What's your advice on how to hand out experience points?

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

Maybe I think that intrinsic motivation is better than extrinsic motivation: good RP is and ought to be its own reward.

I don't see that you can't have both. In fact, my campaigns seem to have multiple motivations; having other players tell stories about how great your characters' best scenes were seems to be extrinsic, but it's not the same kind of extrinsic as eeps.

Maybe I have ethical and political objections to exalting myself above others as the arbiter of goodness in roleplaying.

I don't see that criticism necessarily represents a claim to be uniquely objectively right. There is criticism as a personal art.

Maybe I'm okay with encouraging others to roleplay the way I want them too, but think that unbalancing the characters with unequal point-cost increases is not such a a good way to do it as by awarding chocolate frogs.

I kind of like eeps. They're a little ritual at the end of a session, part of closing off the sacred reality of the game and returning to secular reality. And unbalance doesn't worry me much; my players often have big piles of eeps they haven't even gotten around to spending, and in any case which one gets more eeps isn't consistent. It's mainly just a little ritual acknowledgment of "which player was cool?"

I'd also note that players' perception of unbalance may not have much to do with real unbalance. The one campaign of mine where I had the worst complaints about unbalance didn't even use eeps! There were other mechanisms for character advancement, and there was one player who was perceived by the others as exploiting those mechanisms unfairly and making his character too powerful. And yet, when I checked the character sheets, the character whose power had advanced fastest was played by someone else, one of the players who was concerned.

I don't really notice a big difference between campaigns with the eeps ritual and campaigns without. It's a difference of flavor, not of basic kind. But I kind of enjoy the ritual.

Bill Stoddard

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

Economists would find it convenient if incentives and disincentives had combined effect. Goddamit, they ought to combine and reinforce each other! But they don't. Things we do for fun and the satisfaction of exercising one's faculties go into a different cognitive bucket from things we do for a pat on the head in front of the class.

Have you tried the experiment? Or is this something that just intuitively seems wrong to you in a way that precludes your actually trying it (the way GMPCs seem intuitively wrong to me)? I ask because I've been running campaigns for years, and it's not obvious to me either that the two motivators clash or that my particular players respond differently when there are eeps and when there aren't.

Bill Stoddard

[muranternet]

It's weird that I just logged in after not reading the forum for a long time, finished reading an old thread I had on this same question, and immediately see this newer thread. EP rewards seems to be an eternal question.

If it helps, my old system that worked well was:

X ep for being there.
Y ep as an extra award, but you can lose some or all of it if you ignore your behavioral disadvantages. This is an inverse of the "good roleplaying" bonus that I dislike since nobody knows what it means, and prevents free points for mental disads. If a character doesn't have any of these, they always get this award in full.
Maybe 1 ep if the player did something exceptional that made the game better for everyone. Not limited to roleplay actions. If the player makes a remarkable joke that cracks everyone up, that counts. It's a bonus for entertainment value, which is the whole point of playing.

I'm working on a new campaign and intend to use this system again.

[Loukas]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

But fundamentally you're right. I have a problem with relationships based on power, and dislike being in charge.

I have similar feelings, hence my desire for a RuneQuest-style automated learning system... but Bill is right, that the players are already trusting the GM to frame the whole world. And I'd add if the GM doesn't keep track of roleplaying, who will?

I'm attracted to the idea of making the session's bonus RP-point awarded by group discussion, but your account of how people resented this is a big put off! People can really resent having responsibility loaded onto them, to have to make an impossible choice...

[Loukas]

Originally Posted by muranternet

It's weird that I just logged in after not reading the forum for a long time, finished reading an old thread I had on this same question, and immediately see this newer thread. EP rewards seems to be an eternal question.

Sorry! I should have done a search before submitting such an obviously evergreen question.

[Mathulhu]

In most of the games I play and run all the players get the same xp reward. After the game we chat about what happened and whether it deserves a bonus point for entertaining us.

All of the group gets rewards for good roleplaying because normally it's the back and forth between them that actually makes something special.
If the game bogs down because of bad roleplaying there will be fewer opportunities for good roleplaying and therefore fewer bonus xps will be awarded.

[muranternet]

Originally Posted by Loukas

Sorry! I should have done a search before submitting such an obviously evergreen question.

No biggie. Everyone has a different take on it. Besides, my thread is 3 years old. :P

[Loukas]

Originally Posted by muranternet

No biggie. Everyone has a different take on it. Besides, my thread is 3 years old. :P

Can you post a link?

[Sword-dancer]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I'm not sure why you'd want not to encourage players to make an effort to do a good job at the activity that is the heart of roleplaying.

As Agemegos said Godd RP is a reward in itself.

I don´t Play for XP and i´ve found to often, that good roleplay XP meant Points in Klischeeplay or worse, following the storyline(and trying to figure out what the script is) instead of storybuilding aka inactive Players with roleplay reduced to boring to dead Tavernblather and trying to Play their PCs to the expectations of the Highlord, the fast-talker using his fast talk abilities InGame who´re not in the last related to his and i´ve never ever found an objective measure for good roleplay

It ignorees Character Development

And i don´t think it is fair to penalize the less gifted actor or those whose taste of "dramatic acting" is different from the highlords(Yes i started with DSA/TDE whose writer preached those things thoroughly) or has a bad or hard day at work .

[muranternet]

Originally Posted by Loukas

Can you post a link?

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=71916

Edit: This was a thread about my proposal specifically, but of course the discussion widened.