Topic: XP... what system of rewards do you use?

[Druss_the_Legend]

Compared to many other systems Rolemasters XP development is tediously slow.

1. What rewards system do you use?
2. Any house rules for XP?
3. Do you award XP for treasure and magic items?

[Ecthelion]

We just goal-based XPs similar to the HARP rules. You can find the details in the RM House Rules document on my homepage (see the profile link).

[Peter R]

I also use goal based but I have transplanted the RMU experience rules into my RMC game.

[RickInVA]

I have always used the RM2 activity based XP system.

While I understand the idea behind goals based XP I can't support it as it makes no empirical sense that you get better at skills because you achieved a goal.  You get better at skills by using, practicing and studying them.  While there is certainly not a 100% correlation between the activity based system and the skills you are gaining/improving I feel it better reflects reality, which I value highly.

For that same reason I never awarded XP for treasure or items.

My house rule is that you additionally get 10 XP per day of activity, 5 XP per day of light activity and 0 XP for days of sloth.  This represents practice and study.

[jdale]

We use the GM fiat system. The GM decides when it's time.

I've contemplated trying RMU's goal based system. In general for XP systems, I think it's important that the system rewards the behavior that you want to encourage. I don't think RM's original systems did that. In other games, I've used systems that rewarded only three things: 1) roleplay, 2) having goals, 3) progress towards goals. Equal weights on all three. I thought that was helpful for keeping things focused.

[thrud]

I favor just letting the GM wing it but it's kind of hard putting that in print. In a finished product you need a quantitative system that is reasonably balanced.

[RickInVA]

We use the GM fiat system. The GM decides when it's time.

I've contemplated trying RMU's goal based system. In general for XP systems, I think it's important that the system rewards the behavior that you want to encourage. I don't think RM's original systems did that. In other games, I've used systems that rewarded only three things: 1) roleplay, 2) having goals, 3) progress towards goals. Equal weights on all three. I thought that was helpful for keeping things focused.

I have never played in that kind of a system, so how, as a GM, do you handle the player(s) that don't have, and/or don't want to have, goals?  Or where goals are greatly different.  Such as a Paladin who's most lofty goal is being a honorable knight, and a Dabbler that wants to overthrow the established order and make himself King.  Some people have lofty goals, some are more modest, some players I have played with want to be the motive force, some just want to come along for the ride and have fun.  It seems from my outside perspective that those differences would make it very hard to have a fair system.

[jdale]

I have never played in that kind of a system, so how, as a GM, do you handle the player(s) that don't have, and/or don't want to have, goals?  Or where goals are greatly different.  Such as a Paladin who's most lofty goal is being a honorable knight, and a Dabbler that wants to overthrow the established order and make himself King.  Some people have lofty goals, some are more modest, some players I have played with want to be the motive force, some just want to come along for the ride and have fun.  It seems from my outside perspective that those differences would make it very hard to have a fair system.

Goals can exist on different scales. Overthrowing the established order and becoming king is certainly a goal. I would encourage that character to form some intermediate goals along the way, because it's not really something they can act on without breaking it down into smaller steps. For example, if he wants to become king, he needs to either be building an army to conquer the nation with or, more likely, trying to acquire noble status (since commoners don't get elevated to the throne) and undermining nobles who will be obstacles.

"Being an honorable knight" is really a roleplaying motivation (being honorable) and not a goal, unless he isn't a knight yet (then becoming a knight is a goal). But if he is a knight, his goal(s) might be to carry out the instructions and intentions of his liege lord. That's easy for me as GM, I either assign some tasks or give him a selection of tasks to pick between, or I have his liege express a set of concerns and leave it to him to figure out how best to address them. Any connections the characters have (family, loyalty to teachers or organizations, etc) can motivate goals.

The party may have shared goals. Perhaps they are trying to reveal the traitorous actions of a particular noble. Or they may have related goals. The paladin may want to discover and reveal treachery, the dabbler may want to implicate a particular noble of treachery, the mercenary may want to get paid for doing the job well and improve his status, the mage may want to discover the secrets of the dark magic that the unknown traitor is using, etc. Those can all relate to the same adventure (in fact it's ideal if they do), and lead them to work together, even if what they want to get out of it is not quite the same.

