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Tanarii
2018-05-05, 07:41 PM
Can we stop with claims that it is "punishing" players who miss a session by not awarding them XP. Not being there means they don't get a reward for participating. They are not being punished in any way.

If you have a specific situation where you want all your PCs to be the same level, regardless of their ability to attend sessions, then by all means give XP to characters that can't attend. Or drop XP altogether. That's fine. It may, depending on the system, even be laudable, or a better way to play the game. But don't try to twist the language so that not earning a reward, is instead a punishment.

kyoryu
2018-05-05, 07:46 PM
RPGs have a bizarrely high number of people that can’t handle losing, or even not getting as much stuff as others.

Quertus
2018-05-05, 07:49 PM
Can we stop with claims that it is "punishing" players who miss a session by not awarding them XP. Not being there means they don't get a reward for participating. They are not being punished in any way.

If you have a specific situation where you want all your PCs to be the same level, regardless of their ability to attend sessions, then by all means give XP to characters that can't attend. Or drop XP altogether. That's fine. It may, depending on the system, even be laudable, or a better way to play the game. But don't try to twist the language so that not earning a reward, is instead a punishment.

"Go to bed without support" - or desert - is a rather traditional punishment. So, lack of getting something certainly can be a punishment. But it doesn't necessarily follow that all such removals of rewards are punishments.

However, for those who care about game balance - for those who aren't interested in playing Thor (and the Avengers) - then anything which removes their ability to contribute on equal footing, anything which places their XP total below the party XP total absolutely is a punishment.

It's punishing them, not just once, but for the rest of the campaign.

jindra34
2018-05-05, 08:00 PM
However, for those who care about game balance - for those who aren't interested in playing Thor (and the Avengers) - then anything which removes their ability to contribute on equal footing, anything which places their XP total below the party XP total absolutely is a punishment.

It's punishing them, not just once, but for the rest of the campaign.

There are many games out there where one or two sessions of XP won't seriously impact character performance (assuming standard rewards). In fact of the games I've played, DnD is the ONLY one where a single (or small number of) session(s) can permanently push you behind. So I'm not sure how true this is.

KillianHawkeye
2018-05-05, 08:05 PM
I know that in D&D (3e and 3.5 at least), differences in XP should even out over time as lower-level characters get more XP than their peers. Pathfinder notably does not do this, and as my group has been learning Pathfinder I've been wondering how this plays out in the long run. Anyone have experience with this?

I guess Pathfinder also dramatically increased the amount of XP needed to level up in the mid and later levels. Does that help at all?

Quertus
2018-05-05, 08:15 PM
There are many games out there where one or two sessions of XP won't seriously impact character performance (assuming standard rewards). In fact of the games I've played, DnD is the ONLY one where a single (or small number of) session(s) can permanently push you behind. So I'm not sure how true this is.

Point. This decidedly was a Playgrounder Fallacy*. :smallredface:

* although it would be true in any game that actually had balance / power curves. Most games, balance and/or XP is a joke, so build > XP, and player > character rules the roost.


I know that in D&D (3e and 3.5 at least), differences in XP should even out over time as lower-level characters get more XP than their peers. Pathfinder notably does not do this, and as my group has been learning Pathfinder I've been wondering how this plays out in the long run. Anyone have experience with this?

I guess Pathfinder also dramatically increased the amount of XP needed to level up in the mid and later levels. Does that help at all?

I can't speak for PF, but, back in 2e, one of my favorite experiences was with a 1st level character in a 7th level party. The 2e exponential XP curve made things more or less balance out eventually.

Tanarii
2018-05-05, 08:25 PM
"Go to bed without support" - or desert - is a rather traditional punishment. So, lack of getting something certainly can be a punishment. But it doesn't necessarily follow that all such removals of rewards are punishments.
Thats a poor analogy. That analogy, being denied desert that you have.come to expect for attending dinner, would be like being denied xp for what you just finished doing in game.

Getting XP for not attending a game is closer to asking someome to save you a plate. Its not unreasonable for them to do so, but its nice of them if they chose to. You aren't being punished if they choose not to. Even if you expect them to, because family or close friends.

By the way I can already tell this is going to be thread full of analogies funtime. 😂

kyoryu
2018-05-05, 08:43 PM
Also, individual xp in D&D came out of the "open table" game where you'd decide who you'd play based on who showed up at that night and what you decided to do.

In that structure, being behind a level or two doesn't mean you're "permanently behind". It means that character (and you'd have others) would just adventure with different characters.

Fiery Diamond
2018-05-05, 08:47 PM
Thats a poor analogy. That analogy, being denied desert that you have.come to expect for attending dinner, would be like being denied xp for what you just finished doing in game.

Getting XP for not attending a game is closer to asking someome to save you a plate. Its not unreasonable for them to do so, but its nice of them if they chose to. You aren't being punished if they choose not to. Even if you expect them to, because family or close friends.

By the way I can already tell this is going to be thread full of analogies funtime. 😂

If you ask your family members to save you a plate because you're going to have to miss dinnertime and they don't, your family members are being jerkfaces. Whether or not the specific term "punishment" is accurate is irrelevant; it's a jerk move. So your own analogy supports calling it a bad thing to not give XP to people who miss a session.

Koo Rehtorb
2018-05-05, 08:50 PM
Whether it's a good move or not depends entirely on if you're playing a system that heavily encourages all the PCs to be the same "level".

RazorChain
2018-05-05, 08:52 PM
Yes it is!!!

Not only did you miss out on gaming session but you get no XP as well. You'll watch your friends discuss how awesome last session was and how the barbarian split the evil villains head in two and your friends are laughing from all the fun stuff that happened. You kinda feel left out and try to get into the conversation by mentioning that spell you cast that saved the group....but it's old news and Tim looks at you and says "yea but that was three sessions ago". To top this you get no xp and now you are a level behind, all because mom forced you to clean the basement instead of playing. As you stand there talking with your buddies, you'll be crying inside yourself.

Tanarii
2018-05-05, 09:07 PM
If you ask your family members to save you a plate because you're going to have to miss dinnertime and they don't, your family members are being jerkfaces. Whether or not the specific term "punishment" is accurate is irrelevant; it's a jerk move. So your own analogy supports calling it a bad thing to not give XP to people who miss a session.
Interesting. We clearly have different understanding of what it takes to be jerkfaces. Or maybe what family is and how they should act.

I felt it would be clear by family or friends saving a plate I was making a thanksgiving/Christmas reference, where its almost a joke to ask someone to save you a plate. But I forget many Europeans post here.
If a husband didnt save a plate from dinner because his wife was running late there would be some jerkiness, but at that point the analogy has broken down again.

Deophaun
2018-05-05, 09:12 PM
People still play with XP?

Tanarii
2018-05-05, 09:15 PM
People still play with XP?im always surprised when people don't. I mean, you can dump it from games with an XP system, if you're running a very specific type of game: one group of players, all playing one set of PCs, who will all adventure together for an entire adventure arc campaign.

But even then, I find almost all players prefer XP.

Deophaun
2018-05-05, 09:19 PM
But even then, I find almost all players prefer XP.
That's like finding surgery patients that prefer to go under the knife without anesthetic. Anyway, moving this edit as a proper response to your question:

But don't try to twist the language so that not earning a reward, is instead a punishment.
The idea of XP being a reward is twisting the language. In those barbaric games that still inflict this odious burden upon hapless players (cursed be those who run them), XP is necessary to keep pace with challenges, which will progressively increase throughout the campaign. A proper XP reward would be XP above and beyond what is necessary to keep that pace. Any XP gain that does not keep pace is a punishment. XP that keeps pace just is.

Corneel
2018-05-05, 09:42 PM
That's like finding surgery patients that prefer to go under the knife without anesthetic. Anyway, moving this edit as a proper response to your question:

The idea of XP being a reward is twisting the language. In those barbaric games that still inflict this odious burden upon hapless players (cursed be those who run them), XP is necessary to keep pace with challenges, which will progressively increase throughout the campaign. A proper XP reward would be XP above and beyond what is necessary to keep that pace. Any XP gain that does not keep pace is a punishment. XP that keeps pace just is.
Condescension much? Did XP kill your mother?

Luccan
2018-05-05, 09:57 PM
Wait, is this a thing that's hotly debated? I don't think I've seen it discussed as a punishment anywhere but this specific thread. I have heard of only awarding XP to those who show up before, but that was specifically about games that take place with large numbers of players. AL type stuff, and even then, it was a "if you show up, you get XP" to encourage people to come consistently. Just showing up got you as much XP as everyone else got that session, basically.

Still, if you're playing in a regular group and still use XP, potentially keeping another player at lower levels hurts the party (the example above had 4th-10th level PCs. High level guys regularly have to be Big Damn Heroes, unless the level 4s keep to fighting mooks). So I wouldn't encourage it regardless. IMO, the reward for showing up is playing (and I say this as one of the guys whose usually a player, not the DM). The only time I'd use XP and XP "rewards" was if I wanted to encourage a certain behavior for that game.

RazorChain
2018-05-05, 10:00 PM
That's like finding surgery patients that prefer to go under the knife without anesthetic. Anyway, moving this edit as a proper response to your question:

The idea of XP being a reward is twisting the language. In those barbaric games that still inflict this odious burden upon hapless players (cursed be those who run them), XP is necessary to keep pace with challenges, which will progressively increase throughout the campaign. A proper XP reward would be XP above and beyond what is necessary to keep that pace. Any XP gain that does not keep pace is a punishment. XP that keeps pace just is.

No XP is a Pavlovian reward system that keeps the poor player salivating for more. Mostly it's used to condition the player to kill or "overcome obstacles". The much vilified murderhobo is a creation of this system that not just condoned such behavior but outright rewarded it.

But not getting XP is a punishment, this is evident through the XP penalty or punishing the player for certain behavior.

Tanarii
2018-05-05, 10:08 PM
The idea of XP being a reward is twisting the language. In those barbaric games that still inflict this odious burden upon hapless players (cursed be those who run them), XP is necessary to keep pace with challenges, which will progressively increase throughout the campaign. A proper XP reward would be XP above and beyond what is necessary to keep that pace. Any XP gain that does not keep pace is a punishment. XP that keeps pace just is.
The idea that a game has a pace that the PCs need to keep up with and cannot fall behind would be a specific need. Its also commonly tied in with one group of players, with one group of PCs that will stay together throughout the game.

Like I said, if your game has special requirements, by all means ditch XP. It makes sense in that case. Its actually a superior way to handle things that way for your situation. But don't pretend that this means that in general, a lack of the reward of XP because you aren't there to contribute and participate is some kind of punishment.

RazorChain
2018-05-05, 10:25 PM
Can we stop with claims that it is "punishing" players who miss a session by not awarding them XP. Not being there means they don't get a reward for participating. They are not being punished in any way.

Ok we are only rewarding those who show up. If they are complaining that they don't get reward for not showing up then it's clearly working and we should keep it up. It can be hard enough to heard players for a session, now at least we can entice them with all the XP they'll be missing out.

RazorChain
2018-05-05, 10:30 PM
When my players complain about not getting XP when they don't show up being punishment, I just smile wryly and hook up my nipple clamps to a car battery and demonstrate to them what I consider punishment.

Quertus
2018-05-05, 10:56 PM
For the record, I'm in the open table, CaW, "balance" is a joke at best and a detriment to fun at worst, if you're not there of course you don't get XP camp.

But I understand this strange newfangled "stay in one group", CaS, play in systems that try to promote game balance alien mindset enough to say that this isn't an entirely unreasonable position to take to claim that withholding XP is a punishment.

See also my stance on punishing players when their character die.


Thats a poor analogy. That analogy, being denied desert that you have.come to expect for attending dinner, would be like being denied xp for what you just finished doing in game.

Getting XP for not attending a game is closer to asking someome to save you a plate. Its not unreasonable for them to do so, but its nice of them if they chose to. You aren't being punished if they choose not to. Even if you expect them to, because family or close friends.

By the way I can already tell this is going to be thread full of analogies funtime. 😂

In CaS, getting an advantage based off attendance would reduce the fun of the sport.


im always surprised when people don't. I mean, you can dump it from games with an XP system, if you're running a very specific type of game: one group of players, all playing one set of PCs, who will all adventure together for an entire adventure arc campaign.

But even then, I find almost all players prefer XP.

I'm definitely in the prefers XP camp, but I am open to trying arbitrary leveling some day.


That's like finding surgery patients that prefer to go under the knife without anesthetic. Anyway, moving this edit as a proper response to your question:

The idea of XP being a reward is twisting the language. In those barbaric games that still inflict this odious burden upon hapless players (cursed be those who run them), XP is necessary to keep pace with challenges, which will progressively increase throughout the campaign. A proper XP reward would be XP above and beyond what is necessary to keep that pace. Any XP gain that does not keep pace is a punishment. XP that keeps pace just is.

I had a root canal without pain killers. I prefer it that way.

I agree completely with your assessment, btw. If the game is geared such that XP is necessary to keep pace with challenges, then XP that keeps pace "just is", and reductions to that are punitive.

Elbeyon
2018-05-05, 11:37 PM
The idea that a player should get xp just for showing up is them getting a reward for nothing. If a player wants xp, they should do something to earn it. The bard talked the team through an encounter? They get all the xp. A fighter killed the monster before the rest of the party acted? The fighter gets all of that creature's xp reward. The players aren't getting punished because they didn't do anything to earn that xp. It's not a punishment. It's simply a lack of a reward. The reward goes to the deserving.

Deophaun
2018-05-05, 11:42 PM
Condescension much? Did XP kill your mother?
My mother was not old enough for the medieval practice of XP to have killed her.

It was my great, great, great, great, great, great, great uncle Eadan who was slain by cowardly XP arrows on the plain of Curragh.

Pex
2018-05-06, 12:01 AM
If an adventure arc takes more than one session and a player can't make one of them, presumably someone will play that character as a secondary to maintain the party's action economy and story cohesion. That character gets a fair share of the loot and full XP because the player was there for all the other parts of the adventure. Missing one session is not a problem to miss out on the rewards earned when the player was there but not received yet. If the game session missed is its own adventure for that one session, then sure, the character was not there along with the player so no XP. Hopefully the DM would be kind for that one session only adventure the XP and treasure award is not Lottery Jackpot level the player will be miffed he missed out on it. If the player is absent from games a lot for a reason the DM accepts and allows the player to play when he can come, then it's valid he only gets the XP and treasure for the games he's there Jackpot level or not.

RazorChain
2018-05-06, 12:03 AM
The idea that a player should get xp just for showing up is them getting a reward for nothing. If a player wants xp, they should do something to earn it. The bard talked the team through an encounter? They get all the xp. A fighter killed the monster before the rest of the party acted? The fighter gets all of that creature's xp reward. The players aren't getting punished because they didn't do anything to earn that xp. It's not a punishment. It's simply a lack of a reward. The reward goes to the deserving.

It's much more productive to have them earn XP differently. I wholly agree that showing up isn't enough and they should do something to earn it. Which is why I reward XP for different things, like doing chores. Vaccuming, doing the dishes, helping out with the laundry, stuff like that. XP bonus for how well they did their chores.

FreddyNoNose
2018-05-06, 12:04 AM
RPGs have a bizarrely high number of people that can’t handle losing, or even not getting as much stuff as others.

Back when it was wargamers and college kids, it was pretty good. Around 79/80 I started to see a shift with "serious" role players who were very entitled and opinionated.

Pronounceable
2018-05-06, 12:19 AM
Not making the absolute maximum profit possible is completely identical to loss. What are you, a communist?

NichG
2018-05-06, 12:31 AM
The perception that XP is about keeping up is an illusion. Generally, challenges in a tabletop game are going to be bounded by the fact that the GM is trying to make things feel intense while avoiding a TPK. If everyone eschewed XP gain you'd end up with an eternal campaign of 'farmers vs kobolds' or somesuch, because it's going to be obvious to the GM that dropping a balor on that group is pointless.

So what XP really represents is pacing. In systems which allow players to choose how to spend XP, that means that it acts as a sort of bidding points for game aesthetics (if you constantly put it into raw power, you escalate rapidly and get a game more focused on one-trick ponies; if you put it towards diversity, utility, etc, you're bidding to have a more rounded, cerebral game). In systems where you gain power from XP in specified ways (e.g. D&D levels), there's not much agency in XP. In D&D 3.5, gaining XP too fast can be a devil's bargain since you'll fall behind WBL but on paper the CR of encounters should still increase.

What XP actually does is pretty divorced from how XP feels to a player though. Whether XP denial is punishment or just the absence of reward will depend on how that is being wielded. That is to say, both punishments and rewards are just consequences, with the main difference being in how one experiences them and feels pressure to adapt their behavior in response - moving towards or moving away.

I would guess that the more systematic something is for the rest of the group, the more punishment-like it will feel to not receive it. So in a game where hypothetically only one player each session on average receives a thing, not being the one to receive it due to not being present will feel more like missing a reward (other people also didn't get the thing, even though they were present), whereas if everyone but you receives it then it will feel more like a punishment.

Tanarii
2018-05-06, 12:31 AM
It's much more productive to have them earn XP differently. I wholly agree that showing up isn't enough and they should do something to earn it. Which is why I reward XP for different things, like doing chores. Vaccuming, doing the dishes, helping out with the laundry, stuff like that. XP bonus for how well they did their chores.Oh man, that never even occured to me. I just make them do that stuff or else I TPK the party. I like your way better. A bribe is a less bitter pill to swallow. 😂


Not making the absolute maximum profit possible is completely identical to loss. What are you, a communist?Shhh. Don't give the game away comrade.

Quertus
2018-05-06, 12:48 AM
The idea that a player should get xp just for showing up is them getting a reward for nothing. If a player wants xp, they should do something to earn it. The bard talked the team through an encounter? They get all the xp. A fighter killed the monster before the rest of the party acted? The fighter gets all of that creature's xp reward. The players aren't getting punished because they didn't do anything to earn that xp. It's not a punishment. It's simply a lack of a reward. The reward goes to the deserving.

This mentality is toxic. It will encourage the one **** player who hogs the spotlight and does everything.

Don't do this.

Rewards team players, who let everyone have fun. Give group XP.


RPGs have a bizarrely high number of people that can’t handle losing, or even not getting as much stuff as others.


Back when it was wargamers and college kids, it was pretty good. Around 79/80 I started to see a shift with "serious" role players who were very entitled and opinionated.

War gamers expect and demand balanced scenarios - we're totally CaS in war games. So "not getting as much stuff as others" is a CaS, war game mentality.

Whereas, "can't handle losing"? That's not healthy in the war games side of CaS, or in CaW. That's something different, that has spawned this new age CaS.


The perception that XP is about keeping up is an illusion. Generally, challenges in a tabletop game are going to be bounded by the fact that the GM is trying to make things feel intense while avoiding a TPK.

This assumes CaS - it doesn't work in CaW. This line of reasoning only works to the extent that the encounters are tailored to the party.


(if you constantly put it into raw power, you escalate rapidly and get a game more focused on one-trick ponies; if you put it towards diversity, utility, etc, you're bidding to have a more rounded, cerebral game)

Hmmm... Honestly, I think it's a more cerebral game when the character is less well-rounded, and you have to come up with creative ways to leverage your abilities.


What XP actually does is pretty divorced from how XP feels to a player though. Whether XP denial is punishment or just the absence of reward will depend on how that is being wielded. That is to say, both punishments and rewards are just consequences, with the main difference being in how one experiences them and feels pressure to adapt their behavior in response - moving towards or moving away.

I would guess that the more systematic something is for the rest of the group, the more punishment-like it will feel to not receive it. So in a game where hypothetically only one player each session on average receives a thing, not being the one to receive it due to not being present will feel more like missing a reward (other people also didn't get the thing, even though they were present), whereas if everyone but you receives it then it will feel more like a punishment.

Although I haven't seen this theory in practice, I do believe you are correct regarding human perception.

Koo Rehtorb
2018-05-06, 01:35 AM
Gosh I sure am glad I stopped playing D&D.

NichG
2018-05-06, 01:38 AM
This assumes CaS - it doesn't work in CaW. This line of reasoning only works to the extent that the encounters are tailored to the party.


At least in systems with D&D's sort of power scale spanning multiple orders of magnitude, encounters are always tailored to the party to greater or lesser degree unless the campaign is expected to end in a TPK. It's just that not every kind of tailoring is obviously metagamey, and that can make it appear that they aren't being tailored. What I mean is, even if it's a status quo world and 'there is a great wyrm red dragon in the nearby mountains' is an established aspect of the setting, the party of eternal Lv1 Farmers is going to use that information in order to make sure that they don't encounter the dragon - e.g. they'll avoid the mountains. If there are really lethal things in the outer planes, the fact that the party is too low level to have access to Plane Shift provides a similar 'natural' tailoring, but it's tailoring nonetheless.

To put it another way, if you have a game make it from Lv1 to Lv20 by the book, the party has fought ~80 battles at or above their CR, none of which was so far outside of what amounts to a relatively narrow survivable power scale for the party at that moment in their development as to guarantee a TPK. That's not going to happen by coincidence in a 'well-mixed D&D' where you just encounter things non-selectively - rather, there's intentionality behind that in making sure to stay within that band on the DM's side, the players' side, or both.

I would believe the argument more for systems with much flatter power curves, but in those systems keeping up is a lot less important because there just isn't that much power to be extracted from XP gain anyhow (compared to e.g. gear, preparing the environment, etc). For example in a recent Changeling campaign, to get the equivalent of flak jackets (which basically anyone can use) in combat survivability would cost something like 20-30 sessions of XP spent on powers (more, if you count the need to raise your Wyrd to be able to even spend enough Glamour to activate those powers). Even if combat is war, missing even 10 sessions worth of XP won't necessarily make too much difference in actual combat performance, and if you do want combat advantage it's going to be more through in-character maneuvering (e.g. in our case, we found a way to summon the thing we wanted to attack into a place of our choosing, rigged the battlefield in advance, called in political alliances to obtain extra NPC combatants, and managed to take down something way above our paygrade with a 3 person party only one of whom had any combat abilities to speak of).



Hmmm... Honestly, I think it's a more cerebral game when the character is less well-rounded, and you have to come up with creative ways to leverage your abilities.


Generally when people start on a numbers arms race, it quickly gets to a point where there's only one action or situation that pulls on those numbers. If e.g. it's a defenses arms race, then all fights must follow the form of 'everyone else stand back/make yourselves non-viable as targets, and let the unhittable guy tank'. If it's an offenses arms race, then it tends to be 'lets use the alpha-strike because we know we can win as long as we act first', etc. I've never seen 'I have AC 200' or 'I do 20k damage with my full attack' or 'Time Stop + 3x Delayed Blast Fireball + 3x Quickened Delayed Blast Fireball' or the like lead to cerebral play. Generally they require some thought to initially come up with, but once they're in play it becomes standard operating procedure very quickly, so in effect it tends to overall simplify the game.

On the other hand, I have seen lots of cerebral play when people have a wide suite of ecclectic or idiosyncratic abilities (none of which on its own would make a viable character) and have to figure out which one or combination to use to get a handle on the situation.

oxybe
2018-05-06, 03:12 AM
Question: If a player attends a session, but doesn't make a sound, does he get XP? Lets says Little Jimmy does absolutely nothing this session but attend? do you give him XP? Is presence the only determinant in getting XP?

What if all he does is a single attack roll during the one fight, and doesn't participate in the RP? Is he going to get a full share of XP?

Also: I'm sorry I got ill that night and decided to stay home or decided that dealing with real life was more important then the elfgame. Next time I'll make sure to come to the game session when ill with my spew in tow. I'll mix it up by downing a bag of Skittles presession and make it technicolour, for everyone's enjoyment.

Kaibis
2018-05-06, 03:15 AM
What do the players say about this? Why not just pass the buck to the players - award the XP to the party and ask them how they want to divide it. It may be that they don't feel like sharing with the guy who skips every third session, or it may be that they are happy to keep things even.

Kaibis
2018-05-06, 03:24 AM
The idea that a player should get xp just for showing up is them getting a reward for nothing. If a player wants xp, they should do something to earn it. The bard talked the team through an encounter? They get all the xp. A fighter killed the monster before the rest of the party acted? The fighter gets all of that creature's xp reward. The players aren't getting punished because they didn't do anything to earn that xp. It's not a punishment. It's simply a lack of a reward. The reward goes to the deserving.

Don't reward the bard for doing all the talking.

You end up with the bard who never ever shuts up, takes point on every conversation ("I'm the face"), comments on every single persons combat action ("I am eating an apple, and yelling a comment at you, and doing a little dance"), gives everyone advice on what they should do (because by now they are so used to doing all the talking that they have forgotten to stop), oh and then realise that they seem to be talking so much that it makes sense that they are the leader.... Then they pout when anyone suggests something different to what they want... and then things get awkward.

Oh... and then they complain that everyone else is too quiet.

Silent players are occasionally because there are really dominating players in the group and it is too hard to get a word in edgewise. I am a super chatty active player, but had a group member so bad that I would sit pretty much in silence until my combat turn, because it was just too painful. I tried chatting with the DM but he dismissed my concerns - "The bard is the face" I was told, and I watched player after player leave the group, until finally I left too.

Corneel
2018-05-06, 06:50 AM
So how does one play DD without XP? Leveling up implies getting XP. So either you give out XP more or less as intended in the game's basic rules or otherwise you hand hem out in level-sized chunks, without any link to player accomplishment, entirely depending on the narrative needs of the campaign whim of the DM.

I can see systems work without XP - for instance like the practicing of skill system used by the Elder Scrolls games (though I think that is a bit more difficult to set up as a TTRPG system for bookkeeping reasons) or a system where there is no important progression in the character's basic abilities and any progress is through the acquisition of items during adventures - but D&D isn't one of them.

Deophaun
2018-05-06, 07:20 AM
So how does one play DD without XP? Leveling up implies getting XP. So either you give out XP more or less as intended in the game's basic rules or otherwise you hand hem out in level-sized chunks, without any link to player accomplishment, entirely depending on the narrative needs of the campaign whim of the DM.
How are you handing out XP if you aren't using XP?

Quertus
2018-05-06, 07:40 AM
At least in systems with D&D's sort of power scale spanning multiple orders of magnitude, encounters are always tailored to the party to greater or lesser degree unless the campaign is expected to end in a TPK. It's just that not every kind of tailoring is obviously metagamey, and that can make it appear that they aren't being tailored. What I mean is, even if it's a status quo world and 'there is a great wyrm red dragon in the nearby mountains' is an established aspect of the setting, the party of eternal Lv1 Farmers is going to use that information in order to make sure that they don't encounter the dragon - e.g. they'll avoid the mountains. If there are really lethal things in the outer planes, the fact that the party is too low level to have access to Plane Shift provides a similar 'natural' tailoring, but it's tailoring nonetheless.

To put it another way, if you have a game make it from Lv1 to Lv20 by the book, the party has fought ~80 battles at or above their CR, none of which was so far outside of what amounts to a relatively narrow survivable power scale for the party at that moment in their development as to guarantee a TPK. That's not going to happen by coincidence in a 'well-mixed D&D' where you just encounter things non-selectively - rather, there's intentionality behind that in making sure to stay within that band on the DM's side, the players' side, or both.

I would believe the argument more for systems with much flatter power curves, but in those systems keeping up is a lot less important because there just isn't that much power to be extracted from XP gain anyhow (compared to e.g. gear, preparing the environment, etc). For example in a recent Changeling campaign, to get the equivalent of flak jackets (which basically anyone can use) in combat survivability would cost something like 20-30 sessions of XP spent on powers (more, if you count the need to raise your Wyrd to be able to even spend enough Glamour to activate those powers). Even if combat is war, missing even 10 sessions worth of XP won't necessarily make too much difference in actual combat performance, and if you do want combat advantage it's going to be more through in-character maneuvering (e.g. in our case, we found a way to summon the thing we wanted to attack into a place of our choosing, rigged the battlefield in advance, called in political alliances to obtain extra NPC combatants, and managed to take down something way above our paygrade with a 3 person party only one of whom had any combat abilities to speak of).

Hahaha - by natural selection, D&D worlds where all humans get Plane Shift tend to die out. I love it.

