Thursday 28 May 2020

Are You Experienced

Comments on recent posts led me to revisit the 2nd edition AD&D DMG (God help me) and its Chapter 8 - on "Experience".

These rules are easily, and fairly, criticised on a number of grounds. Foremost among these criticisms is the rules' arbitrariness, encompassed in the notion that "the number of points given a player for a game session is a signal of how well the DM thinks the player did in the game". In other words, they're a method for rewarding whatever the individual DM's conception of "good role playing" entails. Favouritism, inconsistency, mistakes, unfairness, resentment - what could possibly go wrong? The worst element of all this is the idea that experience points should be awarded for meta concerns such as whether a player got involved properly, encouraged others, interfered too much, or acted like a "rules lawyer". Why it is the DM's business to passive-aggressively police the behaviour of the players through XP awards rather than just taking them to one side and saying, "Stop being an arsehole" is beyond me. Almost as bad is the idea of getting XP for achieving "story goals" - a rule that positively incentivises the absolute worst thing about bad gaming: railroading.

The beauty of XP for treasure is not just that it is simple but that it also tells you what "good role playing" is - getting treasure and surviving. It is what Ron Edwards might have called "coherent". This might not be to all tastes, but those other tastes are served by other games.

The 2nd edition way of awarding experience points was always unworkable in practice except in limited circumstances (like an adult DM with a group of youngish children), and it is mostly a historical curiosity now - or at least it should be. But it's possible that there is one bit worth rescuing. This is the class awards. Briefly summarised, these are:


  • Fighters get XP for "defeating" enemies
  • Priests get XP for successfully using their powers, casting spells to further their ethos, and making stuff
  • Wizards get XP for casting spells to overcome "foes or problems", researching things and making stuff
  • Rogues get XP for using their special abilities and, er, treasure

This is at least worth playing around with as the sole method of awarding XP where the desire is to get away from the "PCs as rogues" motif that is at the heart of what the OSR is all about. It is coherent in a different way, in that it at least attempts to link XP with what the various classes are supposed to be for. 

The immediate consequence that suggests itself is that this would incentivise slavish and unthinking pursuit of what you might call class priorities: the fighter wants to kill everything; the magic-user is constantly trying to come up with magical solutions to solve problems; the thief is just after treasure. This could have its charms. One could imagine all sorts of amusing and interesting consequences flowing from having an adventuring party whose priorities are fundamentally orthogonal and occasionally even directly at odds with each other. Although one could also imagine priorities being so different that it becomes difficult to reconcile them.

Another is the mid-game. In my experience as the players begin to amass cash they tend to use it to make investments (in 99% of cases this is building a pub; in 1% it is fortifications). If most PCs don't have a massive interesting in getting treasure in order to advance, are they going to be as wealthy as they go up in levels? What does a fighter do whose only real goal is to fight? Or a wizard whose only real goal is to use magic and research it? The answer: much more adventuring, but for other aims than financial. 

How this would work in practice remains to be seen: as usual, have at it in the comments.

27 comments:

  1. How many people actually used these rules? I know I didn't. They went in the same pile as weapon speed factors and all the rest.

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    1. I think weapon speed factors could actually add a lot to combat if used correctly. Maybe something for a future blog post.

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  2. I never read or used 2E AD&D, so this is news to me, but it does not surprise me. The tendency throughout the '80s (as, I suppose you and others will recall) was increasingly to reward meeting the goals of the respective roles rather than allowing treasure to count as a double reward. And, of course, there were good reasons for this, occasionally in the name of morality, but more often raised in the name of role-playing (as opposed to gaming).

    I agree with you that XP should require careful consideration. XP are one of the very few features that make role-playing games different from games that went before them. Continuity of character is central to the hobby.

    My solution is not to bother with XP at all. I humbly provide a link to my discussion:
    https://lichvanwinkle.blogspot.com/2020/04/ditch-experience-points-forever.html

    In a nutshell, I argue that there is no generally satisfying solution for what to reward--even XP for GP is as manipulative as the dreaded railroading, because the DM stashes the XP (level-ups) in the form of golden coins wherever he pleases and to force players to go where he wants them to go--so I say just allow characters to advance at a pace appropriate to the mood of the campaign without all that accounting. Money is its own reward, as is defeating threats. Players groups need to collaborate to have characters who remain motivated to go on adventures.

    Do most of your players really aspire to build pubs in-game? I have never witnessed that.

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    1. The solution is random treasure stocking in dungeons and being strict with yourself about it.

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    2. Ah! That *would* help to make it less about the DM's special favor.

      But even then, the DM has adopted specific parameters for random treasure. For example, in Moldvay's Basic, if I kill 1-6 gnolls, and it's specifically on the second level of the dungeon, there's a 60% chance I get to take 1D6 x 1000 GP = XP. So when I stock the dungeon with 1-6 gnolls on level 2, I am knowingly also supplying those chances of getting XP.

      Let's say I don't like those particular random parameters. I still have to make my own. Then it's still DM choice.

