Way Off-Topic: Question for RPGamers

[honorentheos]

I really like the milestone system for XP. Or skip the XP and use milestones as leveling points. I think it makes for better storytelling.

Maybe it's just age or the crowd I play with, but the RPers I play with are story driven rather than character-leveling driven. Several years ago, I played with a group of munchkins. I didn't enjoy it at all.

On another front, I finally DM'd my first RPG. It was a very simple, one page RPG called Adventure Skeletons. It's mostly silly, but the players say they are having fun. That's what counts.

Hey Res,

I ended up downloading the one-page RPG and it looks like it would be a blast. I'm curious if your group are experienced or new to TTRPGs? It seems like it could be fun with either type of group, but that new players would approach it differently from how I think more experienced groups might.

[honorentheos]

When I started running games there were formulas for how many experience points players got for each monster they killed—and for every item of loot they acquired. At some point I decided that tying experience and treasure together was an arbitrary constraint. They were both valuable rewards and it would only add flexibility to separate them, so that financial windfalls and unrewarded heroism could be possible independently.

To make up for the loss of all those xp-for-gp points, I started just awarding large blocks of experience at milestone campaign events. I don't remember now whether I just came up with this idea myself. It might well have been prompted by some suggestion I read somewhere, probably in the old Dragon magazine, but it wasn't a standard option at the time.

That's interesting. For our old AD&D games, the gold-to-XP relationship incentivized attempting to get gold without dying and thus using trickery or cunning over brute force which I think now is more reflective of how nature works. Creatures look for easy meals and avoid injury at almost all cost unless forced. Fighting to the death is unnatural. So when I planned games the gold was what really drove the XP, and killing things was only one way of getting the associated XP for defeating the monsters whose treasure was waiting to be looted.

I have since found in 5e players want to play the game they want to play rather than let the game inform the play, which is either, 1) A video game where they kill, steal, and craft to get power. Or 2) Play out their dramatic social fantasies. Fights are for narrative purposes more than incentives in themselves. And as mentioned upthread, my experience is the folks in the first category tend to end up driving the direction of the game.

Levelling up your character is such a big part of the game that it is always tending to eclipse the storytelling and role-playing aspects. People complain about "munchkinism", where RPG players focus only on powering up their characters, but it's what brings the customers. Given that, though, it's weird how little most RPG campaigns seem to do to explain why and how a small subset of the population is evolving from ordinary teenagers into gods within a few years. It's rare even to have an innkeeper express surprise at how those kids from last year have just slain the Lich King, let alone for anyone to explain how the heck that could happen.

My first 5e campaign had attempted to insert downtime to make this more reasonable. But that proved impossible. The folks with the video game mentality saw downtime as a chance to get even stronger and hated when I suggested the limitations in one of the books be applied. A year to craft a magic item???!!!!! It's A-B, select, Right3 in the other game! And I can do it while walking! So I stopped making downtime available to them, honestly, and began to narratively handwave time. They spend a week journeying to the gnome village, then the action picks back up; they spend a month in the City making contacts and working their way into the social fabric of the trade quarter...stuff like that. I never really found the sweet spot where they were satisfied and I didn't find it turning into their wanting to say if a month passed then they should be x-times more powerful and rich without any game play needed. I honestly think video games make for bad TTRPG players now.

[Physics Guy]

The old rules were even worse about down time: they stipulated "monthly expenses". Player characters had to drop 1000 gold pieces per level per month, supposedly in maintaining a lifestyle commensurate with their experience level.

The idea was to keep the players hungry for loot even as the profits from their adventures rose well above anything they might actually need. It was one thing to tell the players that they couldn't just gain class levels by studying for a month, they had to go and fight monsters. It was another thing to tell them that they couldn't even just save their money for a month. They had to squander it away.

