You know, I've often considered a game where advancement is mostly in breadth/flexibility rather than power level.

In a game like that, where more xp is, say, nice but not _necessary_, I might have less problem with player-specific xp.

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;784915I think we're talking about different things here.

Yes, D&D does assume that characters who have different experiences will get different experience points. But it also assumes that characters who have the same experience will get the same experience points (which is why I said it "tends to" simply share experience out among the party, rather than saying it always does).

It sounds to me like you are defining experience in a way I would not define it. It seems like for you experience is something you get just by being along for the ride or in the same room or section of the dungeon whether or not the PC does anything. So in your mind, the entire party generally has the same "experience." Whereas I am using experience as a combination of what a character does (attacks made, spells cast, traps detected) and what they endure (damage taken, spells resisted, etc.).

On the other hand, in OD&D and AD&D characters get experience i.e. XP, primarily through acquiring treasure and secondarily by defeating/killing monsters. Now when we played, we interpreted contributing quite literally. Standing on the sidelines prepared to do something useful, but not actually doing anything useful didn’t count as contributing. So having some members of the party getting no experience for monsters was often the rule rather than the exception. But the real differentiator was in treasure – which we never divided equally. Because really, why would we? Typically we used a merit based method for dividing treasure that factored in character level with a bonus for major contribution towards success. So a 4th level PC would get twice the gold as a 2nd level PC and 4/3 the gold of a 3rd level PC – all else being equal. The upshot was that characters often did not get the same experience since they weren’t the same level, didn’t contribute the same effort to success, etc.

QuoteRAW in AD&D is that when a party kill some monsters the experience is shared equally between those who were there contributing to the fight no matter how insignificantly (and the DMG uses those exact words).

I gave away my AD&D rules 3 decades ago, so I’ll take your word for that. I will remind you that we interpreted contribution as actually contributing. Not just being in the same room or along for the ride. You haven’t made it clear whether just being along for the ride counts as “the same experience” for you.

QuoteI was contrasting D&D with things like Rolemaster…

Which avoids the fact that D&D wasn’t originally written and frequently wasn’t played in the group experience fashion that you are playing it. Hence there is less of a contrast than you are making it out to be.

QuoteBut what D&D definitely doesn't say is that different characters should be given different amounts of experience depending on how closely the play-style of their players matches the DM's preferences - which is what Beagle and I were talking about.

I recall many articles in the Dragon that suggested doing exactly that. (I thought the rules did too, but I may be misrecalling.) And as jibbajibba pointed out, the training rules did suggest differentiating based on play style.

And, yes of courese we used the weapon vs. armor table. Once you use variable weapon damage it just makes sense. I can’t actually recall if we used the training rules. I suspect we did not since it wasn’t part of OD&D which was where we started playing.

QuoteI hope you don't think I have a "visceral" reaction...

Honestly, your reaction does sound kind of visceral to me. Your comments haven’t focused on anything objective like bookkeeping as the reason for equal experience or leveling. Rather you seem very focused on subjective matters like wanting every player to be the same level and not wanting XP based on judgments on individual play style. And you seem to have a very strong reaction to judgments on play style.

You’ve made comments about how you are playing for fun and don’t want the game to be competitive. But when I read your comments, my initial reaction is wow these guys are so hypercompetitive that they can’t stand anyone in their group being even one level lower or higher than the others – yet they say they aren’t competitive. That’s weird because they sound way more competitive than we are.

It's probably also worth pointing out that fun and competition are not inversely related. One can both compete and have fun with friends. There are multibillion dollar leisure industries based on that very premise.

Quote from: Bren;784992Honestly, your reaction does sound kind of visceral to me. Your comments haven't focused on anything objective like bookkeeping as the reason for equal experience or leveling. Rather you seem very focused on subjective matters like wanting every player to be the same level and not wanting XP based on judgments on individual play style. And you seem to have a very strong reaction to judgments on play style.

I think you're misreading me horribly here.

I've already said that I have no objection at all to using individual experience, or to the characters being different levels (especially not in earlier editions where the classes had different XP progressions). And I've already said that the reason I (currently) skip XP completely and just have the characters level up when it seems appropriate was because it made the bookkeeping easier.

The only things I'm actually arguing against (well, more laughing at than arguing against, to be honest) are:

1) The claim that the DM varying experience gain based on subjective measures of how "awesome" they find the players' playstyle is somehow fairer than the DM not doing that.

2) The claim that experience points are (or should be) primarily a reward for players rather than a measure of how experienced the characters are.

