Further thoughts on Experience Gain in a megadungeon campaign

 Consider this a sort of part 2 to this previous post. After reading through some articles regarding alternate experience gain methods in the context of OSR play (notably this one from Ben L.) as well as the comments under said articles, it got me thinking of a potential alternative approach.

Now, to be clear, as with the previous post, experience for treasure recovered is good, fine and works great. However, I can't help myself when it comes to tinkering of this sort, so please indulge me on this one.

First off, an important piece of context - I am thinking of this solely in relating to an open table megadungeon-focused campaign. For broader sandbox play, this might not work great (almost certainly won't in fact) and for a consistent player group it is meaningless, and you might as well use modern day milestones where you just get experience because the GM decided to give you some. So keep that in mind.

The basic setup is this: For every session in which the party has delved into the megadungeon, each character participating in that delve gets N experience points. 

Yeah yeah, xp for just participating, boo boo the man. But let us actually think about this. XP for GP is good because it presents a simple, clear and transparent framework for character advancement tied directly to playing the game. You play the game, you go in the dungeon, you find treasure, you get exp.  The function of XP for GP is to give players a direction at least initially on what to do in the campaign - go find you some treasure! You get experience for, in short, playing the game! (The game, in this case, being location-based exploration, a.k.a. dungeon crawling) 

So the thing above simply cuts out the middle man. You get experience for going into the dungeon and not dying. The amount is simply decoupled from the treasure you returned with or the enemies you defeated or the McGuffins you diddled or whatever other scheme. The more you play, and the more consistent you are in being part of the game, the more experience your character will get, while also risking more opportunities for that character to die.....oh wait, that's just what getting experience for treasure and monsters already does!

Discussing this general concept both on Discord (hello!) and with my partner also helped me crystalize some of the questions, issues and solutions this brings.

1. This is not experience for "just showing up". 

You only get experience for a session in which the party actually went adventuring into the dungeon, thus exposing themselves to the risk of character death. Sessions set during downtime or focused on the town do not give XP, just like they don't under XP for GP

2. This method flattens out the ups and downs of treasure based xp gain.

An aspect of XP for GP is that it is basically never consistent. In some sessions the party pulls nothing out of the dungeon, in others they hit a motherload and get a ton of xp in one chunk. This method flattens that out to an even number. This is not necessarily better or worse, just different. Missing a session (which should not be too punishing in an open table campaign) in which the party found a ton of treasure now doesn't seriously kneecap your character's XP growth. However you still don't get to have any of that actual money for the treasure, so there is still some consequence, just not as sever one in xp.

3. This should not invalidate gathering treasure and resource management.

Finding treasure will likely still be the focus for most of the player character. After all, you have living expenses, or maybe the characters want to make items, scrolls, research magic, build a base of operations, help the community, do any of that fabled Domain Game stuff. Well that stuff still costs money (it makes the world go round!) and the reckless endangerment to oneself for the possibility of finding more money than a peasant will ever see in their life is still present. Just that that aspect is now no longer tied directly to experience gain and level progression is all.

This means that balancing the party's finances, figuring out hiring retainers, figuring out how to haul expensive but problematic items out of the dungeon, all of that stuff is still present. It just does not affect your xp. That's all.

4. Number go up!!

Look, people like it when numbers go up. That is a fact of life and a fact of gaming. The reasons behind it are deep, numerous and way beyond my artist-level brain can comprehend fully. But people like it when number go up. Well this makes it so number goes up, while also avoiding some of the previously discussed relations to treasure. 

Pictured: Every D&D player.

5. Motivation for play is not related to specific in-game activity.

This one is, again, not inherently a better or worse thing, just a different thing. People have observed in plenty of blogposts, that XP for GP being your primary way of leveling up (a thing you want to do in D&D, because that's what you do in D&D) leads logically to specific types of motivations and actions. Picaresque tales of rogues and other adventurer types, focus on hauling everything not nailed down (and prying the stuff that is) and so on. That is loads of fun, of course! 

However in this case this allows me to simply take a bit more of a meta look at the situation. The thing that I want people to do, is to play in my megadungeon campaign. The whys and hows of the motivations of their PCs then don't entirely matter to me when it comes to that goal. Your character can have whatever possible reason you can think of to venture into the dungeon - that is fine by me. What I want from you is that you go into the dungeon. This, again, cuts out the middleman and simply gets to the point. We are playing a game. Let's play that game.

