How to Award Experience Points - GM Tips
About a year ago I talked about why you should be awarding Experience Points, and today I want to discuss how to award those points. There are quite a few games out there with all sorts of ways to give players experience points, like Dungeons & Dragons focuses on giving it out based on encounters and how dangerous the monsters in it are, while other games like FFG’s Star Wars provides XP based on the DM’s whim and how fast they want their players to buy new abilities. Other games may have no XP system in it, instead, the players must accumulate ‘scars’ on their character to get better, and still other systems have no concept of getting better and you just stay at the same power level as before.
I’m going to be focusing on the more general idea of XP and how to award it in the context of a game, though it will have a DnD/Pathfinder bias due to my own bias towards those games. I like rolling a d20.
Encounters
Most systems expect you to encounter monsters, situations, and more to drive the narrative and add excitement to a game. Most of these games have combat as a central focus, though some may forgo physical combat for more social-style combat. Unfortunately for many of these games, this is the sole way to award XP to the players. They get themselves into a fight and are awarded XP if they defeat or otherwise overcome the encounter.
This creates a situation where players are ready to fight and see the only way to advance is to bring out their magic and swords and get real messy. If a system specifies that the only way to gain XP is to fight something, that’s defining how the game should be played and makes players play in a specific way. A game like Dungeons & Dragons awards mechanical benefits focused on combat and murdering your way to success, you then get XP for overcoming challenges, and that XP then means you become stronger and get more combat-oriented abilities to farm out more XP. Repeat this basic set up until the campaign ends.
But this isn’t me saying that awarding XP from winning combats is bad. I like combat, I think it’s a lot of fun and even during combat when it isn’t my turn, those rare few moments when I’ve been a player, I’m hyper-focused on the grid and what others are doing. I like combat in my games as do most people who play these types of games. The system then rewards you with XP for taking on those challenges.
What I am saying is that you should tie XP awards to more than just violence and destroying your enemies, but rather tie it to everything that makes your players adventurers.
The Pillars of the Game
When determining how to award XP, think about what defines your game. If it’s a dungeon dive, then its about killing creatures and clearing dungeons. If it’s a high-school-monster-teen-throb, its about finding love in high school and making it through teenage life. If it’s a typical game, it probably has elements of a lot of things. Something like Dungeons & Dragons features elements like combat, social interaction, and exploration. Star Wars features similar elements but also includes interactions with honor, duty, and your journey with the force. Blades in the Dark is focused on going on heists and growing your gang, while another game could be focused on collecting the orbs of four elements across a large world map.
Every game or system has different focuses and those focuses should net the players who accomplish or do that activity XP. If I run a d20 fantasy game and want my players to enjoy exploring the massive world I’ve been working on, then I should incentivize them with XP. If I want my players to get past monsters using their smarts and not their raw might, I should incentivize that with XP. If I want my players to bon mot with some nobles, I should incentivize that with XP.
Every system provides incentives in different ways, the most common way is XP. If you aren’t sure what a game is about, look at how players advance and gain points. Is it by killing monsters? It’s a combat-oriented game. Is it by making new friends? It’s a social-oriented game. Is it by failing? It’s a game about overcoming your failure.
Awarding XP
Now, think about your games. When you hand out XP, do you tell your players what that XP is for? Or do you just end a game with “you get 500 XP”? If you don’t tell the players why they are getting XP, there is a disconnect as to their actions and their advancement.
Instead, break down what XP they are getting and list it out to them. You should be saying something like:
You each get 1,100 XP! That’s 400 for the troll, 300 for beginning to explore the cave, 200 for finding reading the BBEG’s secret ledger, and the last 200 because you guys brought me cookies.
If you list out what the XP is for, you can start incentivizing your players to play the game a certain way. If we look at the example above, you are incentivizing the players to not only fight a troll but for exploration and finding out useful information for the plot of the story… as well as bringing cookies.
