OSR XP Awards Expanded

The conceit of XP for gold in Dungeons & Dragons is to incentivize adventuring. To face unknown peril in the hopes of in-game rewards. And since then DMs and PCs have argued for and have given XP for behavior outside of wealth accumulation. A great example of this mechanic is found in TSR’s Marvel Super Heroes. The game incentivizes heroic action by awarding “Karma” points. The spending of Karma point values by the PC is then used to turn in-game failures into successes for the hero. Do more heroic stuff during the game and your PC continues to enhance their ability to successfully pull off heroic stuff! Play it safe (and decidedly non-heroic) and the PC will not have a means to pull the proverbial fat out of the fire when the stakes are nigh insurmountable.

And there I have let the XP for gold standard lay. The end-all and be-all means of OSR-character advancement, while expanded means of character advancement I accepted in any other game as well as the conceit implied. I mean, I never had reason to change OSR experience awards. Sure it forced me to become oblivious to standard economic reality in my fantasy settings, and what it would require for in-game financial management, let alone where are the staggering tall stacks of cash being kept! But I was young, impressionable and really didn’t care. My sandbox DM hands were kept out of meddling with value judgments and in-game awards outside of the prescribed method.

But now I am older and game time is not had everyday. It is three times a month or less. Me and my players will be long dead before multiple campaign worlds will be played out and characters risen to heroic, high fantastic deeds if I kept XP count strictly on coin. Besides, my interest in player motivation and player-driven goals leads to no other conclusion than XP awards for goals, activities and actions.

My current OSR campaign, the Dying Earth of Rom’Myr, started as a genre-enforcing thought experiment by restricting PC class. Basically house-ruling the character creation rules to suit the game worlds genre. Without diving into too much detail, here is the long and short of it. Decidedly pulp-flavored fantasy the default class is Thief. Good attributes qualify the budding PC for any of the other six character classes available. But restricting character class wasn’t going to get my desire across. That of incentivizing PC play inline with genre tropes typical of the literature.

For this task I had to offer up XP awards for actions and behaviors. For example, I wanted the PCs to take a look at some great indie-OSR product as well as take faction affiliation more seriously. Therefore I offered 250 points for a god from the Petty-Gods compendium at character creation. Completing “jobs” for Patrons gave more XP than just their financial award. Achieving party-agreed upon goals generated XP awards, causing story-appropriate reactions and results gained XP, engaging with the campaign world’s people and places gains XP.

How these XP’s are rated and distributed has been an ongoing experiment, really just giving out group XP rewards for great game play. Here is a good example of my evolving thought on these XP awards. The PCs placed a modest wager on a racing long shot. They then involved themselves mightily in the races intrigue and double-dealing to orchestrate a win! Against all odds the PCs slapped their marker down at the betting window, achieving an 8,000 dollar win! Except the poor never win in Rom’Myr. Just like the real world, when the powers that be are denied they call foul and cancel the payout! No gold, no XP. I did not like this, not one bit. So the crown and cathedral confiscated the “fairly” won spoils. Why do the PCs get no XP? The players themselves achieved an amazing in-game feat, one worthy of cataloging in any dying earth tale. So I gave the party the 8,000 XP.

Look, I want my players to succeed. That is why I don’t fudge to-hit and damage rolls. It makes those miraculous rolls, those narrow odds achieved, really memorable. I also don’t want them to toil endlessly for thousands of coin to achieve heroic stature and reputation. The geometric expansion of XP totals forces me to litter the game world with ridiculous treasure caches otherwise. Screw that noise. Specifically, cash and gems generates instant XP. Items of value must be converted into cash before XP is awarded. Pulling off risky actions typical of the genre grants individual awards. Now I am rewarded by having good players. Players who “do stuff”. They most likely would play in-character even without artificial XP awards. But sometimes they want to play it safe, drift away from trouble and take the road more traveled to save their hides. Turning up the possible XP available makes ignoring new, dangerous hooks and threads just that more harder. That the call to adventure, and its awards, can be found in completing well known tropes and attitudes. I think rewarding the PCs for completing goals agreed upon by the party the most satisfying of all. This “rapid” advancement drives the game with a fast pace, the other great ingredient marking a good game. This idea of additional XP awards driving pace is something for another blog post itself. Suffice to say, reward your PCs for doing stuff. Not just with coin and magic. But with meaningful XP awards.