Image Source: Chatty DM’s game room
It’s no secret, since the seventies, D&D has arguably been mostly about two things:
- Kill Stuff
- Take their loot
A lot of people were content with that (and still are). I have been for a long time. However, as I played D&D 3.0, and later 3.5, I realized that we had matured to a point where character development became a more important parts of the plots that I weaved. The game had grown past the killing and looting and was tentatively exploring Story-driven roelplaying territory.
And while we have had a few good game sessions with hardly any die rolls (much to the chagrin of Eric) giving XPs for good role playing has always been a matter of ill-defined DM fiat for me (and I hate ill-defined, I can’t stand ambiguity). I often felt I gave too little which in turns encourages killing stuff for XPs.
Then I discovered this D&D Ptolus log (one of the best logs I’ve read after Adam Winsor’s X-crawl adaptation ) and I found what I had been looking for. This very funny British writer plays in a Ptolus campaign that uses the XP component of an unfinished d20 variant called Sweet 20 by Clinton R Nixon. (Go ahead, have a look, it’s only 2 pages long)…
So if you understand the same things I did, the Sweet20 proposes to do away with D&D’s genocidal XP system for another system aimed at rewarding roleplaying. It works as such:
- Each character chooses a certain number of ‘keys’. These keys are core motivations for the character.
- Whenever the character plays out a scene, he wins XPs if he played according to his chosen keys.
- The player loses XPs if he played “counter” to the keys.
- Except that it’s also possible to willingly play against a key to move on from a motivation (i.e. turn the page), gaining a large amount of XP but losing the key forever as a potential source of XP.
- The higher level you are, the more keys you get, the more opportunities for RPing XPs.
This is awesome! I’ve been looking for a way of handing out Role-playing XPs in such a way that it would motivate players to roleplay more. By letting them chose their keys according to their tastes it becomes a potentially self-motivated system.
Handing out these XPs is going to be a group thing. When a players makes a choice, he’ll inform me that he’s invoking a given key and act accordingly. I’ll ask around the table if it’s acceptable, subjected to DM veto, and hand in the XPs if agreed.
Here’s how I intend to implement this in my current group:
- I’ll keep XPs as D&D, no simplification to 13 points.
- A successfully used key will give between 1/13th and 3/13th of the XPs needed to level up.
- I’ll maintain XPs for killing stuff as my group likes a good fight. (I don’t mind speeding up the leveling up process, I aim to finish the campaign in May)
- I won’t use Scene Keys as it amounts to giving XPs to players for just showing up. I’ll probably award Scene-specific XPs anyway.
- To make it easy to implement in my group, everyone will start with only 1 key this week. If all goes well, I ‘ll suggest taking extra keys up to the allowed limit (they are 7th level) in the following sessions.
Here’s an example I discussed with Yan today. He is thinking of taking a Warden of Trees key for Lillie, getting XPs whenever she does something to protect or promote trees in the Ptolus very urban environment. (and Yan, planting an oak feather token in the sewers does not count unless you have a good reason to think that this would help the trees’ cause)
So I hope this will catch on with the group. It sure looks good on paper and from the aforementioned Ptolus logs, it sure seems to work for these guys.
Would it work for you and your gaming group?
Well I dont care for Mr. Nixon or the company he keeps. (To put it mildly) But I can understand the need for XP rewards not just based on killing stuff. You might want to take a look on how experience is handled in Palladium Fantasy.
Now obviously the amount of points for your application differently. But you’ll get the idea.
25xp performing a skill (successful or not)
25xp Clever, but futile idea
100xp Clever, useful idea or action
100xp Quick-thinking idea or action
200xp a critical plan or action that saves the character’s life and/or a few comrades.
400-1000xp A critical plan or action that saves the entire roup or many people
100-300xp Endangering the characters own life to help others
500-700xp Self-sacrifice in a life or death situation
100xp avoiding unnecessary violence
100-200 deductive reasoning and/or insight
50xp good judgement
50xp playing in character bonus
50-100xp Daring (clever or not)
25-50xp Killing or subduing a minor menace
75-100xp Killing or subduing a major menace
150-300xp Killing or subduing a great menace
I’m not saying that pallys system is the end all be all. But I put it out there as food for thought.