QuoteYou've made comments about how you are playing for fun and don't want the game to be competitive. But when I read your comments, my initial reaction is wow these guys are so hypercompetitive that they can't stand anyone in their group being even one level lower or higher than the others – yet they say they aren't competitive. That's weird because they sound way more competitive than we are.

Again, I don't know where you're somehow getting the idea that my group "can't stand" there being a difference in PC level. That's a complete misreading of what I've said.

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;784718I feel sorry for you that your players need "concrete" rewards in order to motivate them to have fun. I tend to find in my groups that fun it its own reward.

Your reading skills are amazing. I said that it is an instrument that actually works. Not the only instrument. Just one tool of proper gamemastering, that doesn't lose its unquestionable effectiveness due to your unwillingness to use it. Concluding that this means that this is the only way players could be motivated includes some impressive logical summersaults.
Besides, if you improved your game by switching to a fair and individually differentiated form of distributing XP, you'd very likely recognize (if you can actually overcome your bias) the positive development among your players as well, and they might appreciate of being treated fairly as individuals.

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;784718Just as I suspected. It's not about rewarding the person who is trying hardest (as you previously claimed) at all, but about rewarding players for doing things that please you - that you find "awesome".

As Will says, how terribly patronising that sounds.

I also provide bonus XP for people who bring food for the group and the one who maintains the group diary. What I consider awesome is usually when one of the players goes out of his or her ways to contribute to the game, showing effort, which is usually based on individual reservations of the players. I usually appreciate it more when one of the more introvert players grasps the spotlight by their own volition because the guiding principle is fairness. I am being quite upfront about the behavioral shaping aspect of gamemastering. Besides, I'm a teacher in adult education. I'm used to evaluate the behavior and contributions of people in social interactions as well as their activity quite frequently. This isn't something impossible or particularly hard, it just requires reflection and empathy - and that is considering the vocational future and livelihood of grown people, not just a silly game.
And yes, maybe it is patronizing to offer guidance, maybe it is patronizing to refuse to reduce feedback to shallow compliments without any bearing on the actual gameplay. But even if that is true, it is still leagues above a GM who does not address when these special events occur and who makes it sure that he doesn't care too much if they do, as you have so proudly proclaimed.

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;784718What are you talking about? I said nothing about "using different approaches", or "using approaches" at all for that matter. I was pointing out that feedback loops naturally occur in both character actions and player actions without anyone needing to take any kind of "approach" or deliberately use any kind of reward system at all.

Can it be that you simply haven't understood Skinner? You always use some sort of reward system by sheer necessity. It doesn't matter if the reward is solely an ingame event, is based on a metagaming construct like XP or just a thought process initiated by the feedback provided by the gamemaster. This is an inevitable element of the game, if not communication in general. Like your players who cannot not learn, you as the gamemaster are unable not to teach them - one way or the other. The only options you have is to make use of these reinforcements and use them consciously and transparently  or to not actively coordinate them and leave it to randomness while also veiling the whole process - both to yourself and your players.  
Let's have a look at a very simple example: The player characters have the idea to torture a captured opponent for gaining some information. The way the gamemaster responses to this - the framing of the scene (e.g. are the torture scenes glossed over or presented as gruesome and painful?), the direct results (do the players get the information they want or does the tortured one just says what he thinks they want to hear?) and the indirect aftermath (how NPCs react to the act, stuff like alignment for those who play with that) and so on all have an impact if this action will be "rewarded" or not. If the torture of a captured bad guy leads to the rescue of a bunch of grateful innocents from a horrible fate and bears no ill consequences, the players will react completely differently the next time such a dilemma occurs.
And yes, you might chose to act ignorant again and claim that this has nothing to do with XP. Well, you know I think that's wrong, and here's why:  Many of these decisions are not necessarily hard coded and almost entirely  depend on pure metagaming thoughts that might interact with the actual game, but are not necessarily a part of it (for instance the mood of said torture scene is almost entirely depending on the gamemaster). The point is, XP rewards are really not different from that - they are a metagaming-based concept with a rather weak link to the in-game reality of learning, but for the most part, they are an abstract tool to direct the game in any way you want. It both requires judgment calls from the gamemaster on a regular base, and those judgments are an essential part of the gamemaster's role and it is the gamemaster's responsibility to make these calls, almost for every scene in the game. By refusing to use this tool, you have one opportunity less to provide guidance and have input in the game; that wouldn't be so bad, but the unwillingness to provide the judgments essential to your role as a gamemaster is just plain avoiding a part of the GM responsibilities.

