I’m a new DM and very early on in running a few campaigns I notice how a lot of the XP is awarded related to battle or set ups for battles. I’m actually trying to encourage more role playing and random exploration and story telling. Do others have alternate ways they award XP and especially awarding non-battle situations.

I mean I understand that adventuring and battling is how one builds skill and learns how to use more advance skills. But I also don’t want to feel like I’m penalizing my players if they are going a whole session with one or maybe no battles and get soaked up in roleplay.

I don’t want to be over year into them building characters and they’re stuck at like level 5. Appreciate your help on this!

I mean, the easy way is to say “is this RP scene or social encounter or whatever comparable to an easy, moderate, or hard combat” and then just award the same amount of XP as you would for that kind of combat.

Milestone leveling. Instead of giving out xp every session, tell them they level up when they complete an important story arc. It’s a simple concept and makes for less bookkeeping. Also gives you much more direct control over when they level. 
And awarding xp for defeating a monster doesn’t have to mean killing it. If they sneak past it, or sweet talk it into becoming a friend, they’ve still overcome the obstacle. I’d award full xp as if they killed it. 

What worked for me is to define them as quests, to do that I prepare a 'dramatic' questions, I got it from the a website (I think) but then for RP encounters:

"Will they be able to persuade the townsguard to let them into the restricted area?"

If it's completed I hand out XP that would be relevant to their level and matches the speed you want them to level. A good way to determine this is take the total XP they still need for the next level, divide it by the number of days you want them to spend, then divide it by the number of encounters/challenges you want them to have. There are some nice tables you can find when you google "alternative ways to award xp 5e".

And yes I have made the mistake before to not award players XP for these sessions and as a player it can feel as a standstill, unles you've agreed to use milestone based leveling.

Kr,

Rob.

My perspective is that Characters get experience for solving problems, not killing monsters.

If they kill the bad guy's minions, storm the compound, and rescue the beautiful monster from the hungry princess, they get a block of experience. If they super-stealth in, steal it away, and the bad guys are left clueless, same experience. They bribe the minions to allow them to take it away ... same experience.

This approach can be tricky, trying to figure out the difficulty level of a non-combat goals.

Milestones - and a caveat here: there are multiple different award systems in use that people all call "milestones"- or awarding blocks of XP at given plot points in the story, is a good system, in theory and in my opinion, but can have some issues with Players. If you search around the web you'll find Players ( possibly a minority ) complaining about this approach, citing that they feel that it feels railroady ( you must go do X, or no experience for you! ), and arbitrary ( all that RP and fighting you did up to this point gets you no experience, but you open this door, and hey! You go up a level! ). Depending on the GM, this approach can also ignore the possibility that Party A may go direct to the goal, while Party B may go on a wildly indirect route, have many other adventures, yet both Parties could be awarded the same set experience. I also have an ideological issue with GMs feeling they need "direct control over when they level". In my opinion, if I withhold rewards from my Players for no other reason than to make my life easier, that's unfair to them. I believe they should get rewards when they earn them; I'll adapt.

Session based experience ( you'll go up a level after X amount of "adventuring days" have passed ), is dead simple for the GM - which is why it's really popular. However, this feels even more artibrary to me. Fully engaged Players who are RP'ing, creatively solving problems, and are tactically clever in combat get the same experience as the Player who is on their phone all the time, never gets into the role-playing side of the game, and roll their longsword attack once in their combat turn and go back to their phone. I don't like that. I feel the first Player should be rewarded more for playing more.

An approach that interests me which I haven't tried ( but will attempt the next game I start up ), is the idea of Player selected goal experience. Individual Players select personal goals, the Party selects overall goals. The GM assigns difficulties for those goals, and figures out the XP for achieving that goal.  When the Party/Player achieves those goals - by whatever means - they get that experience reward. This almost gives you the bookkeeping ease of "milestones", but reduces the likelihood that Players will feel railroaded by the GM since they selected the goal, it feels less arbitrary, and it can adapt to differing adventure paths. The problems with this approach are - again - the GM/Players trying to gauge the complexity of goals; a need to keep Players from spamming out the same goal over and over; everyone dogpiling on each others' personal goals; and Players trying to select goals at the last minute to try and wring experience rewards out of easy situations ( oh yet, I meant to select convincing someone to let us into the castle as a goal, so can I claim that? ). You also need to be able to adjust the reward for goals over time, since goals that everyone thought would be simple turn out to be complicated, and vice-versa. It can also be scary for some GMs, since it seems to put narrative control squarely in the Players' hands. I don't think really changes things much. While - in theory - Characters can select any goals, do anything, and go completely off the rails - they always could, and in-world consequences for blowing off an Adventure still exist.

Adam Koebel - one of the designers of Dungeon World - is a proponent of this  idea and has done some work on it, if you want to dig into this further.

Best of luck! 

