My apologies for overreacting.

XP for gold is a guildeline, not an absolute.  If 2 players say "I'm going to sleep with a bag of gold tonight and he's going to steal it and tomorrow he will sleep with it and I will steal it and we'll do this until we level up", the correct response is not "The rules say X;" the correct response is "That's an asinine idea."

The spirit of the rules is ALWAYS more important than the letter.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1014494XP for gold is in no way stupid; on the contrary, it's genius. But only if you want the PCs to be assiduously obtaining gold.

Well, yeah.  If you want your PCs to clear lands, build huge expensive castles, hire armies, and fight wars to steal each others' treasure piles, it works a treat.  If you have different long term goals, you may need to rethink that.

But one other advantage it has is wandering monsters are pure pain and no reward.  That can be useful.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1014553Well, yeah.  If you want your PCs to clear lands, build huge expensive castles, hire armies, and fight wars to steal each others' treasure piles, it works a treat.  If you have different long term goals, you may need to rethink that.

But one other advantage it has is wandering monsters are pure pain and no reward.  That can be useful.

I like how xp for gold in D&D encourages trickery over combat, afterall you just want the money.  That said, we never player xp for gold.  I'd like to say it was a well thought out choice, but rather I think it was just the way we learned to play and an oversight.  Once we learned about the rule, at that point it was gp are their own reward, but I think we started using the xp for magic items.  On the greater concept of leveling, you can get to high level (15th-18th) in AD&D if play 20+ hours per week, ahhh the days of junior high weekend marathon sessions; where you get through G1 and into G2 in a single weekend.

I'm of the camp xp should line up with the game you and your players are looking for.  For example, I like exploration, and most of the players as well, so I give xp for each "dungeon room" explored, on top of anything else that may yield xp.   It rewards/encourages exploration, looking for secret doors, and the like.

In the Earthdawn system, XP ("Legend Points") are awarded based on a few categories: achieving goals, conflicts and obstacles, acquiring treasure, and individual deeds and roleplaying.

Normally, "loot" is defined in Earthdawn as "stuff you took", while "treasure" is defined as "stuff you took that is worth important or magical enough to be worth Legend Points".

I've decided that large piles of Loot count as Treasure as long as the players defeated conflicts/obstacles to get it.

Quote from: Skarg;1014544in the case where something minor (but non-zero) ends up defending a huge pile of loot, there's a max gain of +1 level, and also the DM is free to make exceptions or award XP in other ways if/when he likes.

Yes, per RAW. GMing yesterday the low level PCs were incredibly lucky (& quite skilled), wiped out the orc tribe and got a lot of treasure. Per the RAW I should have capped XP at 1 under the amount needed to level twice, but that felt chintzy so I just let those in line for it (2 of the 5 PCs, a Ftr-1 and Bard-2) level twice, capping XP at the minimum for the second level.

ie I gave them +1 XP.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1014551If 2 players say "I'm going to sleep with a bag of gold tonight and he's going to steal it and tomorrow he will sleep with it and I will steal it and we'll do this until we level up", the correct response is not "The rules say X;" the correct response is "That's an asinine idea."

Everyone knows that instead of a bag of gold they should be stealing a hat every night which they then sell back the next day to the other guy for gold.

And they should really add in a third PC so that A steals hat from B and sells it to C. B steals hat from C and sells it to A. C steals hat from A and sells it to B. That way the transactions are arms length and thus acceptable.

In my experience, if gold=xp AND killing monsters=xp, then EVEN if monsters are worth a lot less xp than gold, players will still be trying to steal all the gold they can AND kill every monster they see.