[DF] Dungeon Fantasy Advancement question

[umbros]

In DF 3: The Next Level we are given guidelines on how much XP to award for a number of different scenarios.

My first question concerns Completion XP.
What if the dungeon is a megadungeon that may take years of playtime to clear, or a wilderness area that can never be truly cleared?
In a sandbox style game there may be no discrete end-point that could be called a completion point. What do you recommend?

What if you want to encourage (or at least allow for the possibility for) not fighting everything you see? What if you want a more old-school feel where exploration of dangerous places and acquisition of treasure is more important (or at least more efficient to get XP) than killing things?

all comments are much appreciated!

Jon Tate

[Dustin]

Obviously a megadungeon requires different Completion terms. Perhaps 1xp for every 10 encounters (where an encounter can be a fight, a negotiation/roleplaying opportunity, trap, or obstacle/puzzle), with an additional 1xp for finding a new safe area where the party can rest.

xp for treasure is tricky, needs a sliding scale, I think. Perhaps you can set an increasing threshold based on the Speed/Range table, so starting at (say) $100 per character, once the party amasses that much loot ($500 for a party of 5), everyone gets 1xp. Next threshold is $150, so the party of 5 needs $750 in additional loot to get the next xp. Priceless items (artifacts, Mona Lisa, etc) can just be 1xp by themselves.

[Dinadon]

Originally Posted by umbros

In DF 3: The Next Level we are given guidelines on how much XP to award for a number of different scenarios.

My first question concerns Completion XP.
What if the dungeon is a megadungeon that may take years of playtime to clear, or a wilderness area that can never be truly cleared?
In a sandbox style game there may be no discrete end-point that could be called a completion point. What do you recommend?

Sandbox and Megadungeon are campaign styles, not adventures, meaning they will consist of several adventures, each of which will give its own completion awards. All you need to do is determine what counts as an adventure the players need to complete. For example, for a Megadungeon this is probably a single floor.

In general an adventure should be some sort of Major Problem that isn't The Main Problem. Only things related to the Major Problem should count for determining if the adventure has been completed. Everything else is effectively a random encounter, even if it is actually part of a separate adventure running concurrently.

What if you want to encourage (or at least allow for the possibility for) not fighting everything you see? What if you want a more old-school feel where exploration of dangerous places and acquisition of treasure is more important (or at least more efficient to get XP) than killing things?

Then just let the players know that they can get bonus CP for non-violent solutions, on top of the normal reward for overcoming that encounter.

[mlangsdorf]

In my wilderness/exploration game, I gave out a CP/day spent exploration, with bonus CP for either finding particular obscure locations or for recovering treasure from deep within a monster lair. I didn't give any CP out for fighting monsters: boss monsters generally were in the way of the treasuure/CP site, but the PCs could totally avoid them if they wanted and had the right skills.

[Peter V. Dell'Orto]

Originally Posted by umbros

In DF 3: The Next Level we are given guidelines on how much XP to award for a number of different scenarios.

First, I went though this myself with my own DF game, and blogged it here:

http://dungeonfantastic.blogspot.com...use-rules.html

Originally Posted by umbros

My first question concerns Completion XP.
What if the dungeon is a megadungeon that may take years of playtime to clear, or a wilderness area that can never be truly cleared?
In a sandbox style game there may be no discrete end-point that could be called a completion point. What do you recommend?

I'd drop the completion XP. The whole point of a megadungeon is that clearing levels is unnecessary and/or impossible. So offering completion XP is a bad idea - it encourages an attempt at something you can't reasonably do and don't want people to do.

You can offer a bonus for completion the "specials" of a level, or just for those specials. You cleared the Evil Shrine on level 1? Great, +2. Wiped out the Orc Menace on level 2? Great, +1. How about +3 for solving the Mysterious Moon Man Portals on level 7? Fine.

I plan to have bonuses for finding and solving neat stuff in my megadungeon (2 1/2 levels mapped, just started on levels 3 and one of the sub-levels of 4) but nothing for "completion." It's a concept that doesn't mesh well with a "megadungeon" IMO.

Originally Posted by umbros

What if you want to encourage (or at least allow for the possibility for) not fighting everything you see? What if you want a more old-school feel where exploration of dangerous places and acquisition of treasure is more important (or at least more efficient to get XP) than killing things?

Check my blog for that - I dislike giving out XP for killing stuff. It makes monsters and people into targets for killing, and "you are worth more to me dead than alive." I make it about exploration and treasure. This encourages clever, non-resource-consuming approaches to problems. Why kill the dragon if you can rob him? Why slaughter the hobgoblins and risk a critical that kills your 250 point guy when you can bargain with them for safe passage and protection money (given or received). Why fight the morlocks if you can recruit them in return for helping you get More Loot? If you give XP for killing them, they'll get killed. If they are obstacles to your main goal of getting rich, well, maybe giving them $100 each to help you tote back $500 of treasure (maybe something valueless to them) each to the surface works out for all sides.

But FWIW I've averaged about 4-6 XP per session in my game, and that seems to work out fine. I plan on giving a large completion bonus for the long, involved clearing of the Temple of Evil Chaos in the Caves of Chaos, because it's inevitably multi-session and it's an assigned mission.

Hope that helps.

[Greg 1]

So much depends on the group and how fast you want the characters to advance, which may in turn depend on how much time you have to play.

I would start by asking myself about how much I would want successful PCs to advance in the time we are going to devote to the game and work backwards from there.

I would be happy to eye-ball the cp gain at the end of each session, based on how much the PCs did and what they achieved.

[Kuroshima]

Me, I give one Cp for showing up, 1 CP per "bonus area discovered" and 1 CP per "challenge solved". A group of monsters can be a challenge, but diplomacy/bribery/stealth can (sometimes) be used to go past it, and it grants the same CP, only taking less time (so more CP/session). Puzzles can be challenges (if necessary to advance) or bonus areas (if necessary to reach a hidden treasure cache). If the characters are on a quest, then succeeding grants extra CP, depending on how hard was the quest. If they are on a personal quest (meaning that they wrote a backstory with motivations for me to use hooks), they get a +1 CP each time IMO they advance it. Finally, they get to pick a MVP each session. A MVP means +1CP that session. This averages 3 CPs per session.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Kuroshima

Me, I give one Cp for showing up, 1 CP per "bonus area discovered" and 1 CP per "challenge solved". A group of monsters can be a challenge, but diplomacy/bribery/stealth can (sometimes) be used to go past it, and it grants the same CP, only taking less time (so more CP/session). Puzzles can be challenges (if necessary to advance) or bonus areas (if necessary to reach a hidden treasure cache). If the characters are on a quest, then succeeding grants extra CP, depending on how hard was the quest. If they are on a personal quest (meaning that they wrote a backstory with motivations for me to use hooks), they get a +1 CP each time IMO they advance it. Finally, they get to pick a MVP each session. A MVP means +1CP that session. This averages 3 CPs per session.

Sorry, what is MVP?

[Peter V. Dell'Orto]

MVP is most valuable player.

I do that too, actually, because it encourages my players to brag up the cool stuff they did (or someone else did) during the session.

[sir_pudding]

There's no reason you can't just use the "normal" CP guidelines in Campaigns in a DF game. The Next Level guidelines are basically there to simulate old school "boiling anthills" style play, AFAICT, if you don't want that, don't use them.