>>92504265
Gaining levels through conditions codified in the mechanics.

>>92504265
1xp per word spoken in character
I play the tapes back after each session

>>92504299
the kicker:
>the players don't know

>>92504265
Split between gaining loot as dungeoneering incentive and successful rolls as a poor analogue of training that isn't a horrifying downtime sink

>>92504265

XP from gold AS ORIGINALLY INTENDED.

>>92504347
>AS ORIGINALLY INTENDED.
so you also do HDx100 xp then?

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XP as failed rolls is the best by far and not enough games use it.
It encourages the players to constantly engage with the world by making rolls they would normally be too reluctant to make because the chance of success is low.
also makes more sense philosophically, you only learn from your mistakes.

>>92504299
memes aside this is a good idea if you go by lines spoken in character
just keep a little tally as you’re GMing

"From solving quests". DM should have his own internal metric for what counts as a quest and how much XP each quest is worth. Ideally this is all based on fame, PCs only gain XP for things that grow their legend and cause other intelligent creatures to admire them, but you shouldn't actually say that to the players.

>>92504457
nah that’s dumb. how does getting more famous making you more agile, more mighty? unless your world runs on collective belief magic

>>92504512
You are doing improving and it is demarcated into levels by fame. Kinda obvious anon.

>>92504512
Someone who uses "DM" as the default term for referee has the level of brainrot to conflate popularity with quality, so they would base in-world power on character popularity.

>>92504520
what if ur like a class or profession for whom increase in fame means you’re doing worse at your job, like a spy?

>>92504381
What game uses failed rolls? I know they use the the opposite in BRP.

>>92504553
He said "reputation among intelligent creatures", for a spy that might be their handlers, their colleagues, or their victims.

>>92504512
>nah that’s dumb. how does getting more famous making you more agile, more mighty?
Because people think you're more agile and more mighty. Though, to be fair, the ability score increases from gaining levels are marginal, it's mostly HP boosts and higher bonuses and better magic, and HP in particular doesn't make any sort of in-world sense by itself, it isn't self-improvement or skill it's something else.

>>92504548
lol, I appreciate this post.

>>92504560
dungeon world does, it’s a good idea; too bad the rest of that game is unplayable in its vanilla state
idk any other

>>92504265
XP for how much real world money my players pay me. My games are all pay-to-win

>>92504548
>>92504572
Yea that's part of why it needs to be fuzzy, also if you save a village and that village later gets dragonbreath'd that shouldn't cause you to lose any XP. It's not like people are consciously investing you with their belief like you're a god, it's something a bit different.

>>92504265
>XP from completing quests
This one

>>92504639
It's common in PbtA (of which Dungeon World is a terrible example in the same way it is a terrible D&D).

>>92504800
are there any pbtA games you recommend

Depends on the tone you want to set and the amount of abstraction you're content with and what you want to incentivize.

>>92504811
It's generally very genre specific.
If you want to play a monster hunting tv show, for example, then Monster of the Week is great. It nails doing stuff like Kolchak the Night Stalker, Buffy, X-files, etc.
The problem people get into with PbtA is trying to play the game to do something it wasn't designed for and it really fucking sucks when you do that. If there's a genre you are after, there's probably a PbtA that attempts it (and some of them even succeed).

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>>92504265
>none of the above
I use Milestones.

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>XP from gaining loot
>XP from spending loot
don't understand the difference here. If it's the classic "your XP from the dungeon gold doesn't count until you make it safely back to town," then this is kinda similar to XP from fame. either way, XP from loot makes the players at least willing to want to spend time checking things out, look around, etc. good things.
>XP from slaying enemies
terrible system, don't know how it ever gained popularity. doesn't encourage anything useful from the players. players will fight an enemy the GM throws at them regardless of XP, because if they don't, or even if they just try to flee, they can die.
>XP from failed rolls
this is a great one, >>92504381 explained it well. makes it so that players won't get too salty from a series of failed rolls, too, because at least they're gaining xp.
>XP from successful rolls
this is the most video-gamey one. "oh you jumped a lot, jumping increased by 10!!" kinda boring.
>XP for solving puzzles
this is good, obviously, so long as it's not the ONLY way to gain xp. depends on your players, some want puzzle and trap gauntlets. not for me.
>XP from completing quests
another great one. so long as no one at the table is brain-dead, it should be clear when a significant narrative milestone has been crossed, and it's time to level up.
>XP from amount of real-life time played
never heard of this. I can't imagine it would ever feel satisfying.
>XP from character development
This is in the same category as the xp from completing quests in that both represent strong and obviously landmark events in the character's journey.

>>92504893
>GM, can we level up yet? we've been on this road for ages!
>the next milestone is just 200 paces ahead, keep going, roll stamina

>>92504963
>just 200 paces ahead, keep going, roll stamina
>failed roll and you've run out of fatigue
>your character dies 10 paces before they would have hit level 5
>Bummer

>>92504265
XP from taking notes

XP is stupid. Advancement should occur when the group decides it's time.

>>92504949
I think the idea with spending loot (on celebration, and frivolity) is that money not spent on practical investments goes towards your level. So you decide between gear, spell research, hirelings, etc, and advancement.
>how slaying gained popularity
Probably because it was the only other significant source of XP, so when people excised GP=XP because it didn't fit heroic story arc gaming that's what they were left with.

>>92504299
Terrible idea for drama club kids.
You're also severely limiting players who choose to role play shy or non-verbal characters. Which is double PLUS wrongbad in current year.
>>92505011
You're stupid.

>>92505011
leveling up in general is handled terribly in both ttrpgs and video games. most of the time it's just an increase in damage output, health, or other combat stats, which can only lead to two outcomes:
either the enemies you encounter now have higher health/damage as well, so like, what was the point in leveling up,
or the game/GM doesn't throw harder enemies at you, and combat gradually becomes trivially easy, and where's the fun in that? any game where you're rewarded with shorter combat is basically admitting its combat was boring to begin with.
imo, levelling up should only change HOW you interact with the game. It should give you more abilities, moves, or whatever, so that the way you approach encounters/obstacles/fights becomes not easier, but different and more exciting. People like when they level up and now get more moves; no one cares that they have a couple more health points or that they hit harder with their sword.