The test for a goal is whether it motivates the character to take actions. In short it is a hook that I as GM can use to motivate the characters to progress some kind of story. If the character has no goals, there's nothing to keep their interest in that story, and they could just as well wander off at any time. I feel like I am failing as GM if the character is just here to hang out. I should find something about their interests, their character's background, their aspirations, etc to dangle in front of them and catch their attention. Otherwise maybe I am showing favoritism to the characters whose interests I have spent the time to catch.

Goals need to be compatible with the kind of story the GM is interested in telling. If the character wants to become the king, but I as GM don't want to deal with noble politics, it's not going to work. Some communication is required between the GM and player. Also, personally as GM, I'm not interested in running a game where the players are in direct conflict over the focus of the campaign. E.g. if the paladin wants to elevate the king, and the dabbler wants to overthrow the king, I don't want to run a game about the king and put them into direct conflict. I would rather run a game about some kind of external conflict they can agree on, and have those other motivations be side issues. A little bickering in the party keeps things interesting (if it doesn't get out of hand) and motivates roleplay, but direct conflict that leads to murdering each other does not make for a happy gaming group. Again, this requires some communication between the GM and players. How much dissent are you willing to have between your PCs? I've played games that fell apart because there was too much. Some players and GMs may enjoy having lots of conflict, and that's fine, it's just not for me.

[Cory Magel]

The longer we played RM the simpler our Exp system got.  We started with the normal system and made minor modifications, then we moved to a mission/goal based one, then we moved to a session based amount (at the end), then I finally just decided when I run it's simply when I tell you to level (which lets me control the pace of the campaign).

[RickInVA]

The longer we played RM the simpler our Exp system got.  We started with the normal system and made minor modifications, then we moved to a mission/goal based one, then we moved to a session based amount (at the end), then I finally just decided when I run it's simply when I tell you to level (which lets me control the pace of the campaign).

As a player I think that would make me feel I had no control over the outcome, which I don't think I would like very much. 

How did your players react to that? 

I'm also interested in why you moved away from the base system.  Going to something "simpler" is a common theme across a lot of discussions.  What was "complicated" about the base system?  The math seems to be a part of it for a lot of people.  I'm a CPA so I'm not surprised that the math part never bothered me. 

[tbigness]

In the RAW for RMSS players tried to dominate everything by using as many skills as possible to gain XP that the game flow came to a stand still. Moving to a mission based XP was better but trying to figure the reward for each type of mission was more difficult to balance with the flow of the campaign goals to get to the XP level for that part of the campaign. I had to do a combination of both of these providing a base mission value with non-frivolous skill use. This is my base and works well for me.

[Cory Magel]

...then I finally just decided when I run it's simply when I tell you to level (which lets me control the pace of the campaign).

As a player I think that would make me feel I had no control over the outcome, which I don't think I would like very much. 
How did your players react to that?

So, one question to ask yourself first is: Do you (or your GM) pay no attention to how much exp the players are getting?  Meaning do you have a pace that you try to keep or is it just a completely free flow of exp that you adjust your game to?  Most GM's I talk to have a story/plot/pace they are trying to at least loosely hold to.  It's rare a GM is running a sandbox campaign where there's really no real control needed.

So taking that into account, if you think about it, just telling players when to level their characters really isn't much different than in-game mission based or out of game session based exp.  The GM is still only giving you as much exp as they feel is appropriate.  When I suggested it everyone reacted the same way... a slight look of approving surprise is the best way to put it.  As if they'd never thought of doing it that way but were perfectly fine with it.  I never did ask for specific opinions after that.

Also consider that this is not merely a way to slow the PC's down (again, go back to controlling the pace of your game - if you want to speed things up you give more exp), but it can also allow you to jump ahead if you wanted without a slog of exp gathering.  If you wanted an epic style campaign maybe once the PC's got the 'lay of the land', made some friends, and started establishing themselves you want to jump ahead to grander things.  So you say "Okay, spends a few years patrolling the plains for Orc bands and gain X levels, after those X number of years you notice a more focused effort and discover someone is organizing the Orcs into a more dangerous force..." and move on to a grander story-line.

