Story awards for experience points - OG Myth-Weavers

Notices


Gaming Discussion

For all things gaming related.


Story awards for experience points

   
Story awards for experience points

Given the very slow rate of PvP combat I'd like to be able to reward players for things other than defeating monsters, such as playing out a courtroom scene. I want to create a set of "story award" guidelines for how to hand out experience points in my heavily houseruled D&D 3.5e campaign. I realize I'm free to create anything I like, but I'd appreciate learning from the experience of other 3.5e players and DMs. Or from any system that uses experience points in the hundreds to thousands range, really.

Do any of the rest of you give XP for accomplishing story goals, and what sort of guidelines did you use?

Do you give "roleplaying awards" for individual players or do you view that as unfair to people who are less articulate?

If you use a "milestone" system for raising levels, what sort of guidelines do you use for that? I personally prefer something more XP-for-roll/role-playing" than milestones but I'm prepared to learn from those who do use them.

I typically go with story goals, though it's still a bit arbitrary. I don't exactly have a rubric utilized for such. And often I will give a level for chapter completion, as I usually have story segments broken into chapters.

For PvP PbP, I usually use the chapter approach to determine level ups. Also, I have given level-ups to offset the loss of players. When the campaign is further into a story line, it is easier to buff the existing players than trying to integrate a new player(s) into it.

This would be PvE rather than PvP, though.

@Rakle interesting idea about leveling up when players disappear.

I've never been in a game where the DM used a "chapter approach"; how much is involved in a chapter? If it's like book chapters it would only be a few scenes.

Quote:
Originally Posted by dalamb View Post
This would be PvE rather than PvP, though.

@Rakle interesting idea about leveling up when players disappear.

I've never been in a game where the DM used a "chapter approach"; how much is involved in a chapter? If it's like book chapters it would only be a few scenes.
My mistake. I meant PbP. When I do it, chapter lengths can vary. It depends upon what is happening, and what I want them to be able to do. I know that is rather vague . . .

I haven't played with it much, but I'm in favour of XP for achieving individual PC goals - but also for drawbacks. That is, rather than giving players a mechanical bonus for a disadvantage (which typically leads to trying to force a disadvantage mechanically and an imbalance between bonuses and drawbacks when one or the other only applies some of the time), give them XP in exchange for suffering or role-playing a penalty. This is similar to how some systems (e.g. M&M) do it by default (though bonus hero points/action points/whatever is more common in systems without XP).

Milestone seems to be quite common, and works OK, but doesn't give you a lot of granularity - it also missed out on the opportunity that XP is for doing things like the above.

I give out story awards, role-playing awards, participation awards, and even have awards that I give to players to write fluff stories. Because of the slow pace of pbp, I try to give the players every opportunity to get experience points. For the story awards, there is no guidelines other than complete the task at hand. For role-playing awards, it is based on my estimation on how well the players are staying true to the character. Participation awards is just that, how much is the player participating in the game, both in character and out of character. I usually give the players a score of 1 to 5 for both role-playing and participation, then multiply that by a number that is then further multiplied by the characters level. The awards for the fluff stories are usually a set amount for a set word count.

@Mindcrime: do you need to keep example numbers secret, so your players don't find out, or do you have a suggestion for the number you multiply by?

It's usually 25 experience points. So a 1st level character can receive between 25-125 experience points for role-playing and between 25-125 points for participation. So that is up to a total of 250 experience points per level that I award players for good role-playing and good participation. And I usually give this out at the end of every game day. It might not seem like much but it can add up, especially at higher levels.

1(For All) XP per post with a roll in it makes combat cook with gasoline.




 

Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.8
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.
User Alert System provided by Advanced User Tagging (Lite) - vBulletin Mods & Addons Copyright © 2024 DragonByte Technologies Ltd.
Last Database Backup 2024-03-28 11:38:33am local time
Myth-Weavers Status