Why punish a player if they can't come to the game?

[Umbran]

My take on it is thus -
I don't want to penalize a player who cannot attend for decent, real life reasons. Here, I have a bigger concern than XP - I am more worried about what happens if the character should die while the player isn't present. So, when a player is not present, their character (if I can't remove them altogether for plot reasons) tends to get a goodly dose of "script immunity". The likelyhood of character death if you aren't present for the session is extremely low.

However, now I don't want to penalize the players who do show up. If they take more risk with their characters, why should they reap the same rewards as one who took less risk? If XP is a marker of advancement through one's personal story, why shouold a character who's story hasn't advanced as much be as far along? So, I drop the XP award for those covered by script immunity. Normally, this really isn't an issue. Everybody is missing occasionally, and being down a bit of XP here or there doesn't slow you up that much. It all comes out in the wash.

It only really matters if one is chronically missing from the game. But that's okay, too. A person who is chronically absent enough to run significantly behind the rest of the party probably ought to be considering if they ought to continue in the campaign anyway.

 

[ThirdWizard]

Now we did not play at all that day because, as all the players know, we are near the end of a five year run of a campaign and every player's (and character's) presence is crucial - but if we had why should he get XP for that day?

I have to ask, what is the benefit of not awarding xp to a particular character? Do you believe lack of an xp award would make him more likely to make it to sessions or at least give more advanced warning? Was this case of not wanting to award xp more emotional than not, and wouldn't such a decision be more in line with my "punishment for not showing to show the player who's boss" explaination for not showing?

 

[Oryan77]

All it comes down to in the end is people wanting something for nothing. When I play D&D, I'm not in it for my character having fun and being a great adventurer, I'm in it for myself to have fun and for myself to be a great adventurer...that's why I roleplay, to pretend to be an adventurer. I would never expect a handout for any reason when it's my fault I can't play. I want to earn that XP; I don't care about my "character" earning the xp or not. It just seems to me that people don't want everyone else to get ahead of them so they want something for nothing. I pride myself in what "I" have earned from the game.

As a DM, if I absolutely have to run a PC as an NPC for a game or more, I make sure any resources that character lost is replaced from found loot by the time the player comes back to run him. That way he hasn't lost anything and can pick up his PC the way he was the last time he played him.

 

[Mallus]

Btw Mallus, seems you and I use the same exact XP method. The only thing the players have to keep track of XP-wise is how much they've spend making items, etc.

Funny you should mention that. I basically got rid of that too.

I noticed that charging PC's even minimal XP amounts for item creation resulted in PC's who never made neat, personalized magic items (and it posits a world full of mighty wizards perfectly willing to bleed their souls dry in exchange for a few pretty baubles.

So magic items in the World of CITY cost rare materials, knowledge, money, circumstance, and, of course, DM fiat.

On the rare occasion I might require XP to be spent, I'd always allow the PC mage to substitute the XP of an (unwilling) innocent, in the form of their blood. Because that just the sort of thing swords and sorcery stories are made of.

So far, no ones taken me up on it.

 

[el-remmen]

Oh, and the point of my long-ass post - was that I do judge the reasons a player has missed, as a friend of mine I am in the best position to do so.

Crap happens in life and sometimes it is unavoidable to miss a commitment - for those situation arrangements and RE-arrangements are made (for example one of my former players was a ballet dancer and X-mas time was his busy time making money being in productions of Nutcracker - he let me know months in advance and we worked out story elements over email and IM), but when you are being irresponsible or inconsiderate. . .well, that is another story.

We're not talking about punishing someone for their grandfather dying or for having the flu.

 

[Mallus]

All it comes down to in the end is people wanting something for nothing.

Or it all comes down to people mistaking nothing for something...

XP is nothing. One DM could give you heaps of it for your brilliant play, and another might award a series of dead characters, for the very same play choices. XP just doesn't work as a measure of how skilled a player you are, because outside of some very basic tenets (don't try to win a staring contest with a beholder, don't eat fire --without a ring of fire resistance, etc.), what constitues good/skillful play will vary from group to group.