Yes, if provided with enough information, characters will avoid things that are completely beyond them. With insufficient information, they must rely on stealth / fight / running / Contingency / etc to escape certain doom - or, occasionally, wits or luck to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Or the party Diplomancer. :smallannoyed:


Generally when people start on a numbers arms race, it quickly gets to a point where there's only one action or situation that pulls on those numbers. If e.g. it's a defenses arms race, then all fights must follow the form of 'everyone else stand back/make yourselves non-viable as targets, and let the unhittable guy tank'. If it's an offenses arms race, then it tends to be 'lets use the alpha-strike because we know we can win as long as we act first', etc. I've never seen 'I have AC 200' or 'I do 20k damage with my full attack' or 'Time Stop + 3x Delayed Blast Fireball + 3x Quickened Delayed Blast Fireball' or the like lead to cerebral play. Generally they require some thought to initially come up with, but once they're in play it becomes standard operating procedure very quickly, so in effect it tends to overall simplify the game.

On the other hand, I have seen lots of cerebral play when people have a wide suite of ecclectic or idiosyncratic abilities (none of which on its own would make a viable character) and have to figure out which one or combination to use to get a handle on the situation.

How about "gee, we need diplomacy, but don't have that. Well, I can deal enough damage to tunnel through the mountain / divert a river for them to boost trade - that should give us a bonus. You can have the town guard attack you all day and all night without getting hurt, that should impress them. Now, is there any way to leverage 'suddenly, fireballs' to give us a diplomatic advantage?"

Theoboldi
2018-05-06, 07:45 AM
I am glad I now understand how much better everything was back in the day.

I hereby renounce my vicious Combat as Sport or War or whichever buzzword I'm playing ways, so that I may no longer feel entitled to play a playstyle I enjoy with my friends.

I'll go and tell them we've been having fun wrong, and that we've been horrible people all along. Thanks for pointing that out to us, everyone.

NichG
2018-05-06, 08:15 AM
How about "gee, we need diplomacy, but don't have that. Well, I can deal enough damage to tunnel through the mountain / divert a river for them to boost trade - that should give us a bonus. You can have the town guard attack you all day and all night without getting hurt, that should impress them. Now, is there any way to leverage 'suddenly, fireballs' to give us a diplomatic advantage?"

More like 'Alright, lets walk into the seat of government and kill all the heads of state in order until the war stops'...

Quertus
2018-05-06, 08:16 AM
I am glad I now understand how much better everything was back in the day.

I hereby renounce my vicious Combat as Sport or War or whichever buzzword I'm playing ways, so that I may no longer feel entitled to play a playstyle I enjoy with my friends.

I'll go and tell them we've been having fun wrong, and that we've been horrible people all along. Thanks for pointing that out to us, everyone.

Although the blue text makes this clear sarcasm, I think it highlights part of the point of this thread: that the way you enjoy playing may be detrimental to the fun of your friends. Not realizing that, if they view the game differently (wrongly), they might consider a lack of XP punitive.

IMO, the value of this thread is to appreciate the existence of multiple PoV on this issue (even if most of them are wrong).

Quertus
2018-05-06, 08:18 AM
More like 'Alright, lets walk into the seat of government and kill all the heads of state in order until the war stops'...

I'm not sure if you're describing what you're seen, or what you consider a clever solution to the problem...

NichG
2018-05-06, 09:08 AM
I'm not sure if you're describing what you're seen, or what you consider a clever solution to the problem...

What I've seen, in two different campaigns if I remember correctly.

ZamielVanWeber
2018-05-06, 09:30 AM
I always hand out XP if the system allows for it because I love that sense of progression. However, handing out exp no absent players varies by system and player. For very large games or for systems where calculating exp is a pain in my butt I hand it out only if they player is present. For smaller games that don't require calculators to do exp I hand it out even if they are absent. I honestly prefer to hand exp to absent players: that way they don't feel like they are forced to come or else. Leads to happier players (in my personal experience).

Blackjackg
2018-05-06, 09:34 AM
As a DM, I've mostly stopped using XP for D&D. I still use it for other systems or D&D games that are particularly open and sandboxy. I've also stopped running when some players are missing. It means we wind up skipping a few sessions, but it's more fun if no one feels they're missing anything. That said, whether withholding XP counts as a punishment or not really depends on the general philosophy of your approach to experience points.

The person who described XP as a Pavlovian reward system was nearly right, but Pavlov was about classical conditioning and reward and punishment are instruments of operant conditioning (think B.F. Skinner). A reward or reinforcement is something that you give after a desired behavior to encourage the subject to do the desired behavior again; a punishment is something you do after an undesired behavior to discourage that behavior. Whether you're technically giving something or taking something away is immaterial-- either can be a punishment or a reward depending on whether the subject wants that thing or not. When a parent says to their child "Because you used a naughty word, I will take away your dessert," that is a negative punishment: punishing an undesired behavior by taking away a valued something. When they say "Because you did your chores, I will give you a dessert," it's a positive reinforcement.

Part of the distinction here is whether or not the child had an understanding that they were going to get dessert. If they don't expect dessert, then not getting it isn't a punishment and getting it is a reward. If they do expect dessert, then getting it isn't a reward and not getting it is a punishment. Makes sense, right? I actually have this conversation a lot with parents about things like electronics time. If a child understands that the tablet is theirs and they can use it anytime they want, then the parent taking it away for bad behavior is a punishment. If the child understands that the tablet belongs to the parent and they can earn time on it by meeting certain expectations, then it's a reward.

Part of the trouble is that XP in most D&D games (at least most that I've encountered) serves at least two functions. One is to concretely represent the abstraction of characters learning from their experiences. It accrues as a natural consequence of what the characters, well, experience. When they fight monsters, evade traps, solve mysteries, or whatever, they learn and move toward greater skill and power. The other function of XP is to reward players for behaviors desired by the DM: showing up consistently, good roleplaying, paying for the pizza, etc. Which is legit, but distinctly different from its other function.

In operant conditioning terms, this dual function creates a complication. Some XP is understood specifically to be a reward for certain behaviors and players not getting it because they didn't meet criteria to earn it is hard to characterize as a punishment. But some XP could also be understood as a baseline expectation based on the character's participation in the game world, and withholding it to discourage players from missing sessions could certainly be characterized as a punishment.

As usual, I think the answer is clear communication at the beginning of the game. Tell your players at the beginning of the game what you intend to award XP for. Give them a chance to weigh in on whether or not this works for them.

Lorsa
2018-05-06, 09:57 AM
Can we stop with claims that it is "punishing" players who miss a session by not awarding them XP. Not being there means they don't get a reward for participating. They are not being punished in any way.

If you have a specific situation where you want all your PCs to be the same level, regardless of their ability to attend sessions, then by all means give XP to characters that can't attend. Or drop XP altogether. That's fine. It may, depending on the system, even be laudable, or a better way to play the game. But don't try to twist the language so that not earning a reward, is instead a punishment.

Even though NichG gave a very good answer to this, I will write something of my own anyway.

There are basically two discussions here. One is if it is twisting the language to claim it is a punishment to NOT give players XP, the other is whether or not one should give XP to absent players.

Whether or not something is a punishment or a reward depends on if it is the default assumption or not. Basically, giving something above the default assumption is a reward whereas withholding something from the default is a punishment.

For example, if the default assumption is that you get dinner at home, then NOT getting dinner is indeed a punishment (and has been used by some parents to punish their children for certain behaviors). If you are not expected to get icecream after dinner, then getting icecream can be a reward for good behavior (such as being extra quiet during dinner or whatnot).

Therefore, it is not at all twisting the language to claim that not getting XP for absence is a punishment. It really depends on the core default assumptions. If XP is something everyone just "will get" (like dinner), then not getting it is indeed a punishment. If XP is something more rare, not being the default expectation, perhaps only given out for specific good behaviors, then it is a reward.

So, my counter would be: "don't twist the language by claiming that what is reward and what is punishment is something other than contextual".

As for whether or not one should give XP to absent players, I am firmly in the camp that WILL do so. It does, however, depend a lot on the game itself (omg, another contextual thing).

Personally, I view XP as not being a reward for the player, but rather an abstract way of modeling character progression. So, even if the player was absent from the game, within the fiction, the character probably did something. This something will most likely also lead to some character progression, which is modeled by XP. In many games, it would be very weird if the character of an absent player was not also involved in whatever was going on. Therefore, why shouldn't the character get XP just the same? And if it was not involved, why couldn't it be doing something else?

I can see how in some games, awarding XP to a character with an absent player would be strange. Especially in games where XP is awarded unevenly among the characters based on very specific player behaviors. Also, if a new player entering the group is expected to start with a baseline character, then awarding XP to absent players would also be weird. So if you're in the habit of letting new players have a lvl 1 character with a lvl 18 party, then that's the way to go.

In any case, not awarding XP to absent players comes with a couple of issues, such as the character permanently falling behind the power curve and eventually becoming less and less useful to the party. You can view these things as "no-problems" (again it is contextual), but if you DO seem them as problems, why NOT give XP to absent players?

I agree with whoever said that being absent from the session is punishment enough. Or that being present at the game is reward enough. One does not need to permanently reduced the future fun for players simply because they weren't there. I mean, if someone can't attend a session, there's a good reason for it, and they're usually quite upset about not being there anyway. Why add fuel to the fire?

Or, looking at the question in another light. Why do you have such a problem with players being absent from sessions that you have to reward them for showing up? I mean, the only reason to give a reward for something, is if the behavior is not the expected default. So if you reward presence, then presence can hardly be the default?

Beleriphon
2018-05-06, 10:05 AM
More like 'Alright, lets walk into the seat of government and kill all the heads of state in order until the war stops'...

Isn't that the plot of the Stormwatch comics?

Pleh
2018-05-06, 10:32 AM
"Tiers don't matter because you can just adjust your playstyle to compensate."

You can find videos online pretty easy that behavioral analysts have confirmed that when animals like ourselves (confirmed in several other species as well as humans) see other members of their group rewarded while they are not, it is upsetting to them and doing this intentionally can easily be perceived as punishment.

The funny thing about punishment is that it's mostly psychological. Therefore, if punishment is perceived, then it is already real to some extent, even if it wasn't intended.

Thankfully, in this context, relieving the perception of punishment is usually easy enough. Communication is the answer. Express compassion, correct the understanding of intent, make your rules to the game clear, if needed, add a peace offering by giving them something nice in the game (XP, magic items, etc) and make it clear you are thanking them for agreeing to the rules going forward. "Failing to communicate my way of running games is on me and I value you as a friend and player, so you can have what you expected (or something equivalent in worth) this time, but in the future I'll expect cooperation with the rules."

To suggest it isn't a problem is oversimplifying. Just because it can be fixed doesn't mean it isn't a problem (rather, it proves such a problem exists).

Tanarii
2018-05-06, 10:36 AM
Also: I'm sorry I got ill that night and decided to stay home or decided that dealing with real life was more important then the elfgame. Next time I'll make sure to come to the game session when ill with my spew in tow. I'll mix it up by downing a bag of Skittles presession and make it technicolour, for everyone's enjoyment.Clearly DMs need to provide 2 sessions sick time and 2 sessions vacation time for a years worth of weekly sessions. If employers can do it, it's the least DMs can do. :smallwink:


What do the players say about this? Why not just pass the buck to the players - award the XP to the party and ask them how they want to divide it. It may be that they don't feel like sharing with the guy who skips every third session, or it may be that they are happy to keep things even.Makes sense to me. But the issue isn't getting XP vs not getting XP vs not using XP. It's people claiming that not getting XP for absenteeism is a punishment.

Similarly, a claiming not getting it for actual non-contribution is punishment would not be correct. If you choose to have your character wander off and not even attempt to contribute to a party's success in an adventure at all, you're Being a Richard, but you're not being punished for that if you don't get any XP.


This mentality is toxic. It will encourage the one **** player who hogs the spotlight and does everything.

Don't do this.

Rewards team players, who let everyone have fun. Give group XP.Despite the lack of blue text, I'm fairly sure that poster was attempting to build a strawman extreme argument. Or be sarcastic.


This assumes CaS - it doesn't work in CaW. This line of reasoning only works to the extent that the encounters are tailored to the party.It certainly does. Games certainly don't have to be tailored to the level of the party. Not doing so will not automatically result in a TPK. In D&D in particular, Sandbox, megadungeon, and west marches games are a thing for a reason. They usually have level appropriate zones, but parties are free to go where they want and risk their lives as much as they choose, with (hopefully) commensurate rewards based on danger.


Although the blue text makes this clear sarcasm, I think it highlights part of the point of this thread: that the way you enjoy playing may be detrimental to the fun of your friends. Not realizing that, if they view the game differently (wrongly), they might consider a lack of XP punitive.

IMO, the value of this thread is to appreciate the existence of multiple PoV on this issue (even if most of them are wrong).
Exactly. Claiming a game mechanic intentionally designed to be a reward, to instead be a punishment because at your specific table you have a situation in which you don't want anyone to "fall behind", means the general rule is a punishment, is misrepresenting the intended use of the mechanic.

Not to mention falling behind is generally a perception problem, not a mechanical problem. I don't personally know of any game in which the mechanics of a game can't handle at least a 2 level difference without problem. Certainly not any TSR, WoTC, or Palladium system.

Not to dismiss people's feelings in reaction to "forever being behind". Feelings are valid. But let's not mix them up with mechanical justifications that aren't valid.

Lorsa
2018-05-06, 11:18 AM
Exactly. Claiming a game mechanic intentionally designed to be a reward, to instead be a punishment because at your specific table you have a situation in which you don't want anyone to "fall behind", means the general rule is a punishment, is misrepresenting the intended use of the mechanic.

Uh, that really depends on what you see XP is being a mechanic of.

To me, XP is a means to abstract character development (as I said). That doesn't inherently make it a reward. It just IS.

What it is that makes you think that XP is a game mechanic intentionally designed to be a reward rather than an abstract way to provide character progression?

JoeJ
2018-05-06, 11:42 AM
Here's a wacky notion. What if the group had an OOC discussion and came to an agreement on what to do about missing players? Not just xp, but also what happens to their character during that session; whether they disappear, are played by another player, temporarily become an NPC, or whatever. Also, whether it's possible for a character to die when their player is absent. That way, nobody can (reasonably) feel punished if the group follows whatever rule everybody agreed to.

Tanarii
2018-05-06, 11:44 AM
To me, XP is a means to abstract character development (as I said). That doesn't inherently make it a reward. It just IS.
if you want to view gaining XP as a measure of a characters experiences, then not getting it for absenteeism is still not a punishment.

Blackjackg
2018-05-06, 11:48 AM
Uh, that really depends on what you see XP is being a mechanic of.

To me, XP is a means to abstract character development (as I said). That doesn't inherently make it a reward. It just IS.

What it is that makes you think that XP is a game mechanic intentionally designed to be a reward rather than an abstract way to provide character progression?

There were previous editions of the game (at least 2e, maybe some others) where it was explicitly recommended that the DM award bonus experience to players who contribute to the fun of the game rather than detracting... and in any case, it's fairly common practice to award bonus XP for stuff like having a great idea or roleplaying really well. Not that this negates your point, but it does mean that XP can be used at least two ways.

Slipperychicken
2018-05-06, 11:51 AM
Can we stop with claims that it is "punishing" players who miss a session by not awarding them XP

It is punishment. You're setting people behind in-game over something that happened in real life.

Blackjackg
2018-05-06, 11:52 AM
if you want to view gaining XP as a measure of a characters experiences, then not getting it for absenteeism is still not a punishment.

Unless you're a group where the character remains present even if the player is absent. Which seems to be a lot of groups, since we don't like having to write a character out in the middle of an adventure.

Also raises the question of how you handle quest/milestone experience for quests that the player participated in, but was absent for the awarding of XP? Or even just one who was present for part of an extended quest, but not all of it? What if the game has to break in the middle of a long combat?

Forrestfire
2018-05-06, 11:55 AM
The way I look at it, if someone is missing a session, that's already punishing enough.

After all, everyone in the group is there to have a fun time hanging out, playing, and roleplaying together, right? If someone is forced to miss a session they lost a session. That's huge! That's painful. So in a D&D-type game, why would you go out of your way to make it so that in later sessions, they probably have less fun (by being behind the group and less able to contribute) or you as the DM probably have less fun (by having to balance encounters around disparate levels while still giving everyone a fun time, which doesn't work well in any edition of D&D).

Sure, there are particular player types who don't mind being behind everyone else for no reason other than non-game-related scheduling screwing them over, but like.... the "punishment" isn't "you didn't get XP when everyone else did."

It's you are now permanently behind everyone else, and this will probably make you have a harder time contributing and less interesting things to do, entirely because... what, someone had an emergency that kept them from getting to the session? They were sick? Work ran late?

Viewing it only as a matter of the XP given to other people is... silly. This is about more than XP, it's about the DM's choice to leave someone out because of things they very likely could not control. And if you're playing with friends, why would you do that? They're not your child or your dog. There's no need to "discipline" them by lessening their later ability to contribute. They're there to have fun. You're there to have fun. Why not take steps to maximize the fun later, given that they already lost a lot of fun by missing the session itself?

I just don't get it.

(As a note, this is specific to games like D&D, GURPS, and the like, where the "XP" you get from a session directly increases your later contributions in the campaign, and generally is difficult to recoup without spending a lot of time behind or getting an extra handout from the DM to undo the punishment itself. A lot of games handle XP differently and this wouldn't apply to them).

Koo Rehtorb
2018-05-06, 11:58 AM
I like the way Torchbearer handles missing a session.

There's two different advancement methods in Torchbearer. Skills all progress independently by using them in play, use a skill enough times and it levels up. And then there's also character level which gives you bonuses like extra spell slots or armour training, or that sort of thing, you get those by gaining and spending fate and persona points from doing things like achieving personal goals or being the MVP of the session.

If someone misses a session then at the start of the next session they have a chance to describe where their character was when they were absent. If they do that then they get to mark one test for any skill they want to. It's less than the number of tests you'll probably get for attending a session, and they obviously don't get any fate/persona at all, but it's a little token to keep pace a bit. And it's a test you can focus on a specific thing you want to level up as opposed to actually having to roll that thing.

Tanarii
2018-05-06, 12:06 PM
I like the way Torchbearer handles missing a session.

There's two different advancement methods in Torchbearer. Skills all progress independently by using them in play, use a skill enough times and it levels up. And then there's also character level which gives you bonuses like extra spell slots or armour training, or that sort of thing, you get those by gaining and spending fate and persona points from doing things like achieving personal goals or being the MVP of the session.Which makes me wonder: how do people that don't like XP in systems designed for it, and do leveling without XP instead, handle systems that advance levels purely on individual activities taken in session? How do they handle skill advancement based on using skills? Do they just not play games like Warhammer or Runequest?

Boci
2018-05-06, 12:11 PM
Is you miss a session, and next time the DM brings a donut for everyone except you after promising to do so the previous session, will you just shrug and say "a lack of a reward is not a punishment"? Because I would not do that as a DM, because I imagine most people, me included, would feel like it was a punishment.

Forrestfire
2018-05-06, 12:31 PM
Is you miss a session, and next time the DM brings a donut for everyone except you after promising to do so the previous session, will you just shrug and say "a lack of a reward is not a punishment"? Because I would not do that as a DM, because I imagine most people, me included, would feel like it was a punishment.

I like this example, because like.... really, isn't missing the session bad enough? I've been in situations where something comes up that has to be handled. Or work was exhausting enough that I couldn't function. Or a missed alarm screwed me out of the session. It sucks . It just feels awful to be looking forward to a session then miss it.

Why would one go out of their way to make that feeling worse for someone who is, ostensibly, their friend? Whether it's a donut or later contribution ability (xp), the result is the same. Someone has been left out intentionally as retaliation for... already missing out.

Quertus
2018-05-06, 12:34 PM
As a DM, I've mostly stopped using XP for D&D. I still use it for other systems or D&D games that are particularly open and sandboxy.

A lot of good stuff, and some I might want to question later, but, for now, let's start here: why do you vary your XP distribution method based on how Sandboxy a game is?


Not to mention falling behind is generally a perception problem, not a mechanical problem. I don't personally know of any game in which the mechanics of a game can't handle at least a 2 level difference without problem. Certainly not any TSR, WoTC, or Palladium system.

Combined with the "only the best get to roll" thread, and, yeah, being a single level behind can be huge.

Lorsa
2018-05-06, 12:40 PM
if you want to view gaining XP as a measure of a characters experiences, then not getting it for absenteeism is still not a punishment.

Technically, it is punishing the character for actions taken by the player.

In any case, in my longer previous post, I said that the character of the absent player most likely does something. Or what do you do with those characters? They go into a dark void for a time?

Corneel
2018-05-06, 01:06 PM
How are you handing out XP if you aren't using XP?
Is that what passes for answering a question in your world? If in D&D you are using the levels as character progress you are using XP, explicitly or implicitly. If you let the characters level up after a certain in game time that is the equivalent of handing them the XP needed to level in one go. There is no mechanical difference. If you're not, then I'm interested to hear how you what you do about character progress, which might include not having the characters progress at all.

ImNotTrevor
2018-05-06, 01:07 PM
I mean, from a background of Behavioral Psych, being denied XP is 100% a punishment. Not the same kind as a slap to the face, but still a punishment. I use this kind of punishment on the psych unit, because it is effective at changing behavior.

There are 2 kinds of Reward and 2 kinds of Punishment. Positive and Negative, for both.

Now, in this case Positive means "adding something" and Negative means "removing or not-adding something"

Positive Reward:
You killed the dragon! Here's some XP

Negative Reward:
You killed the dragon! You are no longer cursed.

Positive Punishment:
You didn't kill the dragon. You are now cursed.

Negative Punishment:
You didn't kill the dragon. No xp (or lose XP, or lose items)

So not getting XP is rather firmly in the Negative Punishment box, from a Behavioral Psych perspective.

And since the most effective behavior-changers are Positive Reward and Negative Punishment, we now know why D&D creates the players it creates.

Blackjackg
2018-05-06, 01:49 PM
A lot of good stuff, and some I might want to question later, but, for now, let's start here: why do you vary your XP distribution method based on how Sandboxy a game is?

Good question! The shortest answer is because I feel like it. The less short, but still fairly short, answer is that in a level-based system like D&D, I prefer to do advancement at appropriate plot points such as when the party completes a major story goal. At the most open-ended end of the sandbox spectrum, I don't really have a plot or story goals. The players can create their own, which I totally encourage, but I don't feel the need to adjudicate which of their goals are important enough to warrant a level gain.


I mean, from a background of Behavioral Psych, being denied XP is 100% a punishment. Not the same kind as a slap to the face, but still a punishment. I use this kind of punishment on the psych unit, because it is effective at changing behavior.

{snip}

And since the most effective behavior-changers are Positive Reward and Negative Punishment, we now know why D&D creates the players it creates.

Your behavioral psych is spot on, but I disagree with your conclusion. Reward and punishment aren't a binary choice--there is a middle ground. "Business as usual" is neither reward nor punishment. It's when you add or remove something from business as usual that it becomes a reward or punishment, depending on how pleasant or unpleasant it is. The question at the core of this disagreement is what constitutes business as usual in an standard D&D game. If all characters advancing every time the game gets played is business as usual, then not awarding XP to absent players is a punishment. If characters advance only as a reward for participation, then it isn't. It's just business as usual.

NichG
2018-05-06, 02:45 PM
I like this example, because like.... really, isn't missing the session bad enough? I've been in situations where something comes up that has to be handled. Or work was exhausting enough that I couldn't function. Or a missed alarm screwed me out of the session. It sucks . It just feels awful to be looking forward to a session then miss it.

Why would one go out of their way to make that feeling worse for someone who is, ostensibly, their friend? Whether it's a donut or later contribution ability (xp), the result is the same. Someone has been left out intentionally as retaliation for... already missing out.

The point isn't making sure you feel bad, but rather making sure you change your behavior. Whether losing XP is the right way to do that, I actually don't think so, but the general idea is that if you are repeatedly choosing to miss the session, lack of being at the session is clearly not a sufficiently significant consequence for you to behave differently.

As to whether it's reasonable to put that pressure on people, keep in mind that this is a social activity where all participants are blocking out a significant portion of their free time to engage in, and it's one where if two people don't show up that may be enough to scuttle the entire session. So there is some harm inflicted beyond just the one player feeling awful for missing which may factor in.

I think it's reasonable to hold someone who promises to attend accountable if they repeatedly fail to hold that up, even if it's always for a good reason - because the thing they did wrong isn't not showing up but rather misleading the other participants about their ability to show up consistently. I wouldn't dock XP, but I probably would care a lot less about that player's needs in the game when compared to the regular attendees (e.g. avoid running extended plots designed to hook them, etc). Which is actually more severe than not getting XP, in my opinion at least...

Boci
2018-05-06, 02:56 PM
I think it's reasonable to hold someone who promises to attend accountable if they repeatedly fail to hold that up, even if it's always for a good reason - because the thing they did wrong isn't not showing up but rather misleading the other participants about their ability to show up consistently. I wouldn't dock XP, but I probably would care a lot less about that player's needs in the game when compared to the regular attendees (e.g. avoid running extended plots designed to hook them, etc). Which is actually more severe than not getting XP, in my opinion at least...

That context you kinda invented. Forrestfire was talking about missing sessions, not someone who misses a significant number of sessions and mislead the group as to there availability.

dps
2018-05-06, 03:02 PM
XPs are a reward for accomplishing something within the game. They're earned. If you didn't even show up, you accomplished jack ****, and didn't earn anything.

Not being given something that's supposed to be earned because you didn't earn it isn't a punishment. Punishment would be if the DM took away XP that you had already earned in previous sessions because you missed a session.

ImNotTrevor
2018-05-06, 03:06 PM
Good question! The shortest answer is because I feel like it. The less short, but still fairly short, answer is that in a level-based system like D&D, I prefer to do advancement at appropriate plot points such as when the party completes a major story goal. At the most open-ended end of the sandbox spectrum, I don't really have a plot or story goals. The players can create their own, which I totally encourage, but I don't feel the need to adjudicate which of their goals are important enough to warrant a level gain.



Your behavioral psych is spot on, but I disagree with your conclusion. Reward and punishment aren't a binary choice--there is a middle ground. "Business as usual" is neither reward nor punishment. It's when you add or remove something from business as usual that it becomes a reward or punishment, depending on how pleasant or unpleasant it is. The question at the core of this disagreement is what constitutes business as usual in an standard D&D game. If all characters advancing every time the game gets played is business as usual, then not awarding XP to absent players is a punishment. If characters advance only as a reward for participation, then it isn't. It's just business as usual.

XP isn't awarded for just showing up. There must be some kind of completed task(s) befpre it shows up.

And since the goal of the behavior is to stop/prevent/not encourage players to not show up, it's doubly a punishment.

For instance:
At my workplace, if I have a young man who does not attend his groups, he does not get to go downstairs to the cafeteria or recreation area. Instead he must eat upstairs and be bored inside.

The latter are not assumed rights. They must be earned through action (like XP)

If you don't attend groups, and are merely in the same room as group, you also don't get to go down.

Not being able to go downstairs is a punishment for not doing something. Stay in your room all day, and get instant access to staying upstairs all day.

Since Negative Punishment involves NOT getting rewarded, no XP fits that end of the model.

I do applied behavioral psych 8 hours per day, 5 days per week. I'm by no means a psychiatrist, but I have kids who already know the mantra "I don't reward bad behavior" and no longer ask me for good things if they've not given me the behaviors I need to see. And they tend to do those behaviors more often when I'm on the unit.

Weird how withholding a reward changes behavior patterns. Almost like it's a Negative Punishment.

Talakeal
2018-05-06, 03:07 PM
From a logical perspective a lack of expected reward and a punishment are identical. There might be different psychological and philosophical implications, but there I no practical different between a $100,000 dollar a year salary with a 10K bonus if you did well vs. a $110,000 dollar a year salary and docking a person 10k if they fail to do well.


As for XP, I don't use it anymore. I level up the entire party as a group after they complete X number of milestones (in D&D I usually say a number of adventures equal to their current level). I have had too many players go out of their way to murder things for no reason other than XP, which is disruptive to the game on both a real world and narrative level, and too many situations where the players demanded extra XP from an encounter because I used smart tactics or they used dumb tactics. In addition it is a pain in the but to keep track of every player's XP (which is necessary as I occasionally audit character sheets to catch mistakes and the occasionally cheater) and it makes it harder to balance the game.


Now, let's look at this from a psychological perspective:

If someone misses out on XP they are PERMANENTLY weaker than the rest of the party in most game systems. Thus you have infinite punishment for finite crimes, which imho is innately unjust.


