Thread by @ActionEconomy

I'm in an airport waiting for a flight so you know what that means? #RPGTheory! Today I'm going to talk about Experience, advancement, and specifically XP on Failure. But I want to consider it from a direction I don't see people talking about a lot: Framing Milestones.

It takes struggle to make muscle, right? What you give and get XP for, defines what makes our character's struggle. Three Points:
1. Maybe D&D is onto something (maybe not)
2. XP on Failure
3. Flagged XP

(Also fair warning I'm on my laptop which has none of my PDFs, and I'm away from my books so my quotes are gonna be iffy and my examples nigh non-existent. WE FLYING BLIND TONIGHT, BABY!)

Firstly: What do I mean by framing milestones? Simply: What is a big moment in your character's life. If leveling up is how we show growth, then that's our milestones in a character's life. How we frame it is "what does XP say about the advancing moments of a character's life?"

1. Maybe D&D is onto something -
D&D experience is beautiful and simple. Combat is a mathematical algorithm. It does this much damage, you do roughly this much damage, you have X encounters per day, and therefor we can use XP as an assessment of risk/reward.

Your character doesn't *really* improve as a sixth level fighter by stomping on goblin teens. The amount of XP is minimal, because the risk is minimal. Struggle to make muscle. On the other hand, a first level wizard who defeats a dragon might skip a level.

For this reason, an enemy's XP level is equal to the risk you take while fighting it. Want more XP? Fight riskier things. Want to stay safer? sure, but you wont learn as much. This is perfect in a game about ADVENTURERS doing ADVENTURING.

1b. (Maybe not)
But it suffers three problems: 1. It only works when your stakes are death, and your tool is death. What does it mean to "defeat" a monster? Anyone who has an army of lizardfolk scared off by a wizard's apparition knows this. "Do we get XP for all of them?!"

4e tried to alter it a bit with Challenge ratings for skills challenges, but it still only works in that mathematical construct. If they are not attacking my resources (hit points) there's no risk, and if I am not attacking their hit points, there's no definition of defeat.

Problem 2: It happens at weird times. The dragon den lays before you. Someone kills the final hobgoblin and says "hey wait, I leveled up!" It doesn't feel right. The climax is ahead, why does it feel like the reward is coming first?

Problem 3: There can be disconnect between the XP earned and what it's spent on. I slash and hack at goblins for two weeks, then I spend the XP to multiclass into wizard? Or I take the performer feat? None of them feel connected to the action used to generate the XP.

(For anyone considering D&D 5e's Milestone XP - Put a pin in it, we'll get to that)

Point 2: XP on Failure
PbtA has a large volume of 6- results, especially late first-wave early 2nd-wave games. In order to help lean the players into it, awarding XP on 6- is born. It has a few benefits: Players roll their lesser stats more often, seeking failure/xp

Players don't feel so bad about failing. Useful in PbtA where (as we know) failure is not a passive act. It's going to cost you. Which...is fine? Like there's nothing wrong with XP on failure, but the game should (and good PbtA does) drive players toward 6- results anyway.

Like "oh I got XP, that's nice I guess" prevails over "I am going to do this because I want XP" in games with tighter and more supportive system design. Additionally, the flat progression systems in some PbtA mean that XP isn't that interesting a reward anyway

So XP on failure is a choice that can (depending on the design of your other systems), feel incidental, or counterproductive. I ask this question of XP on failure:

"If failure is expected, and I should feel good about failing (rewarded) and I should drive toward failure (incentive), then why would I ever care about getting better (advancing) and reducing failures?"

Again, I love XP on failure. It meets that clear requirement, but it's also almost antithetical to the D&D version of getting XP for slaying the monster. One is reward for failure, the other is reward for overcoming. This difference also shows a big weakness in XP on failure.

XP on fail doesn't link the milestones in even half as good as TradXP does. So in D&D I complained that killing the hobgoblin might be the milestone rather than killing the dragon. Well, in FailXP systems, the milestone of growth might be flubbing a spell during a heated combat.

What does this say about our characters and their growth? What does it mean to define characters by these little moments of failure? Especially because in a lot of PbtA the 6- doesn't mean you fail, it just means something else bad happens. "Suddenly Ogres". It creates dissonance

So how does XP define our character when it's given on failure: I'd say "incidentally". Asked to define their dungeon world character, they're almost never going to talk about failures. They're going to talk about overcoming the dragon and weilding untold magics upon darkness.

Similarly: Asked about monsterhearts they're going to talk about how they failed and COULDN'T GET WHAT THEY WANTED. Both of these games use the same XP system, but they're defined by so much else in the game. The XP is incidental, it doesn't frame our characters at all.

3. Flagged XP
I just wrapped a game of night witches, in which you advance if during a duty station you meet a requirement of your playbook. Did you walk away from a firey wreck? Did you abandon a lover? These moments are written in advance they "flag" desired moments.

This method of XP is big and flashy. Milestone-y. It's done once a session and is about whether you met the BIG MOMENT for your character. This isn't, necesarrily, a good character thing (night witches once are all p harsh), but it is a defining thing. Or should be.

Blades in the Dark has a similar thing where the end of session XP is a bit more "progressive", it's less about hitting a milestone, and more about "did we chip away at little bits of our crew's story". Blades, here, is specifically not what I'm talking about, so pin it.

Blades and the Sprawl both play in this space, but maybe we can pin this kind of XP for later? Because I still want to develop some more of the bigger ones.

Machiato Monsters (1.0 just released!) does this for OSR games. The GM explicitly tells you at the start of the session what your current list of goals are. When something comes up in play, players and GMs can negotiate whether or not it's a goal.

Notably: Goals must be achieved to be counted. These acts are explicitly flagged as achievements and milestones. The Sprawl does the same thing where the GM defines steps of a mission that grant XP. We're more similar than we think <3.

(This is also similar to D&D 5e's Milestone XP, which we can unpin to consider in the same breath. )

Okay so how does Flagged XP act on framing milestones? Well, both of these games do the same thing in a cool way. Machiato says "My goal is to slay the goblin king!" which is a really cool goal, and you do it, and you get level 2. And that's awesome.

Your growth as a character is defined by achieving a big moment. Night Witches is the same: "Walk away from a firey wreck". Cool. I'm gonna do that, then later I'll advance. It's an awesome moment that defines me as a character. Your milestones are framed as epic and exciting.

Because MM has table defined goals (not gametext defined goals) your GM could suggest your first goal to be "survive my first battle with a goblin raiders". and this is where things get interesting. Notice how this goal frames the character? You grow. Just from surviving.

It's still epic and exciting, but it flags something: "surviving goblins is a challenge". The GM is telling you that these beasts aren't whimpy fools to be pushed aside for your XP and loot. Just surviving them will make you stronger. And the table can then change that.

The framing of the milestone here sets tone for the game, and it suggests that (as a player), you are going to have to work HARD for these things.

In each case, we're not looking at the input into the XP system, we're looking at the output: What the XP says about the characters. It's not something I'm coming to you saying "this is better!", it's just an offer for you to think about something.

It does take struggle to make muscle, but the muscle that's born of it is determined by the struggle, right? Like you can do squats for days but it's not gonna give you big biceps (maybe, I've never seen a gym). I'm asking you to consider that in your designs and your games.

I'm asking you to consider both the way players interact with XP and the story of the game, and also the way that XP and advancement interacts with the story of the characters, and the narrative that develops through play.

But authorial intent is bunk, and we need discussion. What do you think about XP systems and how they frame the growth of a character? What has defined your play?
Next time we talk about this, we're talking Corruption and Compendiums. But for now, @threadreaderapp, unroll please.