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Recent discussions on S&S have me wondering what would work best.

I went for carousing, but I think there's some nuance there. For one thing, fighting should make the characters improve as warriors. Similarly, doing thief-things things should reward experience, even if there's no treasure at the end. Realistically that's how you'd improve. Drinking wine and wenching would, at best, have no effect.

I think carousing is chosen partly to match the genre, and partly to encourage the players to make the characters poor frequently, even if the GM gives them eye-watering rewards. There are limits, though - if your character is a king and spends the country's money on nightly revels, then he's the sort of decadent ruler the characters should kill, not play.

So maybe it should just be a reward for surviving or "winning". How many times did Conan achieve nothing more than escape in an adventure? Perhaps the characters celebrate gaining vast riches at the end of one adventure, then wake poor in the next. As long as that was known from session 0, I think that would be fine.

Mix of all of the above.

I'm with Krazz to a large extent. If you're trying to get into the spirit of those S&S tales, then that naturally lends itself to an episodic campaign, and since the heroes in S&S stories frequently walk away from their adventures with nothing but the shirts on their backs, I'd probably give XP for surviving each adventure, maybe subdivided into passing certain parts of it for longer adventures.

But I generally don't care much for gold-based XP. The way I run my games, encouraging players to prioritize gathering loot would be counterproductive.

It's an old and simple truth, what you give XP for is what players will do.

Gold for XP had a distinct couple of advantages.

1. It tied Wealth and Level together quite neatly, meaning a DM roughly knew how wealthy and what equipment a PC might have at certain levels.

2. stepping off of point 1, it made the transition from dungeon delving to domain level play easier, as by the time they had reached that level, they had the actual wealth to afford owning a manor or estate.

3. It created a form of play where killing the monsters was not always the most logical way forward, it was often easier and less risky try and otherwise circumvent than engage a monster, as monsters only represented a resource tax and risk to a dungeon.

There are however some disadvantages to a purely gold for XP system.

1. It made the fighter less important as a class as the point of a fighter was to fight, and fighting was the fail state for not devising a more clever option. it also meant fighters didn't get better at fighting because they fought battles, but because they had more wealth?

2. In games where domain level play was not an end point or agenda, than it means characters had exorbitant wealth, but are still perusing basic dungeon delving? it seems to break a great deal of verisimilitude. why would rich merchants at this point need to risk their necks doing petty dungeon work?

Quote from: Socratic-DM on January 08, 2025, 04:30:42 PMIt's an old and simple truth, what you give XP for is what players will do.
/snip

This could never be said enough!

100 XP per lamentation of the women.

Quote from: Ruprecht on January 08, 2025, 02:48:16 PMRecent discussions on S&S have me wondering what would work best.

Since there is little if any character advancement in S&S, the answer is rather obvious. None.

I'm tempted by the Wolves Upon the Coast approach - we're all fighting men, and we advance by boasting, and then making good on that boast, not by shirking it. This feels like it resonates with a lot of S&S - somebody gets deep in their cups and makes a boast, and then has to follow through or lose face. Or swears an oath in a moment of passion, then ditto.

It sounds like it can get a bit meta and arbitrary but play reports suggest that with the right group it could work; the act is diegetic even if there's some non-diegetic genre-emulating discourse going on.

Quote from: zend0g on January 08, 2025, 08:49:39 PM

Quote from: Ruprecht on January 08, 2025, 02:48:16 PMRecent discussions on S&S have me wondering what would work best.

Since there is little if any character advancement in S&S, the answer is rather obvious. None.

Underrated comment. The "zero to hero" thing is not common in S&S stories.

But yeah, I like the idea of gold spent, plus monsters defeated (not sure they always "slay" all the monsters).

Quote from: Socratic-DM on January 08, 2025, 04:30:42 PMIt's an old and simple truth, what you give XP for is what players will do.

Gold for XP had a distinct couple of advantages.

Players will still collect gold even if there isn't gold for XP, though. Gold is useful for itself.

The question is whether there needs to be extra incentive to collect gold, such that players will go for it even if they might otherwise do something else. It depends on the players, I'm sure, but usually I don't need extra incentive for players to go after gold.


Also, I question whether gold is all that important for Sword & Sorcery. Yes, Conan was a mercenary earlier in his life, but he wasn't particularly greedy. He regularly would skip gold to go after revenge, or a woman, or some other passion of his. Some other S&S heroes are less motivated by gold, like Imaro.

I'm inclined to agree with zend0g the most. I might still have XP in a Sword and Sorcery campaign, but it would be relatively minor like in Unisystem rather than D&D-like.

Carousing only, for obvious reasons. You kill monsters and take their stuff specifically for ale and whores, your entire existence is ephemeral and tied to no one or nowhere. You gain experience ONLY after blowing all your cold hard cash in town and have to adventure to get more. Wanna be a pirate or a thief or infiltrate a snake cult? Go for it as long as you get a reward.

Bandits keep had a recent video where he mentioned you get 100xp/level per hit dice of monster defeated as well as XP for Gold (i think also divided by level) in OD&D before the supplements. That could work for S&S if you characters go the Adventurer Conqueror King route (not the system but like how Conan goes from a lone thief to a mercenary leader to a king.)

Quote from: Eric Diaz on January 09, 2025, 07:19:03 PMThe "zero to hero" thing is not common in S&S stories.

The Modiphius 2d20 Conan line handled this by players starting as quite respectable heroes (probably equivalent to 5th level in D&D), but afterwards the in-game advancement was extremely slow.

I would (and do) give XP for getting into a mess, and getting out of a mess. For BX/OSE D&D I use the fighter class as a reference based on average party level. So if there are 5 PCs average level 1, my reference is 2000xp. They get into a little trouble, like caught pickpocketing, they get maybe 10% of that. 200xp. Big trouble, like getting enslaved by orcs, they get 1000XP. In this way the PCs are incentivized to take risks. They can just keep getting in trouble and fail forward without resolving any situations. But sure, if they escape the orcs, and kill the leader, they get 50% too.

Quote from: jhkim on January 10, 2025, 12:51:07 PMI'm inclined to agree with zend0g the most. I might still have XP in a Sword and Sorcery campaign, but it would be relatively minor like in Unisystem rather than D&D-like.

For S&S campaigns, a skill by skill XP system like in Runequest would be superior. If you want to get good at fighting you fight, if you want to get good at sneaking you sneak, etc.

Quote from: Socratic-DM on January 08, 2025, 04:30:42 PM2. In games where domain level play was not an end point or agenda, than it means characters had exorbitant wealth, but are still perusing basic dungeon delving? it seems to break a great deal of verisimilitude. why would rich merchants at this point need to risk their necks doing petty dungeon work?

The easiest way to stick to XP for gold without character accumulating massive wealth is to award XP for magic items based on their GP value. Especially for limited use things like potions and found spells. This way, most of the value of the XP awarded will be in things the players want to keep and the actual gold pieces found be a minor addition.

For me, it makes the most sense to require some kind of training to "level up" or improve in some way.  This training can come from practice in the field as adventuring, but is formalized in lessons from a "master" who is more skilled.  I can see gold being tracked as XP especially if you need to use that gold to pay for the training.  But if you have more of a long-term relationship with the master who is training your characters, XP would be in the form of tasks/quests the master gives the players, and the master would not expect to be "paid" for helping you level up because you've already agreed to some long term master/student kind of situation.

I suppose it really comes down to the setting/campaign you're trying to run.