>>92505034
you're definitely right. XP from slaying foes is such a comically broken system though.
>Hi, welcome to your first day at wizard school. no, put down those textbooks, there's no studying here. Turns out all you need to do to increase your magic power is kill things, so get ready for 12-hour days in the imp-summoning room!!

>>92505096
That's something I'd been thinking on. I'm more interested in character advancement in a game like DMC than gaining little bits of XP for misc bullshit in RPGs, or purely from combat.
Want more health? Find green orbs.
Magic? Find blue orbs
Weapons? better go Find those fuckers.
I guess you can also buy grorbs/blorbs, and you do have to buy new moves with red orbs.
Applying it a little differently, perhaps sacrifice health and/or magic upgrade items to gain new abilities rather than anything gained by killing enemies.
>>92505126
It's fine if you want to encourage hack 'n slash gaming, which is what it did, and why people switched to milestone, quest completion and XP for RP. They all incentivize something else. And gold for XP also makes little sense (unless you make the training requirements mandatory). There's nothing realistic except for actual practice.

>>92504265
>Loot
Gaining and spending loot seem like a needless split in the already workable "Gold as XP" method.
>Slaying
Slaying enemies is mostly fine, but you end up with the usual joke of "haha you see a goblin with a sign that says he's worth the exact amount of xp to level up" and that's gay.
>Failed rolls
Primarily works with a fail-forward system, otherwise players will just keep retrying and begging for more rolls
>Successful rolls
Yeah sure, why not
>puzzles and quests
Advised by most systems
>real-life time played
Useless metric
>Character development
If that's the nature of the game, but harder to quantify and can end up punishing players for things that they can't fully control.

>>92504265
XP for solving encounters whether by violence, diplomacy, trickery or something else.

>>92504265
>XP from gaining loot
This is the large majority
>XP from spending loot
Seemed like a good idea but meme in actual practice.
>XP from slaying enemies
Some, based on HD but not enough to be the mainstay.
>XP from failed rolls
We're playing D&D not AW.
>XP from successful rolls
In a roundabout way, as successful rolls likely lead to more treasure.
>XP for solving puzzles
I give 100xp for any good idea that works. Hand wavy but I've found direct tangible rewards for being smart and trying shit works out.
>XP from completing quests
Gay.
>XP from amount of real-life time played
The real xp was the friends we made along the way.
>XP from character development
Tubogay.
>Bonus
>XP for exploration
Small bonus xp for successfully mapped new areas as long as the map is decently accurate and makes it back to civilization.
>Verification not required
Even Captcha knows this is the way.

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>XP from Artifacts: found in tucked-away places or taken from powerful characters or places

I'm gonna say XP from carousing because I like saying the word carousing

>>92505413
this is just XP as loot, the only difference is you're redefining what loot is in your setting.
>>92505328
what is a fail-forward system?
>>92505215
>There's nothing realistic except for actual practice.
would you say the most realistic system then would be XP for rolls, period?
>>92505368
this is the real answer to the whole thread because it's how most GMs do it anyway, rules be damned.

>>92504265
I run D&D 3.5 in a rather generic homebrew setting and my players gain their XP from doing any of these 4 things:
1. Winning battles
2. Completing quests
3. Solving puzzles
4. Engaging in good roleplay, which to me means staying in character and participating, but without being an obnoxious cunt.
For the battles I use a CR to XP calculator and for the other stuff I just pull a number out of my ass based on how challenging I think I made things for them.
Also my players all earn XP independently, if you miss a session you miss out on XP. If you roleplay better, or solve a puzzle nobody else could solve, or if you carry the party through a battle you get more XP.

>>92504265
character progression through successfully using abilities or being trained for money / favours. That's my favourite.

>>92504265
1XP per session.

>>92505476
Not that anon, but I believe fail forward is where failing a roll still progresses the story. So rolling to investigate and not hitting the DC should stil give a result rather than just saying "you don't find anything". For example
>trying to find a leveler to open a door
>fail investigation DC
>DM might say you can't find any mechanics to open the door and you begin to hear the echoes of goblins catching up to your crew
You have to be careful as GM because a bad GM will use it as a railroad. Really, fail forward is an attempt to make sure that just because a player fails a roll doesn't mean the story grinds to a halt. Games that have this as a mechanic force the players to keep up with the changing world, which is why the failed rolls as XP works because they can't spam their rolls over and over. They can't go
>uh I'll investigate again?
Because the world state still changed even in their failure.

>>92504347
Damn, just found a dragon horde of 200,000 silver pieces. We don't get XP until we exchange it for gold and are leagues away from the nearest money changer.

>>92504265
XP from using your abilities for slow-paced campaigns (it encourages interacting with the world, social skills also count). XP from quests for fast-paced sessions

>>92504265
XP from overcoming challenges, regardless of how those challenges were overcome.

It's kind of shocking how you managed to not list the most bog standard way to give XP ever.

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>>92504378
>>so you also do HDx100 xp then?
>8HD fuckhuge monster
>8HDx100xp = 800xp
>800xp divided evenly amongst a party of 4 - 6 PCs plus retainers
If half the party gets rekt you can walk out with around 200xp.
Gold is the primary means of gaining XP.
In comparison, XP from monsters might as well be a participation trophy.

>>92504265
None of the above. Increase abilities through downtime specifically training in those abilities. Back to School.

Maybe as supplemental, a very small amount of progress in a skill every time you fail, or perhaps every time you barely succeed (getting a 15 on a DC 15).

But mostly learning through training.

>>92505034
Murder xp was negligible. 2e jacked up the combat xp and either removed gold xp or made it optional. They also took the prices off magic items. They wanted it more like a fantasy novel and less like a tomb-raiding game.

>>92504265
I liked MERP, you get exp for actually everything you do (like travelled miles) AND THEN it was group totalled and half given as reward for roleplaying and important ideas etc

>>92506627
That's about how I run things. Whether you disarmed the trap or get through the room without triggering it after discovery. Or if you convince enemies to leave instead of fighting them. In both cases you're solving the issue, just in whatever way works for you.

>>92507810
I've literally never played a game doing it any other way. Beancounting the number of killed goblins and their arbitrarily assigned levels or struggling to rationalize why gold should equal life experience or relative soul strength/power seems to incredibly asinine to me.

