Xp Rewards

[OsricIlien]

I was interested in any ideas people had about giving xp for things other than adventuring. In particular Domain level actions and other long term xp gains.

[geeman]

At 05:12 PM 11/6/2003 +0100, OsricIlien wrote:



> I was interested in any ideas people had about giving xp for things

> other than adventuring. In particular Domain level actions and other

> long term xp gains.



To me the domain level is an extension of the adventure level. A domain

action represents about four weeks of activities, not all of which are

worth XP awards (things like travel, the bureaucratic aspects of rulership,

etc.) but interspersed with the kinds of encounters, activities and events

that warrant XP awards. A couple of weeks ago I wrote up a little, first

draft "article" on breaking down of domain actions. Since we`re in a nice,

neat, new thread here, I`ll recreate it. The most relevant part to this

discussion is the last one "Assigning XP Awards to Domain Actions" but one

kind of has to go through the previous sections in order to get to that....



<bold>What is a Domain Action?</bold>



IMO the domain level of play is an extrapolation on the standard adventure

level of play. It`s a form of "game mechanical shorthand" if you will in

which the actions and assets of the adventure level are compiled into a

system of game mechanics and statistics. Interaction between the two levels

of play needn`t exist, but combining them in the long run makes for a

better overall system. Using the domain rules one can fill out and inspire

adventure level activities and the effects of adventure level activities

can be portrayed in the overall domain system.



When it comes to XP awards for domain actions I`m a big proponent of

role-playing out the domain actions, but it is nice to have the domain

level rules around for those cases when the DM doesn`t have a particular

thing in mind for an adventure level of activity, or when one is resolving

actions quickly for neighboring realms or other NPCs. It also allows us to

reflect many of the advantages and results of adventures into a broader,

more inclusive system of action and effect, allowing for what is a natural

extension of one of the basic implications behind many adventures--how will

the results of this adventure actually effect the world at large? In the

domain level of play we often have our answer to that question: a new

holding is established or one becomes contested, GB go missing from the

treasury, the population level of a province increases, the bandits that

threatened a region are dealt with, etc. Furthermore, if we can extrapolate

the domain actions into adventures and vice versa then we can develop a set

of guidelines for adventure design and development that will cross over

between the two levels of play.



Within such a context, I`d suggest that for the purposes of XP awards for

domain actions what we need is a system of converting domain actions into

adventure level play and then such a system can be "backward engineered"

into a system of XP awards for domain actions. We have a few good examples

of exactly how one might do that sort of thing with the LotHK text (IMO the

best of the BR supplements) but that is for random events as well as being

something that was developed without much of an eye towards the

relationship between the adventure level of play and the domain level. It

was not, of course, developed with the system of EL and CR that exists now

in 3e either, which is one of the aspects of the system that can have a lot

of use for our purposes.



So what does a domain action represent? First of all, it represents a

month`s worth of activities and effort on the part of the regent, the

population that he administrates, his staff and other associated

characters. For the purpose of simplicity and parity with the way the

domain level breaks time up into domain turns, action round and war moves,

I`d suggest that for our purposes we can convert the four weeks of time of

a domain action down into weeks (war moves) for the purpose of determining

how to convert to encounters and adventures.



<bold>Converting Domain Actions to Adventures</bold>



A domain action represents a month of activities, but it is not the only

activity that goes on during that period of time. The regent must still

administrate his domain on a day-to-day basis, dealing with those constant

issues that anyone in a position of authority must address. The domain

action itself merely represents an area of concentration during that

period, not the whole of the regent`s time. One of the things that RPGs

often do is assume that certain activities happen automatically. We do not

role-play PCs washing their clothes, cooking their food, polishing their

armor and weapons or engaging in most of the mundane activities of life

except on those occasions where it segues into an encounter or where the

player has some particular concept in mind. Just to shake things up DM

might say, "While polishing your armor you are approached by a group of

unsavory looking men" in order to arrange an encounter with the PCs in

which their equipment or other stats are not as high as normal. Similarly,

a player might have a character who was an excellent chef and mention that

fact when cooking out of doors. In general, however, such things are

exceptions rather than the rule. Most mundane activities are assumed.



When it comes to domain level activities, I`d suggest that the same is

true. Most of the administrative and mundane activities of controlling a

domain are assumed, and unless the DM or players want to engage in them for

some reason they can be ignored. How much of a regent`s time do they take?

That`s quite debatable, but for the sake of simplicity, I`d suggest they

take half the time of the regent. The domain action itself would then

represent the activities of three or four days a week.



In D&D "an adventure" really has no time limit. One assumes it is a

relatively brief amount of time in which a particular goal is accomplished,

and that several of those goals combine to form "a campaign" but adventures

are not themselves set to a stopwatch. In 3e, however, it is suggested that

the "average" adventure is comprised of four encounters of CR equal to the

party level. I`d suggest that this can work well into the above break down

of the amount of activities involved in a domain action. Since an "average"

action is equivalent to roughly the same amount of encounters that occur in

a week of activities performed as part of a domain action we can associate

the two easily, making a domain action equivalent to what the DMG suggests

is four adventures at the adventure level of play comprised of four

different main encounters.



