Quote from: Ratman_tf on September 09, 2022, 01:57:04 AM

Quote from: Lunamancer on September 08, 2022, 11:35:51 PM
First, for special XP rewards for special individual activity or accomplishments should be awarded immediately. Not waiting until the end of the session. Two reasons. One, by awarding it immediately, you don't have to track it. You don't have to add it to the leger, you don't have to worry about any double-entry bookkeeping. You can give your accountant the night off. It even saves you from ever having to add that reward to the general XP reward. Two, at least part of the function of XP is incentive. General XP at the end of the adventure makes sense as that's the carrot for the group to see their way to the end of the session. But if you're trying to incentivize specific instances of good play, it makes no sense to wait 3 hours, 3 hours of play where the reward isn't incentivizing anyone, to the end of the session where for all you know the player will have forgotten exactly what it was they did to get that reward.

I've often thought about doing this.

I've done it.  For some players, it is a really bad way to handle it.  Because the last thing you want to do with them is take them out of the moment and get them fixated on the character sheet.  You think some players are bad at always looking for a button to push on the character sheet instead of thinking about the situation?  Try making them visualize a big "Get XP" button and tying it to some behavior that gives the immediate "ding". 

Instead, what works better is to give some kind of enthusiastic but vague appreciation for what they did.  Even better if your enjoyment shows.  Make that stick in their minds. Then when you give the individual award later (whether XP or anything else), explicitly tie that back to the moment that is now stuck in their minds.  This way works just as well for people who aren't "button pushers", but it now gives the button pusher a place to revel in it.  I've had some success this way weaning the button pushers off of their behaviors. 

Having played in games that did (a) xp for combat and gold, (b) xp for combat and completing quests, (c) xp for combat only, (d) xp for "encounters" including combat and traps, (e) xp for showing up and roleplaying well, (f) xp for hitting story milestones, and (g) xp because the GM feels like it... I personally strongly prefer (a) and (b), strongly dislike (f) and (g), slightly dislike (c) and (d), and can take or leave (e).

The main issues for me are tractability, variety, and agency. I want to know what I'm going to get XP for so that I know what sorts of things I should be doing, but I want to have options and not have XP used to railroad me. Options (a) and (b) satisfy those requirements really well. Option (c) gives me tractability and agency but not variety. Option (d) is in principle a good idea but I've never seen it done well. Options (f) and (g) fail hard on my criteria by being railroady and arbitrary.

Option (e) is weird because it technically satisfies the criteria --- basically it tells me to do whatever I want. Which for some games is great. For others, not so much, though maybe that's just because I'm so used to my characters having to risk their lives doing crazy BS like rummaging through monster-and-trap-laden ruins in the hopes of bringing a heap of gold back. (No seriously, think about it: that's nuts!)

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on September 09, 2022, 08:03:13 AM
I've done it.  For some players, it is a really bad way to handle it.  Because the last thing you want to do with them is take them out of the moment and get them fixated on the character sheet.

Here's another thing I do. If something is causing a character pain but is not actually lethal, something like a bee sting, I tell the player their character takes a half point of damage.

I'd expect a theorist to say this is bad because I'm breaking immersion by referencing that half hit point and in the end it doesn't even have any real mechanical effect since whether you have 10 hp or 9 1/2 hp, you still survive 9 damage but don't survive 10+. So there's no benefit to doing this. All I'm doing is making the player erase "10" and write in "9 1/2".

And yet I've never once done this without the player saying "Ouch!" in response. Tying what's happening back to the character sheet most certainly does NOT take them out of the moment. In fact, without the mechanical reference, I don't get so visceral a response as reliably. It's no different with XP rewards.