>>92507424
Well that's essentially what he said. Once you axed gold-to-xp, murder-to-xp took center stage, whether it used to be negligible or not.

>>92504265
Set XP values based on 'checkpoint' completion, with small amounts of bonus XP assigned for session participation and general involvement or investment in the campaign. The more active you are, the more bonus XP you receive, until the point getting 5 XP every session adds up to something more meaningful

>>92504560
Blades in the Dark does something similar - it gives you extra XP for attempting desperate rolls, i.e. trying to do things when odds are stacked against you and consequences for failing will likely be serious
Since the game is about playing as daring rogues this fits very nicely thematically and encourages roleplaying that stays true to the convention,, while also increases the probability of creating intense and memorable situations when things inevitably go very bad

>>92504265
I usually just make a more abstract estimate based on
>How long the session was
>How many important things happened on it
>How much did the PCs managed to accomplish
I feel like most of the stuff in the OP, with the exception of last 3, incentivises various kinds of shitty min-maxing and murderhobo'ying instead of just focusing on the events of the game and roleplaying. Then again, this would probably become and issue mostly with players who were shit to begin with

>>92504265
I love how ACKS does this, it allows you to earn XP through combat, looting, being a military leader, merchant, or even ruler. You even get tangible benefit from spending money improving your character's lifestyle because it converts into XP on your next character. I used to hate loot as XP because I used to find dungeoncrawls terribly boring but I realized when I played an OSR game for the first time that dungeons are boring in 3.pf onwards because you get no rewards for them and they're just combat gauntlets. Making the objective of the game about acquiring money (principally) means players never want for purpose, even at the highest levels, and provides grounded and naturally interesting conflicts over resources by the existing polities and powers of your setting.

>>92507965
He made it sound like it was significant before gold as xp was axed as the main thing. It was not a gradual change, it was a deliberate and dramatic one.

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I only play stars without number and haven't hosted a game in ages but I simply just ask them to create 2-3 goals for their character that are reasonable within the setting, will develop their arc and generally are challenging to simply gain a level. Helps me develop an interesting narrative in a sandbox as well as keep the game grounded. Hard mode is you don't get to set new goals until you complete your old ones.

>>92504265
>XP from gaining loot
And in some specific cases
>XP from slaying enemies
>XP from completing quests

>>92504560
>systems using failed rolls

Kids on Bikes rewards failed rolls with 'Adversity Tokens'. A PC can use a token to +1 a future roll of theirs or through storytelling, +1 to a fellow PCs roll.

There's also character traits (Strengths) that alow you to spend points to impact a story
>Lucky: spend 2 tokens to reroll a check
>Loyal: tokens spent to add +1 to a friend's check adds +2
>Prepared: spend 2 tokens to have any commonplace item in your back pack

It's a good system. Even if a player fails a check they get a consolation prize they can use later.

>>92504381
The one time my group played a game with this, one guy maxmined his character to fail at everything and managed to level so far ahead of the rest of the party that he was unkillable and, eventually, slightly more competent than them.

>>92504265
>>XP from gaining loot
Only works in eplicitly OSR/early D&D style campaigns
>>XP from spending loot
I'd like a system that handles this but it would pretty much have to eschew traditional character advancement and be a rags-to-riches style game
>>XP from slaying enemies
Easily can turn into disaster if mismanaged
>>XP from failed rolls
What the actual fuck
>>XP from successful rolls
Would be interesting
>>XP for solving puzzles
>>XP from completing quests
Probably the best system as long as the game isn't a complete sandbox
>>XP from amount of real-life time played
Interesting idea for a West Marches campaign
>>XP from character development
Lmao, even

>>92505096
The problem with this approach, which I’ve seen in my current game, is that you can very quickly hit the point at which a character has too many “moves” for the player to easily keep track of, which results in frustration all around. Either people feel overwhelmed by the number of options available to them and just stick rigidly to a basic action, they spend forever deciding between their options, or they make what they think is a good choice and then get annoyed when they later remember they had something better that could have avoided the mess they wound up getting into.
I don’t know that there’s a good and straightforward solution, but unbounded breadth-based character growth brings its own issues.

>>92510643
>>92505096
you're both right, these are just for different players.
XP from spending loot kinda solves this: you can choose the bigger numbers, or spend it for a new character option

>>92504265
You level when I say you level
Any other system is just an arbitrary variant thereof that I still have control over anyways, I'm just removing the middle man
Deal with it

>>92506531
not a dig to you, just reminded me how from antiquity to today, gold has always been more valuable than silver by an amount grossly underestimated in most fantasy settings. Gold is the currency that kings trade in; In ancient rome, a few silver coins could buy you a month's room and board at an inn; a few gold coins could buy the whole building

>>92510592
>XP for real time played.
I've used this in Pf1 and 5e. 1/4 of a level every 3.5h. (Round down). It worked well enough. Threw out the typical XP scale and used a simple 100xp/lv.

I gave out some bonus xp any time someone was brought below 0 because they attempted something hard (as opposed to because they did something stupid), and one or two other things but the vast majority of xp was just the flat 1/4 lv/session.

Anyways it can work well.

>>92510872
>Everything is just DM fiat! Fuck my players!
Tell me you play 5e without telling me you play 5e.

XP rules can (and should) easily be spelled out explicitly and transparently so the players can track them themselves, know what gets them levels, and know how far off they are, without any GM skullduggery to fuck them around after the campaign starts.

>>92510872
>You level when I say you level
the ultimate railroad

>>92511103
I just say "hey we're gonna level up at the end of this dungeon" or something. I could math it out so that happens, or I can just handwave it. doesn't really matter in the end.

>>92511014
never heard of someone actually doing this; cool to see someone in favor of it.

what kind of table were you doing that with? like what age range/ free time range?

