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View Full Version : A cool post on XP for GP



kyoryu
2012-02-16, 05:31 PM
http://muleabides.wordpress.com/2009/10/08/wine-women-and-song-experience-points/

(Disclaimer - I'm a fan of the idea, as I prefer objective-based advancement to usage-based advancement)

Crow
2012-02-16, 06:08 PM
I've done it in old-school D&D, great for RP and works well enough for advancement.

I dig it.

Tengu_temp
2012-02-16, 06:38 PM
I acknowledge Gygax's good intent, but I see this as a relic of the old times when RPGs were about getting treasure, not roleplaying. In a modern day all this does is reinforce playing an archetype, not a character.

kyoryu
2012-02-16, 07:05 PM
I acknowledge Gygax's good intent, but I see this as a relic of the old times when RPGs were about getting treasure, not roleplaying. In a modern day all this does is reinforce playing an archetype, not a character.

Well, I see your point, but "xp for killing" is even worse at that. And a lot depends on your definition of "roleplaying," as well.

I think it's a reasonable rule, overall, provided that ultimately what's awarded is the achievement of character goals. While this rule isn't perfect, it's a step closer than mere "xp for killing."

It also has the advantage of letting GMs set up more interesting scenarios, and then letting players reap the advantage of smart tactics. However, it doesn't play well at *all* with railroad-plots and games with little player agency.

Something like Burning Wheel's advancement for following your Beliefs/playing your Traits/letting your Instincts get you into trouble is even closer from a "pure roleplay" standpoint, but for a more traditional game I'd still take gp for xp over "xp for killing" any day.

Coidzor
2012-02-16, 09:04 PM
I hate the concept of level drain as well as the concept of considering it a good idea to kludge together discrete concepts so that they're actively competing for the same resources/player attention.

It's why in D20, especially D&D 3.X, I cannot stand when designers try to sell purely roleplay feats as being a valid concept, rather than something handled purely by the group through roleplay, and worth the same cost as purely mechanical feats.

So this sort of idea is something that I can only really feel disgust towards the people who came up with it for coming up with it in the first place. Along with shame and revulsion for these people being the pioneers of a hobby that I love.

Reminders of the bad old days tend to do that to me, especially when they advocate things that increase the power of the DM to be an ass and have a "legitimate" excuse. Or otherwise sanction, shore up, or defend the idea that the person running the game has leave to act as a tyrannical little powertripping despot or, worse, that such is desirable.

Crow
2012-02-16, 09:21 PM
Dude relax. Remember this was from back in the days when you didn't need gold to buy (or could if you wanted to) magic gear, and 'wealth by level' didn't exist or have much bearing on balance anyways.

If you didn't spend it on 'living it up', opening orphanages, or hiring sword masters and master magicians to train you, you ended up with huge piles of treasure, and not much to spend it on.

Totally Guy
2012-02-17, 03:17 AM
That's pretty cool. Spending money on stuff that you and your character cares about can say a lot about who your character is and what your priorities are as a player.

Tying it straight to advancement means that the optimal path has roleplaying in the above form on it.

Lapak
2012-02-17, 09:20 AM
That's pretty cool. Spending money on stuff that you and your character cares about can say a lot about who your character is and what your priorities are as a player.

Tying it straight to advancement means that the optimal path has roleplaying in the above form on it.Indeed. I'd be completely on board with this even in a system where treasure does not normally grant experience.

Jerthanis
2012-02-17, 11:42 AM
The problem I see with getting XP for gold is that tax collectors should be level 20 in such a system. Unless it's only gold gained on "adventuring", in which case it really comes down to "You killed something dangerous to get the gold" in which case it makes more sense that the XP comes from the level of danger you face from the monsters and cultists and whatever.

Another problem is that the system where drunken carousing is the primary suggested way of gaining XP will result in a higher percentage of people who have that character personality. Coming into a game I find people don't tend to have an ironclad idea of who their character is yet and it develops over time. While the article goes on to mention spending money to achieve other character goals is acceptable, I think it's harder to think of what certain characters would spend money on.

Like... In an AD&D game I'm in right now, I'm playing a disillusioned former priest/assassin who loves the sea, but I had my own ship by level 5. Now adventuring is for its own sake and the character doesn't have any specific goals for acquiring additional wealth beyond continuing to pay his crew and keep the ship together. If I only got XP for spending money, I'd essentially become a different character as I make up a new motivation when lack of motivation/wanderlust/ennui is part of the character I made. If this rule had been in place, the ennui would have 'just happened' to manifest as burying himself in earthly pleasures.