If I had to posit a theory around it, it would go something like this. If "flavor text" and "mechanics" are viewed as two separate things, one being the immersive element, the other being the gamist element, then it's natural to think any intrusion of the latter into the former will take you out of the moment. However, I see them more like a respiratory system and a circulatory system. In a living person, the two are interrelated, and if you cut either one out you kill the patient. Giving the flavor text mechanical teeth makes it all the more real. It makes players immersed in the first place. And I think it's actually mechanical options when they are detached from flavor text that creates the button-push mentality.

Quote from: Lunamancer on September 09, 2022, 03:05:04 PM
If I had to posit a theory around it, it would go something like this. If "flavor text" and "mechanics" are viewed as two separate things, one being the immersive element, the other being the gamist element, then it's natural to think any intrusion of the latter into the former will take you out of the moment. However, I see them more like a respiratory system and a circulatory system. In a living person, the two are interrelated, and if you cut either one out you kill the patient. Giving the flavor text mechanical teeth makes it all the more real. It makes players immersed in the first place. And I think it's actually mechanical options when they are detached from flavor text that creates the button-push mentality.

It's a balance.  If you assume a person with no video game experience, or similar motivations (maybe from board games), then maybe. I find, however, when there is a player with a clearly bad habit that I want to break, it's better to confront it head on rather than work it into the regular flow of the game.  In short, I've had plenty of players for whom subtly in how the game is going does not work before my patience gives out.  Whereas, if I just force the issue, they will sometimes change.  And for what it is worth, I see this far more now than I did 30-40 years ago. 

But then, I also know quite a few people who are like this in everyday things.  They will do something inconsiderate and annoying, for example, that to me is almost impossible to believe it is not done on purpose to annoy.  No one could be that dense, right?  Yet, if asked to stop, they will be in shock that the thing is annoying.  It never crosses their minds, and they lack the observational skills to deduce it, or even guess that something is wrong. 

This is perhaps one of the differences between teaching interested, casual people how to game versus finding those people that enthusiastic gamers and getting them interested in the game you want to do. 

QuoteWhat I lack is recent experience with XP that is doled out like an accountant might, where gold is tallied with monster XP values and PCs routinely earn chunks of XP for various actions and playing their character well. I assume from various OSR rules as written that this is still common practice. Is this done at your table?

As others have said, it depends a lot on the players. In my most recent long-running game, I started out with a standard XP award per game session. The game almost died a few months after it started because the players were complaining that their characters weren't doing anything exciting. Rather than get into an argument with them—the reason was that they weren't choosing to do anything exciting unless circumstances forced them to—I just changed the way XP was awarded back to a more traditional approach. Mainly, XP for defeating monsters. I also added XP for engaging high-profile NPCs, which they used a lot, and XP for dispensing with treasure, which they did not.

Once the rules encouraged them to (a) interact with important NPCs, and (b) fight their enemies, they started doing so.

I never gave them a rundown of "you got this XP for talking to this guy, and this other XP for fighting those orcs", but it was very obvious to them very quickly that XP came from choosing to do stuff. The game lasted about seven years beyond that change, which it would not have done with the flat XP award.

This is some great feedback! Thank you everyone.

What do you think of this idea? Party XP divided evenly and then individual bonuses for 1 significant action each session. Everyone gets a bonus and the bonuses are all the same value. The purpose would be to effectively call out each character's best contribution to the session. Like a participation award but linked to a certain action.

Quote from: David Johansen on September 07, 2022, 02:47:17 PM
If I have to run D&D I generally hand out 1xp per gp/day spent on training.

Yeah, this is awesome, also stealing it.

I've always loved the idea of getting XP for spending gold -- especially wasting gold wantonly per the S&S trope. I've tried awarding XP specifically for money spent "without return", but in practice that line was often difficult to determine.

Leveraging training costs doesn't exactly fit the trope, but as a mechanism to achieve the more general "XP for money spent", it's about as intuitive and sensical as it gets.

It also potentially adds a nice time element to the game, as players may want to take time to train between each adventure, and not just when they level up.

"What could you possibly need one hundred ladies of the night for?"

"I need to spend 500gp to level up!"