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>>92510643
>>92505096
>>92507391
>>92505215
This is why I go with the real solution to this thread:
LEVELING is bad. Don't do it.
REBALANCING is good.
Every 5-6 sessions (or upon reaching "milestones'") I just rebalance the game. I'll give players new abilities / magic items, but also remove things that aren't helping play.
For some stats, I buff, for others, I nerf. You balance each character based on what's best for the party.
If a player has been getting jaded by one-hit-killing enemies that take the other party members 3 rounds to take down, nerf that player's damage.
If a player has been getting more into RPing but always lets other players do CHA rolls because their own character has a shitty CHA stat, buff it.
Max HP is something I rarely touch bc that's the easiest thing to balance early on.
People who knee-jerk in thinking this is a bad system likely have players who don't trust them, either because the players are brats or the GM is not diligent.
My players trust me to make changes that make playing the game more fun & know they can always talk with me & the other players about specific changes they want to see during the next rebalancing.
>>92510561
I do something tangentially similar to this when I have to run 5e. To make well-rounded characters, you want character to have flaws. But there's no incentive to act out flaws if it hurts the party's goals.
So I have a system where, instead of the normal Inspiration mechanics, players gain Inspiration by "taking a setback", which means voluntarily rolling with disadvantage on something they think their character would be bad at (my character gets nervous interacting with higher-class people, mine doesn't do well in the heat, mine has bad ranged aim bc of their one eye, etc).
The players who take a setback get an Inspiration point to use on something their character actually excels at later, and the other players aren't mad at them for intentionally throwing a roll for the sake of RPing.

>>92510965
Colonial gold mines in Africa and South America really did a number on the value of European gold.

>>92504870
Fucking this. PbtA was never intended to create generic systems for traditional gameplay loops. It's all about genre emulation, which is why the Moves are all things characters in the given genre might do in a movie or TV show, and why it's all about failing forward, and why "death" usually leads to changes instead of being "written out."
But people try to run MOTW like D&D and then decide it's a bad system.

>>92511533
>setback
stealing this

>>92511014
>1/4 of a level every 3.5h
Jesus, that’s fast. My level 13 party would be something like level 22 under those rules.

>>92511535
on the contrary, while both metals were subject to inflation, it's silver that had it worse. spanish flooded the world markets with so much silver; I mean we literally have Argentina (silver land) and the rio de la plata (Silver River); tons of examples of "gold rushes" causing mass influx of people but financially eclipsed by much more profitable silver rushes (compare the colorado gold rush to the subsequent silver rush in terms of actual ore extracted).
In the modern day, Gold is even MORE valuable compared to silver than it was in most places in antiquity and the middle ages.
Of course all of this depends on location and supply. For hundreds of years in ancient egypt silver was worth more than gold because it was more rare, before the big silver mining locations of the ancient world took off.
Don't forget, too, that in the bronze age you could "mine" copper by walking along most mediterranean beaches and simply picking up chunks of unprocessed copper ore. That got picked clean within a few hundred years.
>>92511535
>"death" usually leads to changes instead of being "written out."
what do you mean by this? do PbtA characters usually not die, they just reach 0 HP and then decide to peace out?

>>92511561
please do; I recommend it to everyone because it has such a massive "fun increased: changes made" ratio.

>>92511582
NTA but for a game like D&D the standard is pretty close to that.
Take a classic module like Curse of Strahd; the players are expected to enter the game at Level 1 and finish up in 16-20 sessions at Level 10.
that's means they expect you to be leveling your character every two sessions.
it's wild.

>>92511801
>finish up in 16-20 sessions
What in the fuck? My current campaign has been going for 36 sessions, and there’s still a bit of ground to cover. How the fuck are you having an adventure that quickly?

>>92511197
>I could tell them when they level but I would will just be doing it by my whims mid campaign so it doesn't matter.
I mean. They would know how long they have to wait. That matters a bit.

But it would matter much more if they got to actually decide what they did. Which, they should be able to do. Decide which missions to undertake, which dungeons to explore, who to fight, etc.

Then you either tell them the things that get exp to encourage particular styles of play without coercing them (like OSR goal for xp encourages looting), or you give them a level every X hours of gameplay / every X sessions regardless and let them do whatever they decide to do or a mix of both.

There are options besides capricious GM fuckery (much better options), often codified in other games as the default - even if a lot of 5e players don't seem to realize they exist.

Hence, "tell me you only play 5e without telling me you play 5e".

>>92511224
1-2 sessions a month usually at 4-5 hours each. Actually it wasn't 3.5h, it was 3.25. The idea was so if a session ran 6.5h (occasionally happened) it counted as 2 sessions xp.

I was... 32, and the other guys were 29 and 30.

It was a sandbox campaign both times. I basically always run sandboxes. I like to be surprised by what the players choose to do, and with a railroad you have nothing to work with if they don't follow the script.

I'm putting together a new sandbox game at the moment. This time it's going to be using a 3.x d20 kitbash (with Eclipse) using adapted training and education rules from GURPS, so learning stuff will take downtime and money rather than xp. I want a slower advancement without stagnancy, to keep the game more centred more around a particular power level (maybe around level 8 or so). So rather than levels I'll let them individually learn skills and feats and class features, and downtime will be a thing. Managing a settler outpost, building stuff, maybe some monster ranching - well see. But the campaign side of prep is all flexible assets. Factions with goals, wandering monsters, maps, reusable characters, a weather generator, missions and a mission generator for a job board, rumors, secrets, NPC vs NPC conflicts for the PCs to meddle in, etc.

1gp = 1xp.
For any halfway competent DM this allows you to fine tune the advancement of your PCs while also incentivizing the type of content you want your PCs to engage with.
You don't want to play with murder hobos? most creatures don't carry gold. You want to play wilderness exploration? There's a PC in town who will pay for maps of newly discovered locations. You want players to follow quests? NPCs pay good money for the quest. You want to play a dungeon crawler? Put big piles of gold in dungeons. You want an open world sandbox? Do all of the above.

>>92511582
Typical levelling speed in 3e/PF1/5e if you're running as much combat as they recommend each session works out to an average of ~3 sessions a level or so (with 5e doing the first couple levels faster). I went to 4 because I wanted a slower pace than that default. That said, I agree it was still a bit too fast for me, and am doing it slower (and more gradual) for the next one.

>>92511864
How long are your sessions? You get a lot more done in a 5-6h session than a 2-3h session.