6. This does not preclude other methods of earning experience.

Just because you get a steady flow of the Good Stuff for every session you shove your PC in the megadungeon, doesn't mean there can't or won't be other methods to earn XP. Specific objectives, quests, goals whatever you want to call them, that can give a higher (but one-off) experience to the party. This still keeps the relation between risk and experience gain. Every time you go in the megadungeon there is a background noise level of risk to your character, so you get an appropriate amount of experience. When you go do something particularly risky you get more experience. This still maps to how older D&D functions - more powerful enemies give more experience, because they are riskier to deal with. 

7. It makes it a bit less of a headache to figure out the campaign's pacing.

A question that always comes when making a dungeon is "how much treasure do I put in here?" Because that question ultimately is "how much experience do I want the PCs to earn from this?". And we know that that is what it means, because it is straight up stated in so many words in B/X. So again, why not simply address it directly. 

I still need to figure out how much treasure certain parts of the megadungeon should have, but now the treasure can be a lot more interesting, weird and maybe not as expensive. And I don't have to calculate it based on party numbers and levels etc. No, everyone just gets some experience for delving into the murderhole.

Of course, this still leaves the question - okay, so how much is N in that sentence up there on top? Well, I don't know. If we make it, say, 100, that means that a level 1 Fighter will need 20 sessions to get to level 2. That is probably slower than it is reasonable for most people in our day and age. However, I also don't want it to be too high and get to a point where I have been with my other campaigns, of character levels outpacing my capacity as a referee to figure out what to do with the game.

So I also had an interesting idea on how to help with the pacing. Let's use that 100 xp for our example. From level 1 to, say, level 5 your character gets 100 xp per delve. However from level 5 to, say, level 7 they now only earn 75. Or 50. progress slows down, without me needing to still shovel kingly sums of money at the party just to even get that much. So okay, you get to level 7. Well from here on out, you get 25 exp per delve. The game slows even further, it stretches out. However that is fine, as the stretching out happens in what most people consider the "sweet spot" for a lot of D&D, old or new. So getting a character to level 9 or 10 is still a challenge and an actual achievement. 

This is hardly original - Empire of the Petal Throne famous does that too. This method also means that, due to this being an open table, a brand new character joining a higher level party into the dungeon can catch up relatively fast to them, as they will simply gain more experience. 

I know the OSR has had this weird obsession with low level play (and low level play has plenty of charms in it too), and I know the reactionary contingent (or as they are better called - living shitstains) have kind of monopolized the interest in higher level play, but....it doesn't have to be that way you know? Levels 3 to ~5 or 7 is fun. Magic-Users get fireball, Fighters can still dish out damage, but can take a few more hits, Thieves become barely competent (barely), etc. Also at that point the players have usually figured out for themselves what it is they want out of the campaign and can pursue their own goals and have most of the tools to do so. 

Again, all these numbers will need a lot of tweaking. But that can happen as play happens. It is the easiest part of designing systems, and the hardest at the same time. But RPGs are much more forgiving than, say, board games or card games, when it comes to number tweaking. 

So, that is where I have this idea developed so far. The more I think about it, the more I seem to convince myself it has legs, so I might end up going with it at least initially. And if it doesn't work, or feels lame or flat? Guess what, it's my fucking campaign I can just go back to XP for GP and it won't really matter! 

Brainstorming - Experience Gain in a megadungeon campaign.

((Edit: You can find a sort of Part 2 to this here.))

This is going to be a much much looser post than I usually do, as I am going to use this to go through a brainstorming process regarding, well, experience gain in the context of a megadungeon-focused campaign.

I am planning on my next in-person game that I organize to be in my Greylands world, and focus on megadungeon exploration. My goal is to not use a published one, but actually work on creating the tools and procedures to create, stock, restock and run my own megadungeon. 

As part of this process I am also going to be doing a whole bunch of rewrites of the OSE house rules I used for my previous and current Greylands games. Stuff like how encumbrance works, tweaks to armor and armor class, maybe use a different magic system than the standard B/X spell list (but also not just use W&W again, I tried that already), the list goes on. 

One of the things on my mind in that vein is experience gain. I am definitely not the first( nor will I be the last) person to observe that with the amounts required to level up in B/X and with the consideration that 75 to 90% of that experience comes from recovering treasure, the amount of money the party builds up after 1-2 levels is just absurd to the point of rendering it meaningless. Things like carousing, training and conspicuous consumption are ways the OSR has dealt with this conundrum.

