Is "grinding" an important aspect of a tabletop system?

[Talakeal]

So in my homebrew system I give experience points for completing objectives rather than for killing monsters, good role-playing, or amassing treasure. This system seems to work out fairly well, although it sometimes makes it tough to run a sandbox game where the players don't want to set specific goals for themselves.

Recently I had a player complaining that in this system he always had to be "doing" something, and that he would much prefer a system where he could simply wander the world killing monsters and still progress his character.

I explained to him that he could set his own goals which involved wandering the countryside killing monsters such as "map the southern wilds", "make an overland journey to the coast," or "clear out the monsters who inhabit the local countryside," but he said that wasn't what he wanted. He wanted to simply be able to wander around aimlessly Final Fantasy style, killing random encounters until he could level up.

Is this a normal desire for players? This is the first time I have ever heard anyone who wants to add more grinding to a tabletop game, normally I hear quite the opposite, video game players who feel cheated by games that expect them to grind out levels to pad out play time.

What do you think?

[Kaun]

Yeah that's a strange one.

Not something i have encountered in my 15+ years of running games.

Generally if you want that kind of game, video games will do it much better.

[Craft (Cheese)]

I can't speak for your player with confidence, but I suspect he only wants the ability to do this: If you actually gave it to him I doubt he'd actually start running around aimlessly slaying monsters just to get XP.

As for why he feels this way, perhaps he's just being contrarian about it: The surest way to make someone want something is to tell them they can't have it.

[Vitruviansquid]

Why not give experience for both?

[Ravens_cry]

It's possible, especially in Sandbox games, to do this, but it's never being something I have really encouraged or desired in any game on either side of the DM screen.

[Talakeal]

Why not give experience for both?

Mostly because we get into arguments about what constitutes "defeating" a monster.

Players will pick fights with harmless creatures to get XP from them. If I give full XP for just getting past a creature no one will ever fight, and if I give reduced xp for not fighting it no one will ever try to sneak / talk their way past.

Also had a case where an enemy was using hit and run tactics over the course of an entire adventure and the PCs demanded full XP for defeating it each time they encountered it. That really soured me on the concept of XP for kills.

[JoshuaZ]

To some extent the classic dungeon crawl is a bit like this.

But it seems like this player has had too much exposure to MMOs and similar things. Maybe try to get him to understand roleplaying a bit more? That part of the point is to play as an interesting character with goals and ambitions and people they care about, etc.? Ask them to imagine what sort of person would actually say "I'm going to wander around the desert fighting everything I see so that I get to be the best warrior ever."

[Acanous]

Sneak it into your system as fractions of the quest/objective XP.
For instance, if he wants to aimlessly slay monsters, make his quest "To find a Worthy Opponent" or "To become a better Swordsman/Caster/etc by practicing on local threats" or the other examples you cited. Then divvy up the quest XP per monster.

On the player side of the screen, it looks like he's getting XP per kill, when on the DM side, he's getting XP for progressing his quest.

[Talakeal]

To some extent the classic dungeon crawl is a bit like this.

But it seems like this player has had too much exposure to MMOs and similar things. Maybe try to get him to understand roleplaying a bit more? That part of the point is to play as an interesting character with goals and ambitions and people they care about, etc.? Ask them to imagine what sort of person would actually say "I'm going to wander around the desert fighting everything I see so that I get to be the best warrior ever."

This player has told me numerous times he doesn't care about roleplaying a personality, only a collection of stats. One time he told me straight out "people are boring, only powers are interesting"when I aksed why he wans't interested in RPing more.

So yeah, I have mostly given up on trying to force this player to RP so long as he isn't being actively disruptive.

[JoshuaZ]

This player has told me numerous times he doesn't care about roleplaying a personality, only a collection of stats. One time he told me straight out "people are boring, only powers are interesting"when I aksed why he wans't interested in RPing more.

So yeah, I have mostly given up on trying to force this player to RP so long as he isn't being actively disruptive.

Does the rest of the group get along with him ok? What does the rest of the group want to do? If his goals are far enough from what the rest of the group wants (and what the DM wants to run), then you may want to just tell him that the table isn't for him.

