Pondering XP = GP ... not

[Finarvyn]

To be honest, I haven't used XP=GP in my OD&D games for a very long time. I've been more goal-oriented, where I use GM fiat to advance characters at my whim based on when they finish modules or missions, accomplish certain goals, or whatever. My players are fine with it, and it has worked for me.

I've been pondering going back to some sort of XP system, but since I feel like gold is its own reward I'd rather use a system more like WARRIORS OF MARS where XP mostly goes back to monster kills and goals (such as rescuing a princess). I may also go to a 3E-style unified XP chart, but that's probably the subject of a different thread.

So ... I'm trying to rebuild my intuition on what I have to do to the XP charts in order to make level progression still work at a decent pace. If I had played BTB recently I could just go back and check my notes to see how many XP my players earned and how many GP they earned, but sadly such notes are long gone. I was thinking that perhaps 90% of XP usually comes from gold and 10% from monster kills, so that if I simply divided the XP in the charts of Men & Magic by 10 I'd be pretty close.

Is this a reasonable guestimate? Anyone have a "better" rule of thumb for this?

[Scott Anderson]

It's 80/20 for bloodthirsty players and 100 XP per hit die and asterisk. I would say that a mature group would be more like 90/10.

Just tell your players you're fiddling with it and it might not work out right, and then go with the number that's a lowball. If it turns out it's going too slow, you can adjust it.

I suspect due to your experience, you can eyeball level ups just fine.

[Deleted]

There are three main reasons that GP was the source of XP.

1) To give players the financial base they need to build their strongholds
2) To reward cleverness; if XP is for gold and monster XP is chump change, stealing or tricking the gold from the monster works as well as killing it
3) So that wandering monsters are a hazard and not XP on the hoof.

Bear that in mind for any alternate XP system

[EdOWar]

In OD&D gold doesn't seem like much of its own reward. After the first delve the PCs usually have enough gold to purchase any basic equipment they need, and hire a small army of mercenaries. Unlike 3E/Pathfinder, they can't use gold to purchase magic items, though I suppose wizards can use it to craft magic items at some point (provided they're willing to take a break from adventuring for the next several months).

[Scott Anderson]

Those are good reasons Mike. I would add, and this is going to be long, I would add some more to that.

The basic BTB rules say the gold piece is the measure of XP.

This isn't a subtle message: the object of the game is to collect money. Money is how you win; monsters are how you die. This is a very good thing to keep in mind in the lower levels. So messaging is important. (Someone was talking about running a B4 campaign and awarding XP for water found - it is an equally strong message in that world. But back to the matter at hand.)

The gold piece is also the measure of encumbrance. Encumbrance slows you down. So every several hundred coins you pick up makes your exploration slower. It makes some fights more dangerous. Every several coins you want to carry out is one more piece of potentially life-saving gear you have to forgo or leave in the maze. That's why copper (and even silver in the long run) coins are a trap.

So the GP now links basic gear, XP, and movement speed.

The next thing the gold piece helps to measure is time. You move at a certain rate in the underworld. Your torches, spells, hit points and so forth dwindle. How much of the dungeon can you explore before you have to escape? If you move slower, then you explore less.

And then there are second-order trade offs. How many porters will you hire? How many swordsmen? Will they help you enough to justify their wages? If you buy that spell, will it help you earn more GP (and therefore XP) than hiring a few more medium horse for the garrison?

These trade-offs are some of the things which make treasure and delving interesting. It's why I think that the gold piece as it is in the rules is one of the things they really got right the first time.

[Finarvyn]

Oct 1, 2017 21:59:51 GMT -6 @gronanofsimmerya said:

There are three main reasons that GP was the source of XP.

1) To give players the financial base they need to build their strongholds
2) To reward cleverness; if XP is for gold and monster XP is chump change, stealing or tricking the gold from the monster works as well as killing it
3) So that wandering monsters are a hazard and not XP on the hoof.

Bear that in mind for any alternate XP system

All great points, Michael, and ones that were key to my games "back in the day."

To respond with quick thoughts:
1) My players often retire their characters prior to the stronghold phase of the game nowadays.
2) I can still reward XP for cleverness; tricking the gold from the monster can be the same as killing it for XP purposes. (E.g. XP to "defeat the challenge.")
3) No counter to this one.

