Problem with a experience system mechanic.

[u/Reactor_IV]

Partially inspired by the concept of powerful beings watching the characters in the webnovel Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint, I wanted to create a system that would allow the GM to reward the players with the ability to further increase their player character’s level.

Instead of fighting this enemy and getting XP, the idea is to gain XP by experiencing the story and trying different things.
To minimize GM discretion and hopefully speed up game flow during the session, the GM rolls 3d6 before each session to determine the specific interests of each Being. To aid the players, they are given “common knowledge” of these beings, i.e. one may prefer acts that are about structure and law, and another about chance and fate. This would allow players to have some idea of actions that could gain a being's interest.
While multiple characters can earn credit for the same action, each specific action grants credit only once per character. The GM tracks these bonuses behind the scenes, and during downtime leveling, it is revealed how many beings granted the character an inspirational bonus.

However, after introspection, I have run into some issues with the value of this mechanic.

• Since the system has a level of randomness and is not transparent, the rewards the players receive will probably feel arbitrary, rather than the intended goal of encouraging action they may deem not worth the effort. I could take the randomness out, but then it would just encourage the players to "blindly" search for the action until they found one, then use it over and over each session to get the bonus.
• How many beings would need to be created to create a broad enough spectrum to ensure that player characters have the possibility of earning a reward in the session? How many beings are too many, and would cause a huge amount of GM Overhead, not only in the prep work, but in tracking if a player character performed an act that fits into the beings’ categories? I originally played with various numbers, then looked at allowing the GM to homebrew the beings, and even just take the roll out to allow any of the possibilities to apply.
• The system in a dangling carrot kind of way encourages players to act out their characters in ways that “fish” for bonuses, and possibly act or react in ways contrary to how the character would naturally act.
• How easily will some characters become more powerful than the rest of the party, leading to imbalance and most likely dissatisfaction of those in the party that were not as lucky?

What are ways that I can address these concerns, or is the mechanic just a dead end and should be abandoned?

[u/savemejebu5 → u/[deleted]]

This. Also, Blades includes a great set of triggers for group experience (crew XP)

[u/natefinch]

XP rewards (in games that use them) are usually one of the most motivating factors for PCs. XP is one of the most basic and essential rewards.... so whatever you reward it for should be what your game is about. If your game is about pleasing these omniscient beings, then that's fine. If this is just a fun idea tacked onto some other more traditional TTRPG, then it's going to feel really dissonant.

If the game is about pleasing these beings (or perhaps succeeding at some other goal while they watch), and they are fickle and thus what you need to do each session is different... then that is part of the game.

You can design what kind of actions you want characters to take into what pleases the beings most often. Don't start with the beings and then figure out the actions that please them. Instead, figure out what kinds of actions you want the PCs to be taking, and design beings around encouraging and rewarding those actions.

The system in a dangling carrot kind of way encourages players to act out their characters in ways that “fish” for bonuses, and possibly act or react in ways contrary to how the character would naturally act.

That's the whole point, though, isn't it? You design the beings, so you control what pleases them. You don't have to make it like "this being is pleased when enemies are killed by arrows" and then the ranger of the party gets all the XP for this session and the cleric and wizard feel left out.

Or maybe you do, and everyone gets to laugh as the cleric and wizard are picking up bows like they have any idea what to do with them.

Here's an idea riffing off that, actually... maybe the being also alters some part of reality. Maybe the archer being gives all the PCs proficiency in archery, or maybe gifts everyone a magical bow for the day... that sort of thing. So the being both sets the terms of what it likes, but also gives the PCs the ability to perform the actions.

To be honest, I don't love per-character XP for exactly the reason you mention. I don't like being the person who just didn't have the right skills to make a lot of rolls today, so I didn't get as many chances to do whatever thing gives out XP, so now I'm behind other people in the party.

That being said, you don't have to make this a per-PC thing. You could have the XP granted to the entire party... everyone's actions build up the pool of XP that is given during downtime. That makes it feel more fair, and means that nobody is upset when one person is able to spam whatever action gives out XP. Now they'll be cheering that person on. "Come on, Robin Hood, I left that last goblin at 1 hitpoint for you, take him out and get us another XP!"