>>92511733
Its a good system, i did something similar to it when i ran a TMNT road hogs campaign (mad max style post apocalypse with mutant animals) for my kids.
I used a couple of tables for character flaws from a Dark future article in an old white dwarf magazine (WD 124 if anyones interested) and it turned out interesting.
My oldest sons goose character had a vanity flaw where he had to save all his money to buy a bespoke $10,000 suit.
My youngest sons mole gunslinger had the Trigger-happy flaw where he had to shoot any enemy he could, stealth be damned. And my daughters armadillo driver rolled the Heavy-footed flaw whereby she couldn't help but floor the accelerator
They all played it well and i awarded them more xp for good role-playing.
Its definitely a system that ive considered transferring to other games that i run.

>>92511864
uhhh huh okay maybe i'm wrong & my group just goes fast. We use a LOT of timers and the GM makes things really time-sensitive.
In combat you only get 10 seconds (timed) to say what you're going to do, lest your turn gets skipped.
similarly for any non-combat obstacles.
The GM presents a problem and if it takes longer for the party to do something within 15 seconds of discussion, the situation gets more dire.
take too long?
>snowstorms in the mountain pass get worse.
>NPCs consider you either simple-minded or suspicious.
>The person you're interrogating makes a break for it.
>the puzzle-mechanism now activates a trap component.

My group has moved beyond XP systems. We play a different one-shot each time. Respec'ing between adventures is fine, upgrading your character doesn't cost anything, it's done at the GM's discretion. i.e. player says what he wants to improve, and as long as everyone is being reasonable about it, anything goes.

>>92511693
Re: metals, I'll take your word on it, though IIRC Argentina was named with more optimism than evidence.
Re: death in pbta, not exactly. What often happens is that when you reach 0 hp, you suffer some trauma and transform or diminish in some way, but show up again after a period of recovery. Definitely depends on the specific system, though.

>>92511957
This does take altruism off the table, though. Saving orphans and challenging the mighty tyrant are both loss-making enterprises (unless you install yourself as the new tyrant... or sell off the orphans yourself).

>>92511914
Players will optimise the fun out of any XP system, including wasting session time to level up when they want to, but there's no way for them to ruin "I'll level you up when I've had a good time AND I'm ready in my prep for the next level's abilities and monsters."

>>92512711
I ran a game where HP was replaced by "posture points" and it worked like this:
Every "hit" you take to your posture represents some effect that has no appreciable injury on you, either because it was a near miss, “wearing down your luck” or simply a blow that does no damage “sword bouncing off a dragon’s scales”
When you are in the bottom 25% of your posture points, your luck starts to wear thin. Now, narratively, you receive injuries, (“the injury zone”) but while they may cause some scars, these are not permanent injuries. these are things a typical action hero would still walk away from no problem. blows to the head, shallow slashes on the chest or cheek, minor burns to the hands.
In the injury zone, many NPCs are expected to change their behavior. They now will roll to flee, negotiate, surrender, or enter a state of adrenaline-fueled desperation and strike harder than before.
However, your posture finally breaks when you reach 0 posture points. This is when your luck truly runs out. Now, any damage dealt against you will most likely kill you, and if it doesn’t, it will impart a significant, long-lasting injury.
When damage against you drops below 0 posture points, you enter negative points. When you enter negative points, you must make a saving throw.
if you fail, you die.
if you succeed, you are struck with a grievous, impactful injury. This can include losing a limb, an eye, a tongue, or something similar.
The DC of this Saving throw is the absolute value of your (currently negative) posture points. You roll 10% of your max posture points, rounded to the nearest whole number, plus 1d20.
So say you were brought down to -9 Posture, & your max posture points happen to be 30.
10% of 30 = 3.
So you roll 1d20 + 3 as your saving throw.
If the results are below 9, you die.
If you roll 9 or above, you are left with a permanent, devastating injury.

XP per time spent adventuring. 1x during overland hex crawl, 10x during dungeon crawl, 100x during combat encounters. No xp gain in civilization unless party chooses to spend time training (1x) or if they have combat encounters or what not.

>EXP is posted on the quest, which you get immediately after the session regardless of success
this method is too successful for me, now I have 7+ people trying to get into every session and asking for multiple midweek sessions

>>92504560
Torchbearer levels skills by failing and succeeding at it the required number of times.

>>92512739
You have a point with the orphans. However the tyrant surely has a treasure room that could be looted.

I want to try xp for rooms/hexes explored, with a bonus for secret areas/doors/features and portals to deeper reaches. And a multiplier for multiple areas per delve.

>>92513374
The principle purpose of castles is to cost more to assault than the conqueror could stand to gain by doing so.

>>92512739
Money spent is still earned. I'm sure you could have a value calculated for your deeds.

>>92504265
Reminder that a 'milestone' system where you gain XP whenever the GM decrees it, you don't actually have a system; you have an admission your system is broken.

>>92514191
Spending money doesn't remove the XP.
In case you're unaware the XP is earned upon bringing the gold back to a safe zone (read: town). Once you've earned the XP it's yours to keep, even if (when) you spend all the gold.
That being said, a system where you loose the XP when you spend the gold could create interesting situations when deciding if it's worth it to spend gold to buy magic items or whatever. But that's not what anybody is talking about when they say gold=XP.

>>92512918
I've been pondering doing something similar built roughly around the wounds & vitality subsystem, where only a couple of hit dice would be the players durability, and everything beyond that will be either luck based, or as explicitly magical defenses - which would be cheaper because you'd lose them in an anti magic field.

Might let people buy explicitly magical enhancements to their real durability too though. We'll see.

>>92513068
>get into every session.
Is it a west marches drop in game? I'm interested in hearing more about this setup and why it: s so well liked.

>>92516377
can you explain that differently; i'm not understanding what you mean.

>>92516492
There's a somewhat similar variant rule in Unearthed Arcana for 3.5. Yours is a bit different, but the broad strokes are similar.

https://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/vitalityAndWoundPoints.htm

I've been thinking about starting from that, and the armour as DR rule (maybe the d20 Conan variant), and tweaking the death by massive damage rule, maybe add on the one I've seen with wound penalties.

>>92504265
XP from slaying enemies, of course.
Because XP stands for eXecution Points, an indicator of how bloodthirsty and violence-prone the character becomes. The more XP you have, the bigger your penalties to the saving throw against not killing everyone in the room.

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>>92512739
If anything it makes the altruism more sincere. You know you might gain nothing by saving those orphans, but you do it because it's right.
>waahhh I need a reward
Silence, neutralfag.