You generally have one of two cases:

Case A: The player is having fun with the game and really wants to show up, but just can't because of RL issues. Why punish* this guy? He loves the game, and he would be there if he could, missing the session is punishment enough! In this case you are really trying to leverage him into unhealthy (perhaps literally so) behavior and encourage him to choose a game over real life concerns. Why?

Case B: The player isn't having fun and must be bribed into coming to the session. First off, do you really want players who are only there because you have them conditioned to show up for rewards? Secondly, these kind of players will miss sessions if they have something come up in real life regardless of your in game incentives, and so they will have weaker characters than the rest of the party. Do you honestly think this is going to make them enjoy the game more? The most likely outcome of this scenario is that they start having even less fun and will drop out of the game entirely at some point. Was this your goal?



*Or if you prefer withhold rewards, or even just a neutral term like deny his character the opportunity to advance at the optimal rate.

Boci
2018-05-06, 03:12 PM
For instance:
At my workplace, if I have a young man who does not attend his groups, he does not get to go downstairs to the cafeteria or recreation area. Instead he must eat upstairs and be bored inside.

But a D&D game isn't a work place, the players aren't young men who need to be taught discipline and realiability.

Telonius
2018-05-06, 03:26 PM
Falling behind in XP isn't just bad for the player, it's bad for the group. When the character in question is lower level than they "ought" to be, they're less able to fulfill their role within the group. By not giving XP for a missed session, you're essentially withholding a benefit not just from the missing player, but from the whole party.

We've been using milestone level-up for the last couple of years, and really haven't had any problems. Crafting uses the 5-to-1 GP to XP ratio, so there's no problems for anyone with a crafting feat.

Lorsa
2018-05-06, 03:27 PM
But a D&D game isn't a work place, the players aren't young men who need to be taught discipline and realiability.

Then why have a discussion about rewards and punishments within D&D at all?

Boci
2018-05-06, 03:29 PM
Then why have a discussion about rewards and punishments within D&D at all?

Because its an important topic? You just need to remember that school and work aren't the best examples, because D&D is a social activity between friends, whilst the former two aren't.

JoeJ
2018-05-06, 03:49 PM
Because its an important topic? You just need to remember that school and work aren't the best examples, because D&D is a social activity between friends, whilst the former two aren't.

Hence my wacky idea that the group could agree on what to do about players who can't make it. Then, whatever has been decided is neither lack of reward nor punishment, but merely business as usual.

Boci
2018-05-06, 03:52 PM
Hence my wacky idea that the group could agree on what to do about players who can't make it. Then, whatever has been decided is neither lack of reward nor punishment, but merely business as usual.

That's the best solution yes (and that solution does render this whole discussion moot). But people on the forums like comparing marits of various aproached, and this can be helpful if you ever find the group opinion at your table split.

Corneel
2018-05-06, 04:16 PM
We had the simple rule that if you couldn't show up, you designated one of the other player to handle your PC. This other player then played the PC, with veto power by the DM (me) if he thought that they were making the PC do things out of character. The character would get his part of group XP, but of course had no opportunity to gain individual XP. Basically the character was demoted for the session to the role of a NPC/Follower accompanying the group.

I also shifted away from encounter & combat based XP rewards towards more story goal and "good idea" based XP rewards. With often the larger XP rewards coming at the end of a story line with a kind of debriefing in which I doled out the XP and explained my reasoning behind it. Interestingly the play style shifted from raging murderhobos to more sophisticated and creative roleplaying (though going from hormone-adled teenagers to somewhat responsible adults with spouses and children might have helped to).

RazorChain
2018-05-06, 04:20 PM
The point isn't making sure you feel bad, but rather making sure you change your behavior. Whether losing XP is the right way to do that, I actually don't think so, but the general idea is that if you are repeatedly choosing to miss the session, lack of being at the session is clearly not a sufficiently significant consequence for you to behave differently.

As to whether it's reasonable to put that pressure on people, keep in mind that this is a social activity where all participants are blocking out a significant portion of their free time to engage in, and it's one where if two people don't show up that may be enough to scuttle the entire session. So there is some harm inflicted beyond just the one player feeling awful for missing which may factor in.

I think it's reasonable to hold someone who promises to attend accountable if they repeatedly fail to hold that up, even if it's always for a good reason - because the thing they did wrong isn't not showing up but rather misleading the other participants about their ability to show up consistently. I wouldn't dock XP, but I probably would care a lot less about that player's needs in the game when compared to the regular attendees (e.g. avoid running extended plots designed to hook them, etc). Which is actually more severe than not getting XP, in my opinion at least...

If you don't care that much for showing up to game then XP is probably not going to be the carrot that makes you show up.

When I have unreliable players and very often I have at least one then that players character plays second fiddle to the other PC's

The second thing that happens is that I prioritize for my other players benefit. If everybody but the unreliable player can play next sunday then tough luck to him if there isn't another day where everybody can attend.

I dont award XP for anything in particular so the PCs can do whatever they want, XP just represents them getting better and more experienced.

Deophaun
2018-05-06, 04:46 PM
Is that what passes for answering a question in your world? If in D&D you are using the levels as character progress you are using XP, explicitly or implicitly.
No. I don't use XP. I just use levels.

If you let the characters level up after a certain in game time that is the equivalent of handing them the XP needed to level in one go. There is no mechanical difference.
Glad you said it and not me. Since there is no mechanical difference, XP is a needless intermediary step. Hence, I cut out the needless intermediary step. There's now no complaining about reward or punishment, no looking at things as bags of XP. There's just the game. People who don't attend are punished (or not rewarded, however you wish to phrase it) by not having played the game. If some other incentive is required beyond that, then that only means I suck at GMing.

ImNotTrevor
2018-05-06, 05:07 PM
But a D&D game isn't a work place, the players aren't young men who need to be taught discipline and realiability.

That's entirely orthogonal to my point. I'm not arguing the merits of the action. Just confirming that, by psych definitions, withholding XP IS a punishment.

And making that the status-quo doesn't make it suddenly not a punishment. Punishments are not defined by their being or not being common. If it is normal and agreed upon that people who sneeze are struck over the head with a tire iron, that's still Positive Punishment.

That's not a value judgement, just pointing out that if a behavior has the purpose of changing behavior, it will fit into one of those four boxes.

Luccan
2018-05-06, 05:15 PM
No. I don't use XP. I just use levels.

Glad you said it and not me. Since there is no mechanical difference, XP is a needless intermediary step. Hence, I cut out the needless intermediary step. There's now no complaining about reward or punishment, no looking at things as bags of XP. There's just the game. People who don't attend are punished (or not rewarded, however you wish to phrase it) by not having played the game. If some other incentive is required beyond that, then that only means I suck at GMing.

I think I mostly agree with Deophaun, with the caveat I know there are games where XP is a specific reward for things like good roleplay or clever action, rather than a consequence of regular play and games where XP is spent independently of actual levels. These games are times I would agree it makes complete sense to not give absent players XP. Outside of those, XP is usually unnecessary, at least in my experience. It generally leads to complaints of levels being gained too quickly or too slowly, so as unhelpful as it may sound, my general thought is you should level up when it "feels right" for your game/table. And since in most modern D&D-like games I've played the game isn't intended to have widely disparate levels for characters, I see it as a detriment to the party if one player is behind, rather than just a detriment to that one player.

And if you have a problem with a player not showing up consistently, that probably needs to be handled in some other manner. Whether or not it's a punishment is moot.

Corneel
2018-05-06, 05:19 PM
No. I don't use XP. I just use levels.

Glad you said it and not me. Since there is no mechanical difference, XP is a needless intermediary step. Hence, I cut out the needless intermediary step. There's now no complaining about reward or punishment, no looking at things as bags of XP. There's just the game. People who don't attend are punished (or not rewarded, however you wish to phrase it) by not having played the game. If some other incentive is required beyond that, then that only means I suck at GMing.
Twisting my words much?

There is no mechanical difference between handing handing them the XP needed to level in one go and having them level up without mentioning XP. So you are still using XP. You're just hiding it quite well.
What you are doing is cutting the link between XP and any specific player or character actions, and just handing them a block grant of XP when you think it's convenient for the PCs to level up (that's what I go by since an explanation about how you decide when characters can level up hasn't been forthcoming - though at a minimum I suppose the characters will have to have gone through some adventures or storylines which could reasonably called experiences).

I (and whoever I played with) prefer an approach where XP are linked to player and character actions. Yes, the characters do not level at the same moment but that is a feature, not a bug. In my opinion there are several advantages to a staggered leveling of the characters:
- The group as a whole more gradually increases in power in stead of getting a sudden shift of power as everyone levels at the same time
- It might be the type of player I played with, but any advancement in level of a player, even if more important to that player, was still to a certain extent a group event with discussions how the player should go about leveling up. With staggered leveling you have more of these moments.
- It allows each player in turn their little moment in the spotlight, a bit like everyone having their own birthday party.

Boci
2018-05-06, 05:23 PM
Twisting my words much?

There is no mechanical difference between handing handing them the XP needed to level in one go and having them level up without mentioning XP. So you are still using XP. You're just hiding it quite well.

No you're not. XP is how traditionally a levelling system is tracked in a roll playing game, but its in no way integral to a levelling system. If you don't mention XP, then you aren't using it.

gkathellar
2018-05-06, 05:24 PM
It depends entirely on context and generalizations to either effect serve only to vent frustration with how other people play or think about play.

Deophaun
2018-05-06, 05:37 PM
Twisting my words much?
Your words are perfectly fine. I am, after all, not confusing two terms so that I can claim that you are doing what you clearly assert you do not. That would be rude.

What you are doing is cutting the link between XP and any specific player or character actions, and just handing them a block grant of XP when you think it's convenient for the PCs to level up
I don't hand out any XP. I mean, I could hand out a bajillion million XP if I wanted. It just wouldn't do anything. You're still level 3 alongside the guy with 0 XP.

that's what I go by since an explanation about how you decide when characters can level up hasn't been forthcoming
When the narrative calls for it.

I (and whoever I played with) prefer an approach where XP are linked to player and character actions. Yes, the characters do not level at the same moment but that is a feature, not a bug.
I trust you aren't under the impression that your "feature" and the various "advantages" thereof are not exclusive to your methods of play.

Corneel
2018-05-06, 05:40 PM
No you're not. XP is how traditionally a levelling system is tracked in a roll playing game, but its in no way integral to a levelling system. If you don't mention XP, then you aren't using it.
That's like saying you're using clean fuel when driving an electrical car, even though the electricity is generated by coal fired power plants.

Deophaun
2018-05-06, 05:44 PM
That's like saying you're using clean fuel when driving an electrical car, even though the electricity is generated by coal fired power plants.
Yes. Your argument is exactly like someone thinking electricity can only be generated by coal fired power plants.

WarKitty
2018-05-06, 05:55 PM
I have to wonder how much of this is driven by our own experiences and ideas of why people don't show up.

Generally, I find people who are in favor of withholding XP to be those who have issues with players who just decide not to show up on a given night. It's frustrating for everyone because it messes things up.

On the other hand, people who oppose it are often concerned that they have unavoidable issues where they can't make it. A child is sick, or they have to stay late at work, or something. They're frustrated because their character is less powerful due to something they couldn't avoid.

Tanarii
2018-05-06, 06:24 PM
Generally, I find people who are in favor of withholding XP to be those who have issues with players who just decide not to show up on a given night. It's frustrating for everyone because it messes things up.
There is no withholding of XP involved. This is just another attempt to call white black.

2D8HP
2018-05-06, 06:33 PM
...As you stand there talking with your buddies, you'll be crying inside yourself.


*Note to self: Continue not having "buddies"*


.....But even then, I find almost all players prefer XP.


Really?

At my lastest game of 5e D&D, only the DM wants to retain XP (to reward "good role-playing" :yuk:), while me and the other players suggest milestone instead.


Back when it was wargamers and college kids, it was pretty good. Around 79/80 I started to see a shift with "serious" role players who were very entitled and opinionated.


:redface:

It's a fair cop.

As someone who started playing then:

Sorry 'bout that FreddyNoNose, I didn't mean to ruin it.


....Shhh. Don't give the game away comrade.


Да!

Boci
2018-05-06, 06:35 PM
There is no withholding of XP involved. This is just another attempt to call white black.

Call it what you want, humans are social beings, being excluded from something, including XP, feels bad, and this is for someone who has already been excluded from last session. The latter was unavoidable, the former isn't.

RazorChain
2018-05-06, 06:42 PM
There is no withholding of XP involved. This is just another attempt to call white black.

It's not that simple. XP is an award system and is awarded for participating in the game.

Most people play for fun so missing out on a session means missing the fun. Also they miss out on a ingame reward that gives them benefit within the game.

This is just psychology. My son was sick and missed out on a sport event where everybody who attended got a medallion, his sister attended and got a medallion. My son wasn't happy and felt penalized.

A friend of mine worked in a brewery where you could drink 6 bottles of beer every day. Everybody tried to drink their quota, else they were missing out. When the qouta was removed the workers drank less beer

This issue is about how people feel and if they feel like they are being punished then dismissing their feelings isn't going to be constructive.

NichG
2018-05-06, 08:25 PM
From a logical perspective a lack of expected reward and a punishment are identical. There might be different psychological and philosophical implications, but there I no practical different between a $100,000 dollar a year salary with a 10K bonus if you did well vs. a $110,000 dollar a year salary and docking a person 10k if they fail to do well.

This logic only works for binary outcome cases. For example, lets say you have three actions you could take (A,B,C). If we reward action A, that means that the optimal action policy with respect to that reward is to do action A. If on the other hand, we penalize action C for example, the optimal thing to do would be any mixture of A and B. This is related to my point about the rareness of the thing being relevant to how it's perceived. If most of the possible actions result in the same outcome (you get XP), but there's one action (missing game) in which the outcome is less, it's going to have the mathematical structure of a punishment in the sense of driving away. If most of the possible actions result in the same outcome (no one gets XP), but there's one action (killing the dragon) in which the outcome is more, it's going to have the mathematical structure of a reward in the sense of pulling towards.

Of course, the psychological factors matter more here, but they aren't actually identical logically - only in oversimplified situations with strict A or B choices.

Talakeal
2018-05-06, 08:52 PM
This logic only works for binary outcome cases. For example, lets say you have three actions you could take (A,B,C). If we reward action A, that means that the optimal action policy with respect to that reward is to do action A. If on the other hand, we penalize action C for example, the optimal thing to do would be any mixture of A and B. This is related to my point about the rareness of the thing being relevant to how it's perceived. If most of the possible actions result in the same outcome (you get XP), but there's one action (missing game) in which the outcome is less, it's going to have the mathematical structure of a punishment in the sense of driving away. If most of the possible actions result in the same outcome (no one gets XP), but there's one action (killing the dragon) in which the outcome is more, it's going to have the mathematical structure of a reward in the sense of pulling towards.

Of course, the psychological factors matter more here, but they aren't actually identical logically - only in oversimplified situations with strict A or B choices.

I don't think I agree.

Throw away terms like "reward" and "punishment".

From a practical perspective someone who does A gets more than someone who does B or C.

Someone who does B gets less than A and more than C.

Someone who does C gets less than either A or B.

This is a fact regardless of whether we term A a reward and C a punishment and B as default, A as default B as punishment and C as big punishment, or C as default and B as reward and A as big reward.

Quertus
2018-05-06, 09:43 PM
XPs are a reward for accomplishing something within the game. They're earned. If you didn't even show up, you accomplished jack ****, and didn't earn anything.

Not being given something that's supposed to be earned because you didn't earn it isn't a punishment. Punishment would be if the DM took away XP that you had already earned in previous sessions because you missed a session.

This assumes that the character is absent whenever the player is absent. But, if the character was still active, would they not earn XP?

WarKitty
2018-05-06, 10:51 PM
There is no withholding of XP involved. This is just another attempt to call white black.

I feel like there really isn't a neutral term I could have put there.

Point is - people don't like to feel like they have to deal with someone who doesn't show up for the game but still gets the benefits, especially if they feel they have to work harder to make up for it. On the other hand, people don't like having their fun impacted more than necessary by various responsibilities that might make someone miss a session.

I think a lot of the debate comes down to which one of those things you value more.

Mr Beer
2018-05-06, 11:14 PM
The way I do it, if you don't show mid-adventure, someone else plays your character and you get 50% XP. If the session kicks off somewhere where you could be doing something else, your character is absent, you get no XP but you also have no risk of dying.

NichG
2018-05-06, 11:41 PM
I don't think I agree.

Throw away terms like "reward" and "punishment".

From a practical perspective someone who does A gets more than someone who does B or C.

Someone who does B gets less than A and more than C.

Someone who does C gets less than either A or B.

This is a fact regardless of whether we term A a reward and C a punishment and B as default, A as default B as punishment and C as big punishment, or C as default and B as reward and A as big reward.

I'm contrasting these cases from an optimization perspective: (1,0,0) and (-1,0,0)

I'm not talking about (2,1,0) or (-2,-1,0)

The reasoning is that reward or punishment both involve giving feedback to a single specific action - that is, the thing the person actually did. So if there are only two options, you can deduce the missing value and saying 'do X' and 'don't do Y' are equivalent. But if there are an infinite number of options, saying 'do X' and 'don't do X' provide extremely different cues.

Namely, if I'm searching for what I should do and am told 'yes, do X' my search has terminated. If I'm told 'don't do X' I still have to keep looking.

Slipperychicken
2018-05-07, 12:22 AM
=
Generally, I find people who are in favor of withholding XP to be those who have issues with players who just decide not to show up on a given night. It's frustrating for everyone because it messes things up.

It's a broader, enduring problem in roleplaying games: A lot of us lack either the conceptual framework needed to communicate and handle OOC problems (such as non-attendance, tardiness, or disruptive behavior) in a constructive manner, or the emotional willingness to do it, so we've ended up trying to use in-game penalties and rewards to handle it.

In-game punishment for out-of-game behavior is just an easy way for us to bury our heads in the game and ignore the real-world context for what's happening.

Blackjackg
2018-05-07, 12:55 AM
I do applied behavioral psych 8 hours per day, 5 days per week. I'm by no means a psychiatrist, but I have kids who already know the mantra "I don't reward bad behavior" and no longer ask me for good things if they've not given me the behaviors I need to see. And they tend to do those behaviors more often when I'm on the unit.

Cheers, that's great. I'm glad you're out there doing that work. Since you brought up credentials, I feel alright mentioning that I'm a professional psychologist too, and I have a doctorate in this stuff. I don't bring that up in an effort to overrule your argument or anyone else's, just to indicate that I'm not totally out in the woods here myself. You are not the only one here with a high level of knowledge on this subject.

It sounds like the definition you're using is a good practical definition for your workplace. It combines basic principles of behavioral theory with policy terms and common language so clients and families can understand it. That's awesome. I'm speaking more from a pure theory perspective, but given that this whole conversation is about semantic pedantry I feel like that's appropriate.

In operant conditioning (which is the branch of behavioral psychology that we're talking about here), there is always a target behavior that we are trying to encourage or discourage. In your example, attending groups is the target behavior. Notably, "not attending groups" is not the target behavior because it's not a behavior. It's a huge category of behaviors that includes literally everything except attending groups. In order to encourage the target behavior, you offer a reward, the privilege of spending time with others. When the client doesn't demonstrate the target behavior, they don't get the reward and have to spend the time alone.

Generally speaking, reward (either positive or negative) is a better way of eliciting behavior change than punishment (either positive or negative), for a number of reasons that can essentially be boiled down to "it's easier to encourage the development of a new behavior than it is to extinguish an established one." What you're describing as negative punishment is effective partly because it's really a system of positive reinforcement in disguise.

Again, I'm talking technical scientific terms here. In common parlance, you are totally justified in saying that forcing a client to stay in their room alone is a punishment for missing group even if technically it isn't. None of what I'm saying should be construed as criticizing the way you do your job or objecting to the terms you use in doing it. I'm making a pedantic technical argument as part of the larger pedantic technical argument of whether not awarding XP counts as a punishment or not.

In the D&D game that I'm currently running, I use story-based leveling instead of XP. I don't consider the levels I award as a reward for anything, they're just part of game. I wouldn't award extra levels as bonuses for good player behavior, nor do I hold back levels in order to discourage bad player behavior. So, as far as I can tell, I use [XP equivalent] as neither reward nor punishment. But I'm not the hypothetical DM that this conversation is about.

If a DM offers XP in order to encourage particular player behaviors like showing up, that's a positive reward. Not giving that reward to players who don't show up is not a punishment, it's just a not-reward (technically; in common usage, it could certainly be described as such). A DM who takes away XP that a player already has or would otherwise earn because of some other target behavior they want to discourage (such as table talk or checking the cell phone during game) is engaging in negative punishment, but that doesn't seem to be what most people are talking about in this thread.

So, by behavioral psychological terms, I find I agree with Tanarii--in most cases, not awarding XP to players that don't show up does not technically count as a punishment. It's important to note, however, that simply because it's not technically a punishment does not necessarily mean that it's good DM practice. That's an entirely separate question.

Lorsa
2018-05-07, 02:15 AM
So, by behavioral psychological terms, I find I agree with Tanarii--in most cases, not awarding XP to players that don't show up does not technically count as a punishment. It's important to note, however, that simply because it's not technically a punishment does not necessarily mean that it's good DM practice. That's an entirely separate question.

This brought me back to a question I never got answered.

Why is player attendance such a rare thing that you have to reward it?

oxybe
2018-05-07, 02:24 AM
This brought me back to a question I never got answered.

Why is player attendance such a rare thing that you have to reward it?

No one also answered my questions about actual participation VS being present.

If a player is present but doesn't do anything or give input, does he get XP simply for existing at the table?

Koo Rehtorb
2018-05-07, 02:39 AM
No one also answered my questions about actual participation VS being present.

If a player is present but doesn't do anything or give input, does he get XP simply for existing at the table?

I don't like rewards for showing up. So no, personally.

You get rewarded for doing the thing(s) that the game's about. A well designed game already has that as part of the rules so I don't need to do anything in that regard anyway.

Frozen_Feet
2018-05-07, 05:30 AM
Why is player attendance such a rare thing that you have to reward it?

Well that's easy: tabletop RPGs are a niche hobby. There isn't an overabundance of available players and you're competing with other hobbies to get them. Hence, boons for attendance may be a good idea to guarantee that they show up.

This said, trying to use in-game artefacts for this is stupid. Bake your players cookies or give them free game swag to get them interested.

---


No one also answered my questions about actual participation VS being present.

If a player is present but doesn't do anything or give input, does he get XP simply for existing at the table?

Does someone who shows up to play soccer but never actually kicks the ball get to score goals?

Experience points and such are just a game's way of keeping score. What the score's given for is arbitrary, but the score exists and effects things only within the game. If you don't give a score to a player who is not participating, that's neither reward nor punishment - it's just acknowledgement that they're, you know, not part of the game.

The reason this gets muddled in RPGs is because the score is attached to an in-game object, namely a character, which may have in-game continuity even if their player's participation is not continuous. Because of this link between character and player, it's easy to think that manipulations of the character are rewards and punishments towards the player - even if the player is not playing, or even present.

The easiest way to deal with this is to reinforce player-character-separation: the score is kept for the in-game entity and awarded for in-game activities. The player is something else and punished and rewarded separately. Nothing about this stops the player feeling as if manipulations of their character are rewards or punishment towards them, but really, at that point it's on them.

Deophaun
2018-05-07, 06:10 AM
Does someone who shows up to play soccer but never actually kicks the ball get to score goals?
Poor goalies, never getting to participate in the game. Or maybe I've gotten soccer wrong and goals are rewarded by the refs for amazing plays, not for kicking the ball into a net. Regardless, the kid who shows up and sits on the sidelines does get rewarded with pizza/ice cream afterwards along with everyone else.

oxybe
2018-05-07, 06:43 AM
Poor goalies, never getting to participate in the game. Or maybe I've gotten soccer wrong and goals are rewarded by the refs for amazing plays, not for kicking the ball into a net. Regardless, the kid who shows up and sits on the sidelines does get rewarded with pizza/ice cream afterwards along with everyone else.

He also gets medals or trophies if his team does well enough to win a championship.

Mordaedil
2018-05-07, 07:16 AM
Oh, it's time for my favorite, personal anecdotes.

Now, if you've ever argued with me in a video game forum, which is possible you have, if you posted on D&D centric video game forums, like for Bioware or Obsidian, you'd see me argue in favor of milestone experience rewards instead of encounter experience, because it allows more creative outcomes from scenarios besides the optimal always being combat. But this comes out of experience with persuasive posters and a desire for video games to take bigger risks and deviate from formulaes a lot more.

For classic D&D, I often play in groups where I wonder what the point is with experience rewards when you are dividing out the same to everyone. It kind of feels like personal investment or being the more creative one to circumvent an encounter cleverly went without being rewarded to me as a player specifically.

We've recently been playing a game in 3rd edition where I got a different sense. We've all been getting some experience, sure, but certain players have gotten more and others less. I've been on the short end of the stick this campaign obviously though, as last session the DM declared "you all get 500 experience points" and everybody, but two of us leveled up. I was 29 experience points from reaching the next level up and the other guy was one that joined a session later than the rest of us. He was 190 from leveling up, so clearly I've been really slacking off, nearly a whole session behind.

Now, I'm sure most of you felt a sucking feeling in the pit of your stomach, but quite honestly I was a bit relieved, as leveling up has some things I feel anxious about, but I also understand the DM's frustration at not everybody being the same level too. It means certain encounters are more difficult for me and I can't help my party as effectively as if I had one more level. But for me it means needing to select new spells and writing the macro for that (we play in roll20, which is as much a curse as it is a blessing) and considering we leveled up in downtime, we are just a little unsure if our DM quite gets the meaning of downtime.

Anyway. I'm sure it can feel like punishment to some people, but the fact is that I was just short of the level because of my own inaction or inability to impress upon the DM my own roleplay. And that happens and I don't really feel like holding a grudge over something we all agree is a game.

Ignimortis
2018-05-07, 07:45 AM
RPGs have a bizarrely high number of people that can’t handle losing, or even not getting as much stuff as others.

Because you're there to play, aren't you? If you got together with your friends to play a board game, but you and only you had to skip every third turn for some reason, it would be rather unfun, I'd wager. Likewise, losing can be fun (even if it isn't pleasant), but if it isn't, it'd better happen less often than fun events, otherwise the game is probably more a test of patience than a fun thing to do.


That's like finding surgery patients that prefer to go under the knife without anesthetic. Anyway, moving this edit as a proper response to your question:

The idea of XP being a reward is twisting the language. In those barbaric games that still inflict this odious burden upon hapless players (cursed be those who run them), XP is necessary to keep pace with challenges, which will progressively increase throughout the campaign. A proper XP reward would be XP above and beyond what is necessary to keep that pace. Any XP gain that does not keep pace is a punishment. XP that keeps pace just is.

I have no idea what you're talking about. While D&D functions relatively well with milestones, some other systems just don't. White Wolf games come to mind, for example - you can't just milestone a character's development in those.

Pex
2018-05-07, 08:01 AM
On a related tangent, it used to be a thing and sometimes still is for DMs to give bonus XP to individual players for good roleplaying, solving something, rule of cool thing, figuring out the DM's plot point, etc. I used to like this, but now I'm leaning to not. It enforces competition between the players to be the first in doing whatever to get the bonus XP. The more dominating players will get more of the rewards. It results in characters having differing amounts of XP even when all the players showed up equally. Maybe it's enough for one character to level a session earlier than another, maybe not, but that there's a difference of XP value is irksome. Jealousy perhaps? Maybe, but I get my share of these bonus XP so I'm not on the losing end of this even if I don't have the most XP at a particular time. It's great for the DM to give bonus XP more than he originally intended, but I prefer it be for all players. Everyone contributed and had their moment to shine to contribute to the earning of bonus XP.

Deophaun
2018-05-07, 08:04 AM
I have no idea what you're talking about.Ice cream, last I checked.

Quertus
2018-05-07, 08:28 AM
Now, if you've ever argued with me in a video game forum, which is possible you have, if you posted on D&D centric video game forums, like for Bioware or Obsidian, you'd see me argue in favor of milestone experience rewards instead of encounter experience, because it allows more creative outcomes from scenarios besides the optimal always being combat. But this comes out of experience with persuasive posters and a desire for video games to take bigger risks and deviate from formulaes a lot more.

