Rewarding Experience

[teluria]

I play D&D online quite a bit, and so it's informing my choices about how I reward experience.

Right now, here's what I have for additional bonuses (these are rewarded to the individual on top of the basic experience for the quest.

Best Performance (by player + GM vote)
A vote is taken at the end of each play session on who gave the best performance. (meaning role playing)
At the end of the adventure, the GM tallies the votes and divides up a 30% bonus.

So for example, over 3 sessions, Mike, Scott , Anne, Jen, and Jason are all eligible for the reward.

Jen missed one session and Mike missed a session. Over three sessions, a total of 16 votes were cast (GM gets a vote too, even though he's not eligible for the award, obviously)

When the votes are tallied, Mike got 6 votes, Jen got 5 votes, Anne got 3, and Scott got 2

Mike gets an 11% bonus
Jen gets a 9% bonus
Anne gets a 6% bonus
Scott gets a 4% bonus

Make sense? Any suggestions or problems with this I'm not thinking of?

[SmootRK]

I dont like player popularity polls for xp...

but feel free to award based upon how you (as GM) feel about role-play or mvp or whatever.

Remember BFRPG awards xp rather slow (by the book), so you control the speed of leveling the game via how you award xp for other things. If you want you can give more/less xp than monster description says, but I would suggest being stingy, rather than too much too fast. Easier to control stuff when the games moves along at slower pace.

[Dimirag]

I prefer giving XP based on new ideas and general roleplay rather than performance, not every player perform their character the same way (some speech as their character, some not), giving XP based on that could make other players unhappy just becouse they are not the bes at performance.
Allowing the players voting for XP bonus can make players star to compete each other or simply nominate the player who needs the most XP.
If you want to include performance use an XP penalty for those that dont remain in character or in play.

[Metroknight]

I have to agree with SmootRK on this one. I plan out the xp prior to running the module or adventure.

There is the base xp for completing the module or reaching a goal.
There is xp for the monsters.
There is xp for that I consider bonus points. I award these bonus points as needed right there on the spot. This is incentive to give the best roleplaying they can. In one session, one of my players made me laugh so hard, I awarded 50 xp right there on the spot to them. Another time, I awarded full xp for an encounter when the players were able bypass that encounter through the use of guile and deceit.

Don't use the popularity poll, use your judgement. You are the one that controls the flow of the game. Write up a small list of how you want to give the xp.

[teluria]

Thank you to everyone for the feedback. As I thought about it, the worse an idea it seemed to be. I'm falling back into MMORPG think instead of GM think, I think. <grin>

The whole point of the best performance was to focus the players on what I want to have the focus of the adventure be, which is the story. If I wanted Min/Maxing and statistical analysis, I'd go back to playing WOW or DDO.

I'm inclined to agree with all of you, the GM needs to be the final say about XP awarded.

[teluria]

I have to agree with SmootRK on this one. I plan out the xp prior to running the module or adventure.

There is the base xp for completing the module or reaching a goal.
There is xp for the monsters.
There is xp for that I consider bonus points. I award these bonus points as needed right there on the spot. This is incentive to give the best roleplaying they can. In one session, one of my players made me laugh so hard, I awarded 50 xp right there on the spot to them. Another time, I awarded full xp for an encounter when the players were able bypass that encounter through the use of guile and deceit.

Don't use the popularity poll, use your judgement. You are the one that controls the flow of the game. Write up a small list of how you want to give the xp.

You win the thread...

It's been a while since I've GMd - 20 years or so, so I'm trying to get my mind back into P&P thinking instead of MMORPG thinking.

[Joe the Rat]

Another time, I awarded full xp for an encounter when the players were able bypass that encounter through the use of guile and deceit.

I wanted to highlight this point. XP from an encounter comes from "beating" the encounter - not beating the living things in the encounter. Awarding XP for approaches besides "kill everything" is justifiable, and encourages players to look for clever solutions - there's less risk of death if you don't have to fight. Note bypass, not avoid - if they decide to find a different route, that's not bypass, that's picking a route with different encounters.

This was actually an issue with the way we played back in the day - we tended to look at XP as a death and treasure thing. Shortcomings of youth, I suppose.

As GM, you are free to award XP for whatever the heck you like, but much like treasure, it's easier to give more than take away. Actually, that's not true. Monsters with level drain do a wonderful job of taking away XP .