Apparently I do need to spell out the obvious. A fair treatment is one where everybody gets just deserts, and is rewarded based on his or her contributions - which isn't really difficult considering the rather small group that forms most RPG groups A collectivized reward could only treat the group as a whole instead of each player as an individual. As such, it is by its very nature unable to provide anything but an unfair conclusion.

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;784797[Beagle] was talking about some players having their characters do things that he considered "awesome" and some not - and basing the amount of experience the characters get on how "awesome" he found those actions (although he initially worded it as some players "trying harder" to try to mask the blatant subjective favouritism inherent in what he's doing).
And specifically he was strongly implying that not varying experience by how "awesome" the player is is unfair to the "awesome" players because they aren't properly rewarded over and above the mundane players for being more "awesome".
That's what I was asking him to explain. How showing a lack of such favouritism can be considered "unfair".

I know, everybody's the hero of his own story, but you are not valiantly struggle against favoritism. You are defending the RPG microcosm's equivalent of the Poll Tax.
And I'm not implying anything - I outright state that refusing to acknowledge great contributions (of your player and acting incredibly smug about it) is a colossal stupidity and an outright failure as a gamemaster. to engage your players appropriately.

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;7850031) The claim that the DM varying experience gain based on subjective measures of how "awesome" they find the players' playstyle is somehow fairer than the DM not doing that.
2) The claim that experience points are (or should be) primarily a reward for players rather than a measure of how experienced the characters are.

1) The idea that subjective measures of the GM are in any way problematic in the context of an RPG shows a deep-seated misunderstanding and distrust towards the role and capabilities of the GM that effectively holds back your ability to fulfill that role.
2) XP are whatever you want them to be, but they create the opportunity to use them as a form of gratification of your players, which is an effective way to offer guidance and
But let me ask you a question: Are you uncomfortable with the idea that being the gamemaster of your group effectively grants you some sort of authority over the game, and thus over your fellow players within its context?

Quote from: cranebump;784928Because it fosters teamwork. When you check the Angels scoreboard, it doesn't read, "Angels 1, Mike Trout 2, Yankees 0."

No, it really, really doesn't. It fosters the delusion of actual teamwork, while the actual contributions of each player to the team are entirely glossed over. "It doesn't matter what you actually do" is a horrible message concerning teamwork. If you actually want to honor teamwork, offer a feasible benefit for people who are acting selfless or taking risks and sacrifices for the rest of the group.

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;785003I think you're misreading me horribly here.

I don't think that is the case, but it is certainly possible.

QuoteI've already said that I have no objection at all to using individual experience, or to the characters being different levels (especially not in earlier editions where the classes had different XP progressions). And I've already said that the reason I (currently) skip XP completely and just have the characters level up when it seems appropriate was because it made the bookkeeping easier.

Well if bookkeeping is the sole or even major reason for that you use equal experience, that is certainly not what I took away from what you have previously said.

QuoteThe only things I'm actually arguing against (well, more laughing at than arguing against, to be honest) are:

1) The claim that the DM varying experience gain based on subjective measures of how "awesome" they find the players' playstyle is somehow fairer than the DM not doing that.

It is more fair if one accepts the premise that it is desirable to connect experience to the behavior of the player and their PC or to use experience as an incentive for behavior of the player or their PC. You don't have to accept the premise, but laughing at the way other people choose to play does make you sound viscerally emotional about the topic.

Quote2) The claim that experience points are (or should be) primarily a reward for players rather than a measure of how experienced the characters are.

But by giving all the characters the exact same experience all the time despite the differences in what they do or endure you are not rewarding the characters for what they are doing or experiencing. In fact you are using a player-centered mechanic for leveling which rewards the players. You are doing the opposite of what you say you want experience to be based on.

QuoteAgain, I don't know where you're somehow getting the idea that my group "can't stand" there being a difference in PC level. That's a complete misreading of what I've said.

From here.

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;784627

Quote from: Beagle;784626Wait. You think that an equal distribution of XP is actually a good thing?!? Why? I'd rather have a fair and contextualized distribution of rewards, not a forced equality that by default fails to do justice to each player's contributions to the game.

Because when me and my friends get together to play a game it's about having fun, not competing to see who has the largest "contributions to the game". I can't even imagine how that would be measured in any way other than "I like you more than I like her".

