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Nerdarchy > Dungeons & Dragons  > Experience schmexperience! Trials and triumphs of a full-time nerd in a part-time world

Experience schmexperience! Trials and triumphs of a full-time nerd in a part-time world

"Old Yeller" - Out of the Box D&D Encounters #44
DMing a Killer Mystery Arc in D&D

A item on my list of potential topics, a comment from Nerdarchist Ryan on a recent Saturday live chat, and something one of my players said to me the other day have coalesced into this week’s examination of different ways to approach your tabletop gaming hobby. A core concept shared by roleplaying games is that characters progress through an advancement system based on experiences. Different systems have different terminology for the mechanics, but essentially it involves accumulating a resource used to reach thresholds of advancement. In Dungeons & Dragons – the game I’m most familiar with – this is represented by experience points.

experience

But they do! They do simply level up!

After many years as a DM, tallying the experience points gained by players through defeating monsters and other hazards and obstacles, I’ve done away with that completely for the current campaign. Starting out, the reasons for this decision were primarily experimental. I knew the group would be sporadic, without regularly scheduled sessions or even the same players attending each time. Time was important to all the potential gamers including me, so the extra time needed to calculate earned experience and divvy it up amongst the participants seemed like a drawback. Along those same lines, we improvise a lot at the table and monsters frequently deviate from their published sources (both planned ahead of time and on the fly during play). Balancing customized monsters’ value against the rules as written frankly isn’t an enjoyable task.

advancement

How many of us have wandered around the plains and fought about a million of these until leveling up?

But it was my player’s comment that most solidified the biggest advantage to doing away with experience points, and he’s a brand new player to not only D&D but tabletop RPGs in general.

“I don’t feel like we have to fight everything we run across, or go looking for opportunities to earn XP.”

From the mouths of babes.

This player is familiar with RPGs from a video game perspective, having played plenty of CRPGs and MMOs, and I believe his enjoyment of our game has flourished the longer we’ve played. He’s come to recognize that, while mechanically similar to a video game, the tabletop environment offers much greater freedom to visualize characters and the fantastical world they inhabit in a realistic way. A character needn’t grind out experience points fighting everything in sight until they can move forward and do the same thing (except with better stats and gear).

The fifth edition D&D Dungeon Master’s Guide describes several different alternative methods to experience points. These methods are found in many other RPG systems as well, including Open Legend. Basically, character advancement is more goal oriented or story driven, as opposed to being tied directly to specific actions (most commonly defeating foes.)

Milestone character advancement

Character advancement tied to reaching crucial moments can be a useful tool for both players and GMs. By creating a list of goals and accomplishments for characters to achieve, GMs can keep a longer story arc on track, ensuring characters are at an appropriate level range to tackle whatever content they’ve prepared. At the same time, it gives players opportunities to take detours from the path.

The important thing to keep in mind is that everyone understands this arrangement, so players don’t feel stifled by a lack of character advancement. GMs can address this by rewarding characters with other sorts of benefits. Giving players breathing room to explore their characters’ own interests in your game world involves them with the creation process, and these side excursions can gain them valuable knowledge, allies or other bonuses. They can also be used to control the pace of the adventure. In a recent session, my players were exploring an underground complex suffused with madness-inducing energies that intensified the longer they remained. They very quickly and astutely realized taking a long rest would be incredibly dangerous to their sanity, but they discovered a small skill challenge that, when completed, gave them the benefits of a long rest.

Players will know they’re on the right track when they reach new milestones and earn a level or other sort of benefit.

An important thing to keep in mind with milestone advancement is remaining open to the possibilities that the adventure may veer from what a GM originally set out to present. Be prepared to refine your list of milestones, whether that means altering them based on the characters’ actions, removing items that no longer fit or adding new ones.

My home campaign began with this method. My players almost immediately went off the reservation, like you do, but the list of milestones remained in place for their first significant story arc. Because I enjoy the fluid nature of RPGs and empowering players to tell the story they want to, I rolled with it and improvised changes during play in terms of the challenge level. However, the milestones provided a context for the characters to advance. What the players’ actions determined was simply the importance or impact of the milestones. Basically, they completed the various steps in the adventure, but in the order that worked for them.

Advancement tied to attendance

If you’re comfortable juggling characters of different power levels, awarding character advancement based on players’ presence at your gaming sessions can be a viable alternative to earning traditional experience points. If players understand their characters will advance one level for every two or three sessions they participate in, this method can be an incentive to entice players to attend sessions. However, the caveat is that potential players can be turned off by this method, especially if irregular attendance is simply the result of real-world priorities like spouses, children or work.