I'm also interested in why you moved away from the base system.  Going to something "simpler" is a common theme across a lot of discussions.  What was "complicated" about the base system?  The math seems to be a part of it for a lot of people.  I'm a CPA so I'm not surprised that the math part never bothered me. 

We've continually tried to find ways to speed things up and, being pretty darned familiar with RMSS and being a fairly intelligent group of people, there were a lot of little things about RMSS we knew we could toss out without much real change in the overall play.  Part of our changes hinge on our playstyle obviously, and some of that playstyle hinges on the fact that we usually play to the low to mid teens in levels (I think in one campaign we stopped at like level 8 and one we stopped around 20th... but most hit around 12-17) which seems slightly higher than the norm for an RM user based on what I've seen in the forums over the years.

In discussing the size system in RMU (and I do NOT want to start a debate on that) I asked someone which problem you'd want to solve as written...
13x13x13x13x13x13x13x13x13x13x13x13x13x13?  Meaning you need to repeatedly do the math.
or
13 to the 14th power?  Meaning you use a shortcut calculation.

In reality they are the same problem with the same answer, one just takes longer to perform due to a repetition that could be built into a single calculation.  Why do it the way that takes longer if there's a shorter way that results in the same answer?

End point, not worrying about how much Exp that last crit was worth, or that spell cast, or how many hits I took or gave, or how many miles I've travelled, was taking players attention away from book-keeping and giving them more actual gaming time.  Basically, imagine if everything added itself up and you no longer had to keep any kind of ledger.  The accounting took care of itself.  We put you out of a job. 

You can't really change major aspects of RM without a high likelyhood of creating new problems, but there are often many small things you can eliminate or tweak that, added up, can make a difference.  Almost no RM users I know of used Exhaustion Points because they were more tedious to track than it was worth.  In my opinion, tracking Exp wasn't much different.

[pastaav]

Our gaming group has experienced that there is not a large correlation between fun sessions when we had a great time and sessions when the main plot advanced. There are of course great sessions when the players progressed with the main plot, but much good roleplaying often happens when characters have different ideas about how to proceed or have some downtime in the city or similar to recover after an adventure.

To promote such play we decided to give most of the experience points for actually attending the game sessions, if you oversleep and miss part of the session you get less exp. I also reward bonus exp for sessions when I feel some player did heroic things or the group finished some major goal, but these are minor in comparison.

[Aotrs Commander]

The longer we played RM the simpler our Exp system got.  We started with the normal system and made minor modifications, then we moved to a mission/goal based one, then we moved to a session based amount (at the end), then I finally just decided when I run it's simply when I tell you to level (which lets me control the pace of the campaign).

That is basically what I did (over the course of twenty-five or so years).

That said, we only play RM* nowadays as a day quest (we do four day quests a year, and what the are really depends; they could be RM, D&D 3.x or Judge Dredd D20 these days). The only exception was about ten years ago, where I briefly ran a campaign in the evening (basically by stapling together about four or my previous day quests that this set of player had never played), but I am not even sure if they levelled up at any point there or (it would have been at a mandated point if the had). The quests are thus generally not contiguous, aside from the odd two-or-three parter, with in-universe time gaps between.

Further, the only other RM party we have played (until a week on Saturday) was one that had been kicking around for knocking onto twenty years and I have stopped advanced altogether on account of it becoming more or less impossible to present a combat challenge. (Despite them only being level 12.) But those games are as close to sandbox as we've ever gotten (in the sense that sometimes I would attempt to squeeze blood out of a stone and ask the players what their characters wanted to do next game) and was more about faffing around with those characters than advancement. (And also, of course, with only about six-eight hours or so for a day-quest, you aren't playing them long enough to have to worry about advancement.) So it wasn't really so much about mechanical character advancement.

(Having said that, neither I nor the other DMs track XP for day quest even when using something like D&D, though.)

