New Experience Rules
The biggest change in the revised version is going to be a change to the experience rules. Here’s the current shape of them, in case you want to try them out.
* There’s no more highlighting ratings.
* Mark experience whenever you roll and the result is 6 or less.
* At the end of each session, answer the following questions. If you get one or two ‘yes’ answers, mark one experience. If you get three or four ‘yes’ answers, mark two experience.
– Did we conclude the current mystery?
– Did we save someone from certain death (or worse)?
– Did we learn something new and important about the world?
– Did we learn something new and important about one of the hunters?
If you try the new rules out, please let me know how it goes.
Just to clarify, “when your roll totals 6 or less” means dice roll plus stat bonus, correct?
Yes: on any miss.
I have ninja edited the post to make it clearer.
Yeah, I think this is sensible. The stat highlighting was a nice idea, but in the end, fiddly and ultimately exploitable (alas!). The Dungeon World system is an obvious fix (which I believe many people have already been using), and your translations of the end-of-session questions also makes sense.
Pretty much. PbtA experience technology has advanced significantly since I wrote MotW!
Nikitas Thlimmenos
I’m not going to fight the change, but I liked highlighting. I liked how it allowed the Keeper (and another player) to direct play. “Your Charm is terrible, so I want to see what happens when you try to use it. No pressure though, cause you get XP either way.”
I understand the change. You usually learn more from failure than from success. Highlighting was just never a problem I felt needed fixing.
I like it! Answering questions about experience really tells you what you should be doing in game, and although Motw was already fairly clear about that, bringing it into the experience mechanics is always a good idea!
then again, it introduces the “end of session” measure for experience, and it could be challenging: as far as I understood, the american session is pretty long. We, on the other hand, are playing via hangout in three hours sessions, at best. That could be, I don’t know, a little unbalanced maybe?
I don’t mind the new experience rules, but I’m a kind of romantic and I think I’m still loving more the old ones.
I really like this modification!
I tend to be a little looser on allowing Episodes to span 2 (sometimes more) sessions. I was having a problem that the characters were growing too fast due to the number of rolls. I think the questions will help manage XP better in these situations.
And I really like ‘learning from your mistakes’. As the Keeper, I felt like the players were always annoyed when i would choose one of their low attributes as a highlight.
I really like this change. My players tend to very quickly become so satisfied with their characters that they’re not interested in advancement. To quote: “I guess I could increase my characters Charm, but she really isn’t charming and I’d rather she keeps failing those rolls”.
The problem with highlighting isn’t how it works mechanically, but that it is more things to remember in play. Personally, I constantly forget to do the highlighting stats step at the beginning of a session.
Experience on a miss, plus end of session roundup, is much easier.
I can totally see where you’re coming from, in fact I also used to forget to highlight the stats before someone had to roll. The scene that followed usually was: “OK, guys, we forgot to highlight the stats, so let’s go with it now!”
I should also say that this is not a “problem” any more and now we always remember to highlight the stats before beginning the game.
Daniele Di Rubbo you also used to repeat “Ok let’s highlight the stats, so we can begin!” during our Dungeon World campaign! You did it for months, admit it! 😀
Yes, I did it, but just to be a pain in the ass, because you know I love you! ;-P
As another calling-for-highlighting-forgetter, I welcome this change. It’ll also be a lot easier to explain and just get started in a con game.
Tried them out today it seemed to work well.
That is so awesome, feeds on the “failure is where the fun is!” 🙂
Yes, plenty of encouragement to have a go on unlikely-to-succeed rolls!
Michael Sands you still need to check five boxes to advance, or more?
From his words I guess five.
Lenny Pacelli, yes, at this stage staying with five. Pending my playtests and feedback from anyone trying out the new rule, of course.
Changing that is an easy customisation if you want a faster or slower burn game.