[neonchameleon]

Is this a normal desire for players?

Nope. Not even slightly. And grinding is something I find annoying; I don't play enough each week anyway. Missing the interesting parts would be silly.

Mostly because we get into arguments about what constitutes "defeating" a monster.

Players will pick fights with harmless creatures to get XP from them. If I give full XP for just getting past a creature no one will ever fight, and if I give reduced xp for not fighting it no one will ever try to sneak / talk their way past.

This is one of the reason for the XP for GP rule in 1e. And Gygax I believe also divided the XP for low level monsters by 10 at one point to prevent exactly this.

Also had a case where an enemy was using hit and run tactics over the course of an entire adventure and the PCs demanded full XP for defeating it each time they encountered it. That really soured me on the concept of XP for kills.

If the monster withdrew on its own terms it wasn't defeated.

Also how adventurous are your groups with different systems. I'd have a look at both Marvel Heroic Roleplaying and Apocalypse World, both of which have characters with cool powers, XP systems that can be gamed extremely effectively - and the game only gets more awesome when someone games the XP system unless they are being ridiculous.

[tensai_oni]

Games I play are often heavily plot- or character-based. Walking around and killing monsters aimlessly is actually impossible in my settings, and frankly sounds boring.

[Slipperychicken]

Also had a case where an enemy was using hit and run tactics over the course of an entire adventure and the PCs demanded full XP for defeating it each time they encountered it. That really soured me on the concept of XP for kills.

They're probably right.

I don't recall the source, but when a combatant in dnd flees, surrenders, or retreats, it is considered overcome, and the victors gain xp for the encounter. Of course, if the enemy gives up more easily than its tactics suggest, the challenge rating and experience award should be modified accordingly.

[Water_Bear]

How do you define "completing objectives" and what sort of XP awards are we talking?

Is having the objective of "build a pile of gold to rival a Dragon's Horde and dive into it like Scroodge McDuck" or "kill every goblin in a 500mi radius, personally" a legitimate choice?

How big does an objective have to be; where on the spectrum from "my goal is to seduce this barmaid" to "my goal is to become king by my own hands" do you draw the line?

Is there a procedure for Players to formally declare objectives or are they implicit?

I'm not trying to make a point, it just seems like kind of important info. If we know what the system here is, maybe that will reveal what he hates about it; after all, you said he had stopped RPing, which implies he did sometime before the switchover to the new rules.

[Jeff the Green]

They're probably right.

I don't recall the source, but when a combatant in dnd flees, surrenders, or retreats, it is considered overcome, and the victors gain xp for the encounter. Of course, if the enemy gives up more easily than its tactics suggest, the challenge rating and experience award should be modified accordingly.

Hit and run =/= fleeing or retreating

[Mr Beer]

If he only wants to play a game style that you and the rest of the players find tedious and he is not contributing to the shared enjoyment of the game, I don't believe that you should expend any significant time or energy accomodating him.

I would be letting him know the way it's working now is the way it's going to work going forward and if he's not happy with that style of play, you would understand if he felt the need to seek adventure opportunities with another group.

[Mr Beer]

Also, a guerilla opponent is not defeated until...defeated. Running away in order to come back, set up a trap and fire arrows at the beleaguered party is not defeat. That's a tactical withdrawal.

I might give them extra XP when they do defeat the opponent though, to reflect the additional difficulty of beating him. They're not going to get full XP for the half-a-dozen harrassment encounters though, no way.

[Ravens_cry]

Hit and run =/= fleeing or retreating

Bloody annoying is what it is. Doing it a few times is all right, but I know from my experience as a player that it is infuriating to have happen over and over again.

[Musrum_]

This player has told me numerous times he doesn't care about roleplaying a personality, only a collection of stats. One time he told me straight out "people are boring, only powers are interesting"when I aksed why he wans't interested in RPing more.

So yeah, I have mostly given up on trying to force this player to RP so long as he isn't being actively disruptive.

Introduce the concept of an extra-dimensional "daemon" called a "Playa" that sometimes possesses people of your world. These particular beings cannot be detected or dealt with magically.

Only by their sociopathic behaviour and sometimes odd way of speaking can they be found. And the only solution is to slay them.

