Worlds of Design: The Benefit of Experience

This is a discussion of how one decision in game design can make so much difference in how everything works. In this case we’re talking about RPGs, specifically how experience points (XP) are awarded. What are the consequences of using one method or another (or a combination)?

Picture courtesy of Pixabay.​

“Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.” ― Rita Mae Brown, Alma Mater

When it comes to XP, there are three obvious ways to reward it:

• For treasure collected or perhaps more broadly for money collected
• For “monsters” killed—the tougher the monster the more XP
• For successfully completing missions, or just for generally playing well, not for specific XP events

Each of these types of rewards are associated with an edition of Dungeons & Dragons, but they are not limited to that game alone. XP is one of the most direct ways of incentivizing players to play a certain way.

XP for Treasure​

What happens when you give XP only for treasure/money collected? In my opinion, this incentivizes the characters (and players) to be money grubbers, not adventurers. Adventure doesn't matter, all that matters is getting the loot. In the “money collected” mode, they may get XP for success in business as well. They don't worry about “more worthy” objectives such as defeating evil or winning the war or whatever more worthy might be. They become sheer mercenaries. They just want to make money.

XP for treasure can be especially bad in Advanced D&D. At low levels, AD&D can encourage this form of treasure hunting. When I’m a player, I usually want to strive for something more than being a mercenary. A game gives you a chance to be better than you expect to be, to strive for lofty goals. Treasure-hunting isn’t a lofty goal.

If you use the training rules, characters have to grub for even more money than would be sufficient to raise their level via XP; they need a lot more to pay for training. If you're only looking for loot you're only going to fight things that are likely to have loot, and you're unlikely to fight things that don't have loot. Why fight something when you don't get any experience points?

Ask yourself, how often do heroes in adventure novels and movies, do it for the money? Han Solo started out trying to do it that way, but changed his mind. In Glen Cook's The Black Company the characters are mercenaries, but in the end they do things for reasons other than money. The Mandalorian is a mercenary, but finds a different calling in Baby Yoda. And so on.

As an aside: why award XP for mere treasure? Given the chanciness of whether a monster or group will have treasure, doesn’t it become something of a lottery?

XP for Kills​

What about XP for kills? Just like the XP for Treasure above, this motivates adventurers toward a different goal: fighting everything. Their goal is to kill things, not to defeat evil or any other lofty goal. So once again you’ve steered the players that in my opinion is a wrong direction (see "Chaotic Neutral is the Worst").

Video gamers are accustomed to fighting everything in most AAA list games. So this method may feel comfortable to them. If you don’t get XP for kills, then you can try for strategems and sneakiness that don’t necessarily kill the “enemy” but achieve your goals in other ways. That provides more variety.

A combination of these two methods steers players away from the worst excesses, but is still not particularly heroic.

XP for Missions​

What about the third alternative, XP for completing missions, or perhaps for just playing well in general? This is the way I do it. I once wrote a computer program that considered the levels of the characters and how many points each needed to rise a level, and awarded XP accordingly. But you don't need to be that complicated; just give the characters each a particular amount of experience.

Clearly there are going to be people in any adventuring party who are much more important to the success of the party, either because of the character’s capabilities or because of the player’s capabilities, and you can differentiate that (giving each player/character a grade, in effect). Or you can simply give the same amount of experience to each character.

What does this do for the game? It means people play to be successful adventurers, not money grubbers, not killers, adventurers. Isn’t the game about adventure, not about treasure hunting or killing? If you have a campaign where there are clear ultimate goals—defeating evil is the obvious one—then that's what they'll try to do.

Which to Use?​

A lot depends on how you decide to award experience, whether you’re the GM or you’re the game designer. It's important to realize the consequences of these incentives because when players end up playing greedy murder-hobos, it's often at least partially due to the way the game rewards play.

Does XP method affect willingness to cooperate? If each individual is singled out, if each one gets XP according to what treasure they lay hands on, or what creatures they kill, cooperation can suffer badly. Which, in my opinion, destroys the point of RPGs: cooperation.

Your Turn: How do you award experience to player characters?

 

[Staffan]

Then tell me: how is it not counterintuitive that the character who actually achieves the most in the game gets the least xp reward, while the character who achieves the least in the game gets the most xp.

Put another way, how does - and how can - "I'm the [highest-level]* character because I failed the most" make any sense at all either in the fiction or at the table?

The xp-on-failure idea certainly incentivizes doing or trying something as opposed to doing or trying nothing, which really is excellent. The counterintuitive part is the lack of xp-on-success, even if it's the same amount as on fail.

* - replace with whatever in-fiction term you like that means 'most skilled' or 'best trained' or 'most able' or 'highest ranked' or etc.

Pemerton went over some Dungeon World-specific ways why it doesn't work quite like that, but I'd like to add a more meta perspective.

If you succeed at something, that means it was a thing you were able to do. If you fail, that means it was something you could not do. You don't learn as much from doing things you already know as you learn from trying and failing.

This is similar to the experience mechanic from various BRP-based games, where using a skill gets you an experience checkmark, and after the adventure/session you need to roll a failure on that skill in order to increase it. The difference is that the failure is front-loaded to the actual use of the skill.

I think Burning Wheel has a similar mechanic, except tied to difficulty in a way that essentially ensures failure unless you spend some flavor of hero points (e.g. if your skill is 5, you need to attempt something which requires you to roll 6 or more successes, each being 4+ on a number of d6:es equal to your skill - the exact numbers are probably wrong, but something like that)

 

[Thomas Shey]

The thing is, with some players any sort of milestone or group advancement model very much does promote/produce/reward a particular behaviour; that being to have one's PC hang back and take as little risk as possible while leaving it up to others to take such risks as need to be taken.