I think I accepted a bankruptcy plea, and didn't make anything especially bad happen if they didn't have enough money to pay the full amount. And at least for the clerics and paladins I argued that they were supporting worthy causes. I tried to tell the wizards that they were spending their money on buying rare tomes and exotic ingredients, but then it was hard to explain why all that expense wasn't bringing them any tangible benefit. With ordinary fighters and thieves I was pretty much reduced to insisting that they were alcoholics or gambling addicts, or something, who could defeat literal demons but were helpless against their own bad habits. I didn't actually say that but it was hard to avoid that interpretation of the monthly expenses rule.

Once I decoupled experience from treasure value, I could also just reduce the group's cash inflow to the point where excess wealth wasn't a narrative problem. Occasionally they did get rich, and sometimes they lost the money all on their own in foolish ventures—or in expenditures on things like an enormous wizard's tower that incurred huge ongoing maintenance costs. That all seemed more natural than those mandatory monthly expenses.

Just letting player wealth follow the campaign plot, instead of trying to control it by rules, did lead to a few exceptional cases. One thief made a huge individual haul from an episode that had him literally digging through giant gems in a dragon's hoard, under the sleeping eye of the dragon, to extract the world-changing artefact that was the goal of a long quest. The extraction was a long, tense series of Pick Pockets attempts to dig down one more layer without alerting the dragon, but the thief was using a magical thief's glove that had a kind of built-in bag of holding—and he kept all the gems he removed. He then somehow made a quick trip to the capital city of a sorcerous empire—it was a high-level group by then and they teleported around a fair bit—where it was already established (alas) that powerful magical items could be bought and sold routinely. He cashed in his gems for some carefully chosen good items; I forget exactly what, but I think one was an artefact sword and another might have been how he got his Belt of Giant Strength, turning him into one seriously badass halfling thief.

I couldn't have let that all happen if I'd been following the original rules—it would have been wildly unfair to the other players, letting him get like ten times as much experience as they did just because he got so much loot that they never knew about. It was a little out of control, even as it was, but that halfling thief was living the dream, and if the possibility of doing that wasn't there, why were we doing this fantasy game?

[Res Ipsa]

I really like the milestone system for XP. Or skip the XP and use milestones as leveling points. I think it makes for better storytelling.

Maybe it's just age or the crowd I play with, but the RPers I play with are story driven rather than character-leveling driven. Several years ago, I played with a group of munchkins. I didn't enjoy it at all.

On another front, I finally DM'd my first RPG. It was a very simple, one page RPG called Adventure Skeletons. It's mostly silly, but the players say they are having fun. That's what counts.

Hey Res,

I ended up downloading the one-page RPG and it looks like it would be a blast. I'm curious if your group are experienced or new to TTRPGs? It seems like it could be fun with either type of group, but that new players would approach it differently from how I think more experienced groups might.

They are all very experienced RPG players. I agree that it would be fun either way, but I'd design something different for the two. I'm planning to do some tweaking of the one that involves smuggling parrots on a commercial flight. I think it would be a riot.

Next Saturday, I'm leading a story game called Dialect. One of the players is a linguist, so it should be interesting.

[honorentheos]

The old rules were even worse about down time: they stipulated "monthly expenses". Player characters had to drop 1000 gold pieces per level per month, supposedly in maintaining a lifestyle commensurate with their experience level.

The idea was to keep the players hungry for loot even as the profits from their adventures rose well above anything they might actually need. It was one thing to tell the players that they couldn't just gain class levels by studying for a month, they had to go and fight monsters. It was another thing to tell them that they couldn't even just save their money for a month. They had to squander it away.

I think I accepted a bankruptcy plea, and didn't make anything especially bad happen if they didn't have enough money to pay the full amount. And at least for the clerics and paladins I argued that they were supporting worthy causes. I tried to tell the wizards that they were spending their money on buying rare tomes and exotic ingredients, but then it was hard to explain why all that expense wasn't bringing them any tangible benefit. With ordinary fighters and thieves I was pretty much reduced to insisting that they were alcoholics or gambling addicts, or something, who could defeat literal demons but were helpless against their own bad habits. I didn't actually say that but it was hard to avoid that interpretation of the monthly expenses rule.