I think my players in the early days saw gold=XP as a good thing because we played adventurers all the way to where they build strongholds and became Lords and fought each other in a miniatures or wargame setting, but my players now aren't interested in the nation-level aspect of the game. They don't play wargames and are interested only in the adventure as the game itself. Also, I kind of like the "Fafhrd and Grey Mouser" approach where the heroes are constantly poor and the adventure gives them motivation to gain some loot, rather than the traditional OD&D rules in which levels and loot go hand-in-hand. It's kind of a style thing.

But Michael, as a guy who still does play the game the right way, do you have a guess as to the typical percent of XP from gold versus monster kills in your campaign?

[Deleted]

90% gold. Maybe more. Mostly because I don't even track monster kills, and neither did Gary.

"You got 2358 gold each. Okay, round it up to 2400 XP to account for monsters each."

[talysman]

GP = XP can work in other ways, too. If you can give something an XP value, like for example opening a new trade route, you can give it an XP value as well. You saved the city? How much would it cost to build that city? How much treasure would you get if you sacked it? How much gold does it generate from trade in one year? That's your XP.

[howandwhy99]

I too don't reward XP for GP. But I'm not sure what kind of ratios you are asking for.

My understanding is XP is the points you score for playing the game successfully. That could be treasure collecting, but it can be different too. I'd think about what you are rewarding XP for and break it up into 10 levels (or so). Then reward level 1 stuff as level 1 XP point totals, and level 2 as 2 totals, and so on. These ratios are not ever about pacing when it comes to games, but about fairly rewarding -player proficiency- at mastering the game level they are on, or can handle really.

Logarithmic rate increases, ability advancement, challenge placement and design difficulty, all that stuff matters based on XP in my opinion.

Treasure, including GP, is a boon and helps, but doesn't need to be the focus of the game. What treasure does is make the game easier. But it isn't required to play the game. The players could lose it all. Or go all in on resource acquisition (treasure). It's their strategic option. Still, all of the benefits of treasure and the mechanical balancing for it in the game Scott Anderson posted is very true. Those are important elements of the design.

[sixdemonbag]

I always go back and forth on this. One nice benefit of XP for Gold™ is that it encourages exploration and creative means of treasure acquisition (i.e. combat avoidance). It also deemphasizes killing everything in sight which can be good or bad depending on the group. I'll admit that some groups prefer hunting monsters to hunting treasure and vice versa.

On the other hand, earning XP almost exclusively affects combat and spellcasting (see a thread I made detailing this in this sub which I need to update). Logically, I don't understand why avoiding combat and stuffing your pockets with coins, gems, jewelry should make you better at fighting and casting spells. Fighting and casting spells should be the primary XP earners since those are the things that are affected by XP. Gold is extremely useful and powerful all on it's own without any need for additional XP-related perks.

Likewise, a thief who never fights and sneaks around stealing treasure shouldn't get better at fighting. The thief should get better at stealing and sneaking. However, thieves are a whole other can of worms.

All said, I've ended up just leveling PCs every 5-6 sessions which will take a weekly group at least a year to reach name level. Anyone can give up their "session XP" to another character if they wish to spread the wealth and bring up a lower level PC. I don't track XP, encumbrance, movement rates, or milestones (however, players can track anything they want if they think it would be fun or more realistic) so this isn't an issue for us and everyone seems happy with it.

I'm at the point in life where I want the biggest motivator to be attendance and consistent participation (sadly). I will also say that playing online has certainly helped attendance.

[Deleted]

But "XP for gold" has nothing to do with "world simulation." It is an artifact designed to create the kind of game Gary and Dave wanted.

[sixdemonbag]

Oct 3, 2017 21:17:24 GMT -6 @gronanofsimmerya said:

But "XP for gold" has nothing to do with "world simulation." It is an artifact designed to create the kind of game Gary and Dave wanted.

^^^And that's probably the single best reason and the only justification needed.

I certainly agree with everyone that as a game abstraction it's a very elegant and well-designed solution to track progression that Gary and Dave perfected right out the gate. It's both practical and ties XP, wealth, combat, spellcasting, domain-play, encumbrance, and movement together very nicely. Heck, even Super Mario uses gold coins to gain HD (ahem, lives). It's a classic notion that's had a massive influence on many types of games.