I'd start with a "monster of the week" run by a guest player. This person would run a typical munchkin PC character which the PCs can take down with significant effort, spiced with a bit of 4th wall dialogue.

After they take him/her out, then they can get the information about what was "infecting" the character. From there you could get some intra-party suspicion or a full on "hunted" campaign scenario.

[Friv]

Honestly, it sounds like your player might be more interested in a rousing game of Mordheim.

Anyway, to answer your OP, that's an unusual request, I think. To be honest, it's been a very, very long time since I did anything but hand out experience at the end of a session, based on how much was accomplished that session, ignoring any other rules entirely. My players get the same experience whether they win, lose or bypass challenges, or spend two hours getting to know everyone in town, as long as they're doing things all session long.

[valadil]

I've never met a player like that but I'm not surprised one exists. I think if it were my game I'd argue that the monster's loot or corpse was the prize for killing it. If you need to earn some gold, mammoth ivory is the way to go. If you need to earn XP, accomplish something.

[Geordnet]

Bloody annoying is what it is. Doing it a few times is all right, but I know from my experience as a player that it is infuriating to have happen over and over again.

Why do you think it is such a widely-used tactic in real life?

I would personally use guerrilla warfare in every tactical situation it is appropriate in; the same way I'd use appropriate tactical maneuvers and formations for any situation. Tucker's Kobolds are merely typical of a well-prepared defense, and an example of why storming the castle gates is a really bad idea.

Hit and run =/= fleeing or retreating

Falling back in general is an interesting subject, because it depends on what level of "victory/defeat" that you're thinking of. A skirmish-level retreat is just another move in a tactical-level battle, one which may in fact be part of the path to tactical victory; so too is a tactical-level retreat just another part of the strategic-level war.

Then there's the question of what "victory" and "defeat" actually mean. If they are defined merely in terms of succeeding or failing in one's objective then a successful retreat can be a victory, if the goal was to withdraw (usually stipulating minimal casualties).

[FreakyCheeseMan]

This player has told me numerous times he doesn't care about roleplaying a personality, only a collection of stats. One time he told me straight out "people are boring, only powers are interesting"when I aksed why he wans't interested in RPing more.

So yeah, I have mostly given up on trying to force this player to RP so long as he isn't being actively disruptive.

...why is he playing a tabletop game at all, then?

[Slipperychicken]

storming the castle gates is a really bad idea.

Bad for the guys storming it, or at least the first wave. Not so bad for the commander. I recall such operations were so lethal, that the first wave would actually get promotions and prizes if they managed to survive it.

[Flickerdart]

Do note that he wants to run around and kill monsters to level up, which is basically training, a totally legitimate thing from a roleplaying perspective. It's pretty easy to tie in a couple of quests should someone want to do this - say, while wandering around looking for stuff to fight, he finds out (from a monster, a traveller, or through primary sources) that a very powerful dragon lives nearby, and would surely be a worthy challenge, or he finds an intelligent sword/prisoners who ask him to do something...the great thing about a tabletop RPG is that you can plant plot hooks anywhere you please.

[Rhynn]

Some players don't want to do any thinking. It's common enough from what I can tell.

By the by, the way OD&D through AD&D 1E worked, you got far more XP for treasure than for killing monsters. If you do the math, a dragon's hoard is worth several times what defeating the dragon is. The idea was, in fact, to make fighting and killing monsters less attractive than cheating, fooling, avoiding, or robbing them through cleverness.

Players will pick fights with harmless creatures to get XP from them. If I give full XP for just getting past a creature no one will ever fight, and if I give reduced xp for not fighting it no one will ever try to sneak / talk their way past.

This was a known problem in the AD&D 2E era - I've read a Dragon magazine Scale Mail from the 90s where someone brought up exactly this. The specific example, I think, was killing a barmaid to get those few XP needed. The answer here is simple: it's not worth XP.

One question, though: why construct adventures so that fighting is assumed? What you describe - XP for goals - already makes fighting unattractive, except in the rare cases where it's the goal? (That's how it was in pre-2E!)

Also had a case where an enemy was using hit and run tactics over the course of an entire adventure and the PCs demanded full XP for defeating it each time they encountered it. That really soured me on the concept of XP for kills.

