Sandbox XP

I've hit on an idea for how to run XP in a way that will work for my upcoming sandbox game using The Black Hack. The system itself should be pretty much transferrable to any classic D&D derivative that uses race-as-class (I've hacked the "kindred classes" from B/X into my game), or with some tweaks for ones that don't.

The one complaint people consistently lodge against The Black Hack is that it doesn't contain much scope for levelling up. This confuses me slightly - as far as I can tell, it offers about as much scope as the early editions of D&D on which it's modelled. That is, fighter-types get better at hitting things, magic users (in the broad sense) get access to more powerful spells, thieves' skill at thief-y tasks increases, as does their backstab damage, and of course everyone gets more hp. Anyway, as I understand it, advancement in these games is largely supposed to be driven by acquisition, especially of magic items - your +2 to hit every three levels advanced doesn't mean very much next to your +3 flaming sword. All of this scans with The Black Hack. TBH does get a little skewy at higher levels, but that's easily accommodated with very little tweaking (e.g.: my Warriors don't get to use their extra attacks against Powerful Foes, i.e.: enemies with more hit dice than themselves).

So I've programmed in XP triggers. This is not a new idea - I nicked it from Blades in the Dark, but I'm sure it's seen even more extensive use in other systems - but the implementation is my own, as are the reasons for it. First, the system, such as it is:

XP and Levelling Up

Y'all ready for an experience?

Levelling up requires spending XP. The amount of XP needed to proceed to the next level is 1000 x the target level.

Each class has three specific XP triggers (see below). If you complete an XP trigger in a session, then you get to add a number of XP depending on the significance of the event.

Warrior:
-        Best a Powerful Foe in single combat
-        Lead a fighting force
-        Fight dirty or outsmart a foe

Thief
-        Steal a valuable treasure
-        Engage with the criminal underworld
-        Overcome an obstacle using trickery or subterfuge

Cleric
-        Exorcise an undead creature
-        Make a sacrifice to help an innocent in need
-        Further the specific aims or values of your god (knowledge, commerce etc.)

Wizard
-        Unearth forbidden lore
-        Overcome an obstacle using magic
-        Deal with (fight, parley, bind) a supernatural creature

Elf
-        Foster an alliance to oppose evil
-        Deal with a fey spirit or wild creature
-        Protect a place of sanctuary

Dwarf
-        Recover a powerful artefact
-        Make good on an oath
-        Explore lost underground spaces

Hobbit
-        Avoid a problem by going unnoticed
-        Help to protect a homely place
-        Make an unlikely friend

XP rewards depend on the significance of the event – more significant means a greater reward. You can’t cash in the same trigger more than once in one session, and you can’t claim the same action for two different triggers, although you can cash in multiple triggers at once. One-off rewards, e.g.: for completing quests or just doing cool stuff, will occasionally be handed out (if you’re not sure if something merits an XP reward, you can always ask). Standard increments for rewards are roughly as follows, by significance of event:

50xp – Trifling

100xp – Considerable

250xp – Significant

500xp – Outstanding

1000xp – Momentous

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The obvious purpose behind the system is to get people to think about their characters in terms of archetypes from fantasy. This was my main reason for going with the kindred classes, as I'm calling them, as opposed to the more conventional race-class combo. Not to be all fusty and conservative (small 'c'), but the wildly combinatorial approach to character creation in 5e just results in a bit of an ice cream soup for me (doesn't taste like anything in particular, just tastes weird and sweet). Playing a fantasy game, to me, means playing a game with some recognisable fantasy tropes, and this can benefit from being tied to character class.

That's what it does on the face of it, but there's also a semi-secret agenda. This campaign will resolutely be a sandbox, complete with hexmap, pre-stocked with dungeons, factions etc., and with no overriding, pressing need for the characters to get on with that one quest. But all this comes with the problem of choice paralysis.