I think if I attempted it the way it was originally designed, I'd be very liberal with "Bags of Holding" and such to avoid the awkwardness of carrying around buckets of treasure without having to resort to taking a team of treasure-bearers and pack mules into a dungeon. I think with some trial and error, I could figure out how much treasure to sprinkle around the world and keep the pace of progression to everyone's satisfaction. I'd also put more emphasis on gems and jewelry and such to make things easier. Then again, maybe most of this was all hand-waved anyway. I wish I could have seen it in action.

Anyhow, as I said, I tend to go back and forth. I see the many merits of the original system. Lately, I've just been lazy tracking all this stuff which is all my own fault. It doesn't seem like anyone has noticed or been bothered by it (yet, lol). Luckily, at this point, everyone is happy to just show up and play without worrying much about XP. This could change one day I suppose.

[hamurai]

XP for gold is great when the group has the goal of achieving wealth and fame by exploring dungeons and winning treasure. I have to admit I never wondered about the gold/kills XP ratio. My guess would be, purely from memory and gut-feeling, 5:1 (treasure:kills).

It's not so useful when you play campaigns focused on diplomatics, on wilderness survival or town-management, for example. So I think it really depends on what kind of game you want to run.
If you're going for old school dungeon crawling, by all means use "XP for gold".
If your group is trapped in the rain forest of a far-away land and fighting for survival, collecting coins shouldn't be on their to-do list unless they start trading with the natives. In that case, award XP for milestones like building shelter, learning important facts about the local weather/flora/fauna, finding a clean water source and so on.

[Zenopus]

Oct 3, 2017 21:53:10 GMT -6 sixdemonbag said:

I'd also put more emphasis on gems and jewelry and such to make things easier. Then again, maybe most of this was all hand-waved anyway. I wish I could have seen it in action.

In my kids' game, I just assume that much of the "gold" they are carrying is actually in the form of gems, jewelry or other unspecified valuables.

[Deleted]

Heh. We do just the opposite... make treasure HARD to carry, not easy.

"This is an armoire made of rare wood. It would be worth about 3500 GP intact."

"This is a million gold pieces... worth of copper."

Heh heh heh...


A big part of the game is LOGISTICS, and CHOICE. What do you carry, what do you leave? Because "bearers" or "treasure carriers" or "pack mules" aren't going to survive for more than a few minutes lower than the first level of the dungeon, and even on the first level, just imagine the fun when an ogre shows up and your bearers, torch holders, treasure carriers, and pack mules panic and scatter in every direction off into the darkness.

[sixdemonbag]

This is all very interesting to me. Without any bearers or mules, a typical fighter/cleric can only carry about 2000 GP at a time before becoming immobile according to the encumbrance rules. I guess that's either a trip back to town every 2000 XP, or coins should be largely ignored and only the most valuable treasures hauled out of the dungeon. A combination of both sounds cool.

I'm liking the strategy of it all for sure. It adds another fun layer to the game. I might have to try this out and see how it goes.

It could be interesting to see what the players decide to do (or not do). I just worry about pacing progression properly in a dungeon, but hopefully that could come with more practice. Also, I think the rules say that characters can only gain 1 level of XP per adventure. That would help mitigate any mistakes I make estimating the amount of treasure to place per level. It sounds like most of this depends on how dungeon-centric I want the the next campaign to be.

Does anyone have a "go to" OD&D module or example for placing treasure based on dungeon level? I don't currently own any TSR modules and the rules only specifically talk about random generation. How does it usually work? I've never ran or played in a megadungeon (more than a couple levels). I've heard the Mentzer B/E books have good examples of play. Would those help?

[Deleted]

A typical group should be 4-7 PCs, with enough henchmen/women to bring the group to 9.

Look at how much magic-users can carry. You can load 'em up and they still move faster than fighters. Thieves too.

[Zenopus]

Oct 4, 2017 13:21:12 GMT -6 sixdemonbag said:

Does anyone have a "go to" OD&D module or example for placing treasure based on dungeon level? I don't currently own any TSR modules and the rules only specifically talk about random generation. How does it usually work? I've never ran or played in a megadungeon (more than a couple levels). I've heard the Mentzer B/E books have good examples of play. Would those help?

You might find the OD&D Monster and Treasure Assortments useful in this way. I once calculated 318 GP as the average value of the treasure for a first level encounter using those tables.

See: odd74.proboards.com/post/125107/thread

[Scott Anderson]

Oct 4, 2017 15:15:12 GMT -6 @gronanofsimmerya said:

Look at how much magic-users can carry. You can load 'em up and they still move faster than fighters. Thieves too.

