Originally from my blog - 5e D&D XP Awards
After playing 5e D&D awhile, I settled on a nice simple metric for XP awards that works for quests & missions, social encounters, and exploration: my guideline XP award per PC is 100 XP per level. That's threat or accomplishment level, which may be the same as PC level but may also be higher or lower. For instance, the awards on the second level of a dungeon will typically be 200 XP/PC, while on the 9th level they'll be 900 per PC. An act worthy of 1st level PCs such as a minor village quest gets 100 XP/PC, while an act worthy of 10th level characters such as victory in a baronial war gets 1000 XP/PC. Saving the world type stuff worthy of 20th level characters gets 2000 XP/PC.

I normally cap any purely social activity awards at 1000 XP per PC per hour of tabletop play, or per 2-3 hours of Internet text-chat play, no matter the PC level, but really major social achievements such as forging an alliance or becoming monarch may get their own awards in addition, again at 100 XP/level per award.

For a 2-3 hour Internet session where things go a bit slowly, a useful guide is to award the standard amount of at least 100 XP per level of each PC, assuming they are actually doing stuff, up to 1000 XP/PC at level 10+.

For a tabletop session I'd recommend three times that a guide to a typical session's total award, ie:

PC Level / Individual Award / Typical Session Award / XP & Sessions to Level

1       100 / 300  / 300 - 1
2       200 / 600 / 600 - 1
3      300  / 900  / 1800 - 2
4      400 / 1200 / 3800 - 3 or 4 (total 7-8 to 5th)
5      500 / 1500 / 7500 - 5
6      600 / 1800 / 9000 - 5 (total 17-18 to 7th)
7      700 / 2100 / 11000 - 5 or 6
8      800 / 2400 / 14000 - 5 or 6
9     900 / 2700 / 16000 - 5 or 6 (total 32-36 to 9th)
10+ 1000 / 3000 / 21000 - 7
Using this metric, a PC can expect to climb from 1st to 11th in around 39-43 sessions of play, somewhat slower than Gygax's '1st to 9th in 50 sessions', but not wildly different, and the main change being the fast levelling up to 4th or 5th level.

It's ok for awards at low level (1-4) to be somewhat lower, about half the above, but 5e seems to work best with low level PCs advancing at least every 2-3 4 hour (tabletop) sessions, compared to higher level PCs advancing around every 4-6 4 hour sessions, perhaps slower at very high level.

For very high level PCs. 11th+, I don't recommend sticking to a metric by level, the 10th level award of 3000 XP per session serves as a reasonable minimum guide. That gives 5 sessions 11-12 (15000 XP), but at that rate would be 16-17 sessions to go from 19th to 20th.
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Example from today's game:
5 5th-7th level PCs heading to Stonehell fought a pack of gnolls & hyenas (standard combat XP, 750 each), went down to the 9th level of Stonehell via teleport, navigated the lightning room they'd been forewarned about (generously gave half a level 9 award, so 450 XP each), explored and found stairs up to level 8 (800 XP each), went up to level 8 and fought some psychic children monsters (standard combat XP - 700 each).

Seems workable enough.  I guess all my questions would be based on how exactly things would be divided in a party scenario.  And more examples of when exactly this particular XP is awarded and for what challenges.  As the description currently stands, I don't clearly see what it is beyond a participation bonus.  There's nothing wrong with that, but it does seem at odds with what I'm interpreting as your intent of a more firm guideline on XP per challenge.  It seems to assume that each character will face three current level appropriate challenges per session.  

Is it correct to assume you mean this only for non-combat challenges, while combat challenges retain their XP structure, or is this a wholesale replacement?

Quote from: S'mon;1049072Using this metric, a PC can expect to climb from 1st to 11th in around 39-43 sessions of play, somewhat slower than Gygax's '1st to 9th in 50 sessions', but not wildly different, and the main change being the fast levelling up to 4th or 5th level.

Given the circumstances of the games I run, I've mostly given up on the idea of tracking XP in the conventional D&D sense.  When I use a guideline the one I use is that it takes a number of sessions equal to the character's level to go up one level.  So 1st level characters raise a level after their first session.  2nd level characters must go through 2 sessions to get to the next level.  Etc.  What I find sort of interesting is how this sum of a series method lines up fairly well which what you state above.

Quote from: Gabriel2;1049074Is it correct to assume you mean this only for non-combat challenges, while combat challenges retain their XP structure, or is this a wholesale replacement?

It's designed for non-combat challenges, but in practice gives very close to standard combat XP in the 1-10 range so it could be used for combat - halve for easy, x1.5 or x2 if hard or very hard. Personally I'm fine with calculating monster XP, but giving everyone 100/level for a typical fight works well too.

The intent is to give every participating PC the award, no splitting XP. It encourages larger groups to delve deeper & take on bigger challenges, which works well in practice. A group of 2 on level 1 is only getting 100 XP/award each, a group of 6 on level 9 is getting 900 XP/award each. I liked seeing my level 5-6 PC groups go to Stonehell level 9 and get satisfyingly meaty XP awards, whereas last week three level 5-6 PCs insisted on sticking to a level 1 subsurface dungeon so they were getting 100 XP awards, albeit plenty of them. The former group got around 2500 XP for today's session whereas the latter had only got 700 XP or so (Tod the Gnome Ranger was in both groups).

Quote from: Gabriel2;1049074When I use a guideline the one I use is that it takes a number of sessions equal to the character's level to go up one level.  So 1st level characters raise a level after their first session.  2nd level characters must go through 2 sessions to get to the next level.  Etc.  What I find sort of interesting is how this sum of a series method lines up fairly well which what you state above.