I've attempted to run sandboxy games before, and each time I've run up against the problem of the players not being sure what they were supposed to be doing, and looking to me like I've got the answers - the opposite of what I want. In that situation, anything shaped remotely like a scenario hook that you dangle in front of the players will get snapped up, and then - bizarrely, paradoxically - you're back to leading them along by the collective nose. Because I love inventing names for things, I call this the "Sandbox Paradox".

With the above XP triggers, I can hand players a guide to how to approach the sandbox. All the triggers point to the sorts of things an adventure is built out of, but all of them require some proactivity from the players. This is the classic "Using XP to reinforce the sort of behaviour you want" - here meaning proactive searching out of adventure. Everyone wants to level up, right? It even makes it into the imagined game. The important thing to emphasise, then, is that in order to get the XP to level up, you have to get out there and start shaking the world to see what falls out.

It fits quite nicely with the system too, since TBH's whole thing is using modern systems, drawn from both neo-trad and PbtA games, to reinforce old school play in a way that's more streamlined and palatable than the original rulesets. Using XP triggers will make more sense to my players than using gold for XP, but they encourage broadly the same behaviours; any dungeon expedition in search of riches will probably present ample opportunity for everyone to satisfy at least some of their triggers.

The problem I had with the implementation of this sort of system in Blades in the Dark was that I frequently forgot my character's specific triggers, and so went whole sessions without gaining any XP whatsoever. This is partly because Blades' archetypes are esoteric and unfamiliar. This at least is a problem I don't have - my players all know the things Wizards do that Hobbits don't and vice versa more intuitively than I know the difference between a Leech and a Whisper.

But the real difference, I feel, is that Blades' triggers told you how to approach a situation, where mine feature a mix of approaches, and immediate and mid-term goals. So while Blades only tells you how to get a reward for dealing with the immediate situation in a characterful way (with the problematic upshot that your first instinct when confronted with an obstacle becomes to look to your character sheet for how you should approach it), the triggers I've given above tend more to tell you what sorts of prizes to pursue in general, because my focus is on giving players a leg up in answering the question "What do we want to do this session?" And where they do mention a particular approach, my triggers mostly just reward you for thinking outside the box - again, behaviour that I want to encourage.

I'll be very interested to see how the group deals with XP differentials building up. Part of the point of this system was to make XP non-transferrable, so the players actually think about levelling; if the XP goes into a big party pool to be meted out evenly each session, then it starts to look too much like a reward just for showing up, and so loses its utility as an incentive. Nevertheless, I predict that if a player starts to fall behind, the party will consider organising an adventure around their specific triggers to net them some XP and help them catch up. Hence, although this is conjecture, non-transferrable XP could well reap the benefits of both competition and cooperation between players, while transferrable XP (or worse, fiat XP) lacks either. If cooperation fails though, there's always the pressure valve of "You did something cool, have an XP reward" - to be used sparingly, of course.

And yes, I did whip out the thesaurus for "Trifling, Considerable" and so on, but I actually don't hate it, looking at it fresh. The point of the GM adjudicating whether the foe you defeated or the treasure you looted was "Considerable" or "Significant" is to act as something of a spam filter. There are certain triggers by which the party could attempt to game the system, if all actions that satisfied a trigger were worth the same amount of XP. For example, the Dwarf could go into any old cave to "Explore lost underground spaces", or swear an oath at the start of combat that they'll hit that goblin, something they absolutely would have done anyway. As the GM, I can call them on completing only a trifling feat and give them only a token reward (the admonishment of having my efforts called "trifling" would on its own dissuade me personally from further attempts to gain XP on a technicality, although I can't speak for my players). And it meant that I didn't have to try and eyeball the balance for all twenty one triggers when designing it to make sure every action was roughly equally difficult to achieve.

The unintended thing I like about this system is that it gives classes more fictional texture without specifically pidgeonholing characters too much - or, the 5e method, piling on special abilities that are supposed to express something about the character. Not that that isn't fun - I enjoy the build-a-bear style of character creation - I'm just intrigued, after working on the system for a while, about the idea of choosing between classes based not just on what they say your character can do, but based on what they say your character wants to do, and how that meshes with or even helps to seed your own ideas about their goals.

More on this when it hits the table.

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