The Theater Kids are fighting with what's left of the BroSR. Are "Milestone" leveling methods better than "gold-for-xp"? Or is there a third option?

If an XP system has points awarded under stated criteria and a threshold for gaining a level, then a milestone system is just a crippled version of that. You need one 'XP' to gain a level, and that one 'XP' is granted arbitrarily.

Large chunks of 'story award' XP fulfill a similar function anyway, if desired.

The bizarre demonisation by the militant rules lite brigade of tracking a few simple numbers gave me an allergy to milestones.

The original purpose of XP is to create addicting gameplay via a Skinner Box. This is why XP to next level historically grew by strange numbers. I am not a fan of this approach, and I generally think that any move away from it is good. "Show up to receive XP" is certainly not a bad approach.

At the end of the day, I think that it's probably better in most circumstances to abandon the zero to hero trope and start with characters who are actually marginally competent and to flatten out character growth.

If I had to design an XP system, I would actually say it should be via player popularity. Each player automatically receives 1 XP per session, and you can vote for a player who isn't you to give them 1 more XP. Obviously, this creates intraparty balance concerns, so I would probably add a choice of restrictions, like cooldown after earning bonus XP, cooldown for the reasons you earned bonus XP, or a special shop you can only spend popularity contest XP on.

At the end of the day, you want to reward making the game enjoyable for other players most, and that is worth giving yourself a balance headache in the long run. Sometimes it's important to remember to not put the cart before the horse.

Gold-for-XP is a sacred cow because its the original design of the dungeon crawl game.  It's certainly defensible in that case, but it becomes ludicrous for the reasons Pundit states in other games.

The big way to get XP in D&D- the standard in every version from AD&D 2e forward I believe- is XP for monster kills, with some optional rules in the DMG for rewards for other things showing up in some versions.  In some cases the XP is determined by challenge rating- 3.X was set up so you couldn't "grind boars" to max level or whatever (a thing that most video games have prevented for decades as well).

The advantage of XP for killing monsters and bad guys is really simple- many kinds of games are progressed by killing monsters and bad guys, not just dungeon crawls.  You can defeat the evil empire by killing enough of their elite soldiers maybe, so everything tracks.

It has one big advantage over all the other things as well- it makes random encounters actually have something players want.  It encourages them to pick a fight sometimes perhaps, and actually engage in the combat minigame, which is usually the best designed part of the rules (and often the part that your character class or whatever is built to function a certain way in).  This is less defensible in a game more oriented about the rest of roleplaying, but none of the other systems seem to rope progression to combat participation as well as this.

Best Pundit video I've seen in a while. The only thing I slightly disagree with is the notion that players have to be told how XP is calculated. I don't think I've ever done that, and it hasn't been an issue. The idea seems to stem from a belief that getting XP is "winning" the game and players need to be told the win conditions.

XP for gold serves no purpose to me. My players aren't very interested in loot, and I have no desire to make them more intent on it. To Venka's point, I also see no reason to further incentivize them to kill people. RPG players rarely need more incentive to kill or steal. What I want to incentivize in my games is players engaging with the game world and problem solving. That tends to lead me towards the idea that some kind of goal/objective based XP system is probably the best. In practice I usually mix in a bit of everything: some XP for finding hidden treasure (but not for stripping corpses), some for successful encounters (what that means will depend on the encounter), some for quest/adventure completion, and a small bonus for session attendance. I haven't given XP explicitly for location exploration in the past, but I might start in the future.

Quote from: ForgottenF on March 22, 2025, 10:21:56 AMBest Pundit video I've seen in a while. The only thing I slightly disagree with is the notion that players have to be told how XP is calculated. I don't think I've ever done that, and it hasn't been an issue. The idea seems to stem from a belief that getting XP is "winning" the game and players need to be told the win conditions.

XP for gold serves no purpose to me. My players aren't very interested in loot, and I have no desire to make them more intent on it. To Venka's point, I also see no reason to further incentivize them to kill people. RPG players rarely need more incentive to kill or steal. What I want to incentivize in my games is players engaging with the game world and problem solving. That tends to lead me towards the idea that some kind of goal/objective based XP system is probably the best. In practice I usually mix in a bit of everything: some XP for finding hidden treasure (but not for stripping corpses), some for successful encounters (what that means will depend on the encounter), some for quest/adventure completion, and a small bonus for session attendance. I haven't given XP explicitly for location exploration in the past, but I might start in the future.

