TheRPGSite

So on Facebook recently, I was posting about my upcoming 5e game, when an acquaintance of mine who plays at the FLGS asked me about the experience gap between spellcasters and melee fighters.

I had no idea what he was talking about.

He said that the DM said that the only way to get XP was to "kill stuff and complete quests" and their Rogue was almost 3rd level, their melee fighters were 2nd level and their spellcasters were only halfway to 2nd level.

I told him that I thought that was questionable DMing, at best, since one of the two official published adventures for 5e (Hoard of the Dragon Queen) offered multiple scenario specific XP rewards.

I found out later from a friend that played 3.5 under this guy and quit, that he gives melee characters 20% more XP per encounter and only gives spellcasters XP based on the spells they cast in a session.

So.

That is certainly one way to solve the Melee/Magic Imbalance.

Quote from: Tommy Brownell;784609So on Facebook recently, I was posting about my upcoming 5e game, when an acquaintance of mine who plays at the FLGS asked me about the experience gap between spellcasters and melee fighters.

I had no idea what he was talking about.

He said that the DM said that the only way to get XP was to "kill stuff and complete quests" and their Rogue was almost 3rd level, their melee fighters were 2nd level and their spellcasters were only halfway to 2nd level.

I told him that I thought that was questionable DMing, at best, since one of the two official published adventures for 5e (Hoard of the Dragon Queen) offered multiple scenario specific XP rewards.

I found out later from a friend that played 3.5 under this guy and quit, that he gives melee characters 20% more XP per encounter and only gives spellcasters XP based on the spells they cast in a session.

So.

That is certainly one way to solve the Melee/Magic Imbalance.

I suppose? Would it help if I whacked him in the balls?

Quote from: Tommy Brownell;784609I found out later from a friend that played 3.5 under this guy and quit, that he gives melee characters 20% more XP per encounter and only gives spellcasters XP based on the spells they cast in a session.

Weak, most of the time I've seen xp split, is when the party splits or a character pulls of a crazy stunt.

I can't remember the last time I played any D&D-like game where the XP wasn't doled out equally. I assumed it was the norm because otherwise the bitchy folks would bitch about it.

Wait. You think that an equal distribution of XP is actually a good thing?!? Why? I'd rather have a fair and contextualized distribution of rewards, not a forced equality that by default fails to do justice to each player's contributions to the game.
The idea of making XP rewards specific to each class and its role is not bad, either. In the OP's example it might benefit from a better fine adjustment (and it basically requires scenarios where each class has the potential to contribute regularly), but as a concept, it is fine (and from my subjective point of view, preferable to any game that fails to reward proper engagement and significant contributions by the players in form of XP rewards).

Quote from: Beagle;784626Wait. You think that an equal distribution of XP is actually a good thing?!? Why? I'd rather have a fair and contextualized distribution of rewards, not a forced equality that by default fails to do justice to each player's contributions to the game.

Because when me and my friends get together to play a game it's about having fun, not competing to see who has the largest "contributions to the game". I can't even imagine how that would be measured in any way other than "I like you more than I like her".

I always give out XP equally - even when players have to miss a session and someone else plays their character for them. XP is a measure of how experienced the characters are, not a Pavlovian reward for the players playing the way I want them to play.

In fact, the only House Rule I'm using in 5e is that we ignore XP completely and the characters simply goes up a level (together) when I say so.

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;784627Because when me and my friends get together to play a game it's about having fun, not competing to see who has the largest "contributions to the game". I can't even imagine how that would be measured in any way other than "I like you more than I like her".

(...) XP is a measure of how experienced the characters are, not a Pavlovian reward for the players playing the way I want them to play.

But there are games where xp rewards don't work that way at all.

For a long time I GMed the German game, Midgard. (A 1981 EPT clone that evolved into its very own thing.)
It has three different kinds of xp, based on combat, magic, and general stuff, and a character can only invest the proper kind of xp into new weapon skills, spells, or skills. The rules are quite strict on how to award xp (per damage output, per energy invested into a spell, per successful skill use, per days travelled, etc.).
When I read the rules first I thought it would be a chore to use all that but in play it was surprisingly smooth - and all in all, quite fair. Over the years all characters were in roughly the same level brackets (depending on when they were created, thanks to later additions to group, or character deaths).
The whole leveling system depends on expenditure of xp (as the character "level" is only the result of expended xp, not xp received) so I never thought of doing it differently (in that game - I eyeballed xp in other games frequently).


I remember that my AD&D group very much liked the individual xp awards as well (though I guess that there was a factor of "I like you more than I like her" with certain DMs...).
But then, in that campaign the DM rotated, and all players had huge folders of characters of differing levels which were mixed and matched for any given session, so the general competence varied anyway.

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;784627Because when me and my friends get together to play a game it's about having fun, not competing to see who has the largest "contributions to the game". I can't even imagine how that would be measured in any way other than "I like you more than I like her".

Acknowledging another player's good ideas and interesting actions is not an expression of competitiveness by default - it could even be the exact opposite, namely an expression of mutual respect and the joy for others being good at what they are doing. Meanwhile, an outspoken concern that someone might get more out of the game than oneself seems rather petty and self-centered in comparison, at least to me. Generosity and
But, even if there is a certain competitive element to it - that is not necessarily bad, either. Friendly rivalry is a great motivator, and if the rivalry consists of "who tries the hardest to make the game as fun as possible for everyone involved", there is virtually no downside to it.

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;784627I always give out XP equally - even when players have to miss a session and someone else plays their character for them. XP is a measure of how experienced the characters are, not a Pavlovian reward for the players playing the way I want them to play.

While conditioning is not the worst model to explain gamemastering, it's not Pavlov, but Skinner. While it is not the only explanation, it is an essential part of running a game,  because, as a gamemaster it is your responsibility to provide proper feedback and consequences to the character's actions anyway, and you can be pretty sure that this feedback will shape the expectations and future actions of your players. That's inevitable, as your players. like the sapient beings they are, cannot not learn. So, true to Skinner's model, their behavior and choices do adapt to your feedback, as it will break down to the usual reinforcements anyway - successful strategies and actions are likely become more frequent, while the failing ones will eventually not be repeated. The only choice a gamemaster has is, if one is  using this actively and consciously, granting you the opportunity to use this instrument, or to leave it up to chance by shunning this responsibility and thus make the feedback more random and thus offer less guidance. As XP rewards are not a separate entity from the rest of the game, but a continuation of this very concept of feedback and responses (and thus behavioral reinforcements) the gamemaster is supposed to provide anyway, it doesn't seem that resigning from using this actually very effective instrument is such a smart idea.

While it is probably quite unfair, I primarily associate 'one size fits all' XP rewards with particularly weak gamemasters whose primary interest is avoiding potential conflicts and just evade them instead of standing their ground and find actual solutions.

Quote from: Beagle;784626Wait. You think that an equal distribution of XP is actually a good thing?!? Why? I'd rather have a fair and contextualized distribution of rewards, not a forced equality that by default fails to do justice to each player's contributions to the game.
The idea of making XP rewards specific to each class and its role is not bad, either. In the OP's example it might benefit from a better fine adjustment (and it basically requires scenarios where each class has the potential to contribute regularly), but as a concept, it is fine (and from my subjective point of view, preferable to any game that fails to reward proper engagement and significant contributions by the players in form of XP rewards).

I would agree that in the hands of a competent GM, this isn't necessarily a bad thing...but when it becomes more important that you cast Mage Hand once a session for XP, then actually finding a meaningful way to contribute to the party, then I think something's wrong.

But then, I don't have a problem with group XP because my whole group tends to stay engaged, and individual players that don't aren't long for the table.

personal goals for PCS
Personal xp for PCs based on hitting those goals
'plot' xp dolled out equal split to those that participated in that event.

IN any case rather like annual bonuses you can hand out xp to each PC hidden from the others.

Quote from: Tommy Brownell;784641...but when it becomes more important that you cast Mage Hand once a session for XP, then actually finding a meaningful way to contribute to the party, then I think something's wrong.

It all comes down to reinforcing the behaviors you want to see.

If you want a 'me' group where everyone takes actions to get the benefits,  then individual rewards make sense.

If you want an 'us' group,  vice-versa.

Unless XP gains are built-in to the system (like in games such as Dungeon World) I just have the PCs level up when appropriate (at the end of an "adventure" or when they reach a significant milestone).

For individual rewards I just give them Bennies/Fate Points/Inspiration etc...

For my upcoming D&D in Ancient Greece campaign, in which each PC secretly has a divine patron, they'll get boons and favors in the form of guidance, cool loot and temporary bonuses or powers.

Quote from: Beagle;784633Acknowledging another player's good ideas and interesting actions is not an expression of competitiveness by default - it could even be the exact opposite, namely an expression of mutual respect and the joy for others being good at what they are doing.

Agreed. That's what we do in my groups.

It has nothing to do with experience points though.

QuoteMeanwhile, an outspoken concern that someone might get more out of the game than oneself seems rather petty and self-centered in comparison, at least to me.

Enjoying the game is its own reward, and if someone else enjoys it more than me then good for them.

This is still nothing to do with experience points. Again, you're characterising a character getting more experienced at what they do as being a reward for players.

QuoteBut, even if there is a certain competitive element to it - that is not necessarily bad, either. Friendly rivalry is a great motivator, and if the rivalry consists of "who tries the hardest to make the game as fun as possible for everyone involved", there is virtually no downside to it.

If you say so. I don't see such rivalry in my groups. It's probably a cultural difference.

And how on earth do you measure who's "trying hardest" to make it fun for everyone, anyway?

QuoteWhile conditioning is not the worst model to explain gamemastering, it's not Pavlov, but Skinner. While it is not the only explanation, it is an essential part of running a game,  because, as a gamemaster it is your responsibility to provide proper feedback and consequences to the character's actions anyway, and you can be pretty sure that this feedback will shape the expectations and future actions of your players. That's inevitable, as your players. like the sapient beings they are, cannot not learn. So, true to Skinner's model, their behavior and choices do adapt to your feedback, as it will break down to the usual reinforcements anyway - successful strategies and actions are likely become more frequent, while the failing ones will eventually not be repeated.

Agreed. The actions of the characters (and therefore by proxy the decisions of the players) will have consequences in-game and this will reinforce successful strategies provide negative feedback to unsuccessful ones.

Similarly, the actions of the players will have consequences out of game in terms of how much fun everyone is having, and this will reinforce popular actions and provide negative feedback to unpopular ones.

But none of this has anything to do with experience points.

QuoteThe only choice a gamemaster has is, if one is  using this actively and consciously, granting you the opportunity to use this instrument, or to leave it up to chance by shunning this responsibility and thus make the feedback more random and thus offer less guidance. As XP rewards are not a separate entity from the rest of the game, but a continuation of this very concept of feedback and responses (and thus behavioral reinforcements) the gamemaster is supposed to provide anyway, it doesn't seem that resigning from using this actually very effective instrument is such a smart idea.

And this is the point where I disagree.

Experience points are not part of the feedback and response. They are not a "reward" for "good play".

They are a measure of how experienced the character are - and the characters learn just as much from mistakes as from successes, so it is decoupled from any kind of feedback about how well the characters are doing, and even further away from how "well" the players are playing.

QuoteWhile it is probably quite unfair, I primarily associate 'one size fits all' XP rewards with particularly weak gamemasters whose primary interest is avoiding potential conflicts and just evade them instead of standing their ground and find actual solutions.

That's nice for you.

It is unfair, by the way, since it is assuming that people who do things differently actually agree with your preferred way to do them but are too cowardly to put it into practise, rather than giving them the benefit of the doubt and accepting that they do things differently because they actually disagree with your preferred way.

I'm crazy and silly and just give out Xp based on "Are we having fun" Would doing it differently be not fun.

So I give it out even if your character isn't there, evenly. Seems fun and fair after all missing my game is punishment enough. Means you had no or at least less fun and may be a little lost in what is going on when you return. I think that is punishment enough.

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;784627Because when me and my friends get together to play a game it's about having fun, not competing to see who has the largest "contributions to the game". I can't even imagine how that would be measured in any way other than "I like you more than I like her".

In that case your choice to dole out experience equally or to level everyone at the same time is a good choice for you.

We gave up individual XP over a decade ago, and don't miss it.  It's rather shocking to me to hear people do it any other way anymore.  Although I'm contemplating bringing some form back for my first 5E, only because it was kind of fun to have people level up at different times.  The only reason I'm not seriously considering it is because all the classes have the same XP leveling rate.  I miss the days of Thieves leveling faster than Paladins :(  I thought it was an interesting balancing mechanic.

But thanks, Beagle, for implying that I am a weak gamemaster.  But if that puts me in the company of Blacky, I'm all good with that form of weak :D

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;784627I always give out XP equally - even when players have to miss a session and someone else plays their character for them. XP is a measure of how experienced the characters are, not a Pavlovian reward for the players playing the way I want them to play.

Yep. The only time I don't give out equal XP is when a PC isn't played at all in a session.

And 5E already has a reward for players playing the way you want them - inspiration.

I play RPGs to have fun with friends.

I really don't need more judgmental hoops to hop through to game 'right.'

I'm also wondering, if individual xp rewards end up with people leveling at the same rate... why are you bothering with the extra overhead?

Quote from: Tommy Brownell;784609I found out later from a friend that played 3.5 under this guy and quit, that he gives melee characters 20% more XP per encounter...

Up through here it just sounds like he's reinvented separate xp charts by class.  Which is not entirely a bad idea if you're playing 3E to high level.  I wouldn't immediately go there for a 5E game, before we really know how it balances out in extended live play.

On the other hand, this...

Quote from: Tommy Brownell;784609...and only gives spellcasters XP based on the spells they cast in a session.

Looks more like a bad idea on its face.  Why penalize a player for holding spells in reserve and seeing how far he can get with a molotov cocktail and a bag of marbles?  If you're going that route at all, I'd probably take a page from Rolemaster and early D&D and go all in.  XP for spell research, lore research more generally, and magic item creation for starters, rather than spells only.

That said, I wouldn't myself use individual xp awards in quite that way, or even play in that kind of game again.  My player-side experience with it in a 2E game was a net negative.  Then I tried it years later on the GM side for an L5R game and dropped it almost immediately.

My experience was it didn't actually encourage good play either tactically or socially; if anything it penalized it.  Tactically, sometimes the smart play is for a fighter to take rearguard at the risk of sitting out some fights, or a mage to memorize comprehend languages even if its not used as often as magic missile.  Socially, it encourages a Jeopardy-like, first to ring in dynamic.  Everyone wants to get the killing blow/solve the puzzle/say the right thing to the npc/blurt out a plan so you get the bonus idea xp.  That's not for me.  As a player and a GM, I'd rather game with people who've got the maturity to realize, "hey, Joe-Bob seems like he's got this, I'll back him up but let him have the spotlight this time" without being penalized for it.

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;784654Agreed. That's what we do in my groups.

It has nothing to do with experience points though.

Yes. Obviously, a built-in reward mechanism has nothing to do with actually  rewarding actions. XP are a way to substantiate the whole process. Just expressing respect is nice and all, but it is a lot more vaporous if it lacks a concrete core. Actual rewards with a recognizable added value (like XP) do add this additional substance to the whole measure and thus increases the gravitas of the whole construct. In comparison to an actual, concrete reward, the mere idea of appreciation always rings a bit hollow.  Would you give your significant other a heartfelt handshake instead of a birthday present?

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;784654Enjoying the game is its own reward, and if someone else enjoys it more than me then good for them.

See, passively enjoying the game is the bare minimum, at best. RPGs are a group effort and live and die with each group's member's attention and contributions, active participation and actually caring. Just having fun is a good beginning, but not the end of it. So, the question shouldn't be how much anyone enjoys the game, but what you actually do to make it as enjoyable as it can be without becomming a chore - both for you and for your fellow players.
In this context, I found that a continuous reward mechanism that actually is directly linked to the concrete actions of the players is an effective instrument to keep the players motivated and at the same time, by establishing a link between an action and a feasible benefit - within the context of the game - the reward becomes more direct.
Besides, and it sound blatantly obvious, rewards work. They do contribute to the enjoyment of the game, because it is actually fun to get stuff.