      I do not wish to be argumentative about imaginary treasures and I don't think any particular way is best. People should play how they want to play. That said, in thinking about how games work, it seems to me that random treasure tables themselves are a scheme for level-ups not so different from DMs fiat. If treasure are linked to rooms or monsters, by type, then the randomness of treasures is not so random, in that DMs set rooms and monsters.

      Perhaps the answer is to randomly generate everything: rooms, monsters, treasures... but at that point I might as well be playing a board game.

      T&T in 1975 gave 100 XP for every level that a character reached. It was XP for "Daring." (In original T&T, saving throws got harder every time you descended a level, too.)

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    3. I think you're overegging the problem with treasure stocking.

      Forget random stocking for a second. Even if the DM is playing all treasure non-randomly, it's not the case that this "forces" players where he wants them to go. This is for two simple reasons. First, they don't know in advance where the treasure is, so how can it possibly affect their decision-making? Second, if there are lots of different options for places which might hold treasure (within a single adventure site and across many adventure sites) the risk of railroading mostly disappears.

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  3. So, when I suggested 2E, I was thinking ONLY of the “class XP awards.” I always forget about the other 2E baloney.

    Yeah, in this particular case (questing after the blue wizards) the party presumably has some sort of goal in mind...their various class priorities then emphasize how it is they go about reaching that goal, for better or worse.

    But “adventurers,” even Middle Earth adventurers have some lust for treasure, at least if the storytelling of The Hobbit is any indication (even Gandalf is interested in a piece of the action). Finding troll hoards and recovering loot from goblin mounds and barrow wights feel like treasure shouldn’t be too hard to come by (or unreasonable to look for).

    Maybe some synthesis of 1E and 2E is appropriate?

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    1. So XP for treasure and class awards, you mean? You would need a replacement class award for thieves, in that case. Or maybe everybody else gets 1/2 XP for treasure and the thief, full.

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    2. Wellll...I figured you were still on this "searching for Blue Wizards" idea.

      The hunt for treasure is a great "uniter" in D&D: everyone wants it, everyone needs it, it fills a common purpose/objective for the party. One of the reasons I dislike 2E is because the absence of this common purpose requires the DM to provide common objectives (often in a ham-fisted or forced manner) that gives disparate adventurers a reason to be together. A "story" if you will.

      [cue long-winded discussion on the many problems with this]

      You already have a concept of the campaign you wish to run here, so presumably there's not going to be a serious problem in this regard with "getting players on board." Elrond's Council (or whatever) has tasked the players with a mission: find Blue Wizards. Here are some clues to start you off (you listed these ideas a couple posts back...see? I pay attention!). The party is united in a common cause that has nothing to do with treasure, so now "winning" the scenario is about something else.

      However, you still need advancement; though presumably not so much...Tolkien characters aren't "super heroic" in terms of power, after all. Aragorn is maybe 9th level by the end of LotR (leading to his crowning). Gandalf is in the 5th - 7th level range. The hobbits have hit their level cap of 4th or so, while both Gimli and Legolas are about 6th...

      *ahem* You still need advancement over time, so allowing characters to go up through their particular class fashion is going to give you the way to do this: fighter types get better through overcoming opponents in battle, magic-users through research and magical means, and thieves from being sneaky and greed-minded. All characters could get a bonus chunk of XP for uncovering major clues about the Blue Wizards whereabouts, and THIS fact should be stated up front: it gives players something to FOCUS on rather than get mired down in pointless battles with orcs all in the name of getting every last scrap of XP. In fact, I'd reduce most of the awards as listed in 2E (an orc shouldn't become MORE valuable as a source of XP as a fighter levels up!) while keeping the basic "gist;" something that influences the players' performance but doesn't distract from the overall mission.

      Later on, if (and when) their search is finished/completed, surviving players can hang out in Middle Earth and simply pick up this "incidental" XP, cutting advancement down substantially, but allowing them the enjoyment of the world. Or you could come up with some new "uniting mission" (look for Ent-Wives I suppose), if that's your interest.

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    3. Those are good comments.

      Looking for Ent-Wives is PhD-level Tolkien role playing.

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  4. I think fighters who are rewarded for fighting would end up playing "shonen anime" like characters. I.E. characters who focus on proving their strength and going around finding worthy opponents to do battle with. This will pop out more in contrast with everyone else, unlike games where everyone gets exp from combat where videogames have generally taught us that this so default it's not really worth considering.

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    1. Yes, I agree, and I also really really like that idea.

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    2. I love that idea. A campaign where the PCs actively seek out opponents to best just for the sake of it sounds great. *cogs whirring*

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  5. I DM'ed 2e extensively in my student years, probably more than any other ruleset, using most of the core rules, weapon speed factors and XP included. I rather liked the way it worked, although it did put some accounting burden upon me which I didn't mind back then but probably would mind nowadays. I also sometimes wondered whether the level progress was too slow (in my longest campaign, it took the party over 100 sessions, I believe, to advance from lvl 2 to 7 or 8), which could be affected by the fact that I was not very fond of the idea of "story goals" and allocated very little in that department.