My usual approach is that this is the "attendance" value of xp. So I keep it rather low, maybe a tenth of what a typical combat encounter would award. And spread the values out by location. Even for an "empty" location. The players don't know that it's empty, and they get something for being willing to push forward.

Theres nothing storygamers wont lie about and try to ruin.

IDK I've only run games with "standard XP" for decades and never had an issue. I only play with people that create characters that are motivated to engage w/ the setting, so I'm not sure what the benefit would be of carrot/sticking them.

As is common for me, I find that Palladium Books did it best; big XP rewards for devising successful plans (particularly to save others) and engaging in potential self-sacrifice, moderate rewards for overcoming foes AND for avoiding unnecessary violence, and small rewards for successful skill use (that add up quickly over a session).

Combined with a relatively small growth curve and class XP tables designed for fairly quick early advancement (up to about level 6) and much slower progression after that (their games have advancement up to level 15, but I've never seen any campaign ever reach it... even long running ones tend to end somewhere between level 10-12... with less than a quarter of the campaign the level 1-6 part) and it just hits my sweet spot for game progression and power curves.

Milestone is for the "Everyone gets a trophy" crowd, the same types that are responsible for every class needing the same amount of XP to progress.

Quote"Show up to receive XP" is certainly not a bad approach.

My experience with it is pretty bad. I implemented it several years ago in our local game while playing Gods & Monsters for the first time. After several sessions, I started hearing from the players that nothing was happening. It was very obvious that they weren't having fun and we would soon stop getting together. They wanted more excitement; more conflicts. Rather than argue with them about why they weren't taking advantage of adventure opportunities I "ignored" their complaints and in a completely unrelated move, I took apart AD&D's experience system (and others) and put it back together as: (a) experience for defeating named encounters; (b) experience for gaining and then losing treasure; (c) experience for engaging named encounters.

I announced the change at the start of the next session. Within four sessions as they saw how XP happened, they were having more fun: talking to more NPCs and fighting more NPCs. The campaign lasted another seven years, until I moved to another state.

Pavlov lives in the hearts of men.

The XP system I'm modeling for my game is very inspired by Your work (Pundit)  and Sandy Peterson's idea of leveling. I think the balance to strike is that leveling shouldn't be arbitrary but also shouldn't be restrictive or unclear.

Thus likewise I give 1 XP for showing up to the game, with different bonus XP for a broad set of defined things, dropping below 0 and surviving is 1 XP, slaying a foe with either greater HD or numbers is 1 XP, making new allies is 1 XP. discovering a clue or insight on a investigation is 1 XP.

I will say I do have a soft spot for gold = XP. I think if the goal or idea is domain level play, Gold for XP makes a lot of sense, since by the time you're the level that domain play matters, you have enough gold to afford domain resources.

Actually the gold for XP, and monster slaying for XP make the most sense in domain play, because clearing hexes and establishing civilization in those hexes requires gold and killing monsters. 

I agree that the XP system should be tailored to the type of game play/advancement that you want to see.  In my latest campaign, I wanted to see a variety of combat, social encounters, training, and goal chasing with the advancement not happening in the middle of an adventure.  So, I went with milestones triggered by downtime between 'missions' after significant events.

Gold-for-XP doesn't interest me in the slightest. I use flat XP points earned by exceptional roleplay, or rolling natural 20's and 1's - we grow and learn by doing something excellently or horribly!

Quote from: zircher on March 22, 2025, 03:34:55 PMI agree that the XP system should be tailored to the type of game play/advancement that you want to see.  In my latest campaign, I wanted to see a variety of combat, social encounters, training, and goal chasing with the advancement not happening in the middle of an adventure.  So, I went with milestones triggered by downtime between 'missions' after significant events.

Two of my groups run the same way. XP tracking provides no value - it doesn't act as a reward to players who are already having fun. They already move the story along just fine. My other group doesn't play too many XP-based systems and we don't miss it.