Incentivizing Good Gaming or Ripping off a Cool Idea

I recently read a blog post by David Rollins, that can be found here: https://searching-for-magic-blog.blogspot.com/2024/12/new-experience-in-d-clones-breaking-old.html.

It is a great read that talks about different strategies used by two recent RPGs, Dragonbane and Forbidden Lands, to incentivize players to collaborate with the story telling of the game. The idea is that we should award experience, XP, or whatever advancement currency is used in the game, based on the sort of behaviors we want to see from the players, rather than simply killing and looting.

This is not a new idea. About twenty years ago I ran a few short d20 games and at the start of each session the players and I would agree on the session’s goals and what the XP reward for achieving each goal would be. It would be something like:

    Make friendly contact with Faction X: 300 XP.

    Get enough money to save the orphanage: 200 XP

    Publicly embarrass rival group: 150 XP.

And then, when things were working correctly, each PC also had their own goal for the day on top of the group ones.

It kind of worked. It took time and required the group to have something approaching consensus on what they wanted to achieve.

What I want to do here is rip off the ideas that Rollins was writing about and apply them to the Experience Roll system in modern d100 games like Mythras, Legend, and Rubble and Ruin. In these games characters are awarded 1 to 5 Experience Rolls which are the currency of character advancement. They are used to improve skills, but new spells and abilities, and the like.

I would love to know how my system works for you. Would you change anything? Did I forget something obvious? Let me know in the comments.

Here are the guidelines I intend to use.

Gaining Experience

At the end of an adventure, player characters are awarded between 1 to 5 Exp Rolls, as per usual. Characters gain +1 Exp Roll for each category which is true for their character in the adventure.

1. Showing up: +1 Exp Roll. Did the character show up and participate in the game?

2. Play in Character: +1 Exp Roll. For Mythras, Rubble and Ruin, and games with a formal system of Passions. Did you play to your character's Passions? Do the people at the table agree that the actions of the character align with their stated passions? For systems without formal Passions, like Legend, did you play in character?

3. Engaging with the World: +1 Exp Roll. Did the character participate in the core actions of the game? Did they find treasure, salvage Old Tech, explore a new area, discover a lost secret, or similar advancements? This can be for the whole party, e.g. “Everybody traveled to the new town and found a place to stay.” Or, frequently, for the individual character. “Bob the Wizard found the lost scroll of Jarlow Tusk which he still needs to study,” or “Peri the Engineer fixed a salvaged pump and upgraded the group’s water supply.” The latter example has the character being consistent with their core behaviors rather than achieving a specific goal. They changed the world while being in character.

4. Advance the Story: +1 Exp Roll. Did the character take actions that advance the shared story? Did they make progress towards a goal? Did they help overcome some obstacle or defeat a monster or dangerous enemy? Did they make an alliance, expose a concealed threat or enemy, or develop a creative solution to a problem?

5. Above and Beyond: +1 Exp Roll. Was this adventure larger than usual? Made it all the way to the volcano and throw the ring in! Survived the dramatic clash of five armies! Big things. Or, during typical adventures did the individual character do something spectacular? Exceptional roleplaying; An absurdly cleaver idea at a critical moment; that sort of thing.