For our weekly sessions, we tend to play D&D (again 3.x if I'm running (Paizo adventure paths nowadays), else 4E sometimes) and there, I do track the XP. And of course, D&D 3.x (and 4E to a lesser extent, though I'm not fond of the system) is a much more character-mechanics/character-build/character-progession based system, so scratches that itch rather better. (After all, in RM, you only have skills, so aside from the very few spellcasters, you only get better at what you do, not find new things to do most of the time.)

We are about to start our first new RM/SM party for ten years shortly, where they party have been set at level 6. (And they are Liches and part of one of the galaxy most high-tech powers; the fact this is a DOWNGRADE tells you something about the previous RM party...) I am not planning to advanced them after the first two-parter.


One thing I've found over the years, is that a party has a "life." At the end of which is the point where either the players are bored with the party or the DM can no longer sensibly concoct challenges for them. (4E went as far as actually codifying this by an actual level cap.) In D&D 3.x it's around 20th; we've run one party from 1st to low-Epic, and by the end, it was taking a disproportionate amount of time to sort the monsters for me. So, these days, with a D&D party, I work along the lines of "we'll play this party through the adventure path, and that will probably be it." With our RM parties and day-quest D&D parties, keeping the advancement rate down help extend the longevity of the party. (Especially in D&D, where a rate of one level per day quest which of one the other DMs does, I felt was far too fast, as my character didn't really get much chance to play with his new toys before he got his next lot.) RM is also bad enough to try and have meaningful combats in anyway (given players have tendency to open-ended splat EVERY boss monster), compounding the issue by inflating their numbers - especially in sci-fi, on high-end weapons  where you can easily reach K-M crits and hundreds of hit damage - does not help.

Thus, out day-quests are a different sort of game to our weekly ones, and the criterion for advancement (and XP) are different.



*I say RM, I really mean RM/SM, since we haven't played an actual fantasy RM (as opposed to RM/SM sci-fantasy) game for... Well, the last one we played - and the only one fully on PC - dates back to 1998.

[Cory Magel]

One thing I've found over the years, is that a party has a "life." At the end of which is the point where either the players are bored with the party or the DM can no longer sensibly concoct challenges for them.

I completely agree with that and I bet if more groups really thought about it they'd have a general idea of where that line was for them.  You mention that 12th level is about your limit for RM.  I think ours is in the upper teens to 20th level or so.  When you start getting to the point that 20th level spells are flying fairly reliably the 'arms race' (so-to-speak) seems to start to ramp up.  At that point you're either fighting stuff that has a unique name or you're running a kingdom.  Back when we played D&D 2nd Ed I remember the point at which we knew we needed to find a new system was when the party took on two dragons at once with no deaths.  After the fight we had a friendly/laughing discussion about how silly that seemed.  I mean, dragons are what many of us see as being at the top of the food chain and we took out two simultaneously without breaking much of a sweat.  There's almost no question that party would have been toast in RM.

Some gamers like the old school search a cave, take out the kobolds or orcs to save the village, and get a little loot out of it stuff.  Some like seeing their PC grow powerful.  Some like wide-scale politics and intrigue.  Each has it's own level progression life.

I suspect out style has grown into what it is partially due the nature of our group.  We've know each other for a very long time.  The 'newest' member joined up in the early to mid 90's and some of us have known each other since '78-'79.  While it's getting into psychology territory I think part of why we love playing a character for years on end (real time) is related to that.  I can relate to both the role-play and roll-play crowds because we really put a lot into our characters and often extensively develop them, but at the same time we are very tactically/strategically oriented, so we love the combats (so long as they aren't just another boring slug-fest).

Relating to the overall topic, that 'level life' can be shortened or lengthened depending on how you give out Exp (and things like improved equipment or magical items).  So tweaking how you handle character leveling can be a real advantage when trying to control the level range of play if needed.

[Thom @ ICE]

I use an informal HARP version, mixed with GM control.  After sessions I notify players of their XP gains, but they don't have formally stated project plan goals.... it's more of a matter where I know where they are going and are they making progress getting there - either individually or as a party.  Level advancement is always done in between sessions and signed off on before the next session.  I try to discourage players even mentioning when they advance levels, because not all of them advance together.

