XP For You

Do you award XP for slaying a monster? What about for resisting a succubus’s lure? Do you award it for discovering a new land, or for building your character’s relationship with another? How about for resolving a plot point, or disabling a trap? Do you award it for bringing pizza to the game, award it differently depending on the kind of PC, or do you just award it every few sessions? Or do you just ignore it entirely?

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!

 

[Jhaelen]

Well, when I'm DM (in 4e) I no longer track xp and let the pcs level when it makes sense for the story but I still tell the players about the xp budgets I used for encounters since they seem to care about it it puts their achievements into context.

In our Dark Sun group where I'm a player, the DMs still hand out xp. But almost 50% of the xp are from other sources than combat. There's xp for skill challenges, achieving milestones, solving quests and roleplaying. The latter is particularly notable since these xp are granted precisely for the reason outlined in the OP's article: to encourage us to roleplay more and drive home the point that combat isn't all that important.

 

[Kalontas]

I absolutely agree that D&D is a combat-centric system, but it is worth noting that in 4e at least, XP rewards for non-combat challenges is no longer a suggestion but a part of the core rules. Like them or loathe them, Skill Challenges are definitely there to provide XP for the sort of things you describe in this paragraph, which I find to be a welcome change of pace from "you could maybe think about giving XP for non-combat stuff, if you're that kind of GM"

Quest rewards being "canonised" is also a long-overdue advancement in my mind. It's an excellent representation of how a series of plot- or objective-connected encounters - combat, skill or social - are worth more than the sum of their parts.

The problem with this is the XP given is still used to advance the combat-centred classes, which have any skill advancement only in a secondary fashion. Meaning, it feels like I'm using an unrelated system to reward another unrelated system.
Skill-based system lumps combat and non-combat skills as part of the same system. People can specialise in either or both, and get rewarded with advancement in things they're actually using.

 

[LostSoul]

Good article, KM.

Since you asked: I use a system where players set their own goals based on the DM-provided setting. Accomplishing those goals grants XP. I feel like this provides two "reward cycles": players are rewarded when they explore and engage with the setting (getting more powerful - and thus the ability to influence the setting), and they're rewarded when they go after what they want to do in the setting (getting more powerful - and more influence - the more they drive the focus of play).

There's a lot of design space here, and I find this one of the most interesting features of game design.

 

[Fox Lee]

The problem with this is the XP given is still used to advance the combat-centred classes, which have any skill advancement only in a secondary fashion. Meaning, it feels like I'm using an unrelated system to reward another unrelated system.

I never saw them as unrelated - I mean, in most challenges or quests you use both your skills and your combat stats, so keeping them separate seems like unnecessary complication to me. Still, I think I see where you're coming from - you only get better at what you practice, right?

In a finely granulated system - you know the sort that deals with complex stuff like wound locations or weapon speeds - I can see the appeal in that. I think 4e D&D is too abstracted to benefit from that though - your abilities are just your abilities, regardless of application. When you illustrate characters in fairly broad strokes, advancing the whole person rather than advancing their individual aspects, just seems more appropriate. Best tool for the job, I'd say.

 

[evilbob]

Way back in the early days, I followed the XP guidelines for monsters to the letter - doing lots of complex math and whatnot. But even then, I always awarded bonus XP for completing quests, and I always awarded XP for defeating encounters - not just killing things. So if you slipped past the guards with stealth, that was the same XP as killing them. If the bad guy escaped, that was still XP because he was "defeated."

That system worked well for a long time. One of the only bad things was the eventual disparity of levels between characters: due to level drain or spending XP on items or missing games or whatever, PCs ended up with radically different XP totals and the math for gaining XP was specific to each character. That was a big hassle.

Around 4.0 time I sort of evolved to where everyone just had the same XP total. There were no more anti-XP effects in the game, which helped, and I just gave everyone the same XP whether they were there or not. It made the math a lot simpler. 4.0 also codified some of the things I was doing anyway insofar as what could earn XP, but not much changed there.

Breaking away from D&D, we played other games that handled XP differently. Our next game was basically a system where you earned a set amount each session, regardless of whatever specific thing you did: and I have to say, I loved it. We were leery at first, but it really worked. When you put XP tags on monsters, it really changes how players look at the game world. But when your goal is just to accomplish something, it widens your perspective (at least it did for us). (Technically this system was also designed to encourage RP by allowing players to earn more or less XP based on their RP each session, but our group had been playing so long we never had a problem with that.) I also modified it slightly by giving out small bonus awards for completing major objectives, which just felt right to us (since we'd always done that), and again: everyone's XP totals were the same.

These days we're playing 13th Age (basically D&D) and its system is to just award character advancements (a piece of a level) after each adventure "day" (long rest), and a full level after about 3 or 4 of those. It's sort of a cross between session XP and hand-waiving. Due to our play schedule, an adventure "day" has typically coincided with accomplishing a major goal, which works well for us: I would probably keep that connection even if they didn't match up. We've only played a few sessions so far so it will be interesting to see how it goes.

In the end, the more I play the more I see XP as something that could go away. It doesn't serve an inherent purpose in gaming other than measuring character advancement, and unless managing XP is part of the point of the game (3.5 for example), you can easily skip it. Character advancement is important, but getting stronger only because you accomplished a goal makes as much or more sense than getting stronger only because you finally defeated the 47th slime. Similarly, experimenting with different systems has shown me that there are a lot of things that can be stripped out - like rolling monster damage, as another example. We do a lot of things just because that's just the way they've been done, but I think a lot of D&D could be boiled away and you'd still have a tight, excellent system that still had all the pure essence of what made the game fun. I dunno - then again, maybe I'm just tired of the math.