That said, I don't see anything else wrong with it, and it's a cool and unique way to make money a goal without having the PCs carting around mountains of gold that they have no use for. In the right game story/atmosphere, this would be a great system and in the wrong one, it'd be a disaster.

Lapak
2012-02-17, 11:55 AM
The problem I see with getting XP for gold is that tax collectors should be level 20 in such a system. Unless it's only gold gained on "adventuring", in which case it really comes down to "You killed something dangerous to get the gold" in which case it makes more sense that the XP comes from the level of danger you face from the monsters and cultists and whatever.

Another problem is that the system where drunken carousing is the primary suggested way of gaining XP will result in a higher percentage of people who have that character personality. Coming into a game I find people don't tend to have an ironclad idea of who their character is yet and it develops over time. While the article goes on to mention spending money to achieve other character goals is acceptable, I think it's harder to think of what certain characters would spend money on.

Like... In an AD&D game I'm in right now, I'm playing a disillusioned former priest/assassin who loves the sea, but I had my own ship by level 5. Now adventuring is for its own sake and the character doesn't have any specific goals for acquiring additional wealth beyond continuing to pay his crew and keep the ship together. If I only got XP for spending money, I'd essentially become a different character as I make up a new motivation when lack of motivation/wanderlust/ennui is part of the character I made. If this rule had been in place, the ennui would have 'just happened' to manifest as burying himself in earthly pleasures.

That said, I don't see anything else wrong with it, and it's a cool and unique way to make money a goal without having the PCs carting around mountains of gold that they have no use for. In the right game story/atmosphere, this would be a great system and in the wrong one, it'd be a disaster.What I find interesting about your post is how I'd read it as DM if this were in place. A character who doesn't have any particular goals and is just drifting (as you describe) wouldn't be ABLE to earn XP from gold if he wasn't spending it on character growth. So mechanically, your character would be stuck at level 5 until he figured out what he wanted to do with himself. And that actually makes a lot of sense in the context of what the rule is trying to promote.

If I was going to do this, I would drop generic carousing as a valid avenue except for characters that were actively pursuing a dissipated lifestyle or trying to achieve fame. (Even today, people are famous for being notorious party animals, so that would feed into that goal.) You'd have to decide what your character wanted in order to achieve the greater competence/fame/political power/saintly reputation that comes with higher level. People just running in place, as your shipbound character is, wouldn't advance at all.

(To address your character on a more positive note, though, 'wanderlust' is a perfectly valid avenue of spending. Spending treasure on scribes and/or equipment to record your journeys, running down rumors of exotic locales to go find, supplying, crewing and repairing your ship; all those would count as XP-worthy in my eyes.)

Tengu_temp
2012-02-17, 01:19 PM
That's pretty cool. Spending money on stuff that you and your character cares about can say a lot about who your character is and what your priorities are as a player.

Tying it straight to advancement means that the optimal path has roleplaying in the above form on it.

Except that this system has very limited options of converting gold to XP, and to make it worse they are tied to your class and alignment. That does not encourage roleplaying and creativity, it stiffles them.

Lapak
2012-02-17, 01:22 PM
Except that this system has very limited options of converting gold to XP, and to make it worse they are tied to your class and alignment. That does not encourage roleplaying and creativity, it stiffles them.
What system? It's a post discussing that several different such systems have existed that tie XP-for-GP. He lists one that has activities by class, one that just has a flat list, mentions that he uses something of his own that grabs elements from a couple of places. There's no hard-and-fast system being promoted or suggested, just the general idea.

Totally Guy
2012-02-17, 01:24 PM
Except that this system has very limited options of converting gold to XP, and to make it worse they are tied to your class and alignment. That does not encourage roleplaying and creativity, it stiffles them.

I'm talking about spending money on causes or stuff that you and your character cares about. I'm not talking about classes and levels.

Tengu_temp
2012-02-17, 01:29 PM
I'm talking specifically about the system described in OP's link. Make it more open and it's much better at promoting roleplaying...

Only that it still promotes uneven character growth, and ultimately a playstyle where the thing that matters most is getting as much treasure as you can, with the player who got the most treasure being the "winner".

kyoryu
2012-02-17, 01:40 PM
Sure, and if I were to run such a system, I'd definitely make it so that the acceptable expenditure categories could be tailored to the character, with the examples given being general guidelines.

