D&D General XP: How Do You Like To Earn It?

[Stormonu]

I prefer getting XP by doing things (of import). Combat, story completion, influencing, evading/surviving traps - that sort of thing.

My wife currently does milestones, which is fine by me as long as I get my level.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

I don't understand mixing milestone xp and individual awards. Isn't the point of milestone XP that everyone levels simultaneously?

It's a point of milestone leveling for some people. One may also want to have a milestone simply to bring everyone up to appropriate level for the next phase of the campaign, in which case it doesn't really matter if someone got there a session or two early, or the milestone may simply be a very important story point and natural point for the characters to get a pile of XP. Obviously this last point might also be filed under "overcoming obstacles" but sometimes the big character defining moments are ones of failure.

 

[DammitVictor]

HARP does it best: the players choose group objectives together, and gain shared XP for making progress toward them, and then PC objectives individually that each PC gets XP for making progress toward.

Always best to reward the behavior you want to encourage in game. And the best behavior to encourage is the behavior everyone agrees the game is about.