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;784654This is still nothing to do with experience points. Again, you're characterising a character getting more experienced at what they do as being a reward for players.

And? The character is little more than an outgrowth of its player and doesn't count nearly as much as the actual person who plays that role.
If I'd run a game where character development is only directly linked to the character's actual experiences, I wouldn't use XP at all and use a system like Runequest or HarnMaster where improvement of skills is the direct result of using certain skills or active training within the game (which I do, with great enjoyment); if you use an abstract form of character advancement like generic XP in the first place, it is pretty clear that trying to establish a direct link between character improvement and previous actions feels quite shoehorned.

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;784654And how on earth do you measure who's "trying hardest" to make it fun for everyone, anyway?

When I think someone did something awesome, I'll make a little note. Admittedly, that is a rather subjective way to measure these things, but if my players wouldn't trust my judgement in these minor aspects of the game, I think I would have failed the group anyway.

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;784654[...] the actions of the players will have consequences out of game in terms of how much fun everyone is having, and this will reinforce popular actions and provide negative feedback to unpopular ones.
But none of this has anything to do with experience points.

This is an artifical division between two linked elements of gameplay. There is really no need (or a good reason) to use two different approaches to various permutations of the same pattern of action and consequences.

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;784654Experience points are not part of the feedback and response. They are not a "reward" for "good play".

Why? Because you refuse them to use them to this purpose (and therefore refuse a suitable and actually useful instrument to provide the guidance expected from a gamemaster)? That doesn't change a bit of how XP work as a reward. The fact that one might refuse to go swimming also has limited effect on the buoyancy of the human body.

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;784654It is unfair, by the way, since it is assuming that people who do things differently actually agree with your preferred way to do them but are too cowardly to put it into practise, rather than giving them the benefit of the doubt and accepting that they do things differently because they actually disagree with your preferred way.

Of course it's unfair. If you can distribute the XP rewards unfairly among your players  by not taking their actual contributions to the game into account, I can be unfair with my judgements. It is rather childish, I know. But, you are wrong in one point in particular: I usually do not care that much if other people play in a different style than what I prefer. I am not the greatest gamemaster there ever was, and not everything I do in my groups would translate well to other groups, due to different social dynamics (as well as tastes). That should really go without saying. In this particular case however, I see this a bit more negatively, because of the inherent unfairness of the whole affair.

There's something that seems really patronizing about awarding XP for gaming 'right.'

In my experience, if someone really isn't contributing... there are reasons that extra incentives won't fix. And if you press it and Not Contributor starts being weaker than the rest of the party, they are less likely to contribute or more likely to simply not show up.

Now, in certain environments this might work out well, like university or something with lots of potential players and a competitive atmosphere. 'Keep up or GTFO'

So many dimensions to this, starting with whether XP are meant to reward players, or to represent "experience", or to represent meta-game "fictional weight". Or a combination. Frankly I think it's a combo in D&D and in any case very hard to nail down even for a given player.

What I'd consider is making divergent XP awards per class. Everybody gets XP for accomplishing goals. Fighters also get XP for fighting. Wizards get XP for spell research/practice, which is very costly. Clerics for sacrifices and donations. Thieves--maybe fighting, in addition to successfully using Thief skills under pressure. Maybe let thieves and fighters also spend money on training (say 1GP=1XP, but cap the amount at 20% of what it takes to make the next level.)

Then also give lots of other ways to spend cash; make sure that players understand the value of hirelings; give ample social advantages for spreading wealth around the community and/or maintaining a high standard of living. Like giving charisma bonus when appropriate and making it easier to attract henchmen.

I would suggest that in 5e things like Inspiration already provide a model for immediate feedback to inspire involved play.

I don't use individualized XP awards simply because, over the years, I've come to find them a pain to track. There's already enough for me to handle as a GM; I don't need to worry about marking down skill failures/successes, successful hits, spells casts, etc. Hell, I still get shivers when I remember how MERP gave out XP for miles traveled. So pure logistics is what gets me giving out equal rewards per session (or just leveling people up at a regular pace).

Quote from: Beagle;784703See, passively enjoying the game is the bare minimum, at best. RPGs are a group effort and live and die with each group's member's attention and contributions, active participation and actually caring. Just having fun is a good beginning, but not the end of it. So, the question shouldn't be how much anyone enjoys the game, but what you actually do to make it as enjoyable as it can be without becomming a chore - both for you and for your fellow players.
In this context, I found that a continuous reward mechanism that actually is directly linked to the concrete actions of the players is an effective instrument to keep the players motivated and at the same time, by establishing a link between an action and a feasible benefit - within the context of the game - the reward becomes more direct.
Besides, and it sound blatantly obvious, rewards work. They do contribute to the enjoyment of the game, because it is actually fun to get stuff.

I feel sorry for you that your players need "concrete" rewards in order to motivate them to have fun. I tend to find in my groups that fun it its own reward.

Quote

Quote from: Blacky the BlackballAnd how on earth do you measure who's "trying hardest" to make it fun for everyone, anyway?

When I think someone did something awesome, I'll make a little note. Admittedly, that is a rather subjective way to measure these things, but if my players wouldn't trust my judgement in these minor aspects of the game, I think I would have failed the group anyway.

Just as I suspected. It's not about rewarding the person who is trying hardest (as you previously claimed) at all, but about rewarding players for doing things that please you - that you find "awesome".

As Will says, how terribly patronising that sounds.

QuoteThis is an artifical division between two linked elements of gameplay. There is really no need (or a good reason) to use two different approaches to various permutations of the same pattern of action and consequences.

What are you talking about? I said nothing about "using different approaches", or "using approaches" at all for that matter. I was pointing out that feedback loops naturally occur in both character actions and player actions without anyone needing to take any kind of "approach" or deliberately use any kind of reward system at all.

QuoteOf course it's unfair. If you can distribute the XP rewards unfairly among your players by not taking their actual contributions to the game into account, I can be unfair with my judgements. It is rather childish, I know.

You said it.

QuoteBut, you are wrong in one point in particular: I usually do not care that much if other people play in a different style than what I prefer. I am not the greatest gamemaster there ever was, and not everything I do in my groups would translate well to other groups, due to different social dynamics (as well as tastes). That should really go without saying. In this particular case however, I see this a bit more negatively, because of the inherent unfairness of the whole affair.

You haven't yet explained how it is unfair to have characters gaining experience at the same rate regardless of whether you find their players "awesome" or not.

Quote from: Obeeron;784673We gave up individual XP over a decade ago, and don't miss it.  It's rather shocking to me to hear people do it any other way anymore.

Why would you find it shocking that some people do things differently than you do.

What I find shocking is the number of people who seemingly cannot even conceive of how or why a different group might choose to award experience in a different manner than how their group does experience awards. I know I can easily make a list of pros for the methods of experience awards I don't use and a list of cons for the methods I do use.

Quote from: Vargold;784715So pure logistics is what gets me giving out equal rewards per session (or just leveling people up at a regular pace).

Not wanting to do the work necessary for tracking individual rewards is a perfectly valid reason to give out group experience awards.

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;784718You haven't yet explained how it is unfair to have characters gaining experience at the same rate regardless of whether you find their players "awesome" or not.

Well here's one explanation. Some people see experience awards as being related to what the character actually does or experiences in the game world rather than as some metagame pacing mechanic. Since in a given adventure different characters will do or experience different things - I would say that is an obvious axiom really, it is unlikely that they will or should each always gain the exact same experience. By giving them the exact same experience each time you are unfairly awarding extra experience to the character who did and experienced relatively little on the adventure while unfairly taking away experience from the character who did or experienced a lot on the adventure so as to arrive at some middle of the road experience award for everyone in the group.

I'm kind of schocked that I had to actually type all that out given how obvious the point seems.

The thing with giving xp for only spells cast, is that it discounts the ability to learn by seeing someone else do something, which is a really basic idea. The group xp is much more sensible.

I have liked very direct 'reward by doing' systems, like BRP.
You use a skill? Check it. At the end of the session, go through every skill that's checked and roll against it. If you fail, you gain points in the skill.
This sets up a dynamic where you are encouraged to try different things, and there's diminishing returns as you get better, it's hard to improve.
More importantly, IMO, it doesn't involve any real judgment calls to determine if someone is doing it 'right.'

Notably, though, BRP isn't a level system, which adds a different spin on things.

Non-level systems, like Traveller are fine, I like them, but I don't use xp in them either. Often I'll grant the entire party a point to increase something, if they can give an adequate reason why.

Quote from: Bren;784726Well here's one explanation. Some people see experience awards as being related to what the character actually does or experiences in the game world rather than as some metagame pacing mechanic. Since in a given adventure different characters will do or experience different things - I would say that is an obvious axiom really, it is unlikely that they will or should each always gain the exact same experience. By giving them the exact same experience each time you are unfairly awarding extra experience to the character who did and experienced relatively little on the adventure while unfairly taking away experience from the character who did or experienced a lot on the adventure so as to arrive at some middle of the road experience award for everyone in the group.

I'm kind of schocked that I had to actually type all that out given how obvious the point seems.

Yes, that is obvious (although it's rarely used in games like D&D which tend so simply share experience out among the party - it's more common in games like Rolemaster or Runequest where characters gain experience independently from each other and experience is tied to specific actions). But that wasn't what Beagle and I were talking about.

Beagle wasn't talking about different characters experiencing different things and therefore getting different amounts of experience.

He wasn't talking about characters at all.

He was talking about some players having their characters do things that he considered "awesome" and some not - and basing the amount of experience the characters get on how "awesome" he found those actions (although he initially worded it as some players "trying harder" to try to mask the blatant subjective favouritism inherent in what he's doing).

And specifically he was strongly implying that not varying experience by how "awesome" the player is is unfair to the "awesome" players because they aren't properly rewarded over and above the mundane players for being more "awesome".

That's what I was asking him to explain. How showing a lack of such favouritism can be considered "unfair".

It has nothing to do with different characters having different experiences and everything to do with him wanting to reward players who do things that he prefers, and characterising anyone who doesn't do that as "weak" for wanting to "avoid potential conflicts". Rather than, you know, simply not wanting to play favourites in the first place.

Quote from: Will;784732I have liked very direct 'reward by doing' systems, like BRP.
You use a skill? Check it. At the end of the session, go through every skill that's checked and roll against it. If you fail, you gain points in the skill.
This sets up a dynamic where you are encouraged to try different things, and there's diminishing returns as you get better, it's hard to improve.
More importantly, IMO, it doesn't involve any real judgment calls to determine if someone is doing it 'right.'

Notably, though, BRP isn't a level system, which adds a different spin on things.

I did like one system - I can't remember the game that used it but I think it was Living Steel - that was a bit like BRP except that you only got a check in a skill when you failed a skill check with it, not every time you used it. The point being that you learn from mistakes. The rules included the line "experience is what you get when you failed to get what you want".

I think that the system didn't make you roll for checks at the end of a session, but simply counted them up and your skill increased when you had a number of checks greater than its current value. (Obviously the checks then reset when the skill increased.)

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;784797Yes, that is obvious (although it's rarely used in games like D&D which tend so simply share experience out among the party - it's more common in games like Rolemaster or Runequest where characters gain experience independently from each other and experience is tied to specific actions).

You're begging the question here, aren't you?

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;784797Yes, that is obvious (although it's rarely used in games like D&D which tend so simply share experience out among the party - it's more common in games like Rolemaster or Runequest where characters gain experience independently from each other and experience is tied to specific actions). But that wasn't what Beagle and I were talking about.

Separate experience was RAW in OD&D and AD&D. Everybody gets the same experience regardless of what they do in the game is not part of the original rules and from my perspective it is a more recent (21st century?) innovation. Every group I ran or played D&D with used separate experience. We used separate experience in other games as well e.g. Star Wars D6 and Honor+Intrigue.

Now I don't have a problem with group experience, though it's not to really to my taste. I can see some advantages (obviously it takes less effort to track) and I can see several reasons why it would appeal to people. What I find really odd, is the visceral reaction I hear from some people who are opposed to giving out separate experience as well as the comments by some folks who can't seem to even understand why anyone would prefer separate experience.

I imagine a lot of it comes from many examples and experiences with how XP rewards of that sort often work out in practice.

I suspect most people have played that way at least occasionally.

In my current hacked 5e game and for the last year or two in my hacked no-feat 3.5 game I just let non-spellcasters add their entire d20 roll (on the die) to damage after 3rd level.

Seems to do the trick.

(Monsters do like d30 and 2d20 damage regularly.)

Quote from: Bren;784829Separate experience was RAW in OD&D and AD&D. Everybody gets the same experience regardless of what they do in the game is not part of the original rules and from my perspective it is a more recent (21st century?) innovation. Every group I ran or played D&D with used separate experience.

I used to do separate experience for AD&D. I stopped because I found it to be a pain in the ass to calculate. It was extra work that didn't add much to the game. Then I stopped using AD&D XP tables, and went to a unified table.  Eventually I dropped XP calculation altogether, and simply leveled everyone up at the same time. All done for ease of play.

If I were to run a campaign where PCs dropped in and out of the party on a session-by-session basis (and I might be doing that for my upcoming 5E campaign), I would go back to group XP calculation per session. If one PC participates in 7/8 sessions while another participates in 5/8, that should be captured in the advancement. But since I won't be awarding XP for magic items (the main differentiation between individual character XP in AD&D), I see no point in going back to individual character XP.

Quote from: Haffrung;784834I used to do separate experience for AD&D. I stopped because I found it to be a pain in the ass to calculate. It was extra work that didn't add much to the game. Then I stopped using AD&D XP tables, and went to a unified table.  Eventually I dropped XP calculation altogether, and simply leveled everyone up at the same time. All done for ease of play.

I get it can be a pain. I never found it to be a pain for me, but back then I used to figure out separate checks with tax and tips. (Partly because I could. Partly because we were poor.) Compared to those calculations, figuring separate XP is a snap.

Now I'm too lazy to figure separate checks and well off enough that I don't need to give a shit if I end up paying for someone else's drink or appetizer.

QuoteIf I were to run a campaign where PCs dropped in and out of the party on a session-by-session basis (and I might be doing that for my upcoming 5E campaign), I would go back to individual XP calculation. If one PC participates in 7/8 sessions while another participates in 5/8, that should be captured in the advancement.

That seems the most obvious advantage to using separate experience. Which makes it no surprise that this (drop in/drop out play) was how the original game designers played.

Quote from: Marleycat;784612I suppose? Would it help if I whacked him in the balls?

I would pay good money to see that.

Quote from: Tommy Brownell;784609I found out later from a friend that played 3.5 under this guy and quit, that he gives melee characters 20% more XP per encounter and only gives spellcasters XP based on the spells they cast in a session.

This sort of thing sort of works in AD&D where each class has its own XP total. In 3E or 5E I think multiclassing where you have one XP track and split levels messes with this. Like - do multiclass characters get double XP (both class rewards) and just advance faster in total levels?

Quote from: Tommy Brownell;784609I found out later from a friend that played 3.5 under this guy and quit, that he gives melee characters 20% more XP per encounter and only gives spellcasters XP based on the spells they cast in a session.

I am wondering if a gish would gain +20% XP, and spell XP too...
Actually, make that a warlock gish casting Eldritch Blast at the darkness ALL THE TIME :D

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;784632But there are games where xp rewards don't work that way at all.

For a long time I GMed the German game, Midgard. (A 1981 EPT clone that evolved into its very own thing.)
It has three different kinds of xp, based on combat, magic, and general stuff, and a character can only invest the proper kind of xp into new weapon skills, spells, or skills. The rules are quite strict on how to award xp (per damage output, per energy invested into a spell, per successful skill use, per days travelled, etc.).

