GP=XP

@DP: I for one am thankful that you stir it up. I think we all enjoy hashing things out, but often sit silent out of fear or complacency. It's just tough (on you) that you frequently are arguing a "nouveau/alternate D&D" viewpoint without much support. I am sure you are not actually alone in your thinking, but "that crowd" must mainly hang elsewhere (or are afraid to speak up).

If it's any consolation, Bryce is actively courting the 5e folks with a good selection of his recent reviews. He's being inclusive (without coddling) and that's a good thing.

Please note, I'm trying not to pre-judge you, or pidgin-hole your play-style---honestly I can't without directly experiencing it. I'm pretty sure that no two DM's are alike and never have been in the history of the hobby. There was never One True D&D.

Because Bryce keeps putting himself out there---loudly and consistently proclaiming his beliefs on good advanture deisgn to the world---we are able to have these kinds of discussions. They reveal and clarify our thoughts, even if it doesn't budge anyone's opinion about what they like. I've learned a ton. DMing can be a bit of a secret society---despite all the material that's been published. It nice to get a glimpse into other folk's methods since most folks are bending the rules a bit (or a lot).

Hang in there. Us "fossils" will eventually fade away (and the OSR probably too)---then you can have the final word. :)

Cheers.
 
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squeen said:
Hang in there. Us "fossils" will eventually fade away (and the OSR probably too)---then you can have the final word. :)
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Maybe so, maybe no. I'm at Gencon and a pretty decent number of guys in my old-school games are other 20-somethings. The playstyle has appeal beyond nostalgia.
 
Slick said:
Maybe so, maybe no. I'm at Gencon and a pretty decent number of guys in my old-school games are other 20-somethings. The playstyle has appeal beyond nostalgia.
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That is music to my ears.

Nice causal 'I'm at Gencon...'.
Lucky dog.
 
Nuts, I missed that comments conversation at the time, I would have liked to have contributed.

We stopped using GP=XP decades ago, when we were still playing 1e, because as teenagers we were all about the simulation. We also played Rolemaster from time to time, so what the hell did we know.
I have actually come back to GP=XP even though it is harder to implement in 4e for a number of reasons.

  • My players are very XP motivated. I started to find that combat=XP was actively discouraging non-combat solutions to problems.

  • GP=XP Combat=XP is only simulationist when you don’t have a skill system. When you are also improving skills, it makes no sense to better at, for example, History because you are engaging in lots of combat.

  • I have never seen a good system for awarding XPs for skill use, or for any other out-of-combat activities. 4e’s skill challenges, for example, are an abject failure at this.

  • Because of this, I started looking for a way to award XPs for the whole suite of activities that adventurers can engage in, without trying to calculate XPs for each action. This led me to look at awarding XPs for goal achievement, so that they got the same amount of XPs for achieving a goal regardless of what combination of combat, strategy, skills, other resources and ingenuity they brought to the table. The assumption is that if they achieve a goal they have learned something.

  • A lot of DMs would equate this to milestones=XP. The difference, at least for me, is milestones are often DM set, which doesn’t fit with my playstyle. Most of the time I would rather reward the players for achieving goals they set for themselves. Also, I really don’t like milestone levelling. As a player and a DM, I prefer to receive XPs incrementally, for the smaller steps I take along the way. I like the anticipation of inching closer to the next level. I am never satisfied when a DM just announces I have gained a level.

  • For my players, most of the time the acquisition of treasure is a significant goal even if it isn’t the only goal in a given encounter. So most of the time, GP=XP is a decent proxy for achieving goals.

  • I am flexible enough to vary the method of awarding XP when there is an obvious measure of progress that is not treasure related – like crossing a bridge or gateway that is guarded, for instance. But most of the time, treasure is as good a proxy as any.
 
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Beoric said:
  • Because of this, I started looking for a way to award XPs for the whole suite of activities that adventurers can engage in, without trying to calculate XPs for each action. This led me to look at awarding XPs for goal achievement, so that they got the same amount of XPs for achieving a goal regardless of what combination of combat, strategy, skills, other resources and ingenuity they brought to the table. The assumption is that if they achieve a goal they have learned something.
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I'm in the same boat here. While combat encounters do award XP in my games, I also tend a lot of arbitrary XP awards for little accomplishments here and there. Successfully negotiated their way into a locked down quarantined city? 100 XP. Found and destroyed a stockpile of kuo-toa siege weapons? 250XP. Turned two enemy generals against each other to cause havoc in the enemy's ranks? 500XP. And so on.