I tried to remember what we did regarding this and honestly don't remember. I don't remember if we ignored it, if we just rolled with it, no idea. We had a period where the group was running a barony with the fighter as the baron and the magic user living their Merlin fantasy as advisor to the baron, but I don't recall if it was for mechanical reasons. I'm getting old I guess.

5e still has lifestyle costs but they are only meaningful at low levels. They have some benefits if used logically in the game but the amount of gold involved is insignificant compared to what mid-level parties find in most games. Funny they haven't figured out how to balance that yet. I understand the 2024 update to the game will include rules for keeps so we'll see. I gave the Coville system a read through and didn't use it because I couldn't see the group I was DMing for at the time finding it interesting.

Anyway, good points and I wish I could remember what we did when it came to upkeep costs...and the fact I can't probably says something about it.

Just letting player wealth follow the campaign plot, instead of trying to control it by rules, did lead to a few exceptional cases. One thief made a huge individual haul from an episode that had him literally digging through giant gems in a dragon's hoard, under the sleeping eye of the dragon, to extract the world-changing artefact that was the goal of a long quest. The extraction was a long, tense series of Pick Pockets attempts to dig down one more layer without alerting the dragon, but the thief was using a magical thief's glove that had a kind of built-in bag of holding—and he kept all the gems he removed. He then somehow made a quick trip to the capital city of a sorcerous empire—it was a high-level group by then and they teleported around a fair bit—where it was already established (alas) that powerful magical items could be bought and sold routinely. He cashed in his gems for some carefully chosen good items; I forget exactly what, but I think one was an artefact sword and another might have been how he got his Belt of Giant Strength, turning him into one seriously badass halfling thief.

Hmm. I guess we always played as a group where shared XP was a necessity. My friend group at the time was too competitive so we had to agree that as long as someone was at the session they got their share of the XP split evenly. That was to discourage the dude who would skip and the whine that he had to miss so he shouldn't have to miss out on XP. I don't know of a comparable situation I experienced to the Bilbo reenactment. Certainly the dwarves wanted their share of the treasure like in the book right?

I couldn't have let that all happen if I'd been following the original rules—it would have been wildly unfair to the other players, letting him get like ten times as much experience as they did just because he got so much loot that they never knew about. It was a little out of control, even as it was, but that halfling thief was living the dream, and if the possibility of doing that wasn't there, why were we doing this fantasy game?

The bigger point is certainly fair. The fantasy of doing cool things, taking big risks, and winning big rewards is really what I think my current players want out of it and justly so. In my return to 5e we briefly tried XP based leveling and before the first session ended it was clear it was going to be an issued when the rogue went, well, rogue and ran off into the market on his own getting into trouble without the rest of the party. And I found the only real solution to these kinds of problems was talking to the players. No in game solution worked no matter what I tried, but finally just telling him and the other dude who was prone to trying to play solo that it was hurting the game so they needed to rethink their motives for doing so did work. Meta-DM is the truly true BBEG I guess.

[honorentheos]

Also, I'm running a solo session for one of the players in this campaign tomorrow, and spent a chunk of the day today prepping for it. He has been unable to play with the group for two full sessions now, but will be rejoining the game next session which is in two weeks. I can't just drop him back in, though, given the circumstances, and so I floated the idea of us running a mini-sesh to make it work more naturally. He liked the idea, and then told me what he was interested in doing. I decided I could make it work. So we'll see how it goes.

He last played in the session before the basilisk was let loose in the market. It had ended just after the party had staked out the building where their old friends the the jackalweres from the first few sessions had shown back up in this new city. The party had decided they wanted to go investigate the building in the middle of the night, did so, and then went back to the tavern inn to sleep and decide what they would do in the morning. The last session he was in ended with the party at breakfast discussing if they should go confront the Jessels or investigate the traveling potion seller instead. At the next session without this player, they decided to investigate the potion seller, The player who missed the session had wanted to investigate the jackalweres. So we decided it would work for him to have slipped away from the party and go do so on his own which we will play out tomorrow. Then if it works out and he doesn't die, it gives him a chance to return to the tavern they were at where he can be told where the rest of the group is and how to join them in the pocket dimension. Or not. We'll see. But either way I think it will be interesting to DM for him solo. I'll let you know how it goes.