Had. The current 5th edition has pooled the different XP into a single resource, and offers a generalized per adventure/session XP system as an alternative. (An alternative that had already been a very popular as a houserule before - I like the direct feedback per action of the traditional Midgard XP method, but it comes with a lot of bookkeeping during the session in a system that already has a lot of bookkeeping going on.)

Instead of the old combat/magic/general XP, practice points tied to specific skills, weapon skills and magic categories have received a more prominent role. 25% of all successful skill checks (and 5% of successful weapon and magic checks) lead directly to virtual XP useable for the used ability only. Sorta like a bankable BRP checkmark.

Quote from: Bren;784829Separate experience was RAW in OD&D and AD&D. Everybody gets the same experience regardless of what they do in the game is not part of the original rules and from my perspective it is a more recent (21st century?) innovation.

I think we're talking about different things here.

Yes, D&D does assume that characters who have different experiences will get different experience points. But it also assumes that characters who have the same experience will get the same experience points (which is why I said it "tends to" simply share experience out among the party, rather than saying it always does).

RAW in AD&D is that when a party kill some monsters the experience is shared equally between those who were there contributing to the fight no matter how insignificantly (and the DMG uses those exact words).

I was contrasting D&D with things like Rolemaster where three characters fighting the same monster can come out of the fight having gained very different amounts of experience points from it depending on their specific actions (and the specific actions of the monster). The experience points for killing the monster aren't simply shared equally between the characters fighting it.

But what D&D definitely doesn't say is that different characters should be given different amounts of experience depending on how closely the play-style of their players matches the DM's preferences - which is what Beagle and I were talking about.

QuoteNow I don't have a problem with group experience, though it's not to really to my taste. I can see some advantages (obviously it takes less effort to track) and I can see several reasons why it would appeal to people. What I find really odd, is the visceral reaction I hear from some people who are opposed to giving out separate experience as well as the comments by some folks who can't seem to even understand why anyone would prefer separate experience.

I hope you don't think I have a "visceral" reaction to giving separate experience in general based on the actual experiences of the characters - I've already mentioned that I like that in some games. In D&D (at least in editions that have unified level charts) I tend to ignore experience tracking completely and just have the characters go up a level after each "adventure" or whenever it seems appropriate; although that's not due to a dislike of separate experience, but simply because it's easier that way and has much less bookkeeping.

What I do have a reaction to is the assertions that I should be giving varying amount of experience based on how "awesome" the players are pour encourager les autres and that it's "unfair" and "weak" of me to do otherwise.

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;784915But what D&D definitely doesn't say is that different characters should be given different amounts of experience depending on how closely the play-style of their players matches the DM's preferences - which is what Beagle and I were talking about.
.

It comes close in the 1e training rules.
Basically if you haven't been roleplaying "according to your class" which is to say fighters are heroic and lead from the front etc. then the DM is supposed to apply a training time and cost multiplier.

So if you decide that your fighter is a coward who avoids combat but became a knight cos his father forced him to or that your thief is brash and cocky and doesn't bother to sneak or check for traps you might get eh same XP but as it will take you longer and cost more to train you will progress in levels slower (a cowardly fighter by this rule would be unable to advance to 2nd level if they had just enough xp to do so as they wouldn't have enough gold to pay for 4 weeks training.)

Quote from: jibbajibba;784918It comes close in the 1e training rules.
Basically if you haven't been roleplaying "according to your class" which is to say fighters are heroic and lead from the front etc. then the DM is supposed to apply a training time and cost multiplier.

So if you decide that your fighter is a coward who avoids combat but became a knight cos his father forced him to or that your thief is brash and cocky and doesn't bother to sneak or check for traps you might get eh same XP but as it will take you longer and cost more to train you will progress in levels slower (a cowardly fighter by this rule would be unable to advance to 2nd level if they had just enough xp to do so as they wouldn't have enough gold to pay for 4 weeks training.)

Oh man, I'd forgotten about training costs! In all the years I played AD&D I never encountered a single DM that ever used them.

Kind of like the Weapon-vs-AC table, in that respect.

(Although now I've said that I'll probably be inundated with people saying that everyone they've played with used both and that my experiences are unique!)

Quote from: Beagle;784626Wait. You think that an equal distribution of XP is actually a good thing?!? Why?

Because it fosters teamwork. When you check the Angels scoreboard, it doesn't read, "Angels 1, Mike Trout 2, Yankees 0."

You know, I've often considered a game where advancement is mostly in breadth/flexibility rather than power level.

In a game like that, where more xp is, say, nice but not _necessary_, I might have less problem with player-specific xp.

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;784915I think we're talking about different things here.

Yes, D&D does assume that characters who have different experiences will get different experience points. But it also assumes that characters who have the same experience will get the same experience points (which is why I said it "tends to" simply share experience out among the party, rather than saying it always does).

It sounds to me like you are defining experience in a way I would not define it. It seems like for you experience is something you get just by being along for the ride or in the same room or section of the dungeon whether or not the PC does anything. So in your mind, the entire party generally has the same "experience." Whereas I am using experience as a combination of what a character does (attacks made, spells cast, traps detected) and what they endure (damage taken, spells resisted, etc.).

On the other hand, in OD&D and AD&D characters get experience i.e. XP, primarily through acquiring treasure and secondarily by defeating/killing monsters. Now when we played, we interpreted contributing quite literally. Standing on the sidelines prepared to do something useful, but not actually doing anything useful didn’t count as contributing. So having some members of the party getting no experience for monsters was often the rule rather than the exception. But the real differentiator was in treasure – which we never divided equally. Because really, why would we? Typically we used a merit based method for dividing treasure that factored in character level with a bonus for major contribution towards success. So a 4th level PC would get twice the gold as a 2nd level PC and 4/3 the gold of a 3rd level PC – all else being equal. The upshot was that characters often did not get the same experience since they weren’t the same level, didn’t contribute the same effort to success, etc.

QuoteRAW in AD&D is that when a party kill some monsters the experience is shared equally between those who were there contributing to the fight no matter how insignificantly (and the DMG uses those exact words).

I gave away my AD&D rules 3 decades ago, so I’ll take your word for that. I will remind you that we interpreted contribution as actually contributing. Not just being in the same room or along for the ride. You haven’t made it clear whether just being along for the ride counts as “the same experience” for you.

QuoteI was contrasting D&D with things like Rolemaster…

Which avoids the fact that D&D wasn’t originally written and frequently wasn’t played in the group experience fashion that you are playing it. Hence there is less of a contrast than you are making it out to be.

QuoteBut what D&D definitely doesn't say is that different characters should be given different amounts of experience depending on how closely the play-style of their players matches the DM's preferences - which is what Beagle and I were talking about.

I recall many articles in the Dragon that suggested doing exactly that. (I thought the rules did too, but I may be misrecalling.) And as jibbajibba pointed out, the training rules did suggest differentiating based on play style.

And, yes of courese we used the weapon vs. armor table. Once you use variable weapon damage it just makes sense. I can’t actually recall if we used the training rules. I suspect we did not since it wasn’t part of OD&D which was where we started playing.

QuoteI hope you don't think I have a "visceral" reaction...

Honestly, your reaction does sound kind of visceral to me. Your comments haven’t focused on anything objective like bookkeeping as the reason for equal experience or leveling. Rather you seem very focused on subjective matters like wanting every player to be the same level and not wanting XP based on judgments on individual play style. And you seem to have a very strong reaction to judgments on play style.

You’ve made comments about how you are playing for fun and don’t want the game to be competitive. But when I read your comments, my initial reaction is wow these guys are so hypercompetitive that they can’t stand anyone in their group being even one level lower or higher than the others – yet they say they aren’t competitive. That’s weird because they sound way more competitive than we are.

It's probably also worth pointing out that fun and competition are not inversely related. One can both compete and have fun with friends. There are multibillion dollar leisure industries based on that very premise.

Quote from: Bren;784992Honestly, your reaction does sound kind of visceral to me. Your comments haven't focused on anything objective like bookkeeping as the reason for equal experience or leveling. Rather you seem very focused on subjective matters like wanting every player to be the same level and not wanting XP based on judgments on individual play style. And you seem to have a very strong reaction to judgments on play style.

I think you're misreading me horribly here.

I've already said that I have no objection at all to using individual experience, or to the characters being different levels (especially not in earlier editions where the classes had different XP progressions). And I've already said that the reason I (currently) skip XP completely and just have the characters level up when it seems appropriate was because it made the bookkeeping easier.

The only things I'm actually arguing against (well, more laughing at than arguing against, to be honest) are:

1) The claim that the DM varying experience gain based on subjective measures of how "awesome" they find the players' playstyle is somehow fairer than the DM not doing that.

2) The claim that experience points are (or should be) primarily a reward for players rather than a measure of how experienced the characters are.

QuoteYou've made comments about how you are playing for fun and don't want the game to be competitive. But when I read your comments, my initial reaction is wow these guys are so hypercompetitive that they can't stand anyone in their group being even one level lower or higher than the others – yet they say they aren't competitive. That's weird because they sound way more competitive than we are.

Again, I don't know where you're somehow getting the idea that my group "can't stand" there being a difference in PC level. That's a complete misreading of what I've said.

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;784718I feel sorry for you that your players need "concrete" rewards in order to motivate them to have fun. I tend to find in my groups that fun it its own reward.

Your reading skills are amazing. I said that it is an instrument that actually works. Not the only instrument. Just one tool of proper gamemastering, that doesn't lose its unquestionable effectiveness due to your unwillingness to use it. Concluding that this means that this is the only way players could be motivated includes some impressive logical summersaults.
Besides, if you improved your game by switching to a fair and individually differentiated form of distributing XP, you'd very likely recognize (if you can actually overcome your bias) the positive development among your players as well, and they might appreciate of being treated fairly as individuals.

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;784718Just as I suspected. It's not about rewarding the person who is trying hardest (as you previously claimed) at all, but about rewarding players for doing things that please you - that you find "awesome".

As Will says, how terribly patronising that sounds.

I also provide bonus XP for people who bring food for the group and the one who maintains the group diary. What I consider awesome is usually when one of the players goes out of his or her ways to contribute to the game, showing effort, which is usually based on individual reservations of the players. I usually appreciate it more when one of the more introvert players grasps the spotlight by their own volition because the guiding principle is fairness. I am being quite upfront about the behavioral shaping aspect of gamemastering. Besides, I'm a teacher in adult education. I'm used to evaluate the behavior and contributions of people in social interactions as well as their activity quite frequently. This isn't something impossible or particularly hard, it just requires reflection and empathy - and that is considering the vocational future and livelihood of grown people, not just a silly game.
And yes, maybe it is patronizing to offer guidance, maybe it is patronizing to refuse to reduce feedback to shallow compliments without any bearing on the actual gameplay. But even if that is true, it is still leagues above a GM who does not address when these special events occur and who makes it sure that he doesn't care too much if they do, as you have so proudly proclaimed.

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;784718What are you talking about? I said nothing about "using different approaches", or "using approaches" at all for that matter. I was pointing out that feedback loops naturally occur in both character actions and player actions without anyone needing to take any kind of "approach" or deliberately use any kind of reward system at all.

Can it be that you simply haven't understood Skinner? You always use some sort of reward system by sheer necessity. It doesn't matter if the reward is solely an ingame event, is based on a metagaming construct like XP or just a thought process initiated by the feedback provided by the gamemaster. This is an inevitable element of the game, if not communication in general. Like your players who cannot not learn, you as the gamemaster are unable not to teach them - one way or the other. The only options you have is to make use of these reinforcements and use them consciously and transparently  or to not actively coordinate them and leave it to randomness while also veiling the whole process - both to yourself and your players.  
Let's have a look at a very simple example: The player characters have the idea to torture a captured opponent for gaining some information. The way the gamemaster responses to this - the framing of the scene (e.g. are the torture scenes glossed over or presented as gruesome and painful?), the direct results (do the players get the information they want or does the tortured one just says what he thinks they want to hear?) and the indirect aftermath (how NPCs react to the act, stuff like alignment for those who play with that) and so on all have an impact if this action will be "rewarded" or not. If the torture of a captured bad guy leads to the rescue of a bunch of grateful innocents from a horrible fate and bears no ill consequences, the players will react completely differently the next time such a dilemma occurs.
And yes, you might chose to act ignorant again and claim that this has nothing to do with XP. Well, you know I think that's wrong, and here's why:  Many of these decisions are not necessarily hard coded and almost entirely  depend on pure metagaming thoughts that might interact with the actual game, but are not necessarily a part of it (for instance the mood of said torture scene is almost entirely depending on the gamemaster). The point is, XP rewards are really not different from that - they are a metagaming-based concept with a rather weak link to the in-game reality of learning, but for the most part, they are an abstract tool to direct the game in any way you want. It both requires judgment calls from the gamemaster on a regular base, and those judgments are an essential part of the gamemaster's role and it is the gamemaster's responsibility to make these calls, almost for every scene in the game. By refusing to use this tool, you have one opportunity less to provide guidance and have input in the game; that wouldn't be so bad, but the unwillingness to provide the judgments essential to your role as a gamemaster is just plain avoiding a part of the GM responsibilities.

Apparently I do need to spell out the obvious. A fair treatment is one where everybody gets just deserts, and is rewarded based on his or her contributions - which isn't really difficult considering the rather small group that forms most RPG groups A collectivized reward could only treat the group as a whole instead of each player as an individual. As such, it is by its very nature unable to provide anything but an unfair conclusion.

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;784797[Beagle] was talking about some players having their characters do things that he considered "awesome" and some not - and basing the amount of experience the characters get on how "awesome" he found those actions (although he initially worded it as some players "trying harder" to try to mask the blatant subjective favouritism inherent in what he's doing).
And specifically he was strongly implying that not varying experience by how "awesome" the player is is unfair to the "awesome" players because they aren't properly rewarded over and above the mundane players for being more "awesome".
That's what I was asking him to explain. How showing a lack of such favouritism can be considered "unfair".

I know, everybody's the hero of his own story, but you are not valiantly struggle against favoritism. You are defending the RPG microcosm's equivalent of the Poll Tax.
And I'm not implying anything - I outright state that refusing to acknowledge great contributions (of your player and acting incredibly smug about it) is a colossal stupidity and an outright failure as a gamemaster. to engage your players appropriately.

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;7850031) The claim that the DM varying experience gain based on subjective measures of how "awesome" they find the players' playstyle is somehow fairer than the DM not doing that.
2) The claim that experience points are (or should be) primarily a reward for players rather than a measure of how experienced the characters are.

1) The idea that subjective measures of the GM are in any way problematic in the context of an RPG shows a deep-seated misunderstanding and distrust towards the role and capabilities of the GM that effectively holds back your ability to fulfill that role.
2) XP are whatever you want them to be, but they create the opportunity to use them as a form of gratification of your players, which is an effective way to offer guidance and
But let me ask you a question: Are you uncomfortable with the idea that being the gamemaster of your group effectively grants you some sort of authority over the game, and thus over your fellow players within its context?

Quote from: cranebump;784928Because it fosters teamwork. When you check the Angels scoreboard, it doesn't read, "Angels 1, Mike Trout 2, Yankees 0."

No, it really, really doesn't. It fosters the delusion of actual teamwork, while the actual contributions of each player to the team are entirely glossed over. "It doesn't matter what you actually do" is a horrible message concerning teamwork. If you actually want to honor teamwork, offer a feasible benefit for people who are acting selfless or taking risks and sacrifices for the rest of the group.

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;785003I think you're misreading me horribly here.

I don't think that is the case, but it is certainly possible.

QuoteI've already said that I have no objection at all to using individual experience, or to the characters being different levels (especially not in earlier editions where the classes had different XP progressions). And I've already said that the reason I (currently) skip XP completely and just have the characters level up when it seems appropriate was because it made the bookkeeping easier.

Well if bookkeeping is the sole or even major reason for that you use equal experience, that is certainly not what I took away from what you have previously said.

