Latest revision as of 01:15, 6 April 2010

Detailed XP Awards Rules by CrownedSun

I figured, in the interests of being less arbitrary, I'd go ahead and write up some actual rules for giving out Experience Points in Exalted to replace the very generic "give everyone half a Solar charm per session" rules in the book. The goal of these rules will be to have a number of potential awards that characters can aim for in play, increasing the "gaming" aspect of things a little.

This will be set aside in three areas: First, the normal session based award which is given out after each and every session. This will range from 3xp at the very minimum, to 6xp for truly exceptional play. Second, the story award, which is given out every 5-6 sessions at the end of a major storyline and which will award an extra 4-8xp worth of additional awards to everyone. Third, and lastly, I'll discuss my pools a bit -- pools are extra bonus xp that players can get for some things, which is not wholely under the control of the player.

Normal Session Awards

• Basic Allotment: 3xp.
  • Everyone recieves this award, and is the bare minimum for a game session. One even recieves this award for sessions in which you do not attend, as long as you are still in the game. Prolonged absences will result in you being booted from the game.

In addition to the other awards, you are eligable for up to 3 additional points of experience points per session. You earn these extra experience points by earning various 'awards' described below. You might notice that there are more than three awards below; in general, I will not award the same reward to more than one player. In addition, I will try not to let one player dominate any single award. Feel free to keep track of what rewards you recieve if you wish to do so!

I'm listing these rewards in the liklihood that they are to be awarded. The first rewards are more or less mandatory; if someone fulfills them, then that reward will be given out that session. The ones at the bottom are filler, which doesn't mean unimportant, but I might will err on the more imporatnt rewards if you have more than three (the maximum you can get in one session).

the Roleplaying Awards

• Got Righteousness?: 1xp
  • This reward deals with heroism and impressive actions in play -- especially actions that put your character in danger or cause you to suffer some hardship of some kind. Note, the definition of 'heroism' varies by Exalt type considerably.
• Working Together: 1xp
  • This reward is there to encourage teamwork and working together, as opposed to actions that divide the Circle meaninglessly. It will not be awarded to any character that encourages the PCs to split up, or that starts a inter-Circle conflict, as it's meant to subtly discourage such.
• Character Development 1xp
  • This is a reward for hvaing your character grow and develop in play, and is rewarded for meaningful examples of this. Such development does not have to be positive, but I will probably favor actions that enhance the game for everyone.
• Exceptional Roleplaying: 1xp
  • A player will earn this reward for roleplaying 'beyond the call of duty'. This includes being exceptionally entertaining, maintaining character in difficult circumstances, a good amount of improvement over prior performance, and similar situations.
• Mood Maintenance: 1xp
  • This is the award that a player gets for helping to maintain the mood and feel of the game. It can include a lot of things, but most of it is stuff that you didn't do as opposed to things you did. It rewards character's who make the game more fun and absorbing.
• Learning & Discovery: 1xp
  • This is the reward you get when your character discovers something new and exciting in the game because of actions you took, or when you push the story and game along with a really good idea. Very gamist, but an important and fun reward regardless.

the High Action Awards

• What the Hell just happened?: 1xp
  • This is the reward you get for stumping the storyteller. If you manage to sidetrack or derail my plot, push the game successfully in a fun new direction, or otherwise do something that forces me to think on my feet. In other words, if I have lots of fun at a game because of something you did, then you get an XP.
• Epic and Exceptional: 1xp
  • This reward showcases exceptional and particularly legendary performance in a game. It's here to encourage characters to have epic swordfights atop the broken towers of Chiaroscuro, or to attempt to chop off the legs of that Warstrider. Note, however, that I will only reward /successful/ legendary stuff.
• the Whoah!: 1xp
  • This is the reward that has to do with doing something that I didn't think was going to be possible or easy, and succeeding. If you kill the unbeatable NPC (or just put up a good fight), or survive a situation that I thought would kill you (or just put up a good show). It's designed to encourage players to try stuff.
• Villain Recycling: 1xp
  • Here's a very very gamist reward, designed for one purpose: letting me reuse cool villains. If you have a chance to kill somebody important and just nick his face or humiliate him, you get an XP. You saved me hours and hours of work, and made the game funner -- you get an XP.
• Best Stunt: 1xp
  • This reward will be given to a player who performs a truly impressive and insane stunt, which I find amusing and fun! This doesn't have to be a plus three stunt, but will almost certain be one if such a stunt bonus is given in the session.
• Winners Circle: 1xp
  • This is the award you get for setting out during the session to do something, working within the game toward that goal, and accomplishing it. I.e., if your character decides he's going to free the prisoners and does so, he might get this reward. Ties go to whomever was more impressive. This is just a "do something" reward.

I reserve the right to make up new awards on the spot and hand them out, if I see a reason. I may or may not add those to this chart later.

Story Awards

This is slightly easier. I'm just going to list 8 different traits that govern the success of a story. When a given story ends, I will just go down the list and reward one bonus XP for every award that comes out a "yes". It's fun to ask (the first 7) of these to the players, and see how they answer in regard to these questions.

• Did everyone have a fun time?
• Was the session a totally awesome climax?
• Were sideplots resolved and character's developed?
• Did the character's accomplish their goals?
• ALL of their goals; i.e., was it a total victory?
• Were the bad guys sent packing, with wailing and gnashing of teeth?
• Do you (mostly) understand (almost) everything that happened in the story?
• Lastly, for the ST; did the players find all the extra nifty bonus secret stuff?