Quote from Rob_molenschot >>

What worked for me is to define them as quests, to do that I prepare a 'dramatic' questions, I got it from the a website (I think) but then for RP encounters:

 

You might by thinking of The Angry GM. He also produced a number of those encounter/day/level charts.

I have had good luck so far with Milestone XP. I identify milestones and define them as major or minor. According to DMG, if you do it this way, minor milestones give the XP of an easy encounter, major of a hard encounter. I have a list of the possible things that they could do of relevance or interest in the adventure and assign them major/minor. When they do one they get XP. They so far have done them all (but only 1 adventure plus a little bit in) and not missed any. Not sure what I will do if they miss some. The first adventure was fairly simple. Thus far, both I, and they, have said we like the Milestone system.

In terms of whether it might feel "railroady," so far no one has said anything like that. I haven't told them what the milestones are. The milestones are based on story elements, like, "Find out where the zombies attacking the town are coming from," or things like, "Repair the damaged altars." All I did was describe the desecrated altars. One of the characters is a cleric. I figured his god would reward them if they repaired the altars, and they sort-of did (they couldn't fix the breaks by they cleaned up the "graffiti" that was splattered on them with paint). There was a necromancer raising the dead. Defeating him was a milestone, but he had a note in a strange language on him. Finding that note was a minor milestone, but translating it was a major one. They didn't do that on the spot, but back in town the next session, they got a local centaur divination wizard to do it for them and got the XP for that.

However, I am highly intrigued by Vedexent's "player goals" idea. Let's say the character has a missing brother in the background. I would naturally have given "find the missing brother" a major milestone. But it might feel more organic if the player gets to define that. I will have to think on this method and look into the Koebel reference. Thanks, Ved.

+1 for selecting the actual book definition of milestones :)

I agree that milestones don't need to be railroady, nor do all Players feel that way. I've just seen some Players in forums express that sentiment.

Player goal XP isn't my idea - I don't get credit for it :) But you've hit upon something I like but hadn't mentioned: it gives Backstory, Character development, and Role Playing mechanical motivations as Players can now mine those to define XP their rewards.

Any discussions I've seen of this system put selection of goals in the Player hands. You may be completely willing to allow "find the missing brother"  as a goal, but - yes - I think that has to come from the Player.

It rewards active Players who are out there accomplishing their goals, over disengaged Players. That may-or-may-not be a good thing, however. "Audience member" Players get penalized - perhaps unfairly - under that system. 

Another plus in my books: you know what the Players are planning on doing, and can do your GM planning and design around those goals.

As a DM, I personally really like tracking XP.  I have adopted Mark Hulmes' "expanded experience points" system.  So far my players have told me they really like the system.  Its kind of a mix between XP and milestone.

Quote from Vedexent >>

+1 for selecting the actual book definition of milestones :)

I agree that milestones don't need to be railroady, nor do all Players feel that way. I've just seen some Players in forums express that sentiment.

Player goal XP isn't my idea - I don't get credit for it :) But you've hit upon something I like but hadn't mentioned: it gives Backstory, Character development, and Role Playing mechanical motivations as Players can now mine those to define XP their rewards.

Any discussions I've seen of this system put selection of goals in the Player hands. You may be completely willing to allow "find the missing brother"  as a goal, but - yes - I think that has to come from the Player.

It rewards active Players who are out there accomplishing their goals, over disengaged Players. That may-or-may-not be a good thing, however. "Audience member" Players get penalized - perhaps unfairly - under that system. 

Another plus in my books: you know what the Players are planning on doing, and can do your GM planning and design around those goals.

The only reason I even realized that "Milestones" and story-based leveling aren't the same thing is that you said it a while back in an earlier post, and I was like, "Huh?" and re-read that part of the DMG and realized that "Milestones" and "story-based leveling" are different. ;)

As for goal-based XP (player goals) - I watched a video by Koebel (when I was supposed to be grading exams -- guess which one is more fun), and although I like the idea, I'm not 100% on the implementation. His method clearly gives XP to each player for achieving his or her goal, and by his own admission this can diverge the amount of XP the characters have. I'm not sure I like that. I prefer to award XP to the party as a whole -- everyone gets 75 xp for the major milestone, regardless of how much or little hand they had in it. The sorcerer, not the cleric, cleaned up the desecrated altars with prestidigitation. He did it because the cleric was sobbing and upset over his god's altar being desecrated, and couldn't do anything about it (had not prepared any spells that would work, had no cleaning supplies) and to calm him down the sorcerer cleaned that altar up. The cleric hugged him and thanked him, so for the later altars they found, the sorcerer just did that too. The ranger and the rogue didn't really do much, but the PARTY still accomplished the milestone so they all got the XP.

So... if I were going to do goal-based XP, I'd need to find some way to work it so that everyone gets the XP, or everyone gets a goal done at the same time, or something. And if they come up with the goals, coordinating that will be harder. Player A may be much more practical and game-wise and realize that setting goals about the immediate adventure is likely to get them accomplished, and player B may be doing more wistful, hard-to-achieve goals. I don't want the XP to get out of synch so I am going to have to parse how to do that.

