Quote from: Ratman_tf;964563Did you just contradict yourself in two consecutive replies?

How so? In the first hes pointing out that the original playstyle was to go for the gold more than the monsters. In the second hes pointing out that over time TSR shifted its focus from the thinking player to the hacking player. Thus the shift eventually to EXP only for monsters.

Though by 2e you also had a more codified set of guidelines for giving EXP for non-com stuff, which was around in AD&D and older, just not as spelled out.

Quote from: Omega;964615How so? In the first hes pointing out that the original playstyle was to go for the gold more than the monsters. In the second hes pointing out that over time TSR shifted its focus from the thinking player to the hacking player. Thus the shift eventually to EXP only for monsters.

Though by 2e you also had a more codified set of guidelines for giving EXP for non-com stuff, which was around in AD&D and older, just not as spelled out.

If I remember correctly, they were 'optional' rules and class specific.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;964680If I remember correctly, they were 'optional' rules and class specific.

Not in 2e. DMG page 45 and on had guidelines for things like EXP for events. Those are not optionals. Optional was EXP for gold and A variant for individual EXP. Though its blurs on what is and isnt optional as the class specific EXP rewards are not in the sidebar.

Quote from: Omega;964615How so? In the first hes pointing out that the original playstyle was to go for the gold more than the monsters. In the second hes pointing out that over time TSR shifted its focus from the thinking player to the hacking player. Thus the shift eventually to EXP only for monsters.

I can see that. I found the reply hard to parse there. Which is why I asked the question. I think my confusion came from Gronan mentioning wargaming, and I wasn't sure how wargaming equated to sneaking around in dungeons.

QuoteThough by 2e you also had a more codified set of guidelines for giving EXP for non-com stuff, which was around in AD&D and older, just not as spelled out.

Yep. I really like the 2E section on class specific awards, and try to work them into the game.

I guarantee that this thread contains more effort than went into Dave Arneson's decision in 1970 to base XP off gold.

Sometimes, the right answer is "it seemed a good idea at the time and worked okay."

Quote from: Omega;964713Not in 2e. DMG page 45 and on had guidelines for things like EXP for events. Those are not optionals. Optional was EXP for gold and A variant for individual EXP. Though its blurs on what is and isnt optional as the class specific EXP rewards are not in the sidebar.

So I was reversing them in my memory?  Wouldn't be the first time.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;964724I guarantee that this thread contains more effort than went into Dave Arneson's decision in 1970 to base XP off gold.

Sometimes, the right answer is "it seemed a good idea at the time and worked okay."

If that's all there was to it, I can see why it got changed.  Now, I'm not saying that it's wrong or it's bad, or whatnot, you do you, but FOR ME, it opens up too many weird situations that to fix would require to turn D&D into more of a video game than it already is (well, truth be told, it's the other way around.  D&D has a lot of blame to take for what it did to Video Games, both good and bad.)

My little brain dun work that way.

Happy Gaming.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;963923Robert Louis Stevenson did NOT write Skill Challenge Island.

That made me laugh out loud.

However, I'm very over treasure-for-xp in anything OTHER than a vanilla D&D fantasy-setting game. It's a useless concept to use for something like Dark Albion, for example, and I won't be using it as the XP system in Lion & Dragon.  Likewise, it's not really a very good fit in Arrows of Indra, even though I did use it there. If I did AoI again I wouldn't.

Quote from: RPGPundit;965019That made me laugh out loud.

However, I'm very over treasure-for-xp in anything OTHER than a vanilla D&D fantasy-setting game. It's a useless concept to use for something like Dark Albion, for example, and I won't be using it as the XP system in Lion & Dragon.  Likewise, it's not really a very good fit in Arrows of Indra, even though I did use it there. If I did AoI again I wouldn't.

Thenkew, thenkew.

There's lots of good reasons to use other things than treasure for XP.  It's all the handwringing and yodeling that astounds me.  "Just do it," as they say.

Quote from: jhkim;963168The XP system is really about what you want to encourage.

From the frequency of half races (half elves, half orcs, half ogres, half dragons, cambions, genasi, and so on*), one strongly suspects that at one time the standard D&D setting awarded XP for miscegenation, and particularly to human characters.

(* Struggling to resist the temptation to add half-ling to the list.)

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;963923Robert Louis Stevenson did NOT write Skill Challenge Island.