My players seem contented with it, when there's a clear connection between finishing some kind of objective and getting XP for it, then they're less likely to think about how to kill a beast, and more likely to consider how they can use the encounter with this beast to accomplish some kind of goal at the same time (can they use the severed dragon head to intimidate the goblin tribes? can they steer this blob over to those gnolls? can they recruit these hillfolk to fight in the upcoming coup-d'état?).
 
Wow! Just circled back to the conversation in the review thread. Although I am a more or less "Reformed Church of GP=XP" guy, I found lots of good points all round. Really good read.
 
All of the below is assuming a sandbox or otherwise player-driven game.

Money=XP, all other things considered, is useful for players setting goals, in a way Murder=XP or Many Things=XP (rewards for combat, adventure completion, exploration) isn't. If I know there's a dragon hoard nearby, or a fleet led by a pirate queen, or the richest merchant in the land, then I can decide who to go after and balance risk/reward. Provided the adventure hooks are there to be found, I have a good idea of what adventure offers what reward, and how to go about getting that reward.

Murder=XP limits the kind of adventures you can have (I'm not fighting a dragon or taking on a pirate fleet at level 1) and the way you approach adventures. The limitations are so commonly known that lots of groups award the same XP for bypassing fights, but the assumption for "bypassing fights" has its own issues.

Many Things=XP (what DP is calling XP=XP) isn't awful, but it can and often does obscure the reward in an adventure. Unless you're stating up front the sort of things you award XP for in this format, and the amount that gets awarded, you'd usually be better off with levels for nothing.

Milestone leveling (in the sense of players accomplish a certain thing/plot point = level) is poison for a sandbox game. It only makes sense in the context of an adventure path or other somewhat railroady game style. I suspect DP may be advocating Levels for Nothing.

Levels for nothing is the absence of levels as a reward, turning them into an expected progression. The group plays three sessions, they level (or something equivalent). There isn't really anything wrong with this kind of play; but it can leave players feeling rudderless at times, since it gets rid of one of the more useful player motivating reward mechanics.
 
WrongOnTheInternet said:
Money=XP, all other things considered, is useful for players setting goals, in a way Murder=XP or Many Things=XP (rewards for combat, adventure completion, exploration) isn't.
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Only true if the players want to use the acquisition of gold as their exclusive objective. If they want to do other things, and get credit for it, then you need to use some other system. As long as it is a system - the XP available needs to be predictable to the players in order to make risk assessments.

Where I use something other than GP as a proxy, I do so predictably. For example, I know what XP would be available for orcs guarding treasure. If the objective is something else, say, recovering intelligence of the orcs' battle plan, and an equivalent group of orcs is guarding it, I just assign the recovery of the battle plan the same XPs as I would if it was treasure instead. It is the same as saying the general will pay GP for the battle plan, without requiring the actual exchange of gold. And sometimes the exchange of gold is not realistic; if the objective is to cross a bridge, nobody is going to pay for that.

Like I said above, I don't do this often (usually the reward for crossing the bridge is access to the dungeon, and the GP it contains, on the other side). But why would I remove this tool from my arsenal? Especially since my players often set goals that have nothing to do with GP. At that point, the presumptions that underpin GP=XP have broken down, and if I don't find another way to award XP, then I am punishing their choice to pursue other goals. And then my "sandbox" is just a different kind of railroad.
 
Beoric said:
Only true if the players want to use the acquisition of gold as their exclusive objective. If they want to do other things, and get credit for it, then you need to use some other system. As long as it is a system - the XP available needs to be predictable to the players in order to make risk assessments.
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I basically agree with the transparent systems being equally viable. I tend not to use adventure rewards because they require just that much extra work to throw together, when the treasure reward is already right there in most cases. This probably wasn't clear in my original post, but I consider the downside of Many Things=XP to be the obscuring effect when it's done without suggestion of reward potential or size.

There's nothing wrong with layering in a few rewards not strictly tied to a system. Muder=XP as a consolation prize in Money=XP games, where you were getting about 10% of your XP from combat and the rest from treasure comes to mind. My post was mainly about those experience systems in isolation from each other.
 
I would like to suggest that if your players are pursuing their own non-monetary goals (and achieving them), then that is reward enough without XP. (...and signs of a healthy campaign!).

High-level play is complicated. There should not be a requirement to have a constant and steady progression upwards.
 
There should not be a requirement to have a constant and steady progression upwards.

