Experience Points for Different Modes of Play

This a follow up for my other post thinking about experience points and design considerations about them. In this post I will try to use those guidelines to come up with some solutions.

Experience Points for Different Modes of Play

In my previous post I talked a bit about how there are different modes of play in most OSR games and that XP for treasure only really rewards dungeon crawling. This is great if your players are mostly dungeon crawling. Such as exploring a megadungeon and only really going back to town at the end of the session, mainly to sell and buy stuff. It's not so great if your players are doing other things like hexcrawling which is supposed to be an activity in of itself and not just something you do to get to the dungeon to dungeoncrawl.

I think for each major activity of play you need a different way to gain experience points. It's why I think a lot of OSR blogs develop experience point rewards for exploration. However, I also try to want to satisfy the other main guidelines I created:

1. XP rewards should not be given for something the players will already do

2. XP rewards should encourage risk

3. XP should be given at the end of a session

You can read my reasoning for these guidelines in my previous post.

Three Main Activities of Play

The main modes of play that I would want to grant XP for in my games are:

1. Dungeon Crawling: composed of encounters and exploration of rooms.

2. Hexcrawling: composed mostly of traveling about the map.

3. Investigating something big in the setting: composed of seeking out answers for various aspects of the setting.

There are arguably other major activities of play. Such as spending time in town buying and selling items. But I wouldn't grant XP for engaging in such things as players are likely to do them anyways and they contain very little risk. XP should be used to encourage player risk, and given as a reward for players successfully taking a risk. Dungeon Crawling and Hexcrawling definitely involve lots of danger and risk. Investigating knowledge, not as much, it's a bit more dependent, but I think there are some cases where there is genuine risk. I'll explore that more when I come to that activity.

XP in Dungeon Crawling

For dungeon crawling I'm just going to use the tried and tested XP for treasure via carousing with the following rules:

Carousing 

Carousing is the easiest and the main way for character to gain experience points, especially in earlier levels where they have yet to venture very far from their starting settlement. In short, carousing is action taken in a settlement in which the group spends a large amount of their hard earned money, having a good time about town, blowing their fortune as they blow off steam, before becoming desperate enough again to raid another crumbling ruin for treasure.

Carousing lets a player turn money directly into experience points at a 1:1 ratio. First they choose an amount of money to convert into experience points. Then they roll on the following table to see how their bender went. After they may have to roll on the carousing mishaps or fortunes table to see how their relationship with people in the settlement has changed.

 

2d6	Result
2-6	Experience is gained. However, you've all made fools of yourself in some manner. Roll on the carousing mishaps table.
7-9	Experience is gained.
10+	Experience is gained. You've all had a stroke of good luck! Roll on the carousing fortunes table!

 

