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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8843701" data-attributes="member: 42582">In the context of 4e D&D, my answer is what I posted upthread: the 4e XP system awards roughly 1/10 of the XP needed to level per roughly 1 hour of dedicated play (ie the players actually engaging the fiction by the play of their PCs).So instead of tracking all the minutiae of that - what encounters were tackled, what skill challenges occurred, what free roleplaying the players engaged in - why not just level the PCs ever 10 hours of serious play, which is to say every 3 to 4 sessions? Or to put it another way, if XP are primarily a pacing device - which is what they are in 4e D&D - then why not just cut out the intermediary and do pacing-based levelling?This approach to XP also bears upon your earlier post:This claim is not true, at least in the case of 4e D&D. The players get XP whatever they do, provided they are engaging in serious play. The only way in which players can control their progress is by consuming content more quickly - eg completing an encounter or a skill challenge in half-an-hour rather than an hour - but at least at my table no one is interested in that sort of intensity of play!Of course in Gygaxian dungeon-crawling (which I choose as an example just because it is so different in this respect from 4e), the players can control their progress by choosing which rooms and dungeon levels to explore and raid. This just shows how different XP are in Gygaxian play compared to 4e - they're a reward for success in dungeon-crawling, not just a pacing device.There is a corresponding difference between the two systems, also: in Gygaxian play the players exercise significant control over framing, by choosing where to explore and loot. Whereas 4e assumes that the GM will exercise control over framing, although of course having regard to the cues that players send via player-authored quests.Over the past few months I've been GMing a bit of Torchbearer. It doesn't use XP as such - characters gain levels when their players spend a certain number of Fate and Persona points. These are point spent to allow various sorts of dice pool and dice roll manipulation, a bit like Inspiration in 5e D&D.Players earn Fate and Persona by taking and/or succeeding in actions that are connected to their PCs' Beliefs, Instincts and Goals. At the end of each session there is also a vote for MVP and for Teamworker - each is worth one Persona.This is a type of milestone system but the control is in the players' hands to a significant degree, and it does not require any particular work from the GM. I would assume that something like this could be fairly easily adapted to 5e D&D.</blockquote>

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