How are you handing out EXP?

DrSkull

Mongoose
Since the game book leaves it up in the air (which is certainly fine by me, I hated messing with the CR system), how are you all dealing with handing out EXP.

First I give a survival award equal to 100xp times current character level.

What I do is keep a set of poker chips next to me. Each time someone kills something, I throw one chip at them. Each time someone uses a skill or spell for something useful, I throw one chip at them. At the end of the session each chip is cashed in for 100exp.


The system has a few advantages:
1) Player competition
We call each chip a "Hack" and there is considerable competition for getting the most Hacks. Someone who finishes off an enemy who you've already whittled down is called a "Dirty Hack Stealer". It might not work with every group, but we find it to be a lot of fun.

2) No paperwork
Neither the GM nor the PC has to make any notation until the game is over. You also can't forget to write a particular award down.

3) Simplicity
Since each hack is worth the same amount, there's no need for figuring out relative values of encounters or obstacles. If the GM thinks folk are advancing too fast or too slow, just change the value of the Hack.

I used to make a Hack worth about 1% of the experience needed to gain a level when we played D&D, and we gave a bigger story/survival award. But with Conan we've made the Hack worth a lot more to encourage rampant action.
 
Since I'm running my game online,i didn't want to deal with the extra bookeeping so I'm just telling them when to level up after an appropriate amont of time as determined by me.
 
For the moment, I am going totally story-based. That is, at the end of the first adventure, succeed or fail, they will get to advance to 2nd level. Now that assumes they try to succeed, of course. As the levels advance, however, I think I will begin assigning XP based on accomplishing certain tasks and, like you, give out points for skill use and kills.
 
My current method for assigning XP is as follows:

Showing up generally gets you at least 100 XP

Story based reward (accomplishing goals, defeating enemies, basically "doing stuff" that makes for a fun adventure) will be from 100-500 XP depending on difficulty.

Roleplaying award gives up to 100 XP from me. I also have each player secretly rate the others on a scale from 1 to 10 for their game performance (roleplaying, contributing to the overall experience, whether they were disruptive or helpful, etc.) and multiply that by 10 XP for an additional bonus.

I'll add all that up and that becomes the Base XP amount. Depending on the level of the characters, Base XP may be multiplied by a certain amount so higher level characters don't take *too long* to level up.
 
Ditto on the story-based advancement trend.

I'm gonna keep the paths of pursuit pretty open (rumors of some tombs thatta way, caravan headed to that city other there, a noble here wants you to do [something questionable]) and base the adventure from that. Once any particular story mini-arc wraps up I'll evaluate how the group is doing and base their potential level-up on what they've done thus far and what I wanna do next.
 
I think I'm gonna use Call of Cthulhu d20 awarding system.

Short story :

Before the session GM define 4-6 story goals.
Each story goal fulfilled is 'worth' 300 XP.
Final award for each character is (nb of goals fulfilled)*300*(average PC level)/(Nb of survivors).

Naturally, goals PC set to themselves will become story goals in their own right.

I intend to reward good roleplaying, heroic behavior and such more with fate points than XP.
 
Hyena said:
I think I'm gonna use Call of Cthulhu d20 awarding system.

Short story :

Before the session GM define 4-6 story goals.
Each story goal fulfilled is 'worth' 300 XP.
Final award for each character is (nb of goals fulfilled)*300*(average PC level)/(Nb of survivors).

Naturally, goals PC set to themselves will become story goals in their own right.

I've just moved to this method in D&D and I think it really works nicely (although I use a variant which instead of just using average PC level has an additional factor which divides by their own level and multiplies by the average level... rewarding the lower level members of a party with slightly more xps, and the higher level members with slightly less (enabling the levels to eventually equalise over time)

Cheers
 
Hyena said:
I think I'm gonna use Call of Cthulhu d20 awarding system.

Short story :

Before the session GM define 4-6 story goals.
Each story goal fulfilled is 'worth' 300 XP.
Final award for each character is (nb of goals fulfilled)*300*(average PC level)/(Nb of survivors).

Naturally, goals PC set to themselves will become story goals in their own right.

I intend to reward good roleplaying, heroic behavior and such more with fate points than XP.

This is what I'm doing as well. The CoC d20 experience system seems a fair and standardized way of handling experience awards - character advancement is rapid, but not too fast. It's a good fit with Conan.
 
I go pretty much by-the-book:

If the PCs do reasonably well in terms of what they achieve during the game session, they get 1000-2000XP - lower end at low levels, upper end at higher levels. This gives quick advancement to start, slower later - I think mid-level PCs are the most fun to play & run for so that's great with me as well as being the standard Conan rule. Above 10th level I might award over 2000 XP for a major session where the PCs do something really big.

PCs are currently 2nd level after 1-2 sessions. 1 PC has survived 2 sessions, she got 1500 XP in her first session (lone survivor of tough scenario), plus 200 XP & a Fate Point for a great Story Hour*. In the 2nd session, set 2 years later, the 4 PCs got 1068 XP each.

