Comments on: Rewarding players with XP

By: Rob (NG)

Rob (NG) — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 22:13:53 +0000

I had this conversation with one of my newer players who also DM’s some times. He gives out XP for telling stories, extra role-playing, character histories, and otehr things. My issue is, I don’t ever want to reward a Character for a Players actions. I don’t give a magical sword to the player who brought food, and I have a hard time justifying giving XP to a player who wrote a cool story about his character.

I can understand the merit of doing so because it may increase player interactivity. Instead I generally use all the information players give me. If a player writes out a large past for his character then his character will be more important de-facto because he has given me material to work with. So the character still has to earn his rewards, but the character has the potential to earn more rewards in-game because the player gave the DM more information to add to his campaign world.

Their is something about directly correlating player action to Character reward (that is an event the Player did that the character had little or no say in). For example, if Writing a Diary gave you XP then it should give you XP regardless of whether it is only the character or the player. Which is why I would never give XP for writing a diary.

It’s arbitrary I know, and perhaps not 100% logical, but it breaks the 4th wall of my DM style.

By: Dungeon Mastering » Rewarding players (follow up)

Dungeon Mastering » Rewarding players (follow up) — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 05:31:24 +0000

[...] took part in the discussion on rewarding players, right here on Dungeon Mastering, and it prompted Dave – from Alchemist’s Fire - to toy with [...]

By: Fox

Fox — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 20:21:14 +0000

I really like Deez’s system of reward in there. I hope you don’t mind me stealing it. :) Thatks for the idea, I think it will help my game quite a bit.

By: Benjamin

Benjamin — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 18:33:22 +0000

I have a tally chart divided between category and quality. Roleplaying of substantial merit? Tick. A good idea that ranks as outstanding? Tick. Each of these boxes has an xp value that you multiply by the character’s level. Then you can keep track of individual totals or combine everyone’s results for a group award.

By: Peter

Peter — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 15:57:19 +0000

One thing I dont like is leveling up all characters at the same time. That way I would feel bad for killing one of them and make him start one level below everyone. I like it when they fear that their character could die in the next encounter. They get more tactical and use more ressources in combat, on information gathering about monsters, etc… which lead me to a good reason to give more XP !