I agree completely that Koebel isn't "there yet" with implementation.

I also struggle with awarding XP to individuals vs. across the Party. I don't have a huge issue with Characters diverging in their experience, or even level ( within reason ). Or at least, I don't have any more of an issue with that, than the idea of a non-participatory Player being carried along by the other Players in milestone awards.

If a Character falls behind the others, that might be a signal to me as GM to plan my next adventure ideas around the goals of that Character and/or afford that Character more spotlight time - in which case It may be a good game diagnostic tool.

I think there are ( or can be ) Party level goals, and that an "assist" can also be a thing. The complexity/reward of a goal is proportional to its difficulty. Its difficulty is proportional to the number of Characters involved in achieving it. So - in your example - if it had been a Party goal to reclaim the desecrated shrines, everyone would have achieved a goal, and received an award.

If one Character helps "significantly" ( GM's call ) or is crucial in helping another Character obtain a Personal goal ( "find the missing brother" ), then I can see award the aiding Character a percentage of the overall goal's experience value as well. I don't believe goals have to be a completely personal thing - although they could be, if you wanted.

I also think that "wistful, hard-to-achieve goals" can-and-should be broken down into a series of concrete sub-goals ( just like in life :D ). Who knows if "Player B" ever achieves their overall goal - but they can definitely gain experience for their sub-goals along the way.

It really isn't super different than Milestones - save that they are Player selected. I think that's a benefit as a) the Players are now automatically invested in their own goals, and b) the Players have a clearly defined direction, and won't potentially end up hunting around for the hidden milestone story event trigger ( the story-based milestone equivalent of murder hobo-ism ). 

Like I said - I've not tried this yet, so I can't tell you how this works. However, I'm interested in trying it out.

I like the idea of party-defined goals. I think I may use that instead of character. That is... what is your goal for this session? What are your long-term goals say for the whole adventure, as a group? If they achieve that it is not the only, but perhaps an extra, milestone if it is not one that I had defined.

I like that as a hybrid approach.

Take the situation where the Party has self-selected get the caravan to Neverwinter as a goal. Along the way, the stumble across a ruin, and delve that dungeon, slaying many monsters and gaining much treasure. Should I say they don't learn anything from that since it wasn't a self-selected goal and just fell in their lap? That doesn't seem reasonable.

I think significant accomplishments should be awarded milestone/goal rewards as well - even if they're impromptu. 

However, there is a real danger here of just going back to the base XP model. If the Party goes off on a murder hobo rampage, is that a "significant accomplishment"? I would say no.

It brings up the question of when you would allow the Party/Player to choose a goal. Under my example, if they are allowed to define goals at any time, the Party could say "we choose exploring this dungeon as a goal" - which they actually have done, if you think about it. Under most player-goal reward models I've seen, the GM still has the power to decide whether that goal is significant, and what the level of complexity/reward is attached to it. I think that if my Players said "we randomly select slaughtering this tribe of orcs as a goal", my response would be "that has no basis in either your Characters backstories, recent events, or the Narrative, so no".

Yes I think that goals should have meaning.

I'm going to keep thinking about this idea and maybe talk it over with my players, not in the sense of "I am implementing it" but in the sense of "here is an idea that I think we could implement, if you guys want to help me work it out." One has lots of experience in D&D 5e and probably would have some good ideas about how to do it.

Where can I find this system online?

Which system?

Chapter 8 of the DMG, under the section for awarding experience has explanations for the basics of most of the options mentioned here.

As Vedexent said, it was mentioned by "Adam Koebel - one of the designers of Dungeon World". He describes it in this stream, 34 minutes in:

https://youtu.be/I3hF_aeB0uU

EDIT: I assume you were asking about the player goal XP system.

I agree that Players like seeing the bar go up rather than "surprise you leveled because you hit the milestone". 

I've tried a variant of the XP rewards idea - but I was explicit about the kinds of things I awarded bonuses towards, and tried to award the things I wanted to promote in the game. I also threw in an "MVP Award" which was and award given to the Player which everyone agreed had contributed the most to the session.

Quote from shawnrevfit >>

Where can I find this system online?

If you mean XP for player chosen goals - then apart from the stream BioWizard linked to, you can search around for "Player Goal XP D&D" and find some websites on the concept.

There's a blog article here, on the subject: http://barrymw.com/article/2018-10-11/dd-5e-goal-based-experience

There's a GMBinder pamphlet on the subject here: https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-L7jy3vdsUst1Q-qYN8O

None of the resources are consitent; they're all doing their own variation of the idea. They're more useful as inspiration for you to create your own homebrew version of the idea.

I think for this to be done right, several people familiar with D&D would have to get together and write up some stuff and then perhaps playtest it and see how it goes with a couple of different groups.