QuoteThe only things I'm actually arguing against (well, more laughing at than arguing against, to be honest) are:

1) The claim that the DM varying experience gain based on subjective measures of how "awesome" they find the players' playstyle is somehow fairer than the DM not doing that.

It is more fair if one accepts the premise that it is desirable to connect experience to the behavior of the player and their PC or to use experience as an incentive for behavior of the player or their PC. You don't have to accept the premise, but laughing at the way other people choose to play does make you sound viscerally emotional about the topic.

Quote2) The claim that experience points are (or should be) primarily a reward for players rather than a measure of how experienced the characters are.

But by giving all the characters the exact same experience all the time despite the differences in what they do or endure you are not rewarding the characters for what they are doing or experiencing. In fact you are using a player-centered mechanic for leveling which rewards the players. You are doing the opposite of what you say you want experience to be based on.

QuoteAgain, I don't know where you're somehow getting the idea that my group "can't stand" there being a difference in PC level. That's a complete misreading of what I've said.

From here.

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;784627

Quote from: Beagle;784626Wait. You think that an equal distribution of XP is actually a good thing?!? Why? I'd rather have a fair and contextualized distribution of rewards, not a forced equality that by default fails to do justice to each player's contributions to the game.

Because when me and my friends get together to play a game it's about having fun, not competing to see who has the largest "contributions to the game". I can't even imagine how that would be measured in any way other than "I like you more than I like her".

Here you state that you play for fun, not competition – as if fun and competition were objectively in opposition rather than being objectively unrelated. You then follow the false fun/competition dichotomy by stating that you always give out group experience or leveling rather than individual experience or leveling. Which makes it appear that your award is based on your desire for uncompetitive fun rather than just being based on it being too much work for you to track separately. Which is what you now seem to be saying is your main motivation for group experience.

QuoteI always give out XP equally - even when players have to miss a session and someone else plays their character for them. XP is a measure of how experienced the characters are, not a Pavlovian reward for the players playing the way I want them to play.

The Pavlovian reward comment seems both inaccurate and needlessly belittling of rewards and incentives. Again, you seem to have a visceral reaction to the notion of anyone choosing to use systematic incentives in their game.

QuoteIn fact, the only House Rule I'm using in 5e is that we ignore XP completely and the characters simply goes up a level (together) when I say so.

This sounds to me like leveling has nothing to do with character experience and everything to do with narrative needs or encounter balance for a scripted storyline. There is nothing wrong with making decisions that way, but it undercuts your claim to basing experience on what the character does as opposed to story needs, metagame balance, or some other reason.

QuoteIt has nothing to do with different characters having different experiences and everything to do with him wanting to reward players who do things that he prefers, and characterising anyone who doesn't do that as "weak" for wanting to "avoid potential conflicts". Rather than, you know, simply not wanting to play favourites in the first place.

Phrases like "play favourites" and the earlier "Pavlovian reward" is part of why you sound visceral about other people giving out experience in their games in a different way than do you.

Quote from: Beagle;785009Let's have a look at a very simple example: The player characters have the idea to torture a captured opponent for gaining some information. The way the gamemaster responses to this - the framing of the scene (e.g. are the torture scenes glossed over or presented as gruesome and painful?), the direct results (do the players get the information they want or does the tortured one just says what he thinks they want to hear?) and the indirect aftermath (how NPCs react to the act, stuff like alignment for those who play with that) and so on all have an impact if this action will be "rewarded" or not. If the torture of a captured bad guy leads to the rescue of a bunch of grateful innocents from a horrible fate and bears no ill consequences, the players will react completely differently the next time such a dilemma occurs.

Wow. This is an odd response to the situation you outlined. In fact you don't need to treat the players at the table like some Skinner black box. You jumped right past the best way to handle the situation: an actual conversation. Here are some examples of how one might start a conversation.

• "Hey people, I thought we agreed to play good guys. What's up with the torture? That's something only the bad guys should do."

• "Hey, you all agreed you were going to play heroes who save the prince/princess, when did your PCs turn into Jack Bauer clones?"

• "OK, before we start down the road of PCs as torturers or even hard people doing hard things, let's talk about what we want in our game. Should torture be on or off the table?"

• "People, I don't want to GM a game about PCs who torture people."

Any of the above are far better responses to the question of how should the GM respond to players who choose to use torture or to address the question of what do I the GM want to do about torture in my RPG than is providing incentives via in-game success or failure or XP to try to incentivize your players to use/not use torture as a solution in game.

QuoteBut let me ask you a question: Are you uncomfortable with the idea that being the gamemaster of your group effectively grants you some sort of authority over the game, and thus over your fellow players within its context?

It know it may look like the role of gamemaster grants you authority, but it doesn't really. The GM has only and exactly the authority the players are willing to grant.

Quote from: Bren;785020You don't have to accept the premise, but laughing at the way other people choose to play does make you sound viscerally emotional about the topic.

I wasn't laughing at people for choosing to play differently.

I was laughing at people for claiming that their way of playing was objectively more "fair" than mine and that my preference isn't actually a preference but merely me being too "weak" to do things in the "fair" way.

But yeah - it wasn't very classy of me, and I'll stop.

The whole discussion was more about politics than RPGs anyway, if you read the fairly blatant subtext.

Re: politics

Holy crap, yes!

'We can't just GIVE XP to everyone, they might not be properly EARNING IT and getting away with something!'

Wow. Reminds me of half my FB feed lately.

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;785154The whole discussion was more about politics than RPGs anyway, if you read the fairly blatant subtext.

Politics? Sounded more like a conversation about the education system kids or sports to me.

Quote from: Bren;785188Politics? Sounded more like a conversation about the education system kids sports to me.

That's not political?

Quote from: Haffrung;785198That's not political?

I don't think it is. The difference in learning and rearing philosophies that I was thinking seems somewhat generational not political. If there is a correlation, I'd suspect it goes like this:

• learning/rearing philosophy correlates to generation
• generation correlates to political affiliation
• therefore learning/rearing philosophy correletates to political affilation

All primary correlations are weak. The learning/rearing to political affiliation secondary correlation is likely weaker still.

To me, it sounds like the Protestant Work Ethic wringing its hands about people not EARNING their place in the world.

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;784627Because when me and my friends get together to play a game it's about having fun, not competing to see who has the largest "contributions to the game". I can't even imagine how that would be measured in any way other than "I like you more than I like her".

I always give out XP equally - even when players have to miss a session and someone else plays their character for them. XP is a measure of how experienced the characters are, not a Pavlovian reward for the players playing the way I want them to play.

In fact, the only House Rule I'm using in 5e is that we ignore XP completely and the characters simply goes up a level (together) when I say so.

Having fun can be actually playing a game in a way that is effective at scoring points! It's amazing that these should seem opposed.

Scoring  by team certainly can make sense when there is a set team, but that is not the case in the old "grand campaign" form. Your "everyone goes up a level when I say so" approach makes even more sense, when the whole strategic context that would make x.p. other than moot has been abandoned.

Quote from: Bren;784992It sounds to me like you are defining experience in a way I would not define it. It seems like for you experience is something you get just by being along for the ride or in the same room or section of the dungeon whether or not the PC does anything. So in your mind, the entire party generally has the same "experience." Whereas I am using experience as a combination of what a character does (attacks made, spells cast, traps detected) and what they endure (damage taken, spells resisted, etc.).

The problem with this for me is that dice are fickle.  I get less XP only because the dice was rolling bad for me?  That to me is an award for good dice rolling.

Quote from: Bren;784992On the other hand, in OD&D and AD&D characters get experience i.e. XP, primarily through acquiring treasure and secondarily by defeating/killing monsters. Now when we played, we interpreted contributing quite literally. Standing on the sidelines prepared to do something useful, but not actually doing anything useful didn't count as contributing. So having some members of the party getting no experience for monsters was often the rule rather than the exception. But the real differentiator was in treasure – which we never divided equally. Because really, why would we? Typically we used a merit based method for dividing treasure that factored in character level with a bonus for major contribution towards success. So a 4th level PC would get twice the gold as a 2nd level PC and 4/3 the gold of a 3rd level PC – all else being equal. The upshot was that characters often did not get the same experience since they weren't the same level, didn't contribute the same effort to success, etc.

XP charts aren't equal, I would go ape shit over this. I don't see a merit based method here.  Tenure perhaps.

Quote from: Bren;785021It know it may look like the role of gamemaster grants you authority, but it doesn't really. The GM has only and exactly the authority the players are willing to grant.

There is a difference between Authority and Leadership.  Far too often GMs are all about the Authority and haven't a friggin clue about Leadership.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;784632But there are games where xp rewards don't work that way at all.

For a long time I GMed the German game, Midgard. (A 1981 EPT clone that evolved into its very own thing.)

Is that the one on which some novels, the first called Wargamer's World in English translation, were based? I had the impression it got started in the 1970s, but in any case it's neat to learn more about it.

QuoteIt has three different kinds of xp, based on combat, magic, and general stuff, and a character can only invest the proper kind of xp into new weapon skills, spells, or skills. The rules are quite strict on how to award xp (per damage output, per energy invested into a spell, per successful skill use, per days travelled, etc.).

That reminds me of Fantasy Wargaming, a British rules set.

QuoteWhen I read the rules first I thought it would be a chore to use all that but in play it was surprisingly smooth - and all in all, quite fair. Over the years all characters were in roughly the same level brackets (depending on when they were created, thanks to later additions to group, or character deaths).
The whole leveling system depends on expenditure of xp (as the character "level" is only the result of expended xp, not xp received) so I never thought of doing it differently (in that game - I eyeballed xp in other games frequently).


I remember that my AD&D group very much liked the individual xp awards as well (though I guess that there was a factor of "I like you more than I like her" with certain DMs...).
But then, in that campaign the DM rotated, and all players had huge folders of characters of differing levels which were mixed and matched for any given session, so the general competence varied anyway.

Kevin Siembieda (Palladium) and Dave Hargrave (Arduin) presented benchmarks largely based on what might be called "notability". However the points system is weighted, that's likely to encourage whatever behaviors it's designed to encourage. For example, if resurrection is easy to  come by (or "inheritance" benefits another character), and there are awards for a desperate rearguard action to save one's fellows, that incentive might make such action more likely.

Another approach might be neutral toward such role-playing, keeping a strictly rational cause and effect relationship (e.g., exercise increases stamina, while study increases book learning and practice improves practical skills such as speaking a language).

Quote from: Phillip;785227Having fun can be actually playing a game in a way that is effective at scoring points! It's amazing that these should seem opposed.

Scoring  by team certainly can make sense when there is a set team, but that is not the case in the old "grand campaign" form. Your "everyone goes up a level when I say so" approach makes even more sense, when the whole strategic context that would make x.p. other than moot has been abandoned.

I can't answer for BtB, but a couple of my reasons I dropped XP from level-based RPGs:
It takes me out of the equation.  I don't want the players playing to me.  I want them playing their characters how they see fit and not having to worry about what I like, like to see, etc.
I don't want them chasing XP.

Quote from: Sommerjon;785228The problem with this for me is that dice are fickle.  I get less XP only because the dice was rolling bad for me?  That to me is an award for good dice rolling.

It would seem then that you want a different game, one that does not involve dice. For the point of tossing dice, as much in D&D as in Backgammon, is that it makes a difference. One might win despite bad luck, or lose despite good, but the random element is non-trivial.

QuoteXP charts aren't equal, I would go ape shit over this. I don't see a merit based method here.  Tenure perhaps.

Division of treasure is obviously up to the characters/players involved. That may (per usual in AD&D) also divide associated xp potential. If you don't like the division, then that's something to address in character (by means that may vary by role, alignment, etc.)

QuoteThere is a difference between Authority and Leadership.  Far too often GMs are all about the Authority and haven't a friggin clue about Leadership.

Quote from: Sommerjon;785232I can't answer for BtB, but a couple of my reasons I dropped XP from level-based RPGs:
It takes me out of the equation.  I don't want the players playing to me.  I want them playing their characters how they see fit and not having to worry about what I like, like to see, etc.
I don't want them chasing XP.

No, apparently you want them chasing "power ups" that come at your whim or else as an entitlement for time served. The dishing out of the drug is in place, but no longer as a game in the strategic sense. Everyone gets to be a Hall of Famer on schedule, regardless of actual play.

Quote from: Will;784964You know, I've often considered a game where advancement is mostly in breadth/flexibility rather than power level.

In a game like that, where more xp is, say, nice but not _necessary_, I might have less problem with player-specific xp.

It can address or avoid a number of issues, such as what lies beyond the dice scale (too often just contrived penalties, rather than qualitative differences).

Quote from: Will;785223To me, it sounds like the Protestant Work Ethic wringing its hands about people not EARNING their place in the world.

Giving the same XP to everyone? Socialism!

One of the dumbest rules in any edition of D&D is the 10 per cent XP bonus for having high attribute scores in AD&D. Naturally gifted and inherently superior to your peers? Then the gap will widen and widen over time even if your peers accomplish as much as you do. Lame.

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;785252Giving the same XP to everyone? Socialism!

Bullseye. Even more, it's like a holiday with Intourist: If it's Tuesday, this must be Leningrad (and we must all be 10th level).

The view that it would be a fine game if only it were not a game naturally seems to some fans rather to miss the point.

Quote from: Haffrung;785256One of the dumbest rules in any edition of D&D is the 10 per cent XP bonus for having high attribute scores in AD&D. Naturally gifted and inherently superior to your peers? Then the gap will widen and widen over time even if your peers accomplish as much as you do. Lame.

I think it's somewhat short  of justification in AD&D, but not in the original. In that, it was just about the only way that a high strength score made a figure a better fighter! Since there's a pretty big consensus that this ought to be so, what's really notable is how insignificant the bonus is compared with the bonuses to hit and (especially) damage added later.

With xp amounts roughly doubling each level up to "name," a difference of 5-10% hardly makes a difference at all. Even with a penalty, you could start at 1st and attain 7th before a 7th-level figure reaches 8th.

Individual accomplishment easily washes out such advantages, which mean at most perhaps a difference of a single adventure. Variation in the lives of characters is, by the old ethos, a big part of what makes the game interesting. Had stamping out cookie-cutter figures been what was desired, that would have been (and remains) very simple to accomplish.

Quote from: Phillip;785257Bullseye. Even more, it's like a holiday with Intourist: If it's Tuesday, this must be Leningrad (and we must all be 10th level).

The view that it would be a fine game if only it were not a game naturally seems to some fans rather to miss the point.

What a patronizing bullshit statement.

People have advocated giving XP to players for things like bringing pizza. People have suggested its role to 'shape proper behavior.'

How exactly are those things 'part of a game'?

If you play poker with friends, does whomever wins get extra cards next time? Is suggesting otherwise SOCIALISM ?

Quote from: Phillip;785230Is that the one on which some novels, the first called Wargamer's World in English translation, were based? I had the impression it got started in the 1970s, but in any case it's neat to learn more about it.

Not familiar with Wargamer's World novels, and google doesn't teach me anything about them either.

There was however a series of German novels by Hugh Walker/Ray Cardwell/Hubert Straßl (all the same guy using different pseudonyms) for the original setting of Magira. If it is the same author and the same setting name, then WW was probably the translation of them.

Magira itself dates back to 1966, evolving from the wargame "Armageddon" played by the fantasy club "Follow e.V.".

In 1978, the role-playing game for it emerged as an EPT mod called "Empires of Magira" of which 20 copies were produced on a typewriter and handed to a handpicked audience.

It was followed up in 1981 by the 1st edition of "Midgard", which was a stand-alone role-playing game and came into wider circulation, and thus the very oldest commercial German role-playing game.

By 1983, the creator of Midgard was forced to stop using Magira as the game's default setting. The current setting Midgard was still very much Magira but for the names, but has since more strongly diverged over the last 3 decades.

Quote from: Phillip;785237It would seem then that you want a different game, one that does not involve dice.

No I don't want my XP hitched to how well I roll or are rolled against.
I roll like ass against a creature and keep it occupied.  Why am I being punished for not dispatching the creature in a timely manner?