How many fantasy classics actually involve that much seeking after treasure as a primary objective or motivation? The Hobbit, yes, but not the Lord of the Rings; Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser; Conan, although he often seems otherwise motivated. Thinking back on what I was familiar with when I started playing D&D in the 1970s, I can't think of a lot of others.

Perhaps the emphasis on treasure is mostly a game thing; number of gold pieces is an easy thing to measure, in tabletop or computer games. And as with pinball machines it's easy to just add a zero at the end to make it more impressive.

Quote from: rawma;965090How many fantasy classics actually involve that much seeking after treasure as a primary objective or motivation? The Hobbit, yes, but not the Lord of the Rings; Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser; Conan, although he often seems otherwise motivated. Thinking back on what I was familiar with when I started playing D&D in the 1970s, I can't think of a lot of others.

Perhaps the emphasis on treasure is mostly a game thing; number of gold pieces is an easy thing to measure, in tabletop or computer games. And as with pinball machines it's easy to just add a zero at the end to make it more impressive.

Maybe that's why I can't wrap my brain around Gold=XP.  I grew up reading fantasy stories, starting with the Conan short stories and then moving to others as I found them, and even when Conan was out looking for loot, something else came along and distracted him, like The Tower Of The Elephant.  And most of my gaming has been influenced by fantasy literature.

However, it's pretty clear Conan himself enjoyed the reputation he has among the Black Corsairs, the Red Brotherhood, the Barachan Pirates, the thieves of Zamora.  Many times he boasts of the riches that have passed through his hands surpassing all he's dealing with and marking him their better.  Money is a way of keeping score, always has been, especially among criminals, pirates, mercenaries, ie. people who aren't landed and titled.

Most of my D&D was playing 1e, so I used the standard gold, treasure and monsters for xp so basically anything.  If I play 1e again, I'll do the same.  For other games I tend toward milestones, fiat, by skill use, or simple time spent playing and not worry about what biscuit I want my players to chase for exp.  That navel-gazing shit can go die in a fire.

Quote from: CRKrueger;965206not worry about what biscuit I want my players to chase for exp.  That navel-gazing shit can go die in a fire.

How is chasing XP navel-gazing? Surely it's outward directed, towards the XP source? Basically the opposite?

Re actual navel-gazing playstyles, "Build" focus and focus on the character's internal life are the two types that come to mind.

Well, this thread has gone places since Friday. I don't think I can reply to everything I've seen, so I'll focus on a few.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;964733If that's all there was to it, I can see why it got changed.  Now, I'm not saying that it's wrong or it's bad, or whatnot, you do you, but FOR ME, it opens up too many weird situations that to fix would require to turn D&D into more of a video game than it already is (well, truth be told, it's the other way around.  D&D has a lot of blame to take for what it did to Video Games, both good and bad.)

Well good. I for one was not trying to get you to accept gp=xp as the one true way or anything, but merely show that it makes sense in context and was not showing blind obedience to 'St. Gary.'

I'm genuinely confused by the video game reference, because I've never seen a video game that rewards xp based on gp, but instead almost always is xp for monsters killed. Is it because it does things like incentivize you to clear out the rest of the dungeon, even though you've already rescued to villagers or whatever your story goal was? Because that's true for gp=xp, monsters defeated=xp, and a true experience/tft style. Pretty much anything except 'xp for actual goal.'

Quote from: Willie the DuckThe thief showed up later because up until that point, everyone was a thief. Or at least the 'dungeon delver' type that most of the thieves' abilities actually are. The thief class is simply an addition of codified mechanisms to achieve what people were already doing-finding traps, climbing over things, picking locks with daggers, what-have-you. Why the fighting man is listed first, well I of course can't tell you because I'm not Gary. However, it does seem to be the default option in the three-class original concept--if you're not specifically wanting to be a spell-slinger, you would be a soldier or equivalent, which makes sense if you're deriving this game from Chainmail.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;964557But, soldiers and spell-slingers are not very sneaky by nature, both deal with a form of overt power. Soldiers are the Swordy McSwordfighter as Robiswrong calls them.

Soldiers and spell-slingers were never not sneaky until a specifically sneaky class showed up. There is nothing in the oD&D that says a dwarven fighter in plate mail can't sneak around (actually there isn't anything until 3e that says so*). Soldiers (as I put it) are everything from Swordy McSwordfighter to Conan to Indiana Jones to Grey Mouser's non-wizard training up until the thief class was invented and would be a better fit. It was the invention of the thief that made people believe that the other classes couldn't do these things.