Not sure if this is the right thread, but I'd love to hear your reasoning on this.


On a related tangent, it used to be a thing and sometimes still is for DMs to give bonus XP to individual players for good roleplaying, solving something, rule of cool thing, figuring out the DM's plot point, etc. I used to like this, but now I'm leaning to not. It enforces competition between the players to be the first in doing whatever to get the bonus XP. The more dominating players will get more of the rewards. It results in characters having differing amounts of XP even when all the players showed up equally. Maybe it's enough for one character to level a session earlier than another, maybe not, but that there's a difference of XP value is irksome. Jealousy perhaps? Maybe, but I get my share of these bonus XP so I'm not on the losing end of this even if I don't have the most XP at a particular time. It's great for the DM to give bonus XP more than he originally intended, but I prefer it be for all players. Everyone contributed and had their moment to shine to contribute to the earning of bonus XP.

I give that bonus XP for good role-playing, clever plans, etc - to everyone.

That is, I give out the system's standard XP, then start listing off cool things people did throughout the session, adding to the group XP total. The players get involved, adding in things that they thought were cool, and I add bonus group XP.

It means players are rewarded with special spotlight time recognition for the cool things that they did, but, in game, everyone is rewarded. So everyone gets to be happy that you roleplayed well, that you came up with a clever plan, that you got that awesome lucky crit when your teammate was down, that you described your actions with cool flair. Everyone gets reminded what everyone thinks makes for a good game.

Frozen_Feet
2018-05-07, 08:57 AM
Poor goalies, never getting to participate in the game. Or maybe I've gotten soccer wrong and goals are rewarded by the refs for amazing plays, not for kicking the ball into a net.

Pointless nitpickery of the analogue; besides, goalies can kick the ball just fine. :smalltongue:


Regardless, the kid who shows up and sits on the sidelines does get rewarded with pizza/ice cream afterwards along with everyone else.

The pizza and ice cream are non-game rewards which are awarded (or not) completely independent of rules of soccer. XP and other in-game scoring mechanics are never analogous to such.

---


He also gets medals or trophies if his team does well enough to win a championship.
So is XP in your game something that's awarded to the team rather than an individual? If yes, you've answered your own earlier question. If not, clearly you are treating XP as analogous to something it is not alike.

Deophaun
2018-05-07, 09:40 AM
Pointless nitpickery of the analogue; besides, goalies can kick the ball just fine. :smalltongue:
No, your analogy was fine. It's just that you missed that the reward for playing soccer is playing soccer, not scoring goals.

The pizza and ice cream are non-game rewards which are awarded (or not) completely independent of rules of soccer. XP and other in-game scoring mechanics are never analogous to such.
Again, if you think scoring is the reward, there are lots of sports where vital players rarely if ever score. Roger Clemens never earned a "reward" despite being one of the greatest pitchers of all time because of DH. The only other "rewards" he has received you would term "non-game."

XP is not a reward. It is progression. RPGs use progression to keep the game fresh. If you deny progression to one character, you necessarily slow progression for the entire party as they are less able to handle new challenges. They have to kick around in the kiddy pool for longer than otherwise. Who are you really punishing not rewarding?

Blackjackg
2018-05-07, 09:47 AM
It is true that the only thing that makes D&D work is the fact that character advancement is the goal and that the only ways to accomplish that are by engaging in combat, meeting story goals, and pleasing the Dungeon Master. Could you imagine a game in which DM's didn't hold their ultimate power over the object of the game over players' heads? Everyone would avoid combat, abandon the story and spend every session stacking dice and raising farm crops. And the DM would be powerless to stop it! Thank goodness we have a system to reward our target behaviors and keep players in line.

Pelle
2018-05-07, 10:44 AM
XP is not a reward. It is progression. RPGs use progression to keep the game fresh. If you deny progression to one character, you necessarily slow progression for the entire party as they are less able to handle new challenges. They have to kick around in the kiddy pool for longer than otherwise. Who are you really punishing not rewarding?

Interesting comment (and thread in general btw). Some counterpoints:

I agree the point of xp/progression is to keep the game fresh. However, I don't really buy that slowing down the progress of the party challenges is a concern for freshness. To me it is the new abilities of my own character that needs to be fresh once in a while, not whether my opponents are called goblins or orcs. As long as I am challenged and allowed to be clever in using my abilities, I don't mind staying in "the kiddy pool".

So for PC progression, let's say the ideal progression is every 3rd session, for players not to be bored of their character and also have time to learn their new toys. If a player is absent 1/3 of the sessions and still gets xp, in practice he will progress every 2nd instead, which can feel too rushed (YMMV). In this respect, withholding the xp can be good for the player.

This is assuming that characters of absent players are also absent in the party. Which means being lower level than party average does not limit what the party can take on, since it's anyways better with 4 level 5 PCs + 1 level 4 PC, than only 4 level 5 PCs. Whether the last PC is level 4 or 5 is insignificant compared to if the PC is present at all, it still helps to have an extra party member.

Deophaun
2018-05-07, 11:00 AM
This is assuming that characters of absent players are also absent in the party. Which means being lower level than party average does not limit what the party can take on, since it's anyways better with 4 level 5 PCs + 1 level 4 PC, than only 4 level 5 PCs. Whether the last PC is level 4 or 5 is insignificant compared to if the PC is present at all, it still helps to have an extra party member.
Not necessarily. Numbers in RPGs are funny things which can make a party more or less than the sum of its parts. If we go by an extreme example, a party of two level 10s is better off than a party of two level 10s and a level 1 up against the same challenges, because the level 1 cannot survive those challenges without a level 10 babysitting them. That requires one of the level 10s to take their focus off the challenge, whereas both level 10s in the former group are free to exert all their energy on the problem at hand.

Now, most systems do have a tolerance built into them for this so that one level of difference is not supposed to matter, but none are foolproof.

Pelle
2018-05-07, 11:20 AM
Not necessarily. Numbers in RPGs are funny things which can make a party more or less than the sum of its parts. If we go by an extreme example, a party of two level 10s is better off than a party of two level 10s and a level 1 up against the same challenges, because the level 1 cannot survive those challenges without a level 10 babysitting them. That requires one of the level 10s to take their focus off the challenge, whereas both level 10s in the former group are free to exert all their energy on the problem at hand.

Now, most systems do have a tolerance built into them for this so that one level of difference is not supposed to matter, but none are foolproof.

That's a rather extreme example, though. And if the level 1 do manage to survive, in for example 5e, it will have reached almost level 5 after just one adventuring day.

If instead the difference in level is small, the difference in player skill is often much more significant IME. And either way, I don't care much about carrying party weight etc. The party takes on what it can take on, the party strength just affects the approach, and it's fun anyways.

Frozen_Feet
2018-05-07, 11:31 AM
No, your analogy was fine. It's just that you missed that the reward for playing soccer is playing soccer, not scoring goals.

I didn't miss that, it's just not material to the point I was making. In fact, it's pretty clear you missed the point if you think I think scoring is "the" reward.


Again, if you think scoring is the reward, there are lots of sports where vital players rarely if ever score. Roger Clemens never earned a "reward" despite being one of the greatest pitchers of all time because of DH. The only other "rewards" he has received you would term "non-game."

See above point I made to oxybe. Rules of a game can keep score for the team or for the individual.


XP is not a reward. It is progression. RPGs use progression to keep the game fresh. If you deny progression to one character, you necessarily slow progression for the entire party as they are less able to handle new challenges. They have to kick around in the kiddy pool for longer than otherwise. Who are you really punishing not rewarding?

You assume there is a party.

You're also getting detached from the question I was answering. Oxybe's question presumed a player who is, essentially, not participating. Why'd you think that this non-participant's progression has any positive effect on the other players?

Deophaun
2018-05-07, 11:38 AM
I didn't miss that, it's just not material to the point I was making. In fact, it's pretty clear you missed the point if you think I think scoring is "the" reward.
Re-reading, it is difficult to tell what point you were making, mainly because you insisted on equating XP to scoring in both, which is nonsensical. I gave it meaning because nature abhors a vacuum. I apologize that it was not the meaning you intended, but it was better than nothing.

WarKitty
2018-05-07, 11:52 AM
For classic D&D, I often play in groups where I wonder what the point is with experience rewards when you are dividing out the same to everyone. It kind of feels like personal investment or being the more creative one to circumvent an encounter cleverly went without being rewarded to me as a player specifically.

We've recently been playing a game in 3rd edition where I got a different sense. We've all been getting some experience, sure, but certain players have gotten more and others less. I've been on the short end of the stick this campaign obviously though, as last session the DM declared "you all get 500 experience points" and everybody, but two of us leveled up. I was 29 experience points from reaching the next level up and the other guy was one that joined a session later than the rest of us. He was 190 from leveling up, so clearly I've been really slacking off, nearly a whole session behind.

Now, I'm sure most of you felt a sucking feeling in the pit of your stomach, but quite honestly I was a bit relieved, as leveling up has some things I feel anxious about, but I also understand the DM's frustration at not everybody being the same level too. It means certain encounters are more difficult for me and I can't help my party as effectively as if I had one more level. But for me it means needing to select new spells and writing the macro for that (we play in roll20, which is as much a curse as it is a blessing) and considering we leveled up in downtime, we are just a little unsure if our DM quite gets the meaning of downtime.

Anyway. I'm sure it can feel like punishment to some people, but the fact is that I was just short of the level because of my own inaction or inability to impress upon the DM my own roleplay. And that happens and I don't really feel like holding a grudge over something we all agree is a game.

I admit the sucking feeling in my stomach is more that I worry that this rewards a certain type of player that's not the type I necessarily want to play. I'd worry that this sort of approach would push players to more grandstanding and jockeying to be the one in the spotlight, and in my experience that can be a very frustrating experience. Not everyone can be the fun guy who's doing all the contributing all the time, and I don't want to encourage people to always be trying to inject themselves whether it's useful or not. Plus inevitably some people will be faster speakers and actors than others, and that sort of reward inevitable favors and encourages them to jump in with the cool thing their PC is doing (to get that bonus reward) and then the people who need a little longer to organize their thoughts have to work around them.

Frozen_Feet
2018-05-07, 12:58 PM
@Deophaun: experience points are very transparently a scoring mechanic. If you think that's nonsensical, there's no discussion to be had.

Boci
2018-05-07, 01:16 PM
@Deophaun: experience points are very transparently a scoring mechanic. If you think that's nonsensical, there's no discussion to be had.

If XP is a scoring mechanic, then how come I don't win the game if I end up with more expirience than anyone else in the party? What other game has a scoring mechanism, but doesn't consider the participant with the highest value the winner?

PhoenixPhyre
2018-05-07, 01:24 PM
If XP is a scoring mechanic, then how come I don't win the game if I end up with more expirience than anyone else in the party? What other game has a scoring mechanism, but doesn't consider the participant with the highest value the winner?

Golf?

But that's true. There is no such thing as "winning" at a TTRPG (at least more than "had fun"). I find analogies from competitive games to be really weak when discussing cooperative games (and yes, even PvP is cooperative between the players, or should be, even if the characters are competing).

Scripten
2018-05-07, 01:41 PM
XP never struck me as a reward mechanism, but rather one of progression. This is likely where a lot of the disconnect between viewpoints on XP get introduced.

Those who seem to view XP as a reward see it as a way to present players with a motivation to engage challenges. When a player defeats a challenge, they are given XP as a reward. If a player does not complete the challenge, then they don't get the reward. This is like scoring a goal in a game of soccer. That is, when the ball enters the net, the scoring team gets a tangible reward. The analogy works pretty well here.

Alternatively, there is the idea of XP as a progression system, where PCs gain XP as a measure of their status as heroes in a story. This doesn't mean, however, that I'm saying that this mentality pushes the whole Games as Storytelling Engines concept; just that the PCs are progressing through a system that fosters growth. This is more similar to a measurement of a soccer team's capability throughout the season. Yes, you are technically tracking goals as well, but what matters is the skillset that the players are building as they progress. The analogy isn't particularly worthwhile, because the fitness function is not quantified via goals.

When a player addresses an RPG campaign that treats XP as a reward through the lens of XP as progression or vice versa, they end up with a mismatch of expectations that lessens the experience. No pun intended.

Frozen_Feet
2018-05-07, 01:43 PM
If XP is a scoring mechanic, then how come I don't win the game if I end up with more expirience than anyone else in the party? What other game has a scoring mechanism, but doesn't consider the participant with the highest value the winner?

About a hundred varieties of solitaire, Tetris, Obliterator, Phobia etc. - there is an uncountable amount of games which keep score but which don't have a winner or even a win condition, continuing untill the player loses. Similar to how XP typically keeps increasing untill the player makes a mistake and their character is removed from play.

Also, in BECMI and 4th Edition D&D - you do effectively win when you hit the max level. Not even particularly unique among RPGs. The idea that RPGs don't have winner or win conditions isn't actually a hard rule. Nor is it what sets RPGs apart from other games.

Deophaun
2018-05-07, 01:57 PM
About a hundred varieties of solitaire, Tetris, Obliterator, Phobia etc. - there is an uncountable amount of games which keep score but which don't have a winner or even a win condition, continuing untill the player loses.
True. There is absolutely no competitive scene for such games where high scores are tracked and people are declared to have world records and documentaries made about them. Doesn't happen.

Boci
2018-05-07, 02:09 PM
Also, in BECMI and 4th Edition D&D - you do effectively win when you hit the max level. Not even particularly unique among RPGs. The idea that RPGs don't have winner or win conditions isn't actually a hard rule. Nor is it what sets RPGs apart from other games.

And where in 4th edition D&D does it say "first player to level 30 wins"?

Frozen_Feet
2018-05-07, 02:24 PM
True. There is absolutely no competitive scene for such games where high scores are tracked and people are declared to have world records and documentaries made about them. Doesn't happen.

Missing the point yet again. None of that changes that, for example, Tetris does not actually have a win condition; comparing scores is a metagame conceit.

You also seem to imply that there totally never has been a scene in roleplaying where people track, compare and brag about experience points earned. No sir, tournament play for D&D and Pathfinder never happened and roleplayers have always been totally blase about XP totals and character levels.


And where in 4th edition D&D does it say "first player to level 30 wins"?

Because a character being removed from play as a culmination of their epic destiny totally isn't winning unless the word's explicitly used. :smalltongue:

Tanarii
2018-05-07, 02:25 PM
I don't like rewards for showing up. So no, personally.

You get rewarded for doing the thing(s) that the game's about. A well designed game already has that as part of the rules so I don't need to do anything in that regard anyway.At no point did I mean to imply XP should be rewarded for showing up. XP is almost universally a reward for doing in-game things in RPGs. Sometimes successfully, sometimes not. Sometimes individually, sometimes as a group.

But the minimum requirement for doing in-game things is you (or possibly your character played by another) need to show up and do the things. A player/character that's not around can't do things. So its not a punishment when they don't get XP awarded for doing the things.


Ice cream, last I checked.
Mmmm ice cream. I heartily endorse discussing ice cream, even if its just as an analogy. 😂

PhoenixPhyre
2018-05-07, 02:27 PM
Because a character being removed from play as a culmination of their epic destiny totally isn't winning unless the word's explicitly used. :smalltongue:

To have a set of win conditions means that anything outside that set is failure. And there's no expectation that all, or even most, or even many campaigns will continue to level 30. So it's not a win condition by any reasonable meaning of that word. A campaign that ends at level 5 is just as much a success or failure as one that reaches 30.

Frozen_Feet
2018-05-07, 02:44 PM
@PhoenixPhyre: a victory condition does not require an expectation of most players, or even any player, reaching it. Angband or Doom on Nightmare difficulty have win conditions, no-one reasonably expected anyone to reach them.

Regardless, what you say can still be true - based on internal standards of a campaign. But all that shows is that an individual game can set its own victory conditions or ignore those of a system. It doesn't debunk the larger point, it barely debunks the specific example.

DigoDragon
2018-05-07, 02:54 PM
Personally, I view XP as not being a reward for the player, but rather an abstract way of modeling character progression. So, even if the player was absent from the game, within the fiction, the character probably did something. This something will most likely also lead to some character progression, which is modeled by XP. In many games, it would be very weird if the character of an absent player was not also involved in whatever was going on. Therefore, why shouldn't the character get XP just the same? And if it was not involved, why couldn't it be doing something else?

This is how I've always viewed it, so even if the player is absent (because life sometimes crops up and pulls us away from Saturday evening get-togethers) the character is usually still there and gets a share of the exp same as everyone else for experiencing the session's events.

Pelle
2018-05-07, 03:07 PM
This is how I've always viewed it, so even if the player is absent (because life sometimes crops up and pulls us away from Saturday evening get-togethers) the character is usually still there and gets a share of the exp same as everyone else for experiencing the session's events.

The assumption that the character is present when the player is absent is not a given, though. Structuring games specifically to not include the characters of missing players is not so uncommon.

If so, it gets contrived fast when the characters not joining the adventures always coincidentally score exactly the same amount of xp as the others, doing "something else" in the meantime. If that is necessary or not depends on the expectations and attitude of the players.

Deophaun
2018-05-07, 03:14 PM
Missing the point yet again.
Just because you lack a point doesn't mean I'm missing it.

None of that changes that, for example, Tetris does not actually have a win condition; comparing scores is a metagame conceit.
If it's a metagame conceit, then why does Tetris have a leaderboard built into it? It's not metagame if it's actually in the game.

You also seem to imply that there totally never has been a scene in roleplaying where people track, compare and brag about experience points earned.
I'm sure people have compared progress across games run by different GMs. It's just dumb to attach meaning to it because different GMs.

Mordaedil
2018-05-07, 04:27 PM
Not sure if this is the right thread, but I'd love to hear your reasoning on this.
Sure, as much as it stays in topic anyway.

For a tabletop game, the experience is usually rewarded at the end of the session to speed up play and to keep things moving fast, at least that is how we do it. For a video game, experience can come at any odd juncture and usually overcoming any given encounter rarely provides any creative methods for overcoming it, it is usually just one combat encounter after the other with completing quest rewards as extra tips to the iceberg. I've argued this invalidates some character builds and even design ideas where the encounters are not overcome through sheer force, but by completing the stated objectives without needing to kill every NPC in the building for the most optimal approach. It would allow designers to design their missions with end-goals in mind and combat encounters serving as punishment for characters trying to circumvent them stealthily, while still serving as just the usual reward for the combat oriented classes in these games. Usually video games don't allow for scrying or teleportation to immediately end the objective, so that isn't necessarily an incentive to plan around either.

I think it would allow game designers to work more on set-pieces that make sense, instead of 20 duergar in a tiny room for fireballing.


I admit the sucking feeling in my stomach is more that I worry that this rewards a certain type of player that's not the type I necessarily want to play. I'd worry that this sort of approach would push players to more grandstanding and jockeying to be the one in the spotlight, and in my experience that can be a very frustrating experience. Not everyone can be the fun guy who's doing all the contributing all the time, and I don't want to encourage people to always be trying to inject themselves whether it's useful or not. Plus inevitably some people will be faster speakers and actors than others, and that sort of reward inevitable favors and encourages them to jump in with the cool thing their PC is doing (to get that bonus reward) and then the people who need a little longer to organize their thoughts have to work around them.

You know you'd be right, but usually I'm the one that makes people laugh in our group. No, the XP rewards are usually explained and given due cause to fair play, we feel. I don't think I was unjustly left in the dust or anything.

Corneel
2018-05-07, 04:28 PM
Your words are perfectly fine.Yeah, I thought so too, so, would you kindly stop twisting them like here:


I am, after all, not confusing two terms so that I can claim that you are doing what you clearly assert you do not. That would be rude.Nah you're just a little bit, confused about, what you're doing while being all hoity-toity about it like here:


I don't hand out any XP. I mean, I could hand out a bajillion million XP if I wanted. It just wouldn't do anything. You're still level 3 alongside the guy with 0 XP.In D&D giving levels is the equivalent of giving XP. You might not like it, but that is it. I don't what it is about XP that you're so desperate about not wanting acknowledge their existence, even if they're their just under surface of your play.


When the narrative calls for it.More hoity-toity bollocks. Who decides when the narrative calls for it? The "narrative" ain't no person I know. It seems more like, "You get your levels when I, the Dungeon MASTER, deem you're ready for them." How generous.


I trust you aren't under the impression that your "feature" and the various "advantages" thereof are not exclusive to your methods of play.
a. That wasn't meant for you.
b. I trust you don't really think that your little system of communist leveling (individual merit will be ignored in favor of the progress of the Party by ukase) merits the level of hipster "We don't do XP, baby, that's for the plebs, we go straight to the leveling!" condescension on show in your posts.

Frankly speaking, after your first posts, and the cocky self-assured condescension therein, I was somewhat hoping that there would follow a great revelation, something grand, while all I got was something bland, a little game of hide the XP, that I guessed after about two seconds thinking about the subject.

Notice my repetition of the word condescension. That's my fracking problem with you. The casual devaluing of other people's playing styles while thinking you're the dog's bollocks, while you're just another schmuck like the rest of us that has discovered a neat little trick that suits him.

Talakeal
2018-05-07, 06:04 PM
Cheers, that's great. I'm glad you're out there doing that work. Since you brought up credentials, I feel alright mentioning that I'm a professional psychologist too, and I have a doctorate in this stuff. I don't bring that up in an effort to overrule your argument or anyone else's, just to indicate that I'm not totally out in the woods here myself. You are not the only one here with a high level of knowledge on this subject.

It sounds like the definition you're using is a good practical definition for your workplace. It combines basic principles of behavioral theory with policy terms and common language so clients and families can understand it. That's awesome. I'm speaking more from a pure theory perspective, but given that this whole conversation is about semantic pedantry I feel like that's appropriate.

In operant conditioning (which is the branch of behavioral psychology that we're talking about here), there is always a target behavior that we are trying to encourage or discourage. In your example, attending groups is the target behavior. Notably, "not attending groups" is not the target behavior because it's not a behavior. It's a huge category of behaviors that includes literally everything except attending groups. In order to encourage the target behavior, you offer a reward, the privilege of spending time with others. When the client doesn't demonstrate the target behavior, they don't get the reward and have to spend the time alone.

Generally speaking, reward (either positive or negative) is a better way of eliciting behavior change than punishment (either positive or negative), for a number of reasons that can essentially be boiled down to "it's easier to encourage the development of a new behavior than it is to extinguish an established one." What you're describing as negative punishment is effective partly because it's really a system of positive reinforcement in disguise.

Again, I'm talking technical scientific terms here. In common parlance, you are totally justified in saying that forcing a client to stay in their room alone is a punishment for missing group even if technically it isn't. None of what I'm saying should be construed as criticizing the way you do your job or objecting to the terms you use in doing it. I'm making a pedantic technical argument as part of the larger pedantic technical argument of whether not awarding XP counts as a punishment or not.

In the D&D game that I'm currently running, I use story-based leveling instead of XP. I don't consider the levels I award as a reward for anything, they're just part of game. I wouldn't award extra levels as bonuses for good player behavior, nor do I hold back levels in order to discourage bad player behavior. So, as far as I can tell, I use [XP equivalent] as neither reward nor punishment. But I'm not the hypothetical DM that this conversation is about.

If a DM offers XP in order to encourage particular player behaviors like showing up, that's a positive reward. Not giving that reward to players who don't show up is not a punishment, it's just a not-reward (technically; in common usage, it could certainly be described as such). A DM who takes away XP that a player already has or would otherwise earn because of some other target behavior they want to discourage (such as table talk or checking the cell phone during game) is engaging in negative punishment, but that doesn't seem to be what most people are talking about in this thread.

So, by behavioral psychological terms, I find I agree with Tanarii--in most cases, not awarding XP to players that don't show up does not technically count as a punishment. It's important to note, however, that simply because it's not technically a punishment does not necessarily mean that it's good DM practice. That's an entirely separate question.

That might work in technical scientific terms, but it is so far removed from standard usage as to be meaningless.

If I am reading this correctly, a parent telling a child that they will spank their child and ground them for a week if they forget to do their chores and then following through would NOT be punishing the child under this definition?

ImNotTrevor
2018-05-07, 06:40 PM
That might work in technical scientific terms, but it is so far removed from standard usage as to be meaningless.

If I am reading this correctly, a parent telling a child that they will spank their child and ground them for a week if they forget to do their chores and then following through would NOT be punishing the child under this definition?

It's a good thing I have no problem arguing with the Therapists at work, because on this I can't think of any who would think of the removal of priviledges and other goodies as not-a-punishment.

Hell, I was raised by a lady with a doctorate in behavioral psych and a guy with a masters in social work. If there's any one thing they drilled into me while I was doing psych classes, it was Operant Conditioning and other behavioral psych stuff.

You don't reward behaviors that you want to stop.

Skipping group is an action. A willful decision is made. A consequence follows: loss of things you would have gotten if you attended.

That looks like Negative Punishment by any definition I've seen. Namely: you lose good things.

With a session, it's functionally the same. Don't go, don't get XP (which are a positive reinforcement reward no matter how you slice it.)

Throw around "technical term" all you want, but hell, I'm not buying it. I'll ask my local PhD about it later. :P

Boci
2018-05-07, 11:22 PM
Because a character being removed from play as a culmination of their epic destiny totally isn't winning unless the word's explicitly used. :smalltongue:

That is how winning works, correct, the rules need to explicitly state it. Plus a character shouldn't be removed from play at level 30, as that would make a level 30 feature pointless since you cannot use it, so they would be removed from play at a nerrativly apropriate time after reaching level 30.

Plus one player doesn't "win" if they reach level 30 before others in their group. So no, reaching level 30 is only "winning" in the vaguest sense of the analogies. It definitly isn't "winning" as we traditionally understand it.

Pleh
2018-05-08, 06:10 AM
That is how winning works, correct, the rules need to explicitly state it. Plus a character shouldn't be removed from play at level 30, as that would make a level 30 feature pointless since you cannot use it, so they would be removed from play at a nerrativly apropriate time after reaching level 30.

Plus one player doesn't "win" if they reach level 30 before others in their group. So no, reaching level 30 is only "winning" in the vaguest sense of the analogies. It definitly isn't "winning" as we traditionally understand it.

Never a reason to remove the character at all unless you want to start over, but you can do that at any level, so level 30 isn't special.

In TTRPGs, "winning" can only be based on arbitrary goals you set for yourself. You can win or lose in encounters involving direct contest and you can win or lose contested plot arcs. You can win or lose a race to a certain power level, but you can also abandon the concept of winning and play the same game.

Blackjackg
2018-05-08, 09:49 AM
It's a good thing I have no problem arguing with the Therapists at work, because on this I can't think of any who would think of the removal of priviledges and other goodies as not-a-punishment.

Good. I mentioned my background as a part of the conversation, not as a way of shutting it down.


You don't reward behaviors that you want to stop.

Absolutely, 100%. First principle of behavioral psych: if you want the behavior to stop, don't reward it. It's worth noting, however, that nowhere in this statement does it say that you should punish the behaviors you want to stop. Punishment is at best an inconsistent way of changing behavior, and at worst does the opposite of what's intended. Because we never really know what's going to be reinforcing for a particular person. You would think that yelling at a child or sending her to her room is a punishment, but if what she wants is to be the center of attention or to get out of whatever activity she's currently in, then it's really a reward. As long as it's safe to do so, ignoring undesired behaviors is preferable to punishing them.


Skipping group is an action. A willful decision is made. A consequence follows: loss of things you would have gotten if you attended.

That looks like Negative Punishment by any definition I've seen. Namely: you lose good things.

Look at the terms you used there: privilege defined as "the things you would have gotten if you attended." Sounds like a reward to me. Practically by definition, a privilege is something you get over and above the baseline. These aren't always doled intentionally as rewards (because society isn't a behavioral psychologist), so I (for instance) get certain privileges for being White and male, but when there's a person deciding whether or not to grant privileges based on behavior, it's hard to term that anything but a reward system.

Let me ask you this: what do you do on the unit when someone doesn't want the privileges that you're offering as a reward for group attendance? Say, someone who likes to be alone? I've worked in inpatient units myself so I suspect it has come up. Do you look for ways to make life progressively more miserable for this client until they finally relent and go to group? Or do you look for something they do want that you can offer as a reward? If it's the latter, it may give you an indication as to which way the conditioning is working. If it's the former, that may be a problem and it should probably be looked into.