Quote from: Phillip;785242No, apparently you want them chasing "power ups" that come at your whim or else as an entitlement for time served. The dishing out of the drug is in place, but no longer as a game in the strategic sense. Everyone gets to be a Hall of Famer on schedule, regardless of actual play.

Actually it comes at their whim, not mine.  When I run a level based game I am upfront about how the gaining of levels is accomplished.  Sometimes that is X number of sessions per level, other times that is accomplishing something impactful in the game world.

Never found 'game in the strategic sense' to be worth much in D&D.  Rarely is both the players and DM on the same level in the strategic sense.  Actual play ends up turning into what's the easiest way to gain the most XP with no regard to the actual setting.

If you want to play competitive D&D, you go girl.

Quote from: Will;785261What a patronizing bullshit statement.

People have advocated giving XP to players for things like bringing pizza. People have suggested its role to 'shape proper behavior.'

How exactly are those things 'part of a game'?

If you play poker with friends, does whomever wins get extra cards next time? Is suggesting otherwise SOCIALISM ?

I have no idea what sense your reference to some people giving points for pizza is supposed to make; I am certainly not among them.

As to "socialism," I think a response to obvious hyperbole is due the same grain of salt as the post to which it responds. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Junta is thoroughly a banana-republic dictatorship-for-life game; and a load of fun! If you are genuinely unclear on the difference between banter about an evening's entertainment, and protests against Soviet gulags, then you need a checkup from the neck up.
 
In the 1970s-80s, it seemed a widely held view that maturity in role-playing entailed not being worried that another player happened to have a mechanically "better" figure. A character might well envy those seemingly more fortunate; but to a player, that should be just as rich in role-playing potential as the conflicts presented when the shoe is on the other foot.

The latter-day demand for a Procrustean comissariat seems to reflect the opposite view: an assumption that resentment among players is a fundamental and profound problem, to be solved only by abolishing such differences.

I'm pretty sure this shift, both in prevalence and vehemence of the latter attitude, is due to a change in the demographic of players. In the early days, it was taken for granted that the field of hobby games was geared more to those who delighted in the challenges offered by vagaries of chance.

Historical games have not recovered from the decline that wiped out the former giants of the hobby game industry. One might have expected a transition from miniatures and board games to computer programs, with ultimately brighter prospects; but this does not appear to be what happened.

Clearly there are larger cultural factors at work.

Yeah, one larger factor is maturity.

After decades of experience, I've realized a lot of pie-eyed 'oh, embrace the roleplaying CHALLENGE of happening to be useless' is a lot of juvenile hooey, that often masqueraded as a gambler-esque 'I want randomness but I'm counting on ME getting lucky.'

Really? I can roleplay differences and cool stuff without being handed a pile of shit and going 'IMAGINE THE POSSIBILITIES.'

You know, if I WANT to play a scrub newbie, I can... choose to.

I suppose another factor is not accepting patronizing stuff from other gamers or games.

Quote from: Phillip;785334In the 1970s-80s, it seemed a widely held view that maturity in role-playing entailed not being worried that another player happened to have a mechanically "better" figure. A character might well envy those seemingly more fortunate; but to a player, that should be just as rich in role-playing potential as the conflicts presented when the shoe is on the other foot.

The latter-day demand for a Procrustean comissariat seems to reflect the opposite view: an assumption that resentment among players is a fundamental and profound problem, to be solved only by abolishing such differences.

I'm pretty sure this shift, both in prevalence and vehemence of the latter attitude, is due to a change in the demographic of players. In the early days, it was taken for granted that the field of hobby games was geared more to those who delighted in the challenges offered by vagaries of chance.

You're conflating two things: parity in PC power and parity in XP awarded. A lot of people are fine with power disparity in PCs, while disliking awarding XP independently. Several DMs in this thread have already commented that they only award XP when the player attends the session, and they're okay with PCs not getting XP when they don't attend.

Awarding XP to suit effective or desirable behaviour is another matter. As we saw in the thread about the 5E inspiration mechanic, a lot of people aren't comfortable with determining what 'desirable' play is, and then awarding players for adopting that behaviour like trained monkeys. Handing out candies and patting on heads is what bothers most of us, not power disparities.

Quote from: Phillip;785334Historical games have not recovered from the decline that wiped out the former giants of the hobby game industry. One might have expected a transition from miniatures and board games to computer programs, with ultimately brighter prospects; but this does not appear to be what happened.

Clearly there are larger cultural factors at work.

Yes. The historical wargame boom was short-lived (just as the D&D boom was). A generation of young boomers, many of whose fathers were of the WW2 generation, grew up with war on TV and movies. WW2 was everywhere in pop culture when they were growing up. And fantasy was still a weirdo, fringe interest.

Today, it's the reverse. It's perfectly normal for kids growing up today to watch fantasy movies, TV shows, and play fantasy games. As a society, we've largely turned away from history and embraced fantasy for our escapism. Part of it is a distaste for real-world war. Part is a new romanticism that turns to fictional worlds for escapism. You can take a simple wargame and repackage it with a fantasy theme and it will sell more. Because most of the geek market today finds history surpassingly dull.

As for the games themselves, the wargaming hobby did itself no favours by turning to ever bigger and more complex games in the 80s. The hobby became the purview of hardcore gamers who had no problem spending 2 hours simply setting up a game with 2,000 counters, that took 20-30 hours to play. Even today the boardgaming hobby still relies on middle-aged men who have a couple gaming tables in their basement where the keep monster games set up for months on end. That was never going to be a popular pass-time. And today, the mini-renaissance in historical boardgaming is being driven by the simpler, more casual end of the spectrum. Games like Twilight Struggle, Command and Colors: Ancients, and Combat Commander. Wargame publishers finally twigged onto the fact they needed to sell games to more than just the 58 year old solitaire player who keeps two-map, 2,000 counter games set up in his basement.

And it's not as though young gamers today are sheltered from competition. Tabletop fantasy miniatures and CCGs are ferociously competitive. And that's not even mentioning the savage world of online multiplayer gaming. Young gamers love head-to-head competition. But they'd rather it be between the orcs and elves, or House Stark vs House Lannister, than the Russians vs the Germans.

So yeah, society has changed. But it hasn't become the coddled, socialist world you seem to be implying. It's a matter of broad cultural changes regarding history and fantasy. And just as it's unlikely D&D will ever see another boom like the 80s, it's unlikely historical boardgaming will ever see another boom like the 70s.

I came across this (http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=67578) on another forum.

Quote from: MepherI am curious how everyone awards XP in their groups. I am back to playing again after about an 18 year hiatus and we are playing 1st edition. The way they award xp is whoever lands the killing blow on a creature gets the xp for that creature. Everyone gets the bonus xp/hp damage done. Casters get 100xp/level of spells cast. Its the first part that I find really broken. Almost everyone in the party wanted to play multiclassed characters while I opted to go with a Human Ranger with Bow Specialization. Most of our combat ends up being within the point blank range and most everything we have fought has been humanoids so I am getting bonuses. As a result I usually easily clear half the creatures in any given encounter thus I end up taking the lions share of the xp. While some people might love it, I think its a little ridiculous. Forget the fact that I think the 1E ranger + bow spec is way overpowered, that is another conversation entirely.

...

The problem I have with the first method is that it does everything possible to discourage playing your character and just seems to push everyone to do everything in their power to get kills for the xp. In over 2 months now I have NEVER seen our Cleric cast a cure light during combat and have seen many players fall. I couldn't tell you what spells our Magic User has because all I have seen him cast is Magic Missile. Rather than sneaking around to try and get a backstab during combat our Thief spends most combat sneaking around trying to pilfer corpses DURING combat to pocket as much treasure as he can for the xp. It really is a mess imo. I think my method of awarding the combat xp to all players regardless of what they did works better because it allows the Cleric to fall back and wait to support the fighters, it allows the Wizard to cast other support spells that might not damage the monsters but will negatively affect them, thus helping the party as a whole. My plan when I take over DMing is to make a course correction with this group starting with XP and attempt to re-teach them how to better play their characters.

...

I've bolded the part that's key to me.  I don't divide xp evenly out of any kind of "everyone gets a trophy" impulse.  That's such a far-fetched strawman, and so far away from what anyone else is talking about, I'm having a hard time taking it as a good faith argument.

I divide xp evenly to reward the players who back up their teammates, who set someone else up for the killing blow, who can agree to another player's plan without demanding credit if they were thinking of someone similar, or can recognize when a fellow player has something under control and think "yeah, he's got this, I'll let him have the spotlight until he needs help" without being penalized for it.  In short I do it to incentivize smart, tactical play.

I suppose another dimension to this is that I play a lot of MMOs.

And when I've seen situations where rewards go to the individuals who get the kill/whatever, what I've found is that it leads to unpleasant behavior. (Like 'oh great, looks like healing gets dick-all for victory points in this scenario', kill-stealing, and so on)

While, yes, tabletop games aren't the same as MMOs, my experience with tabletop games suggests to me that some parallels exist.

For example, my big problem with 3e is that the focus of XP and reward for 'beating appropriately leveled monsters' shapes behavior immensely. You end up with people seeking out combat, a lot, and doing 15 minute workdays/nova bursts and generally 'grinding mobs' as much as possible. Because that's what is rewarded.
People start worrying more and more about combat effectiveness.

This mirrors similar things I've seen in MMOs.

On the other hand, MMOs where rewards primarily come from quest completion, people don't worry about trying to wipe out every nether-rabbit in the magic nether fields, but rather accomplishing goals.
Now, in MMOs, adventures are usually pretty boring, but in TT?

So, yeah, if you create a situation where X is rewarded, people are going to try to be good at doing that and do it a lot. Are you really sure you want to try to find every wrinkle and scheme and properly adjust rewards such that no exploits evolve? Do you really want to keep chasing your ideal reward scheme, rather than work on making an interesting plot or characters?

I've finally worked my way through all of the PHB, and I don't get what the big deal is. Sure, magic using classes are able to do various interesting and powerful things, but I don't really get how that crimps the style of non magical characters. They are just as fun to play, there is plenty for them to do, and they are powerful in their own right (depending, I suppose, on what you count as 'power').

In my experience, the character type who gets all the screen time in typical adventure action is a fighter of some sort (ranger, barbarian, tough bard, etc.) with some stealth ability, rugged enough to stand up to some punishment, and both a good missile weapon and a good melee attack. Someone like this can go all day every day, is able to influence the flow of action in almost any situation, and is busy most turns in or out of combat.

You can do that at 1st level with a bog-standard fighter in 5E. Magic users are cool and powerful, but the game can go on without them, and they aren't adventuring busy-bodies in the way I describe. Plus it is easy to kick them in the ass if they get uppity; demons, gods, other magicians, etc. are always waiting in the wings to give it to some magic using character that gets noticed.

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;784627Because when me and my friends get together to play a game it's about having fun, not competing to see who has the largest "contributions to the game". I can't even imagine how that would be measured in any way other than "I like you more than I like her".

I always give out XP equally - even when players have to miss a session and someone else plays their character for them. XP is a measure of how experienced the characters are, not a Pavlovian reward for the players playing the way I want them to play.

In fact, the only House Rule I'm using in 5e is that we ignore XP completely and the characters simply goes up a level (together) when I say so.

That's not actually a houserule. It's one of the modes of play offered in Hoard of the Dragon Queen.

Quote from: Sommerjon;785228The problem with this for me is that dice are fickle.  I get less XP only because the dice was rolling bad for me?  That to me is an award for good dice rolling.

You are ignoring the other attributes to contribution e.g. strategy, innovative ideas, thinking around the problem, but certainly dice rolling may enter into it. Though, assuming people play with reasonably fair dice, dice rolling tends to average out over time so I tend not to get too worked up about how the dice roll.

QuoteXP charts aren't equal, I would go ape shit over this. I don't see a merit based method here.  Tenure perhaps.

XP charts weren't equal. By design.

Also you missed "a bonus for major contribution towards success."

Quote from: Tommy Brownell;785492That's not actually a houserule. It's one of the modes of play offered in Hoard of the Dragon Queen.

Ah. I don't have that - only the PHB and the Basic PDFs for monters.

I guess if it's an option in there it will probably also be an option in the DMG.

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;785512Ah. I don't have that - only the PHB and the Basic PDFs for monters.

I guess if it's an option in there it will probably also be an option in the DMG.

I expect that'll be true, yeah.

Incidentally, I ran through episode 1 of Hoard of the Dragon Queen today and handing out XP instead of using their recommended milestones for advancement had the PCs hit level 2 fairly early, whereas they are only level 2 at the end of the first adventure with the milestone advancement.

Quote from: Bren;785498You are ignoring the other attributes to contribution e.g. strategy, innovative ideas, thinking around the problem, but certainly dice rolling may enter into it. Though, assuming people play with reasonably fair dice, dice rolling tends to average out over time so I tend not to get too worked up about how the dice roll.

Everything else you state that is factored into the way you do XP is directly imputed by the player.  Dice rolling is random.  Perhaps you want that little bit of randomness involved, I would ask why.

Quote from: Bren;785498XP charts weren't equal. By design.

I know I stated that already.
Back in the day most people(I played with) had thief or druid as at least their secondary character.

Quote from: Bren;785498Also you missed "a bonus for major contribution towards success."

I didn't miss it.  It is an unknowable quantity.

...

I did have this nice long play example for you, but whatever.  What you state is precisely why I don't use individual XP in level based games.

Quote from: Will;785408I suppose another dimension to this is that I play a lot of MMOs.

And when I've seen situations where rewards go to the individuals who get the kill/whatever, what I've found is that it leads to unpleasant behavior. (Like 'oh great, looks like healing gets dick-all for victory points in this scenario', kill-stealing, and so on)

While, yes, tabletop games aren't the same as MMOs, my experience with tabletop games suggests to me that some parallels exist.

For example, my big problem with 3e is that the focus of XP and reward for 'beating appropriately leveled monsters' shapes behavior immensely. You end up with people seeking out combat, a lot, and doing 15 minute workdays/nova bursts and generally 'grinding mobs' as much as possible. Because that's what is rewarded.
People start worrying more and more about combat effectiveness.

This mirrors similar things I've seen in MMOs.

On the other hand, MMOs where rewards primarily come from quest completion, people don't worry about trying to wipe out every nether-rabbit in the magic nether fields, but rather accomplishing goals.
Now, in MMOs, adventures are usually pretty boring, but in TT?

So, yeah, if you create a situation where X is rewarded, people are going to try to be good at doing that and do it a lot. Are you really sure you want to try to find every wrinkle and scheme and properly adjust rewards such that no exploits evolve? Do you really want to keep chasing your ideal reward scheme, rather than work on making an interesting plot or characters?

At some point, the accounting loses all purpose, and then I would say the fellow who dispenses with points and plays it by ear is quite sensible.

Again, there can arise a question of what purpose the whole "level up" business serves in a new context. Starting figures at 1st, or rocketing them past 12th - or whatever - just because of "tradition" might not be best for the group at hand.

Yeah, at a certain point it's worth taking a step back and going 'ok, why are we yet again doing Hero's Journey/Bildungsroman?'

Quote from: Larsdangly;785411I've finally worked my way through all of the PHB, and I don't get what the big deal is. Sure, magic using classes are able to do various interesting and powerful things, but I don't really get how that crimps the style of non magical characters. They are just as fun to play, there is plenty for them to do, and they are powerful in their own right (depending, I suppose, on what you count as 'power').

In my experience, the character type who gets all the screen time in typical adventure action is a fighter of some sort (ranger, barbarian, tough bard, etc.) with some stealth ability, rugged enough to stand up to some punishment, and both a good missile weapon and a good melee attack. Someone like this can go all day every day, is able to influence the flow of action in almost any situation, and is busy most turns in or out of combat.

You can do that at 1st level with a bog-standard fighter in 5E. Magic users are cool and powerful, but the game can go on without them, and they aren't adventuring busy-bodies in the way I describe. Plus it is easy to kick them in the ass if they get uppity; demons, gods, other magicians, etc. are always waiting in the wings to give it to some magic using character that gets noticed.

