going though monsters for treasure or plot it is easy enough to calculate XP and GP (and magic times) rewards. the DMG has some guides for traps being setbacks/dangerous/deadly and sometimes the treasure is reward enough for dealing with them but a trap that is between them and there goal with no treasure? i feel like there should be some XP rewards, but i dont have a good idea on how to set up other then gut feel. does anybody have a guild or just a particularly good rule of thumb they could recommend?

traps are pretty much the same as monsters. so yes they do give xp. and the damage output is similar to a monster of the same difficulty

It doesn't say anything really about XP, but Colville just put out a video on making traps if you need more help with creating and running them:

You can always go back to the standard XP for Easy, Medium, Hard, and Deadly encounters, for their level. You have to go with your gut here, and have that be shaped by how the encounter played out: how much time, effort, magic, and HP did the Party "burn" bypassing the trap? The Rogue spotted the trap on a single perception roll, and disabled the trap in a single Slight of Hand roll? That might not even be XP. 3 Three Party members died, and the Party burned all their revivification magic, and it took high DC skill rolls from 3 other people to disable a complex multi-stage trap? That's clearly deadly.

Of course, that's edging toward an "XP for effort expended", and not "XP for accomplishment", which I'm not convinced is a good direction to go.

This is part of why we switched to milestone leveling, give people experience for actually accomplishing something.  Trying to destroy the one ring in the fires of mt doom?  Get the same exp for it whether you stealth your way past the gates or drive a hole in the army of orcs.

Quote from Lunali >>

This is part of why we switched to milestone leveling, give people experience for actually accomplishing something.  Trying to destroy the one ring in the fires of mt doom?  Get the same exp for it whether you stealth your way past the gates or drive a hole in the army of orcs.

Yup, agreed. I do milestones as well. So they get XP for "freeing the captives." How they do it is up to them. Kill the slavers? Capture them? Turn them to your side? Lure them out of the HQ and sneak back in to free the slaves without striking a blow? Doesn't matter. Accomplish the goal, get XP.

Right now my group has descended into an ancient necropolis. The way in was trapped in several ways. They disarmed one, accidentally triggered (but escaped damage from) the other. They got to the necropolis. That was the milestone. How they got there, is up to them.

That, of course, runs into the "Party floundering around in the world trying to find the magic lever the DM has personally deemed significant" problem.

I've seen a lot of DMs totally ignore the "meeting the Ents", "storming Isengard", and "escaping Shelob" encounters because they weren't the "destroying the one ring".

Milestone leveling works well in the hand of a competent and aware DM. Such a DM would dole out Milestones for significant encounter that they hadn't foreseen the Party pursuing and accomplishing ( at which point, it's starting to look like an XP system ).

Unfortunately, it's an advancement systems draws the incompetent and lazy-as-f%#$ DMs to it like flies to honey, where it promptly train-wrecks the Party.

Quote from Lyxen >>

Want to share ?

Sure.

First, I think we need to lock down what you mean by Milestones. Some versions of Milestones I think are perfectly viable.

Milestones as written in the DMG, and are written in published modules, are really just guesstimated averages of XP for a particular point in the story: The Party gets to this point, they each get 500XP; If the Party defeats the Grumlings they all get 300XP. This is completely viable, because it's objective ( usually even written down ), and it does not exclude XP for other things: The Party goes off an has a side adventure rescuing the Blacksmith's Daughter, they can be awarded a Milestone for that as well.

If the encounter ( combat, social, puzzle, trap, whatever ) was roughly a Hard encounter, then the Party gains the XP for a hard encounter. No calculating needs. Advancement for non-combat encounters included. This was a deadly encounter for the Party, it is therefore worth 2,000 XP,  and they get that regardless of whether they hack their way through the Grumlings, talk them out of the McGuffin of St. Generica, or sneak in and steal it.

That system is completely fine. It is, in fact, what I use.

So far, I think we agree?

Where things start to go off the rails when the other systems which lazy DMs lump under "milestones" get abused.

1. Session based leveling. I hate this system intensely. It is in the participation trophy version of Character advancement. It is literally rewarding Players for nothing more than showing up and breathing. What's worse, it rewards the active, engaged, thoughtful, tactical Player who is contributing to the game, and to everyone's experience equally with the lazy-assed SOB who cannot be bothered to learn the rules after being in your game for 2 years, still takes 30 seconds to figure out which dice is the d8, and when it isn't their turn in combat is on their phone. The contributory Player and the disruptive Player both get the same reward. At best, this never incentivizes the deadbeat to get better, and at worst incentivizes the good Player to stop trying.
2. DM fiat. We've covered this elsewhere, but there's a couple of issues with this:
   • Player frustration: When is the DM going to level us up? What the hell am I supposed to do to go up a level? What is the magic word that triggers the story condition that the DM has decided levels us up?
   • Inconsistency: DM is in a good mood? Go up a level! DM is having a crap day? Good luck - you're stuck at level 3 for another session
   • Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely: The Party really should go up a level, but it makes the story beats I was planning on railroading the Party down later harder to design, so I guess they just don't go up a level until it's convenient for me ...