While there is no time limitation on the sequence of those encounters, it

would appear to be generally assumed that they are going to occur

sequentially, so that PCs may not rest up or otherwise rejuvenate between

encounters. At the adventure level of play there is a time restriction, but

at the domain level encounters are spread out over a greater period. Four

encounters per week means the PCs have a day between encounters in order to

heal, research, etc. In order to deal with this issue, I`d suggest that any

encounter that isn`t ultimately resolved in a "single sitting" be

considered a failure for the purpose of the overall success of the domain

action. (See Below)



This only gets us half way to our goal, however, because we also need to

address the issue of CR in order to find the actual amount of XP that would

be awarded for such an adventure. D&D normally assumes that encounters are

going to be scaled to the party level of the PCs. The DMG describes these

as "tailored" encounters (pp 100-101) and provides guidelines for

developing them. I`d suggest that for our purposes, however, we should not

assume that to be the case. At the adventure level of play one has a broad

range of character levels. It would make sense to preserve the interaction

of low level PCs with higher level ones and vice versa, since that`s a

basic aspect of the BR domain level. We can either tailor encounters or

employ a "status quo" set of encounters, but in several ways the system of

encounters used to reflect the particulars of a domain action need not

abide by the strictness of the EL system as presented in the DMG. For one

things many of the encounters need not be of the hack `n slash variety that

standard D&D seems to assume. A diplomatic encounter can represent widely

different CR values than a stand up fight. The results of the encounter

might not be all that different since the total modifiers of a high ranking

character versus a low ranking character could make the opposed checks

pretty much a foregone conclusion, but where the DMG assumes that 25% of a

party`s resources are going to be used up in such an encounter than isn`t

the case for our purposes. Similarly, the encounter can be role-played out

rather than the result of rolls, so in general things may not be as unequal

as they would normally be in a typical EL-minded encounter.

When determining the encounters that comprise the adventure level portrayal

of a domain action it`s important to consider the difficulty of the domain

action itself. More difficult domain actions will represent higher CR

values in the encounters involved, or might be used to justify more than

the "average" either the four encounters per adventure or the four

adventures per domain turn estimate. If a typical domain action is DC 15

then we can extrapolate from that "average" encounters. Now, if we`re

creating tailored encounters that means a grand total of sixteen encounters

of CR equal to the party level.



The standard range of encounters for D&D is encounters with EL within four

levels of the PCs. We can use that number to shift the CR values of the

encounters when creating an adventure to represent the activities of a

domain action. Every 2 points of difference in the success number results

in a 1 level increase or decrease in the EL of the encounters it inspires.

That is, a domain action with a success number of 20 would have encounters

that were equal to the party level +2, while a domain action with a success

number of 5 (pretty easy) would have an EL of party level -5.



After determining the EL of the encounters the DM can assign characters to

the sixteen encounters of the adventure.



<bold>Determining Success of Domain Actions from Adventure Results</bold>



Success at the adventure level can be converted to the result of a die roll

to determine success on a domain action by counting each successful

encounter as 1 point. Since there are an average of 16 encounters in a

domain action that means a "die roll" of 16 is possible on a typical

adventured out domain action.



As with typical domain actions a player should announce the number of RP

spent on the action. Those domain actions that have success numbers higher

than 16 will require spending RP to assure their success.



<bold>Assigning XP Awards to Domain Actions</bold>



Not all those encounters need necessarily be of the type that will grant

normal XP awards nor should we assume that even if the domain action is

successful that every encounter was a success, so the regent shouldn`t

necessarily get XP for all those encounters (more on that later.) After

determining what the average number of encounters and the average CR of

those encounters might be we are ready to assign XP. There are, however, a

couple of factors we need to consider for how many XP should actually be

granted. The first is success. Since the average domain action represents

sixteen encounter we cannot assume that every encounter is a success. The

second factor is how many of those encounters are of the type that will

grant XP. Now, I`m of the opinion that XP should be granted in one form or

another whether an encounter is combat oriented or story oriented, but some

encounters may wind up being neither. So for each of these conditions, I`d

suggest that we should simply half the number of encounters, so that each

domain action results in four encounters that grant XP. That might seem a

bit low, but we should also take into consideration that we`re using the

domain level as a short hand for what would normally be adventures in

tradition D&D. If one wanted to grant more experience, however, it would be

easy to assign a different number to the "encounters that grant an XP

award" number.



In a tailored system of adventure design for a group of PCs with a party

level of 8, the average domain action would, therefore, result in four CR 8

XP awards or 9,600 XP to be split amongst the party. If the XP award is

going to go to a single regent one should bear in mind that the CR system

assumes four PCs. If using tailored encounters the CRs would be scaled down

by -2 for a single PC. That would result in 4,800 XP being awarded to the

regent.



Now, I should note that IMC I grant XP at a rate of about 1/3 that of the

DMG`s Table 7-1. The XP awards are actually 1/4 those on that table, but I

also grant story awards based on the overall activities of the players, so

it winds up being more like 1/3 of the standard awards for D&D. For the

above awards I would give out 3,200 XP to the group and 1,600 to an

individual level 8 regent.