It depends on the game. Without any further context, my go to is:

First point is automatic,
Learning curve: What did the player or character learn?
Heroism: Was there heroism?
Danger: Was there danger? Stupidity does not count!
Internal Consistence: roleplaying, not play acting award.
GM Bribery: who brought snacks and drinks to share?
Success: did PC accomplish their goals or complete the mission?
End of Story Arc: extra points depending on length of arc.

Quote from: David Johansen on September 10, 2022, 12:44:33 PM
"What could you possibly need one hundred ladies of the night for?"

"I need to spend 500gp to level up!"

That averages to 5 gp per lady...
Hope you got a Remove Disease scroll handy.

I might not be the best person to comment on this, for I (mainly) play games which have no XP and level systems.

Anyhow, back in the day I used to play in group which was using Rolemaster in MERP. The GM kept a tally of all
the player/character actions that he saw as entertaining, whether that was in interaction, coming up with clever
ideas or simply moving the story forward. Looting treasure and defeating opponents never gave any XP. The player
who got the largest amount of ticks on the tally, got 50% of the total XP of the group and the rest were divided in
"socialist" style as the OP mentioned. As far as I remember, the group liked it quite a bit for it kind of forced the
players to come up with clever things to do and say.

Quote from: Effete on September 11, 2022, 08:30:21 AM

Quote from: David Johansen on September 10, 2022, 12:44:33 PM
"What could you possibly need one hundred ladies of the night for?"

"I need to spend 500gp to level up!"

That averages to 5 gp per lady...
Hope you got a Remove Disease scroll handy.

A Roman Soldier earned 225 silver coins (denarii) annually under Ceasar.  If your annual wage is 22.5 gold coins, 5 gp is a hefty sum. 

If you look at economics outside of adventuring, the amounts of money adventurers are spending is extremely significant.  They're billionaire rap-stars dripping with bling.      We don't reshape the world to fit the characters, we just let them play in it.

Even if gold is worth a lot less than it was in real life, it's hard to argue that 1gp is anything less than $10 (and some cases to be made that it is worth $100). 

Quote from: David Johansen on September 10, 2022, 12:44:33 PM
"What could you possibly need one hundred ladies of the night for?"

"I need to spend 500gp to level up!"

You say that like its a flaw lol.

Quote from: deadDMwalking on September 12, 2022, 10:36:07 AM

Quote from: Effete on September 11, 2022, 08:30:21 AM

Quote from: David Johansen on September 10, 2022, 12:44:33 PM
"What could you possibly need one hundred ladies of the night for?"

"I need to spend 500gp to level up!"

That averages to 5 gp per lady...
Hope you got a Remove Disease scroll handy.

A Roman Soldier earned 225 silver coins (denarii) annually under Ceasar.  If your annual wage is 22.5 gold coins, 5 gp is a hefty sum. 

If you look at economics outside of adventuring, the amounts of money adventurers are spending is extremely significant.  They're billionaire rap-stars dripping with bling.      We don't reshape the world to fit the characters, we just let them play in it.

Even if gold is worth a lot less than it was in real life, it's hard to argue that 1gp is anything less than $10 (and some cases to be made that it is worth $100).

I've tried measuring it against real life stuff and I think it would have to be more like $200 or even $400. But it's hard to make sense of any of it because really cheap stuff would be nonsensical that way if you used it, but if you didn't expensive things would be astronomically more expensive in comparison.

Anyway I like doing xp for spending gold on town stuff. It does a great job of making the players engage with the setting and build it up.

Quote from: Effete on September 11, 2022, 08:30:21 AM

Quote from: David Johansen on September 10, 2022, 12:44:33 PM
"What could you possibly need one hundred ladies of the night for?"

"I need to spend 500gp to level up!"

That averages to 5 gp per lady...
Hope you got a Remove Disease scroll handy.

I think you mean, "Hope they've got 500 Remove Disease scrolls handy."