With a session, it's functionally the same. Don't go, don't get XP (which are a positive reinforcement reward no matter how you slice it.)

I really don't think that's been definitively established here. They certainly resemble a reward in a lot of ways, most notably in that players often enjoy getting them. But is everything we like automatically a reward, even if it's doled out automatically without respect to our behaviors? If I get paid regardless of whether or not I do my job, is the payment actually a reward?


Throw around "technical term" all you want, but hell, I'm not buying it. I'll ask my local PhD about it later. :P

Heck yeah, NotTrevor! Question everything. Consult multiple sources. Form your own opinions. You're doing online argument right.


That might work in technical scientific terms, but it is so far removed from standard usage as to be meaningless.

Boy, folks around here really like throwing around the term "meaningless." Just because something has a meaning that you don't typically use or need doesn't make it meaningless.


If I am reading this correctly, a parent telling a child that they will spank their child and ground them for a week if they forget to do their chores and then following through would NOT be punishing the child under this definition?

That's actually a very interesting point. Even to me, that seems like a case of punishment, even though it runs contrary to what I've been arguing so far. For that matter, what about folks who get sent to jail for failing to pay a fine? I've spent a chunk of this morning consulting sources I consider to be authoritative and I haven't found a clear answer on the subject yet. It may be that I've defined things too narrowly in this last chunk of the conversation, and that the definition really should include things like baseline expectation as I said a few days ago, and/or the intent of the person doing the rewarding/punishing.

Frozen_Feet
2018-05-08, 10:41 AM
@Lorsa: understanding the XP is a progression track for a game system is fine - because it is.

But that shouldn't get in the way of understanding that it's also a reward. Because it's that too and most games with XP are quite explicit about it. It's also a scoring system. These are not mutually exclusive and it's quite common for them to go hand-in-hand.

---


Just because you lack a point doesn't mean I'm missing it.

Your claim of me lacking a point is proof positive of you missing it.


If it's a metagame conceit, then why does Tetris have a leaderboard built into it? It's not metagame if it's actually in the game.

What materially changes in gameplay if you remove a highscore board from a Tetris program? Nothing. What materially changes in a D&D game if you add a highscore board for XP? Nothing.

Regardless of the scoreboard's existence, Tetris has no win condition. D&D doesn't have to have one either.


I'm sure people have compared progress across games run by different GMs. It's just dumb to attach meaning to it because different GMs.

Your opinion on the matter tells of your lack of knowledge of tournament play and other standardized RPG circles. It has no relevance to my point.

---


That is how winning works, correct, the rules need to explicitly state it.

I don't agree; see below.


Plus a character shouldn't be removed from play at level 30, as that would make a level 30 feature pointless since you cannot use it, so they would be removed from play at a nerrativly apropriate time after reaching level 30.

Decent point about interpretation of the rules, but otherwise irrelevant.


Plus one player doesn't "win" if they reach level 30 before others in their group. So no, reaching level 30 is only "winning" in the vaguest sense of the analogies. It definitly isn't "winning" as we traditionally understand it.

"Before others of a group" is a complete red herring; one person winning does not have to preclude others from winning. A game can track victory conditions on per player or per character basis, there's nothing exotic about that.

Neither is there anything exotic about considering culmination of a person's epic destiny, winning. That's where we disagree; my "traditional understanding" of winning has always included that. As has those of people around me. That's why the idea that using the exact word "winning" is somehow necessary is bogus. If your "traditional understanding" differs, then there clearly is no "we" in the equation.

Suppose there was a shooting contest, with the rule "the person who scores highest is declared Marksman of the Year". Would the exact words "winning" and "victory" have to make an appearance anywhere for people to understand that being declared "Marksman of the Year" is, in fact, winning?

---


In TTRPGs, "winning" can only be based on arbitrary goals you set for yourself. You can win or lose in encounters involving direct contest and you can win or lose contested plot arcs. You can win or lose a race to a certain power level, but you can also abandon the concept of winning and play the same game.

The "only" part is wrong. Nothing stops a game designer from making a TTRPG with explicit win and loss conditions in the rules. Nothing stops a GM from including such rules and then reinforcing them. The idea that there no winner or losers in TTRPGs is understandable, given that the most popular RPG systems omit win and loss conditions and leave them up to individual tables, but it's still not a hard rule nor is it what sets TTRPGs apart from other games. You can argue your game of D&D has neither winners nor losers, but basic tag fits the same criteria.

But really, all this talk about winners or losers is irrelevant, because score can be kept independent of win or loss conditions. Again, hundreds of variations of Solitaire: the game is only won when the puzzle at the core of the game is solved. The scoring exist to tell how fast and well you did it, but it does not itself tell you whether you won or lost. Comparing score between players is, again, metagame conceit, and nothing stops you from doing that in most TTRPGs.

ImNotTrevor
2018-05-08, 10:59 AM
Good. I mentioned my background as a part of the conversation, not as a way of shutting it down.
das fine.




Absolutely, 100%. First principle of behavioral psych: if you want the behavior to stop, don't reward it. It's worth noting, however, that nowhere in this statement does it say that you should punish the behaviors you want to stop. Punishment is at best an inconsistent way of changing behavior, and at worst does the opposite of what's intended. Because we never really know what's going to be reinforcing for a particular person. You would think that yelling at a child or sending her to her room is a punishment, but if what she wants is to be the center of attention or to get out of whatever activity she's currently in, then it's really a reward. As long as it's safe to do so, ignoring undesired behaviors is preferable to punishing them.
Yes. I would deem ignoring as a punishment, as well. Negative Punishment as far as the person not getting the thing they desire. Namely, attention.



Look at the terms you used there: privilege defined as "the things you would have gotten if you attended." Sounds like a reward to me. Practically by definition, a privilege is something you get over and above the baseline.
I would argue the "above the baseline" part. Baselines are determined by the majority. A baseline citizen gets to live where they want and move freely. Convicted criminals have these priviledges temporarily (or permanently) revoked. We can get nitpicky about the differences between rights and priviledges, but that's nitpicking terminology.




Let me ask you this: what do you do on the unit when someone doesn't want the privileges that you're offering as a reward for group attendance? Say, someone who likes to be alone? I've worked in inpatient units myself so I suspect it has come up. Do you look for ways to make life progressively more miserable for this client until they finally relent and go to group? Or do you look for something they do want that you can offer as a reward? If it's the latter, it may give you an indication as to which way the conditioning is working. If it's the former, that may be a problem and it should probably be looked into.
I either do that, or give extra rewards to those doing what needs to be done without much fanfare. The more fanfare I do, the less likely the kids will be receptive. But if the kids doing good just get tp do extra cool stuff, usually the others ask what they have to do to get said cool stuff. I have that answer they seek.

Where does that fit on the spectrum? I dunno. But it works, so I do it.



I really don't think that's been definitively established here. They certainly resemble a reward in a lot of ways, most notably in that players often enjoy getting them. But is everything we like automatically a reward, even if it's doled out automatically without respect to our behaviors? If I get paid regardless of whether or not I do my job, is the payment actually a reward?
XP doesn't work like a salary in the instance we're talking about.
It works like this:
Overcome Obstacle --> Receive XP ---> numbers get bigger.

Given that D&D literally calls them Awards:
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/DnD_DMG_XPFinal.asp

I think it is painfully obvious that XP is meant to be positive reinforcement. Which is game design 101: reward the players for doing what the game is about.



Heck yeah, NotTrevor! Question everything. Consult multiple sources. Form your own opinions. You're doing online argument right.
I don't know if it's meant this way, but it comes across as condescending. Which would undermine that first paragraph rather badly.

WarKitty
2018-05-08, 11:25 AM
I would argue the "above the baseline" part. Baselines are determined by the majority. A baseline citizen gets to live where they want and move freely. Convicted criminals have these priviledges temporarily (or permanently) revoked. We can get nitpicky about the differences between rights and priviledges, but that's nitpicking terminology.

I think this is where a lot of people are feeling uncomfortable in the game. A lot of people feel like XP is the D&D baseline. So a player who missed a session may very well be thinking "I got to stay up all night watching a toddler throw up instead of gaming with my friends, and now I'm losing the XP I would get too?" If XP is the baseline it's seen as a punishment.

Luccan
2018-05-08, 11:52 AM
I think this is where a lot of people are feeling uncomfortable in the game. A lot of people feel like XP is the D&D baseline. So a player who missed a session may very well be thinking "I got to stay up all night watching a toddler throw up instead of gaming with my friends, and now I'm losing the XP I would get too?" If XP is the baseline it's seen as a punishment.

I am struggling to imagine what a no-XP session for tables that use XP would be. Do the characters just sit on their hands?

Lorsa
2018-05-08, 12:06 PM
@Lorsa: understanding the XP is a progression track for a game system is fine - because it is.

But that shouldn't get in the way of understanding that it's also a reward. Because it's that too and most games with XP are quite explicit about it. It's also a scoring system. These are not mutually exclusive and it's quite common for them to go hand-in-hand.

I would say that XP can be a reward, depending on how you use it. Some systems may suggest using it as a reward, this is true, but that doesn't automatically make them such. I don't know any group that uses XP where it isn't a progression track though. It's even in the name.

Many system, I think even including D&D, suggest using XP to reward the group, not individuals. If the group defeats the obstacle, all characters get the XP. When the group is rewarded together, it quickly stops feeling like an individual reward for something, and rather a group reward for group effort. Therefore, when you miss out because you're not present, you feel punished.

If we want to go with the football (soccer) analogy, at the end of the season, every player will get a medal when they win the league, even the players that missed a game or two due to being sick. They don't get a 8/10th of a medal, they get the whole medal.



I think this is where a lot of people are feeling uncomfortable in the game. A lot of people feel like XP is the D&D baseline. So a player who missed a session may very well be thinking "I got to stay up all night watching a toddler throw up instead of gaming with my friends, and now I'm losing the XP I would get too?" If XP is the baseline it's seen as a punishment.

This has been claimed quite a lot now, and I believe it basically solves the argument. Or has anyone actually provided any good counter-argument to this point?

WarKitty
2018-05-08, 12:30 PM
This has been claimed quite a lot now, and I believe it basically solves the argument. Or has anyone actually provided any good counter-argument to this point?

I really do think a lot of it has to do with group dynamics and the perception of people missing sessions and why they do so.

If you're in a group where "I blew off D&D to go drinking" or "I just didn't feel like getting dressed tonight" is a concern, people are more likely to feel that if you didn't put in the effort to show up you shouldn't get any of the rewards. On the other hand, if you're more used to "The sitter called off and I couldn't find anyone else" or "I had a last-minute thing at work and ended up staying 2h late with no dinner," you're more likely to feel that you should still get XP.

Blackjackg
2018-05-08, 12:34 PM
Yes. I would deem ignoring as a punishment, as well. Negative Punishment as far as the person not getting the thing they desire. Namely, attention.

Fair point. Withholding attention can be a punishment, especially if the person would otherwise have been getting it (for instance a parent and child are playing together, the child starts acting up, and the parent stops playing and starts ignoring them). What about in a scenario where the parent wasn't paying attention to the child, the child starts acting up, and the parent continues not to pay attention to them? It seems to me it's hard to call it a punishment if the outcome of the behavior is the same as the outcome of not engaging in the behavior.


I would argue the "above the baseline" part. Baselines are determined by the majority. A baseline citizen gets to live where they want and move freely. Convicted criminals have these priviledges temporarily (or permanently) revoked. We can get nitpicky about the differences between rights and priviledges, but that's nitpicking terminology.

Are baselines determined by the majority? The majority of American adults have a driver's license. Does that mean all American adults by default have a driver's license unless we took it away? The discussion of differences between rights and privileges may actually be relevant here, but it's also complicated and potentially politically volatile so maybe best not to get into.


I either do that, or give extra rewards to those doing what needs to be done without much fanfare. The more fanfare I do, the less likely the kids will be receptive. But if the kids doing good just get tp do extra cool stuff, usually the others ask what they have to do to get said cool stuff. I have that answer they seek.

Where does that fit on the spectrum? I dunno. But it works, so I do it.

Neat system. It's interesting that you might reward kids B through Z more if kid A behaves badly, but if it works it works. In any case, I would peg that squarely as a reward system: kid A sees something he wants, finds out what behavior he has to engage in to get it, does the behavior, and gets the reward. Or doesn't, and things stay the same.


XP doesn't work like a salary in the instance we're talking about.
It works like this:
Overcome Obstacle --> Receive XP ---> numbers get bigger.

That's assuming two things: that overcoming obstacles is the way we get XP; and that numbers getting bigger is of inherent value to the player. They're both fair assumptions the majority of the time, but they are also assumptions.


Given that D&D literally calls them Awards:
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/DnD_DMG_XPFinal.asp

True. I myself have used the word "award" with reference to XP/level gain in the course of this very conversation. But how much does that word really mean? I was awarded a diploma when I finished all my high school credits. Is this a means of behavioral shaping, or is it a way of indicating to employers and universities that I've completed my basic education? If it's meant to be behavior modification, it is pretty bad behavioral psych in that it required me to demonstrate the target behavior for more than a decade before giving the reward.


I think it is painfully obvious that XP is meant to be positive reinforcement. Which is game design 101: reward the players for doing what the game is about.

So, what do you reckon would happen if we stopped using XP? Or advancement at all, for that matter. Players create characters at a particular level and stay at that level for the entire game. Would players then have no motivation to play? Dissolve into absenteeism and generally bad player behavior? In my experience, players don't need extra incentives to play the game or to overcome obstacles; it is its own reward.

Side note: there have been games in which I feel my character has advanced too fast, and I didn't get a chance to enjoy playing a level before the next one came along. Was the DM punishing me for overcoming obstacles?


I don't know if it's meant this way, but it comes across as condescending. Which would undermine that first paragraph rather badly.

Ok, I can see how what I said could seem condescending and I apologize for giving that impression. I find it genuinely cheering that we're both actively considering our standpoints and looking for multiple perspectives on the matter.

ZamielVanWeber
2018-05-08, 12:44 PM
I am struggling to imagine what a no-XP session for tables that use XP would be. Do the characters just sit on their hands?

Very heavy role play in a system that was not designed to reward roleplay. DnD really assumes overcoming challenges so if you guys spend the entire session doing heavy RP with no challenges overcome you could, in theory, earn no exp.

Koo Rehtorb
2018-05-08, 12:56 PM
So, what do you reckon would happen if we stopped using XP? Or advancement at all, for that matter. Players create characters at a particular level and stay at that level for the entire game. Would players then have no motivation to play? Dissolve into absenteeism and generally bad player behavior? In my experience, players don't need extra incentives to play the game or to overcome obstacles; it is its own reward.

XP isn't an incentive to play the game, it's an incentive to play the game correctly, for however the game defines correctly. Killing monsters is playing D&D correctly, which is why the game rewards you with XP for doing it, and why D&D tends to play like it does.

Blackjackg
2018-05-08, 01:31 PM
XP isn't an incentive to play the game, it's an incentive to play the game correctly, for however the game defines correctly. Killing monsters is playing D&D correctly, which is why the game rewards you with XP for doing it, and why D&D tends to play like it does.

I must say I'm glad I play the game wrong, then. Playing it right sounds pretty boring.

Koo Rehtorb
2018-05-08, 01:35 PM
I must say I'm glad I play the game wrong, then. Playing it right sounds pretty boring.

You're not playing the game wrong, you're playing the wrong game.

Boci
2018-05-08, 01:45 PM
Neither is there anything exotic about considering culmination of a person's epic destiny, winning. That's where we disagree; my "traditional understanding" of winning has always included that. As has those of people around me. That's why the idea that using the exact word "winning" is somehow necessary is bogus. If your "traditional understanding" differs, then there clearly is no "we" in the equation.

The statement of yours that started this was when you told Deophaun that "experience points are very transparently a scoring mechanic". Have enough posters quierried your stance on the matter to make you conisder that maybe its not very transparently? Or are we just all slow for not getting it?

Frozen_Feet
2018-05-08, 03:05 PM
I am struggling to imagine what a no-XP session for tables that use XP would be. Do the characters just sit on their hands?

Depends on what the game awards XP for.

For exampe, Basic D&D or retroclones award XP for treasure found and monsters slain. If no monsters were slain and no treasure found, then no XP for session. (Whether XP is awarded per individual or per group is irrelevant here.)

This isn't and wasn't particularly exotic outcome. No more than scoring zero goals in soccer.

---

@Boci: a score is a point-value awarded by a game for some game action, keeping track of how well a player or their team is doing in the game. Experience points trivially qualify: it's a point value awarded for succesfully completing game challenges (slaying monsters, finding treasure etc.) or for being a good (role)player by the group's standards.

It only gets more transparent than that with games (like Lamentations of the Flame Princess) that spell it out.

I can see a person missing this if they're so used to thinking of RPGs as non-competitive that they forget that even when co-operating, the players are still competing - against challenges set by the game and the game master. Or if they have always used some houserule on XP which removes any connection between it and doing well in the game. So no, you don't have to be slow or dumb. But maybe you should play more different types of games.

---

@Lorsa:

Reward's a reward whether it's given to a team or an individual. D&D has used both modes, sometimes both at once (for example, AD&D variants where group XP is given for treasure found and individual XP for performing class-appropriate actions, like lockpicking for thieves). Withholding a team reward from an individual may be a punishment, but whether XP is a team reward varies. And again: XP is a pure in-game construct. It has no value outside a game. So likening it to physical rewards like medals or after-game icecream is just wrong.

But more importantly, what you seem to miss is that, from a game design viewpoint, progression in a game is often a reward unto itself.

You do well in a game. Doing well gets you a higher score. Higher score opens up new abilities. New abilities open up new challenges. That's the basic reward structure of not just most tabletop RPGs, it's a basic structure shared by boatloads of non-RPG videogames.

ImNotTrevor
2018-05-08, 06:35 PM
Fair point. Withholding attention can be a punishment, especially if the person would otherwise have been getting it (for instance a parent and child are playing together, the child starts acting up, and the parent stops playing and starts ignoring them). What about in a scenario where the parent wasn't paying attention to the child, the child starts acting up, and the parent continues not to pay attention to them? It seems to me it's hard to call it a punishment if the outcome of the behavior is the same as the outcome of not engaging in the behavior.


I don't think intent plays into reward/punishment structure. If I accidentally touch a hot stove I get burned and it hurts. Positive Punishment. I avoid hot stoves now. Neither the stove nor I had any intention on the interaction (the stove is inanimate, and incapable of intent, even). Yet in my psych textbook this was used as an example of Positive Punishment. It still changes behavior.



Are baselines determined by the majority? The majority of American adults have a driver's license. Does that mean all American adults by default have a driver's license unless we took it away?
Depending on your state... yes. I'm not 100% brushed up on it, but in Texas at least there's an age where you just get a driver's license without testing. I remember finding it stupid. Is that still the case? I dunno. I read that more than a decade ago in drivers ed.
But removing a person's license or capacity to attain one fits dirmly in NP, in my mind.



The discussion of differences between rights and privileges may actually be relevant here, but it's also complicated and potentially politically volatile so maybe best not to get into.
Indeed.



Neat system. It's interesting that you might reward kids B through Z more if kid A behaves badly, but if it works it works. In any case, I would peg that squarely as a reward system: kid A sees something he wants, finds out what behavior he has to engage in to get it, does the behavior, and gets the reward. Or doesn't, and things stay the same.
Well, I like to reward my good kids anyways, but doing it where the kids who aren't doing well can see it has a positive effect, in my experience.



That's assuming two things: that overcoming obstacles is the way we get XP; and that numbers getting bigger is of inherent value to the player. They're both fair assumptions the majority of the time, but they are also assumptions.
I mean, we're talking about D&D here.




True. I myself have used the word "award" with reference to XP/level gain in the course of this very conversation. But how much does that word really mean? I was awarded a diploma when I finished all my high school credits. Is this a means of behavioral shaping, or is it a way of indicating to employers and universities that I've completed my basic education?
Both.



If it's meant to be behavior modification, it is pretty bad behavioral psych in that it required me to demonstrate the target behavior for more than a decade before giving the reward.
Long-term rewards are still rewards.



So, what do you reckon would happen if we stopped using XP? Or advancement at all, for that matter. Players create characters at a particular level and stay at that level for the entire game. Would players then have no motivation to play? Dissolve into absenteeism and generally bad player behavior? In my experience, players don't need extra incentives to play the game or to overcome obstacles; it is its own reward.
There are ways to reward players without XP, so no. But if your game is about going in holes and killing the things in those holes, then you should probably reward them for killing stuff in holes. Gold is a reward. Magic items, too.

And before the whole "there's a set gold progression!" Well, slot machines have set (and highly complex) win/loss patterns. Those also operate on a reward system.

There seems to be a confusion between "XP is A reward" and "XP is THE ONLY reward." I'm saying the former, not the latter. Not sure why people hear the former and begin asking about what happens without XP. Without XP, other rewards are used.



Side note: there have been games in which I feel my character has advanced too fast, and I didn't get a chance to enjoy playing a level before the next one came along. Was the DM punishing me for overcoming obstacles?
Sounds like he/she was. Unintentionally, but yes.

[/QUOTE]
Ok, I can see how what I said could seem condescending and I apologize for giving that impression. I find it genuinely cheering that we're both actively considering our standpoints and looking for multiple perspectives on the matter.[/QUOTE]

It's all good.

Lorsa
2018-05-09, 04:57 AM
@Lorsa:

Reward's a reward whether it's given to a team or an individual. D&D has used both modes, sometimes both at once (for example, AD&D variants where group XP is given for treasure found and individual XP for performing class-appropriate actions, like lockpicking for thieves). Withholding a team reward from an individual may be a punishment, but whether XP is a team reward varies. And again: XP is a pure in-game construct. It has no value outside a game. So likening it to physical rewards like medals or after-game icecream is just wrong.

But more importantly, what you seem to miss is that, from a game design viewpoint, progression in a game is often a reward unto itself.

You do well in a game. Doing well gets you a higher score. Higher score opens up new abilities. New abilities open up new challenges. That's the basic reward structure of not just most tabletop RPGs, it's a basic structure shared by boatloads of non-RPG videogames.

Indeed a reward is a reward whether it's given to a team or an individual. I am also aware that there are many types of ways to use it (individual or team). In the groups I've been in, XP is used as a team reward. And, as you said, withholding a team reward from an individual can certainly be a punishment. Therefore, it is not "twisting the language" to claim that not giving XP to someone who is absent is a punishment (which was the OP's assertion).

It is hard to find anything in soccer that would be an adequate analogy to XP. I guess the only thing I can think of is that if you win enough games, you get to progress to the next league. When this happens, the whole team progresses, even players that were absent for a game or more. So again, it comes back to if you view RPG as a "team game" or an "individual game played in a group".

I am aware that progression can be a reward in itself. My point was more "if XP is meant as a 'reward for the player' or 'progression track for the character' is a matter of perspective". Whether or not progression can be seen as a reward as well is a bit beside the point of that particular argument I feel, even though it is useful to bring up when discussing reward structure in RPGs (and games in general).

Tanarii
2018-05-09, 10:49 AM
Indeed a reward is a reward whether it's given to a team or an individual. I am also aware that there are many types of ways to use it (individual or team). In the groups I've been in, XP is used as a team reward. And, as you said, withholding a team reward from an individual can certainly be a punishment. Therefore, it is not "twisting the language" to claim that not giving XP to someone who is absent is a punishment (which was the OP's assertion).

It is hard to find anything in soccer that would be an adequate analogy to XP. I guess the only thing I can think of is that if you win enough games, you get to progress to the next league. When this happens, the whole team progresses, even players that were absent for a game or more. So again, it comes back to if you view RPG as a "team game" or an "individual game played in a group".

I am aware that progression can be a reward in itself. My point was more "if XP is meant as a 'reward for the player' or 'progression track for the character' is a matter of perspective". Whether or not progression can be seen as a reward as well is a bit beside the point of that particular argument I feel, even though it is useful to bring up when discussing reward structure in RPGs (and games in general).
That's a huge assumption, that the "team" stays the same, and that XP awards are somehow tied to a "team" that is formed at the beginning of the first adventure, for it's entire "season". This assumption probably comes about from a single group of players, playing a single group of PCs, for an adventure arc campaign where all players and PCs will adventure together.

An opposite assumption: if a "team" XP award is for accomplishing something in game, it's being split evenly among the current party who did the thing in game. It's a team effort, but it doesn't mean people not present should get the reward, and they are not being punished because of it. Who was in the party in the previous session and who is in the party the next session is irrelevant. This is most obvious when you have many players, many PCs, all part of a large team (an adventuring company) and some number of them come together as the party to adventure each session. It's also pretty obvious if a single group of players playing say a mercenary company, one of whom has 1 PC that stays the same and is the party leader each time, but all the other players alternate between one of several PCs for individual missions.

Edit: Basically, just because the XP award is split among the current party who worked together to do the thing doesn't change that it's ultimately an individual award for individual participation in doing the things, and character growth happens individually. So analogies like medals for a soccer team aren't accurate at all. What would be accurate is a soccer player getting better at soccer at the end of the season because he played in many games with the rest of the team, vs one that doesn't get much better because he was on vacation half the season. Still not perfectly accurate, because playing official soccer games isn't the only way to get better. But that's more a problem with XP systems in general: generally the assumption is playing is the only way to get better. (As opposed to systems that allow in-game downtime practice of skills, etc.)

kyoryu
2018-05-09, 11:16 AM
That's a huge assumption, that the "team" stays the same, and that XP awards are somehow tied to a "team" that is formed at the beginning of the first adventure, for it's entire "season". This assumption probably comes about from a single group of players, playing a single group of PCs, for an adventure arc campaign where all players and PCs will adventure together.

And, again, this assumption wasn't really the case when individual xp came about. In fact, the opposite was the assumption (each player would have multiple PCs, and the group was just whoever showed up).

This isn't a UR DOIN IT RONG. This is understanding the original design, and understanding the original design kind of hints to where it can and should be modified when those presumptions are changed.

Tanarii
2018-05-09, 11:20 AM
And, again, this assumption wasn't really the case when individual xp came about. In fact, the opposite was the assumption (each player would have multiple PCs, and the group was just whoever showed up).

This isn't a UR DOIN IT RONG. This is understanding the original design, and understanding the original design kind of hints to where it can and should be modified when those presumptions are changed.
The only "ur doing it wrong" involved is by those calling it a penalty. They're either explicitly or implicitly saying that it's doing it wrong to not award XP to those who are absent or otherwise not involved in the game activity that XP is awarded for, both character and player.

kyoryu
2018-05-09, 11:22 AM
The only "ur doing it wrong" involved is by those calling it a penalty. They're either explicitly or implicitly saying that it's doing it wrong to not award XP to those who are absent or otherwise not involved in the game activity that XP is awarded for, both character and player.

And for certain games I'd probably advance the whole party at the same rate.

There's a ton of context in that "for certain games", though, and a lot of assumptions that the way people play is the only way that the game is played.

(Also, previously in the thread there was kind of an assumption that saying how things *were* was a BadWrongFun moment, so I wanted to head that accusation off at the pass this time).

Tanarii
2018-05-09, 11:36 AM
And for certain games I'd probably advance the whole party at the same rate.Sure. There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with giving absent players XP. There's nothing wrong with discarding XP entirely. There's nothing wrong with not giving absent players XP.

Calling it a penalty punishment is either a direct or indirect attempt to say there is something wrong with the latter.

ZamielVanWeber
2018-05-09, 12:01 PM
Calling it a penalty punishment is either a direct or indirect attempt to say there is something wrong with the latter.

Punishments are not intrinsically bad. The problem is removing a method of character advancement, possibly permanently crippling the character relative to the party, for real life considerations that could not be avoided. What should be done about it really needs to be between the players and the GM since it will ultimately involve the system being used as well involve the perceptions of EXP being awarded (or not) being good/bad.

Erring on the side of being understanding toward the player is generally the best advice in a vacuum.

kyoryu
2018-05-09, 12:05 PM
Sure. There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with giving absent players XP. There's nothing wrong with discarding XP entirely. There's nothing wrong with not giving absent players XP.

Calling it a penalty punishment is either a direct or indirect attempt to say there is something wrong with the latter.

Yeah, I mean, you know we're agreeing, right?

2D8HP
2018-05-09, 12:52 PM
[...]While D&D functions relatively well with milestones, some other systems just don't. White Wolf games come to mind, for example - you can't just milestone a character's development in those.