Not wearing armor is a class feature of the wizard, not a restriction.

Oct 4, 2017 15:15:12 GMT -6 @gronanofsimmerya said:

A typical group should be 4-7 PCs, with enough henchmen/women to bring the group to 9.

I was about to chide you for being a hidebound old curmudgeon insisting on such an enormous group until I realized my table is six players, 7 PCs, and a henchman. We're almost there!!

[lige]

Back to the OP - I too like the elegance of 1gp=1xp but as others have stated it doesn't work for every campaign. Myself I have a hard time placing ludicrous amounts of treasure just to allow characters to go up a level. Rob Conley had a nice fairly objective time based system for experience points on his Bat in the Attic blog (I'd post a link but my search powers have failed).

[sixdemonbag]

Thanks to everyone for the replies. A group of 9 is very doable and your analysis waysoftheearth is great as usual. I'm pleasantly surprised that I'm not too far off from these numbers much like Scott Anderson. Right now we have 4 PCs, 2 NPCs, and a friendly lammasu (don't ask lol). I'm gonna give it a go and float the idea of a good ol' fashioned dungeon crawl sometime before the holidays. I'm sure I'll screw something up but that's the best way to learn.

Thanks again!

[starcraft]

Given how little treasure and magic I give out, if I still did 1gp/1xp my players would die of old age before their pcs did.

I too use a combo.of goal related awards, modified monster xp and dm fiat.

Honestly my playrs don't stress much over it. We just kind of wing it.

[graelth]

I only give XP for gold (nothing else), but I modify that in a few ways. Firstly, it includes reward money. If a king offers the party 4,000 gp for slaying a Dragon, then they will get XP for the 4,000 gold (as well as any treasure they accumulate from the dragon's horde, naturally).

Secondly, I don't split the experience award. Indeed, nothing to my recollection in Men & Magic actually suggests that you should, and it has never been intuitive for me to do so (in fact, I only heard about the "splitting XP" idea after years of running the game without doing so). If a party hauls 2,000 gp out of the dungeon, all player characters earn 2,000 experience points (their individual share of the wealth has nothing to do with the prestige of their party earning a haul like that, and it has little if anything to do with the difficulty of braving that level of the dungeon). It doesn't matter if there are 2 characters or 20, they all get the same experience regardless. I do this for a few reasons... half of what a level means to me is prestige and reputation (which is how a fighting man becomes a "lord"... not just being a skilled fighter, but being recognized by others as such). Secondly, it speeds up levelling, which I like.

Lastly, I encourage players to explore the dungeon with a "full" party, and that means one character per player and the full compliment of followers (mostly intelligent monster types, but usually some class-types as well). With four player characters, this averages about 16 followers or 20 characters total. Thus I can hand out gobs of treasure and still not have a "maunty haul" problem... a take of about 2,000 gold pieces from a dungeon adventure will make sure each player gets to second level with about 100 gold pieces in their pocket to show for it (all followers always require an equal share of the loot as the player characters... it's standard practice in my campaign world... but they don't earn any experience, aside from a single protege that a player may "split" his own experience with to build his backup character... think of it as banking your XP).

[graelth]

The other advantage of that approach is, of course, that you can somewhat plan how much XP each session will provide. While my players do sometimes blunder into the dungeon to find what treasure they may, more often they take "missions" from local lords (more typically from various ne'er-do-wells, such as corrupt merchants and thieves guild masters! *sighs*) so everyone knows ahead of time what that the session will be worth, e.g. 800 gold/experience.

[foxroe]

Never had a problem with XP = GP. It makes perfect sense within the D&D framework.

A nice little house-rule for those that have a hard time swallowing the standard XP rule: PC's have to spend the gold between adventures in order for it to count as XP - represents training, upkeep, and research costs.

[tetramorph]

graelth , thanks for your posts in this thread. Mind blown!

I came back to D&D as an adult about 5 years ago now. I "relearned" how to play with folks who were playing (especially under the excellent refereeing of austinjimm ). Your post reminds me how much the playing and ruling of D&D are by "oral tradition" and not "written constitution."

Our group divides XP just as it divides gp. I had never even considered that every character present would simply get the full XP. I recoiled from your posts at first, "that can't be right!" I thought. But only because it was not what I was used to. So I went back and reread the rules. Sure enough, there is nothing that explicitly states that XP is divided among the characters within the party. I only thought it was, reading it into the text, because that is how I had been "traditioned" back into D&D.