All of these issues I would classify as abuse of those systems, however. A good DM can make these work. But it is so easy for a bad DM to completely destroy Player trust with these.

I agree completely that XP can be abused as well. Handing out XP only for combat, and always handing out XP for combat, leads to muder-hobo campaigns. This is the main reason people switch to "milestones" - or whatever system they are adapting and calling milestones so that it sounds like the system everyone seems to like.

In my mind, a good reward advancement system needs a few qualities:

1. It needs to be clear, objective, and transparent. This allows the Players to understand the kind of game behaviors which are advantageous to pursue, the Players can be sure it's fair since they can see how it works, it protects the DM from the perception of capriciousness & favoritism, and it removes the temptation of the DM to screw with the Party advancement merely for their own convenience.
2. It needs to be flexible with the evolution of the Narrative. When the story goes off in directions the DM hadn't planned on, the Party advancement doesn't stop because the DM didn't foresee these events.
3. It needs to reward good play, or at least reward those Players who are contributing to the group experience. 

Milestones, as written in the DMG, can accomplish that. DM fiat fails on point #1. Session based leveling fails on point #3

The problem is that when people start touting the virtues of "milestones", they are - as often as not - referring to these latter two, because those systems are the easiest and most convenient for the DM to use.

Edit: I'd add a 4th quality to a good advancement system: It should not be dependant on the Players solving a problem in a particular way. Although there would be in-game-world side effects of the means that they solve the encounter, mechanically speaking Combat solutions should not be rewarded over Stealth or Social solutions.

Session based leveling. I hate this system intensely. It is in the participation trophy version of Character advancement. It is literally rewarding Players for nothing more than showing up and breathing. 

In addition to all the other things you appropriately said against it, in concept, session-based XP could encourage foot-dragging and do-nothing behavior. It would in principle be more effective to stand around doing RP just to run out the clock, rather than moving on to the next level of the dungeon, because when the session ends, you get XP and maybe level up, and this will make the next level or room or encounter easier (assuming the DM doesn't up-scale it). Put another way, why go through three dungeons to gain three levels when you can drag your feet and gain three levels halfway through the first dungeon just by making the sessions take longer?

I'm sure most players (and by most I mean nearly all) would not foot-drag like this just to get more XP per adventure, but at its core session-based XP rewards the party for taking longer to do things, and potentially could punish them for being quick, efficient, and effective. So, not a fan of that either.

[Milestone leveling], of course, runs into the "Party floundering around in the world trying to find the magic lever the DM has personally deemed significant" problem.

So far this has not happened yet in my campaign. I think I have made the milestones transparent enough (and I tell them when they hit them) and obvious and objective enough that the players don't seem to be running around trying to "find the milestone" yet. If I see them doing that then I will have to re-think the whole thing.

One thing I am going to have to do is start adjusting the XP per milestone upward from the suggested "minor = easy, major = hard encounter" algorithm suggested by DMG. After 5th level that is going to require an insane number of milestones, which will just take too long to level. To me, each adventure should just about level them, which would mean a campaign of ~20 adventures to get to level 20. Doing the milestone system, the higher level adventures would need 50 hard milestones, let alone if there is a mix of hard and easy. I can't figure out how I'd put 50 or 75 milestones into a single adventure unless it's enormous. And I have no real desire to do that.

Thus, I'm already going to have to tweak things. For the 5th level adventure, now that I have it mostly blocked out, I am just going to figure out how many milestones there are, and each milestone will be worth 1/Nth the XP they need to level, so if they do everything I put out there for them to do, they will gain a level by the end of the adventure. Hopefully that'll work.

@BioWizard: As I said, no system is objectively wrong. All advancement systems can be used correctly and effectively by a good DM. I would classify you ( and @Lyxen) as such :) And any advancement system can become a problem in the hand of a lazy or incompetent DM ( combat XP, combat XP only, and murder hobos ). 

It's kind of like even an absolute autocracy can be a just and fair form of Government in the hands of a competent and benevolent dictator ( since you are familiar with Roman History I would draw your attention to Marcus Aurelius ), and - in my opinion - we're seeing some severe cracks appearing in the structures of Western Democratic governments ( regardless of where you stand on the political spectrum ).

But if an autocracy has the most potential for corruption and abuse, and - as I believe - decentralized democratic power has the least ( but not zero! ) potential for this - you play the odds as to which is the most likely to get you the best results over the largest spread of conditions and scenarios. Likewise, I think, we should do the same for game mechanics.

The question is which systems have the most potential to be misused, either from the Player side of the table, or the DM?