Here you state that you play for fun, not competition – as if fun and competition were objectively in opposition rather than being objectively unrelated. You then follow the false fun/competition dichotomy by stating that you always give out group experience or leveling rather than individual experience or leveling. Which makes it appear that your award is based on your desire for uncompetitive fun rather than just being based on it being too much work for you to track separately. Which is what you now seem to be saying is your main motivation for group experience.

QuoteI always give out XP equally - even when players have to miss a session and someone else plays their character for them. XP is a measure of how experienced the characters are, not a Pavlovian reward for the players playing the way I want them to play.

The Pavlovian reward comment seems both inaccurate and needlessly belittling of rewards and incentives. Again, you seem to have a visceral reaction to the notion of anyone choosing to use systematic incentives in their game.

QuoteIn fact, the only House Rule I'm using in 5e is that we ignore XP completely and the characters simply goes up a level (together) when I say so.

This sounds to me like leveling has nothing to do with character experience and everything to do with narrative needs or encounter balance for a scripted storyline. There is nothing wrong with making decisions that way, but it undercuts your claim to basing experience on what the character does as opposed to story needs, metagame balance, or some other reason.

QuoteIt has nothing to do with different characters having different experiences and everything to do with him wanting to reward players who do things that he prefers, and characterising anyone who doesn't do that as "weak" for wanting to "avoid potential conflicts". Rather than, you know, simply not wanting to play favourites in the first place.

Phrases like "play favourites" and the earlier "Pavlovian reward" is part of why you sound visceral about other people giving out experience in their games in a different way than do you.

Quote from: Beagle;785009Let's have a look at a very simple example: The player characters have the idea to torture a captured opponent for gaining some information. The way the gamemaster responses to this - the framing of the scene (e.g. are the torture scenes glossed over or presented as gruesome and painful?), the direct results (do the players get the information they want or does the tortured one just says what he thinks they want to hear?) and the indirect aftermath (how NPCs react to the act, stuff like alignment for those who play with that) and so on all have an impact if this action will be "rewarded" or not. If the torture of a captured bad guy leads to the rescue of a bunch of grateful innocents from a horrible fate and bears no ill consequences, the players will react completely differently the next time such a dilemma occurs.

Wow. This is an odd response to the situation you outlined. In fact you don't need to treat the players at the table like some Skinner black box. You jumped right past the best way to handle the situation: an actual conversation. Here are some examples of how one might start a conversation.

• "Hey people, I thought we agreed to play good guys. What's up with the torture? That's something only the bad guys should do."

• "Hey, you all agreed you were going to play heroes who save the prince/princess, when did your PCs turn into Jack Bauer clones?"

• "OK, before we start down the road of PCs as torturers or even hard people doing hard things, let's talk about what we want in our game. Should torture be on or off the table?"

• "People, I don't want to GM a game about PCs who torture people."

Any of the above are far better responses to the question of how should the GM respond to players who choose to use torture or to address the question of what do I the GM want to do about torture in my RPG than is providing incentives via in-game success or failure or XP to try to incentivize your players to use/not use torture as a solution in game.

QuoteBut let me ask you a question: Are you uncomfortable with the idea that being the gamemaster of your group effectively grants you some sort of authority over the game, and thus over your fellow players within its context?

It know it may look like the role of gamemaster grants you authority, but it doesn't really. The GM has only and exactly the authority the players are willing to grant.

Quote from: Bren;785020You don't have to accept the premise, but laughing at the way other people choose to play does make you sound viscerally emotional about the topic.

I wasn't laughing at people for choosing to play differently.

I was laughing at people for claiming that their way of playing was objectively more "fair" than mine and that my preference isn't actually a preference but merely me being too "weak" to do things in the "fair" way.

But yeah - it wasn't very classy of me, and I'll stop.

The whole discussion was more about politics than RPGs anyway, if you read the fairly blatant subtext.

Re: politics

Holy crap, yes!

'We can't just GIVE XP to everyone, they might not be properly EARNING IT and getting away with something!'

Wow. Reminds me of half my FB feed lately.

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;785154The whole discussion was more about politics than RPGs anyway, if you read the fairly blatant subtext.

Politics? Sounded more like a conversation about the education system kids or sports to me.

Quote from: Bren;785188Politics? Sounded more like a conversation about the education system kids sports to me.

That's not political?

Quote from: Haffrung;785198That's not political?

I don't think it is. The difference in learning and rearing philosophies that I was thinking seems somewhat generational not political. If there is a correlation, I'd suspect it goes like this:

• learning/rearing philosophy correlates to generation
• generation correlates to political affiliation
• therefore learning/rearing philosophy correletates to political affilation

All primary correlations are weak. The learning/rearing to political affiliation secondary correlation is likely weaker still.