It doesn't promote roleplaying as much as a system that rewards characters directly for acting in character or achieving character goals. But again, I'd argue that it's better for roleplaying, by far, than a system which primarily relies upon xp from killing monsters for advancement (which is how the vast majority of D&D players play).

Dervag
2012-02-17, 03:51 PM
I acknowledge Gygax's good intent, but I see this as a relic of the old times when RPGs were about getting treasure, not roleplaying. In a modern day all this does is reinforce playing an archetype, not a character.So come up with more ways to 'carouse' your money away. The article referenced in that post already has options like "give the money to charity" and "stick it in your clan/tribal/family vault." A reasonable DM from those days might come up with something like "use it to build a castle," or "recruit an army to retake your throne," too.

The logic here is that while most of the enemies a D&D character fights are totally irrelevant to whatever overarching goals they have in life, treasure is relevant to almost any goal they might have. Whatever you want in the world, a pile of gold can probably help you accomplish it in some way. So getting the bulk of your XP for gaining (and then using) treasure to achieve your goals makes sense, in that regard.

To take terms out of Order of the Stick, which makes more sense: for Haley to earn XP by killing goblins, or for Haley to earn XP by taking gold and storing it up to pay her father's ransom? Which is more relevant to her character's motivation?

Now, if your character is more like Roy, who's fighting with a specific objective, or Elan who's along for the hell of it, things get trickier. But then, maybe if you want to get fancy, it would be best to allow different XP gain mechanics for different characters, if your goal is to encourage roleplaying. Maybe Haley gets few XP for fighting but many XP for treasure, Roy gets few XP for treasure but many for fighting, and Elan gets most of his XP for participating and trying to help his friends.

Mechanics should support roleplaying, and reward the player for doing the roleplaying.


It's why in D20, especially D&D 3.X, I cannot stand when designers try to sell purely roleplay feats as being a valid concept, rather than something handled purely by the group through roleplay, and worth the same cost as purely mechanical feats.What do you mean by "roleplay feats?"


So this sort of idea is something that I can only really feel disgust towards the people who came up with it for coming up with it in the first place. Along with shame and revulsion for these people being the pioneers of a hobby that I love. "Shame and revulsion" sounds really, really excessive.


Another problem is that the system where drunken carousing is the primary suggested way of gaining XP will result in a higher percentage of people who have that character personality. Coming into a game I find people don't tend to have an ironclad idea of who their character is yet and it develops over time. While the article goes on to mention spending money to achieve other character goals is acceptable, I think it's harder to think of what certain characters would spend money on.If you look at the kinds of characters the old pioneers actually played in the '70s, this was pretty common. The 'model' of a "fighting man" character was someone like Conan or Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser: people who would indeed do a lot of carousing and partying.

The idea that it was necessary or desirable to give characters more complex motives was... well, you could probably have joined Gary Gygax's D&D group with a fighter whose motive was something like wanderlust/ennui or "find my lost fiancee" or something like that. But it wasn't the standard, so the system wasn't specifically calibrated to make it easy to do that.

If you read between the lines, it's pretty obvious that a smart DM will tailor this system to the character. Almost any character can think of some reason to spend money on something, and you can use whatever that thing is as your character motivation/source of XP gain.

kyoryu
2012-02-17, 04:00 PM
Now, if your character is more like Roy, who's fighting with a specific objective, or Elan who's along for the hell of it, things get trickier. But then, maybe if you want to get fancy, it would be best to allow different XP gain mechanics for different characters, if your goal is to encourage roleplaying. Maybe Haley gets few XP for fighting but many XP for treasure, Roy gets few XP for treasure but many for fighting, and Elan gets most of his XP for participating and trying to help his friends.

Or, Roy gets XP for treasure for spending loot on training, equipment, and research into liches. Elan gets XP for treasure for spending it on his friends, or advancing the Church of Banjo.


The idea that it was necessary or desirable to give characters more complex motives was... well, you could probably have joined Gary Gygax's D&D group with a fighter whose motive was something like wanderlust/ennui or "find my lost fiancee" or something like that. But it wasn't the standard, so the system wasn't specifically calibrated to make it easy to do that.

