Experience gain for my planned campaign

In my blogpost earlier today I talked about a list of ideals and beliefs that the players would hand me before starting the campaign, that would line up with the faction goals and beliefs, but also contradict with it, or itself, in some ways. I’m hoping that this gives my campaign a bit more direction, a bit more sense of meaningful gameplay, as you get closer to communal goals, and although drama in a party can be fun, also a bit more cooperation.

To extend this I want to talk about experience and how to gain experience in the campaign I am preparing. I want to tie this closely to the beliefs and goals system I set up.

 

There are many ways of experience gains in RPgs that I’ve played. Experience for gold you’re spending (AD&D), experience for monsters you kill (5e), milestone experience (5e),  experience for a set of questions you answer (Maze Rats) or experience based on your class (Blades in the Dark).

I really like the question based experience, but I would make a few changes to make it better fit my style. Where Maze Rats (at least the version I played) has a few questions that are the same for everyone and Blades in the Dark has questions based on your Playbook, I would like to suggest experience based on personal goals, ideals and beliefs.

I’d let the players set out to write their own personal goals and distill some experience gain questions from it. A belief saying ‘we need to root out corruption by having a revolution’ will grant experience when you are inciting a village to stand up against the nobles. A belief saying ‘The Gods have more power than any Earthly power’ can grant experience when you are performing a sermon for a village or invoking the power of the gods as a show of power. While ‘All cultists must be exterminated’ can lead into a destroyed cult being the source of experience.

 

This can lead to imbalance between players, but it’s up to the DM to give equal opportunity to have the same experience gain in the campaign. It shouldn’t be that one is level 5 and one is level 1, while they started at the same point in the campaign. But this is also a matter of sharing ideals between characters. If they are all set up to do about the same thing, it shouldn’t matter much.

Also getting faction goals should always reward with some experience gain for the characters, just like they must be rewarded with promotions or other rewards to symbolize the gain in ranks and trust.

 

This is how I’m planning my campaign, and although it is a bit different from other campaigns, I hope I will reap the fruits and have a more serious and meaningful  campaign.