The story-ending bonus is in addition to the normal session awards. I reserve the right to change these questions, if I think of better ones.

Experience Pools

Experience Pools are an extra kind of award that I implent, which allow me to give PCs a few extra experience points here and there for reasons that might not reflect actions in the game. The criteria I use is described below, but first I want to explain a bit of the way these work. Basically, experience that goes into "the pools" is 'extra' -- above and beyond the normal rewards that character's get for playing the game! The catch here is that the player's don't have full (or even much) control over the experience from these pools. Also, pool experience is 'invisible' to the characters unless I let them know how much they have.

The Two Kinds of Pools
The first kind of pool is the General Pool, also called the Essence Pool. This pool is very flexible, able to be used in any method besides one. The default use for this pool is to raise the character's Essence rating, but it can also be used on any other kind of expenditure that I decide is worthy of getting these bonus experience points. This could include Attributes, Willpower-raises, Virtues raises, or even Abilities and Specialities. The one thing that you can't spend General Pool experience on is Charms.

The Charm Pool solves that deficency, however. All the experience points in this pool is earmarked for learning new charms, or more rarely the ability to learn fun combos. This experience cannot be used anywhere else either!

How Pool Experience is Spent
The Experience in the Pools is, as noted above, not under the full command of the player. Rather, it is a extra pool of "bonus experience" that I spend to encourage growth in areas that I feel would benefit the character or the game. There are two ways that this experience is spent, which I will briefly outline.

1. ST-Directed purchases are gained when I have enough experience in the appropriate pool to raise a trait (or buy a charm), and I note my intention to do such to the character. The character can choose to veto this increase if he wishes, in which case I might put away the experience for later or propose an additional option. If a character has been doing a lot of hard physical labor in play, I might reward him at one point with the note that his Strength has just gone up a point due to such labor! Similarly, a character might discover during an adventure that he's spontaneously learned a useful charm that he might not otherwise have bothered grabbing but that is useful in this situation.
2. PC-Directed Aid is given when a player wants to raise a certain trait, but doesn't have enough experience to make the increase with her own experience point pools. If the character can afford the raise with the addition of some General (or Charm) pool experience then I will offer him the ability to use some of it. He may take the bonus experience, or turn it down for later use, as he wishes. The key difference between this method and the previous is that the player is the one to decide to raise the trait in question.

Why use Experience Pools?
Mostly, Experience Pools are just a way to add a little extra experience to your games without worrying about overbalancing the game because you know that you'll have a say in where it goes. Not just in where it doesn't go, mind you, but what it's actually used for in game. This allows for a slightly more realistic bit of character growth, with characters growing in avenues that they might not otherwise have!

How I award XP to the pools
Each session, you can earn from 0-3 experience points to your pools.

Here are some ways you might gain pool.

• Blueblooking, extra private scenes (logs mailed to me, if I'm not present), and character fiction.
• Extra aid or effort to make the game fun for everyone, above and beyond the call of duty. Cleaning up logs, maintaining a game page, helping keep the NPC page accurate, whatever.
• Something cool that happens, that I don't want to /directly/ award.

The first two are simple; if you put in extra work, you get more of a reward. However, at the same time, I don't want character's to be getting too far ahead of everyone else. This can cause a trouble, especially when one player consistently puts a lot of extra effort into the game. I can reward him, without necessarily making him more combat effective or robbing the other players thunder.

The last is a tricky case. You might have noticed that I tend to award things that make the game funner. I also tend to NOT give a lot of awards for things that make the game harder. People who cause the group to split up, sideplots and storylines that involve character infighting or betrayal, and other such things can quickly make a storyline very hard to run because nobody has an excuse to keep the group together. Soon, I end up having to run effectively two games -- or the suspension of disbelief is ruined, because one can't help but wonder why these people keep working together.

In this case, rather than giving a direct award that would encourage such behavior in the future, the character might get less experience than everyone else in the actual award but I'd give them a little pool experience to make up for it. I only give these awards if I think that the offense in question was both fun and interesting, however. Something that perhaps should have gotten a reward, but didn't because I felt it hurt the game rather than making it more fun.

How Much I award
Note, these examples assume issues 1-2 for purposes of description. Also, I try to be fair with regard to the character's usual contribution. Someone who routinely does lots and lots of stuff doesn't automatically ALWAYS earn the 3pt award.

0 points : the character didn't undertake any extra work, or did very little.
1 point : a small show of work that deserves a bit of notice.
2 points : a fair-sized amount of effort, which probably took a lot of time and energy.
3 points : the player did some really impressive stuff, which impressed me greatly!

Also, I tend to award 1xp to anyone who I think did a very good job relative to their normal play experience one point above and beyond the following. This is just a "thank you" for showing up on time, having good ideas, and basically making the game a lot more fun for everyone (but especially me).

Where do those points awarded go? That depends entirely on whim. I try to maintain a certain level of balance, and since both pools are useful in their own way it helps to distribute the points fairly evenly. However, General pools tend to be slightly favored over the Charm pool.

Comments

OK, now this is damn useful. Been looking for something like this for a while, but too busy with mechanical issues to work on it. That yoinking sound you hear is me stealing this for use in my games. :) - Moxiane

I concur. This is as close to Perfection AND applicability as one gan get without charms.  :P Scrollreader

Thanks! I'm glad other people find it useful! -- CrownedSun

This is beautiful. I must steal it immediately. Just in time for me to start my game, too! -- TheT