My thought was to keep the 1 moneys worth of treasure = 1 experience point (probably not gp, I want to move to silver in the Greylands setting, with gold coins essentially being an alternate resource you need for certain services or items),  but slash all the numbers involved by 10. So a Fighter now needs 200 experience points to get to level 2, but also the treasure is slashed by 10 as well. This way money does not become as useless as fast. 

But I have also had another thought - is money for exp actually the way I want to handle experience gain and advancement in this game? After all, there are many other ways to gain levels in an OSR game. While I have been sticking to money for exp so far in my campaigns, I have been thinking what else could I do.

First off, I want to make sure I stick to goal-focused experience gain. What does and what doesn't give experience needs to be clearly defined and written out so that players at any point know exactly what action will or will not garner them experience, and how much if it does. To me this is a non-negotiable aspect of the process. 

However, as you can see from the links above, there are plenty of other goals. I also did some of that in my BSSS campaign when the players stormed the gatehouse. That worked fine for a single very focused mission, but for a megadungeon? A location you are supposed to revisit again and again and again during a campaign? I dunno.

Money and treasure are still going to be important - after all resources get expended and need replacing, hirelings need to be paid, food and shelter must be secured and so on. 

Another option I have considered is one I've heard of or seen mentioned in passing used in other games - experience for exploration. Be it every hex or point on a map, or perhaps every room or floor or section of a megadungeon? That could work! This provides a good and clear goal, however it is a tad wishy washy. After all, what counts as "exploring" a room? If a room has a secret door and a treasure, do the players get experience for finding either or only if they find both? If the latter, wouldn't that just lead to overly slow and boring gameplay? Methodical exploration is cool and all, but it still needs to be enjoyable, this is a game after all.

I have had it suggested to me (on discord, I think?) that maybe instead the party gets experience for each room they visit, but it starts low and grows from there. So the first, say, 2 rooms give nothing. The third gives 10 exp. The fourth 20, the fifth 30, the sixth 40, etc. But once the party leave the dungeon, the count is reset. This in turn I think would incentivize riskier delves into the dungeon, trying to cover as much ground as possible, but it might lead to ignoring a lot of the actual dungeon that's around. It does provide a clearer goal than the previous exploration method though!

Yet another option - zones cleared and secured. The megadungeon in my game is (at least as of time of writing) going to be of the supernatural incursion type. A common trope, sure, but one that I enjoy, the dungeon as an alien thing intruding upon reality.  I hope to have thematic sections in my megadungeon, since those are always fun, and I figure each section would be between 5 and maybe 10-12 rooms each, and so securing that section, clearing it of monsters and making sure they can't really reestablish a foothold in it can provide a big and solid chunk towards leveling. 

That works, but...again - the goal is vague and ultimately depends on my fiat as a referee to declare when a section is or is "cleared". I don't like that. Plus, this means that I can't simply restock and refill and rearrange things in the megadungeon, as that would negate the progress of the PCs. 

A separate question to ponder - experience for killing enemies. A possibility, though one I don't really plan on entertaining too much. It turns a lot of gameplay into a near constant combat, and I have written a few words about my opinion on combat in dungeon crawling games.

What else then...perhaps each level of the dungeon has a certain number of special elements - idols, objects, altars, weird alien dungeon organs, winged monkeys whatever, that if destroyed will both help weaken that level (or sector?) of the dungeon and provide experience, and most importantly - will not return even during restocking. A bit better in terms of goals, as it provides a clear and non-ambiguous object and interaction with that object (loot, destroy, desecrate, whatever).

These can also be different - perhaps the underground garden's experience can be gained only if you find and cut out the central root core of the trees in it. But in order to get the experience for the halls of marbled salt you need to destroy the crystal that spawns the salt golems? That could be interesting and provide me with potential ways to make the dungeon fresh for the players.

Another issue entirely is that of numbers. Even if I just stick with money for exp, how much treasure do I put in the dungeon? That's a huge question and one who's answer can have major repercussions about the campaign. To a smaller extent this also goes for the exploration EXP - how much do you earn for that?

Obviously this doesn't have to be a single form of advancement. I will probably combine some of these, giving 2 or even 3 different sources of advancement (though I'll probably just stick to experience points for the time being), but as you can tell from the text you read - I am not sure where to go with it. 

So, if you have any experience (hah!) with alternate experience methods, please tell me about it and about how it's worked out in your own game. I don't care if it's in a comment here, on discord, email, a postcard...whatever. I am curious as to how you've tackled this if you have. 

Because for me there is no right answer in this, there simply is an answer and the implications it brings with it.