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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AaronOfBarbaria" data-source="post: 6949054" data-attributes="member: 6701872">I like both - right tool for the job, and all of that.I use tracked XP whenever the campaign is set up in a way that the characters don't have distinctly measurable goals that will be coming along. I currently have a dungeon crawl (Rappan Athuk) going where I track XP so that the chosen path through the dungeon sets the rate of gain to match the difficulty the characters face. I also have an AD&D campaign going where I am completely winging it as DM so it's a full-on sandbox, and I track XP there too because I have no outline to follow so milestone leveling would feel completely random to the players. Another AD&D campaign I'm running also tracks XP even though I am utilizing adventure modules to run it because I'm trying to show one of the players involved what AD&D is actually like (as opposed to what AD&D is like when you have an awful DM that wants to "win" the game, which is all he knows of it from before meeting me).I use milestone based leveling whenever the campaign has clear points at which characters improving makes sense (like chapters in a novel, or half-season arcs in a tv show). I currently have a campaign going that has a rough outline of what is going on in the world, and the players figure out what their characters are doing given those events in the world around them, and they set a meaningful goal. Once their current goal is completed, they level up, and make another goal. It's not at all a linear campaign - the players are entirely able to do whatever they please in-character - but the players set goals and I can put meaningful challenges in the way of those goals, but I'm not required to pay any attention to what XP value those challenges are worth (which prevents me feeling like I'm "padding" the game with encounters that are only there to fill-in the XP).I kind of think of it like console RPGs - some of them you can just play right on through as you like, and if you play well you'll do fine. Others force you to spend time grinding by being nigh-unbeatable if you don't. And I try to avoid my table-top campaigns feeling like the latter (which, so that I'm not misunderstood, either type of leveling system can be both of these things depending on how you use them).</blockquote>

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