Said I would return and report and here I am.

It turned out to be pretty fun. He had me worried at first when he immediately suggested a shopping trip, but we quickly handwaved that to a mechanical exchange and then we were into the streets. That's where I introduced him to Reytha and he told me after he really enjoyed her being someone with a tie to his backstory. Said it was a cool surprise. His strategy to the Jessel encounter was epic, actually. He walked in acting like it was the old place and he had been there a thousand times, tossed some money at the front desk and went in under that pretense in order to actually scout out the place. Then he dropped the facade and managed to parlay with the jackalweres to the point they all gathered to engage with him. I wasn't sure how that was going to go since it looked like he had put himself in the middle of the worst possible odds. But then the roleplay went well and the results were he promised to help them get the gold needed to resurrect their lamia leader, tied to the promise he would take out the Purevault Grinning Sinners within the month knowing that if he doesn't his soul stealing blade will turn on him. He also found out some information regarding Lady Miessa including where she lives and a hand drawn somewhat reliable interior map. And they have an understanding that the pack had turned on her when they did so, so if she came inquiring about it before any raid on her compound occurred then the pack would have to tell her they had been attacked and barely escaped with their lives. Turns out Korvala is true neutral evil and he found her deepest motivation.

Anyway, he found his way back to the Stoa as the guards were questioning folks outside, slipped in the back and got caught up by Juomo as best as he could, then he went into the pocket dimension where he found himself at the threshold of the cemetery grounds that make up its interior space as zombies were emerging out of the ground and the tabaxi wight gleefully welcomed the new plaything to the necropolis.

So now the party is all lined up for next session with the rest of the party down in one of the tombs dealing with the aspect of Lolth while he is above ground facing the undead hordes that have turned to serve her rather than Preston. Seems like a great place to pick up the next session, knock on wood.

[honorentheos]

I couldn't have let that all happen if I'd been following the original rules—it would have been wildly unfair to the other players, letting him get like ten times as much experience as they did just because he got so much loot that they never knew about. It was a little out of control, even as it was, but that halfling thief was living the dream, and if the possibility of doing that wasn't there, why were we doing this fantasy game?

I've rethought this and now I think it explains why Bilbo survived the battle of the five armies while half the more prepared dwarves did not. He had leveled up multiple levels from the Smaug and Gollum encounters that they had missed out on while only fighting measly goblins with the help of a disguised celestial DMPC magic user to aid them. Soloing an encounter with an ancient red dragon and looting an artifact at the level of the One True Ring of Power? No wonder he was god-tier by the end of the Hobbit and spent the rest of the books doing whatever he wanted until he went off to elf heaven...I mean, his being a retired top level character is the real, best explanation for him, Galadriel and Elrond sitting out the world ending events at the gates of Mordor. How much more D&D can a story get than that?

[Physics Guy]

Heh, that's true.

You can't think too much about The Lord of the Rings. Giant eagles can carry hobbits, so why don't they just dive-bomb the ring into Mount Doom? It might not exactly be a sure bet, with flying Nazgûl around, but it seems better than the "simply walk into Mordor" plan that they follow.

[Xenophon]

I'm curious how the campaign is going / went? Did you manage to get though the game without reloading a save point?

I apologize for taking so long to get back to this, I'd like to say I have a good excuse but sometimes life is just a jerk.

Ultimately that campaign died due to a bit of trolling from a member of our team coupled with a misunderstanding of the fight mechanic behind the act 2 final boss. Still trying to avoid spoilers, there appeared to be an interaction that needed to be completed before the boss could actually be killed, the party member tasked with investigating it somehow missed the interaction (I'm fairly perplexed on this one, as when we finally made it back I was the one to check and it was really obvious what to do ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ). Resulting in a party wipe and a reset to the beginning.