 @Lyxen - I think that's where you and I diverge. To me, you seem to be looking at things from the perspective of your group - which honestly sounds like an awesome set of gaming friends, and I wish I had a group like that :) I also don't disagree that ultimately, playing should be its own reward. I just don't think that's how most people, and most gaming groups, actually work - especially young groups finding their stride, and causal pick-up games on the Internet. But just as I wouldn't build a set of Laws for a culture based on the good people I happen to know, and build it instead around general human nature, I think game mechanics need to be built around general human behaviors. That leaves your group robust and able to survive an influx of a new Player ( perhaps as a replacement ), with whom you don't have that implicit social construct, but you do have an explicit gaming contract in place until such time as you develop those social conventions with them. 

P.S - sorry if the rhetoric and analogies are overly serious and heavy; my wife and I are watching season 3 of Westworld this weekend :p

Quote from Lyxen >>

 My only problem is with the above. I try and run an equal opportunity game. I will allow anyone, in particular a timid guy, to play a charismatic general if that is what he wants to play. Of course, he will probably, at start, have to rely mostly on rolls for his charisma checks, because these people usually do not come up with rousing speeches on their own, or, rather, do not fancy declaring it, in public, to their fellow gamers. But I'm OK with that if that is what they want to play. In the same situation, I will ask the loudmouthed guy who, this time, plays a timid wizard with a dump-stated 8 Charisma, to shut up and let the other talks, and in any case, my NPCs will not react favorably to his request and speeches.

I'm saying all this because I don't believe that the loudmouthed braggart should get more XPs for contributing than the quieter players. I don't want the quiet ones, who still come to sessions to be with friends, to contribute to the ambiance, and who still participate but in a quieter way to lag in level to more outspoken extroverted players.

And this is the part where I come to say that I absolutely hate individual experience. Every time I've seen it, it has been abused and has generated behaviours which were bad, including forcing quieter but usually much nicer people out of the game because it all went to the players who knew how to stroke the DM's ego and wishes the right way.

IMHO, if a player come to the game mostly for the incentivisation of XPs, he will probably have come to my table for the wrong reasons, and he will probably find out that I don't run games that I will enjoy. I will enforce his dumpt-stated 8 charisma or 8 intelligence, and I will not be manipulated his attempts to cater to what I wish in the game, or appear to wish to. This is because what I want most when I run a game is for the players to enjoy themselves, all of them and not specifically any one individual. If someone tries to hog the spotlight to appear more "active" and get more XPs, I will purposefully shift the spot around so that everyone has a chance to shine.

And I do believe that, over the years, this has achieved fairly good success in not only having people enjoy the games (we have been running for more than 30 years with my groups) but also to get the best of the people without having to resort to carrots (and even less to sticks, except in specific cases).

I think we're almost on the same page :)

The key phrases here are contributes to the group experience, and strokes the DM's ego.

I would argue that rewarding Players who contribute to the groups experience is not the same as rewarding the "loudmouthed braggart" - in fact it might be diametrically opposed.

The quiet person at the table who occasionally contributes a solid idea, in Character, that leads to Party success is contributing much more than a self-styled "voice actor" who hogs the spotlight, and really doesn't actually contribute much.

As for strokes the DM's ego, this is one of the two central issue with leveling by DM fiat: subjectivity.

I see that you're avoiding this by declining to use individual awards, and that works. But that runs right into the issue of failing to reward the Player ( loud or quiet ) who is actively contributing over the Player who is just sitting there passively. Perhaps we disagree on whether active and contributory play should be rewarded over the passive audience member Character, and perhaps that's a point we'll need to just politely disagree upon.

I think I'd like your group. It's kind of like a group of friends who'd shoot a couple of hoops together, and not bother to keep score, just to enjoy playing the game - and I think that's probably a better overall experience for the participants.

But most of the rest of the Human race keeps score. It's just how our brains are wired - and I think it's probably more prudent to write games for how most people are, rather than the corner cases.

not that i dont like this discussion of milestone xp vs combat exp, it has caused me to try and put my opinion into better words, that will put later.  I tend to use more event based experience, as such was looking for a rule of thumb for assigning exp to traps, i had not considered working out damage output for a monster and then using a slimier xp reward for that. i will look into that but it will involve number crunching and that takes time. Thanks for that line of thought.

with regard to milestone vs combat xp, i like to think of myself as a smart but lazy DM and i could plan out the campaign and the level i want the party to be at various times and then back calculate the experience to get there and subdivide that to noteworthy milestones, but i am far to lazy to get that detailed, and when i have tried the party went so far off the tracks that was constantly having to re-evaluate. as such i like the freedom of writing an outline of my plot and only filling in details a session or two before it happens. i plan they will be fighting demons well in advance and why, but until that encounter is only a session or two away i dont break it down to party size/party level and pick what i think they can handle: next weeks fight will be roughly <looks though monster manual> ahha roughly 1 Vrock then calculate the exp after the fact. this gives me extreme flexibility in adjusting to someone being missing because work got busy and to the party deciding to jump track and go somewhere else. 
this DMing style is not for everybody, but it works for me, hence looking for a quick and explicit way to come up with XP numbers for traps. not that i generally feel the need to justify my numbers to the players, but i do feel the need to be able to justify them to myself, and do so consistently.

I give XP for everything, even good roleplaying.