I can't imagine RuneQuest and other "BRP" games, using milestone.


[....]Everyone would avoid combat, abandon the story and spend every session stacking dice and raising farm crops. And the DM would be powerless to stop it! Thank goodness we have a system to reward our target behaviors and keep players in line.


That almost was the end goal at first:

1974 - Dungeons & Dragons Book 1: Men & Magic,
(Page 6)
"Fighting-Men:...
...Top-level fighters (Lords and above) who build castles are considered "Barons", and as such they invest in their holdings in order to increase their income (see the INVESTMENTS section of Book III). Base income for a Baron is a tax rate of 10 Gold Pieces/inhabitant of the barony/game year"

"Magic-Users: Top level magic-users are perhaps the most powerful characters in the game, but it is a long hard road to the top, and to begin with they are very weak, so survival is often the question, unless fighters protect the low-level magical types until they have worked up."...

(Page 7)
"Clerics:...
....When reach the top level (Patriarch) they may opt to build their own stronghold, and when doing so receive help from "above." Thus, if they spend 100,000 Gold Pieces in castle construction, they may build a fortress of double that cost. Finally, "faithful" men will come to such a castle, being fanatically loyal, and they will serve at no cost. There will be from 10-60 heavy cavalry....

....Clerics with castles of their own will have control of a territory similar to the "Barony" of fighters, and they will receive "tithes" equal to 20 Gold Pieces/Inhabitant/year."


1974 - Dungeons & Dragons Book III: The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures,
(Page 20)
CONSTRUCTION OF CASTLES AND STRONGHOLDS:
At any time a player/character wishes he may select a portion of land (or a city lot) upon which to build his castle, tower or whatever...
.....Surprises, intakings, sieges, and so on can take place

(Page 24)
BARONIES:
Another advantage accruing to those who build their strongholds...
...This populace will bring in annual tax revenue equal to..."

You get the gist, it hints that it becomes Chainmail combined with Monopoly.

Pendragon tried to do it again with the Nobles Book.

But I didn't know anyone who actually played the game that way.


[....]I have no idea what you're talking about[...]



Ice cream, last I checked.


[...]Mmmm ice cream. I heartily endorse discussing ice cream, even if its just as an analogy. 😂


Make mine gelato please! :amused:


Yeah, I thought so too, so, would you kindly stop twisting them like here:

Nah you're just a little bit, confused about, what you're doing while being all hoity-toity about it like here:

In D&D giving levels is the equivalent of giving XP. You might not like it, but that is it. I don't what it is about XP that you're so desperate about not wanting acknowledge their existence, even if they're their just under surface of your play.

More hoity-toity bollocks. Who decides when the narrative calls for it? The "narrative" ain't no person I know. It seems more like, "You get your levels when I, the Dungeon MASTER, deem you're ready for them." How generous.


a. That wasn't meant for you.
b. I trust you don't really think that your little system of communist leveling (individual merit will be ignored in favor of the progress of the Party by ukase) merits the level of hipster "We don't do XP, baby, that's for the plebs, we go straight to the leveling!" condescension on show in your posts.

Frankly speaking, after your first posts, and the cocky self-assured condescension therein, I was somewhat hoping that there would follow a great revelation, something grand, while all I got was something bland, a little game of hide the XP, that I guessed after about two seconds thinking about the subject.

Notice my repetition of the word condescension. That's my fracking problem with you. The casual devaluing of other people's playing styles while thinking you're the dog's bollocks, while you're just another schmuck like the rest of us that has discovered a neat little trick that suits him.

:confused:


Since you quoted someone else, I suppose that amazing post wasn't directed towards me, which 'tis a pity.


:frown:



XP isn't an incentive to play the game, it's an incentive to play the game correctly, for however the game defines correctly. Killing monsters is playing D&D correctly, which is why the game rewards you with XP for doing it, and why D&D tends to play like it does.


Sadly your now right. :frown:

But...

STORYTIME!

In ancient times,
Hundreds of years before the dawn of history Back in the 1980's
Lived a strange race of people, the Druids
No one knows who they were or what they were doing
But their legacy remains
Hewn into the living rock, of Stonehenge with the "gold for XP" rules our D&D games were more 'bout stealin' rather than killin', which is the true, the good, and the beautiful way to play.

Not that, if it's fun for you, there's anything wrong with being wrong. :tongue:


You're not playing the game wrong, you're playing the wrong game.


Table top games require actual other people to play.

In the early 1990's, as much as I may have wanted to play D&D (or Castle Falkenstein, Pendragon, and Stormbringer) was not on the table, other (less fun for me) RPG's were.

Today, as much as I may want to play other games, they are not on the table, if I want to play it's D&D and Pathfinder.

There's a great deal of alternative games for me to read and imagine playing, but tables?

Not that I can see.

It's a two party system.

Boci
2018-05-09, 01:02 PM
a score is a point-value awarded by a game for some game action, keeping track of how well a player or their team is doing in the game. Experience points trivially qualify: it's a point value awarded for succesfully completing game challenges (slaying monsters, finding treasure etc.) or for being a good (role)player by the group's standards.

It only gets more transparent than that with games (like Lamentations of the Flame Princess) that spell it out.

I can see a person missing this if they're so used to thinking of RPGs as non-competitive that they forget that even when co-operating, the players are still competing - against challenges set by the game and the game master. Or if they have always used some houserule on XP which removes any connection between it and doing well in the game. So no, you don't have to be slow or dumb. But maybe you should play more different types of games.

Or maybe you should stop telling other people how to have fun? I just feel that if your argument ever involves you needing to tell others that they having fun wrong and should look at other games, then your arguments sucks reguardless of whether or not you are technically right.

Plus I still don't your stance. You mention games like tetris and solitar, having a scoring mechanic yet you don't win, but it can still be used to tell who did better at the game. If last time I played solitair and got 613 points and last time you played it you got 588, I played the game better than you did, no questions. If we play seperate games, and last time you played your 10th level character they got 6,000 XP and last time I played my 10th level character they got 6,500XP, does that mean I played better than you did?

Tanarii
2018-05-09, 01:08 PM
Yeah, I mean, you know we're agreeing, right?For sure. I was jumping off from your statement. (It's hard to tell sometimes in forum discussions if someone is arguing against you or jumping off of whatever.


Punishments are not intrinsically bad.Um, what? You're gonna have to elaborate, because that statement is bizarre. :smallamused:

JoeJ
2018-05-09, 01:11 PM
I can't imagine RuneQuest and other "BRP" games, using milestone.

I don't know about those games specifically, but any game where characters are expected to incrementally improve individual abilities rather than advancing them as a set would be pretty difficult to do with milestone experience.

Koo Rehtorb
2018-05-09, 01:13 PM
Table top games require actual other people to play.

In the early 1990's, as much as I may have wanted to play D&D (or Castle Falkenstein, Pendragon, and Stormbringer) was not on the table, other (less fun for me) RPG's were.

Today, as much as I may want to play other games, they are not on the table, if I want to play it's D&D and Pathfinder.

There's a great deal of alternative games for me to read and imagine playing, but tables?

Not that I can see.

It's a two party system.

If no one is GMing the game you want to see then GM it yourself. You're wrong, though, people are playing other games, you're just not looking in the right places.

At worst you can always fall back on an internet game, it's not as good as in person, but it's a lot more convenient. Use Roll20's LFG feature and you'll get results from it. You'll certainly have to slog through the page after page of D&D, but people are playing other things too.

Boci
2018-05-09, 01:14 PM
Um, what? You're gonna have to elaborate, because that statement is bizarre. :smallamused:

If punishments were instrisically bad we wouldn't have them as a society. They are bad for the person they're inflicted on, but in the big picture are often neccissary or at least very useful to regulate behavior.

ZamielVanWeber
2018-05-09, 01:34 PM
If punishments were instrisically bad we wouldn't have them as a society. They are bad for the person they're inflicted on, but in the big picture are often neccissary or at least very useful to regulate behavior.

This, thank you. Punishments can be used for legitimate reasons with the intent of helping the punished. They can certainly be used to malign reasons as well. Punishments are a tool: their qualities cannot fail to be influence by the wielder.

Tanarii
2018-05-09, 01:40 PM
This, thank you. Punishments can be used for legitimate reasons with the intent of helping the punished. They can certainly be used to malign reasons as well. Punishments are a tool: their qualities cannot fail to be influence by the wielder.
Punishments can certainly be earned, or designed to change behavior. But they are inherently bad for the individual involved. If they are not, they wouldnt have the desired effect. They would not be punishments.

The problem here is people are trying to reverse the syatement.

All punishments are bad for the individual involved.

Not all things bad for the individual involved are punishments.

Boci
2018-05-09, 01:42 PM
Punishments can certainly be earned, or designed to change behavior. But they are inherently bad for the individual involved. If they are not, they wouldnt have the desired effect. They would not be punishments.

The problem here is people are trying to reverse the syatement.

All punishments are bad for the individual involved.

Not all things bad for the individual involved are punishments.

A conscious descision to exclude an indevidual from an aspect of a social activity they take part in sounds like a punishment to me.

kyoryu
2018-05-09, 02:01 PM
For sure. I was jumping off from your statement. (It's hard to tell sometimes in forum discussions if someone is arguing against you or jumping off of whatever.

Yeah, that happens to me all the time :)

dascarletm
2018-05-09, 02:29 PM
Yeah, I thought so too, so, would you kindly stop twisting them like here:

Nah you're just a little bit, confused about, what you're doing while being all hoity-toity about it like here:

In D&D giving levels is the equivalent of giving XP. You might not like it, but that is it. I don't what it is about XP that you're so desperate about not wanting acknowledge their existence, even if they're their just under surface of your play.

More hoity-toity bollocks. Who decides when the narrative calls for it? The "narrative" ain't no person I know. It seems more like, "You get your levels when I, the Dungeon MASTER, deem you're ready for them." How generous.

I know this isn't directed towards myself but as someone who also levels by milestones I'll answer some points you find confusing about it.

XP leveling and milestone leveling are different. They are different means to accomplishing the same goal. Just because a system exists which numerically tallies the worth of encounters, and gives threshholds to when you level, that doesn't mean any other method of leveling is equivalent. In just about everything there are goals you try to accomplish, and different methodologies in which to achieve said goal.

You're whole "I, the Dungeon MASTER" example says to me one of two things: Either you are being overly dramatic in how you portray DM player relations, or you actually think that way. If it is the former, know you are being ridiculous, and milestone leveling would make no difference in such a group as to how well the game runs. There are other, larger problems in play here. If you actually think this way, I hope you find a group that is healthier. I've been using milestone leveling for 5+years and our group prefers it, and it causes no problems.

Corneel
2018-05-09, 07:15 PM
I know this isn't directed towards myself but as someone who also levels by milestones I'll answer some points you find confusing about it.

XP leveling and milestone leveling are different. They are different means to accomplishing the same goal. Just because a system exists which numerically tallies the worth of encounters, and gives threshholds to when you level, that doesn't mean any other method of leveling is equivalent. In just about everything there are goals you try to accomplish, and different methodologies in which to achieve said goal.

You're whole "I, the Dungeon MASTER" example says to me one of two things: Either you are being overly dramatic in how you portray DM player relations, or you actually think that way. If it is the former, know you are being ridiculous, and milestone leveling would make no difference in such a group as to how well the game runs. There are other, larger problems in play here. If you actually think this way, I hope you find a group that is healthier. I've been using milestone leveling for 5+years and our group prefers it, and it causes no problems.
Now you see, my dear Dascarletm, your post lacks the necessary condescension for me to get worked up about it. So instead of going the drama route I'll engage with your post.

First of all you do you, no problem. It doesn't matter to me that you find "milestone leveling" (or communist leveling as will be forever in my head) the way to go with your group. If it works for you guys, perfect. At least, contrary to some other people, you're not being a rooster about it, and you don't seem to judge people for not playing that way.

Secondly, yes I was overly dramatic, what did give it away? And the reason I was overly dramatic was twofold:
1. The condescension on display by the person who introduced the milestone leveling discussion into this thread - as it seems to me now contrary to the forum rules that specify that this is considered flaming:

Putting down or insulting ANY play preference, including (but not explicitly limited to) choice of game system, choice of preferred levels, classes, or races, choice of setting, choice of power level, etc. You cannot call another poster a munchkin or make any other disparaging remarks about how they like to play the game. You can express your own preference, you can express why you don't care for their preference, but you can't put someone down for feeling differently.
So in hindsight I should just have reported them instead of flipping out.
2. The frustration with getting the actual nuts and bolts of this whole "we don't do XP" thing stated in clear terms.

Now I get most of it (mainly by thinking about it myself) but there remains for me one point that I'd like some clarification about and that proponents of milestone leveling haven't been quite clear about in my opinion. Since you seem quite a reasonable proponent of the system you might help me out in that regard: so who decides when and how you level up? Because for me that is a bit of a sticking point since at first sight the milestone leveling system seems to put an inordinate amount of power/responsibility into the hands of the DM.

The Insanity
2018-05-10, 01:23 AM
who decides when and how you level up? Because for me that is a bit of a sticking point since at first sight the milestone leveling system seems to put an inordinate amount of power/responsibility into the hands of the DM.
Of course the DM decides. It's no different than with XP leveling.

Koo Rehtorb
2018-05-10, 02:24 AM
Of course the DM decides. It's no different than with XP leveling.

It certainly is different when XP is mechanized. The system saying "You get 10 XP from killing a goblin." + "You level up at 2000 XP" is fundamentally different than you leveling when the GM feels like it.

NichG
2018-05-10, 03:17 AM
It certainly is different when XP is mechanized. The system saying "You get 10 XP from killing a goblin." + "You level up at 2000 XP" is fundamentally different than you leveling when the GM feels like it.

It's different, but not in the sense of limiting the DM's power or even absolving the DM of making decisions with respect to the rate of progression. With mechanized XP, if a DM wants to slow down the rate of progression, they can just run very RP-heavy sessions with few imposed combat situations. If they want to accelerate progression, they can generate high CR encounters in a context that gives situational advantages to the PCs.

The biggest differences in mechanized XP are when XP can be spent in multiple ways - crafting systems, point-buy stuff, etc - and where the specific mechanization gives rise to non-uniform XP rewards across the party - for example in 1ed D&D, where thieves gained XP per gold piece value of loot recovered from the dungeon; wizards for using magic; and fighters for killing things, but also in things like differing XP tables for different classes and ways to lose XP permanently such as level drain or negative levels from resurrection.

Don't pretend like it's some kind of control against DMs abusing their power though - a DM who wants to control the rate of progression can do so just as well in a game with mechanized XP as with milestone-based leveling.

EGplay
2018-05-10, 04:08 AM
It certainly is different when XP is mechanized. The system saying "You get 10 XP from killing a goblin." + "You level up at 2000 XP" is fundamentally different than you leveling when the GM feels like it.

Hmm, I wonder to what extent the reasons for abandoning mechanised XP are because of the activities rewarded by said XP.

What if earning XP is set up as follows:

- All monsters/NPC's/etc award half XP when overcome permanently, half that if overcome non-permanently (awarded 'once per' only).

- monsters/NPC's/etc can be linked, through background or otherwise, in something I'll call a scenario for now.
When such a scenario is resolved, XP is rewarded equal to half the XP value of all monsters/NPC's/etc that are part of said scenario, regardless of whether they were encountered or not.


Does that seem more agreeable? And what if the first point is dependant on character presence?

Earthwalker
2018-05-10, 07:11 AM
I cant really add much to the discussion on behavior and psychology.

I did just want to say in response to the Original Post.

If I missed a session for any reason and found out later I got no XP for the session where I didn't play, I would in no way feel punished or that someone was punishing me.

If I aren't there then I don't automatically expect a reward. Not getting XP to me just feels like a consequence of not being there, but not a punishment.

Corneel
2018-05-10, 07:56 AM
Of course the DM decides. It's no different than with XP leveling.
On. What. Basis.

Also, pretty ironic that you say "It's no different than with XP leveling." in view of what has gone before...

Boci
2018-05-10, 08:08 AM
On. What. Basis.

When sufficient progress has been made. Players are free to suggest when they feel its time to level, and the DM ultimatly decides.

Lorsa
2018-05-10, 08:24 AM
That's a huge assumption, that the "team" stays the same, and that XP awards are somehow tied to a "team" that is formed at the beginning of the first adventure, for it's entire "season". This assumption probably comes about from a single group of players, playing a single group of PCs, for an adventure arc campaign where all players and PCs will adventure together.

An opposite assumption: if a "team" XP award is for accomplishing something in game, it's being split evenly among the current party who did the thing in game. It's a team effort, but it doesn't mean people not present should get the reward, and they are not being punished because of it. Who was in the party in the previous session and who is in the party the next session is irrelevant. This is most obvious when you have many players, many PCs, all part of a large team (an adventuring company) and some number of them come together as the party to adventure each session. It's also pretty obvious if a single group of players playing say a mercenary company, one of whom has 1 PC that stays the same and is the party leader each time, but all the other players alternate between one of several PCs for individual missions.

Edit: Basically, just because the XP award is split among the current party who worked together to do the thing doesn't change that it's ultimately an individual award for individual participation in doing the things, and character growth happens individually. So analogies like medals for a soccer team aren't accurate at all. What would be accurate is a soccer player getting better at soccer at the end of the season because he played in many games with the rest of the team, vs one that doesn't get much better because he was on vacation half the season. Still not perfectly accurate, because playing official soccer games isn't the only way to get better. But that's more a problem with XP systems in general: generally the assumption is playing is the only way to get better. (As opposed to systems that allow in-game downtime practice of skills, etc.)

Sure, it's an assumption. I wouldn't necessarily call it a HUGE assumption, but it's an assumption. This is what I said in my original post. Whether or not withholding XP is a punishment or giving it is a reward is a matter of perspective and context. It's not one or the other, it can be both in different situations and circumstances.

So when people claim that not getting XP from being absent is a punishment they're not necessarily wrong, nor are they inherently twisting the language as you claim.

It's the same kind of discussion as for example "is this hot or cold" or "is this big or small". It depends entirely on your baseline, the experienced default and your assumptions.

I also like your "getting better at soccer" analogy. This was sort of one of my other points. Characters can improve in the game even if their players aren't present at a session. This is why my preferred "XP systems" have more to do with how much in-game time that passes, and regular training and whatnot (like Ars Magica). It usually doesn't work very well in practice, but I like the idea behind such a system.



Sure. There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with giving absent players XP. There's nothing wrong with discarding XP entirely. There's nothing wrong with not giving absent players XP.

Calling it a penalty punishment is either a direct or indirect attempt to say there is something wrong with the latter.

Is it? Both rewards and punishments can be "wrong". It depends on what you reward, what you punish, and how you do it. Just to give an "in-game" example, I once had a situation where a succubus had set up a club where she rewarded people for raping innocent victims. Was this A-okay simply because a reward was being given? My players certainly didn't think so.

Basically, both punishments and rewards can be bad, depending on how they are used. There's nothing inherently "good" in giving rewards. In fact, only giving out a reward to one specific person in a group can be a way to punish the others. So an action can even be a reward AND a punishment at the same time.

Corneel
2018-05-10, 08:49 AM
When sufficient progress has been made. Players are free to suggest when they feel its time to level, and the DM ultimatly decides.
And how does that work in practice? Are any expectations set on the outset? When do players feel it's time to level? How does the DM decide that the players are right about it being time to level? How does he motivate his decision when he doesn't agree? Walk me through the process.

I really have the impression that for some reason people using milestone leveling are a bit shy of going into the specifics of how it works. It's a bit frustrating.

Boci
2018-05-10, 09:20 AM
And how does that work in practice? Are any expectations set on the outset? When do players feel it's time to level? How does the DM decide that the players are right about it being time to level? How does he motivate his decision when he doesn't agree? Walk me through the process.

Well in my current game, players started level 1.

The players met up on an island not knowing eachother, one of them was persued by local tribesmen but managed to bluff the others into thinking they were pirates (the others players weren't familiar with human/orc culture). They fought some wildlife and eventually the "pirates" and where then ambushed by an undead assassin. They decided to head for the ruins on the mountain top. The players hacked their way through the various dangers of the mountain side jungle, eventually finding the swamp which likely where the ruins were hidden. They fought some undead, but more rose and so they retreated. Level 2.

The players contacted the local guardians of the ruin, trying to persuade them to let them enter. The leader agreed, if they could bring him a fang the size of his finger, a necklace of woven feathers and a single gold coin. The players headed down the mountain via river to do this. They eventually assembled the 3 pieces, though one player lost their lives in the effort. Level 3.

The players returned to the swamp, avoiding the lesser undead and finding their "leader", who they defeated and then decended into the ruins. THey began exploring and had mapped out roughly half when they reached level 4, where they are currently at now.

Tanarii
2018-05-10, 10:20 AM
If I aren't there then I don't automatically expect a reward. Not getting XP to me just feels like a consequence of not being there, but not a punishment.Well put. That's exactly the point I was trying to make.


Whether or not withholding XP is a punishment or giving it is a reward is a matter of perspective and context. It's not one or the other, it can be both in different situations and circumstances.It's a matter of consequence and intent.

For something to be a punishment:
1) The consequences must be bad for the person they happen to.
2) Someone must intentionally inflict the bad consequences on the person that wouldn't normally happen as a consequence of an action, in order to cause the negative association with the action.

kyoryu
2018-05-10, 10:21 AM
Of course the DM decides. It's no different than with XP leveling.

Well, if you go back to the original games, where XP was based primarily on GP, and most treasure was randomly rolled.... that's pretty wrong.

Koo Rehtorb
2018-05-10, 11:06 AM
It's different, but not in the sense of limiting the DM's power or even absolving the DM of making decisions with respect to the rate of progression. With mechanized XP, if a DM wants to slow down the rate of progression, they can just run very RP-heavy sessions with few imposed combat situations. If they want to accelerate progression, they can generate high CR encounters in a context that gives situational advantages to the PCs.

It's the difference between the DM having some tenuous control over leveling if they go out of their way to exercise it and the DM having complete control over leveling at all times whether they want it or not. I find this proposition bizarre though, frankly. I have never seen a DM design encounters out of a concern for leveling rates. I find it far more usual for DMs to design encounters that they want to design and then look up afterwards how much XP that provided.

And furthermore, this assumes a game where XP comes from fighting things in the first place. In, say, Dungeon World, you get XP for failing rolls, doing your alignment, and answering some questions about what you accomplished at the end of the session. The GM only has some small amount of control over the session end questions and that's a small amount of your total XP anyway.

Koo Rehtorb
2018-05-10, 11:08 AM
Hmm, I wonder to what extent the reasons for abandoning mechanised XP are because of the activities rewarded by said XP.

What if earning XP is set up as follows:

- All monsters/NPC's/etc award half XP when overcome permanently, half that if overcome non-permanently (awarded 'once per' only).

- monsters/NPC's/etc can be linked, through background or otherwise, in something I'll call a scenario for now.
When such a scenario is resolved, XP is rewarded equal to half the XP value of all monsters/NPC's/etc that are part of said scenario, regardless of whether they were encountered or not.


Does that seem more agreeable? And what if the first point is dependant on character presence?

It's certainly better than milestone leveling in that players have a clear goal and know what they have to do to get XP.

dascarletm
2018-05-10, 11:21 AM
Now I get most of it (mainly by thinking about it myself) but there remains for me one point that I'd like some clarification about and that proponents of milestone leveling haven't been quite clear about in my opinion. Since you seem quite a reasonable proponent of the system you might help me out in that regard: so who decides when and how you level up? Because for me that is a bit of a sticking point since at first sight the milestone leveling system seems to put an inordinate amount of power/responsibility into the hands of the DM.

I don't know how it is done in every group, but in the group I run, the DM decides when the party levels mostly. I personally don't find that it give the DM too much power, since they have almost unlimited power in the game they run anyway.

To the specifics of how I decide, it depends on how the campaign progresses. After a session, I ask two questions:
1. Does it make sense they would be a level higher now based on what they have accomplished?
2. Am I ready to give them higher level challenges?

This typically works better for my group since there can be multiple sessions in a row where very little combat happens. I actually enacted this after I realized I was trying to shoehorn in more encounters where they shouldn't be, just to get the players to the level I wanted them at, or asking, "How much XP till you all level?.... Okay, you gain that much XP as a story reward." That happened so often I thought, why not just level them when it is appropriate.

EDIT: The one concern we had was crafting back when we played DnD 3.5, but hardly did PCs craft in our group. Once we switched to Pathfinder it pretty much settled it.

NichG
2018-05-10, 11:32 AM
It's the difference between the DM having some tenuous control over leveling if they go out of their way to exercise it and the DM having complete control over leveling at all times whether they want it or not. I find this proposition bizarre though, frankly. I have never seen a DM design encounters out of a concern for leveling rates. I find it far more usual for DMs to design encounters that they want to design and then look up afterwards how much XP that provided.

Sure, in general the DM isn't trying to fight the players over progression (or, if they are, it's more likely going to be with regards to something like wealth balance when using humanoid enemies vs using monsters due to gear value). But the position I'm responding to is, at least in my eyes, equally implausible - that in a milestone-based campaign the DM is so much more burdened/empowered by having to determine when to grant levels that ambiguous bad stuff would happen.

I'm more arguing that, if you're afraid of bad stuff happening when the DM is determining progression, you're fooling yourself to think that mechanizing XP somehow protects you or actively prevents the DM from determining the rate of progression if they really wanted to. The DM's job is to determine the contents of the scenario and in any situation where progression is at all tied to the contents of the scenario, it's something that remains able to be determined by the DM's choices in that regard.

Of course, if your XP mechanic is 'everyone gets this much XP every session, no matter what' then I would agree in that case progression is taken out of the hands of the DM. But if its based on monsters killed or challenges overcome (or even failed rolls), its still being determined by the DM's choices - just in a way which is less patently intentional.

ImNotTrevor
2018-05-10, 12:09 PM
It's a matter of consequence and intent.

For something to be a punishment:
1) The consequences must be bad for the person they happen to.
2) Someone must intentionally inflict the bad consequences on the person that wouldn't normally happen as a consequence of an action, in order to cause the negative association with the action.

Punishment doesn't require intent, but by this definition not rewarding XP works fits 100%

1) Is the consequence bad? Yes. Losing out on XP is a net negative.

2) Is it intentional? Yes. DM makes a conscious decision to deny XP. Would it normally happen? No. You usually receive XP for the session. Will it cause a negative association with the act of non-attendance? Yes, in most cases.


You literally proved it was a punishment with your own requirements. 10/10.

Talakeal
2018-05-10, 12:23 PM
Typically milestones are defined before the start of the campaign, like after X number of sessions or at the end of each adventure.

And yes, it can be a bit subjective, but no more so than what "overcoming a challenge" is in standard D&D rules, and a heck of a lot less so than "RP awards" or whatever other methods of XP the game uses beyond simply killing things.

dascarletm
2018-05-10, 12:38 PM
Punishment doesn't require intent, but by this definition not rewarding XP works fits 100%

1) Is the consequence bad? Yes. Losing out on XP is a net negative.

2) Is it intentional? Yes. DM makes a conscious decision to deny XP. Would it normally happen? No. You usually receive XP for the session. Will it cause a negative association with the act of non-attendance? Yes, in most cases.


You literally proved it was a punishment with your own requirements. 10/10.

It is only a punishment in the eyes of the player if they think they are entitled to the XP.
1. If I work an hourly wage job, and I am out sick for a week it isn't a punishment if I did not receive pay that week. (assuming I don't have any more sick days)
2. If I work a salary wage job, and I am out sick for a week it would be a punishment (and also illegal) if I did not receive pay that week.

Example 1 I am not entitled pay, and will not receive it as a punishment from my employer.
Example 2 I am entitled pay, and will receive it as a punishment from my employer.

AuthorGirl
2018-05-10, 12:42 PM
I most often play in games where the DM declares "oh, and you level up, you guys" when it's convenient or appropriate.

Solved a puzzle / survived a tough battle / it's time for a plot point? LEVEL UP.

None of that is happening? Do not level up.

It works surprisingly well, and no XP is involved. It does make each character seem less unique, in a way, but that's the only downside I've really noticed.

EDIT: Just realized that the esteemed Mr. Dascarletm described this sort of setup a few posts ago.