The RAW basically instructs DM's to award the player who came up with the plan to beat the dragon and the guy who did nothing but roll dice the same XP, more or less. So what is XP a measure of, precisely?

 

[howandwhy99]

I think your goals are completely unconnected to the subject at hand. What exactly are you rewarding players for? There's a player in my group who plays a cleric that spends most of every combat buffing himself then never entering melee. He is, without a doubt, the safest character in the group, because he never takes any risks. There's another player in the group who plays the fighter, who fearlessly engages the meanest-looking critter on the field, every time. The fighter has come close to death dozens of times, and died several times as well. Now I ask you, what kind of "player success" has the cleric's player achieved? What kind of "player success" has the fighter's player achieved? And do those correspond with their respective levels, of which the fighter's is lower due to his various deaths?

Players are rewarded in-game by how well they playing the game. They are rewarded both with in-game rewards (gold) and meta-game rewards (exp).

Players succeed by improving themselves through the challenge of the game. You cannot give this reward as a DM. But you do encourage it with the appropriate rewards above.

The players of the characters you mentioned above are learning through play. Their expertise of course doesn't necessarily correspond to the level of the character they are playing. But their ability to gain experience through play is certainly related to this expertise. (again, this is not just knowing the rules or what the character is capable of)

So what am I trying to say? Namely, that there's no such thing as "player success." There are only players. Now, a character may have a certain amount of in-game success. My own PC was recently inducted into a prestigious paladin order. But tying character level to "player success" is, IMO, an impossibility.

And I am saying "character success" and "player success" need to be tied together to reflect real world accomplishment.

I can understand your preference for characters of differing levels. But I think denying xp to absent players (due to circumstances beyond their control, not Halo,) is the wrong way to go about it.How exactly does this pertain to absenteeism? Not being there has nothing to do with the kinds of risks you're willing to take, or a personal responsibility for a character's advancement, unless you are referring to the risk of getting fired by refusing a business trip, or the personal responsibility you have to the game over your marriage and kids.

I do feel bad about players who have so many other responsibilities outside of gaming. A person always has to juggle priorities and gaming is rarely one of them when you have a spouse and kids and a demanding job. How much more important than is it to reward those who do make it a priority? How do you judge when a player's character should receive experience even though they could not make it? Whether or not they were simply slacking off or stepping up to their own lives, I mean. That's why we use the 50% rule and offer multiple options when a player cannot attend. XP is given if the character is put at risk when the normal player is absent.

 

[howandwhy99]

The RAW basically instructs DM's to award the player who came up with the plan to beat the dragon and the guy who did nothing but roll dice the same XP, more or less. So what is XP a measure of, precisely?

Than the RAW is wrong.

 

[Arravis]

Mallus, the way I've solved that issue is that at the end of every game session the player's vote to reward one of the players with a "blue stone". They're just little blue glass stones I picked up at a hobby store. The players can trade them in for a re-roll or for XP that can be used towards item creation or other XP expenditures. The stones are ussually awarded for good role-playing, but they've known to campaign for votes for other reasons, hehe.

 

[billd91]

D&D is a game. But you're thinking of it backwards. Being 12th-level in a 12th-level campaign isn't a reward. It's the status-quo. It's where you need to be to meet the challenges you'll face in the game. To return to the chess comparison, being 12th-level in a 12th-level campaign is like having the appropriate chess pieces on your side of the board. You've got the tools you need to play.

Now imagine a weekly chess game. Only each time real life commitments force you to miss a game, I'm going to take away one of your chess pieces. So after missing three sessions (business trip took you out of state, let's say,) everyone else is still playing normal chess, while you have to play without two pawns and a rook.

Does that sound right to you?

That wouldn't sound right, but it's also not what we're talking about here. We're not talking about taking something away that the PC already has (like taking away the bishop). We're talking about them not making some experience points and that's a different thing. Not making the same number of XPs over time means they don't advance at the same time as the PCs played by more regular players, but we have yet to see this turn into a difference of more than 1 level or so. I fail to see that as being in any way analogous to losing a bishop for missing a regular chess game.