I'm not up on the particulars in 5e, but this has been a matter of debate and rules amendment since D&D was first published, if not before. There was a continuing flux through the original  supplements, to Advanced and Basic, and beyond.

In most pre-D&D heroic fantasy, the protagonists are preeminently warriors, at most occasional dabblers in sorcery; magicians are largely relegated to the roles of antagonists or mentors.

Once they were made player-characters, the tremendous and attractive game potential of magic was in certain ways placed at their disposal. However satisfactory those ways may have been at start - and for various reasons they never satisfied everyone - they strained as ever more powers were added.

There are three key questions:
1) What kind of game balance do we want?
2) Is that even possible?
3) How best to implement it?

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;785154I wasn't laughing at people for choosing to play differently.

I was laughing at people for claiming that their way of playing was objectively more "fair" than mine and that my preference isn't actually a preference but merely me being too "weak" to do things in the "fair" way.

But yeah - it wasn't very classy of me, and I'll stop.

The whole discussion was more about politics than RPGs anyway, if you read the fairly blatant subtext.

Or, to paraphrase: "Every argument I've made has been shown to be biased and/or wrong, but instead of admitting that, I'll shift the playfield from actually concerning roleplaying games to a nebulous claim that it's all about  politics and then quickly cut my losses and run."

Wasn't throwing smoke bombs and then refuse to participate in a discussion not one of the tell-tale signs of actual trolling?

(Admittedly, there actually was an off-hand remark about politics before, in particular a reference to Maggie Thatcher, who by Blacky's logic here must basically be a socialist icon.)

I think the originally sought kind of balance was - when the game was run as intended - pretty well achieved throughout the TSR editions.

Trouble was, firstly, a lot of people didn't like that balance. It entailed a lot of mu mortality, the situation getting ever harder past name level (which was a challenge to attain in the first place).

So they 'fudged' in various ways.

But, secondly, they got attached to all the powers that had been piled on. So, now they had a class with huge advantages and without the intended offsetting disadvantages.

Then, some people wanted to keep all the above - or even add more! - yet somehow have fighters be as attractive as mus who could do what they could do, only better, and lots of other things as well.

That's pretty much three impossible things before breakfast.

I think Ars Magica works well, if it's the kind of thing you want; but it's a different kettle of fish from  D&D.

I've never really understood why anyone gets their shorts in a knot over game balance. This isn't tic-tac-toe: characters have many properties, some not defined by any number, and interact with a fluid environment, in an open ended series of events, with no clearly defined winners and losers. How am I supposed to decide who is balanced with whom? Perhaps these issues can be argued over for any edition of any game, but I don't remember anyone giving much of a shit about it before the advent of internet discussion forums. This is a made up problem, created by people with too much time on their hands.

Quote from: Larsdangly;785683I've never really understood why anyone gets their shorts in a knot over game balance. This isn't tic-tac-toe: characters have many properties, some not defined by any number, and interact with a fluid environment, in an open ended series of events, with no clearly defined winners and losers. How am I supposed to decide who is balanced with whom? Perhaps these issues can be argued over for any edition of any game, but I don't remember anyone giving much of a shit about it before the advent of internet discussion forums. This is a made up problem, created by people with too much time on their hands.

I never played through the A series.  This is a made up series, created by people with too much time on their hands.

Quote from: Larsdangly;785683I've never really understood why anyone gets their shorts in a knot over game balance. This isn't tic-tac-toe: characters have many properties, some not defined by any number, and interact with a fluid environment, in an open ended series of events, with no clearly defined winners and losers. How am I supposed to decide who is balanced with whom? Perhaps these issues can be argued over for any edition of any game, but I don't remember anyone giving much of a shit about it before the advent of internet discussion forums. This is a made up problem, created by people with too much time on their hands.

I think the main concern is that a game should not devolve into a "solved puzzle," because once that happens it gathers dust on the shelf. A corollary is that gamers don't like getting a bunch of useless components, but once they've got a playing piece or a chrome rule, they want to make it strategically important.

Before the advent, not of internet forums (pretty much before my time, although Compuserve and GEnie were the kind of thing to which I actually had ready access), but of the Web, I was hardly aware of people unsatisfied with the original kind of balance in D&D, although there were variants that implemented basically the same thing in different ways. There were people who preferred  other rules sets, but that's a different matter from "fudging" D&D.

That does not mean they were not out there, though. And clearly the demographic change that started with Basic and Advanced picked up steam through the 1990s.

Personally speaking, I just don't like feeling like a chump and finding out that I've been sold 'be free to do whatever you want' and actually given 'ha ha ha, stupid fucker, your character sucks.'

I've encountered this a bunch of times in various guises, and it doesn't have to be intentional to suck.

I've encountered MANY systems where people can specialize in various areas, and because the designers never gave much thought to 'campaign balance,' well, your bright idea of a character ends up stupid and useless.

Quote from: Will;785719Personally speaking, I just don't like feeling like a chump and finding out that I've been sold 'be free to do whatever you want' and actually given 'ha ha ha, stupid fucker, your character sucks.'

I've encountered this a bunch of times in various guises, and it doesn't have to be intentional to suck.

I've encountered MANY systems where people can specialize in various areas, and because the designers never gave much thought to 'campaign balance,' well, your bright idea of a character ends up stupid and useless.

One of those that particularly frustrates me is in systems where you get exponentially better at stuff the more you specialise. That tends to mean that a "jack of all trades" character is completely non-viable because they end up sucking at everything so much compared to the specialists. I prefer systems where specialising gives you an edge but you get diminishing returns from over-specialising. That way you can still be "the best" at a particular thing, but not at the expense of leaving non-specialists completely in the dust.

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;785786One of those that particularly frustrates me is in systems where you get exponentially better at stuff the more you specialise. That tends to mean that a "jack of all trades" character is completely non-viable because they end up sucking at everything so much compared to the specialists. I prefer systems where specialising gives you an edge but you get diminishing returns from over-specialising. That way you can still be "the best" at a particular thing, but not at the expense of leaving non-specialists completely in the dust.

In my systems characters with poor stats tend to become specialists where as the more naturally talented end up more like jacks.
This isn't entirely accurate (naturally talented people end up often being better at everything) but it works in a game context and gives folks with weaker stats a niche.

Quote from: Sommerjon;785587Everything else you state that is factored into the way you do XP is directly imputed by the player.  Dice rolling is random.  Perhaps you want that little bit of randomness involved, I would ask why.

I have no idea what you mean by "imputed by the player," but I include dice in my RPGs because rolling dice is fun. If you don't enjoy the random effects of dice, there are games like Amber that don't use dice. Have you tried one of those games?

QuoteI didn't miss it.  It is an unknowable quantity.

What the major contribution is (if any) for a given session is unknown for future sessions. It is knowable for past sessions. I don't know why you think that major contributions are unknowable. That seems odd.

Quote from: Bren;785811I have no idea what you mean by "imputed by the player," but I include dice in my RPGs because rolling dice is fun. If you don't enjoy the random effects of dice, there are games like Amber that don't use dice. Have you tried one of those games?

I have no problems with rolling dice.  I have issues as a gamer when the results of random rolling directly impacts how much XP you will give me.
"Whereas I am using experience as a combination of what a character does (attacks made, spells cast, traps detected) and what they endure (damage taken, spells resisted, etc.)."
All the underlined is random dice rolling.
A character surviving isn't enough? You have to take it a step further and give bonus XP to players who happen to be on a hot streak with the dice?

Quote from: Bren;785811What the major contribution is (if any) for a given session is unknown for future sessions. It is knowable for past sessions. I don't know why you think that major contributions are unknowable. That seems odd.

Because (you) have to tell them it is a major contribution.

"strategy, innovative ideas, thinking around the problem"
Do you give XP for these even if the group doesn't implement it?

Sommerjon, was "imputed by the player" a typo, because I still have no idea what you meant by that statement.
 

Quote from: Sommerjon;785876I have no problems with rolling dice.  I have issues as a gamer when the results of random rolling directly impacts how much XP you will give me.

I don't have issues with random rolls impacting XP. Though I would say the impact is indirect, not direct.
 
D&D, like the vast majority of RPGs that people play, uses random rolling to determine success and failure. Therefore success will be in part a function of how the dice roll. Therefore any system of experience based on what the character does will be based on part on random rolls. This is a consequence of using random rolls. I don't find this a big deal. You clearly do.

Quote"Whereas I am using experience as a combination of what a character does (attacks made, spells cast, traps detected) and what they endure (damage taken, spells resisted, etc.)."
All the underlined is random dice rolling.

Not all. Just some.

1) Attacks made, like spells cast, isn't the same as an attack succeeding. Attacks made just indicates the character was involved in the combat, taking a risk and trying to get a hit.

2) Damage taken in D&D is a measure of the character being involved in the fight. Often it is not a function of a player roll, but a function of the NPC's roll. If you want to include both player and GM rolls, then OK, it's random. In variant's where the PC has an active defense, then damage taken will be a result of NPC hits and player's defense fails. So still random, but a bit odd to complain about getting experience for random failure when your original point seemed to be that you didn't like not getting experience due to random failure.

QuoteA character surviving isn't enough?

Nope.

I prefer that a useless, do nothing character gets less experience than a useful do (or at least try to do) something character. It's not the only way to allocate experience but it is a reasonable and fair way of determining experience.

QuoteBecause (you) have to tell them it is a major contribution.

I don't have a problem with the GM figuring that out. Though in our games, experience allocation tends to be consensus based. There is seldom any disagreement since 90-95% of the time it is obvious to everyone at the table who did what and calling identifying that 'the GM telling them' is a misnomer. Anyone at the table could tell everyone else because it is obvious.  Maybe 5-10% it is not obvious and in that case the GM needs to make a call that someone at the table will disagree with. I can live with that.

Quote"strategy, innovative ideas, thinking around the problem"
Do you give XP for these even if the group doesn't implement it?

I'm not sure what you are asking here. Are you suggesting that a group that comes up with five plans and implements plan C should get more experience than a group that comes up with say three plans and who also implements the exact same plan C?

If that's what you are asking, then no I don't do that. Frankly that sounds rather silly and like a perverse incentive that would just waste everyone's gaming time.

Quote from: Bren;786187Sommerjon, was "imputed by the player" a typo, because I still have no idea what you meant by that statement.

Oh, yeah 'input'
However
Impute:  Law. to ascribe to or charge (a person) with an act or quality because of the conduct of another over whom one has control or for whose acts or conduct one is responsible.
kinda works as well.

Quote from: Bren;786187I don't have issues with random rolls impacting XP. Though I would say the impact is indirect, not direct.
 
D&D, like the vast majority of RPGs that people play, uses random rolling to determine success and failure. Therefore success will be in part a function of how the dice roll. Therefore any system of experience based on what the character does will be based on part on random rolls. This is a consequence of using random rolls. I don't find this a big deal. You clearly do.

I have a 'big deal' with the idea that (all other things being equal) I get more experience than you because I happened to roll better than you did.

Quote from: Bren;786187Not all. Just some.

1) Attacks made, like spells cast, isn't the same as an attack succeeding. Attacks made just indicates the character was involved in the combat, taking a risk and trying to get a hit.

2) Damage taken in D&D is a measure of the character being involved in the fight. Often it is not a function of a player roll, but a function of the NPC's roll. If you want to include both player and GM rolls, then OK, it's random. In variant's where the PC has an active defense, then damage taken will be a result of NPC hits and player's defense fails. So still random, but a bit odd to complain about getting experience for random failure when your original point seemed to be that you didn't like not getting experience due to random failure.

No my original point is I don't want to be rewarded or penalized(with experience points) by the results of dice rolling. Group and/or individual survival is where dice rolling comes into the game(imo) XP means diddly squat if the person/group is currently rolling up a new character(s).  I see no reason to double dip into that.
I rolled bad and am now rolling a new character while another who rolled well gets XP plus a bonus to that XP for rolling well?  nah, not for me.

Quote from: Bren;786187Nope.

I prefer that a useless, do nothing character gets less experience than a useful do (or at least try to do) something character. It's not the only way to allocate experience but it is a reasonable and fair way of determining experience.

Why I said I take me out of it. I may not like a player who does nothing, but that is my issue not the game or groups issue.  I don't want/need to reward for proper(read my preference for) play.

Quote from: Bren;786187I don't have a problem with the GM figuring that out. Though in our games, experience allocation tends to be consensus based. There is seldom any disagreement since 90-95% of the time it is obvious to everyone at the table who did what and calling identifying that 'the GM telling them' is a misnomer. Anyone at the table could tell everyone else because it is obvious.  Maybe 5-10% it is not obvious and in that case the GM needs to make a call that someone at the table will disagree with. I can live with that.

Another reason why I dropped XP.   If only 5-10% is not obvious, I guess we play very different games.

Quote from: Bren;786187I'm not sure what you are asking here. Are you suggesting that a group that comes up with five plans and implements plan C should get more experience than a group that comes up with say three plans and who also implements the exact same plan C?

If that's what you are asking, then no I don't do that. Frankly that sounds rather silly and like a perverse incentive that would just waste everyone's gaming time.

What about plan E? You breathed a sigh of relief when they went with plan C.  You know the plan that was chocked full of strategy, innovative ideas, thinking around the problem. The plan that had you sweating.  Does the player who came up with plan E get XP for it?

The fundamental problem is that magic can potentially accomplish anything. Even a novelist must come up with some "rules of the game" to prevent a magician character from solving every problem with a mere wave of a wand.

A problem that has arisen in fantasy games is that the more combat dominates play time, the bigger the push from players of magicians to increase their fighting power. This is especially a difficulty with the D&D character-class system, which is premised on a game in which the fighting man can shine precisely because there's plenty of other activity in a typical hour of play.

This compounds the wargame origin of the MU as artillery and at higher levels air power. That was limited at first by gamers who wished to see serried ranks of knights, spearmen and archers; wherefore if wizards alone could decide the issue?

Of all things, why should the warrior be overshadowed by magicians in battle? Yet real world artillery and air power has sometimes demoted the "queen of battle" to maid of mopping up.

In games such as RuneQuest and DragonQuest, anyone can learn any trade. But if spells were hands down more useful than skills, people would invest in them instead.

Some common ways to limit magic are:

1) A magician can do only some things with spells.

2) Magic is in more limited supply than other resources. Once spells are used up, sword and skill can continue to overcome obstacles.

3) Magic is costly, risky or debilitating, so it is often advantageous to employ other means.

Quote from: Sommerjon;786424I rolled bad and am now rolling a new character while another who rolled well gets XP plus a bonus to that XP for rolling well?  nah, not for me.

This illustrates a key difference in how we view XP. You are looking at XP as something the player gets. So getting XP is a reward to the player and not getting XP is a penalty to the player.

I see XP as something the character gets. So characters that do more, get more. If the player has their character attempt less stuff, they get less XP. If they succeed less, they also get less XP. XP is for doing stuff, trying to do stuff, and enduring stuff. Characters that sit home grubbing potatoes don't get much XP. To me that seems entirely reasonable and appropriate to an interesting RPG. Similarly, characters who go into the dungeon and don't do much also don't get as much XP as characters who go into the dungeon and try and do more and risk more. However they do get more XP than a potato farmer.

The XP is not a reward for playing a certain way, it's aligning XP with what the character does, risks, and experiences rather than using XP as a pacing mechanic or as a some mechaism designed to reward or penalize the player.

QuoteIf only 5-10% is not obvious, I guess we play very different games.

Possibly. Or possibly we just don't see XP the same way. I see XP is a blunt mechanism compared to a more nuanced system like Runequest/BRP skill checks or Pendragon trait checks, but I still see the primary purpose of XP as replicating what the character does, tries, risks, experiences, and learns.

QuoteWhat about plan E? You breathed a sigh of relief when they went with plan C.  You know the plan that was chocked full of strategy, innovative ideas, thinking around the problem. The plan that had you sweating.  Does the player who came up with plan E get XP for it?