*edit: see
http://www.randomlingshouse.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3110

Those were both highly successful sessions for the survivors, with much achieved. Since Conan is a fairly Narrativist game I aim to avoid minor or unexciting sessions, but for one where relatively little is achieved, maybe due to intra-PC bickering or overplanning - I'd give 300-600 XP.
 
I'm pretty much story based as well.

As I up the oposition I try to adapt the level of my players as well.
That usually means they rise one level per adventure the first 4-5 adventures and then slow down a bit.

I don't bother with XP at all, they're just stupid numbers and the moron who decided that xp should be sacrificed for certain spells and magic items should have his head examined. :D

/wolf
 
DrSkull said:
What I do is keep a set of poker chips next to me. Each time someone kills something, I throw one chip at them. Each time someone uses a skill or spell for something useful, I throw one chip at them. At the end of the session each chip is cashed in for 100exp.

I like your method Dr Skull. I'm actually playing the game for the first time Saturday, so I haven't worried so much about XP yet, thought I'd just wing it. The beauty of your method is definitely that there's no book keeping involved. :D

TTFN,

Yokiboy
 
DrSkull,

I ran your adventure last night for a couple of players (modified per fitting in as a "Hawks of Shem" precursor as I mentioned), and at the end of the adventure (which ran quite well - they did ask where Drusilla came from, I said she had escaped her slave master caravan and got lost in the desert), they asked how much xp - and I told them "some", so that's what they wrote in the box ;)

VincentDarlage said:
I don't use any math or formulas. I just assign whatever amount I feel like assigning. :D

Looks like were on the same wavelength ;)
 
slaughterj said:
DrSkull,

I ran your adventure last night for a couple of players (modified per fitting in as a "Hawks of Shem" precursor as I mentioned), and at the end of the adventure (which ran quite well - they did ask where Drusilla came from, I said she had escaped her slave master caravan and got lost in the desert), quote]

D'oh I meant to write that she was a refugee from the camp followers of the Shushan army, but forgot to put that in (unless of course you met her in the Turanian slave pen, where she is said to be a slave of the tavern keeper)
 
DrSkull said:
slaughterj said:
DrSkull,

I ran your adventure last night for a couple of players (modified per fitting in as a "Hawks of Shem" precursor as I mentioned), and at the end of the adventure (which ran quite well - they did ask where Drusilla came from, I said she had escaped her slave master caravan and got lost in the desert),

D'oh I meant to write that she was a refugee from the camp followers of the Shushan army, but forgot to put that in (unless of course you met her in the Turanian slave pen, where she is said to be a slave of the tavern keeper)

LOL, no prob, easy enough to make up on the fly, certainly not the only thing to do that way, since one can't predict all the PCs' actions :) Oh, and my PCs went the flee route. Coincidentially one made a Shemite Nomad, so he was messenger boy on his camel, I told him his camel was a riding camel, would be hard to control in battle and Captain G was in the midst of it. So he got off, slapped it over to the Zingarans who were controlling the camels, and went to deliver the message. Only he wasn't able to reach the captain who was taken down in the treachery, so when he went to flee, he saw the Zingarans riding off with his camel! ;)
 
My players really hate "treacherous Zingarans" a lot. If our Shemite had had his faithful camel stolen, it would have been even worse.

One problem I had was keeping my players straight on the difference between a Zingaran and a Zuagir (thankfully, there were no Zamorans involved)
 
DrSkull said:
My players really hate "treacherous Zingarans" a lot. If our Shemite had had his faithful camel stolen, it would have been even worse.

One problem I had was keeping my players straight on the difference between a Zingaran and a Zuagir (thankfully, there were no Zamorans involved)

LOL, there are a lot of "Z"'s in Conan's world! The Zuagirs' weren't an issue, since I went with the pre-Hawks of Shem route, but "A"s were an issue: Asgalun, Akkharia, Anakia!

Yeah, the Shemite PC was NOT happy with them camel-jacking his ride!
 
I found that the unarmored Shemite nomads were a good foe for the PC's. The PC's could fight enough of them at once to make it a worthy battle, and not get immediately slaughtered. Tito and Vizzarro got a good sneak attack on the party barbarian before they went down. The hell bats and the Nameless Horror also put up good fights. The only Fate point spent when we played was against a swarm of Hell bats, when 2 of the 3 PC's swooned in terror. When the last PC fell to -1, one of the swooned spent a Fate point to revive and save the day.
 
GhostWolf69 said:
I don't bother with XP at all, they're just stupid numbers and the moron who decided that xp should be sacrificed for certain spells and magic items should have his head examined. :D

/wolf

*shakes fist*

You can have my XP when you take them from my cold dead hands !

No, I couldn't resist. Why do you ask ?
 
One of my favorite methods for handing out some extra experience is giving 50 bonus exp to any player that has a copy of the book, and 25 bonus exp for any session they bring the book after they receive the initial 50. It can actually encourage your players to pick up their own copy. Really helps keep yours in better condition too. Once everyone in the group has it, I stop. Usually this isn't an issue though since I have one cheap player that holds out. This works well for pretty much any game, except D&D itself since everybody seems to buy those books.
 
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