[Aotrs Commander]

One thing I've found over the years, is that a party has a "life." At the end of which is the point where either the players are bored with the party or the DM can no longer sensibly concoct challenges for them.

I completely agree with that and I bet if more groups really thought about it they'd have a general idea of where that line was for them.  You mention that 12th level is about your limit for RM. 

It's more that we have only had only a few major RM parties 5/6 over the course of the last twenty-five years, and of that, this particular party was running the longest. Most of the other were in a set (weekly) campaign with a start, middle and end (sorta) and one which we just sort of fell out of favour of. This particular 12th level party (which is the highest we've gotten) is so broken, due to twenty-odd years of exacerbating issues (many of which Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time) that is is ridiculously hard to challenge them. (They have VERY ACTUALLY beaten two Greater Black Reavers with Sianetic Harbinger technology...! Granted, they did do it in the spacecraft, and it did take at least one set of fate points, but even so...!) And they aren't really important enough (or powerful enough) to be rolling with the Named Movers and Shakers of the galaxy (being basically a band of wandering misfits, Jedi and wanted criminals...) So I have said to the players that I plan to retire this particualr party on my 40th birthday year (about four years hense), after which, they'll have been clocking around for 22 years, which I think is a PRETTY good run, even if it's only been an average of about on adventure per year! (By "retire" I mean more like "end of the series" but leaving open the possibility of reuniting for "the movies" on occasion afterwards...!)

I suspect out style has grown into what it is partially due the nature of our group.  We've know each other for a very long time.  The 'newest' member joined up in the early to mid 90's and some of us have known each other since '78-'79.  While it's getting into psychology territory I think part of why we love playing a character for years on end (real time) is related to that. 

That, I suspect, is also quite a large part of it. As you may have surmised, I have been paying with mostly the same crowd for twenty-five years, both with the weekly and day-quest groups (most of the members ofd which are common). (in fact, the problem with the Agamemnon party is that there are a fair number of now-NPCs hanging around that have acrued over the years, sometimes from players who have left, who are sort of indepensible or who I have not, despite my geniune best efforts, to get shot of. (Damn you, Gillman. *shakes angry fist to the heavens*)

So Aggy is more about [Richard]ing around with those characters, rather than advancement or whatever, because they really are like old friends as this point.

What I've been working on flat-out since about, what May, is a new party, with a slightly more flexible set-up (it's basically Evil Lich Superpower Does Stargate SG-1), which I expect I will last another twenty years or so. Since this time, I am obviously better able to understand how to set myself up to not get into that same corner! I'll also be sparing with advancement, since part of the set-up is to make the PCs use their available resources (which includes skills), and the emphasis is going to be more on exploration than anything else.

[Cory Magel]

I find a lot of GM's don't think about it for some reason... but I love using retired PC's as future NPC's and players get a kick out of it too.  I mean, you've got a FULLY fleshed out and organically grown NPC at your fingertips.

Just something to think about after you retire those characters. 

[Aotrs Commander]

I find a lot of GM's don't think about it for some reason... but I love using retired PC's as future NPC's and players get a kick out of it too.  I mean, you've got a FULLY fleshed out and organically grown NPC at your fingertips.

Just something to think about after you retire those characters. 

That is something that we have bounre in mind before... Though in the case of the Aggy party, the problem is, the new one we're starting is sort of on the opposite side of the alignment spectrum...!

...

Though only of most of the group... Actually... Huh. There are about three characters that could fit in with the new Lich party as non-enemies (and at least one NPC I'd have no qualms about making the players kill if I can't manage it before then...!)

[Cory Magel]

I find a lot of GM's don't think about it for some reason... but I love using retired PC's as future NPC's and players get a kick out of it too.  I mean, you've got a FULLY fleshed out and organically grown NPC at your fingertips.

Just something to think about after you retire those characters. 

That is something that we have bounre in mind before... Though in the case of the Aggy party, the problem is, the new one we're starting is sort of on the opposite side of the alignment spectrum...!

That might actually be even more fun.  They'd potentially partially know what they are facing and it might scare them.