Interestingly enough, Larian actually created a game mode that closely replicated the ruleset we were self imposing called Honour Mode and that felt nice knowing enough players were interested in the challenge (read as "psycho") to put a little development behind it.

Life got in the way for 2 of the party members and so ultimately we completed our Honour Mode run with only us 2 remaining. That run had me on a tried and true Oath of the Ancients Paladin/Fighter multi-class (just enough fighter to get me the extra actions) and my friend on a College of Lore Bard. As we were now a party of 2 we could sub in various NPCs to fill the niches we needed and honestly that made the challenge significantly easier, although still not a walk in the park.

Going back and re-reading some of my thoughts on BG3 I think I'm still about where I was. Arguably one of (if not the) best CRPGs I've ever had the privilege to play. The gameplay can be as simple or challenging as you allow it to be and the story-telling is simply masterful. I'm deeply impressed with how "open" the mechanics can feel despite having the limitations of your DM being caged by the limitations of programming. In a world of fairly terrible and greedy game development it was really nice to get to experience something that was so clearly a labor of love for Larian.

That said, I'm still not convinced in how easily you could translate a playthrough to a true tabletop experience. I suspect the real value here will just be in helping players understand how/when they should interact with the world around them but much less valuable in teaching rulesets. In many ways it would be akin to watching very experienced players in their own session. It has value as you can get a feel for how things flow and what parts you can play but there is ultimately no substitution for rolling the dice yourself and learning to explore the human elements of DM interaction.

[honorentheos]

I'm curious how the campaign is going / went? Did you manage to get though the game without reloading a save point?

I apologize for taking so long to get back to this, I'd like to say I have a good excuse but sometimes life is just a jerk.

Ultimately that campaign died due to a bit of trolling from a member of our team coupled with a misunderstanding of the fight mechanic behind the act 2 final boss. Still trying to avoid spoilers, there appeared to be an interaction that needed to be completed before the boss could actually be killed, the party member tasked with investigating it somehow missed the interaction (I'm fairly perplexed on this one, as when we finally made it back I was the one to check and it was really obvious what to do ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ). Resulting in a party wipe and a reset to the beginning.

Interestingly enough, Larian actually created a game mode that closely replicated the ruleset we were self imposing called Honour Mode and that felt nice knowing enough players were interested in the challenge (read as "psycho") to put a little development behind it.

Life got in the way for 2 of the party members and so ultimately we completed our Honour Mode run with only us 2 remaining. That run had me on a tried and true Oath of the Ancients Paladin/Fighter multi-class (just enough fighter to get me the extra actions) and my friend on a College of Lore Bard. As we were now a party of 2 we could sub in various NPCs to fill the niches we needed and honestly that made the challenge significantly easier, although still not a walk in the park.

Going back and re-reading some of my thoughts on BG3 I think I'm still about where I was. Arguably one of (if not the) best CRPGs I've ever had the privilege to play. The gameplay can be as simple or challenging as you allow it to be and the story-telling is simply masterful. I'm deeply impressed with how "open" the mechanics can feel despite having the limitations of your DM being caged by the limitations of programming. In a world of fairly terrible and greedy game development it was really nice to get to experience something that was so clearly a labor of love for Larian.

That said, I'm still not convinced in how easily you could translate a playthrough to a true tabletop experience. I suspect the real value here will just be in helping players understand how/when they should interact with the world around them but much less valuable in teaching rulesets. In many ways it would be akin to watching very experienced players in their own session. It has value as you can get a feel for how things flow and what parts you can play but there is ultimately no substitution for rolling the dice yourself and learning to explore the human elements of DM interaction.

Hey xeno, good to hear from you.

I mentioned up thread I have a new player in our work campaign who had no D&D experience but is fun to have in the game. His only experience was having played BG3 and listened to an actual play. That seems to have given him an intro to the mechanics and a sense of how to rp. And it's been a good base to build from. So I think I see what you mean about it giving someone a feel for the game. But also seeing where he needs guided, too.