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>>92516866
Bravo Toby

>>92516831
oh this is pretty cool.

I like the BoL health recovery system, too.
character only have like 10-13 max HP to start and it’s a system where 2-3 good hits can kill you
but anyway after combat, if you’ve had time to catch your breath, assess things, etc, you instantly earn back 1/2 of the HP you lost in combat (interpreted as “guess it ain’t as bad as I thought it was)
then after that you recover 1 hit point a day, unless someone with medical skills treats you, and then you get an additional healing of 1+ their medical career stat.
so a character who starts with 11 HP and gets down to 3 in combat (they lost 8 points)
after combat, takes a short rest, instantly goes back to 7 HP
next morning wakes up at 8 HP
next morning would wake up with 9 HP but they were tended to by someone with a +1 in Physician the previous day, so they wake up with their max HP again.

>>92516386
It's beloved because you can play when your schedule allows, usually anyone in the game can guest-DM, You're never stuck with the same party, there's a ton of autonomy for your PCs, and it's almost impossible for a westmarches game to grind to a halt because of one or two flakes

>>92517202
I'm familiar with the basic premise of west marches. I was asking what your particular setup was and which parts your players really responded to. I've never met anyone who has actually run a west marches game before, so I'm curious how to do it well.

>>92513068
Gold as XP already solved this though, which is how West Marches is intended to be played. Gold as XP also makes the player parties more dynamic since completing a dungeon and getting all the loot are two different subjects so players will naturally grow at slightly different rates, creating an actual incentive for characters with different classes/skillsets to set up parties for different tasks organically.

>>92516920
3.x/PF1 has a reputation for the build autism that can be a thing in it (doesn't have to be), but it's got much more fleshed out and functional mechanics than 5e, and has more compatible content - including stuff that significantly changes how gameplay feels - than any other system. The only game that comes close is GURPS, and while I like GURPS, it's generally more work to get going, and people are also generally already familiar with either 3.5, PF1, or 5e, so the basic mechanics are already familiar.

From various more gritty combat systems and hp variants, to kingdom management, running or being a member of a business or gang or guild, investing, construction of buildings and castles, possession, poisons diseases drugs and curses, warfare, running a country, golem making, transfiguration into any monster you want, playable monsters, fully point buy character building a la GURPS, chases, exploration an dwilderness survival stuff, hunting and fishing minigames - and I know 5e has *some* of that stuff, but 5e's basic math and design is fucked, and it has a lot less of this stuff thanks to its general fear of having game mechanics you might want to actually use.

Outside D&D I lean towards games with a lot less hit points, and usually no character levels.

>>92517281
Not that guy but I've actually run a west marches before. Our setup was about 30PCs and 2 DMs. We have a discord where players can RP and handle downtime stuff. On the discord players can submit session requests. It's usually something simple like "explore that dungeon we found in the forest" or "map the wilderness to the west of that forest" other players can then vote on which ideas they want to participate in. Each week the DMs select a session request with at least 4 votes and post availability, the player who posted the request gets to select which time slot to play in (within the DMs availability window). Then other players can sign up for the session on a first come first serve basis.
The players responded really well and it allows different people to buy in at different levels. I have one player who submits 2 or 3 session requests each week and is constantly involved in anything he can be, while some other players only join one session a month and don't even submit downtime activities.
At first we had a 1 PC per player rule, but as the level spread grew wider we allowed players to create alts because at one point we had one player at level 11 and the second highest was 9. Everybody else was 7 and lower. That made it quite difficult for the high levels to participate without dominating everything.

>>92517455
> Levels
I play west marches, we use milestones levelling.
Feels more natural than mixed level parties.

Dess is a faggot btw

>>92517455
Interesting. You should be able to do a west marches type thing without using BX / White box / AD&D, right? Like, if I like d20 Conan, for instance? And maybe bolt on some wilderness exploration shit designed for 3.0/3.5/PF1?

>>92517486
Mixed level parties are an intended feature of West Marches. The entire idea of West Marches is that not everyone in the group will be able to play, and those that can commit to playing more or have in-demand characters (like healers) that other players will schedule around are rewarded.

>>92504265
>XP from completing quests
This one. It keeps the game focused.

>>92517486
I considered having everybody level at the same rate via milestone (or a shared XP system) but decided against it because I have some inexperienced players who don't play often, and I didn't want the situation where they play one session at level 3 then show up a month and a half later to another session and suddenly they're level 5.

>>92504265
Class-based/skill-use-based XP
As an OSR player I do love XP for gold (with some for defeating monsters too)

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My recently finished 5e campaign ran by milestone, but in practice it was more or less a regular ~1/6 per session (~4 hours). Because I'm a nerd I even graphed it.

In previous 5e campaign we did do a strict XP-by-playtime metric. You got 1/3 of a level each session you attended, and 1/4 of a level for each you missed. Kept things relatively at-pace but rewarded dedication (we were running something akin to a westmarch, but on a smaller scale). Everything else is just whatever the system recommended: encounters for PF2e, milestone for VtM v5 and Numenera, gold for Esoteric Enterprises.

Overall, I found XP-for-gold unsatisfactory, but it was primarily because our GM didn't really give us much opportunity to actually get gold of our own free will in the campaign; it was always sitting at the bottom of a dungeon, rather than spread out in a way that encourages testing your luck for that little extra. PF2e is very numerical and rewards non-combat successes too, but ultimately it's just 'earn XP for actually engaging with the table' and feels very gamey. Milestone is meh; it more often than not in my experience it just leads to rapid powerscaling rather than something actually structured off story-beats.

Ultimately, as much as people talk about reward mechanisms, the humans around the table get an intrinsic reward by playing the game—something they'd probably do regardless of character progression. If that game is about collecting loot, saving damsels, or whatever, then an XP system that rewards that doesn't really do anything beyond create a steady flow of XP, because the players WOULD be doing that anyway. Honestly I've kinda been turned off the idea of XP-as-powerscaling in general as a result. The increased size of my damage dice doesn't really represent anything of my character when it occurs in a vacuum; it's pure mechanics. I could do without it.