    I remember my displeasure with the concept of group XP in D&D3.5 - which was fully confirmed at the first play experience. It was I who saved the day with a clever plan and some well-timed use of spells after the rest have mindlessly walked into an obvious trap -- and we all get the same amount of XP for today? Really?

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    1. I played a lot of 2nd edition as a wee lad as well but I find it very hard to remember what we used to do. I have a feeling we used to just give XP per session.

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  6. As someone who (briefly) used those rules, I prefer the similar idea from Paul Siegel's Ten Dead Rats D&D+WHFRP homebrew of supplementing treasure-based XP with individual and party ambitions. It's still a way of rewarding the player for playing their role well, but it gives more freedom for the player to decide "this is the character/role I'm interested in playing" rather than having a dictate that "all characters of [class X] must fit into [role X] to advance".

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  7. I am of course falling into a different camp.

    The concept of giving XP for clever ideas, being entertaining at the table, and solving the mysteries at hand has always been the way I award experience.

    I haven't given XP for finding gold and magic items since 1981, and I started gaming in '77. This is mainly because I took the term 'experience' literally. As in, 'what did you learn? What has this taught you?'

    Getting experience for killing stuff and stealing from it teaches you to keep doing that and sure, it probably makes you better at that in the future, but so what? That was never the focus of my games and isn't now.

    D&D's XP system never made sense to me even as a kid, so I had to find one that did. Fighters defeating enemies tougher than themselves, wizards unraveling a magical riddle, clerics furthering the cause of their deity, and rogue pulling off a great con seems a waaay more interesting way to gain experience than, "Oh look, this dead orc left gold on the floor of his cave. Now I know how to fight better!"

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    1. It seems more interesting in theory but in practice I find it too arbitrary - mainly because apart from fighters and theives eveybody else's awards are far too vaguely defined: What is 'furthering the cause of one's deity', exactly, and how do you measure that quantitatively?

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  8. As a DM I hate the idea of figuring different experience points for each character (not to mention having to judge everyone on their playing). I like the objective nature of GP for treasure but if you want your players to level up at all you are limited in what sort of adventures or activities the players can pursue - hunting down a hated adversary through a treacherous maze isn't worth much xp-wise unless there's a bunch GP laying around.

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    1. Yes, although I think it's important to point out that although Incentives Matter, hunting down a hated adversary can still be its own reward.

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    2. The bookkeeping by the DM is quite tedious. I'm thinking of asking the PCs to track their own XP in a future game (with maybe light overview/auditing).

      The danger of course is that that will really crystallise the class based rewards as a thing in the player's mind, possibly leading to weird side-effects. Worth an experiment.

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  9. Well whether GP = XP is a good system depends on what you want experience to do.

    1. Be simple, easy to understand and transparent = GP = XP is great.

    2. Be a realistic way of simulating how people learn things = GP = XP is pretty bad but you can work around that by having training be expensive so you need GP to gain levels.

    3. Be a good scorekeeper of how well players did this session = works beautifully if you're playing a treasure hunting game.

    4. Keep the party all pointed in the same direction = if all party members gain XP in different ways they'll all be trying to do different things which can cause headaches, this can be a problem anyway in a lot of games so having everyone be motivated by money keeps everyone on the same page.

    5. Encourage certain kinds of behavior = GP = XP is great at encouraging certain kinds of behavior, namely making the PCs into a bunch of greedy rat bastards who'll try to think of cunning ways to get money, run away from danger a lot and try to route their way around challenges to get the loot. This is absolutely perfect in some kinds of games and horrible in other kinds of games. But it does encourage a lot of great emergent behavior that doesn't feel artificial or gamey (greedy guys do greedy things). A lot of other XP systems can cause strange incentives that result in the players doing things that don't really make sense in the game's fiction because they're the most efficient way of gaining XP and they can often feel artificial and gamey.

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  10. For many people, myself included, our main experience with 2E was via the Infinity Engine games. Those went all-in on quest XP as a supplement to monster XP. I think you got XP for disarming traps and picking locks as well, but it was split throughout the party. I don't know if the removal of other XP-generation schemes was a top-down design decision to make the game simpler, or if it reflected the "D&D-as-actually-played" culture of Bioware and Black Isle.

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  11. Are you experienced?

    Not necessarily stoned
    but beautiful

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  12. Sounds similar to (and was probably a direct ancestor of) "Keys" in the Shadow of Yesterday. There's a pdf of that at http://downloads.darkon.info/pdf/tsoy.pdf — the list of standard Keys starts on page 27.

    I've had good times with them, but I've only used them in the kind of games (like tSoY) where we leap from scene to scene, resolving big conflicts in a single roll, and so forth. In a turns-and-rooms D&D game it would be harder to make them sing.

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    1. One issue with that can be different PCs having different goals all pulling in different directions. Not an insurmountable goal at all but you have to collaborate with chargen to get everyone pointed in the right direction. With D&D you can just have everyone roll up whatever and people are all pointed in the same direction because everyone wants treasure.

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