	Mishap	Fortune
1	Start a brawl. You all are involved in a brawl that gets out of control. Start the next adventure with a black eye and -1 health per level. The local tavern keeper is no longer quite as amicable.	Jackpot! One of you strikes it rich at the card tables! Gain level x 100 coins.
2	Minor misunderstanding with local authorities that you’re unable to smooth over. You all spend the next 1d6 days in jail. Now seen as local troublemakers.	Gain a local reputation as the life of a party! Those of ill repute much more friendly and see you as one of their own.
3	One of you insulted a local person of rank. They will hold a grudge unless you all publicly apologize and humiliate yourself before them.	Whoa what a trip! The strange powder you sniffed revealed mystic truths about the universe. Young people in the settlement see you as cool and not one of the squares.
4	Hangover from hell. The first day of adventuring all luck rolls are done with a bane.	Well fed, well rested, and ready to go! The first day of adventuring all luck rolls are done with a boon.
5	Gambling binge. You’re party owes a collective debt to someone you don’t want to owe money too.	Citizens arrest! You catch some criminal in the act and are able to restrain them until the authorities arrive. You are seen as hero’s by the settlement for a short time.
6	You've ruined the local economy! Your excess spending means that all prices are now double until next season.	The local blacksmith, due to your influx of cash, has been able to order in an exquisite weapon that he’s willing to sell to you guys for the normal price.
7	Major misunderstanding with local authorities. All weapons, armour, and magic items confiscated until fines and bribes totalling 1d6 x 1000 coins paid.	The local clergy see you guys as protectors of the settlement. They offer you a blessing before your next adventure.
8	When in a drunken stupor and in some trouble, you sought refuge in a church. They took care of you but now as repayment have begun hounding you to perform a charitable act.	Impressed by your ability to drink for days and keep standing, a local hireling is willing to join you on your next adventure if you wish at no initial cost.
9	Invest all your spare cash in some smooth-tongued merchant's scheme. Turns out it’s bogus! One of the towns merchants flees!	Invest all your spare cash in some smooth-tongued merchant's scheme. Turns out it’s real! It returns 75% profits next Season.
10	Due to a lost game of darts at the tavern. You make bitter enemies with a local rival adventuring party.	Your ability to carouse with the common folk as lead them to see you as one of their own. The peasants of the settlement are thankful to have you around. You receive free room and board in this settlement of poor quality.
11	Beaten and robbed. You are waylaid by a bunch of thugs during your drunken carousing. Loose 1d100 coins.	Your time spent carousing has let you in on some juicy gossip. You learn one secret about a person in authority.
12	The roof! The roof! The roof is on fire! Accidentally start a conflagration Roll 1d6 twice. 1-2) burn down your favorite inn 3-5) some other den of ill repute is reduced to ash 6) a big chunk of town goes up in smoke. 1-2) no one knows it was you guys 3-5) one other person knows you did it 6) everybody knows.	A local elder has warmed up and begun to approve of you despite your antics. They let you in on a secret about a nearby adventuring site.

 

The above table I use is a modified version of Jeff Rient's one. It's meant to make the gaining experience points a little more interesting and to change the characters relationship with the settlement their in to make their interaction with it a little more dynamic.

XP for treasure meets all of my guidelines. It encourages risk, it is done at the end of the session, and it's given for something they wouldn't normally do. They have to purposely search for treasure in the dungeon and seek it out. I make the players choose between spending the coins on equipment and things and spending it on XP. I kind of like this as it keeps them somewhat broke.

XP in Hexcrawling

Hexcrawling is a bit more difficult than dungeon crawling. I don't want to just give a straight XP amount for every hex explored or new place discovered. Most of the time, players are going to do this anyways as a normal part of moving around the map, even if it's just to get to the dungeon. I want to encourage them to take risks. 

I'm going to borrow a rule I found in Neoclassical Geek Revival by Zzarchov Kowolski. Basically in it he had a rule where for every room the players explored they'd gain cumulative XP. So if they got 10 XP the first room, they'd get 20 XP the second room 30 XP the third 50 XP the fourth, 80 XP the fifth etc. I'm going to do something similar but for hexcrawls and call it Telling Tall Tales.

Telling Tall Tales

Telling tall tales is another way characters can gain experience points. It involves spreading word of your travels and exploits, generally telling tall tales in places like taverns, at court, to the high and the low, shamelessly boasting and self-promoting, and to simply entertain or achieve status.

This method of experience gain is generally used during the mid levels as the characters begin to venture from their starting settlement more and more and begin to explore the world that surrounds them.

Telling tall tales lets a player gain a certain amount of experience points for every hex of the hex map they have explored since they last left the settlement. The experience gained is cumulative per hex. This is calculated by giving 30 XP for the first hex and adding the previous two hex's together for every additional hex. A table below is provided as an example.

Hex Total	XP Amount
1	30
2	30
3	60
4	90
5	150
6	240
7	390
8	630
9	1020
10	1650
11	2670
12	4320

Once the players have calculated how much experience points they will gain they need to roll on the following table to determine how their telling of tall tales went. After that they may have to roll on the Telling Tall Tales Mishaps and Fortunes table to see how their relationship with people across the land has changed.

2d6	Result
2-6	Experience is gained. However, you've all made fools of yourself in some manner. Roll on the Telling Tall Tales mishaps table.
7-9	Experience is gained.
10+	Experience is gained. You've all had a stroke of good luck! Roll on the Telling Tall Tales fortunes table!

