I took a large break from D&D (AD&D at the time) from the end of highschool to the end of college. I was still playing games then, but my first experience with 3e didn't impress me and I had moved on to an affair with more story-centric games (World of Darkness and Fading Suns).
My return to D&D came with my first long-term (and arguably best) campaign came after I finished my BA: some friends and I had a hankering to slay some orcs. It was a jointly home-brewed world between me and two friends, and it was a thing of beauty (as is everyone's first child, I presume).
Anyway, the point here is that I haven't really used XP since highschool. I'm sure we used it back then somehow, though we rarely had any campaign last more than a few sessions. Second edition had so many character options to test out that we never managed to really keep one campaign going in those early years. But since then I've run successful longer-term games of Changelling, Vampire, Fading Suns, and D&D (both 3.5 and 4e). But still, all the characters advance at the same rate basically.
In my most recent 4e Dark Sun game, I didn't even bother with the pretense of XP. I just told them to level up every 1-3 game sessions (usually two, but I wanted them to be close to level 10 towards the end).
Thinking back on it, there's really very little point to XP once characters in a level-based system advance all at the same rate. In World of Darkness games or LARPs (yes, I still love some good political intruigue and personal horror), we'd often have a vote for 'best player' or some such who got an extra XP for the night. But such a system seems pointless in light of recent D&D editions.
In this respect, I miss the old days of AD&D. Each class had different things to do to earn additional XP, and I'm sure I didn't use all of that junk at the time, but I'd like to see it in action once more, I think.
It also makes me wonder what the new iteration of D&D is going to bring. I imagine it'll be a bit more like Pathfinder, which I have an irrational distaste for. 4e is so slick to run, though a bit too combat focused at times. If everyone advances on the same XP table in the new D&D, I'll probably be a bit disappointed. What's the point in racking up hundreds and thousands of XP if it does exactly the same for you as it does for your friends? Storytelling games like Vampire let you choose how your character advances and when. You save those hard-earned XP for your prized skills and disciplines. In AD&D you have unique ways of earning XP to look for and your Priest of a Specific Mythos (or elven fighter/mage/thief) doesn't advance in the same way as your friend's thief or bard does. I'm not holding out a lot of hope that D&D Next will have distinct XP tables for classes and the ability to mix in first level fighters with 7th level wizards (though with flatter math this shouldn't be too bad). But if the new D&D just has one XP table for everyone, I doubt I'll be mathing it. What's the point?
My return to D&D came with my first long-term (and arguably best) campaign came after I finished my BA: some friends and I had a hankering to slay some orcs. It was a jointly home-brewed world between me and two friends, and it was a thing of beauty (as is everyone's first child, I presume).
Anyway, the point here is that I haven't really used XP since highschool. I'm sure we used it back then somehow, though we rarely had any campaign last more than a few sessions. Second edition had so many character options to test out that we never managed to really keep one campaign going in those early years. But since then I've run successful longer-term games of Changelling, Vampire, Fading Suns, and D&D (both 3.5 and 4e). But still, all the characters advance at the same rate basically.
In my most recent 4e Dark Sun game, I didn't even bother with the pretense of XP. I just told them to level up every 1-3 game sessions (usually two, but I wanted them to be close to level 10 towards the end).
Thinking back on it, there's really very little point to XP once characters in a level-based system advance all at the same rate. In World of Darkness games or LARPs (yes, I still love some good political intruigue and personal horror), we'd often have a vote for 'best player' or some such who got an extra XP for the night. But such a system seems pointless in light of recent D&D editions.
In this respect, I miss the old days of AD&D. Each class had different things to do to earn additional XP, and I'm sure I didn't use all of that junk at the time, but I'd like to see it in action once more, I think.
It also makes me wonder what the new iteration of D&D is going to bring. I imagine it'll be a bit more like Pathfinder, which I have an irrational distaste for. 4e is so slick to run, though a bit too combat focused at times. If everyone advances on the same XP table in the new D&D, I'll probably be a bit disappointed. What's the point in racking up hundreds and thousands of XP if it does exactly the same for you as it does for your friends? Storytelling games like Vampire let you choose how your character advances and when. You save those hard-earned XP for your prized skills and disciplines. In AD&D you have unique ways of earning XP to look for and your Priest of a Specific Mythos (or elven fighter/mage/thief) doesn't advance in the same way as your friend's thief or bard does. I'm not holding out a lot of hope that D&D Next will have distinct XP tables for classes and the ability to mix in first level fighters with 7th level wizards (though with flatter math this shouldn't be too bad). But if the new D&D just has one XP table for everyone, I doubt I'll be mathing it. What's the point?
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