PinkFae Archive #52: How to GM Part 8: Awarding Experience Points

As we near the end of the PinkFae Archives, we come to the second to last entry in the 'How to GM' series. This article was originally published on 4 February 2017.

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 The evening is over, and the game is finished for tonight. Everyone is ready to go home. There's one last thing left to do. It's finally time to award experience points. For some players, this is, in some ways, the entire point of the game. They see it as a reward for having done a good job. Getting a lot of experience indicates that they're a proficient gamer. After all, it helps them feel as if they were useful to the completion of the goal. For that reason, awarding experience points is an important and often delicate task.

Depending on the system you're using, this can be a very easy task, or it can be daunting. Let's look at some of the intricacies involved in effectively awarding experience.

Story versus Action

I was unable to post an entry last week. I apologise. It has been a crazy spring season. Although it's not technically summer yet, my 'summer season' began today, so I expect fewer obstacles for a while.

Today, I want to talk about an exchange I had on Tuesday. I was at the weekly meeting of the local board game club, when two young men walked into the building and said that they were hoping to get to attend, but would need to ensure that they had a ride home. I offered my services. So they stayed, and games were played by everyone present, and at the end of the night, I ferryed them to their residence.

As we were driving, we the conversation turned to role-playing games. They asked me if I had ever played Dungeons and Dragons. I informed them that yes, I had, but that I was not a fan of the game, because it emphasised hack-and-slash over storytelling. They attempted to defend their beloved game, saying the usual things like 'It's not the game that determines the story's structure, it's the GM,' and 'We've played in games that have great stories.'

Which is true, to an extent, but what they don't seem to notice is that the game's mechanics have a distinct effect on the types of stories being told. I've talked about this before, but only in passing.

Loosing my gaming rants onto the world

You have found my little corner of the web, where I talk about one of the most important things in the world to me: games.

I am a major fan of games, including both board games and role-playing games.

So here is where I shall talk about it.

First, let me introduce myself. I'm the Game Dork. Hi. Nice to meet you.

Now, for my first post, I'm going to talk about something that I've wanted to try for a while now, and haven't really got the chance to do: chronicle play.

Chronicle play is when you create a starting level character (1st level for D&D, or whatever), and play that character continuously in the same group of players with the same characters for years, until he becomes a truly advanced character.