An Alternate XP System Suitable for Many RPGs

Courtesy of TT forum member hellibrarian comes this tight, simple alternate XP system — I have to give this a try!

I’ve been making the non-combat stuff in my Star Wars d20 game as important as the combat. When I come up with the plot of the adventure/mission I usually create one long or hard enough that if the players hit everything they get enough xp for someone of the group’s average level to go up one level. Then I make half of the xp dependant on non-combat plot points, some are really easy: like taking the bait, some not so much: like not killing the attacking Sith Alchemy mutated children they came to save.

If they are in a hack-n-slash mode of play they will miss out on up to half the xp. They are well aware of this system. I have a pile of black poker chips I use as a physical representation of these plot points. When they see me take a chip from my pile and put it in theirs. At the end of the mission I can easily count up the chips in their pile and give the players their xp right them.

This may be harder to do if you are using adventures someone else wrote.

Don’t miss the rest of the thread, either: Alternate experience reward system for D&D?. hellibrarian’s system gets tweaked, other options are suggested and, despite the title, much of it is applicable to non-d20 RPGs as well.

Apart from its portability, what I especially like about hellibrarian’s system is that it shows your players what’s out there for them to earn (”We have to explore this warehouse — we might miss out on a chip!”), gives them a “personal best” to shoot for and signals how important the adventure is to the current story arc or to the campaign as a whole (”Wait, tonight’s pile is 20 chips, and it’s usually only 10…”). Nice work, HL!

What XP is Really For

Continuing to steal liberally from the excellent discussion in the comments on Never Penalize Players for Bringing in a New PC, this comment about XP by TT reader Brian is the smartest thing I’ve ever heard on this topic:

“XP rewards the player, not the character[.]“

I’ve never thought about experience points and other PC-advancement rewards in that way before, and it’s absolutely correct. It’s so simple and so obvious, but I’ve been gaming for nearly 20 years and I’ve never come across this piece of advice.

You might have read Brian’s comment and thought, “Right, I know that.” If so, props to you for recognizing something that, the more I think about it, colors all sorts of aspects of gaming as a hobby. One GM’s obvious thing is another GM’s forehead-smacking bolt from the blue, though, so I wanted to bring this one to the foreground.

You Might Be Running the Wrong RPG If…

Commenting on yesterday’s post about not penalizing players for replacing their PCs, TT reader Frank Filz said something that made a light bulb go in my head:

So I guess in the end, I’d suggest that if the issue of how much XP to give replacement PCs is important, and there is a feeling of need to not penalize replacement PCs, then perhaps the game system in use is not the ideal choice for the type of play.

What clicked for me is how this issue, minor though it might be, ties into my increasing dissatisfaction with D&D-flavored d20 as a rules set. In other words, despite running and playing d20 games almost exclusively since 3rd Edition came out, it might not be the right game for me as a GM.

That got me to thinking about what other road signs and warning flags like this are out there — things that you don’t notice because you’re too close to them, but that (like all good revelations) seem obvious and accurate once they’ve been pointed out to you.

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Never Penalize Players for Bringing in a New PC

When a PC dies or is otherwise removed from play, some GMs require that replacement PCs start out less powerful or capable than the rest of the party. This is a terrible idea.

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What a Killer One-Shot Looks Like as a Player

In lieu of one of our regular Saturday night campaigns, one my group’s GMs ran a Star Trek one-shot for myself and one other player this past weekend. It was a blast.

After the game, I looked back at Nine Steps to Help You Run a Great One-Shot Adventure and noticed that three of those steps were more obvious from a player’s perspective than others.

There were also three things that didn’t make my list of nine steps, but that stood out in sharp relief from the other side of the screen.

That gives us six elements of a successful one-shot to examine — let’s get to it.

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First WoAdWriMo Adventure Completed!

Congratulations to Peter Seckler for being the first person to complete the first ever Worldwide Adventure Writing Month challenge! Peter finished his scenario, The Maze of Cherno, a D&D 3.5e adventure for low-level PCs, with 13 days to spare — no mean feat. I’ve added “The Maze” to the WoAdWriMo Adventure Downloads section here on TT.

The intro to Peter’s adventure opens with:

“The dwarven elementalist Cherno was always known as an unconventional innovator and genius. His obsession with precious metals and mining lead him to make fantastic journeys to mines across the known world.. and beyond. Late in life, he began to explore the Elemental Plane of Earth, where he was rumored to have forged strange alliances with great elemental lords.”

It kicks off with a dungeon profile, detailing basic dungeon features and offering some brief advice for GMs, and then gets right down to an old-school, multi-level dungeon crawl that looks like it would be a lot of fun to play through. And, of course, it’s completely free for you to use with your group.

Nice work, Peter! I hope this provides some inspiration for others who are taking the WoAdWriMo challenge — you can do it, and you still have plenty of time to finish your creation.

Preserving a Sense of Mystery About Your Games

My group is light one member tonight, so one of our GMs, Don, is running a one shot for myself and one other player. He won’t tell us what it’s going to be, and I love that — it’s a totally appropriate level of mystery for a one-shot. It piques my interest and makes me wonder what we’re going to play, and those are both good things.

But what about for a more traditional multi-adventure campaign? I’d argue that maintaining at least some mystery about what’s going to happen is absolutely vital, and probably preferred by almost 100% of players. How much mystery is appropriate, though?

Take character creation, for example. That’s not an area where you want any mystery at all for a long-term game: your players should know exactly what to expect, and you should help them create PCs that will be fun to play.

When it comes to plots and story arcs, though, things can get a bit muddier. Take secrecy too far in one direction, and your players will spend all their time flailing around, trying to find the storyline (which will only fall into their flashlight beam at random). Too far in the other direction, and it’s like accidentally seeing a movie spoiler when you’re not into spoilers: not much fun at all.

How do you find that balance? And where’s the line for your group?

Crimes as Plots or Premises

Ben Robbins, author of ars ludi, has an excellent post up about the two ways you can use crimes in your adventures.

Specifically, it’s about the difference between crimes as plots, where the whole scenario revolves around the crime, and crimes as premises — an excuse to do something cool, but not the basis for the whole adventure.

That’s a great difference to highlight, and it’s not one I’ve ever thought about before. Ben also provides some good advice about telling the difference between the two variations, and on making both of them work for you. Good stuff, as always.

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