Again, that's nonsense and obviously wrong.

You always have the worst stories about players, though.


Incidentally, on the topic of experience points, Artesia: Adventures in the Known World gives you XP (called Arcana Points) for things like "befriend a stranger or outsider", "write a new essay", "hold an opinion in the face of evidence to the contrary", "break something beautiful", "break a vow", "make a judgment about yourself", and "Die." Arcana Points are earned for specific Arcana (as in Tarot Major Arcana), each useable for improving specific related characteristics, skills, and gifts. It's an awesome system everyone should check out.

[Slipperychicken]

By the by, the way OD&D through AD&D 1E worked, you got far more XP for treasure than for killing monsters. If you do the math, a dragon's hoard is worth several times what defeating the dragon is. The idea was, in fact, to make fighting and killing monsters less attractive than cheating, fooling, avoiding, or robbing them through cleverness.

To be fair, in 3.5, although it was heavily de-emphasized, you were still considered to have defeated monsters which you overcame, whether you snuck past them, tricked them, intimidated them, convinced them to surrender, or so on.

[Rhynn]

To be fair, in 3.5, although it was heavily de-emphasized, you were still considered to have defeated monsters which you overcame, whether you snuck past them, tricked them, intimidated them, convinced them to surrender, or so on.

Yeah, but by then, AD&D 2E (and probably vidya games, especially AD&D ones) had sort of ruined the field, made the default assumption "combat encounters!" (blech!), and the notion of getting XP for "getting around" enemies was buried in the text somewhere (same as the option for XP for treasure in 2E), and almost all published material assumed players will dutifully fight almost all enemies.

A lot of other d20 games seem to take the "you get XP for doing stuff, not for defeating enemies" approach, though. Maybe, in isolation from what came before, even 3E's text would have worked more to that effect.

[Starwulf]

What do you think?

So, I haven't actually gotten to take part in a real D&D gaming experience in RL, just a couple of games here on the forums, none of which, unfortunately, ever lasted more then a month or two(admittedly, by the end of trying, I was becoming part of the problem myself, I guess I just naturally expected it to die, so I didn't put forth a lot of effort myself). But I can safely say I can see where your player is coming from. Somewhat.... lol ^^ For me, it would be not so much just wandering around grinding out level after level(though I do enjoy that in video games, it's quite fun to me), it would be more of a "I want to explore without the little voice in the back of my head telling me I should be off saving the princess, or clearing out that specific dungeon, and trying to thwart the BBEG". I want to be able to explore, wherever, and just stumble across cool stuff. Random dungeons or old ruins, hidden monasteries, secret villages, whatever, that isn't part of the plot. Even if doing so gets me killed, it's the thrill of "OH holy crap, I just found a village full of half-dragon/half-human creatures, and they don't want this secret to get out, but I don't want to die, how the hell am I going to get out of here".

Sorry for the wall-o-text, just wanted to throw that out there. On that note, I reaallyy need to fire up my old computer, clear off a flash drive, and move all my digital D&D books so I can find a game here on the forums to play. Starting to crave some character building.

Edit: After reading a bit more, I can safely say I obviously don't empathize much at all with your player. Even though I love the concept of being able to wander wherever I want, I want to do it as part of that characters personality. A kid that grew up in a small village, or even a large city but never outside of his particular street, and now wants to see all that he can see, with nothing particularly holding him down. I don't understand the "I just want to play a set of stats, and that's it". That defeats the whole idea of roleplaying and table-top gaming ><

[Sith_Happens]

How do you define "completing objectives" and what sort of XP awards are we talking?

Is having the objective of "build a pile of gold to rival a Dragon's Horde and dive into it like Scroodge McDuck" or "kill every goblin in a 500mi radius, personally" a legitimate choice?

This. You give XP for completing objectives. His objective is "kill X many of Y." Ergo, when he finishes killing X many of Y, he gets XP proportional to how hard it was to do that.

If you want to keep things coherent from a character perspective, think Monster Hunter. That's basically what his character is. Maybe encourage him to keep trophies, and have his reputation build up as a great hunter of monsters.