Interesting system… But it tend to put the responsability on the DM as most of the XP realted stuff…
The one things I like about sweet20 is that it is defined and mostly handled by the player with a veto of the DM (ChattyDm seemed to liked it also in part for these reason).
What I mean is that it can be as specific as you want but its not the DM responsibility to remember it but the players. The DM as enough stuff to think about. Rewarding player to act in character is an extra burden that is based solely on is understanding and what he can remember of each players characters.
Who better to judge then the players? Of course its a system that required some maturity in your players. If your group feels likes a nursery it might not be appropriate. 😉
I like the ‘Key’ idea a great deal – and it very well might work for my group, especially in our (usual) long-term campaigns.
In our Friday game (a Heroic game, in antidote to our Saturday Ravenloft game), the DM said: “Everybody levels up when I say you do.” It’s worked out great – we got better at dramatically appropriate moments. Magic item creation was similarly handled: “Tell me what you want to make in the downtime, and we’ll work something out.”
Ronin: I don’t know who Nixon is so I can only judge from his somewhat short document. (He did drop in a forum once to say he’d never use the XP system in D&D).
Ahhh Paladium, yes, I played Robotech when I was 14… had fun! That chart looks like what D&D 2nd ED tried to pull. Like Yan says I really want to push roleplaying to another level while making my job simpler.
But I will keep the chart handy (and scalable) for my Scene XPs, thanks Ronin.
Noah: We tried the level up at key points thing and we ended up being level 7 after 1 year and a half of playing. (Granted we missed a lot of games). I wanted faster progression and I wanted to share this progression with the group. I hope it works.
Interesting idea. What’s good about it is that it gives the GM an insight into what the player wants out of the game too, which is always a good thing.
As presented, the Keys seem to be painted in too broad strokes for my liking – I’d rather have them be things that are specific to the character, and might be defined as long-term or short-term.
For example, a Halfling Rogue might have “get enough gold to buy masterwork lockpicks” and “woo the Sorcerer” as short-term Keys, and “find my sister’s murderer” and “own my own Dungeon” as long-term Keys. The short ones could change adventure-to-adventure, the long ones not.
I’d be inclined to allocate 1/20th for completing short-term objectives, and 1/10th XP for anything that works toward the long-term ones.
But that’s just me.
1/10th xp is way more easier than 1/13th agreed.
The short term/long term keys idea is good. It would need some crunching up but I can see it making it’s way in my crunchputer.
Like you actually close a short term key by performing it (no counter) and you get to replace it in between the game sessions (so the DM can act accordingly)… While long-term keys are as posted by Mr. Nixon… or close to.
Men I realy would like an edit button on these comments. Oh well I deleted the previous one. Here is a more cohesive one…
The “You the level when I tell you” approach works well for most system, as long as the DM and the player have the same expectation of progression…
But, in the case of D&D their is a few spells/feats that have XP cost in their uses. What do you do in these cases?
Preventing the use of the spell/feat seam too harsh.
Removing the XP cost of the spell/feat and it becomes too strong…
Greywulf do bring an interesting point on the key system…
I have not played D&D with the Sweet20 stuff, but it does look pretty cool.
I gather that you’re interested in tweaking your D&D a little, but not really moving far away from it. Since you’re looking around a little, though, you want to give Donjon or Shadow of Yesterday a look. Both are fantasy role-playing. The Sweet20 stuff actually is taken from the Shadow of Yesterday, where Keys are from.
I think Shadow of Yesterday might still be available for free on the ‘net somewhere, in fact…
I just tought of something and I’m not sure why I didnt think of it bofre to mention. My DM gives out what he calls plots points. If you do something clever, or really in character, and as my DM puts it “amuse me greatly”. You get a plot point. These can be used to add a D6 to D20 rolls to help increase the likely hood of success. Or if spend in large amounts to effect the story. Stupid example would be to spend so many plot points to make sure sometyhing works out in your favor. Its really a subjective type on thing. Anyways at the end of a session you can only hold on to six points for the next session. Any over that are converted into so much XP per point (I forget the amount). Or you can change in plot points at the end of a session to give your self an XP bonus.
We had the exact same system before and it worked well. Including cashing them for XPs. It’s a good concept.
In my quest to simplify my DM job things, I gave all players Actions points as per Unearthed Arcana and it works fine.
Coolness.
@James: I’m glad you liked that!