Ah, the timeless lamentation of many bureaucrats across the globe. Again we see that art mimics life.
 
Gandalf_scion, you wound me!

Let me amend that,

There should not be a requirement to have a constant and steady progression upwards in PC levels.

Seriously though, levels are not the only measure of player success. Too many abilities and they exit the realm of human and become super-human---potentially losing their place in a wider (and more mundane) world. They must delve farther, deeper, and well off the normal planes of existance to be challenged. It becomes a very different game---no need to rush there. If you postulate the need to level-up after each adventure (or 2), then (with GP=XP) the treasure hordes become mindbogglingly huge.

In my game, GP=XP, but my players twice chose to walk away from an unwieldy hall because it was too difficult to transport and backtracking got in the way of their self-driven agenda. (They of course thought it would be there when they came back later...)

Players can instead gain influence, allies, wondrous items (with inherent checks-and-balances that make them temporary or a double-edge sword to use), knowledge, etc. which can result in an equally satisfying sense of progression.
 
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All true. We might then think of levels as a convenient shoe horn to get new comers into the right fit (frame of mind). After that, it's up to the referee and players to define "progress" in a way that fits their game. Allies, wondrous items, knowledge and others can deliver a sense of progression.
 
WrongOnTheInternet said:
All of the below is assuming a sandbox or otherwise player-driven game.

Money=XP, all other things considered, is useful for players setting goals, in a way Murder=XP or Many Things=XP (rewards for combat, adventure completion, exploration) isn't. If I know there's a dragon hoard nearby, or a fleet led by a pirate queen, or the richest merchant in the land, then I can decide who to go after and balance risk/reward. Provided the adventure hooks are there to be found, I have a good idea of what adventure offers what reward, and how to go about getting that reward.

Murder=XP limits the kind of adventures you can have (I'm not fighting a dragon or taking on a pirate fleet at level 1) and the way you approach adventures. The limitations are so commonly known that lots of groups award the same XP for bypassing fights, but the assumption for "bypassing fights" has its own issues.
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I'd like to hear how you came to that conclusion, because as I see it, you have it reversed. GP=XP I see as less useful for setting goals, because the players goals all become profit-driven.

Also, how can the party possibly know what treasure is involved in, say, figuring out who is haunting Farmer McGregor's field at night, or killing the giant feral hound that's eating village children? GP=XP party has zero motivation to look into that - Farmer McGregor is probably a broke peasant, and feral hounds aren't know to carry around gold and magic items. The party doesn't initially know they'll be rewarded with the Family Ancestral Sword, or that the feral hound has a potion merchant trapped in his den. They'll never know, because they aren't motivated to do the adventure.

Murder whodunnit? Nope, no money there, not interested. Tomb of Horrors? Nah, I heard there's not a lot of treasure to be had there. Why explore that dangerous old crypt when there's a dragon horde in the other direction with more money and only one real obstacle? And so on. Whereas if the party knows I award XP for completing significant events, then they're going to latch onto events, regardless of the financial gain to be had. If the party gets XP for killing monsters, they're going to hunt that feral hound to the ends of the earth and scour the Tomb of Horrors of all life.

WrongOnTheInternet said:
Many Things=XP (what DP is calling XP=XP) isn't awful, but it can and often does obscure the reward in an adventure. Unless you're stating up front the sort of things you award XP for in this format, and the amount that gets awarded, you'd usually be better off with levels for nothing.

Milestone leveling (in the sense of players accomplish a certain thing/plot point = level) is poison for a sandbox game. It only makes sense in the context of an adventure path or other somewhat railroady game style. I suspect DP may be advocating Levels for Nothing.

Levels for nothing is the absence of levels as a reward, turning them into an expected progression. The group plays three sessions, they level (or something equivalent). There isn't really anything wrong with this kind of play; but it can leave players feeling rudderless at times, since it gets rid of one of the more useful player motivating reward mechanics.
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You seem to be putting words in my mouth. What you think I call 'levels for nothing" is not at all what I'd advocate. levels for nothing implies... doing nothing. XP is given for accomplishments in a milestone system. The party has to solve the murder, or stop the bad guy, or rescue the princess, or whatever. That's not nothing; that's levels for adventuring... kinda the whole point of the game, really.

There's no expected progression because only I, the DM, knows when and how XP is going to be awarded, much like how only I know where all the gold is stashed if I were running GP=XP. The player's aren't privy to that - all they know is they'll see a goal and likely improve their characters if they accomplish goals with them.