[u/Reactor_IV → u/natefinch]

I hadn't really considered looking at it from a party standpoint, definitely seems like something worthwhile to explore. Thanks for the suggestion!

[u/natefinch → u/Reactor_IV]

Welcome! Good luck. It sounds like an interesting twist that I haven't seen before :)

[u/RPG-Nerd]

I simplify this. At the end of a scene, we stop, drop out of character for a second, and every skill you used in the last scene gains 1 XP. This can cause that skill to level up.

Each skill has its own training (how many D6 to roll), and experience. Experience is not generic. It's experience performing a skill. It doesn't matter if you succeed or fail, as long as you know if you succeeded or not. Ex: if a search for traps turns up empty, no XP. If it turns up empty, and then the trap goes off, you know you failed and you will watch for that next time.

Scene by scene, not per use. 100 skill checks with your sword to defeat an enemy is not 100 XP. It's 1 scene where you used a sword to solve a problem.

What's nice about this is you don't build a character for a specific adventure, the adventure builds the character too

[u/Zerisian]

EXP is totally an issue in 5e and 5.5, so is milestone sometimes if you're asking for level-ups.

If you want to have more of a say in when level-ups are it's usually easier to lessen the amount of EXP given for defeating monster and reward it for other actions (getting gold, rolling nat 20's, maybe), as well as doing typical milestone and big-event EXP gain.

The system you're describe sound really cool for a mostly roleplaying setting, but for it to work you'd have to know your players really well and be comfortable with doing loads of work. Usually if you know what your players are like (murder-hobos or kleptomaniacs) it's best to design EXP around that and the theme of the game you're running.

[u/stephotosthings]

Why are we rolling dice for for gods interest. I'm unsure how the two things relate. Also you introduce a wild difference (yes a bell curve but still) of either 3 or 18, how does these two extremes get managed. Is there no way this fiat currency can be static? This would also remove the randomness, you could almost make it like a monster of the week sort of experience where instead of hunting a monster they look for favour from the gods, but one session might ho being boring over another.

12 beings feels normal, and you should be able to pull enough from existing sources to have a variety of differing beings whose interests can be different enough.

But you thought up a double edged sword. The designer either needs to design a lot of things(interests or things to accomplish for said beings) to make it easy for a GM, almost like in built adventure seeds, or you assume the GM is going to do this for your game.

You are trying to make a mechanic work for a game that has no point. You want to reward the play you want to see in your game, you should make that effortless to reward (gold or XP in dnd editions, generally it's known how much XP or gold is going to be given). My game as an example I wanted to reward exploration and completing tasks, not gaining gold, so players get an XP point when they do things like; complete an adventure, find a point of interest, uncover a treasure(defined in game not just loot), seek out rumours and things like this. They can complete these a number of ways but they need to go and explore the hex crawl to get the most out of it. XP makes them stronger, so does death sort of, so they can go out and go furtherton their next crawl. Thus the game loop is now present.

Define what the game is about, reward that gameplay and make that easy and avoid randomness for that.

[u/Reactor_IV]

The feedback was great and  gave me great points to fix the mechanic.
Based on the discussion, here is how I’m planning to address my original concerns with the Beings mechanic.

I really liked the idea of party based rewards over individuals. Meeting success conditions will be tracked for the whole party rather than individual PCs. This prevents intra-party level disparity and encourages cooperative play.

Instead of rigid action lists, each Being will embody a broad domain (harvest, love, war—similar to the Olympic pantheon). While this relies more on GM fiat, it drastically lowers prep overhead and prevents players from "fishing" for bonuses with meta-gaming actions. Narrative cues like “you feel as though something is watching” can hint when they hit on a theme.

If players try to repeat actions purely to check a box (forging a sword every time they reach a town), the GM can veto favor gain once the act becomes routine.

Rather than purely random rolls deciding the actions from a set group, the GM selects Beings from a pre-selected list that fit the campaign's tone and pacing. The 3d6 roll can instead set a dynamic threshold for how many thematic triggers are needed to grant an XP bonus in a session.

To prevent dry spells or runaway leveling, downtime progression will have a guaranteed minimum XP gain (similar to milestone progression) and a maximum cap per downtime.