Rant spoiler-ed below, because its mostly just complaining, but it feels like a lot of games lately have added ‘gamified xp’ to their systems, and I don’t understand the appeal at all. The most positive any player I’ve talked to has felt about the systems are ‘meh, I could take it or leave it’, with most slightly disliking them.
So, mostly, I’m looking for people that like these kinds of mechanics (I have to assume they’re out there if so many games feel like they’re adding them), and what you is it you like about them.
But I feel like Milestone XP just makes the most sense for any traditional coop party RPG.
rant
I like trying out a bunch of different systems, and there’s a lot to like, especially with a lot of the smaller games out there. I do like there ‘narrative’ approach ttrpgs feel like they’ve been taking recently, but between Chronicles of Darkness, ICON, Forged in the Dark, Apocalypse world, etc., and all there spinoff systems all having XP be earned for specific actions in game, its just a pain in the ass, that takes me out of the action.
I mostly GM, but I strongly prefer milestone XP. For some of the above games, its easy enough to gut their bespoke XP systems out of it, and just have players advance over time, but in several of them, it fucks with the overall balance, since several actions are ‘bad’, but made worthwhile because they earn XP.
But I don’t like the feeling of interrupting game to award point, and adjudicate character advancement. And I hate systems that have players advance unevenly. There’s always going to be a certain degree on uneven-ness in player attention, of rules mastery, and of spotlighting. As GM, its important to manage those so that everyone gets a chance to shine. But it just feels like increasing that workload for the GM, to need to additionally pay attention to the XP, and try to drag or XP share the players that don’t find those systems engaging to not mechanically fall behind.
And as a player, I tend to have higher system mastery and attention than the others I play with, and tbh it feels bad to end up with more XP because of that. But also, it feels bad to knowingly pass up free XP by purposefully not engaging with those systems.
Really, only Call of Cthulhu and Paranoia feel like their gamified XP fits, and that’s largely because the games are supposed to feel hopeless and unfair, and in the case of Paranoia, gamified and playing favorites.
Depends on the gamification tbh. In my dungeon-crawly games, I gave PCs XP for bringing loot back to town, killing things, and roleplaying according to their traits. All of this except RP are evenly distributed, but RP XP are capped at one instance per session, typically easy to do, and push action forward. Stuff like “my Curious character goes and pulls that suspicious lever because it gets me XP”.
In my current cyberpunk game I’m just giving them flat XP per successful mission with a bonus +1 to a player-elected MVP.
Honestly the biggest issue with uneven advancement in my games is that some players just won’t spend points or buy things. Our big gun shootman and our getaway driver still have their (absolute fucking garbage) starting pistols because they just don’t ever think of getting a new one even though it’s easily affordable and they’ve gone shopping for other stuff before.