JoeJ
2018-05-10, 12:42 PM
I also like your "getting better at soccer" analogy. This was sort of one of my other points. Characters can improve in the game even if their players aren't present at a session. This is why my preferred "XP systems" have more to do with how much in-game time that passes, and regular training and whatnot (like Ars Magica). It usually doesn't work very well in practice, but I like the idea behind such a system.

In some systems, like Pendragon for example, only those abilities that you use in play have a chance to improve. That fits the soccer analogy much better than general xp systems like D&D. Gaining experience while a player in absent in that system requires that some other player take over running the character for that session.

Then there's Mongoose Traveller, where improving skills is based on practice and study during downtime, not on adventure activities.

Boci
2018-05-10, 12:44 PM
It is only a punishment in the eyes of the player if they think they are entitled to the XP.

And since this wouldn't be an issue if the player doesn't think they are entitled to the XP, its probably a safe bet they do.

Alternativly it may be less about entitlement and more about not wanting to be excluded from an aspect of the game unneccissarily.

Telok
2018-05-10, 01:14 PM
I think this mostly a discussion over strongly levelled systems. Systems without big jumps in character power at specified points don't seem to evoke these sorts of things.

BRP ties character development to actions taken during play. But it's generally skill check, training, money-buys-gear, based sysyem without a "gain more hp" ladder.

The Hero/Champions system is 1 xp for showing up and surviving the session, 1 xp for doing something above average, and a handfull on the completion of an adventure. But it's also point buy with 250 - 350 starting character allowances, so even 15 xp isn't a big deal and you had to miss multiple sessions to fall even that fat behind.

Last time I did a D&D game I used milestones out of lazyness. It was pretty explicit. 4 dungeons per level, 2 minor plot points/side quests per level, and a whole level for a major quest/plot point, replacement characters came in one level lower but gained two levels at a time. But then I had a bounded sandbox with ~30 dungeons, three major quest lines broken into 3 parts each, and bunches of minor stuff. I anticipated the game doing about 3/4 the dungeons and 2 of the major quest lines. They did about 2/3 of the dungeons, 1 1/2 major quest lines, and a decent number of the side stuff. It worked out fine.

Tanarii
2018-05-10, 01:19 PM
2) Is it intentional? Yes. DM makes a conscious decision to deny XP. Would it normally happen? No. You usually receive XP for the session. Will it cause a negative association with the act of non-attendance? Yes, in most cases.


You literally proved it was a punishment with your own requirements. 10/10.
The DM is absolutely NOT intentionally makin any concious decision to deny XP, so as to cause a negative association.

The association already exists and is a natural consequence of the action.

2D8HP
2018-05-10, 01:46 PM
[....]Now I get most of it (mainly by thinking about it myself) but there remains for me one point that I'd like some clarification about and that proponents of milestone leveling haven't been quite clear about in my opinion. Since you seem quite a reasonable proponent of the system you might help me out in that regard: so who decides when and how you level up? Because for me that is a bit of a sticking point since at first sight the milestone leveling system seems to put an inordinate amount of power/responsibility into the hands of the DM.


You didn't ask me, but that's never stopped my chattering before, so here's what I like about milestone:


It's less work.


I'm pretty lazy and, unlike TSR D&D, in 5e D&D I'm just not in a hurry to "level-up".

If that puts more "power/responsibility into the hands of the DM", I'm fine with that.


In some systems, like Pendragon for example, only those abilities that you use in play have a chance to improve[..]


I love Pendragon! :smile:

dascarletm
2018-05-10, 03:02 PM
EDIT: Just realized that the esteemed Mr. Dascarletm described this sort of setup a few posts ago.

That might be the first time I've been referred to as esteemed:smalltongue:

Frozen_Feet
2018-05-10, 04:32 PM
Or maybe you should stop telling other people how to have fun?

Recognizing XP as a scoring system has nothing at all to do with what's fun.


I just feel that if your argument ever involves you needing to tell others that they having fun wrong and should look at other games, then your arguments sucks reguardless of whether or not you are technically right.

My comment about playing more different games was and is not about fun. It's about not noticing something if you have not played a lot of different games. That's not a particularly exotic statement.


Plus I still don't your stance. You mention games like tetris and solitar, having a scoring mechanic yet you don't win, but it can still be used to tell who did better at the game. If last time I played solitair and got 613 points and last time you played it you got 588, I played the game better than you did, no questions. If we play seperate games, and last time you played your 10th level character they got 6,000 XP and last time I played my 10th level character they got 6,500XP, does that mean I played better than you did?

I already answered that, but here goes again:

XP is awarded by a game for some in-game action. For example, being a good roleplayer. If we're playing comparable games and I get a higher XP value than you, then that means I was deemed a better roleplayer. QED.

If XP is awarded for treasure found and monsters slain? Then me having more XP than you means I found more treasure or killed more monsters. QED.

In order for me to NOT have played better, one of the following has to be true:

1) no connection between XP and doing well in the game exists.
2) the games we played were not comparable.

For example, to qualify for 1), XP could be given to all characters to put them exactly halfway towards the next level, regardless of how they were played, or even of who played them.

To qualify for 2), the games could've had different scenarios or different real runtime, hence meaning they had inequal opportunity to gain XP and a different XP maximum.

There's nothing exotic about the above and for nearly every game, rather than ask me, the answer is better given by cracking open the game's rulebooks. Exception goes to game where I'm the GM and, by the rules, the one deciding what passes for good roleplaying etc.

Talakeal
2018-05-10, 06:09 PM
It's certainly better than milestone leveling in that players have a clear goal and know what they have to do to get XP.

To me it seems to be a worst of both wand rlds scenario.

It has both the ability of the DM to arbitrarily decide what does or does mot count as a scenario and also encourages the PCs to fnd an excuse to go out of their way and murder everything they can find.

Koo Rehtorb
2018-05-10, 06:15 PM
It has both the ability of the DM to arbitrarily decide what does or does mot count as a scenario and also encourages the PCs to fnd an excuse to go out of their way and murder everything they can find.

Going out of their way to murder everything they can find is the point of D&D. The solution to this isn't gutting the reward system to make D&D do something it wasn't designed for, it's playing other games that are about other things.

Talakeal
2018-05-10, 06:45 PM
Going out of their way to murder everything they can find is the point of D&D. The solution to this isn't gutting the reward system to make D&D do something it wasn't designed for, it's playing other games that are about other things.

Is it really?

My understanding of very early editions that it was about getting treasure and only fighting when neccessary.

When I played D&D it was very much in the Dragonlance tradition where the goal was usually to have epic adventures and save the princess / kingdom / world / multiverse along the way, and only killing the really evil things.

The "kill everything that moves" style of gameplay is, imo, a sort of ludonarrative disonance that emerged in later editions when they pulled away from XP for GP and storyline rewards (every AD&D module I ever played had lucrative storyline awards, a precursor to milestone leveling) and it was really only the munchkins and borderline sociopaths who actually wanted to kill everything, and that usually resulted in Knights of the Dinner Table style antics that annoyed the DM and the other players and quickly killed the campaign.

3E tried to pull away from this model by stating that it is overcoming challenges, not killing, that gives XP, and while this has a host of its own problems it certainly shows that the designers of D&D didnt want to force players into a mindless muder simulator.

Isn't milestone xp an official rule in 5e?

Mystic Muse
2018-05-10, 06:47 PM
Isn't milestone xp an official rule in 5e?

I don't know about in general, but I do know that at least one of their modules, "The Storm King's THunder." Uses milestone based levels.

Koo Rehtorb
2018-05-10, 06:59 PM
Is it really?

My understanding of very early editions that it was about getting treasure and only fighting when neccessary.

When I said D&D I was more talking about 3-5e, for clarity.

D&D is about killing things, though, because that's what 95% of the rules are devoted to. You can certainly change the reward structure, but you're not changing the actual game itself by doing that, all you're doing is making the game design incoherent.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-05-10, 06:59 PM
Is it really?

My understanding of very early editions that it was about getting treasure and only fighting when neccessary.

When I played D&D it was very much in the Dragonlance tradition where the goal was usually to have epic adventures and save the princess / kingdom / world / multiverse along the way, and only killing the really evil things.

The "kill everything that moves" style of gameplay is, imo, a sort of ludonarrative disonance that emerged in later editions when they pulled away from XP for GP and storyline rewards (every AD&D module I ever played had lucrative storyline awards, a precursor to milestone leveling) and it was really only the munchkins and borderline sociopaths who actually wanted to kill everything, and that usually resulted in Knights of the Dinner Table style antics that annoyed the DM and the other players and quickly killed the campaign.

3E tried to pull away from this model by stating that it is overcoming challenges, not killing, that gives XP, and while this has a host of its own problems it certainly shows that the designers of D&D didnt want to force players into a mindless muder simulator.

Isn't milestone xp an official rule in 5e?

That's been my experience as well--both in games that used XP and those (like my own) that use neither milestones nor XP and instead use either session-based leveling (every X sessions spent doing anything remotely adventuring-related) or pure DM fiat ("I think it's been long enough/you've had enough dramatic moments/etc). None have been "murder everything"--my players delight in talking their way through things. One particular group (of stereotypical teenagers, even) declined a chance to do a big battle for the last session of this season (school club) and instead want to hold a negotiating session to try to get four groups of very strange enemy's-enemies to become allies instead.

And milestone XP is a variant rule in the DMG. There, IIRC, you divide the total needed per level into bigger chunks and award them whenever the party fulfills <criterion>. Since XP isn't used for anything directly (it's a part of the scale for encounter difficulty), that works just fine.

Talakeal
2018-05-10, 07:05 PM
When I said D&D I was more talking about 3-5e, for clarity.

D&D is about killing things, though, because that's what 95% of the rules are devoted to. You can certainly change the reward structure, but you're not changing the actual game itself by doing that, all you're doing is making the game design incoherent.

XP for kills encourages players to kill anything and everything they can. You can still have plenty of combat without PCs looking for excuses to kill things.

Take for example a Batman or Superman comic, they spend a lot of time punching bad guys, but only kill them if there is no other option, and they certainly dont go out of their way picking fights with people whom they have no real quarrel with or could resolve their quarrels without violence.

Koo Rehtorb
2018-05-10, 07:58 PM
XP for kills encourages players to kill anything and everything they can. You can still have plenty of combat without PCs looking for excuses to kill things.

The rules for non-lethal combat in D&D are a poorly designed afterthought. They're also not the focus of the system.


Take for example a Batman or Superman comic, they spend a lot of time punching bad guys, but only kill them if there is no other option, and they certainly dont go out of their way picking fights with people whom they have no real quarrel with or could resolve their quarrels without violence.

Batman and Superman are not D&D characters, it's a radically different genre. D&D characters are Conan, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, and other various sword and sorcery characters.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-05-10, 08:07 PM
When I said D&D I was more talking about 3-5e, for clarity.

D&D is about killing things, though, because that's what 95% of the rules are devoted to. You can certainly change the reward structure, but you're not changing the actual game itself by doing that, all you're doing is making the game design incoherent.

That is a common error--judging the importance of something by the page count devoted to it (and doing so in a tendentious manner). Yes, combat is important. No, the game isn't "about killing things". It's about much more than that. It's about (by its own terms) heroic people doing heroic things in a heroic fantasy world. Just because you focus on combat doesn't mean anyone else does or that by not doing so you're making the game design somehow incoherent.

Koo Rehtorb
2018-05-10, 08:14 PM
That is a common error--judging the importance of something by the page count devoted to it (and doing so in a tendentious manner). Yes, combat is important. No, the game isn't "about killing things". It's about much more than that. It's about (by its own terms) heroic people doing heroic things in a heroic fantasy world. Just because you focus on combat doesn't mean anyone else does or that by not doing so you're making the game design somehow incoherent.

The game is about the things the rules are about.

Monopoly is a game about rolling dice, buying properties, charging people money, making trades, etc. It's not a game about criticizing monopolies, despite Elizabeth Magie's design intent. A game doesn't get credit for things that aren't in the rules.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-05-10, 08:18 PM
The game is about the things the rules are about.

Monopoly is a game about rolling dice, buying properties, charging people money, making trades, etc. It's not a game about criticizing monopolies, despite Elizabeth Magie's design intent. A game doesn't get credit for things that aren't in the rules.

...

I give up. I guess some people have viewpoints I'll never understand. And this is one of them. Yes, if you ignore all the parts that aren't about combat, it's all about combat. And counting pages is always the wrong way to judge these things. For any system.

Tanarii
2018-05-10, 08:31 PM
...

I give up. I guess some people have viewpoints I'll never understand. And this is one of them. Yes, if you ignore all the parts that aren't about combat, it's all about combat. And counting pages is always the wrong way to judge these things. For any system.By page count most editions of D&D are about magic.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-05-10, 08:41 PM
By page count most editions of D&D are about magic.

Exactly. Except some of those are about magic in combat. Or magic in non combat. Even in the same page. Or paragraph. Hence, "page count" is a horrible way of judging anything, one that is completely based on how you draw those imaginary lines.

Koo Rehtorb
2018-05-10, 08:48 PM
By page count most editions of D&D are about magic.

I mean, it's a fair argument to make. There's a reason caster supremacy is a thing.

NichG
2018-05-10, 08:48 PM
By page count most editions of D&D are about magic.

1ed D&D is probably around a 50/50 blend of 'magical safari' and 'a game about getting killed by things' rather than 'a game about killing things' by this metric. Bees? Save or die if they sting you. Some lichen on the dungeon wall? Touch it and you become a moss person. Giraffes? No save, just die - you can't fight giraffes.

Koo Rehtorb
2018-05-10, 08:58 PM
1ed D&D is probably around a 50/50 blend of 'magical safari' and 'a game about getting killed by things' rather than 'a game about killing things' by this metric. Bees? Save or die if they sting you. Some lichen on the dungeon wall? Touch it and you become a moss person. Giraffes? No save, just die - you can't fight giraffes.

I specifically clarified that I was more talking about 3-5e D&D. 1-2e definitely do have a different feel to them.

Tanarii
2018-05-10, 09:08 PM
1ed D&D is probably around a 50/50 blend of 'magical safari' and 'a game about getting killed by things' rather than 'a game about killing things' by this metric. Bees? Save or die if they sting you. Some lichen on the dungeon wall? Touch it and you become a moss person. Giraffes? No save, just die - you can't fight giraffes.
I prefer to think of D&D as "fantasy Indiana Jones" personally.

Talakeal
2018-05-10, 09:43 PM
Thinking more closely about XP for missing sessions, I think the only style of game where I would use individual XP would be an old school meatgrinder where death was common, in which case people who miss a session dont get xp, but are also safe from dying and having to start over at level one.

I obviously wouldnt use it in a modern group of the same 4-6 friends who meet once every week or two, rarely if ever change characters, and play through plots, but I also dont think I would do it if I was running a more old school game where people came and went as they pleased and there was no long term plot simply because it feels so much better on both sides of the table to run a "balanced" game.

ImNotTrevor
2018-05-11, 12:22 AM
The DM is absolutely NOT intentionally makin any concious decision to deny XP, so as to cause a negative association.

The association already exists and is a natural consequence of the action.

Except that you don't want the skipping to continue, no?
The penalty is a decision made by the DM in response to a behavior they'd rather not have, yes?

If the DM at no point decides to not award XP, then the player receives XP as normal. So you can't honestly argue that it isn't a choice the DM is making.

AND if you KNOW the player will have a negative association (which you do. See your own post for proof) and you DO IT ANYWAY then you have NO GROUNDS to say it's not 100% intended for the association to go along with it. If you didn't want the association, you'd do something else.

DOUBLE AND, Intent doesn't matter for a thing being a punishment.
Touch hot stove, burn hand, stop touching stoves.
The stove delivered a Positive Punishment, which produced behavior change.

So even still, your own definition makes it a punishment. 10/10

ON ENTITLEMENT:
The system already states that characters receive XP for overcoming obstacles.
That my 2-year-old needs to go to the doctor suddenly would, apparently, be grounds to permanently put me behind the rest of the group, who did receive XP during the session I missed.
Which is especially bizaare reasoning.
"Oh, a thing happened which is out of your control but you must personally attend to because it involves your actual offspring? Guess you get to fall behind, too!"

Hard not to feel like the DM is dropping a solid deuce on your head along with all the other BS that's happening. (Because not rewarding XP is a decision, let's recall.) And the DM is, indeed, dropping a solid deuce on your head, knowingly.

EGplay
2018-05-11, 02:48 AM
Is it really?

My understanding of very early editions that it was about getting treasure and only fighting when neccessary.

When I played D&D it was very much in the Dragonlance tradition where the goal was usually to have epic adventures and save the princess / kingdom / world / multiverse along the way, and only killing the really evil things.

The "kill everything that moves" style of gameplay is, imo, a sort of ludonarrative disonance that emerged in later editions when they pulled away from XP for GP and storyline rewards (every AD&D module I ever played had lucrative storyline awards, a precursor to milestone leveling) and it was really only the munchkins and borderline sociopaths who actually wanted to kill everything, and that usually resulted in Knights of the Dinner Table style antics that annoyed the DM and the other players and quickly killed the campaign.

3E tried to pull away from this model by stating that it is overcoming challenges, not killing, that gives XP, and while this has a host of its own problems it certainly shows that the designers of D&D didnt want to force players into a mindless muder simulator.

Isn't milestone xp an official rule in 5e?

Funny thing, compared to standard D&D (what I use it for):
The proposed system gives less than usual XP for kills, more than that for not killing at first opportunity, and all the missing XP as a completion reward (which a storyline reward, or milestone, is).
It also accounts for non-combat XP, and even XP for bypassing challenges. And it gives some amount of XP when not attending.

Obviously, what links challenges into a 'scenario' (or arc, segment, whatever) is not arbitrary, they are planned that way.

Lorsa
2018-05-11, 02:50 AM
It's a matter of consequence and intent.

For something to be a punishment:
1) The consequences must be bad for the person they happen to.
2) Someone must intentionally inflict the bad consequences on the person that wouldn't normally happen as a consequence of an action, in order to cause the negative association with the action.

Punishments can be inflicted without intent but even if there's intent...

Oh wait, someone already responded to this with flawless logic.



Punishment doesn't require intent, but by this definition not rewarding XP works fits 100%

1) Is the consequence bad? Yes. Losing out on XP is a net negative.

2) Is it intentional? Yes. DM makes a conscious decision to deny XP. Would it normally happen? No. You usually receive XP for the session. Will it cause a negative association with the act of non-attendance? Yes, in most cases.


You literally proved it was a punishment with your own requirements. 10/10.

Thanks NotTrevor. You saved me the time to write just that. Even under Tanarii's own definition, it's a punishment. Case end.



The DM is absolutely NOT intentionally makin any concious decision to deny XP, so as to cause a negative association.

The association already exists and is a natural consequence of the action.

Uh, this is a weird way to wiggle yourself out of your own definition. And frankly, I have a hard time to understand what you mean by "the association already exists and is a natural consequence of the action, therefore I am not making a conscious decision to cause it".

If the association exists, and you make a decision to do the thing, then you are using the association. Intentionally. Otherwise it's equivalent as you standing on court saying "oh no, I didn't murder anyone, I only intended to shoot him in the head, it's not my fault there's a negative association with getting shot in the head and dying, I certainly didn't intend for him to die - only get shot in the head". That's just ****ed up logic.

Secondly, it is not a "natural consequence of the action". It's a consequence you, the DM, decided should be there. You can't just wash your hands and claim innocence here. You made the decision not to grant XP, noone else. And, as NotTrevor said, it is XP they would have otherwise gotten. Ergo, punishment (by your own slightly weird definition).



Except that you don't want the skipping to continue, no?
The penalty is a decision made by the DM in response to a behavior they'd rather not have, yes?

If the DM at no point decides to not award XP, then the player receives XP as normal. So you can't honestly argue that it isn't a choice the DM is making.

AND if you KNOW the player will have a negative association (which you do. See your own post for proof) and you DO IT ANYWAY then you have NO GROUNDS to say it's not 100% intended for the association to go along with it. If you didn't want the association, you'd do something else.

DOUBLE AND, Intent doesn't matter for a thing being a punishment.
Touch hot stove, burn hand, stop touching stoves.
The stove delivered a Positive Punishment, which produced behavior change.

So even still, your own definition makes it a punishment. 10/10

ON ENTITLEMENT:
The system already states that characters receive XP for overcoming obstacles.
That my 2-year-old needs to go to the doctor suddenly would, apparently, be grounds to permanently put me behind the rest of the group, who did receive XP during the session I missed.
Which is especially bizaare reasoning.
"Oh, a thing happened which is out of your control but you must personally attend to because it involves your actual offspring? Guess you get to fall behind, too!"

Hard not to feel like the DM is dropping a solid deuce on your head along with all the other BS that's happening. (Because not rewarding XP is a decision, let's recall.) And the DM is, indeed, dropping a solid deuce on your head, knowingly.

Also this. Seems like He'sNotTrevor is arguing this far better than I could.

Even so, an added scenario for you Tanarii.

Imagine the DM has a roommate who is also part of the group. Both the DM and the roommate are unemployed. Whenever they are home together, they decide to play the campaign (which can include the middle of the night). They always send out messages to invite everyone else "the session starts in 30 minutes!". Only those that come to the sessions are rewarded with XP.

How is this:

A) Not punishing people for having jobs.
B) Not punishing people for not being available at a moments notice.

This is basically what you are doing. You are saying "hey, if you're not able to come to my session, I will NOT cancel it and set up another session when everyone can come, and I will ALSO not give your character any XP". You are, in essence, punishing people for not being able to come at whatever arbitrary time you decided there is a session on.



In some systems, like Pendragon for example, only those abilities that you use in play have a chance to improve. That fits the soccer analogy much better than general xp systems like D&D. Gaining experience while a player in absent in that system requires that some other player take over running the character for that session.

Then there's Mongoose Traveller, where improving skills is based on practice and study during downtime, not on adventure activities.

The example of Pendragon improvement is actually the one I dislike the most. And no, it doesn't actually fit the soccer analogy. If you compare soccer to RPGs, the time spent in the session is like the main match. The important games. Which misses the entire point of all the hours and hours spent on practice (and lesser important games). People get better from practice as well.

There's also a problem if you can ONLY get better during downtime. Does that mean that if your GM decides to have a quite detailed game with little downtime, no characters will ever get better? That's equally weird.

Logically speaking, characters should get better due to many factors. Unless we want to get really nitty-gritty about it, we could simply abstract it to "time has passed -> experience is gained". Doesn't matter if that time is "downtime" or "action time".

NichG
2018-05-11, 03:11 AM
Even so, an added scenario for you Tanarii.

Imagine the DM has a roommate who is also part of the group. Both the DM and the roommate are unemployed. Whenever they are home together, they decide to play the campaign (which can include the middle of the night). They always send out messages to invite everyone else "the session starts in 30 minutes!". Only those that come to the sessions are rewarded with XP.

How is this:

A) Not punishing people for having jobs.
B) Not punishing people for not being available at a moments notice.

This is basically what you are doing. You are saying "hey, if you're not able to come to my session, I will NOT cancel it and set up another session when everyone can come, and I will ALSO not give your character any XP". You are, in essence, punishing people for not being able to come at whatever arbitrary time you decided there is a session on.

While the other case (milestone XP denial) reads pretty clearly as punishment to me, this case actually reads as reward to me instead. That's because the expectation is going to be that most people won't be able to attend, so the unusual thing is obtaining extra XP for making yourself available for a pick-up game. For example, I could imagine a campaign which runs on a nightly basis, and anyone who shows up and plays gets XP, with no expectation as far as a minimum degree of participation. If we were talking about an MMO instead of a tabletop game, it'd be a fairly straightforward reward proportional to elapsed playtime setup.

So I think this goes in the wrong direction if you want to make a case for missed XP for missed sessions as punishment.

JoeJ
2018-05-11, 03:27 AM
There's also a problem if you can ONLY get better during downtime. Does that mean that if your GM decides to have a quite detailed game with little downtime, no characters will ever get better? That's equally weird.

Theoretically yes, but a Traveller game without down time would very difficult to do. There just aren't a lot of adventure opportunities during the weeks that your ship spends in jump space, isolated from the rest of the universe.

Lorsa
2018-05-11, 04:51 AM
While the other case (milestone XP denial) reads pretty clearly as punishment to me, this case actually reads as reward to me instead. That's because the expectation is going to be that most people won't be able to attend, so the unusual thing is obtaining extra XP for making yourself available for a pick-up game. For example, I could imagine a campaign which runs on a nightly basis, and anyone who shows up and plays gets XP, with no expectation as far as a minimum degree of participation. If we were talking about an MMO instead of a tabletop game, it'd be a fairly straightforward reward proportional to elapsed playtime setup.

So I think this goes in the wrong direction if you want to make a case for missed XP for missed sessions as punishment.

Technically, many people can be punished, it doesn't have to be just one.

I do understand your point, but I think my example shows fairly well how "only awarding one person" can be equal to "punishing all the rest".

But we can change the scenario to a case where all players but one are unemployed and are living with the DM. Would that be better in your view?

Pelle
2018-05-11, 05:38 AM
...

I give up. I guess some people have viewpoints I'll never understand. And this is one of them. Yes, if you ignore all the parts that aren't about combat, it's all about combat. And counting pages is always the wrong way to judge these things. For any system.

I would say that in playing D&D, one of the players' goals is to have fun combats, that's why people choose this particular game over others. However, the characters' goal is rarely combat for its own sake. They have something else they want to accomplish, but often combat is necessary to achieve what they want. It's risky, so it's best to avoid it, but when you have to fight it is exciting.

I usually use milestone leveling, and I like it because my players are clever and avoid fights if they can. What I notice though, is if the players are too clever and are able to avoid combats all together, because it is strategically the best for their characters, the players themselves can be "unhappy" with the session. If I instead put them in situations where a combat is unavoidable, but still feel natural and consistent, the players are more satisfied with the session. So in doing what is best for their characters, the players will be less happy if that means there will be no fights at all.

So I think you can maybe say that "D&D is about combat", and you should probably include/facilitate combats when playing D&D, but you shouldn't necessarily reward it. You should reward what you think the goal of the characters should be about.

Pelle
2018-05-11, 06:23 AM
Except that you don't want the skipping to continue, no?
The penalty is a decision made by the DM in response to a behavior they'd rather not have, yes?


No, not necessarily. The DM can run games for a table where the number of players are not permanent, and there's no fixed party of characters. Whoever is able to shows up and plays. Lets say you have 10 players, who show up roughly 50% of the time on average, so you can expect to have 4-6 different players each session. Each player might have multiple characters, and each attending player use 1 character for the adventure of session, which will be finished during the session.

In these cases the DM doesn't care if a particular player shows up or not, so it is not an attempt to change behaviour. It is just acknowledged that players have a life and can't join every session, and the game is structered accordingly.



If the DM at no point decides to not award XP, then the player receives XP as normal. So you can't honestly argue that it isn't a choice the DM is making.


Usually, according to the rules, the character is awarded xp for doing things, not the players. If there is a fixed party, with the same characters always present, one might associate the xp gained with the player. That's really a metagame concern though, and depends on the group and how the game is structured.

If each player has multiple characters and only one in the current party of the session, it does probably not make sense go give xp to all the characters not part of the adventure. If so, it doesn't make sense to give it to the characters of absent players either. And if it does, which should get xp, one or all of them? In these types of groups, xp is only associated with the characters, not players. And for them, it is just a natural consequence that characters not going on adventures is not getting xp, the DM does not make a decision. I think the OP belong to such a group, and can understand why he doesn't see it as a punishment.

Tanarii
2018-05-11, 08:35 AM
Except that you don't want the skipping to continue, no?
The penalty is a decision made by the DM in response to a behavior they'd rather not have, yes?No and No.

You're ascribing intent where there is none.

Skipping a session results in not earning awarded XP, because XP is awarded for doing stuff in the game. Not getting an opportunity to do stuff in the game is a natural consequence of skipping sessions, and thus not getting XP is a natural consequence of the action.

The DM has no intent to deny XP. XP is not awarded because of the player's action. No intent to punish, it cannot be punishment.

And no, a hot stove burning someone who touches it is not punishing them. That's utterly ridiculous.

On entitlement: You are entitled to XP if you do thing thing that the system awards XP for. You are not entitled to XP if you do not do the thing the system awards XP for. And of course, the DM or table may at their discretion change what the system awards XP for, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with them choosing to do so. It is NOT badwrongfun to modify the rules at your table and award XP to a player that misses a session when the system would normal not award it.