Put another way, it actively discourages engagement with the action resolution framework (to borrow @pemerton 's term); because engagement with that framework almost always implies some degree of risk to the PC (or its interests), and why take that risk if in the end you're going to get the same xp anyway?

That's only true in games where engaging with the action framework isn't a big part of the interest in the game in the first place. In other words, if you're not there to engage with the framework, why does the XP matter? All its going to mostly do is give you better abilities to engage with that.

(This can be not true in games that aren't combat focused, but then, in those games avoiding combat is a virtue for everyone).

 

[Marc_C]

No XPs since 3e. DMs use CR to gage difficulty. Since player don't spend XPs to raise their character's abilities and talents is it an obsolete rule. Awarding XPs for good role-play breeds competition for the spotlight and resentment. There is always someone who feels undervalued or cheated.

I tell the players beforehand how many sessions it will take to level up, for each level. Players just have to engage with each other, the npcs and the story. Since you learn as much (sometimes more) from failure than success it works just fine. No need to be granular by using XPs.

 

[MonkeyWrench]

I go with XP for treasure taken from the adventure location not just any money earned by a character. It encourages exploration and discourages pointless combat. The treasure can be anything that has some gp value - works of art, magic items, spellbooks, lost relics, sensitive information, etc - the caveat is that the party, who each receive a share of the xp, must find the treasure through adventuring and not financial investments or whatever.

I will also award ad-hoc XP for players accomplishing goals they set for themselves, but the main source is xp for gp.

I haven't had a problem with murder-hobos or mercenary attitudes because the players choose not to create mercenaries or murder-hobos unless that's what they want to play.

 

[pemerton]

I think Burning Wheel has a similar mechanic

There are some complexities I'll ignore, but the basic idea is that you have to attempt (not succeed at) tests against an ability at multiple levels of difficulty.

I think this is very clever design, because it means that players have an incentive not to always use their best numbers. Because they need high-difficult checks to help their PC advancement. This means that the game can be more relaxed about when bonuses are available, rather than having to police those very closely to avoid abuse.

 

[R_Chance]

Talk to Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Mercenary wretches and adventurers. One advantage of treasure as XP in original D&D and 1E, 2E is it's easily quantified. If deadlier monsters guard more treasure (generally true in D&D / AD&D) it's also a measure of the difficulty in overcoming your adversary. If you do away with it you have to adjust other avenues for gaining experience. 3E went for overcoming monsters, not just killing them. That works. Still, you needed GP to fill out the required "Christmas tree" of magical gear. PF exaggerated that need. So players needed to be "mercenary" to be well equipped whether it mattered for XP or not. 5E has continued the 3E arc, but cut down the Christmas tree

I think you can give XP for defeating enemies, treasure, completing missions, and other reasons. We gave experience for exploration for example. If you want to look closely at different methods of gaining XP you could vary it by class. For example, why wouldn't a Rogue / Thief gain XP for stealing valuable items? There is a black hole here for those who want to travel down it.

I favor XP for defeating (not just killing) adversaries, overcoming challenges (traps, puzzles, locked chests etc.), exploring unknown areas (new lands, ruins, even civilized places the player has never been), and "events" (fighting in a battle, getting married, completing a mission for the Duke, etc.). It should be about the characters experiencing the world and growing. A DM can do this without "hard rules", but they help. I have used different guidelines for my game over the years. It has varied a bit with the different cast of players.

edit One clever twist I remember was in Dave Arneson's Blackmoor campaign, he gave XP for spending the treasure you acquired, different classes spent the money in different ways, and different characters had "hobbies" that allowed them to spend money iirc. That's still a good one for GP = XP imo.

 

[pemerton]

you needed GP to fill out the required "Christmas tree" of magical gear.

4e showed an alternative approach to this (maybe anticipated in 3E OA?): the required gear can be gifts from mentors, gods etc and doesn't have to be either taken as treasure or purchased using treasure taken.

 

[GreyLord]

One form of XP that we've used when playing Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying 1e and 2e was the use of time.

By that it is dependant on how LONG someone plays, for example, a 4 hour session may net someone 100XP. It's based on playing time more than it is based on kills, quests, or anything else.

 

[MNblockhead]

edit One clever twist I remember was in Dave Arneson's Blackmoor campaign, he gave XP for spending the treasure you acquired, different classes spent the money in different ways, and different characters had "hobbies" that allowed them to spend money iirc. That's still a good one for GP = XP imo.

In my current campaign, which awards XP for treasure brought back to their stronghold, I originally required them to spend the GP to earn the XP, but the record-keeping quickly became not fun.

Now, I just create a lot of need and incentive to spend the XP. Most of their money goes toward stronghold improvements and upkeep and paying for all the followers, retainers, and troops needed to secure the areas they have cleared. As they level up and as they tackle stronger adversaries, the cost of keeping their gains likewise increased. More money, more problems.

Using Matt Coleville's Strongholds and Followers, hand-picking rules from the DMG and Xanathar's, and homebrew rules (including EN5iders organization dice rules), I've found a good balance between making treasure matter and avoiding playing Fantasy Accounting the RPG.

 

[Quartz]

System-wise, I don't think that there's one universal answer. For instance, in 3E a mage who crafted many items would be a level or two behind other PCs so careful calculation of XP was important. 1E and 2E didn't have that issue, but did have the issue of different classes having different XP scales. I remember using Lew's Monstermark back in the early days. And then in the Hero System XP were completely different...