|
|
Post by Tesla Ranger on Jun 15, 2015 17:32:53 GMT
Disclaimer: I'm not sure if this is the "most correct" board for this sort of thing but it was my best guess.
I've been playing with the same group for long enough to know them fairly well (about 2.5 years) and while 2 of the players RP at the drop of the hat the other two need a little more provocation. In 5e DMG terms I have an Actor-Explorer, Actor-Problem Solver, Optimizer, and Fighter. The latter two have a lot of fun with RP but I don't think they feel very confident about it so they just need a little nudge most of the time.
To give them that nudge in our new campaign I've house ruled how XP is being dealt out. I cut the usual "you killed something" mob xp in half and then anytime they did something worthy of Inspiration (which I'm fairly liberal with) I gave them an allotment of "RP XP." I made a point of pointing out that RP XP would be applied to the entire party (rather than the one player RPing) and, unlike mob xp, was not divided by the number of players in the party. That was partly to simplify the math but also to keep things balanced within the party.
In our first session this worked a little two well. I was giving 5% of the xp they needed to level for each mark of RP XP and they wound up doing so much RP that they'd earned 75% of their level just from that. I've since revised the formula a bit so that it looks like this:
Instead of using a percentage of the XP needed to level, I've set it to a static amount (25) and I figure that amount will double every 5 levels. So when they reach level 6 they'll earn 50, at level 11 they'll earn 100, etc. I suspect there's still some tweaking that could be done but so far this system seems to work extremely well for our group and it rewards more than just bashing the goblins in the head with sufficient brutality. I figured it could maybe be handy for other DMs out there looking to get more RP & giggles going around the table.
|
|
Skedrix
Squire
Posts: 40 
Favorite D&D Class: Runepriest
Favorite D&D Race: Warforged
|
Post by Skedrix on Jun 15, 2015 21:26:09 GMT
That's an interesting method. The FLGS (friendly local game shop) that I first started playing public games of D&D in actually had a similar setup for their house games to encourage role play, and it worked pretty well. Another method that I've heard of was Bawylie's Deck of Many Deeds: a random draw deck designed around the "Pillars of Play" concept codified in D&D 5th Edition. You draw a set of cards that has certain tasks that you must complete in order to gain experience. The deck is a standard 52-card deck, plus jokers, with each suit dedicated to a pillar: Combat, Social Interaction, Exploration, and Bawylie's addition, Character Growth. Now, I haven't actually used the Deck of Many Deeds, so I can't personally attest to how effective that method is. But I found it interesting, and I've been thinking of discussing it with my group for use in our next campaign, and then combine that with the variant rule "Training to Gain Levels" in the Downtime Activities section of the 5th Edition DMG (page 131 in the first printing). My hope is that by combining these things, the party will encourage each other to role play, since they probably won't want to spend the downtime training unless all of them are ready to level. |
|
|
|
Post by friartook on Jun 15, 2015 21:57:13 GMT
Another method that I've heard of was Bawylie's Deck of Many Deeds: a random draw deck designed around the "Pillars of Play" concept codified in D&D 5th Edition. You draw a set of cards that has certain tasks that you must complete in order to gain experience. The deck is a standard 52-card deck, plus jokers, with each suit dedicated to a pillar: Combat, Social Interaction, Exploration, and Bawylie's addition, Character Growth. That deck looks really cool. I wish I had had that at the start of my campaign. All my guys were newbies and had never roleplayed. That would have helped immensely. Not much use to me now, as they have gotten on board with RP and I have done away with XP rewards, but I downloaded the deck for a possible future campaign. Thanks for posting it! |
|
|
|
Post by Tesla Ranger on Jun 15, 2015 22:46:52 GMT
That sounds a little bit like the Deck of Many Things (DMG162) but in meatspace. One of my players has a deck of all the spells available to his 5e Ranger but that's mostly for reference.