The only thing that's ... seriously off? An attitude problem? A sense of entitlement? (not to be confused with actual entitlement) ... is claiming everyone should be entitled to XP that a system does not by default award XP for, and that it's badwrongfun punishment if you don't do it, especially if you do it to the person making this claim.

Lorsa
2018-05-11, 09:23 AM
No and No.

You're ascribing intent where there is none.

Skipping a session results in not earning awarded XP, because XP is awarded for doing stuff in the game. Not getting an opportunity to do stuff in the game is a natural consequence of skipping sessions, and thus not getting XP is a natural consequence of the action.

The DM has no intent to deny XP. XP is not awarded because of the player's action. No intent to punish, it cannot be punishment.

And no, a hot stove burning someone who touches it is not punishing them. That's utterly ridiculous.

So you don't believe the world itself can inflict punishments, but game systems can grant rewards? Can a game system punish people? I will assume yes. If it can reward people, it can punish people.

You claim "not getting the XP is a natural consequence of skipping sessions". Well, it isn't. YOU are the one that decides that this is the consequence. As I said before, you can't simply wash your hands from your decisions as a DM. It is your intention not to grant XP to absent players. That's simply a fact, and I'm not sure why you are trying to weasel your way out of it.

I will also note your telling choice of words "skipping sessions". When you claim people are "skipping" things, you ascribe intent to them. You assume they could come, but choose not to. This is simply not true. Sometimes people are unable to come. But it's good that your unspoken assumption is brought to light.



On entitlement: You are entitled to XP if you do thing thing that the system awards XP for. You are not entitled to XP if you do not do the thing the system awards XP for. And of course, the DM or table may at their discretion change what the system awards XP for, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with them choosing to do so. It is NOT badwrongfun to modify the rules at your table and award XP to a player that misses a session when the system would normal not award it.

The only thing that's ... seriously off? An attitude problem? A sense of entitlement? (not to be confused with actual entitlement) ... is claiming everyone should be entitled to XP that a system does not by default award XP for, and that it's badwrongfun punishment if you don't do it, especially if you do it to the person making this claim.

Well, first off, game systems can also punish behaviors. In fact, a game system which only awards XP for characters whose players are present are punishing those that can't make it to the session. If you choose to play with such a system, you are in effect also punishing such an action, as you intentionally choose to go along with a system that has this punitive structure built into it.

Secondly, why is it an attitude problem to properly acknowledge when a system is punishing certain behaviors? Of course, if you know of this in advance and choose to play with the group anyway, you can't complain afterwards. Then you made a choice to go along with it.

You are the only one in this discussion who says that the pro-punishment people argue that it is badwrongfun. A group may very well feel it is perfectly acceptable to punish absent players. Nothing wrong with that. It will certainly make sure people resort to potentially unhealthy behaviors in order to make it to the sessions. If that's the goal then mission accomplished.

Tanarii
2018-05-11, 09:32 AM
So you don't believe the world itself can inflict punishments, but game systems can grant rewards? Can a game system punish people? I will assume yes. If it can reward people, it can punish people.Sure. The game system can punish people. For example, it could deduct XP for taking certain actions, and make clear that the developer intent is to create an association between losing of XP and the action. Some game designers in the past have specifically written punishments into their system.

But that's not the same as not getting the reward being a punishment. The intent is you do the thing, you get the reward. Not that you do the other thing, and you are penalized. They're typically pretty clear about this.



You claim "not getting the XP is a natural consequence of skipping sessions". Well, it isn't. YOU are the one that decides that this is the consequence.No. No matter how many times you guys try to claim this is true, it remains false. If you get awards for doing things, then the natural consequence of not being there is you cannot do the things.


I will also note your telling choice of words "skipping sessions".It was not my choice of words. It was ImNotTrevor. So do not try to ascribe to me intent that belongs to him.

edit:

You are the only one in this discussion who says that the pro-punishment people argue that it is badwrongfun. A group may very well feel it is perfectly acceptable to punish absent players. Nothing wrong with that. It will certainly make sure people resort to potentially unhealthy behaviors in order to make it to the sessions. If that's the goal then mission accomplished.A group may decide to punish absent players if they want. They can certainly make a rule to deduct XP from their characters, for example.

The badwrongfun & entitlement attitude is claiming that it is globally a punishment to not grant the system-specified reward when:
1) The system rewards for the player/character doing things in game.
2) The player (and we must assume the character) are not there to do the things in game.

That's not a punishment. It's a natural consequence.

Alberic Strein
2018-05-11, 09:47 AM
As a GM, I make a point to give XP evenly to all my players, even if one couldn't make it to the session. Life comes first, and missing a session should be its own punishment. And if your players would rather go for a couple of drinks than sit at your table, then slapping them with an XP penalty relative to the other players isn't going to make it better. Though yeah, I suppose that if we look at if we look at the definition of punishment:

a : suffering, pain, or loss that serves as retribution
b : a penalty inflicted on an offender through judicial procedure
then saying "the rules say you get XP for doing things, you did not do things so you don't get XP" wouldn't technically fit as a punishment.

Though my experiences as a player definitely tell me that being underlevelled compared to everybody else is the unfunniest thing at a table. Some GMs really like having players be on different levels and being on the bottom end of that hurts. When at least, and I'm being generous, one hour each session is dedicated to combat and one of the players has a spell that destroys everything because he was the one player who had a PC survive to the end of the previous campaign, then you spend one hour pretending to be useful until the player decides to use a tactical nuke on the encounter. Problem solved. Or when other players have a bonus secondary class, hidden classes, etc... And the new guys get jack sh*t. Watching another dude do cool stuff isn't fun.

Now, sometimes being underlevelled is a choice. In 3.5 when you're one level behind everyone, but everybody uses the magical gear you crafted for them, or when one of your scrolls save a team-mate, you feel cool. You feel proud. You don't care you're weaker than everybody else. Your missing XP is there, helping your whole team and making them feel good about themselves. That's choice.

The GM enforcing a reading of the rules that mean that returning absentee players are forced into a situation were they are here to make the other players feel better about themselves is the GM punishing the players who miss game sessions.

We all come to games to have a good time. Making part of your players feel like they're not "real" PCs is not going to make for an enjoyable game. When your understanding of the rules mean a subset of your players are going to feel left out, compared to other players, during your games is a punishment.

I know I may be particularly touchy about the subject because I hate that damn campaign where the GM went for a recruitment mid second campaign and proceeded to make the two new players, including me, like useless waste of game time, but it still sounds like you are playing on words, Tanarii. At this point, wouldn't it be simpler if you honestly asked yourself "Am I really not punishing my irregular players?"

Tanarii
2018-05-11, 10:03 AM
Though my experiences as a player definitely tell me that being underlevelled compared to everybody else is the unfunniest thing at a table.I currently run a 5e campaign that has different sessions for Tier 1 (levels 1-4) and Tier 2 (levels 5-10). The campaign is like official play, the players come to whatever sessions they can, and bring any character that fits the level range for the session. The players don't seem to have any problems except at the extremes. I've definitely heard complaints from players of a single character at the bottom of a Tier in a party full of characters near the top of the Tier. But other than that they're usually heavily engaged.

In previous editions, I've run and been in games many times with characters 3-4 levels apart in the mid-levels range. In fact, in the earliest editions it was impossible not to have level differences. Players didn't worry about power disparity from level differences of that magnitude. And of course, for many editions power disparity has less to do with level difference and more to do with class or build/optimization.

But ... I only offer this as a counter example of views. There's nothing wrong with a specific table or player saying a single level of difference makes them feel unhappy. Your unhappy feelings are your own, and it's not my place to say they're wrong. And there's nothing wrong with modifying rules when something makes you unhappy, although of course it's usually worth considering the other consequences before you do so. Because they may make you unhappier in the long run.

What's wrong is making global claims that aren't globally true due to unhappiness. And that's what it is to call a failure to get a system reward due to natural consequences of an action (or lack of action) a punishment.

Blackjackg
2018-05-11, 10:28 AM
I currently run a 5e campaign that has different sessions for Tier 1 (levels 1-4) and Tier 2 (levels 5-10). The campaign is like official play, the players come to whatever sessions they can, and bring any character that fits the level range for the session. The players don't seem to have any problems except at the extremes. I've definitely heard complaints from players of a single character at the bottom of a Tier in a party full of characters near the top of the Tier. But other than that they're usually heavily engaged.

In previous editions, I've run and been in games many times with characters 3-4 levels apart in the mid-levels range. In fact, in the earliest editions it was impossible not to have level differences. Players didn't worry about power disparity from level differences of that magnitude. And of course, for many editions power disparity has less to do with level difference and more to do with class or build/optimization.

That's cool, but it can't have escaped your attention that this is a very different style of play than the one that many people on this thread are talking about. In a drop-in game that approximates official play, wherein each session is a self-contained adventure, not giving out XP to absent players absolutely makes sense. It would be strange to play any other way.

Several people on this thread are talking about a different style of play. A regular group of players playing a regular cast of characters, engaged in a continuous storyline that may or may not be driven by the characters themselves (e.g., they are exploring this dungeon because they want to rescue Fighter Joe's dearly loved granny). In games like this, allowing characters to fall behind because of player absence is not obviously the best choice, and may in fact be the wrong choice.


But ... I only offer this as a counter example of views. There's nothing wrong with a specific table or player saying a single level of difference makes them feel unhappy. Your unhappy feelings are your own, and it's not my place to say they're wrong. And there's nothing wrong with modifying rules when something makes you unhappy, although of course it's usually worth considering the other consequences before you do so. Because they may make you unhappier in the long run.

What's wrong is making global claims that aren't globally true due to unhappiness. And that's what it is to call a failure to get a system reward due to natural consequences of an action (or lack of action) a punishment.

It looks like you've got an olive branch there, but why are you trying to poke people in the eye with it? The process of deciding how characters should advance in a given game doesn't need to be infantilized by describing it as a soothing of sad feelings.

Pelle
2018-05-11, 10:51 AM
That's cool, but it can't have escaped your attention that this is a very different style of play than the one that many people on this thread are talking about. In a drop-in game that approximates official play, wherein each session is a self-contained adventure, not giving out XP to absent players absolutely makes sense. It would be strange to play any other way.


Tanarii hasn't been so clear about it here, but his different style has been evident. You say yourself that giving out xp to absent players would be strange in this situation. Thus, it is understandable that he doesn't like calling it a punishment. Which I guess is due to the negative connotations of the word, attributing intent (see discussions on if you should call it "punishment" or "natural consequences" when you have the world react negatively to murderhobos).



Several people on this thread are talking about a different style of play. A regular group of players playing a regular cast of characters, engaged in a continuous storyline that may or may not be driven by the characters themselves (e.g., they are exploring this dungeon because they want to rescue Fighter Joe's dearly loved granny). In games like this, allowing characters to fall behind because of player absence is not obviously the best choice, and may in fact be the wrong choice.


Agreed, but so what? That's not a given assumption for all tables.



It looks like you've got an olive branch there, but why are you trying to poke people in the eye with it? The process of deciding how characters should advance in a given game doesn't need to be infantilized by describing it as a soothing of sad feelings.

? Calling it lack or reward or punishment doesn't really matter. The problem is if people are unhappy about having a lower level character than the other players. Changing the advancement rules to accomodate that is the whole point.

Tanarii
2018-05-11, 10:57 AM
It looks like you've got an olive branch there, but why are you trying to poke people in the eye with it? The process of deciding how characters should advance in a given game doesn't need to be infantilized by describing it as a soothing of sad feelings.I'm poking people back who are poking people in the eye in the first place.

If you're unhappy about something, do something about it for your group. That's great!

Don't try to cast it so that anyone that does the thing the way it's supposed to be, and it perfectly happy with it, is punishing. Intentionally inflicting negative things on others to make them associate their actions with the negative thing, when the thing that they're personally unhappy about is a natural consequence. Instead of casting others as villains, instead change the thing you don't like, for your game.

Alberic Strein
2018-05-11, 11:09 AM
Again, as a GM, making a campaign that purposefully plays with levels is an enticing idea. Like making the party woefully underlevelled to force the players to think and react more like adventurers and less like heroes (of might and magic), or having a player get a level penalty due to having a high social status, which would counter-balance the huge social boon they get with less efficiency in the field in spite of their formal training. But from a player's point of view, it can feel unfun and it's easy to misinterpret your GM's thought process because you're not used to it and it can feel unfair. That's just the kind of thing that sounds a lot more appealing to a GM compared to a player.

But sometimes being on the low end of the level spectrum as a player can be fun. We've all seen that video about a level 1 rogue joining a high levelled fighter and wizard. In general I find that skill monkeys, face type characters and other archetypes that are not supposed to shine in combat will take their level difference with the rest of the group a lot better. Or experienced players who rolled a caster and have that one spell that can utterly wreck an encounter they choose. The rest of the time they do nothing useful, but they relish that one moment of extreme power they get. While melee characters usually take a level difference really badly. When your fighter has less hp and defences than the backline spellcaster and gets constantly wrecked, then things become less to not fun.

Of course we reach the party balance subject, where much more than levels come into account. I actually had to explicitely ban 3rd party material in Pathfinder today because a first level fighter was trouncing two cockatrices, and if I start a co- erm, chicken fight with him, I'd either run out of CR before he ran out of levels, or I'd end up murdering the rest of the party. Seriously, I've seen that guy clear an encounter with one CR 12 and one CR 14 monsters as a 7 or 8 PC.

Anyway, back on track. Levels are already finicky as is, with different classes in different systems peaking at different levels. Back at Pathfinder, you have the obvious level 6 and 11 for full BAB classes, but there is a big difference between a level 1 and a level 2 Magus, and it can be irritating to see your teammates reach their goodies while yours remain out of reach.

Of course all that is anecdotal evidence, some players will be fine with anything as long as they get to roll dice, others as long as they get to bed the barmaid, and others will be absolutely livid internally but pretend they're fine.

As for global claims, it really depend how widespread that claim is. For example nowadays everybody will consider technically optional rules in 5th edition as mandatory, like feats and variant human and will expect any and all campaign to include them. In other cases, players can disagree with a GM's decision and I think it's prudent to listen to them. In 5th edition, while playing Storm King's Thunder as a storm priest, I took my horse and attacked a fort by the lake side and by myself to provide a distraction while the stealthier guys did the all important reconnaissance of the fort. During that distraction I took down half a dozen hobgoblins and a watchtower, running away before the wyvern tamer could give chase. The recon team did its job and came back. At the end of the session, they got barely anything while I almost got a level, due to sharing none of the XP for the hobgoblins. Which... irked... the recon team, since they did the job, they made the story go forward, they mattered. While I just went murder hobo and won. I reckon a GM should be open to the criticism of their players and be open to making changes in the spirit of everybody having a good time.

Anyway, all that is about players doing things at a table, and characters being rewarded accordingly. But a player missing a session is an exception to that. It's an out of game concern that has consequences in game, but is not justified in game. The group's fighter won't stop doing his job because his player went to the movies with a lady friend instead of showing up to the session. Denying characters some XP (I know you disagree with the way I word that, but let's not stop at that) just widens the divide. It would make more sens to have a "designated player" that will take care of one or more characters when some players miss a session. I mean in the case where there are reasons for the PC to be there, like the last session having ended in the middle of a dungeon. I understand you don't want players to feel entitled to XP, but denying said XP widens a divide that stands to worsen the players' incentive to grab beers instead of getting to the session.

Also, while it is purely semantics, if you take a group, give something to some and nothing to others, then yes, you in your position of authority, just punished those you gave nothing to.

I suck at quoting the Bible, but there was this one anecdote about Jesus leaving and telling some of his servants to watch his money while he was gone. All the servants got one gold piece. One servant used that money to buy, sell, and by the time Jesus came back he had five gold pieces to give his master. Jesus gave him five cities. Another servant did the same thing, but was less successful, giving back only three pieces. He got three cities. A third servant was even less successful, not only he made no profit, but he lost his starting funds so he had no gold to give back his master. Jesus pretty much said "Meh, you tried." and gave hm a city. The last servant had dug a hole in the ground and hidden the gold piece, so he just unearthed it, cleaned it, and presented to his master. Jesus didn't like how he did nothing with the wealth, and gave him no city. I am pretty bloody sure that counts as getting punished.

Technically in that example there was a "game" and the last servant was punished for not playing it. It's pretty clearly a punishment to me. Do you disagree? It's okay if you don't disagree, nobody's saying Jesus doesn't have the right to punish servants, and I feel nobody has the right to tell you how to run your table, and whether or not you have the right to punish players. Though I'd find it healthier if you would agree that this behaviour may very well, and for perfectly valid reasons, be felt as a punishment by your players and I do hope I gave you decent reasons why people would hold that point of view.

Frozen_Feet
2018-05-11, 11:10 AM
Imagine the DM has a roommate who is also part of the group. Both the DM and the roommate are unemployed. Whenever they are home together, they decide to play the campaign (which can include the middle of the night). They always send out messages to invite everyone else "the session starts in 30 minutes!". Only those that come to the sessions are rewarded with XP.

How is this:

A) Not punishing people for having jobs.
B) Not punishing people for not being available at a moments notice.

This is basically what you are doing. You are saying "hey, if you're not able to come to my session, I will NOT cancel it and set up another session when everyone can come, and I will ALSO not give your character any XP". You are, in essence, punishing people for not being able to come at whatever arbitrary time you decided there is a session on.

Okay, stop right here.

This is the kind of tortured logic which Tanarii, or any other person, would be right to be upset at.

The reason it's not punishment is because it is not the ones who hold the game who ascribe priority to work over game. The game does not make the decision "people who have jobs are punished". The people who have jobs and prioritize it over game decide to not participate.

Talakeal
2018-05-11, 11:26 AM
Hmm, I wonder to what extent the reasons for abandoning mechanised XP are because of the activities rewarded by said XP.

What if earning XP is set up as follows:

- All monsters/NPC's/etc award half XP when overcome permanently, half that if overcome non-permanently (awarded 'once per' only).

- monsters/NPC's/etc can be linked, through background or otherwise, in something I'll call a scenario for now.
When such a scenario is resolved, XP is rewarded equal to half the XP value of all monsters/NPC's/etc that are part of said scenario, regardless of whether they were encountered or not.


Does that seem more agreeable? And what if the first point is dependant on character presence?


Funny thing, compared to standard D&D (what I use it for):
The proposed system gives less than usual XP for kills, more than that for not killing at first opportunity, and all the missing XP as a completion reward (which a storyline reward, or milestone, is).
It also accounts for non-combat XP, and even XP for bypassing challenges. And it gives some amount of XP when not attending.

Obviously, what links challenges into a 'scenario' (or arc, segment, whatever) is not arbitrary, they are planned that way.

So by raw you get full xp for overcoming a challenge.

Afaict In this system you get half xp for "permanently overcoming" a challenge and half for bypassing it. This means that you are encouraged to kill everything as that is the only way to be absolutely sure you get the full xp.

But you still need to complete the scenario to get the other half.

So, you have even stronger incentive to kill than standard d&d and you also have the DM deciding what constitutes finishing the scenario.

As I said, it seems worst of both worlds to me, as one of the most commom complaints about xp for kills is encouraging murder hobo behavior and one of the most common complaints of milestone xp is it gives the dm too much power by allowing them to arbitrarily decide when a scenario has been completed.

EGplay
2018-05-11, 12:25 PM
So by raw you get full xp for overcoming a challenge.

Afaict In this system you get half xp for "permanently overcoming" a challenge and half for bypassing it. This means that you are encouraged to kill everything as that is the only way to be absolutely sure you get the full xp.

But you still need to complete the scenario to get the other half.

So, you have even stronger incentive to kill than standard d&d and you also have the DM deciding what constitutes finishing the scenario.

As I said, it seems worst of both worlds to me, as one of the most commom complaints about xp for kills is encouraging murder hobo behavior and one of the most common complaints of milestone xp is it gives the dm too much power by allowing them to arbitrarily decide when a scenario has been completed.

By raw you have to hunt everything down to get any of their XP, this way you get half for what you miss.
To me, getting half XP for hunting the rest down instead of full is less incentive, not more. Especially since that second half has far more risk to it.

Knaight
2018-05-11, 01:15 PM
The game is about the things the rules are about.

Monopoly is a game about rolling dice, buying properties, charging people money, making trades, etc. It's not a game about criticizing monopolies, despite Elizabeth Magie's design intent. A game doesn't get credit for things that aren't in the rules.

There's all sorts of stuff that emerges from the rules, that the rules aren't directly about though. As an example, Big Pharma is a game with rules about making money by designing drug production lines, doing drug research, etc. You've got a built in competitive system, you've got resources to manage, there's some patent rules, and there's absolutely no rules about greed and corruption.

The game is still about greed and corruption in the pharmaceutical industry, and specifically about how these can happen simply by chasing profit and without actual malice. This comes through in a lot of subtle ways when looking at the optimal strategies in the game, and what those translate to in real terms.

Games that tightly designed are pretty rare, but that same concept shows up all over the place, albeit usually implemented worse. This includes RPGs.

Talakeal
2018-05-11, 01:21 PM
By raw you have to hunt everything down to get any of their XP, this way you get half for what you miss.
To me, getting half XP for hunting the rest down instead of full is less incentive, not more. Especially since that second half has far more risk to it.

Right, but you also get three quarters XP for choosing a non violent solution to an encounter vs the full you would get by RAW.

Also, I think we might be talking past eachother. The problem is not PCs hunting down every last source of XP, I like when the PCs explore. The problem is PCs looking for an excuse to pick fights with and kill everything they encounter.

EGplay
2018-05-11, 02:52 PM
Also, I think we might be talking past eachother. The problem is not PCs hunting down every last source of XP, I like when the PCs explore. The problem is PCs looking for an excuse to pick fights with and kill everything they encounter.

Possibly.
But wouldn't getting only half XP for that nonsense at least make it less attractive?

Also, I didn't know about the 3/4 XP for things missed rule, do you have page nr for that? Maybe I have to tweak the numbers then.

Blackjackg
2018-05-11, 03:23 PM
? Calling it lack or reward or punishment doesn't really matter. The problem is if people are unhappy about having a lower level character than the other players. Changing the advancement rules to accomodate that is the whole point.


Don't try to cast it so that anyone that does the thing the way it's supposed to be, and it perfectly happy with it, is punishing. Intentionally inflicting negative things on others to make them associate their actions with the negative thing, when the thing that they're personally unhappy about is a natural consequence. Instead of casting others as villains, instead change the thing you don't like, for your game.

For what it's worth, as I've said in a few places previous, I actually agree with Tanarii. In that style of game, and arguably even in other styles of game, giving XP only to players who attend the session should not be counted as a punishment. The part that I don't agree with is that there is a "way it's supposed to be" and that any variation from that is perforce an emotional decision based on unhappiness. There are, regardless of whether we call it "punishment" or "reward" or "none of the above, multiple acceptable ways to handle character advancement. All the eye-poking is unnecessary.

Corneel
2018-05-11, 04:57 PM
My thanks to those that took some time to explain about milestone leveling. While I think I got a better understanding of it, I still don't quite feel it's something I'd be comfortable with except in certain circumstances. But again, thanks for the explanations.

2D8HP
2018-05-11, 06:14 PM
My thanks to those that took some time to explain about milestone leveling. While I think I got a better understanding of it, I still don't quite feel it's something I'd be comfortable with except in certain circumstances. But again, thanks for the explanations.


Would it change your mind to find out that "milestone' predates tracking XP (from the players point of view)?:

"Yes, although handled differently. Fighters went from flunky to hero to superhero. We didn’t track our experience points as is done now. Dave simply told us when we had transitioned from one level to another. I do not know if wizards and clerics had different levels of ability or not." (http://shamsgrog.blogspot.com/2009/05/q-with-greg-svenson.html?m=1)

Tanarii
2018-05-11, 06:22 PM
The game is still about greed and corruption in the pharmaceutical industry, and specifically about how these can happen simply by chasing profit and without actual malice. This comes through in a lot of subtle ways when looking at the optimal strategies in the game, and what those translate to in real terms.That game sounds like a lot of fun.


For what it's worth, as I've said in a few places previous, I actually agree with Tanarii. In that style of game, and arguably even in other styles of game, giving XP only to players who attend the session should not be counted as a punishment. The part that I don't agree with is that there is a "way it's supposed to be" and that any variation from that is perforce an emotional decision based on unhappiness. There are, regardless of whether we call it "punishment" or "reward" or "none of the above, multiple acceptable ways to handle character advancement. All the eye-poking is unnecessary.Ah I gotcha. And yes, I made a mistake there, I assumed a certain way was the way XP is supposed to be. My bad. The way XP is "supposed" to work (in games that use it) differs from game to game, edition to edition within games, and is modified differently from table to table.

In railing against an attempt to reframe terms to match dislike, I definitely managed to talk myself into doing the same with that one.

Talakeal
2018-05-11, 10:09 PM
Possibly.
But wouldn't getting only half XP for that nonsense at least make it less attractive?

Also, I didn't know about the 3/4 XP for things missed rule, do you have page nr for that? Maybe I have to tweak the numbers then.


The proposed system was:


"- All monsters/NPC's/etc award half XP when overcome permanently, half that if overcome non-permanently (awarded 'once per' only).

- monsters/NPC's/etc can be linked, through background or otherwise, in something I'll call a scenario for now.
When such a scenario is resolved, XP is rewarded equal to half the XP value of all monsters/NPC's/etc that are part of said scenario, regardless of whether they were encountered or not."

By D&D RAW you get full XP for overcoming an encounter, permanently or not. Under this proposed system you get half of a half for overcoming something not permanently, + half for completing the scenario, which means that using the proposed system you get 3/4ths of the XP you would get for non-permanently overcoming an enemy by RAW.



Also, how does this system handle enemies that aren't really supposed to be combat encounters when the scenario is completed? If I decide to be a jerk and kill some guy in town who looked at me funny do I get 1/2 XP for killing him then, and then a further 1/2 XP when I complete the scenario? Or do I just get the 1/2 when I kill him and none when I complete the scenario because he wasn't intended to be a combat encounter? Or do I get 50% XP for EVERYBODY I could potentially encounter when I complete the scenario because anyone could potentially be a combat encounter.

Depending on how you answer that question it could help murder-hoboing at the cost of the DM having more arbitrary power (which means it is just a clunkier version of milestone XP) or vice versa.

EGplay
2018-05-12, 01:08 AM
The proposed system was:


"- All monsters/NPC's/etc award half XP when overcome permanently, half that if overcome non-permanently (awarded 'once per' only).

- monsters/NPC's/etc can be linked, through background or otherwise, in something I'll call a scenario for now.
When such a scenario is resolved, XP is rewarded equal to half the XP value of all monsters/NPC's/etc that are part of said scenario, regardless of whether they were encountered or not."

By D&D RAW you get full XP for overcoming an encounter, permanently or not. Under this proposed system you get half of a half for overcoming something not permanently, + half for completing the scenario, which means that using the proposed system you get 3/4ths of the XP you would get for non-permanently overcoming an enemy by RAW.



Also, how does this system handle enemies that aren't really supposed to be combat encounters when the scenario is completed? If I decide to be a jerk and kill some guy in town who looked at me funny do I get 1/2 XP for killing him then, and then a further 1/2 XP when I complete the scenario? Or do I just get the 1/2 when I kill him and none when I complete the scenario because he wasn't intended to be a combat encounter? Or do I get 50% XP for EVERYBODY I could potentially encounter when I complete the scenario because anyone could potentially be a combat encounter.

Depending on how you answer that question it could help murder-hoboing at the cost of the DM having more arbitrary power (which means it is just a clunkier version of milestone XP) or vice versa.

First, not everything is part of a scenario (arc, segment, whatever). That random kill is only giving half in total.
I know i'm using the word wrong, I can't find a better term for it.

Second, the same XP is rewarded whether the encounter is resolved through combat or not. Get past just this once? 1/4 Get past whenever? 1/2 It doesn't matter how.
The 1/4 rule is just to not incentivy 'farming' recurring encounters. Could be it's not needed.

I probably didn't make it clear enough, but the "once per" is for the 1/4 XP only. The 1/4 and 1/2 do stack when for example the characters let someone get away, possibly intentional, only to encounter them again later.

Again, the 'scenario XP' is only for things that are part of the same distinct whole, not everything that happens while engaged with it. And XP is rewarded regardless of how the encounter is resolved. Social, violence, or otherwise.
My fault for being too brief.