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GameMastery Guide / Rewards / The Role of Rewards / Experience

Ad Hoc Experience

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 103
Many players recall with great fondness sessions where the dice were never rolled. When a game spends considerable time developing plot and character and places fighting monsters and accumulating XP in the background, however, some players may feel that they’re being penalized. In these situations, reward out-of-combat successes with ad hoc experience awards.

When the group takes part in an entertaining scene that takes 15 minutes or more, consider awarding ad hoc XP. Ask yourself the following questions:
  • Did the scene move the group toward an important, identifiable objective?
  • Did the group face significant negative consequences if the events portrayed in the scene went against them?
  • Did the players take an active role in the scene, as opposed to listening to your descriptions or NPC dialogue?
  • Did most of the players make a noteworthy contribution to the scene?
  • Did all of the players appear attentive and entertained? If you can answer at least four of these questions in the affirmative, you should award ad hoc XP. The following steps can be used to determine a baseline figure for ad hoc awards:
  • Roughly determine the amount of real time it takes you, on average, to run a challenging encounter.
  • Divide this into 15-minute increments. So if it takes you an hour, more or less, to run a challenging fight, you have four increments.
  • Take the XP award the group would normally get for a challenging encounter (usually APL+1) and divide it by the number of increments. This is your baseline ad hoc award.
Once you have decided to award ad hoc experience for a scene, roughly estimate the amount of real time the sequence took. Award your baseline amount multiplied by the number of 15-minute increments as ad hoc XP.

Revise the baseline as the group increases in level. Take into account any increases in the average length of encounters, as well as the experience awards the characters garner. Additional individual ad hoc experience points can also be awarded to players for particularly good roleplaying. If you decide to use individual awards, be careful not to show favoritism. All of the characters should have opportunities to receive such rewards at some point.

Players on the right side of the rewards continuum probably prefer heavily action-oriented games. If your game consists mostly of exciting combat sequences with a minimum of plot to connect them, it’s probably not worth bothering with ad hoc awards.