Muster: a friendly primer to old school D&D
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The1True
My my my, we just loooove to hear ourselves don't we?
Pixel-bitching is what kills it for me. It kills it for everyone but the Thief, really. I've been trying to beat it out of them by cutting back on reasons to do it (arbitrary traps mostly). But they've been rewarded for it for so long, it's hard for them to stop doing it.
Grindy procedures and combat are a definite cause of DM burnout for me.
Two orcs
Officially better than you, according to PoN
XP is awarded when the players return to civilization with their loot and kills, or when they perform downtime activities such as lording over their domain, crafting magic items, or treating wealthy patients.
When running D&D usually I award it on the spot, before or after an encounter. (I like before because it telegraphs difficulty, but sometimes I forget.) I split combat XP among characters proportionate to level or CR (rounding up to 1, e.g. a bunch of CR 1/8 guard dogs or CR 1/4 animated skeletons consume the same share of XP as level 1 (N)PCs).
I've also experimented instead with awarding XP proportionate to damage dealt by or to that particular monster, in order to reward melee fighters for being punching bags. I liked what that did to the psychological dynamics of playing a meatshield vs. a summoner; but the bookkeeping was infeasibly slow at my current level of tooling.
I have in the past allowed PCs to earn additional XP by fulfilling player-chosen archetypes, e.g. a player who chooses to pursue Greed would get a major XP award (IIRC 20% of a level advancement for her/his current level) for achieving a major Greed acquisition, like ending the adventure with a new major magic item (Staff of the Magi, Ring of Commanding Air Elementals, Vorpal Sword--anything significantly more exciting than a Sword +1). In this case the evaluation and award happens at the end of the adventure, and the player keeps all the bonus XP; it is not split.
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The1True
My my my, we just loooove to hear ourselves don't we?
Do you tell them what they earned XP for?
The1True
My my my, we just loooove to hear ourselves don't we?
I assume you have the XP values precalculated like in the old MM's or the Pathfinder Bestiaries? Otherwise calculating XP on the fly has got to be a hassle?
It's an odd dilemma, isn't it? Because repetitive-but-rewarding low-risk work isn't necessarily unfun to do, but it's unfun to supervise or spectate.
In the past I've dealt with this through pacing (skipping ahead to the next interesting decision), and I suspect that might work in the traps case too. Sure, players will suspect something is up when you say "three corridors later, you are still carefully feeling for tripwires before every step when you spot a stairway ahead of you, going up. What do you do?" They'll probably triple-check for tripwires again here. But that seems fine. All you've done is skip over a bunch of paranoid checks that didn't matter.
I guess it matters if checking for tripwires has other side effects, like expending resources like time or ten-foot poles. Is that why you can't skip over it?
It's not too bad to figure out the total, but calculating the split can be more of a hassle. Since my goal is for transparency in why XP was earned, I may just say "the party collectively earns 5300 XP now" because that's enough to show why they earned it. It doesn't matter to me when they actually split it up and increment the number on their character sheet, especially since they don't go up any levels until downtime happens.
Sometimes I calculate the XP split for them, and yes, that can be a hassle, so I do that when I'm waiting for the players to finish a discussion among themselves or make a decision. "Oh yeah, you guys earned 4000 XP from the nopes. 850 XP to Gragmor, 200 to Isabella, [etc.]" Yes it can be a hassle, which is one reason I'm always working on my tooling.
But the fundamental work of determining total XP for e.g. three Fire Giants and a Mind Flayer is not a hassle. I can usually do that in my head. 3*5000 + 2900 = 17,900 XP. Done.
(Also it's not like players would complain if I award 20,000 XP instead of 17,900. Rounding up is not a sin! Therefore, for customized monsters like enemy wizards or spellcasting dragons I just add a generous chunk of XP to the base monster XP award. This is especially great if I remember to give XP in advance--if you're in a dungeon and a sarcophagus opens and the DM (me) suddenly awards the party 18,000 XP, be afraid!)
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Beoric
8, 8, I forget what is for
Yeah, I use macros in my VTT to do a lot of the work during combat (rolling, determining whether attacks hit, calculating attack rolls and damage including any resistances and vulnerabilities, tracking conditions), so I can think about how the combatants I am controlling react as NPCs. I don't have a good VTT framework for 5e, which does decrease my enjoyment.
I calculate XPs between sessions, and usually award it then as well. I find if you award it in the middle of a session, it not only disrupts the flow of the game, but if anyone levels you have basically lost their attention until they have resolved any resulting changes on their character sheet. Not an issue in 1e, but definitely an issue in 4e. The math is also a bit more onerous because I am converting a combat =XP system to a goals (usually GP) = XP system.
I do tell them what the XP was for, though - how much for combat, how much for treasure, how much for other goals achieved.
I appreciate the theory behind awarding it when treasure is taken back to town, and do this sometimes, but a lot of the time its ends not being practical/relevant. Like, if they go to town in the middle of a session, they won't get XP until the session breaks.
Two orcs
Officially better than you, according to PoN
Yes! We calculate the treasure haul so it can be either sold or sequestered or put in the "identify later" pile so they know exactly how much they get from treasure and from monsters (though not which exact monster gave what). The decision to sell or keep magic loot in ACKS is important, you only get XP for sold (and unused) items, they are usually worth a lot to the point where selling them is diffucult. There are sliding breakpoints in the campaign where you stop selling potions of healing (500gp) and start saving them for their utility, or when you start selling weapons+1 (5,000gp) instead of keeping them because everyone is already equipped.
