As much of my early role-playing experience was linked to home-made games, the concept of levelling up was foreign to me. We played for a few sessions and then the GM would allow us to pick a few new skills, or increase our proficiency in the ones we had.
It wasn’t until I started to play Warhammer that the whole concept of experience points was brought to my attention. In that game, the GM didn’t give us weekly points to tally – instead he told us when we could level up.
Furthermore, he wanted us to have a good reason for our changes in skills or profession. In my first campaign, my character went from being a magic user to a knight templar. The GM had already spoken to me about where I wanted to go with the character and he’d instructed me to demonstrate in the game that I was committed to Sigmar and thus my change in career was appropriate.
I remember the looks on my fellow player’s faces when I spent my share of the loot on graves for those that fell in our skirmishes. I can also remember the feeling I had when the GM said I could indeed take the templar career upon levelling up.
My point here is twofold. Firstly, regardless of the official rules of the game, I firmly believe that character progression should be logical and secondly, as a GM you get the sort of players your XP awards deserve.
In my most recent game, the history of XP allocation encouraged players to kill things and grab loot – as that is what the game system said should be granted XP. It’s a subject my first blog entry referred to.
To take the argument further – if XP is awarded for just killing and treasure accumulation, your characters won’t make a real effort to role-play. Why should they? Further, they’ll expend all of their XP on skills and feats that mean they can kill more and grab more swag.
As a GM, I want players to role-play. I want a back-story that allows them to be a fleshed out character and I want them to develop that persona. I want XP allocation to be a logical progression of their character. A third level cleric that decides at fourth level to become a rogue makes little to no sense unless it’s backed up with a sound story. More often than not it’s just a case of power-gaming. Players often know which classes to take at which levels to maximise their character’s stats.
As a player, I tend to roll a character with a long term goal in mind. I may start as a rogue class because I want to end up a sneaky silent assassin. Therefore, if I later take a fighter level or two, there is a logical reason. Or perhaps a level of ranger for the bow skills. My point is that role-playing is about being a character. You’re not playing a bunch of stats. Rather you’re supposed to be a person that can simply be identified as a series of numbers.
Or am I the odd one out?
abstract xp 
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