>>92517711
Agreed. Part of why I'm leaning towards only downtime training. Improve when they make a concerted effort to do so, stagnation when they stay in the comfort zone of their existing abilities. Should also make for a less drastic / rapid power level increase.

I've wondered about having some open charcters. PCs that can be claimed by anyone to fill a role, or in between if thwor character dies.

>>92517763
Yeah, downtime makes sense for newly learnt abilities, but it doesn't match very easily with the typical high-drama adventure where everything happens at once.

A possible solution is to tie rewards to something purely external: equipment. In fantasy, magic items are common, and in sci-fi you can always concoct sillier tech. Numenera makes most magic items consumable by default, and encourages you to use them quickly, so you can very easily cycle towards a higher baseline power. For modern games, I think there'd also be a marked power increase when your squad (e.g. in Twilight 2000) gets their first tank.

Soft rewards, like promotions through an organisation and general repute also work if you're active in playing it out. In my PF2e campaign, one PC has started helping out a bunch of NPCs for free during one-day downtimes (separate to the plot), and he practically glows as I RP an NPC just being generally thankful. There's no tangible reward being given but that open praise is like his drug now.

There's probably other ways too. You're right that things can get mechanically boring if your character sheet never changes (especially in lite wargames masquerading as RPGs), but I'm not sure how to implement it in most systems. 3.5e's Epic 6 houserule is really interesting to me, but I've puzzled for hours over how to make it meaningfully fun in PF2e (which is very geared around progression and scaling—a literal E6 would let you become a hyper-competent jack-of-all-trades very quickly).

>>92504265
Not having character advancement whatsoever.
/thread

>>92518024
Yeah, rather than high octane the whole yearlong campaign spans a weekend in game, I am leaning towards a frontier settlement building thing with lots of wilderness exploration and doing stuff around this walled encampment that's not yet a town. So downtime will be a regular occurrence. But I picked a premise specifically to accommodate it.

In ye olde rapid campaigne, I would be inclined to give them level 6 or 8 characters and give them a revolving door of limited use magic items, contacts, secrets, etc. In a slightly longer game, contacts and rank and realestate, or maybe a ship.

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>>92518101
Is this the standard progression? When I first got into TTRPGs (~10 years ago), I LOVED fast-paced adventures with constant action and many chaotically moving parts. I guess I still do, if done well, but it's waning on me noticeably now. I definitely looking for something slower, pretty much exactly as you described.

Do you already use a particular system for that? I've been looking into Forbidden Lands but I'm open to any recommendation in any genre.

>>92518203
>Is this the standard progression? When I first got into TTRPGs (~10 years ago), I LOVED fast-paced adventures with constant action and many chaotically moving parts. I definitely looking for something slower, pretty much exactly as you described.

I wouldn't say the pace of adventures themselves has changed. What has changed is the speed of level progression and treasure acquisition. 40 years ago Ravenloft was an adventure that could take multiple weeks or months to complete and you might not even gain a level completing it. Curse of Strahd (released 8 years ago) pretty much covers the same amount of content and takes the same amount of time to complete but it has been spread over 10 levels.

>>92518203
>is it he standard
Its certainly the standard with 3e/4e/5e D&D. Old World of Darkness (revised and v20) and Unisystem advance slower, and so does Rolemaster, and even Shadowrun.

>Do you have a system for that
I have two I lean towards the most, but I'll touch on the ones mentioned above after.

1. GURPS.
Slower advancement even with free per-session xp, but there's a whole (short) supplement on education and training. You can just make that the only way to get more character points. Its work to set up outside of grabbing dungeon fantasy RPG, using a genre splat is highly recommended, but it's decent and highly customisable. But, more grounded power levels, generally.
2. Your choice of d20 3.x rule system with Eclipse by Distant Horizon Press for point buy characters. Then adapt the Back to School supplement from GURPS to the point scale in Eclipse, and adapt any rolls from GURPS to your 3.x of choice. It'll handle higher power scales better than GURPS does, an you can use the tons of d&d 3.x material saving you time for fantasy stuff. It's also better for magic items than GURPS.

So, depends on the type of game I'm running.

As for the others mentioned:

OWOD
Dark Ages Vampire line + Hunters Hunted + Inquisitor + Sorcerer Revised + Devil's due.
That makes a pretty solid mediaeval occult mysteries game. Hand out xp slowly. Ignore the other WoD books.

Unisystem.
Buffy an Angel have some good stuff for making monsters an fighting them and Buffy has an interesting Magic System. Ghosts of Albion has a similar magic system and more British isles mythology in the 19th century. Witchcraft is my preferred version o the core system and gives a nicer modern occult setting. You could cobble together something similar with GURPS monster hunters and other GURPS books, though the GURPS books skew closer to supernatural in how it's magic works. Its an option.

Rolemaster 4e.
This is a fun fantasy novel inspired RPG system, runs smoothly at the table. Tedious levelup.

>>92518203
>>92518509 part 2
Eclipse.
So my thought is to decide what spell levels I want available (I'll be using 3.5 magic, I would be less concerned with spells if I was using d20 Conan as my base rather than a house ruled 3.5) and build an eclipse character at that level and see how it feels, decide what to make 'required' for everyone out of their points budget and how I'm going to allocate the rest of the points (nobody will be *only* combat, for instance, a portion of points will be only for noncombat stuff) and then set the learning rates after I convert 'Back to School' to d20.

If that sounds of interest to you, I'm in the /3eg/ regularly, and occasionally post about it, I'll share it there when I have it ready if anyone wants to see it.

>>92511914
>reddit spacing
anyway, i think you're misunderstanding me. This is when we're mid-dungeon at the end of a session or whatever, not "here are your options, if you go to the dungeon you'll level up", that would be retarded. Of course they decide what they'll do, they'll hit the next milestone regardless. If they choose to do something harder, I'll level them sooner.
do you take everything everyone says this fucking literally?

>>92504265
Only two that ever made sense to me.
> Level up after each campaign arcs
> XP per challenges (with character flaws generating extra xp)

>>92523902
>>92523902
>Reddit spacing.
Putting space between paragraphs is a standard English writing convention. That's why word processors do it automatically. It just means you finished highschool, not that you go to Reddit. If you mean I write short paragraphs and they don't show up well on a 1080p monitor in size 8 font, well, I'm posting from my phone. I'm not usually able to access a PC during the day.