What about plan E? Did the player's character ever even articulate plan E? You haven't said, but your focus on the player instead of the character makes me think maybe not. Seriously, how is a plan that a player decided (for reasons) not to implement at all relevant to what XP the player's character should get?

Also, I must say you seem to have a very different attitude towards innovative planning than I have. I think players coming up with a plan with strategy, innovation, and lateral thinking is fun. Why would I breathe a sigh of relief when they decided to instead choose a simple frontal assault? That just seems odd to me.

I'm the GM. I'm not in a contest with the players. In part because that is not what I see the role of the GM to be and in part because a GM vs. the players contest would either be pointless and cruel or pointless and silly. I don't play that.

With the original rules, most characters would qualify for a 5% bonus in at least one class, and it would be mighty rare not to qualify for at least one without taking a penalty. I forget the actual numbers, but for the most part that 10% bonus was effectively just 5%.

As if it were not negligible enough had it been 10%!

If you're going to attack luck of the dice, why sight your big guns on a target so trivial compared with bonuses to hit points, armor class, hit and damage, spells and saves, reactions and henchmen?

Quote from: Bren;786706This illustrates a key difference in how we view XP. You are looking at XP as something the player gets. So getting XP is a reward to the player and not getting XP is a penalty to the player.

Because XP is a metagame function.
Especially with how you garner what actions constitute being 'worthy' of XP.

Quote from: Bren;786706I see XP as something the character gets. So characters that do more, get more. If the player has their character attempt less stuff, they get less XP. If they succeed less, they also get less XP. XP is for doing stuff, trying to do stuff, and enduring stuff. Characters that sit home grubbing potatoes don't get much XP. To me that seems entirely reasonable and appropriate to an interesting RPG. Similarly, characters who go into the dungeon and don't do much also don't get as much XP as characters who go into the dungeon and try and do more and risk more. However they do get more XP than a potato farmer.

Still trying to figure out how this isn't what you say...

Quote from: Bren;786706The XP is not a reward for playing a certain way, it's aligning XP with what the character does, risks, and experiences rather than using XP as a pacing mechanic or as a some mechaism designed to reward or penalize the player.

this is.

Quote from: Bren;786706Possibly. Or possibly we just don't see XP the same way. I see XP is a blunt mechanism compared to a more nuanced system like Runequest/BRP skill checks or Pendragon trait checks, but I still see the primary purpose of XP as replicating what the character does, tries, risks, experiences, and learns.

So it's a reward for playing a certain way.

Quote from: Bren;786706What about plan E? Did the player's character ever even articulate plan E? You haven't said, but your focus on the player instead of the character makes me think maybe not. Seriously, how is a plan that a player decided (for reasons) not to implement at all relevant to what XP the player's character should get?

Because it keeps all of the players adding to the game, suggesting ideas, coming up with alternative plans, etc, etc, etc.   It doesn't take long for a player to realize the pecking order of a group.  Of course I realize your groups never had pecking orders, it was all together now.

Quote from: Bren;786706Also, I must say you seem to have a very different attitude towards innovative planning than I have. I think players coming up with a plan with strategy, innovation, and lateral thinking is fun. Why would I breathe a sigh of relief when they decided to instead choose a simple frontal assault? That just seems odd to me.

Because you reward individuals with bonus XP.  If you gots 5 players with 5 different plans..well only 1 gets to be used and that player gets more XP.  That can lead to the players..er characters to argue their plans more heavily.

Quote from: Bren;786706I'm the GM. I'm not in a contest with the players. In part because that is not what I see the role of the GM to be and in part because a GM vs. the players contest would either be pointless and cruel or pointless and silly. I don't play that.

Your putting the players in contests with each other.



I gave up on the check list for individual XP, then took it further and gave up on XP completely for all the reasons you love XP.
I want the player to play their character without having to worry about: Everything you have mentioned.
I reward the character with game world stuff.  Not all of it is something that the player wants.

Quote from: Phillip;786957bonuses to hit points, armor class, hit and damage, spells and saves, reactions and henchmen?

This is my point.  Luck of the dice is baked into the system itself.

Luck of the dice has absolutely nothing to do with "something the character gets"

Quote from: Sommerjon;787183Because XP is a metagame function.

The fact that you seem unable or unwilling to see that XP can be based on what the character does in the game and need not be a metagame, player focused reward system is the point on which we still differ.

QuoteSo it's a reward for playing a certain way.

Still not what I am saying. XP as a metagame cookie for rewarding players (as you apparently have used it or seen it used in the past) is not the only way to treat or use XP.

QuoteBecause it keeps all of the players adding to the game, suggesting ideas, coming up with alternative plans, etc, etc, etc.   It doesn't take long for a player to realize the pecking order of a group.  Of course I realize your groups never had pecking orders, it was all together now.

Your players need XP bribes just to come up with ideas and alternatives? Really? I find players like coming up with ideas and alternatives.

QuoteBecause you reward individuals with bonus XP.  If you gots 5 players with 5 different plans..well only 1 gets to be used and that player gets more XP.  That can lead to the players..er characters to argue their plans more heavily.

How is this an answer to the question I asked, which I'll repeat.

Quote from: Bren;786706I think players coming up with a plan with strategy, innovation, and lateral thinking is fun. Why would I breathe a sigh of relief when they decided to instead choose a simple frontal assault?

QuoteYour putting the players in contests with each other.

Yes indeed, players are just helpless pawns in a roleplaying arena of death subject to my every whim. They are mere putty in my hands. They have no choice or will in how the game is played and are forced to jump through hoops like performing animals. Mwuh Ha Ha Hah!

QuoteI gave up on the check list for individual XP, then took it further and gave up on XP completely for all the reasons you love XP.

As I said, your method of awarding XP seems overly simplistic to me. In addition, I prefer to have XP connected to what happens in the game world, to what the character does, rather than being solely a metagame, player facing reward. But as long as your metagame dramatic pacing, players-get-to-level-up with and only when the GM tells them they can level up works for your group then you should be happy with using that.

Quote from: Sommerjon;787212Luck of the dice has absolutely nothing to do with "something the character gets"

That's just nonsense. Of course luck of the dice has much to do with what the character gets.

Quote from: Bren;787328That's just nonsense. Of course luck of the dice has much to do with what the character gets.

I think he is arguing against a feedback loop -- I rolled well for my character so my charcter is both more efficient needs to rolll lower to suceed and has a lower XP requirement to gain levels. Then in actual play if I continue to roll well I gain more xp etc ....

In reality a failure can teach us more than an easy victory.

So I think that is what he is getting at...

Quote from: Bren;787328The fact that you seem unable or unwilling to see that XP can be based on what the character does in the game and need not be a metagame, player focused reward system is the point on which we still differ.

Because the character is the player.  Everything you have posted is directed at the player to have their character do in order to get XP.
I follow the mantra of an old GM of mine the character isn't you.  I want players to play their character without having to worry about a checklist of things they need to do(or not do) in order to get XP, bonus XP or negative XP.

Perhaps I'm not seeing the forest through the trees.  I'll list a number of things and see what is what.

Jack and Jill both need a 10 to hit bugbears.  They attack separate bugbears.  Jill hits 4 times rolling 10, 11, 12, 12 killing her bugbear.  Jack hits 4 times rolling 19, 19, 19, 20 killing the bugbear.  Does Jack get more XP for killing his bugbear because he rolled well?  From what I have gathered from your posts, yes he does.

Peter, Paul, and Mary are going through a goblin lair.  Peter and Paul are a Fighter and Cleric, Mary is a MU.  Mary hangs in the back throwing darts while Peter and Paul gets up close taking all of the damage.  Does Mary get less XP for not 'taking damage'?  From what I have gathered from your posts, yes she does.

Hall and Oates are working their way through a trap filled hallway needing to make 10 saves and attribute checks all told.  Hall easily makes all of the checks rolling extremely well.  Oates on the other hand fails 4 times.  The Xp for completing this hallway is 100.  Does Hall get the 100 plus a bonus for not failing, plus a bonus for rolling well?  Does Oates get less than the 100 XP for failing checks?  From what I have gathered from your posts, yes to all.

Larry, Moe, Curly, and Shemp are devising separate plans to tackle the next obstacle.  They argue, wheedle, plead, and so on until Shemps' plan is the one they settle on.  Does Shemp get XP for having his plan implemented?  From what I have gathered from your posts, yes he does.

Quote from: jibbajibba;787360I think he is arguing against a feedback loop -- I rolled well for my character so my charcter is both more efficient needs to rolll lower to suceed and has a lower XP requirement to gain levels. Then in actual play if I continue to roll well I gain more xp etc ....

In reality a failure can teach us more than an easy victory.

So I think that is what he is getting at...

Ah. Thanks. I can see how one might be concerned if one really cared, for some other reason, about everyone being the same level.  I can't say I'm concerned about it though.

Part of that is because I see those differences in XP as minor. D&D plays better, IMO, when treasure is the main XP source rather than who hit, killed, or bespelled which monster. And part of that is because parties with level/points/XP differences seem intrinsically more interesting to me than parties where everyone is exactly the same (from a level, point buy, or XP standpoint) and is artificially kept exactly the same. So I don't value everyone being exactly the same. Horses for courses.

Quote from: Sommerjon;787378Because the character is the player.

QuoteI follow the mantra of an old GM of mine the character isn't you.

Sommerjon, both of these statements cannot be true. It would help the discussion if you decided which one you actually believe.

Currently, you are ignoring XP for treasure, which is the major source (80-90%) of XP in any leveled game that I would GM. Ignoring that and focusing on the minor sources of the treasure seems like you are focusing on the tail rather than the dog. But let's look at your latest set of questions.

• Jack gets more XP from killing bugbears.


• Mary may get less XP from tossing darts - depends on what the darts do and what the other PCs do. If the darts do most the damage, Mary might get more XP.


• I don't set the XP for a hall. Deciding on what a hall is worth is a level of minutia not worth my effort. I also don't understand why Hall and Oates are both rolling at the same time (as it seems in your example). Shouldn't one of them be in front making (or failing) the rolls rather than doubling their jeopardy? The one in front (let's say Hall) would get a bit more XP for success. Alternately Hall's player might make a claim for a larger share of the treasure for their Hall since their PC took the risk of leading the way through the trapped hall.


• You ignored the important questions. Was the plan all Shemp's plan (or Shemp's player's plan) with no contribution from the other PCs or players (which would seem unusual in my experience)? Was Shemp's plan really clever, rather than just adequate? If both answers are yes, Shemp gets some extra XP.

Also you still haven't answered my question.

Quote from: Bren;786706I think players coming up with a plan with strategy, innovation, and lateral thinking is fun. Why would I breathe a sigh of relief when they decided to instead choose a simple frontal assault?

And as I said, all these differences in XP awards are very minor compared to the effect of who got how much treasure.

Quote from: Bren;787525Sommerjon, both of these statements cannot be true. It would help the discussion if you decided which one you actually believe.

Sure they can.
Because the character is the player(you), but the character isn't you.


As for the rest.  I'm not going to bother with it anymore.

Everything you have listed is exactly the reason why I don't track individual XP or XP period in a level based game.

nor do I agree with the lion's share of XP comes from treasure.  If it is, someones die rolling is breaking statistics.

Quote from: Sommerjon;787550Sure they can.
Because the character is the player(you), but the character isn't you.

X is Y but X isn't Y. Right. No contradiction there at all. :rolleyes:

QuoteAs for the rest.  I'm not going to bother with it anymore.

Since you haven't bothered to answer my questions I can only conclude you aren't actually interested in having a conversation.

Quote from: Bren;787595X is Y but X isn't Y. Right. No contradiction there at all. :rolleyes:

Bob is playing Garn Gravelbeard, but Garn Gravelbeard isn't Bob.
Let Garn Gravelbeard have his own voice, separate from the players wants and desires.
Meaning a player has an infatuation with tridents so every character the player plays has a trident, the character isn't being heard. The player is forcing their wants onto the character.

Quote from: Bren;787595Since you haven't bothered to answer my questions I can only conclude you aren't actually interested in having a conversation.

It was a bit of poetic licensing.

Quote from: Sommerjon;787665Bob is playing Garn Gravelbeard, but Garn Gravelbeard isn't Bob.
Let Garn Gravelbeard have his own voice, separate from the players wants and desires.
Meaning a player has an infatuation with tridents so every character the player plays has a trident, the character isn't being heard. The player is forcing their wants onto the character.

The character isn't being heard?

:rotfl:

Thanks. I haven't laughed that hard in a while.

Yeah, this thread crawled up its ass and into some 9th dimensional bag-of-bullshit-holding ~5-6 pages ago.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;787669The character isn't being heard?

:rotfl:

Thanks. I haven't laughed that hard in a while.

Yes.  The character isn't being heard.

Quote from: Sommerjon;787727Yes.  The character isn't being heard.

Character: " Why isn't anyone LISTENING to me!!  :rant:"


Everyone else: " Umm. Perhaps because you are a figment of some dude's imagination."

Quote from: Sommerjon;787665the character isn't being heard.

Yeah, no one heard my character say "My sword is yours."

Everyone did hear the player state "Your sword is mine..." however.

Quote from: Sommerjon;787550Sure they can.
Because the character is the player(you), but the character isn't you.

The degree of difference varies, but yes that is part of the fun. Another part, for many of us, is actually playing a game. It is therefore a significant matter for us to have characters appropriate to the game at hand. A lazy homebody who has no use for adventures ("Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner!") might not be appropriate for D&D. It depends on how often a "thespian" DM is going to insist, "You're not allowed to do that, because it's not in character."

There's an odd trend today, though, to want weaknesses somehow to get lip service but to have no effect. Foolish behavior must reap the same as wisdom. Since in such circles we have clearly left a proper game behind, it is a testament to the kind of story those storytellers think most worth telling.

QuoteEverything you have listed is exactly the reason why I don't track individual XP or XP period in a level based game.

nor do I agree with the lion's share of XP comes from treasure.  If it is, someones die rolling is breaking statistics.

Huh? That's the way the game works! Even the original 100 points per level of monster was just a consolation prize.

In Original or Basic, 5 hp is slightly above average for a 1st-level fighter; in AD&D, slightly below. That's a 1/3 chance of getting killed with a single hit of 1d6, 1/2 with 1d8. Two hits of d6? Dead 5 times in 6. (It will be slightly less with a variant such as negative hp, assuming the foe is too busy to finish you off.)

Do you seriously expect to survive anything near 20 fights to attain 2nd level? Even half that? And as many again to reach 3rd?

If you do, you're in for rolling up a pile of characters, unless your luck with dice is astounding.

Quote from: Sommerjon;787727Yes.  The character isn't being heard.

Ironically, this is about the only thing you've written that does make sense to me.

And my valuing the character's voice sometimes is exactly why I like mechanics for emotions like fear or rage. Because they take some of the control out of the player's hands and make what the character does about who the character is. And I like that because these strong emotions in the real world are frequently not within the control of real people.

Quote from: Larsdangly;787671Yeah, this thread crawled up its ass and into some 9th dimensional bag-of-bullshit-holding ~5-6 pages ago.

Sure seems like it.

Quote from: Phillip;787770Huh? That's the way the game works! Even the original 100 points per level of monster was just a consolation prize.

Sure that is what people want to believe, except the treasure table doesn't bear that out.  

Quote from: Phillip;787770In Original or Basic, 5 hp is slightly above average for a 1st-level fighter; in AD&D, slightly below. That's a 1/3 chance of getting killed with a single hit of 1d6, 1/2 with 1d8. Two hits of d6? Dead 5 times in 6. (It will be slightly less with a variant such as negative hp, assuming the foe is too busy to finish you off.)

Do you seriously expect to survive anything near 20 fights to attain 2nd level? Even half that? And as many again to reach 3rd?

If you do, you're in for rolling up a pile of characters, unless your luck with dice is astounding.