	Mishap	Fortune
1	Inspired by your tales of treasure the road to places you've explored becomes clogged with fortune seekers slowing your travel.	The local authority, upon hearing of your discoveries, is willing to buy maps of your travels for 1d6 * 1000 gp.
2	Jealous of your fortune, a rival adventuring party begins to trail you next time you set out with ill intentions.	Enamoured by tales of your exploits, a local orphan child has begun tending to your belongings in hopes you'll bring them along.
3	Word of your mighty deeds has spread. A mighty warrior has arrived in the settlement to challenge the strongest among you to single combat.	Word of your crimes have spread. There is now a bounty of 1d6 * 1000 on all your heads across the land.
4	Word of your brave exploits has spread. A powerful wizard has arrived in the settlement to challenge the wisest among you to a wizards battle.	Due to your exploits in a region you have explored, you have been granted a deed to a small tract of land and honorary title by the local authority seeking to capitalize on your popularity among the common folk.
5	Sensing a power vacuum, bandits have moved into a location you recently explored and begun raiding the countryside. People are not happy.	Your recent explorations have opened up the land to new settlement. The roads become full of travellers seeking a new beginning. A sense of optimism and hope is in the air.
6	The local authority does not like you intruding upon and causing mischief in lands they see as their own. They forbid you from venturing into them again.	You've become well known among merchants as experienced travellers. They let you in on the location of some exotic trade goods if you're willing to accompany them there.
7	Too late! Your explorations and exploits have upset the unseen balance of things. One enemy you thought defeated or vanquished has struck back! Something big has happened! Refugees begin to flood the area.	A powerful but frail wizard seeks you out. They've found the location of a small trove of spellbooks and wish you to accompany them there.
8	Your heroics have garnered many unseen enemies. Assassins strike out in the dead of night. Defend yourselves!	Word of your righteous deeds has spread among the common folk. You can always find poor accommodation for free in any settlement.
9	Fire! A major forest fire is occurring in several hexes. People are fleeing the area.	Because of your growing renown, a local merchant is willing to pay you for endorsing their products and/or services.
10	Flood! A river or body of water has flooded occluding travel in the area.	In telling tales of your travels, you encounter some old travellers with tales of their own. You learn the details of three unexplored hexes.
11	Pestilence! Plague has broken out in a random settlement. A quarantine has been put in place.	A strange monstrous beast has been seen in an area you recently explored. It's capture or scientific notes on it's behaviour would be worth a lot of money.
12	Word of your exploits has reached the ears of the local authority. They have 'granted' you a non-voluntary audience with them. You suspect they are becoming concerned about your growing fame and popularity.	Strange visitors from beyond time and space have been seen in an area you recently explored.

So while they players aren't likely to gain a level from exploring a few hexes. The amount of XP they gain really begins to ramp up the more they explore. This encourages them to not just make a beeline between the town and the nearest dungeon, but to push into the wilderness a bit, to wander, to seek out the dark corners of the map. The deeper into the wilderness they go, the more dangerous it gets and the more they begin to run out of health and supplies, and the more XP they gain. 

The Telling Tall Tales Mishaps and Fortunes table is meant to make gaining XP this way a little more interesting and kind of reflect the characters growing renown. Where people are taking note of them and it feels like the landscape and setting is reacting to them. I find something like this is needed every once and a while so the landscape isn't just a static thing that only moves when the players interact with it. That dramatic things can happen that they have no control over or never saw coming. In this manner the table is meant to change the characters relationship with the landscape.

Unravel a Mystery

The world is full of strange mysteries. I think players should be rewarded for seeking out answers to them. These aren't small monster of the week mysteries, like who stole the chickens or where did the bandits run off to, but larger mysteries about the strangeness of the setting. Engaging in them means the players are often pursuing a very open ended quest and not just decided to tackle the low hanging fruit of lets just clear another bandit lair this week, or lets just come up with some quick scheme. 

Unravel a Mystery

The world is full of strange mysteries, age old questions, and wonderous places. Things from so long ago their origins are unknown, or seem to exist wholly outside reason. Things that just are, that are whispered about.

This method of experience gain is generally used during high levels as the players seek to truly plumb the depths of their world and try to explore and unravel the mysteries of it's age old wonders.

