I'm familiar with Dungeon World and was a playtester for that game. What some other game says about this matter has no bearing on my point that D&D 5e does in fact tell the players what they need to do - use the power of make-believe and be a bold adventurer confronting deadly perils in worlds of swords of sorcery in a way that is fun for everyone and helps contribute to an exciting, memorable story.
I agree that players really should be entirely capable of figuring out their RP. In our BitD game what we do is basically each player writes up a description of their XP gains in the discord after the session (its pretty much one score per session). We can all see what the other people are thinking in terms of what they believe their character's goals are, how they arrived at RP decisions, and such. Its not a lot of detail, but I know what Skewth's player thinks constitutes attempting to achieve one of his goals, for example. I guess if a player were being very cheesy, they'd stand out here. Honestly, I don't think that happens much except in fairly casual RPG play, in which case maybe its not so bad!
Except, by RAW it is, because you have to pay to be trained up in levels, which costs IIRC 1500gp/level * the level being gained (and then times the infamous 'RP factor').
I think you two are talking past each other a little. Spending gold on training is definitely part of the overall advancement mechanic in the RAW, but I suspect, from his comment, pemerton may be thinking more along the lines of gold not needing to be spent to gain the XPs.
I mean, its splitting hairs really. You have to expend the GP to do the training that actually gets you the next level, without that the XP is just a meaningless number on your sheet (by RAW). In effect you 'buy your XP' (roughly, the costs don't exactly track, as there are some mid-levels where the costs are significantly less than the XPs you need, which pretty closely track actual GP recovered since about 95% of XP comes from GP normally).
I'm not saying there is anything WRONG with what 5e is saying there, just that it is dropping the ball when it doesn't go the next step and PRODUCE that inherently through the process of play. This is why I brought up DW, because you literally cannot play it, in any meaningful sense, without the game producing the type of actions and outcomes which are its focus. 5e is a total crapshoot by comparison.
You must have never seen D&D players play Dungeon World. The game breaks under that scenario in my experience.
Well, the main people I've played DW with are people who still mostly play 3.5, some 5e, and obviously some Dungeon World (maybe some of them play other stuff too, but I'm pretty sure they're all like 95% D&D). Sure, DW requires a bit of a shift in mind set at times, and classic D&D players (especially of the 2e/3.x/5e ilk) often have to unlearn their assumptions that the rules actually describe how the game world works, or other similar misunderstandings. Still, the game is VERY robust, when I GMed it I just stuck hard to the agenda and techniques and the players didn't really have much choice, they kinda had to play DW as DW. I mean, if a player tried to tell me what move her character was making, I just said something like "tell me what that looks like" for example. Pretty soon you will find that, following the prescribed techniques, the game naturally takes on the proper character and structure. Obviously I can't speak to everyone else's experience, I'm sure there are players who are just not going to be able to make it work for them.
I think the answer to you last question is no. I can't imagine it was ever widely implemented as written.
I am 100% in agreement with you there, and I think its been discussed a few times with the consensus being "yeah, we tried that for a couple sessions..." which is exactly what we did right after our pre-ordered 1e DMGs showed up at the store. We read it, we implemented it, we said "WTF!?" and learned that EGG was just another guy at a game store throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks, lol.
Right, and as I pointed out in response to that, one of the ways to view the XP system of 2e is basically as a patch on the 1e procedure in line with what you are suggesting. In other words, ditch training altogether and simply award XP exclusively for stuff that is in character, conforms to class, and doesn't generate an alignment shift (which is penalized in a different way, though I don't recall what 2e specifically says about it in a generic sense). Anyway, while many prefer to see the 2e XP rules as an attempt to push 'story play', I've always seen it as more like this, just a less klunky version of the training rule, which of course does ultimately try to promote a certain play agenda; thus neither interpretation is 'wrong'.
I think the issue with 2nd ed AD&D's procedure is that the actual numbers on the XP awards seem a bit arbitrary. Whereas a system of uniform bonuses/penalties along the lines I sketched can be applied to all classes equally provided that they have a reasonably clear function (so maybe monks and bards would make the system wobble a bit).
Well, a lot of 2e is a very clunky system...
I think the a lot in your sentence is a bit misleading!
And then your characters became dragons.