Show up = level up.

One way to approach this method with players is to present the campaign in the same realistic sense as the players’ circumstances. While characters in tabletop RPGs generally fall into the catchall category of “adventurers,” it’s certainly reasonable and adds to verisimilitude that they might have personal concerns beyond questing with their companions. Let their characters reflect this as well. Perhaps the party rogue is also a new parent and their duties at home keep them from delving into the dungeon this week because they couldn’t find a babysitter. Maybe the sorcerer’s wedding anniversary is the same weekend the rest of the party is heading out to explore the Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan, and their husband made reservations at the finest tavern in town. The fighter might be ready to buckle on their sword and head out for the weekend, but their boss needs them to work the weekend.

By addressing potential party level disparity within the game itself, you can add a new layer of realism to adventures. When both the players, and their characters, understand their differences, it can lead to excellent roleplaying opportunities as well as innovative approaches to adventuring. For example, when the above-mentioned rogue is able to join the quest, the party will have opportunities for stealth and scouting that can keep things fresh for the participating characters. It may also open the door to a greater sense of possibilities when it comes to facing threats like monsters. A party might be more thoughtful about circumventing danger or trying to avoid a fight, for instance.

As the story advances, so too the characters

Follow the path to find adventure (and character advancement, too!)

Similar to milestone advancement, story advancement sees the characters grow in power as they become more involved in the greater narrative. This method syncs up well with a sandbox-style campaign where characters have open-ended environments to explore that advance a larger plot and lead them into new areas as they progress.

Unlike milestones, story advancement is tied to much more significant events. Defeating the spirit naga secretly in control of the cult activity characters uncovered, rescuing the kidnapped princess who can then take the absent throne and stabilize the kingdom, stopping the ritual that would allow the demon lord to enter the world and wreak havoc – these story-based events have a huge impact. Overcoming these challenges is definitely worthy of granting character advancement. Further, they leave characters in a position to take on greater threats and become more invested in the world.

At the Game Master’s discretion

Trust between the GM and players is crucial for this method, where characters advance in level or power based on unknowable circumstances. Some GMs will make a notation every time a player does something particularly noteworthy, and award a level after a certain number of these are accumulated. Others level up characters for every dungeon they complete, or every two dungeons.

At the risk of spoiling my own slapdash method for awarding levels to any of my players who might be reading this, here’s a bit of insight into how it works at my table (My players aren’t aware of what exactly determines when they level up.) I take note of how much they use whatever character abilities they earned since the last time they leveled up. After I feel like they’ve gained a good understanding of not only their own capabilities but how those work in conjunction with the other players, I’ll level them up the next time they do something significant.

So far, this method has worked pretty well. Because our game is a very wide open sandbox environment in a Spelljammer-esque setting, they have ample opportunities to pursue different sorts of hooks at their discretion. The players discover myriad ways to use their skills and abilities individually and collectively.

A side benefit I’ve discovered is that it helps to keep things in perspective for the players and the characters. The players can’t judge the difficulty of an encounter by how many experience points they gained, for example. Their characters have grown more cautious and thoughtful as a consequence.

As the GM, this method frees me up to tailor the story of these characters based on what they get into during sessions. In the constantly-evolving campaign there are quite a few big threats and plot lines that have been hinted at that the players have not been interested in, which is fine. I am able to insert fillers that give them chances to explore their capabilities while they play out the lives of their characters. So far, they seem just as engaged by exploring and learning about their characters and the world they inhabit than by grinding out levels and gaining treasure, a scenario I consider a big in.

And you?

What method do you use for character advancement in your tabletop roleplaying game? Do you stick with traditional experience points gained by defeating monsters? Do you award experience for overcoming traps or avoiding conflicts entirely? Does your favorite game have a fun method for character advancement that you really enjoy? Leave a comment and let me know. And no matter what method you employ, remember to always stay nerdy.

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Doug Vehovec

Nerditor-in-Chief Doug Vehovec is a proud native of Cleveland, Ohio, with D&D in his blood since the early 80s. Fast forward to today and he’s still rolling those polyhedral dice. When he’s not DMing, worldbuilding or working on endeavors for Nerdarchy he enjoys cryptozoology trips and eating awesome food.

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