In GP=XP, the finish line is GP. Guess you'll never meet a level 15 Druid who isn't a millionaire, or find a Level 12 Fighter who couldn't just hire an army to do the fighting for him.

In XP=XP, the finish line is undergoing the experience (hint - they are called "Experience points"). A level 15 Druid has seen some shit; he didn't just come across a treasure vault and suddenly gain new spells and abilities. A level 12 Fighter has wrestled with some serious foes; he didn't kill a single foe who happened to be fabulously wealthy.
 
This might be just me, but I'd rather DM for a party that's altruistic because they want to level up, rather than for a party who refuses any quest that doesn't pay out money.

Then you can say "well sometimes parties want to do good, and aren't motivated by gold", to which I say "sometimes parties want to do anything, and aren't motivated by XP" - equally plausible. The nice thing about GP=/=XP is that players can be motivated by two things: gold OR experience. It's not like money has no use outside a GP=XP game...
 
I play straight-up 0e/1e in terms of XP awards, but even there the 1e DMG (as pointed out here recently) grants the DM a wide berth with regards to XP multipliers (and divisors) for outstanding (or poor) play.

In a few places in my written campaign world, I have noted that certain difficult-but-altruistic actions might deserve an XP "grant". However, if the players don't know this advance---and its rare enough not to be expected---I don't think that introduces harm into the XP motivational equation. I think it's equivalent to just bumping up the multiplier.

Incidentally, thumbs way-up EOTB. For inserting "Bismarkian real-politik" into a forum conversation, I would award you an XP bonus without question.
 
DangerousPuhson said:
I'd like to hear how you came to that conclusion, because as I see it, you have it reversed. GP=XP I see as less useful for setting goals, because the players goals all become profit-driven.

Also, how can the party possibly know what treasure is involved in, say, figuring out who is haunting Farmer McGregor's field at night, or killing the giant feral hound that's eating village children? GP=XP party has zero motivation to look into that - Farmer McGregor is probably a broke peasant, and feral hounds aren't know to carry around gold and magic items. The party doesn't initially know they'll be rewarded with the Family Ancestral Sword, or that the feral hound has a potion merchant trapped in his den. They'll never know, because they aren't motivated to do the adventure.

Murder whodunnit? Nope, no money there, not interested. Tomb of Horrors? Nah, I heard there's not a lot of treasure to be had there. Why explore that dangerous old crypt when there's a dragon horde in the other direction with more money and only one real obstacle? And so on. Whereas if the party knows I award XP for completing significant events, then they're going to latch onto events, regardless of the financial gain to be had. If the party gets XP for killing monsters, they're going to hunt that feral hound to the ends of the earth and scour the Tomb of Horrors of all life.



You seem to be putting words in my mouth. What you think I call 'levels for nothing" is not at all what I'd advocate. levels for nothing implies... doing nothing. XP is given for accomplishments in a milestone system. The party has to solve the murder, or stop the bad guy, or rescue the princess, or whatever. That's not nothing; that's levels for adventuring... kinda the whole point of the game, really.

There's no expected progression because only I, the DM, knows when and how XP is going to be awarded, much like how only I know where all the gold is stashed if I were running GP=XP. The player's aren't privy to that - all they know is they'll see a goal and likely improve their characters if they accomplish goals with them.

In GP=XP, the finish line is GP. Guess you'll never meet a level 15 Druid who isn't a millionaire, or find a Level 12 Fighter who couldn't just hire an army to do the fighting for him.

In XP=XP, the finish line is undergoing the experience (hint - they are called "Experience points"). A level 15 Druid has seen some shit; he didn't just come across a treasure vault and suddenly gain new spells and abilities. A level 12 Fighter has wrestled with some serious foes; he didn't kill a single foe who happened to be fabulously wealthy.
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I see where you are coming from here, but I think you are making some errors in your thinking. None of the players with which I play view XP as the 'finish line.' Most players don't. I certainly don't when I play. Getting XP is super fun and having a session where you get very little XP can be irritating, especially if you don't know why you didn't get much. But in the end, XP is just the gas your PC needs to accomplish whatever their objectives are. If I have a character that survives more than a few sessions, I always come up with some wacky scheme for them to pursue in the long run, for which XP is just the thing that helps them accomplish that goal.

