Yesterday I tweeted this thread about streamling the XP = GP system of classic dungeoncrawling games.

In thinking about it I realized I might need to place some more groundwork about Experience and Leveling mechanics.
1/ https://twitter.com/DistemperedGus/status/1264202315818430465

My belief is that Experience and Level advancement serve a couple of basic purposes. A) Reward B) Content Gating.

2/

People playing games like feeling like they have won, our brain loves a little reward and a sense of having overcome challenge. This is why your bank has a nice splash screen when you deposit cash.

3/

In TTRPG contexts this is especially important with campaign based play. Classic games especially have implied win conditions of building power and wealth as a reward for successful play. This may be a big distinction with story games - where genre emulation offers a meta-win.
4/

ASIDE: By meta-win, I mean a since of success associated with emulating the structure of the chosen fictional genre. If everyone dies to madness and betrayal in a Trophy Dark game this is a win. You told the story right, understood the cues and beats - how is the creative dun.
5/

I think that's what's going on at least, not my forte really, but I do notice that this would favor one-shots over campaigns. Classic play though loves campaigns... sort of...

6/

AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide for example presents the campaign as the basic and preferred style of play ... but ... even before it was released the D&D tournament had spawned a series of adventures and rules. Tomb of Horrors for example.
7/

ToH is often held up as an exemplar of why classic games are bad, or weird, but it's intentionally a one-shot, a D&D contest where progress through it using pre-generated character by multiple teams is supposed to be both consistent and create winners and losers.
8/

Obviously how far one makes it past the Demiliches tricks and traps can be fun, but the reward is not intrinsic to play, and the amount of XP gathered is meaningless for the surviving pregenerated characters.
9/

There was a whole series of these tournament modules. They had weird scoring systems by the end ("5-pts for casting invisibility on the halfling" is a memorable one) and persist, sort of, in D&D's Adventurers' League.

10/

Tournament modules, one shots and genre emulation aside - all of which show ways of providing reward without leveling or experience mechanics - how does leveling work and how does it impact mechanics?

11/

If leveling is reward to players a big design question that follows is what sort of play should experience reward? For example: editions of D&D where experience is derived from combat only seem to focus more heavily on combat.

12/

I'm not sure how this happened. It could have been simulationist (My PC should become more experienced at fight by ... fighting!)? It might be Proceduralist (Our game is mostly fighting, so I will reward it with more XP!)...
13/

It might even be intentional (4E is a fighting game, we must revamp the reward system to emphasize that!). This last is interesting, because to bother with intentional design you have to believe that reward mechanics work.
14/

I do think Experience Systems and Leveling direct players towards specific kinds of play. The risk (or accidental genuis) though is directing them to the wrong things...
15/

For example: A sometime critique of Gold for XP is that players figure out how to invest in businesses, making passive income and the game quickly becomes about trade deals and franchise agreements- a business ttrpg withou supporting mechanics.
16/

This is generally resolved by limiting XP reward to "gold recovered from or as a result of adventures". It works pretty well to encourage treasure hunting. You certainly wouldn't want to use it in a game about winning tactical combats though.
17/

So the goal of an intentionally designed XP system is rewarding the in game activities you want as the locus of play. The risks are unintended emphasis (the Franchises & Fiduciaries problem) and too narrow a focus.
18/

If you make your XP only for slaying dragons to set a heroic tone this might not be that bad. Still you're going to have trouble getting player buy in for saving princesses or slaying ogres and your game is likely to feel more fantasy big game hunter the chivilrous knights.
19/

So that pretty much introduces the concerns around managing the reward aspect of Experience and Leveling, leaving (B) the Content Gating function ... I think for tomorrow.
20/