I rarely award other XP but sometimes I give a bonus for fulfilling certain selfish goals. Recently the were scammed by the giant troll in the Hydaqueus Vaults who on top of everything spitefully broke the equipment of their wounded henchman who was resting in the "hotel". They went through a lot of trouble tracking him to his fortified hideout and had a long tense skirmish (since they headed there without rest and were low on resources) and I gave them a 20% revenge XP bonus for that excursion.
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The1True
My my my, we just loooove to hear ourselves don't we?
Wandering monster checks. Which I also loathe...
The1True
My my my, we just loooove to hear ourselves don't we?
We used to hand out XP on an individual basis, but since the majority of XP came from Bosses and Treasure, it lead to a lot of ugly (and not very immersive) competition to MKS (Made Kill Strike) and steal/hoard loot at the expense of party cooperation. We divvy it out evenly now with acting in character/performing exceptional deeds being perceived as benefiting the whole party, but it has definitely lead to a reduction in truly inspired play.
D&D socialism vs capitalism?
Can't you just roll that into the skip-ahead? Roll three wandering monster checks before you say "three corridors later," and if any of them comes up with an encounter, you instead say, "you're in the middle of the next corridor carefully checking for tripwires when you hear a soft footstep...".
I mean, since everyone but the thief hates the tedium of trap-checking, and presumably even the thief only likes it when there's an actual trap there to be found, it seems like a situation where fast-forwarding is a valid solution. Unlike easy combats, where players may be actively enjoying stuff the GM finds tedious, e.g. because it helps them work on their teamwork.
I confess, part of my motivation for that experiment was explicitly to encourage competition between players, partly in hopes of entertaining the DM by baiting players into high-risk, high-reward actions like wandering off alone and opening a sarcophagus without others present, in hopes of getting ahead. (I had also been reading the book Characteristics of Games and thinking about its observations on the problems with cooperative games with one big team, vs. race games where players have individual goals. E.g. cooperative games are more prone to player resentment of other players who make bad decisions, or conversely of one player making the decisions for all players. Supporting fine-I'll-do-it-myself as a play mode was intended to increase individual player freedom as well as GM amusement, but as I said it ran into issues with bookkeeping slowdown and I shelved the experiment for now.)We used to hand out XP on an individual basis, but since the majority of XP came from Bosses and Treasure, it lead to a lot of ugly (and not very immersive) competition to MKS (Made Kill Strike) and steal/hoard loot at the expense of party cooperation. We divvy it out evenly now with acting in character/performing exceptional deeds being perceived as benefiting the whole party, but it has definitely lead to a reduction in truly inspired play.
D&D socialism vs capitalism?
The1True
My my my, we just loooove to hear ourselves don't we?
I might give this a whirl next time we're back in the dungeon. We recently completed a chunk of Barrowmaze late in the gaming evening and everyone was tired and ready to quit, but we needed to bookmark the campaign so we could set it aside and head back to the Irradiated Paradox playtest. I came up with a seat-of-the-pants formula, had them roll some dice vs my dice and allowed that they had made it back to town with all their loot having fought off a mob of lesser undead and a band of brigands in the woods at the cost of 1/3 of their original hp. That didn't kill anyone (close), so there was no further drama and we can resolve town stuff by mail and get all set up for next time.
Yeah, that seat-of-the-pants formula is how I do it too.
Speaking of Barrowmaze! I had Barrowmaze queued up as a pending adventure, and then I ran across Bryce's review of Ascent of the Leviathan and now that's my next adventure that I want to run (under the Dungeon Fantasy ruleset). But Barrowmaze is still in the queue because I've heard good things about the map and encounter key.
Beoric
8, 8, I forget what is for
Hockey metaphors:
1. The whole team gets the cup.
2. At the very least, you should recognize the assist.
Johann
*eyeroll*
Many GMs do this, but I don't think Eero is advocating this in Muster.
First, XP need to be anchored in the fiction, whether that's 1 XP for 1 gold piece or 10 XP per six-mile hex mapped etc. Hence, no rewards resting on the judgement of the game's participants (whether that's the GM deeming a course of action wise, or the players voting for the session's MVP regarding character portrayal etc.).
Secondly, XP rewards need to be set beforehand (or negotiated - that's a very interesting section of the book!), so the players can act accordingly. You can't play to win if you don't know the victory conditions.
Yeah, after reading more, I think you are right. Eero is not advocating this[1].
I wound up deeply disagreeing with much of the middle section of Eero's book (the advice is very centered on a particular rule system, in a way that is the exact opposite of what the manifesto advises! E.g. while starting at "first level" is indeed important, it's not always important for first level to equate to "barely better than an untrained civilian". What matters is that elevation above the baseline of a starting character is earned in play.). But I got a lot of value out of the first third including the manifesto, and I still intend to finish reading it to see what other value I can get out of it.
[1] I don't think many GMs do reward retreating though--I think many GMs give partial XP for a retreat, but that isn't at all the incentive I'm talking about offering. I'm talking about giving e.g. 3 bonus character points for wisely retreating from the ogre whom you have good reason to suspect of being a lich, 4 bonus points for not only spotting the disguised lich but managing to identify a mutual goals and a common ground and getting its agreement to help kill the mummy, and 0 bonus points for stupidly attacking it but managing to kill it anyway because the GM is apparently unable to roll above a 4 today. Of course if you stupidly kill it through dumb luck and claim its treasure, you may not get any bonus points for good decisions but you may still get points for achieving scenario goals like "get at least 5000 gp of treasure: 5 character points," and of course you get the treasure itself, as well as an Unkillable enemy.
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