These wonderous things are not plot goals. They are often just that, things, not people, or events. or happenings. They can be pursued or ignored as the players wish. Taking this action represents the players returning to a settlement with some form of proof about the wonder, some form of answer to it's mystery.

Each mystery is phrased in the form of a question. The players must explain to the Referee the 'answer' to the mystery. What exactly is a sufficient answer is up to the Referee and players to determine but generally involves being able to sufficiently answer who, what when, where, where, why, and how about the mystery. Once they do they must roll to see how such an unravelling went. For the unravelling of such a mystery often comes as a shock or surprise to the wider world. It will often draw attention from those with great power and influence who will invariably seek to exploit it and the players knowledge about it.

There is no set value for the XP reward but it's in the 10,000-100,000 range. Mysteries are highly dependent on the setting but a couple examples are provided below:

• What lies up top Bald Mountain?
• Does the lost city of Xu exist?
• What happens when you put the Rod of Many Parts together?

There is no table of mishaps and fortunes to roll on for unraveling a mystery. Age old mysteries are important enough and specific in nature that each should have natural consequences from their pursuit. Big players in the setting will take notice if the characters are successful in their investigation of them.

Normalizing Treasure and XP Progression

This a follow up for my other post thinking about experience points and design considerations about them. 

Normalizing Treasure and XP Progression

I find most XP charts used in the OSR seem to be largely copied and pasted from older versions of the game without a lot of thought into why the are the way they are, or the progression of advancement they provide. 

Based on my experience as a Referee I find most XP charts for level advancement require an absurd amount of gold if you're using a XP-for-treasure rule. So much so, that characters either don't really make it past the first couple of levels, or after a while I just begin levelling them every couple of sessions or adventures.

I think both treasure values and XP progression needs to be normalized. My first solution is to first come up with a standardized value for treasure and then come up with a revised XP chart based off of this. 

This is the chart I'm going to use. If the players found any treasure in an adventure I'd probably ignore it's written value and just roll on the below chart when they go to sell it. I find adventures tend to vary wildly in the value of treasure they have so having a chart like this that calibrates treasure to XP progression in your game is necessary.

I also find keeping track of the worth of treasure during an adventure to be kind of tedious and don't like just telling the players the worth of the treasure when they find it as I think they should have to try and figure out what to keep and what to leave behind on their own. As a result I'd just roll on this chart when it came time to sell.

It has 4 general tiers of treasure. 

 

Name	Description	Value	Average Value (d10 = 5.5)
Equipment and Coins	Pretty much all of the standard equipment players can buy themselves and whatever small pocket change that would be on someone or in their trunk. This treasure is rarely hidden well.	1d10 * 10	55
Treasure	All non-descript treasure items. Things such as gems, silver goblets, bolts of fine silk, golden necklaces, exquisite painting. Things that aren’t unique, but are generally recognizable as being valuable. This treasure is often hidden and takes some effort to find.	1d10 * 100	550
Exquisite Items	Items that are of a particular unique nature. Either in their craftsmanship or material. They immediately strike one as one of a kind or something you don’t often come across. May or may not be magical. Things such as ebony bow with strange wire bowstring, silver gong with ancient runes and echoing boom, blood red opal that burns from within. This treasure is almost always hidden and often very dangers to recover.	1d10 * 1000	5500
Legendary Items	Items that are legendary. You often hear about them before you find them. Typically highly magical in nature in a way that could break the campaign/setting. If you do find them without hearing about them first, they're probably really, really hard to remove from the area and will often cause trouble. Once found, the question is often, not how do we sell this, but what do we do about this.	1d10 * 10,000	55,000

I'm not going to factor in the Equipment and Coins type treasure into my XP calculations. I always kind of consider it kind of an upkeep cost where the players are probably going to spend around the same amount of what they find to rest up and restock after the adventure.

I'm also going to leave out legendary items as they'd be the goal of some kind of grand quest. They're not found very often or randomly.

So, in a given adventure I'm probably going to assume about 20 rooms or so. This would be something that in my experience would probably take 2 or 3 sessions to cover. If you assume one third to half those rooms have treasure, but only about 25% of it is probably found by the players, that gives you approximately 5 treasure caches. This seems like a good amount of an average adventure.