Yes, for typical play it will be similar. But I like to encourage risky play with greater rewards (or death). I have grown to hate railroad campaigns & for sandbox gaming I think keep risk & reward closely related works best.

That all seems fine, though it also seems to me that you're one step away from just doing what I did with Lion & Dragon, which is foregoing experience points altogether and just leveling according to number of sessions played.

Quote from: S'mon;1049077Yes, for typical play it will be similar. But I like to encourage risky play with greater rewards (or death). I have grown to hate railroad campaigns & for sandbox gaming I think keep risk & reward closely related works best.

That's why I use xp now after going through a phase of "sessions per level". I do like to award extra xp for taking risks and pushing their luck, and/or doing a thorough job and "revealing the map". Sessions per level just doesn't have the granularity I want.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1049459That's why I use xp now after going through a phase of "sessions per level". I do like to award extra xp for taking risks and pushing their luck, and/or doing a thorough job and "revealing the map". Sessions per level just doesn't have the granularity I want.

I had the same experience, and the exact same reaction.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1049443That all seems fine, though it also seems to me that you're one step away from just doing what I did with Lion & Dragon, which is foregoing experience points altogether and just leveling according to number of sessions played.

It's a pretty big step when I'm giving one group 700 and another of similar level 3500, because they choose to take on very different levels of challenge.

Quote from: S'mon;1049469It's a pretty big step when I'm giving one group 700 and another of similar level 3500, because they choose to take on very different levels of challenge.

And that makes sense.

One group is choosing not to face level appropriate challenges while the other is.  So, logically one group should advance more than the other.

The question in that regard is whether the two parties have or ever will interact or share/exhange members?  If so, then it still makes sense.

If not, then does it make any real difference that the less challenged group advances more slowly?

Quote from: Gabriel2;1049471And that makes sense.

One group is choosing not to face level appropriate challenges while the other is.  So, logically one group should advance more than the other.

The question in that regard is whether the two parties have or ever will interact or share/exhange members?  If so, then it still makes sense.

If not, then does it make any real difference that the less challenged group advances more slowly?

More advancement = higher levels = more world impact, in my games.

PCs do move between groups. In my Stonehell games (part of my larger Wilderlands campaign) there is basically at any one time an offline/tabletop group and an online group. The current online group comprises 2 always-online PCs and two who started offline and went to online (one player moved to Australia, the other decided he liked playing online with her). The current offline PC group last session had two members who had adventured with those two who are now online, one PC who moved from online to offline, and a third who has always been an offline PC and not interacted with the now-online PCs. So of those 8 PCs that's 2 pure online, 3 pure offline, and 3 mixed.

So PCs do move around. They also hear a lot about what other groups are getting up to. It definitely made a difference to the Sunday offline group hearing that the online group had gone to level 9 and returned, it spurred them to do the same!

Quote from: S'mon;1049483More advancement = higher levels = more world impact, in my games.

PCs do move between groups. In my Stonehell games (part of my larger Wilderlands campaign) there is basically at any one time an offline/tabletop group and an online group. The current online group comprises 2 always-online PCs and two who started offline and went to online (one player moved to Australia, the other decided he liked playing online with her). The current offline PC group last session had two members who had adventured with those two who are now online, one PC who moved from online to offline, and a third who has always been an offline PC and not interacted with the now-online PCs. So of those 8 PCs that's 2 pure online, 3 pure offline, and 3 mixed.

So PCs do move around. They also hear a lot about what other groups are getting up to. It definitely made a difference to the Sunday offline group hearing that the online group had gone to level 9 and returned, it spurred them to do the same!

Even if you don't have multiple parties, if the GM is transparent about how the xp is awarded, it can affect player behavior.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1049501Even if you don't have multiple parties, if the GM is transparent about how the xp is awarded, it can affect player behavior.

I'm part of the "use XP to guide behavior", in this case encouraging fun role-playing during a session. I wonder about having a "checkbox" of events instead of just a session? Something like:

Complete a major mission
role-play one of the personality aspects of your character at least once a mission
take part in at least one combat
use your primary skills at least once
use your secondary skills at least once

Quote from: S'mon;1049469It's a pretty big step when I'm giving one group 700 and another of similar level 3500, because they choose to take on very different levels of challenge.

Well, I get that, but with the system I use it means that everyone can choose to do things based on whatever they think makes best sense to their characters. If they want high risk, there's usually other rewards involved. But they can also choose to be cautious (within certain limits of course, a party that does fuck all for a session might not get XP for it, but for example if a party wants to spend a whole session engaging in non-combat Roleplaying that has purpose and matches their goals, they get experience even if they don't kill monsters or gain gold).

I do give xp for purposeful non combat roleplaying and I gave examples in my OP, eg forging  an alliance. I tend to give minimal awards for purely personal achievements, eg might give Trystan the lecherous Bard 25 or 50 xp for a seduction. 5e Inspiration is a nice award for that stuff too. But a group social challenge earns a substantial award.

Quote from: Tod13;1049509I'm part of the "use XP to guide behavior", in this case encouraging fun role-playing during a session. I wonder about having a "checkbox" of events instead of just a session? Something like:

Complete a major mission
role-play one of the personality aspects of your character at least once a mission
take part in at least one combat
use your primary skills at least once
use your secondary skills at least once

The warning I'd provide about this to anyone inclined to use it is that players will checklist the checkboxes.  Each session will have them trying to mark off the checkboxes whether they're appropriate actions or not.  It might cause each session to come across like a Marvel movie.  In other words, a formula of actions that happen every time.

Another thing is that a player might get irritated if their character doesn't have the "opportunity" to mark off a checkbox.

Might be a problem.  It might not.