I'd imagine different DMs have tackled this issue with different solutions. The trick for me, at least in this case, has been getting the math to balance out. That took a fair bit of spreadsheet juggling but I'm pretty sure it's about where I want it now.
|
|
Lekai
Commoner
Posts: 20
Favorite D&D Class: Rogue
Favorite D&D Race: Human
|
Post by Lekai on Jun 15, 2015 22:52:43 GMT
Super cool deck. On the link in the article - even better. I think this seriously merits an in depth discussion of how to actually build out a system that allows fair XP earning, and allows for more than combat-centric characters, which lead to metagaming and what's worse - cases where any "interesting" character is always going to be screwed. On that note, perhaps this even warrants a discussion on progress paths. It doesn't make a load of sense to have a character level up from talking to NPCs and becoming influential in the world, and with that level gain a new way to kill something in combat due to the nature of the default class progression. Article mentioned: www.madadventurers.com/angry-rants-lazy-dms-and-non-experience-systems/ |
|
Samuel Wise
Demigod
Ready to Help...
Posts: 989
Favorite D&D Class: Warlock
Favorite D&D Race: Mousefolk
|
Post by Samuel Wise on Jun 16, 2015 1:20:36 GMT
Ouch. That hurt. But, then again, I go into this with a more "acting" mindset, then most. (Side Note: I don't expect my players to go into a game with this mindset). |
|
|
|
Post by joatmoniac on Jun 16, 2015 2:20:09 GMT
The Angry DMs style takes some getting used to as he is that way with both sides of the topic every time. He brings up a good point in that completely removing XP runs the risk of removing incentives for some players, especially those with deep video game experience. For my current group I have the XP needed for the ne,t level lumped together (i.e. xp needed*number of players) so once that larger number is hit then they will bump up a level. Given that they are in a super dungeon my plan is also to have them go back to town to level up, then again if they REALLY want to sleep in the dungeon to level that's fine too ... muwahahaha! I like the cards as well, but fear what Lekai mentioned in that a player talks his way to 3rd level spells and casting lightning bolts. That could be worked around by saying you need x each type and the rest can be whatever the player chooses.
|
|
|
|
Post by Tesla Ranger on Jun 16, 2015 4:02:49 GMT
I'm feeling more and more sure that having more than one source of XP is a good thing. If the party and DM were into the old "Social Combat" notion I could certainly see PCs leveling up from RP alone. That sort of thing seems more Vampire: The Masquerade than D&D though. I think I'm happy with a mix of the two.
Taken that way I'm not so sure there's any particular reason why you'd only have RP and Combat XP. You could toss in Crafting, Exploration, Research, etc sorts of RP if it worked with that particular group.
|
|
Lekai
Commoner
Posts: 20
Favorite D&D Class: Rogue
Favorite D&D Race: Human
|
Post by Lekai on Jun 16, 2015 19:38:20 GMT
I'd be interested in seeing a module that allows for different types of leveling based on the experience earned, or even breaks apart the core notion of classes and their advancement to a more archetypical / specialization / sub spec + job based on the type of activities they excel at.
For example if you were to boil it down to archtype in a similar way as the deck, you could have say: Intellectual, Martial, Stealth and Diplomacy roles with a division in magic / non magical, combat / non-combat and then a further sub-spec later on, then add in background and job(class) and you'd have a pretty good template for something closer-to-life in terms of character progression.
Let's say you'd start with a martial combat centric pit-fighter with the outlander background named Blurn. Blurn would be pretty good at untrained fighting, scrappy weapons like clubs, daggers, grappling, slings, etc - but wouldn't be great at weaponry that required training or even battlefield tactics. But then say Blurn spends a level gaining diplomacy and intellectual type exp - he would gain feats that might train him a bit more in commander-type roles for martial warfare and potentially a bit of military-esque diplomacy. However as he progressed in non-combat roles, he might lose his edge a bit and not be as proficient in actual fighting than a character who had leveled up almost entirely from slaying monsters or acting as a bounty-hunter.
In that sort system the type of activities you took on would be what your party became adept at dealing with, and could still allow for the DM to throw lower-level CR scenarios with a development tree that those characters were not proficient in to allow for scaling encounter difficulty. Blurn might be able to muster the leadership eventually to bring a bunch of brigands together and start pillaging towns but might be totally blindsided by the potential of a few lone mages or a cursed artifact - even if the mages weren't particularly high level.
Maybe Blurn eventually made his way to court, but coming from the background he grew out of - wouldn't be accustomed to the culture of the courts and could eventually meet his end with some cloak and dagger diplomacy, the same sort of danger that a Tyrion-esque character might be incredibly adept at dealing with.
I dunno, just a thought.
|
|