Now I'm going to assume 3 of those caches have Treasure Items in them, and 2 also have Exquisite Items. Given the average value of all this it works out to be this grants a total of 12,650.

Split five ways for an adventuring party of 5 this equals 2530 coins at the end of the first adventure. Rounded to 2500, I think this is a reasonable amount and all the numbers I've used so far in these calculations kind of reasonable in the sense that the players aren't finding goblets worth 1000 or giant gold statues only worth 100 coins or some such thing. There feels like there is a proportionality to things and the numbers make sense given our modern understanding of money. 2500 coins kind of feels like a good amount for the average 'paycheck' for a dungeon crawl. Nothing that's going to let you retire but enough to let you live the high life for a bit before becoming desperate enough to go on another adventure.

I'm going to use this baseline of 2500 coins for what it takes to go from level 1 to 2 as I think characters should advance to 2nd level after their first adventure. I'm using a standard adventuring party of 5. Most of my players frequently begin a campaign with two characters but I find they'll tend to gravitate to one of their characters over the other so it's up to them if they want to level one faster than the other.

From here I'm going to increase the amount required each level but also pay attention to how many sessions of adventure it would take to gather that much if :

2500 individual share = 20 rooms = 3 sessions.

Worked out this grants the following:

Level	Total XP	Diff. XP	Diff. Sessions	Total Sessions
1	0	0	0	0
2	2,500	2,500	3	3
3	5,000	2,500	3	6
4	7,500	2,500	3	9
5	12,500	5,000	6	15
6	17,500	5,000	6	21
7	22,500	5,000	6	27
8	30,000	7,500	9	36
9	37,500	7,500	9	45
10	44,500	7,500	9	54

So, to reach level 10 one character would need 44,500 coins and a party of 5 adventurers 222,500 coins. While this doesn't seem like an astronomical amount the main way for players to get it is from dungeon crawling not from domain level play (which I dislike). Doing so, would take them approximately 54 sessions. Assuming 1 session per week this whole process would take a little over 1 year. The first 5 levels in three months and three weeks, the remaining 5 levels the rest of the year. 

All this is also assuming that the players do not get XP and their treasure. They get it for their treasure. In my games they have the choice of either spending their money on buying things like hirelings and equipment and other bigger ticket stuff like gypsy wagons or horses, or converting it to XP. This would further slow XP gain a bit as there are probably times when they are going to want to spend 5k or so on some elaborate scheme or another. There would also be wasted XP invested in characters who die, or if players choose to level multiple characters at once.

I have not tested any of these presented rules and all my calculations are kind of back of the envelope and rough, but overall I think most of my assumptions are fair and it all kind of ensures that players can reach higher levels through actual play in a reasonable number of sessions and not just DM fiat. 

I also think having five major caches per 3 session adventure is fair and an easy thing to remember. For most rooms the players will be finding small amounts of coin and equipment. But then once or twice a session they find a major cache of treasure. They have to try and discern what 'tier' it's in (fake treasure like glass gems could pose a further challenge) and right before they go to sell it, I randomly roll to ascertain it's true worth.

Experience Points should Encourage Risk

There has been a lot written in the OSR blogsphere on various experience point systems and how to grant experience points. The two main ways being; the classic granting of experience points for treasure brought back to town, or a more exploration based approach where XP is granted for encountering new things.

Overall I find that no single one person has really figured out a clever system to grant experience points and that even in my own attempts something still feels missing. I don't think I'll solve this problem but after reading several other blog posts about the issue it's all gotten me thinking about it. To this end I have come up with the following design considerations. 

1. Most XP progressions require way to much XP at higher levels

To begin, I very much like the system of gold for XP. It's kind of my default way to grant XP. However, I find that after a couple of levels as the XP requirements begin to inflate, it quickly begins to feel a bit ridiculous where players begin to need absurd wealth to advance in level. 

I know that in older versions of the game, this lead to domain level management where player characters begin to become rulers of mini-kingdoms as they push back the wilderness. Where they'd be making money from other means than just finding treasure in dungeons to sell.

Overall, I tend to prefer my games to not involve domain level play and stick to exploration and dungeon crawling. So while gold for XP does work in earlier levels I feel like it begins to loose impact in later levels as the amount of wealth needed is so much that it kind of becomes out of reach.