To me, it sounds like the Protestant Work Ethic wringing its hands about people not EARNING their place in the world.

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;784627Because when me and my friends get together to play a game it's about having fun, not competing to see who has the largest "contributions to the game". I can't even imagine how that would be measured in any way other than "I like you more than I like her".

I always give out XP equally - even when players have to miss a session and someone else plays their character for them. XP is a measure of how experienced the characters are, not a Pavlovian reward for the players playing the way I want them to play.

In fact, the only House Rule I'm using in 5e is that we ignore XP completely and the characters simply goes up a level (together) when I say so.

Having fun can be actually playing a game in a way that is effective at scoring points! It's amazing that these should seem opposed.

Scoring  by team certainly can make sense when there is a set team, but that is not the case in the old "grand campaign" form. Your "everyone goes up a level when I say so" approach makes even more sense, when the whole strategic context that would make x.p. other than moot has been abandoned.

Quote from: Bren;784992It sounds to me like you are defining experience in a way I would not define it. It seems like for you experience is something you get just by being along for the ride or in the same room or section of the dungeon whether or not the PC does anything. So in your mind, the entire party generally has the same "experience." Whereas I am using experience as a combination of what a character does (attacks made, spells cast, traps detected) and what they endure (damage taken, spells resisted, etc.).

The problem with this for me is that dice are fickle.  I get less XP only because the dice was rolling bad for me?  That to me is an award for good dice rolling.

Quote from: Bren;784992On the other hand, in OD&D and AD&D characters get experience i.e. XP, primarily through acquiring treasure and secondarily by defeating/killing monsters. Now when we played, we interpreted contributing quite literally. Standing on the sidelines prepared to do something useful, but not actually doing anything useful didn't count as contributing. So having some members of the party getting no experience for monsters was often the rule rather than the exception. But the real differentiator was in treasure – which we never divided equally. Because really, why would we? Typically we used a merit based method for dividing treasure that factored in character level with a bonus for major contribution towards success. So a 4th level PC would get twice the gold as a 2nd level PC and 4/3 the gold of a 3rd level PC – all else being equal. The upshot was that characters often did not get the same experience since they weren't the same level, didn't contribute the same effort to success, etc.

XP charts aren't equal, I would go ape shit over this. I don't see a merit based method here.  Tenure perhaps.

Quote from: Bren;785021It know it may look like the role of gamemaster grants you authority, but it doesn't really. The GM has only and exactly the authority the players are willing to grant.

There is a difference between Authority and Leadership.  Far too often GMs are all about the Authority and haven't a friggin clue about Leadership.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;784632But there are games where xp rewards don't work that way at all.

For a long time I GMed the German game, Midgard. (A 1981 EPT clone that evolved into its very own thing.)

Is that the one on which some novels, the first called Wargamer's World in English translation, were based? I had the impression it got started in the 1970s, but in any case it's neat to learn more about it.

QuoteIt has three different kinds of xp, based on combat, magic, and general stuff, and a character can only invest the proper kind of xp into new weapon skills, spells, or skills. The rules are quite strict on how to award xp (per damage output, per energy invested into a spell, per successful skill use, per days travelled, etc.).

That reminds me of Fantasy Wargaming, a British rules set.

QuoteWhen I read the rules first I thought it would be a chore to use all that but in play it was surprisingly smooth - and all in all, quite fair. Over the years all characters were in roughly the same level brackets (depending on when they were created, thanks to later additions to group, or character deaths).
The whole leveling system depends on expenditure of xp (as the character "level" is only the result of expended xp, not xp received) so I never thought of doing it differently (in that game - I eyeballed xp in other games frequently).


I remember that my AD&D group very much liked the individual xp awards as well (though I guess that there was a factor of "I like you more than I like her" with certain DMs...).
But then, in that campaign the DM rotated, and all players had huge folders of characters of differing levels which were mixed and matched for any given session, so the general competence varied anyway.

Kevin Siembieda (Palladium) and Dave Hargrave (Arduin) presented benchmarks largely based on what might be called "notability". However the points system is weighted, that's likely to encourage whatever behaviors it's designed to encourage. For example, if resurrection is easy to  come by (or "inheritance" benefits another character), and there are awards for a desperate rearguard action to save one's fellows, that incentive might make such action more likely.

Another approach might be neutral toward such role-playing, keeping a strictly rational cause and effect relationship (e.g., exercise increases stamina, while study increases book learning and practice improves practical skills such as speaking a language).