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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fox Lee" data-source="post: 7649994" data-attributes="member: 4346">I view XP as a reward for group success, which in itself is a bit vague. Usually it means "you succeeded at what you were trying to do", but that might involve lots of approaches - avoiding a trap rather than disarming it, negotiating a truce rather than fighting a battle, coming up with their own solution to a problem rather than completing the "quest" the way that was expected. And of course, in the event that their original plan should fail, it always includes "successfully flying by the seat of your pants". Basically, the only way they will get no XP for something is if they deliberately ignore it (like a subquest that isn't to their tastes) or manage to skip it entirely (take a different path, never pursue that plot tread, etc.).Thus, I don't bother with individual character XP. On principal I don't want characters to be at different levels because it's fiddly and bothersome, but on a more pragmatic level, my guys don't seem to care very much about XP. They are lazy about tracking their own totals, so I'm not going to spend extra effort on it.As an addendum, in the first game I ever ran - 3.5 D&D - I found calculating challenge ratings and treasure awards to be a horrible chore, so I played it very fast and loose. The characters simply levelled up when it seemed appropriate - pretty much once per major plot arc. They were all fine with this, but I would hardly call it an ideal situation, so I was glad when 4e made GMing about a million times easier for me. The other current GM in my group is using the same abstracted XP style right now, and - maybe because I have a much higher level of system mastery in 4e than I did in 3.5 - that does kind of bug me. I'm not about to stop playing or anything, but I do wish I knew what I actually earned. I can understand why this style would bother people, aso unless it's the default assumption for your game system, I think it's important too decide it with player input, not just on GM preference.In this case, perhaps, it may be a different Measure of C to what you've discussed. Maybe a "Measure of Discovery", since it was based almost entirely on uncovering and pursuing "quests", rather than monster difficulty. Or "Measure of Narrative", since ultimately levelling up was a thing that happened at the point you would expect it to in the plot of a comic book, shounen anime, et cetera.</blockquote>

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