One thing that I think is sorely needed in most OSR systems is a recalibration of the XP charts as most people seem to just grab an existing one without thinking about the progression much.

2. XP should not be given for something the players will already do

Another very strong design principle for XP systems I think is that players shouldn't be rewarded for something they would already do. I can't remember where I originally read this, I think I read it in someone else's blog somewhere, but but overall once I heard it I found it to be a trap most XP systems fall into. 

If your players are going to very frequently encounter and kill hostile monsters, then granting them XP for doing so is kind of meaningless. 

If your players are stuck kind on your rail-road quest line then granting XP for achieving certain milestones or plot points, is kind of meaningless.

If your players are going to be exploring a dungeon and finding gold sitting out in the open then granting XP for it is kind of meaningless.

In all these cases I think granting XP for stuff the players are very likely going to be doing already is meaningless as it's being given out as neither a real incentive nor a real reward. Just something the players get for just playing the game.

Overall, I think there is nothing wrong with this on the surface, but if this is what you are doing, it's usually a lot simpler to just level a the character every set number of sessions. Like 3 sessions and you reach level 1. Six sessions and you reach level 2. Or just level everyone at the end of every major adventure. Just level your characters this way and don't bother tracking all the little fiddly thing they are going to do anyways.

Players generally expect to level every once and a while to keep the game interesting. Most OSR games I've played begin with doing gold for XP for the first few levels. Then because of XP bloat and the free ranging shenanigans that most adventuring parties get involved in as they reach higher levels, I tend to just level them every once and a while after a big adventure or 'score'. I think this practice is fairly widespread. 

3. XP should encourage risk

I think it's kind of a common misconception that XP is like a reward that can guide player behaviour. I think it can a little bit. But I don't think I've ever had a player really do something up front for the XP. Overall I find the general setting of the game and the rest of the rules you are using will guide player behaviour a lot more than how they gain XP.

If your game has a lot of crunchy rules for fighting and your players encounter hostile monsters a lot, in a fantasy world full of hostile monsters, I think most of the time they're going to end up fighting the monsters rather than talking to them, even if you grant XP for talking to them. 

The rules and setting of your game, in my opinion, should be the real things which try to influence player behaviour and the style of game you're playing. And if they aren't supporting the desired style of play, then you probably need to find a different system and achieve greater buy in from the players about the setting. 

Then what, or should, XP encourage? I think it should encourage risk. It's one reason why I do think XP for gold works so well.

If the players kill a bunch of bandits in a dungeon and find gold coins in their pockets, it's not really 'treasure' to me. The players are kind of just doing something they'd normally do. 

However, if they hear the bandits stole a bunch of expensive silk bundles and have them hidden away in their lair somewhere, or if they come across a giant diamond sitting in the middle of a (presumably) trapped filled room, then it's doing something different for me.

In this case the treasure is encouraging the players to take a risk. They're not just delving into the bandit lair cause the mayor asked them too and they want to develop a greater relationship with the mayor and happen to find gold in the process. 

They're seeking out that particular bandit lair and doing things like thoroughly searching it increasing their risk because they know that the increased risk will lead to an increased reward. They're trying to obtain the giant diamond despite the traps because they think it'll be a big payout.

Some XP systems are kind of explicit about this where they only give XP for treasure recovered and brought back to town, not gold made through investments or something.

XP should encourage risk because a smart player tends to be a cautious one. A game played too cautiously tends to be boring. XP for treasure helps as it often directly encourages risk. 

This all kind of became really clear to me in Neoclassical Geek Revival where Zzarchov Kowolski basically had a rule that for every dungeon room explored, the amount of XP given for it would be cumulative. 

So you'd get like 10 XP for the first room. Then 20 XP for the second (total of 30). Then like 30 XP for the third (total of 60). Then like 40 XP for the fourth room (total of 100). 

The difference is kind of subtle. Giving out a flat 10 XP per room explored doesn't really encourage risk as it's what the players would already be doing. But by making it so you gain more XP for each new room, you're directly encouraging risk. And risk is what keeps the game fresh.