>of course they decide what they'll do.
>do you take everything this fucking literally?
I speak and write that literally. Sure. But in this case, it was simple pattern recognition. You were talking like the kinds of overbearing 5e railroad shitter GM I've interacts with over the past decade, so I interpreted the intended meaning of your posts as most likely coming from such a person.

>>92504265
I'm running two different games, one milestone and one multi-EXP source. Milestone is convenient for me as a DM since I can decide when I wanna up the ante and grant the party more party while upping the stakes. At the same time, the party just faffing about means I can go ages without being able to find an excuse to reward with a level.

Started 4e recently and honestly it's pretty nice to just let players throw themselves at whatever, then use a few tables to calculate what the reward should be, and reward the group. And since the system supports battle/quest/puzzle/RP challenge EXP rewards I'm not really bound to a single way to give out the stuff.

>>92526276
do you even find that you're the one who cares more about when the players are going to level than the players themselves do?

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>>92524267
>You were talking like the kinds of overbearing 5e railroad shitter GM I've interacts with over the past decade, so I interpreted the intended meaning of your posts as most likely coming from such a person.
...fine. I'm sorry someone hurt you.

>>92526276
of course, I'm the one tailoring and tuning the encounters. I know what's coming up for the classes. Maybe I don't want them to have access to a specific tool without explicitly banning it or taking it away as a choice. Maybe I want to bump them up before the next boss fight because a player unlocks a cool new feature.

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>>92518416
>>92518509
>Is this the standard progression?
I meant this as "do players naturally yearn for the hexcrawl after playing one too many zero-to-hero campaigns that last an in-game week?" kind of question. I can 100% believe that popular adventure design has moved more towards the latter, though, especially since D&D 4e changed the game from one of attrition and resource-management to one of cinematic set pieces (and which 5e embraced, even if the mechanics don't really hold up for it).

>>92518416
>Curse of Strahd (released 8 years ago)
God, it hurts me to realise how old 5e is now. 3e and 3.5e lasting 3 and 5 years respectively feels tiny in comparison, despite their huge impact on TTRPGs as a whole.

>>92518509
Thanks for all the suggestions.

I took a look at GURPS' basic rules ages ago, but my group was unwilling to give it a go almost on a philosophical level (words to the effect of "I don't believe a universal gaming system is effective nor desirable when I can play something tailor-made"). I'll take a look at Back to School (and Social Engineering as well?), though; see if I can hack any of the ideas into other systems.

Buffy (the TV show itself) was admittedly a bit before my time, so I only have the vaguest knowledge about it. The TTRPG focus on asymmetric power sounds fresh, though, compared to the eternal drudge of encounter balance in almost all the combat-heavy games I've played today.

Although I've never read any of it, I'm dimly aware that a new Rolemaster edition came out. Any value in that?

>>92516244
If you already have the money to assault the keep, does the gathered money for doing so increase your level that much? Doubtful.

>>92504265
>XP from completing quests
This is the best one for the players. If the quests you give them have a three act structure and three quests make them level up, they will be motivated because they can see the next level.

>>92504265
One thing I love about Cairn
>no levels
>stats progress randomly as you have near death experiences that also slowly cripple you.

>>92504893
Great idea but usually executed like garbage

>>92504265
Players level whenever I as the DM feel like it.

>>92530726
Oh. I dunno if its a natural player preference progression. I've been running games since 2001 though, and I am personally tired of rapid advancement.

3.x lasted like 17 years if you include PF1 - and it did get some good stuff, in spite of its problems.

Buffy's asymmetric power is a weak point. The low power characters fall farther and farther behind as they spend xp to get shit done. It was an interesting premise, but the execution needs work. Decent system overall, but it does have some shortcomings.

From skimming the new Rolemaster it looked like they tried to simplify it a bunch while keeping it similar, but it didn't strike me as an improvement. Looked to me more like RM2. Which, if I wanted to play RM2, I could.

>>92540378
Somehow I feel like this is the only correct answer and everything else is just this with extra steps or completely disfunctional.

>>92543624
What's dysfunctional about an explicit mechanic the players can process themselves without constant GM fiat?

>>92504265
It depends on the game. Any XP reward serves to incentivize behaviors associated with that reward. XP-as-reward is one of the few (if only) places where it's generally acceptable even by the groggiest grog to include a completely disassociated mechanic.

>>92544052
An xp system can incentivize behaviour. But it can also just be another proper associative mechanic like GURPS back to school.

>>92504265
I reward people for accomplishing things in game. For example finishing a dungeon or beating a villain. No XP involved, such a shit system.

>>92544365
The overwhelming majority of RPGs don't use associated XP because it is a bad fit for most games.

>>92544453
Because bean counting xp sucks when you're also trying to run the whole game.

>>92544453
Sure. Need in to spend a bunch of time studying or training means you need downtime and a campaign that allows for downtime, or it means something in real time like a west marches game, with downtime happening between adventures.

But it's not like your character *needs* to go from schlub to superman in a couple of weekends of in game time. A game could also just have you build the character you want to play, and then play that character as they are, leaving gradual associative character improvement for people who run games over longer time spans, assuming a lot of people will thus be playing at a more or less fixed power level. Most campaigns don't last 16 sessions anyways, right?

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>>92504265
XP is a reward system. A reward system "rewards" the player by giving them the xp.

The correct answer is you give xp for whatever you want your players to be doing in your campaign.
I ran a Hellknight campaign (think lawful evil bullies/knights/paladins) and they got extra xp for arresting people, interrogations, correctly assessing a situation and giving the right judgement, swiftly handing out punishments, working the locals to gain contacts so they had the intel they needed to find threats, following the chain of command, etc.

Whatever made you more "Hellknight" gave xp. It's one of my favorite campaigns, and my players loved it. If there is anything you want to motivate your players to do, consider xp as a carrot to encourage them in that direction.

>>92510965
>grossly underestimated in most fantasy settings
AD&D: 1 g.p. = 20 s.p.
Rome: 1 aureus (gold) = 25 denarii (silver)
Score one for D&D

>>92504265
XP from whenever GM feels like it, anything to heighten the feeling of power. Now, if you want to level, you better go under the table.