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Out of interest has anyone on my flist ever emailed a GM and asked for extra experience?

As a novice GM I'm a little surprised to be in receipt of such an email, especially since I don't feel I've been particularly stingy with XP* and I've made it clear that it is automatically available for writing campaign diaries and cooking for the roleplaying session.

* we're playing Warhammer and I'm aiming for 30-40 XP per session which means players can buy a new skill or take an ability advance every 2 to 3 sessions.

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From:

philmophlegm.livejournal.com

Nope, never happened to me.

Mind you, it's seventeen years since I ran any game that had experience points.

From:

purplecat

The player in question has a reputation as a GM for being extremely stingy with XP, to the point of basically running games without it. He's another Traveller GM so I guess Traveller may be a good XP-less game.

From:

king-pellinor.livejournal.com

Traveller's awkward: the granularity of the skills is large enough that it's quite hard to have sensible advancement after mustering out.

This is made worse by the wide range of skills, so people being competent (skill-3 is a professional level of skill) is rare, so any advancement at all becomes a significant amount.

Traveller is a great game if you're a harsh GM :-)

From:

scimon.livejournal.com

What? Smite them, with the big stick of doom.

Unless you've been penalising one player severely, which I doubt, there should be no need for this. You set the speed you want the campaign to progress at. If they can't handle that you might seriously want to think about looking for a new player.

Once that one's character dies in a freak rock falling incident.

Sheesh. More? Who does he think he is Oliver Twist?

From: (Anonymous)

Sadly dropping a rock on the character and booting him out of the game isn't really an option. Not without alienating most of Bs social circle. He now claims it was a misunderstanding though I'm not clear what there is to misunderstand about "I don't often do this, but could I possibly ask if any XPs might come my way for..."

Bit worried about the "often" in that sentence, since I've yet to find someone else whose _ever_ done this (discounting munchkins in LARP - and of course, students wanting more marks).

From:

purplecat

That was me, LJs started randomly logging me out again.

From:

scimon.livejournal.com

It does that sometimes. Of course this is WFRP so... offer him an easy path to Power. There are always things waiting to give power to those who want it.

Make a story line of turning him to Chaos. :D

From:

purplecat

Tried that. He got a Fate point from Sauron for arranging for a ship to sink...

...he's still complaining about that, and explaining why it was a good thing that he got the ship sunk.

From:

scimon.livejournal.com

Ah but the trick with turning someone to Chaos is to not let them realise what's happening at first. Don't let them think that are being penalised, instead they are being rewarded, with funky magic items and super powers!

But I'm evil.

From:

purplecat

Yes but Fate points are fate points are fate points. Gather enough in Warhammer and you are basically unkillable and Sauron is quite happy to hand out more, and obviously its not like getting Fate points from Sauron actually commits you to anything.

Besides it wasn't obviously Sauron giving out the fate point, and if you genuinely believe the world is better off without that particular ship then is must have been some friendly sea spirit...

From:

scimon.livejournal.com

I prefer my gifts from the Chaos gods to be more concrete, pointy things that drip poison, extra limbs that kind of thing.

From:

king-pellinor.livejournal.com

I've not come across it, but then the main on-going campaign I've been involved in recently was Ars Magica, and there XP is pretty much player-driven.

One thought is that by giving XP for things the player does, rather than what the character does, you may be giving the impression that XP are fairly arbitrary - devaluing them a bit, perhaps. Especially if you're being generous with them.

I'm right behind extra XP for IC stuff and good roleplaying, but I'd be tempted to give non-XP rewards for OOC actions: if you cook, then the next adventure will be aimed more in the direction you'd want it to go, for example.

From:

purplecat

You could be right. B vaguely thinks the fact that I tell the players what they are getting XP for and it varies from player to player depending what they've done in the session gives the idea that I can be talked into distributing more of it. I may switch to a flat rate per session available to all players without explanation. I've always though XP was kind of arbitrary anyway and largely there so people could have the fun of watching a character improve. That being the case simply saying "right everyone who turns up gets 30XP, end of discussion" serves the same function and avoids the irritation of players trying to power game.

From:

king-pellinor.livejournal.com

XP should be a reward for doing something special IC, I think.

If you're going for 30-40 per session, then maybe give people 25 for turning up plus gold stars each worth 5, awarded at your discretion for whatever you think fit - good roleplay, timely luck on the dice, witty-one-liner, dinner, etc (though I'd probably stay IC or at least game-related).

My XP-giving (such as it has been recently ) has been along the lines of "I want to get you half-wayish to leveling up, so you can have 1,000 each except that Alice gets 1,200 because of her spells saving the day and Bob gets 1,100 for bluffing the inn-keeper so well."

As (in D20 at least) experience is worthless until you cross the level threshold, then (so long as no-one gets to level up ahead of anyone else) no-one gets handicapped but some people think they've been rewarded.

XP: the opiate of the players ;-)

From:

wellinghall.livejournal.com

No!

(Mind you, I've only had one gaming session since email was invented, or at the very least since it came into common currency. *feels old*)

From:

purplecat

I guess in your day (:D) players actually had to phone up the GM in order to get special goodies for their characters.

From:

wellinghall.livejournal.com

Yes ...

(Not that I ever did that either, I hasten to add!!!)

From:

wellinghall.livejournal.com

I lie; it was two.

From:

sixgun45lc.livejournal.com

Back in the days when I GMed stuff, that would have been unheard of. As an aside, I didn't know there was a Warhammer RPG. I play 40k. Geeks unite!

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