Not dividing XP truly changes the game for me. As I think about it, I realize that suddenly the treasures by level table in U&WA actually makes sense. I found my self doubling those random treasures, sometmes even moving the decimal in the case of larger parties, just to generate enough treasure so that my (rather large) party of characters could actually eventually level. But those tables and those value amounts make absolute sense if XP is not divided. One could place 2,500 gp value of treasure on lvl 1 of a dungeon and, if the party were thorough and lucky, all could level.

This also has the advantage of making both encumbrance and the accumulation of character wealth far more reasonable. It also (this is another way of saying the same thing) allows for a deeper decoupling of XP and gp on the part of individual characters.

My only problem is: XP division among party members is exactly how my group has awarded XP for years now. So we have important, developed characters in the campaign who leveled on the old system, and who have, thusly, acquired ludicrously gargantuan hordes. I don't know what I would have to do to get my group to switch to this new approach. I don't know if they would even consider it. And I don't know how we could grandfather in the old characters developed through the old XP division way. (Any thoughts, countingwizard ?)

Finarvyn , Scott Anderson , @gronanofsimmerya , EdOWar , talysman , howandwhy99 , sixdemonbag , hamurai , Zenopus , Piper , lige, starcraft , foxroe , have you ever played or ruled XP awarding in the way suggested by graelth ? Either way, what do you think of his approach?

Fight on!

[sixdemonbag]

tetramorph I haven't used the system proposed by graelth , but I am very accustomed to decoupling XP from GP, so I have some experience there. I've only ever used session XP since I started playing OD&D again, for reference.

To me, the system sounds almost like a non-guaranteed XP per dungeon level system (a hard cap, if you will, for XP per dungeon level) while still keeping the focus on GP accrual. All in all, I like it very much!!

I've never strictly ran "XP for GP" but based on some recent conversations on here (and similarly the "turns to inventory" thread), my group is proposing that we start bolting on old-school components beginning with this year's campaign. We hope to begin by the end of month (we typically like to run 1 entire campaign per year, with old PCs retiring to become NPCs or for brief cameos).

This system might be a perfect middle-ground for us to experiment with! A bonus to this system, as you mentioned, would by easier XP and encumbrance tracking which is something I have always had issues with. This might help us in that regard since we aren't too fond of tracking mundane resources or movement in the first place. Anything to simplify these parts of the game would be a great boon to our group as we inch closer to the original game.

And to answer your question, I personally do not see any issues with the system. It looks good to me.

[Deleted]

That would make leveling WAY too fast.

It would also remove most of the incentive for solo adventuring.

[hamurai]

That's actually how we always played, too. We did at first wonder if XP were to be shared or not, though. Our argument always was that you get XP for an experience, and experiencing a treasure or monster or quest would not be diminished by sharing the experience. If you learn something, would you learn less if someone is with you?
Sharing XP never made much sense to me unless you see it just as "How big was your contribution to overcoming the monster?"

Jan 5, 2018 12:26:50 GMT -6 @gronanofsimmerya said:

That would make leveling WAY too fast.

Depends on how much treasure the DM gives out, doesn't it?

Jan 5, 2018 12:26:50 GMT -6 @gronanofsimmerya said:

It would also remove most of the incentive for solo adventuring.

Why? It's still a bigger challenge and you don't have to share the treasure and magic items.

[talysman]

Jan 5, 2018 11:28:38 GMT -6 tetramorph said:

Finarvyn , Scott Anderson , @gronanofsimmerya , EdOWar , talysman , howandwhy99 , sixdemonbag , hamurai , Zenopus , Piper , lige, starcraft , foxroe , have you ever played or ruled XP awarding in the way suggested by graelth ? Either way, what do you think of his approach?

As far as granting XP for gold earned for other sources, yes. But I split XP based on the way treasure (or other profit) is split. It lets the party control how fast each character advances.

I have, however, thought of using a similar approach for monster XP. I typically use the flat 100 xp/hit die approach, tracking how many hit dice worth of monster each character fights and adjusting downwards when facing weaker monsters, but considered switching to 20 xp/hit die for every character involved in the combat, doubling if either the party was smaller or the monster was at least as strong, increasing to 50 xp/hit die for solo characters.