4. Grant XP at the end of the session

Another major design consideration I think for XP is that it should be rewarded at the end of the session. Every time I or the players have to engage in paperwork, I find it takes us out of the evolving shared narrative. Having to track XP gained during a game for various things I think detracts from play and in my experience tends to be forgotten.

It's one reason why I'm kind of against giving XP for things the players already do or coming up with long lists of things the players can gain XP for like XP for hex explored, or new monster seen, or riddle solved, or trap overcome, etc.

These things aren't bad if at the end of the session you can look back and remember exactly what the players did, but for a lot of things, it's hard to remember. Thus I think it's much easier to tie XP to some other form of paperwork that players are already doing. Like items they have collected, or maps they have drawn, then essentially have them do an entirely new form of paperwork.

Also, I think XP should be given as a group. If you give XP for a specific activity, like killing boss monsters, it's not really fair to classes who aren't great at killing boss monsters. XP can be split up, but once again, doing so in the middle of combat after a monster is killed tends to distract from the game. If XP is given at the end of the session it allows players to discuss as a group, who gets what, and why, without it distracting from the actual game. 

5. Make sure you grant XP for different activities of play

One of the reasons why I think a lot of other OSR bloggers come up with various XP systems is because if you play the game a lot you begin to realize that there are different major activities of play. XP for treasure really only rewards risk in one activity of play, mainly dungeon crawling.

Once players have completed the beginning dungeon or two they tend to spend more time exploring the landscape and setting, most often in a hex crawl. In the hexcrawl there is often less opportunity to find treasure as there is less of a narrative reason for treasure to just be sitting out in the open in the wilderness unclaimed.  This kind of leaves players unable to gain XP in a mode of play that takes up an increasing amount of time as they play.

The argument can be made that there is still treasure in dungeons which the players are seeking out, but it kind of just makes hexcrawling more the thing you do quickly to get to the dungeon and not really a thing in of itself. As a different major activity and mode of play, it should have a different way of rewarding the players for risks they take during it.

The same I think can be said for information gathering and investigation. Basically players talking to NPCs and interacting with setting elements to learn more about the setting. Usually doing so is in pursuit of treasure and can lead to treasure, but it's not really rewarding risk in this particular mode in of itself. It can also be very hard to reward risk in this mode of play as very often there isn't a lot of risk to begin with. 

Regardless, I do think it's important to make sure you are rewarding players taking risks in all the different major activities of play in your game, to try and encourage them to explore things and not just see those modes or activities as things they do to get to the real 'meat' of the adventure. 

Impressions: Knock! Magazine

Knock magazine is a 212 full colour magazine that is a collection of OSR gaming things. Articles, charts, random tables, classes you name it. 

What I think really separates Knock from other such magazines is it's layout which is full of colour and very slick:

Overall its a fairly easy and enjoyable read. I finished it in a day or two. It has a variety of things and I would say I found more than the usual amount of useful information and tables I generally find in such collections.

The one other thing which I do think really separates it apart from other such magazines or efforts is that it has a large number of famous blog posts from the OSR scene. Some of which I had read, some of which I had not.

For years the best advice I could kind of give someone asking what is OSR and who was interested in the scene was to suggest a few blog posts or articles that gave good advice on what makes OSR games different from other RPGs. 

The OSR is kind of getting to the point though that some of the original blogs and posts are no longer really with us, or at times hard to find. Boomarks become outdated and sometimes you don't feel like searching through someone's blog with 100's of posts just to find that one article you kind of vaguely remember as the original kernel for an idea you had or how you play the game. 

Knock magazine is really doing everyone a bit of a service but helping to collect and preserve this information. The first issue was pretty good and has gotten everyone's attention and I'm interested to see what the next one is like. 

I hope it continues for a while and kind of becomes the unofficial Dungeon Masters Guide of the OSR. In many ways I think it's struck on the perfect format for an OSR DMG. It's easy to read, written in a casual, fun manner and it's not for any one particular system. It contains a variety of engaging articles and useful random tables and things that really makes you consider, what do I want my game to be like? What am I excited about?

Being creative and flexible enough to play things out with your players to see what happens is probably the most important part of the OSR mindset to me. And Kock really inspires this.