Don't look at me.  I'm not the one that made the treasure table.  It wasn't until finding shit loot multiple times that we realized the treasure table is ass.

Quote from: Sommerjon;788273Sure that is what people want to believe, except the treasure table doesn't bear that out.  


Don't look at me.  I'm not the one that made the treasure table.  It wasn't until finding shit loot multiple times that we realized the treasure table is ass.

The treasure tables are fine for the filler of random dungeon stocking. Like anything else that is completely random, the results are likely to be all over the place.

 Important monsters & treasures should always be placed by the DM.

Tables are fallback filler. If you rely on them to design your entire campaign then you deserve what you get.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;788276The treasure tables are fine for the filler of random dungeon stocking. Like anything else that is completely random, the results are likely to be all over the place.

 Important monsters & treasures should always be placed by the DM.

Tables are fallback filler. If you rely on them to design your entire campaign then you deserve what you get.

That doesn't ring true to the stance here.

Nor is that ever stated in the books.

Quote from: Sommerjon;788567That doesn't ring true to the stance here.

Nor is that ever stated in the books.

I'll get you the exact quote from Moldvay basic when I get to my copy. That advice was very much included in the DMing section.

[page B51]

C. DECIDE ON SPECIAL MONSTERS TO BE USED.
The DM should decide on what special monsters (not placed by
using the Wandering Monster tables) will be used. Some monsters
should be placed by the DM because of the scenario chosen,
and the DM may create or change some monsters to fit the
dungeon.[/end]

[page B52]
E. STOCK THE DUNGEON.
To "stock" a dungeon means to fill in the general details, such as
monsters, treasure, and traps. Special monsters should be first
placed in the appropriate rooms along with special treasures. The
remaining rooms can be stocked as the DM wishes. If there is no
preference as to how certain rooms are stocked, the following system
may be used. Roll Id6 for CONTENTS, and then roll on the
second table for TREASURE according to the result of the first roll.
A "Yes" result means that Treasure is there along with whatever is
indicated by the first roll
[/end]

So right there in the "How to be a DM" section, we have advice about placing specific monsters & treasures in a non-random fashion.

If you don't have this book, you can get it for $5.00 from D&D Classics. Its worth it for the DMing section alone.

The AD&D DMG has quite a bit of detail regarding monster & treasure placement also.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;788577I'll get you the exact quote from Moldvay basic when I get to my copy. That advice was very much included in the DMing section.

[page B51]

C. DECIDE ON SPECIAL MONSTERS TO BE USED.
The DM should decide on what special monsters (not placed by
using the Wandering Monster tables) will be used. Some monsters
should be placed by the DM because of the scenario chosen,
and the DM may create or change some monsters to fit the
dungeon.[/end]

[page B52]
E. STOCK THE DUNGEON.
To "stock" a dungeon means to fill in the general details, such as
monsters, treasure, and traps. Special monsters should be first
placed in the appropriate rooms along with special treasures. The
remaining rooms can be stocked as the DM wishes. If there is no
preference as to how certain rooms are stocked, the following system
may be used. Roll Id6 for CONTENTS, and then roll on the
second table for TREASURE according to the result of the first roll.
A "Yes" result means that Treasure is there along with whatever is
indicated by the first roll
[/end]

So right there in the "How to be a DM" section, we have advice about placing specific monsters & treasures in a non-random fashion.

If you don't have this book, you can get it for $5.00 from D&D Classics. Its worth it for the DMing section alone.

The AD&D DMG has quite a bit of detail regarding monster & treasure placement also.

I shouldn't need the Moldvay book in order to play another edition of D&D.

Sure the AD&D DMG has quite a bit of detail regarding monster & treasure placement.
[page 91-92]
"All monsters would not and should not possess treasure! The TREASURE TYPES given in the MONSTER MANUAL are the optimums and are meant to consider the maximum number of creatures guarding them. Many of the monsters shown as possessing some form of wealth are quite unlikely to have any at all.  This is not a contradiction in the rules, but an admonition to the DM not to give away too much!"

Quote from: Sommerjon;788718Sure the AD&D DMG has quite a bit of detail regarding monster & treasure placement.
[page 91-92]
"All monsters would not and should not possess treasure! The TREASURE TYPES given in the MONSTER MANUAL are the optimums and are meant to consider the maximum number of creatures guarding them. Many of the monsters shown as possessing some form of wealth are quite unlikely to have any at all.  This is not a contradiction in the rules, but an admonition to the DM not to give away too much!"

Alright then what seems to be the problem with enforced randomness?

There may be some DMS who really like to make everything random but that isn't based on explicit instructions from the game itself.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;788763Alright then what seems to be the problem with enforced randomness?

1d6 Dingos showed up on a wilderness encounter table and ate Sommerjon's baby.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;788763Alright then what seems to be the problem with enforced randomness?

Didn't say I had a problem with it.  I said: "nor do I agree with the lion's share of XP comes from treasure. If it is, someones die rolling is breaking statistics."

Finding out that treasure also equals XP it sounded nifty.  Then,
"Don't look at me. I'm not the one that made the treasure table. It wasn't until finding shit loot multiple times that we realized the treasure table is ass."
that happened and we realized that gold=Xp wasn't all that until later in a character's career.  

Quote from: Bren;7887931d6 Dingos showed up on a wilderness encounter table and ate Sommerjon's baby.

I snicker at your nit-picking of how much XP people get when you say 80-90% comes from treasure.  That's a whole lot of needless work for maybe 1-2% of their XP.  Good Job!:cheerleader:

Quote from: Sommerjon;788843Didn't say I had a problem with it.  I said: "nor do I agree with the lion's share of XP comes from treasure. If it is, someones die rolling is breaking statistics."

Finding out that treasure also equals XP it sounded nifty.  Then,
"Don't look at me. I'm not the one that made the treasure table. It wasn't until finding shit loot multiple times that we realized the treasure table is ass."
that happened and we realized that gold=Xp wasn't all that until later in a character's career.  

OK, so you had a stingy DM who preferred to blame the treasure tables for witholding XP. Not a system problem at all.

Quote from: Sommerjon;788567That doesn't ring true to the stance here.

Nor is that ever stated in the books.

Yes it is, very clearly in the original Volume 3! Random generation tables were explicitly presented as a labor-saving convenience for quickly filling in the secondary areas of a dungeon level when the key areas were carefully designed.

The wilderness tables were presented to be used (in conjunction with the map from Avalon Hill's Wilderness Survival game) for impromptu play. They could also be used to generate "filler" for a proper campaign map, as with the dungeons. The Dungeon Masters Guide included a number of essays on designing the campaign milieu.

Quote from: Sommerjon;788273Sure that is what people want to believe, except the treasure table doesn't bear that out.  


Don't look at me.  I'm not the one that made the treasure table.  It wasn't until finding shit loot multiple times that we realized the treasure table is ass.

No, what's an ass is a stumblebum player whose "strategy" is a drunkard's walk, and blames his failure not on that but on a false claim that the tables don't provide rich treasures.

They do indeed, but your odds of being in on a haul of 1000s of g.p. value are not so good if you expect it just to drop into your lap! Play long enough, and you'll eventually wander into such a random jackpot. But that's likely to take a long time, because there will be fewer nearby as more skillful players clean out the hoards.

Quote from: Sommerjon;788843I snicker at your nit-picking of how much XP people get when you say 80-90% comes from treasure.  That's a whole lot of needless work for maybe 1-2% of their XP.  Good Job!

I wanted to cheer you up. We are all tired of your whining and crying about your epic failure to find treasure.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;788870OK, so you had a stingy DM who preferred to blame the treasure tables for witholding XP. Not a system problem at all.

Hmm lemme see, what did Gary say about that...
[page 91-92]
"All monsters would not and should not possess treasure! The TREASURE TYPES given in the MONSTER MANUAL are the optimums and are meant to consider the maximum number of creatures guarding them. Many of the monsters shown as possessing some form of wealth are quite unlikely to have any at all. This is not a contradiction in the rules, but an admonition to the DM not to give away too much!"
Yep it's a stingy DM. :rolleyes:  
Couldn't be that people were following what Gary says to do at all.  Evidently we are supposed to be following what was written in one edition to play another edition.
Wow.

Quote from: Phillip;788892No, what's an ass is a stumblebum player whose "strategy" is a drunkard's walk, and blames his failure not on that but on a false claim that the tables don't provide rich treasures.

They do indeed, but your odds of being in on a haul of 1000s of g.p. value are not so good if you expect it just to drop into your lap! Play long enough, and you'll eventually wander into such a random jackpot. But that's likely to take a long time, because there will be fewer nearby as more skillful players clean out the hoards.

Ignoring certain dungeons because they have the wrong treasure tables to roll on.  Smart players there.:rolleyes:

Quote from: Phillip;788888Yes it is, very clearly in the original Volume 3! Random generation tables were explicitly presented as a labor-saving convenience for quickly filling in the secondary areas of a dungeon level when the key areas were carefully designed.

The wilderness tables were presented to be used (in conjunction with the map from Avalon Hill's Wilderness Survival game) for impromptu play. They could also be used to generate "filler" for a proper campaign map, as with the dungeons. The Dungeon Masters Guide included a number of essays on designing the campaign milieu.

Not going to buy one edition to play another edition.

Quote from: Bren;788938I wanted to cheer you up. We are all tired of your whining and crying about your epic failure to find treasure.

And yet you still keep asking questions...

Quote from: Sommerjon;789200And yet you still keep asking questions...

Let me help you out yet again. The sentences that end with a question mark, i.e. "?" are questions. The sentences that end with a period, i.e. "." are statements, not questions. Here is an example of a statement.

Quote from: Bren;7887931d6 Dingos showed up on a wilderness encounter table and ate Sommerjon's baby.

Do you see the difference?

Note that the above sentence is an example of a question.

Quote from: Sommerjon;789200Hmm lemme see, what did Gary say about that...
[page 91-92]
"All monsters would not and should not possess treasure! The TREASURE TYPES given in the MONSTER MANUAL are the optimums and are meant to consider the maximum number of creatures guarding them. Many of the monsters shown as possessing some form of wealth are quite unlikely to have any at all. This is not a contradiction in the rules, but an admonition to the DM not to give away too much!"
Yep it's a stingy DM. :rolleyes:  

Stingy DM or whiny bitches as players depends on your point of view. The entire issue is one of expectations from both parties.

As a players do you expect hundreds of gold pieces to drop from the corpses of a half dozen goblins?

As a DM should the players have to fully loot six or eight dungeons to gain sufficient treasure to reach 2nd level?

These are both extreme expectations and problems are bound to arise the further apart the players and the DM are on this issue.

Quote from: Sommerjon;789200Couldn't be that people were following what Gary says to do at all.  Evidently we are supposed to be following what was written in one edition to play another edition.
Wow.

No idea what you are babbling about here. All you need for AD&D are the three core books. NO EDITION COMES WITH A COMMON SENSE BUNDLE.

No matter what rule set you buy, you will need to supply your own brain.

Quote from: Sommerjon;789200Ignoring certain dungeons because they have the wrong treasure tables to roll on.  Smart players there.:rolleyes:

Abandoning certain dungeons when the loot looks crappy IS smart play when treasure = XP. Being offered only a single loot poor option for adventure is a railroad and rules can't fix shitty DMs.

Quote from: Sommerjon;789200Not going to buy one edition to play another edition.

Then don't.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;789217As a DM should the players have to fully loot six or eight dungeons to gain sufficient treasure to reach 2nd level?

Not if they are neutralizing the creatures.  If you are expecting loot to give you an advantage?  Well according to the loot tables, the odds favor that six or eight dungeons.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;789217No idea what you are babbling about here. All you need for AD&D are the three core books. NO EDITION COMES WITH A COMMON SENSE BUNDLE.

No matter what rule set you buy, you will need to supply your own brain.

You brought up Moldvay, which last time I checked it isn't the only edition of D&D.  If you want to use Moldvay to somehow enhance AD&D, good for you.
In AD&D no where does it say treasure is expected.
[page 91-92]
"All monsters would not and should not possess treasure! The TREASURE TYPES given in the MONSTER MANUAL are the optimums and are meant to consider the maximum number of creatures guarding them. Many of the monsters shown as possessing some form of wealth are quite unlikely to have any at all. This is not a contradiction in the rules, but an admonition to the DM not to give away too much!"
  It only states that treasure is also XP.  There is no percentages of how much treasure is expected per level or dungeon or session or any other criteria you try to use.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;789217Abandoning certain dungeons when the loot looks crappy IS smart play when treasure = XP. Being offered only a single loot poor option for adventure is a railroad and rules can't fix shitty DMs.

The game states
[page 91-92]
"All monsters would not and should not possess treasure! The TREASURE TYPES given in the MONSTER MANUAL are the optimums and are meant to consider the maximum number of creatures guarding them. Many of the monsters shown as possessing some form of wealth are quite unlikely to have any at all. This is not a contradiction in the rules, but an admonition to the DM not to give away too much!"
that most adventure is going to be a loot poor option.

How far do you go before you determine that the loot is crappy?  Two rooms?  A hallway?  By the creatures inside?

Quote from: Exploderwizard;789217Then don't.

I don't.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;789217NO EDITION COMES WITH A COMMON SENSE BUNDLE.

No matter what rule set you buy, you will need to supply your own brain.

Good point.

Also, unlike many video games, table top RPGs don't have a player controlled EASY setting nor a GOD mode code.

I've always found that the treasure tables work fairly well for the types of campaigns I like to run.

Sommerjon's ability to avoid knowing what he's  talking about or making sense at all is truly  astounding.

Quote from: Phillip;790177Sommerjon's ability to avoid knowing what he's  talking about or making sense at all is truly  astounding.

Prove me wrong then.

All I see is you talking out your ass, pretty much par for the course here.

Quote from: Sommerjon;790269Prove me wrong then.

All I see is you talking out your ass, pretty much par for the course here.

Your gibberish is not even wrong; it's just nonsense.

Quote from: Phillip;790353Your gibberish is not even wrong; it's just nonsense.

That's funny.

Quote from: Sommerjon;790414That's funny.

Yes. Your gibberish is also funny.

No I'm not; you said you are.

Might as well be at dragonsfoot or big purple.

Quote from: zarathustra;790498No I'm not; you said you are.

Might as well be at dragonsfoot or big purple.

:confused:

This is in response to what exactly, or was that post randomly generated?

Quote from: Exploderwizard;790499:confused:

This is in response to what exactly, or was that post randomly generated?

I think his phone mistyped, but pretty sure it's in response to the "I know you are but what am I." over the last few posts.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;790493Yes. Your gibberish is also funny.

Then prove me wrong.

I'll wait.

I suspect this thread would be a lot more interesting with ZALGO


Ṯh͚͎e̴͇̮̠ṋ ͓̞p̩r̢̪̯̙̗o̜̠̤͖̯v̭̮̖͖͠e͡ ͖͍̬̕m̦ͅe̶ ͉w̦͕̫̮̼͈̫r̲̙͕̠̳o̶n̹͈g͝.̶̬̮
̩̪̬͎̗̭̬
̟̦͔̤I͕̞͚̦̭̭'̠̩͙͖̩͖l҉͙͇̳ͅḷ͉͉ ̶͍̦͔w̯͜a̞̲̫i̹̯̼͎̮͇t̞͈̯͟. ̤



There we go.

(http://www.gamesprays.com/images/icons/cheshire-cats-eyes-3115_preview.png)

Quote from: Sommerjon;790511Then prove me wrong.

On what point exactly. That the AD&D game assumes that those reading it do indeed have brain and thus expects them to use it?

Just fuck, already.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;790517On what point exactly. That the AD&D game assumes that those reading it do indeed have brain and thus expects them to use it?

Didn't realize that phat lewtz all the time is using a brain.
Sounds like player whinetitlement.


How was that stated?  oh yeah  "Being offered only a single loot poor option for adventure is a railroad"

Quote from: One Horse Town;790522Just fuck, already.

And listen to him bitch afterwards?