When you tell players they get XP for exploring, they take that to mean that exploration is important in the game. When you tell players they get XP for finding out information on the story, they take that to mean that the story is important in the game. Every time you tell them what they get XP for, they get to learn what is important in the game, as well as what you as the GM value in the game. If you want the players to explore more, you give them more XP for that, if you want them smooching with the elite and upper classes in games of politics, you give them XP for that. Every time you hand out XP, give a brief explanation for where that XP came from.
But don’t get carried away.
Listing out 20 different things for XP gets confusing and ultimately means nothing is worth pursuing for the players. Try to restrict your list to 4 or 5 things at the most, that way they have a clear focus on what advances them and try to be consistent every session. If you tell them that one session they get 200 XP for exploring a dungeon, and then the next session they explore a different dungeon and get no XP for it, that might signal to them that the current dungeon isn’t important or worth exploring. Same with talking to NPCs, if they get XP for telling a noble to walk off a pier and then talk to another noble and become friends, they should get XP for both encounters to encourage them to talk to every NPC and not being afraid to play their characters.
How Much XP To Award?
Let’s say you’ve taken everything I’ve said to heart and you want to start giving your players XP for exploration and talking to people… how much do you give them? Well, depending on what system you are playing, it can be rather simple and ultimately depends on how much you value your player doing certain activities. If you want them to explore the world, assign a higher XP value to exploration than talking to people. If you want them to solve problems by playing politics at the capital, award them more XP for talking than for fights.
Dungeon Master’s Guide, 2014 WotC
An Example
But again… how much do you award? For a game like Dungeons & Dragons my personal opinion is that exploring an area nets a party enough XP to equal an Easy encounter while clearing a location is equal to a Medium encounter. If you aren’t sure what that would look like, flip to page 82 of the 5th edition Dungeon Master’s Guide (2014).
I also give out XP for accomplishing major story points. If they find out a major secret of the BBEG or unlock a new arc in the campaign, they get XP as if they had conquered a Hard encounter.
This means that I value exploration and unlocking story moments in my game as well as combat. This isn’t to say that talking to people is not an important part of the game, as often story moments are hidden behind social encounters, but that I am encouraging my players to follow the story and get more XP. Sometimes they may get distracted on a side quest or want to do something not related to the story, but that’s fine, if they want more advancement, they know how to get it and can make that decision for themselves.
For Your Games
But how much do you prioritize different things in your games? If you want your players to only explore a little bit, you might not assign that activity XP but instead assign XP for talking to different characters or talking with other characters about their back story and present struggles. Maybe you want your players to get important documents or find out important information, in which case you give out a large portion of XP when they do so to let them know that the information they have is important.
It all depends on how much you value different activities over others and not all games come with a handy chart to determine XP rewards. If you are playing something like FFG Star Wars you might decide to hand out 5 XP for fighting stormtroopers and 10 XP for flying to a new planet and taking in the local sights. This means while you value combat, that seeing new things and interacting with the world is more important to your table.
XP is Key
All this to say that XP is important. XP provides the benefits that encourage your players to play a game in a specific way. The designers of a game determine how they want their system interacted with, and they then use an XP mechanic to encourage players to interact with it in that way. A GM can also use the XP mechanic to further encourage players to play the game with other elements highlighted. If a DM wanted a combat-oriented game to highlight social interactions, they can provide rewards to prioritize such behavior.
Of course, like anything, this is open to abuse. If the players don’t want to talk for hours to a tavern keeper about the problem with the new tax codes in section C-1-a3, then no amount of XP is going to make the players want to spend time on that. If a GM only gives XP on how they want the game to be played, then they take away agency from their players. XP awards should be greeted from the table with excitement. If you award 300 XP for exploring an abandoned ship and no one seems to care about repeating the activity, you know that that is not a priority for the players. If your players ask if they get XP for befriending the troll and helping it build a bridge empire, then you should pick up that they prioritize helping out NPCs.
Eventually, tables can start figuring out what the players and GM prioritize. This has the benefit of creating a table excited to take on challenges that everyone at the table is interested in partaking in. Once you start giving out XP awards for different parts of the game, you can begin highlighting the parts of the game you think is the most important for the table, and what the players are most excited for.
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