One of the thing’s my group’s Stargate SG-4 GM, Don, does that I really like is handwave XP. Instead of awarding XP, he just tells us when we level up.
He has a keen sense for pacing, and we usually go up a level every couple of adventures (each adventure being one session). This pace is satisfying for us, and fits well with the tone of the game.
This approach is formalized in Green Ronin’s True 20 system (and I mentioned quite liking in my True 20 review), and it saves a lot of bookkeeping for everyone. It won’t work for every RPG or every group, but when it does work it’s a great approach.
Edit: One essential ingredient, at least for me, is that Don also awards Action Points (which, in d20 Modern, let you break the rules a bit) during sessions. This really makes the XP-by-fiat approach hum — see the comments below for details.
I run my Arcana Evolved campaign almost that way. I factored out all the other things that XP could be used for besides leveling. Then I give block awards–usually in multiples of a thousand. In other words, it’s a thin patina of giving out XP to make the players happy, but is really leveling every 10-16 hours of play, as needed. 🙂
For my Ptolus campaign, I really want to have each player with multiple characters for the various possible story lines. I want them to pick a character for a session based on what we want to do that day–almost episodic adventures within the framework of the campaign. Since not everyone attends every session, leveling becomes almost arbitrary. I’m seriously toying with the idea that character levels just happen to fit the adventure. Hero Points and (minimal) XP will be player rewards, to use with any character. The XP can be used for crafting items or casting spells or dealing with energy drain.
We’re just about that way in our group; while XP is given, it’s always a number (based on difficulty/struggle/etc.) x our current level. Though last session, our GM said, “What’ll it take to level you?” we told him, he shrugged and said, you now have 91,000 XP.
In most of the games I play in the DM tracks XP. It’s just easier for everyone. The DM knows how close we are, he can hand wave things if he wants and he tells us when we level, not the other way around. As players, we really don’t care about XP unless we’re leveling. It gets a bit hairy if we’re making magic items and spending XP, but it’s usually not a big issue.
The creation of magic items is my only concern with this method. Without XP constraints in a game like D&D, wizards can create a virtually unlimited arsenal of magic items. One way of constraining this is time–if the adventure moves along at a high pace, the wizard simply doesn’t have time to create the items. Another way to resolve this is the GM awarding an arbitrary XP amount, instead of stating an arbitrary level. Both feel a bit forced to me–they seem like situations where the GM makes decisions for the player.
How do other people reconcile this?
We are using a varient described in the DMG. So far it is working VERY well. Each session they get XP Equal to 300 x lvl. Its that simple. It doesn’t matter if they battle lots of monsters one session and a bunch of role playing a different session it all averages out in the end. It really makes the bookwork a no brainer.
I like the idea. In a thing like DND (where experience is minial) it is great for story heavy games. Gives it a more movieish feel, and negates the need to have a dungeon crawl just to gain experience.
It could cause some problems with point buy systems though, but that is easily worked around by assigning the experience points to the players t’m playing, and the one I’m running I usualo get them to the level you want.
In the game I’m playing, and also the one I’m running in, it’s usually just a “You all get 12 experience at the end of the session”, or go through the experience categories once, for the group as a whole, and assign it by how the group did together. It gives everyone the same chances at purchasing new stuff, and focuses on the groups cool things. This has it’s flaws too though. When someone does something cool, they want extra experience for themselves, and feel kind of slighted if the rest of the group gets it.
The best thing about it though is that it takes out the 15 minutes at the end of the session trying to remember everything everyone did, and the yappy dog players don’t keep going “but i did this, and this, and this, and that was good character development, and that was a good use of my skills” when they trying to leach experience.
Charlie: I’ve reconciled the creation of magic items with…well, anything XP-related…by redoing item creation and completely removing XP from the equation. Instead, the house system my friend and I developed uses DM-limited resources (essentially naturally-occurring, though rare, “batteries” of magical energy). That wasn’t the primary reason we did it — we did it because we wanted to see PC item enchantment used more often than “never” — but it does fit with this XP award style change.
Removing XP can be a perfectly fine idea, especially with a group that doesn’t want to concern itself with minutia. Still, I agree with Xcorvis and Charlie; there’s simply no way to remove XP without incurring balance issues with magic item creation in games like D&D. Zephyros’ idea sounds interesting, although I think creating a limited resource solely for magic item creation doesn’t really address the issue. The point here is that XP is something players HATE to give up. There is a certain emotional trauma involved when you have to burn 1,000 XP to get a nice item. Preserving that impact is key; it makes players not merely unable but unwilling to make as many magic items as possible.
The arbitrary handing out of levels is my one main criticism of True20. For some reason, it really rankles. I guess I just think that xp in some form or another is a goal of many players, a small-scale indicator of progress to greater abilities. I’m currently developing a city-based campaign where I plan on having many “quests” available to the player’s characters (though they’ll have to seek them out). For each quest the party completes, they’ll get an experience point (or maybe two if the quest turns out to be especially complicated). Every X number of experience points gains them a level. Right now, without any testing, I’m setting that number to 5, and the quests will get more and more difficult as they go up in level. I just feel that the gathering of XP is an important factor in player fun, at least in my games. Maybe some GMs can make arbitrary leveling work, but for me, I prefer a more objective system.
JOhn.
