Courtesy of TT forum member hellibrarian comes this tight, simple alternate XP system — I have to give this a try!
I’ve been making the non-combat stuff in my Star Wars d20 game as important as the combat. When I come up with the plot of the adventure/mission I usually create one long or hard enough that if the players hit everything they get enough xp for someone of the group’s average level to go up one level. Then I make half of the xp dependant on non-combat plot points, some are really easy: like taking the bait, some not so much: like not killing the attacking Sith Alchemy mutated children they came to save.
If they are in a hack-n-slash mode of play they will miss out on up to half the xp. They are well aware of this system. I have a pile of black poker chips I use as a physical representation of these plot points. When they see me take a chip from my pile and put it in theirs. At the end of the mission I can easily count up the chips in their pile and give the players their xp right them.
This may be harder to do if you are using adventures someone else wrote.
Don’t miss the rest of the thread, either: Alternate experience reward system for D&D?. hellibrarian’s system gets tweaked, other options are suggested and, despite the title, much of it is applicable to non-d20 RPGs as well.
Apart from its portability, what I especially like about hellibrarian’s system is that it shows your players what’s out there for them to earn (“We have to explore this warehouse — we might miss out on a chip!”), gives them a “personal best” to shoot for and signals how important the adventure is to the current story arc or to the campaign as a whole (“Wait, tonight’s pile is 20 chips, and it’s usually only 10…”). Nice work, HL!
I also use poker chips to dole out XP with my D&D group, but we have a different format. Each Player has their own stack of 10 chips of 1 color that they use to recognize other player’s roleplaying genius by throwing them a chip. Player chips are worth 10XP/Level of the PC receiving them. The DM has 3 colors of chips valued at 10, 20, or 30 XP/Level of the PC. This mechanism provides an outlet for immediate feedback to encourage good/entertaining roleplaying, and isn’t reliant solely upon the whims or tastes of the DM.
Having a little older group we haven’t had to worry about anyone abusing the system, and on those occasions that the Players run low on chips we “cash them out” at a convenient down point during the session. The individual awards are small, but accumulate considerably over the course of a session.
I really like this method of giving out XP “as it happens” to the players. I’m going to tweak this to work with my own system. I also liek the idea of players rewarding each other as well. Thanks for the great ideas!
I’m putting some ideas together along the same vein; most of it’s in the above forum link. I’ll post the whole thing when done.
My players have 6 of their own chips that they can give each other during play. They are worth 50xp each and they can be given for many reasons, for example: coordinating attacks during combat, aid in a skill check, reminding of forgotten skill. Essentially they are a way for the players to reward each other for making the game more enjoyable. I started it to encourage teamwork, and it does. We’ve been using this system about a year now.
Apart from its portability, what I especially like about hellibrarian’s system is that it shows your players what’s out there for them to earn (â€We have to explore this warehouse — we might miss out on a chip!â€), gives them a “personal best†to shoot for and signals how important the adventure is to the current story arc or to the campaign as a whole (â€Wait, tonight’s pile is 20 chips, and it’s usually only 10…â€).
I would find this incredibly annoying for a number of reasons, not the least of which that it places the metagame portion of the activity front and center.
If I wanted this kind of “collect the chit” experience at my table I’d simply play Crackdown…
YMMV, of course.
I know a GM or two who sometimes have trouble figuring out how much XP to give out for the non-combat portions of things. We’re generally agreed that the more plot-heavy and decision-heavy things are, the more XP things tend to be worth, but sometimes by the end of the night it’s tough to quantify such a qualitative thing. That’s where I could see this system coming in handy. I’m not sure I’d do the “put it out in front of them to give them incentive” thing, but then everyone I game with is pretty crazy about exploring everything anyway, so I don’t think it would be necessary.
On the one hand, I like the idea of changing how experience is awarded. However, there’s actually a bigger issue. If the changes to the character from gaining experience don’t mesh with what you want out of play, just changing how you award XP really isn’t solving the problem.
D&D expresses character change through increased capacity to fight things. Sure, in the latest edition, there’s also some skills and abilities tacked on that don’t directly relate to combat, but fundamentally, the game is still about fighting things and getting better at fighting things.
If you want play to be about characters making moral decisions, you need to make the changes to character reflect and inform that desire.
Now that said, a system that allows the other players to reward you with more combat ability for what they consider to be good play might totally work. But the game is still going to be focused around combat and gaining more capacity for combat.
This all goes back to my thought that many people are playing games that aren’t really satisfying their needs, and that they need to examine what their needs actually are, and make sure they change their game, or find a new one, that really meet those needs.
Frank
I hadn’t considered the appeal of the “awarding XP as it’s earned” aspect of this idea — that’s pretty sexy, too. I also dig the idea of players having a pool of chips to award to each other.
One way to mitigate the video game-y feel of knowing how much XP is out there to be earned would just be to nix that element: award chips as your players earn them, but don’t have a predetermined stack available on display.