I didn't play LBB w/o GH back in the day, but in BECMI and 2e we absolutely had fighters and clerics and wizards hiding (behind things, or in those ubiquitous empty rooms, not in shadows), and stealthing (not of course 'Move Silently,' and often with the thief looking for when the coast was clear).

*I'm sure one of you guys who know the books by heart will find a contradiction somewhere.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;965138Maybe that's why I can't wrap my brain around Gold=XP.  I grew up reading fantasy stories, starting with the Conan short stories and then moving to others as I found them, and even when Conan was out looking for loot, something else came along and distracted him, like The Tower Of The Elephant.  And most of my gaming has been influenced by fantasy literature.

And while D&D was influenced by fantasy literature like Conan, it was really created as an outgrowth of Arneson's castle games*. The players decided to mine, and he built dungeons with treasure in them for them to encounter. And they decided that going into the mines to look for treasure was more fun than the battle going on up above. So treasure being the goal came in before the game was even invented.
*this is all coming from Playing at the World, and from memory

As to situations where treasure isn't the goal, yes, those situations arise. They actively changed the xp system (to the 2e mish-mash) when it became clear that the go into the dungeon model was insufficient for what players were trying to do; but when the game was conceived, it made perfect sense.

The Tower of the Elephant is actually a great way to highlight the different systems. The first part of the story (Conan hears about gem, goes looking for gem, fights spider, doesn't get gem) The situation looks like this:
true experience system: uses skills --> would get xp
defeat monster for xp: kills spider --> would get xp
gp=xp: doesn't get gem --> would not get xp
goal based: doesn't get gem (which is his goal) --> would not get xp

As to the second part of the story, he doesn't defeat much (unless mercy killing Yag-kosha counts, which I hope not), gets no treasure, uses some skills I guess, and accomplishes a goal made up in the moment (deciding to help Yag-kosha). The xp reward is murkey, as it probably should be.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;965275I'm genuinely confused by the video game reference, because I've never seen a video game that rewards xp based on gp, but instead almost always is xp for monsters killed. Is it because it does things like incentivize you to clear out the rest of the dungeon, even though you've already rescued to villagers or whatever your story goal was? Because that's true for gp=xp, monsters defeated=xp, and a true experience/tft style. Pretty much anything except 'xp for actual goal.'

I meant the idea of the greater the monster the more treasure it drops after defeat, thus the amount of gold received scales in response to the threat level.  MMO's still do it, for example, with lower level 'mobs' dropping copper coins (or the equivalent) to high end ones dropping handfuls of gold to whole treasure chests of loot.

And IF I remember correctly, Rogue gave out XP that more or less equaled the amount of coin that dropped every time you killed a monster.  But I could be mistaken that.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;965275And while D&D was influenced by fantasy literature like Conan, it was really created as an outgrowth of Arneson's castle games*. The players decided to mine, and he built dungeons with treasure in them for them to encounter. And they decided that going into the mines to look for treasure was more fun than the battle going on up above. So treasure being the goal came in before the game was even invented.
*this is all coming from Playing at the World, and from memory

What a cool piece of history!

Quote from: Willie the Duck;965275As to situations where treasure isn't the goal, yes, those situations arise. They actively changed the xp system (to the 2e mish-mash) when it became clear that the go into the dungeon model was insufficient for what players were trying to do; but when the game was conceived, it made perfect sense.

The Tower of the Elephant is actually a great way to highlight the different systems. The first part of the story (Conan hears about gem, goes looking for gem, fights spider, doesn't get gem) The situation looks like this:
true experience system: uses skills --> would get xp
defeat monster for xp: kills spider --> would get xp
gp=xp: doesn't get gem --> would not get xp
goal based: doesn't get gem (which is his goal) --> would not get xp

As to the second part of the story, he doesn't defeat much (unless mercy killing Yag-kosha counts, which I hope not), gets no treasure, uses some skills I guess, and accomplishes a goal made up in the moment (deciding to help Yag-kosha). The xp reward is murkey, as it probably should be.

This situation is why I prefer a more flexible XP model than XP for Loot Only or Killing Only.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;965294This situation is why I prefer a more flexible XP model than XP for Loot Only or Killing Only.

I don't think D&D ever had those schemes. At base it was a mix of the two whose balance changed, and expanded, over time.

The only scheme I don't care for personally is XP for time, but other than that I'm flexible.