! Good boy! Here's 300 XP!"

"Who's a good cleric? Who's a good cleric? You are! Yes, you are! Pray at the altar... and here's a 250 XP bonus!"

"Man, I love it when the barbarian's leg starts thumping the floor when I give him a 200 XP bonus."

"Bad assassin! I liked that NPC! 200 XP Penalty!"

D&D players are not dogs. We, as DMs, do NOT need to train them to do as we wish by giving them XP for specific acts that make us happy. Individual XP rewards are, IMHO, demeaning - and they damage the fun for the people that don't get them as often.

But couldn't the other players get them more often by being good puppies? Maybe. Many DMs, however, seem to have favorite PCs or players that tend to get rewards more often because the DM creates more opportunities for them to get rewards. If you're a bard with a silver tongue, you might get dozens of opportunities to get an XP bonus in a city adventure, but you might not find any in an adventure where the only things you meet are mindless.

Once one PC starts to get ahead in XP, that player will have more options available to them - and they'll be more effective in general. That gives them more opportunities to shine and earn individual awards - allowing them to further out distance their allies. In no time, you can find yourself with one PC and a bunch of his henchman rather than a party of allies.

I prefer one party XP level that rewards the group as a whiole for the work of the group. PCs that do great things in character are rewarded by what occurs as part of the adventure - not by gaining more power faster than their allies.

The PCs should be competing to beat the traps and challenges the DM sets before them, not with each other to get the most XP.[/SBLOCK]

I'd like to publicly go on record that I agree with this wholeheartedly. Excellent post, jgsugden!

 

[Ariosto]

Lanefan:

#1 is another of those things that becomes more of an issue with the "TV show cast" approach I mentioned above. Otherwise, one can simply go with the players present and their available characters. If it takes a little contrivance to bring them together, the players usually don't mind. It's ideal to end a session in such a state that any given character does not have to be involved even in a session picking up at that time and place in the game-world. Then, if a player has to make a last-minute cancellation, his character's inactivity (in adventurous terms) can be assumed. Cliff-hangers are nifty in theory, but as a practical matter I much prefer not to end a session with the characters in (e.g.) a dungeon.

Unless it's really necessary, I would rather not involve Character A without A's player being present. There have been occasions when I contacted a player by telephone, but that's usually not practical.

I see XP as a reward for the player; if one could give one's character to a computerized "bot" to play, I would not consider that any more relevant to my game than a player simply declaring his or her character level X.

#2 is something those folks must answer for themselves. I'll hazard a guess, though, that in such cases leveling up is basically something that "just happens" rather than being earned by a player's activities.

Unless I missed it, the Deck of Many Things does not appear in the 4E PHB lists, and it's one of those things that seem utterly opposed to the new game's philosophy.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I'd like to publicly go on record that I agree with this wholeheartedly. Excellent post, jgsugden!

Yes.

Speaking of which, what DM in his right mind expects the players to "Sit, Role Over, and Beg" just to get to 30th level? Why, when I make a character, I expect to just be 30th level. Why should I have to show up for a bunch of lower-level game sessions to get there? Why should I be expected to earn those levels? Why should I have to do anything? The DM who expects me to do anything has clearly mistaken me for a dog.

Urm......

On the other hand, maybe No.


RC

 

[FireLance]

1. Do all of you have it that when a player misses a session, their character(s) also somehow magically vanish?

Yes. To facilitate this, we tend to end every game session with the party recovering in town or whichever base of operations they are using. This makes it plausible for characters to leave or new characters to join them.

2. Those many of you who don't even give out ExP and instead just level the party up, how do you account for characters who just don't do their part? Or who missed a significant part of an adventure (got captured, wandered off, lost their mind, etc.)? And, how do you account for developments that cause someone to *gain* a level e.g. lucky pull from a Deck of Many Things?

The characters are assumed to be doing something "off-camera" that allows them to gain a level. They may be pursuing personal quests or be involved in other adventures. Presumably, if a PC was killed in the last game session, and the player brings in a new character at higher than 1st level, you don't run a solo campaign for the new character to enable him to earn the necessary XP? This operates on pretty much the same principle. (I do recognize that some DMs would do this, by the way, or require a 1st-level PC to join an adventure with 10th-level PCs.)

Maybe this is all an issue with the faster level advancement of 3e-4e games; where missing out a few batches of ExP can quickly put you a level or two behind. (then again, a death-revival cycle in 3e has the same effect) I find in 1e that giving out ExP individually by encounter tends to separate the wheat from the chaff over the long run; those characters that get in there and give 'er do better than those who stand back and watch, and justice is served.

Now that you mention it, I think that the key disagreement seems to be between those who think that RPGs are important enough that the wheat needs to be separated from the chaff, and those who do not.