Also, keep in mind that NPCs shouldn't follow the same rules as players. It's irrelevant how a level 15 druid NPC got to level 15, and he doesn't necessarily have to be a millionaire. A level 12 warrior NPC doesn't necesarily have to have an army. However, a level 15 PC druid probably spent lots and lots of money on his fancy garden or nature preserve and is quite pleased with his accompishments. A level 12 warrior PC should have an army unless he lost it doing something stupid.

Also, the game is more fun as a player if you know what you are getting XP for.

With that said, let me share my experience with different XP systems.

I've been DMing for about 5 years and I've used three systems for XP. The first system was not keeping track of XP and then leveling up the characters when I felt necessary. This is good if you are a total beginner and you are running Lost Mine of Phlandelver or something. This system also works very well if you have an episodic campaign where you switch DMs every few sessions, but other than that, it sucks and it has we don't need to go into that.

The current system I use is what you call XP=XP. At the end of each session, we do a quick recap of the session, during which I award XP. We currently play DCC so the experience points in the examples below much lower than traditional DnD. I award them 1-4 XP per based on three main things: risks, treasure and goals (sometimes knowledge too).

For risks, the bigger the risk, the more XP they get. If a PC actually dies, the survivors usually get the full 4 XP.

For treasure, If they find a hoard of treasure, they get the full 4 XP. If they find bits and pieces of valuable treasure here or there, then they get XP for that too, but not the full 4. This is on top of risk. So, if they sneak into a dangerous dragon's lair, find their way to the hoard, fill their pockets, and then craftily bounce, 8XP.

As far as the goals go, they either come from me (the DM) or the players themselves, and I award XP based on how well or how close they came to accomplishing a goal. For example, if Granny (an NPC) asked the party to save some asshole child who got kidnapped by gnomes, and they succeed, they get 4 XP. But if they only found some clue as to where the child was, then 1 or 2 XP. If they made up their own goals, then I give them XP based on how well I think they did on those goals. For example, if their goal is recruiting more cult members, then they might get 1 XP for a handful of villagers, but 4 XP for converting the local warlord and his warriors. Again, this is all on top of how big the risk was. So, if they negotiated through a 3rd-party to have the aforementioned asshole child released by the gnomes, then no XP for the risk, but 4xp total. If they launched a full on surprise attack of the gnome warrens without scouting it out and one of the PCs is killed, 4XP for that, plus an additional 4XP if they managed to save the kid.

Here and there, I might award for other things too, such as getting a valuable or interesting piece of knowledge, or making some particularly interesting choices in role-playing, but this doesn't happen every session and it's usually a small amount of experience.

This system works well enough for my group, and incentivizes the type of play I like DMing. I haven't explicitly told the players this is how I am awarding them XP, but I think they sort of get it, and they really seem to like it.

However, I have run a few games with GP=XP and I was blown away how it changed the game for the better. First and most importantly, it gives you an objective measure of how well the party did (rather than just how the judge felt about it.) This makes getting XP a lot more rewarding, and not just feel like a byproduct of showing up to play. Second, it incentivizes the players to take risks and look for secrets, since gold is usually well protected or stashed in weird places, thus encouraging your players too try to explore for all of the content you prepped. Third, it generally de-incentivizes combat and hunting down the 'BBEG'. I love tactical combat, but one or two battles per session is more than enough for me. The concept of the 'BBEG' that is omnipresent in mainstream DnD also really gets on my nerves. Finally, if you implement the Dave Arneson rule ( GP≠XP, but rather GP spent=XP), it incentivizes the players to take ownership of the world they are in, which is what drives long-running campaigns forward.

Yes, Gold=XP might make the game more about profit and it might make certain types of hooks harder to convince the PCs to take (like helping some crusty farmer, or investigating a series of dissaperances) but these problems are fairly easy to mitigate and you get a lot of benefits that no other XP system can offer you. Having the players know how to get experience points makes the game significantly better (in my opinion), and GP=XP is the cleanest form of that. (Monsters killed=XP being the worst, but that is for the adventure leagues goobers)

The only reason I don't do GP=XP, is because last time I asked my players about it, they said they would rather do what the DCC rule-book says which is '1-4XP per accomplishment in a session.'

Bunch of rule-following squares, really.

I should edit this before I post a giant block of text that nobody will ready but fuck it, I am late for work.
 
squeen said:
I would like to suggest that if your players are pursuing their own non-monetary goals (and achieving them), then that is reward enough without XP. (...and signs of a healthy campaign!).
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Yes, and it is something to be encouraged. Which is why you don't want a systemic discouragement of doing so by forcing them to choose between their goals and advancement.
 
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