Especially if you consider that at the time of AD&D1e, the "campaign as a big overarcing plot" game didn't really exist. 1e was more Greyhawk, less DragonLance.


If you read between the lines, it's pretty obvious that a smart DM will tailor this system to the character. Almost any character can think of some reason to spend money on something, and you can use whatever that thing is as your character motivation/source of XP gain.

This is actually something I see a lot, in that a list of things is seen by many people as an authoritative, complete, and exclusive list, rather than a set of things to start with and to use as a guideline.

Jerthanis
2012-02-18, 03:07 AM
What I find interesting about your post is how I'd read it as DM if this were in place. A character who doesn't have any particular goals and is just drifting (as you describe) wouldn't be ABLE to earn XP from gold if he wasn't spending it on character growth. So mechanically, your character would be stuck at level 5 until he figured out what he wanted to do with himself. And that actually makes a lot of sense in the context of what the rule is trying to promote.

Yeah, but the problem is that in the paradigm I'm in right now I have no motive to invent a motivation for my character, and so if he does figure out what he wanted to do now, it'll be because he's had some spark or call to action or some other trigger. If I were being mechanically penalized for being unsure, I'd have a pretty strong impetus to come up with something in particular as a motive, whether it made sense or not.

I suppose the character could accumulate money until they gained a new purpose, donate it all and gain several levels at once, and thus wouldn't really "be behind" in the long run. I guess it's not that bad for my current character now that I think about it.



If I was going to do this, I would drop generic carousing as a valid avenue except for characters that were actively pursuing a dissipated lifestyle or trying to achieve fame. (Even today, people are famous for being notorious party animals, so that would feed into that goal.) You'd have to decide what your character wanted in order to achieve the greater competence/fame/political power/saintly reputation that comes with higher level. People just running in place, as your shipbound character is, wouldn't advance at all.

But this encourages people to take goals LIKE pursuing didipated lifestyles or being tied to an organization that can always take more money so they don't have to face the situation of "Okay, now I can afford a ship, so I've got to think of something else to put money into"

Mystify
2012-02-18, 03:35 AM
I prefer the idea of "Xp for overcoming challenges". That could be combat, it could be role-play, it could be circumventing a confrontation altogether. I dislike the idea of incentivizing the players into combat. If they come up with a cool plan that would avoid confrontation, then abandon it because killing everyone mindlessly gets more xp, there is a mechanical problem. Money is less of an issue because it is a real, in-game motivation for the characters. If you go after the more lucrative option because you are greedy, it is role playing. But most characters don't have an in-game motivation to kill indiscriminately, even if the game offers a mechanical one.
That same paradigm also allows xp for completing a quest. Gold for completing a quest can be done, but it is often arbitrary. Sure, you might be hired, and sure, the dragon has a hoard. But what if your quest was to banish the Balor? Nobody hired you, you are doing it because its the right thing, and your paladin will not stand for it. The local town might not have proper loot for a level 15 party; they might throw a feast and roast a few goats, but tens of thousands of gp are outside of their means.

Lea Plath
2012-02-18, 07:51 AM
One of the things my old IT teacher (who was an avid RPG player) use to recommend was divding XP up into skill, combat, strategy and role-playing.

Basically, things like the less damage you took, the more you killed, the better you role played it and the diffrent skills you used got you more xp. She would also vary it, so that players didn't want to just kill NPCs straight away, especially villainous or neutral ones, when they could bargain and make deals instead, which gave XP. Then when they did try and kill an NPC, to get the maximum XP, it would be best to beat him half to death, then bargain from a position of strength, which would give good XP and allow her to use these characters later if need be.

Totally Guy
2012-02-18, 08:25 AM
Then when they did try and kill an NPC, to get the maximum XP, it would be best to beat him half to death, then bargain from a position of strength, which would give good XP and allow her to use these characters later if need be.

So the way the game was designed lead to the players making different choices so that the game would reward them?

I prefer games that are designed in that way.

I've know people that prefer the game to have no input into the player's choices. But that's a very very difficult paradigm to design games for.

I believe that a game's rules influences player choices without anyone intending for that to happen.

kyoryu
2012-02-19, 12:04 AM
I believe that a game's rules influences player choices without anyone intending for that to happen.

Of course they do. Players will optimize their choices around the rewards they're given.

UserClone
2012-02-19, 05:43 PM
I think this is probably more what I'd be into. (http://files.crngames.com/cc/sweet20/experience.html)