I am running my Iron Heroes game like that. I did it from the start. Every 4-5 sessions, I tell the heroes to level up.
The reason I like it, is because I do not have to have extra combat scenes to pad XP. Any combat scene I have, has a purpose, and I can take my time with them. I never have to worry about rates of character progression. They progress in time with the story.
“The creation of magic items is my only concern with this method.”
In my current campaign, I made magic items cost Hero Points to create instead of XP. Since I’m giving out a lot of Hero Points and letting them be used broadly, it seems to work well. A single Hero Point will do a bunch or small items (AE equivalent of scrolls and potions) or one big one. Some of the nicer items might take 2 or more Hero Points. Character getting the item has to spend the points. Money and time are both precious in this campaign, so we aren’t swamped with items (very few, actually).
XP for leveling, items, regaining level drains, limit on casting certain spells, etc. is not a necessary balance point in d20 games. It’s one convenient way of attaching a single resource to all those things. Nothing says you can’t detach one of those from XP–and then maybe attach it some other resource.
When I was running my own campaign months ago I did experience this way — I had wanted to assign experience for RolePlay but it ended up being too much work to try and track everything that happened in a session. My players didn’t seem happy with it, as I think they felt rather lost without an indication of how close they were to levelling.
Personally, I’d prefer not to have to think about when I’m going to level up and just focus on the story.
Experience for levelling up seems so arbitraty. That’s why I think point buy systems are so good. You still get experience, but you actually get to use that experience directly towards how your character develops. It is still a game of numbers, but the numbers start to mean something.
Though I’m in danger of going too far off-topic, Stephen, you are right on in saying it’s not a perfect solution to this issue. It wasn’t made to be. Our goal in designing the house rules were twofold: 1) make item creation worthwhile, and 2) improve customization and personalization of items rather than PCs always shopping at Magic Items ‘R’ Us. (There are other tweaks to support the latter goal, but those are more ancillary to this discussion.) By controlling the rarity of the resource you can introduce some of that same reluctance to enchant willy-nilly, while still leaving them willing to enchant at all, since they’re not giving up precious precious XP. No, it’s not a perfect solution, but I don’t think there IS a silver bullet…
I’ve been handing out levels instead of XP in my D&D games ever since I saw it in True 20.
I hand out a level every time the party achieves something significant in the campaign.
Its not ideal, and I’m sure some players might not like it, but it saves me precious preparation time, which can be spent on the fun parts of DM ing instead.
No one in the party has any magic item crafting feats, or (so far) any spells which require XP, so that is not an issue.
If it was, I’d simply keep track of how much XP characters had “spent” and use it to gauge how much slower to level them up. However, as the XP in these circumstances is usually being spent to benefit the party as a whole I’d give the players the option of spreading the cost amongst all the characters as well.
When I create an adventure, I usually set out to create enough experience through challenges/battle for the group to level up. This averages a level up of every 4 to 6 sessions of play, which is what many other use. However, I adjust that xp earned down if they miss things, or fail part of the ‘mission’, or up if they excel and learn more or come up with a better solution.
The players also have a system to reward each other for good play, either role or role. I’ve also used the system from the original version of Spycraft to allow the players to spend xp on skills and feats in lieu of level advancement. They still have to meet the requirements of what they buy in this way.
Quite true, Zephyros, and I’m not suggesting it’s a bad solution. I’ve just always been a fan of drama. To see the look on a player’s face when they have to trade their precious character advancement for goods is priceless to me. Honestly, I have no intention of adopting a system without XP because of that. I guess I’m just a sadistic DM. 😉
I’m not surprised that item creation in D&D 3.5e is a sticky wicket for a lot of GMs — it’s a tough one to resolve without retooling the system, although several excellent options have been mentioned.
Reading your comments, something occurred to me about our game that really contributes to this approach working well: the way our GM handles Action Points.
In d20 Modern, APs come once a level. In our game, they come at the end of every session — kind of like XP — as well as throughout the sessions. Do something cool, and you get an AP. Make everyone laugh, get an AP.
In other words, a lot of what makes XP fun (at least for me) in other games is made fun in this one by APs. We have something to work towards, and it has a meaningful impact on the game.
Your APs sound like PTA’s Fan Mail. That’s a good thing.
“Reading your comments, something occurred to me about our game that really contributes to this approach working well: the way our GM handles Action Points.
In d20 Modern, APs come once a level. In our game, they come at the end of every session — kind of like XP — as well as throughout the sessions. Do something cool, and you get an AP. Make everyone laugh, get an AP.”
Martin beat me to it in describing how I handle “rewards” in the Stargate game. Yes, there needs to be an immediate way to reinforce positive behaviors for the players. In fact, I daresay this and hand waving XP/levels is a better way to get the type of behavior you want in your games than the traditional XP/level model.
My players get immediate feedback and an immediate tool (an Action Point) that they can put into play immediately, right then and there. Their actions are reinforced and they get a “tangible” reward.
The levels between games just help cement the overall plot of the campaign and provide milestones for a “job well done.”
Total amount of time that it takes on my part for both? ZERO. That’s time I spend working on the next great adventure.
Thinking about this a bit more, Abulia is right on the money: XP by GM fiat wouldn’t be nearly as fun without an in-game reward to complement it.
Anyone had a different experience with XP by fiat?