XP in D&D (and its parallels in other systems) serves an interesting psychological function: it is reinforcement.
Reinforcement is a powerful psychological element that is easy to under-estimate. The basic mechanism of reinforcement is this: if you perform this action, you will be given something you want. But why does XP work as an incentive? Why do we want XP, anyway?
A Measure Of C
In order to look at how XP functions as an incentive, it’s useful to look at why we would want to get these points. After all, they’re not directly useful. It’s not like winning money in poker – you can’t use your XP to buy an extra beer. So why do we want these points? What makes them fun?
The answer is multifaceted, of course. Since all lemonade is local, we all have our own agenda when it comes to this. But it wouldn’t have stuck around for 40+ years unless it was hitting on a few different cylinders, and there are a few big reasons, for a few different kinds of players, as to why XP can be fun.
A Measure of Player Skill
One of those cylinders, perhaps one of the first that XP fired on, is competition. It’s a way of measuring how “well” you play the game – those with a higher XP total have played “better” than those without.
This was very true when D&D was a deadly game – characters with higher XP totals had survived longer, and survival was a sign of player luck and skill, because death was so aggressively enforced.
In order for this to be true, players need to be awarded XP at varying rates. If you award bonus XP for the player who brings pizza, or you award XP based on various class-specific actions, you’re effectively creating this kind of division: some people are playing D&D “better” than others, perhaps because they’re willing to feed everyone, or perhaps because they played the right kind of class for your game. If you give EVERYONE XP for Bill bringing in a pizza, this doesn't necessarily reward Bill, showing him, in numerical terms, why he's awesome.
This can work on a group level, too, of course: if an easy challenge nets a small XP award while a bigger challenge results in a larger XP reward, high-reward challenges can be sought out,
This kind of XP award depends mostly on a direct numerical comparison, and a kind of competition. Whoever has the better score is being awesome (even if this means outside-the-game things like telling a great joke), and those who don’t score as high are not quite as awesome. It’s appealing to players seeking emotions like fiero – it creates a competition with other players, and a high score is a sign of winning that competition.
A Measure of Character Change
XP naturally has the effect of causing your character to gain more power and more abilities and more options – this is the nature of character advancement, and XPs are the logs you throw on that fire to keep it burning. XP serves as a device to drip some novelty into the character you’ve been playing – it determines how long you need to keep rolling dice until you get to do something new with your avatar.
Those abilities are frequently more powerful and awesome the higher up the chain of levels you get, so XP also serves to help demonstrate your growth as a hero, from low-level goblin-slayer to high-level dragon-slayer, with the chops to prove it. You are measurably a different character after 60,000 or so XP than you were a few XPs ago, and through that arc, you see the character that you’ve been playing come to life.
This nature of XP was explored a little bit when I talked about delayed gratification and marshmallows: when you see the awesome things your character is capable of at high levels, this becomes an incentive to get there as efficiently and effectively as possible. XP is the thing you must get to become awesome, so they become desirable things.
This kind of fun-from-XP focuses on feelings like desire and anticipation, creating a feeling that someday, someday soon, this reward will let you be awesome.
A Measure of Time
Games that award levels at certain intervals, or “whenever the DM feels like it” still effectively use XP. The XP isn’t explicit, but if one took the average rate of level gain, and the XP it takes to gain that level, one could get an approximate value for “XP per session.”
XP in this style aren’t desirable because of what they’ll get you or as a reward for good play, but they are desirable because they help account for how long you’ve been with a given story or a given character. Gaining a level is still a way to inject some change into the character, but it’s also a way to see how long you’ve spent with a given character, or with a given campaign. Even if you don’t care about the change of your character, you might care about the investment you have in that character, and remember fondly various games you’ve played with them.
This is appealing to emotions like satisfaction or pride, giving you a sense of having created something, something shared, that has created some lasting value.
A Measure of DM’s Desires
Finally, XP is desirable because it can be a sign that you are meeting the desires of the DM. This may not be very arbitrary, and, in fact, can be highly customized. A DM who wants to encourage a behavior may award XP for it, and this XP becomes valuable because it does what the DM wants. This shows a deep trust in the DM, but it can be very rewarding to follow that breadcumb trail. If the DM awards XP for fighting monsters, but not solving mysteries, then the DM clearly trying to incentivize a certain action, and XP is a measure of what that DM wants to see out of the players (murder and fighting!). If the DM awards more XP for discovering a new land than for fighting monsters, the DM is telling you to boldly go explore, rather than to stick around fighting orcs.
This feature of XP appeals to emotions like empathy and compassion – giving other people what they would like can be insanely gratifying for the giver, as well as the recipient.
Additional Incentives
Regardless of the direct reason we as players seek out XP rewards (or level rewards, in games that prefer to award big chunks at a time), we all do value them, to varying degrees, for various reasons. They are a way to codify what psychology calls "positive reinforcement:" do something someone else wants you to do (have your avatar slay the monster, keep playing the game, bring back GP, explore the frontier, etc.), and you -- as a player -- get rewarded for it (you get to see your character grow powerful, your score gets higher, your story continues, and your DM is happy).
This shows that XP and levels are not just character rewards -- they are rewards for the players of the game, rewards that show, quantitatively, a measure of achieving the emotional goals the players set for themselves. Viewed in this light, you can see that XP can be used to add a concrete number to any behavior the group (or the DM, at least) wants to incentivize. It's a way to communicate, "yes, this action was good, we want more of that," even if the action indicated is simply playing the same campaign on a weekly basis.
In a previous article about pigeons, I talked a bit about B. F. Skinner. It turns out, this guy was big into reinforcement. In fact, in his mind, human action consisted only of these "conditioned responses." There was no acceptance of a reflective, internal world where we make free choices, only a world of behaviors we have learned through previous experience. For Skinner, you sitting down to play a game of D&D isn't about you choosing to do so, but about you expecting to get a positive reinforcement for doing so. XP is that positive reinforcement, codified.
This is why a minor change, like changing what the party receives XP for, can have deep ramifications in the actual playing of the game. So your challenge this week: for the next level of your games that your characters can gain, change how you give out XP, and see what effects this has on your table.
Are you usually the type to ignore XP and only give a level up "whenever?" Try awarding XP explicitly for killing monsters or solving mysteries or bringing back GP. Are you the type to award XP simply for showing up to the table? Try awarding XP based only on other players nominating each other for XP. Are you a diehard XP-for-GP person? Try awarding XP based on class behavior, or for discovering a new land.
Tell me what XP system you use, and one that you'd like to at least give a trial spin to, down in the comments! And let me know what effect changing that simple little mechanic has on your game!
