I’ve read the sample RPG and the book several times and cannot find a example of experience points anywhere. Any suggestions?
Struggling with the same thing. Thinking of awarding 1 XP per 100 points of enemy units.
I asked a similar question in this thread:
https://forums.modiphius.com/t/fallout-ww-rpg-questions/7106/37
Still no answer…
I’m going with 1XP for every hour spent playing.
And I’m being mean by bringing a stopwatch and stopping the clock whenever we stop playing and wander off-topic.
My thinking is that you want your characters to advance, and this much means they can buy something pretty much every session, but will have to save up for something big.
Hi. Yes, there aren’t any XP guidelines in the rulebook. It’s a difficult one to legislate as different groups and GMs like to progress at different speeds and for different reasons, prefer to award XP at different times, sometimes players progress quickly and sometimes they are slower, etc. It’s very personal to each group. Personally, I quite like a fast progression for players so they gain new tools to play with quite regularly (or so harder situations/enemies can be thrown at the players), but some groups want a much longer/gradual campaign.
The timing of when to give XP is based on preference too and affects how much XP to award - little-but-often or larger-amounts-less-often. As a GM, I prefer to give players XP at scenario milestones (i.e. each moment they make a clear step in progress in the scenario) rather than per real-world gameplay session so it happens at beats that fit the story; however, there are lots of other ways people prefer to do it and no way is right or wrong - just whatever your group prefers.
I appreciate some guidance would be helpful for new GMs and we’re talking about creating some guidance at the moment. In the meantime, the best thing to do is to consider how much advance you want your players to have that will match what you/they prefer, what fits your campaign, and what fits with their performance. Then, consider how much XP would be needed to achieve that. For example, if you want to have players gain one or two Perks per scenario milestone, or maybe a Perk and a couple of new/early skills, then 4-5 XP would be good for that.
As your players get more experienced (assuming they survive that long), you may want to increase the amounts slightly as skills that are already developed will become more expensive. Something to compare to is that a player must spend 25 XP to go from not having a skill at all to having 5 dice in that skill - that’s a lot of dice but also a lot of XP - that’s only a single skill, and there are lots to choose from as well as Perks too, but it gives you a reference point. Similarly, it costs 9 XP to take one skill from unskilled to 3 dice in that skill. A character with 3 dice in half the skills and a few dice in some others would need to spend around 200 XP plus they’d probably have some Perks too which could cost another 40 XP. Therefore, 250 XP in total would take a starting character to a fairly developed character, so consider that when awarding XP so it matches the length of your campaign. Do you want to the characters to be that developed after a single campaign or several? Do you want them to be more or less developed than that?
Remember you can set limits for players when spending XP such as not gaining more than one dice in a skill at a time if you prefer it to be more gradual - I prefer characters to layer up their skills rather than go from novice to expert in a single skill in a very short time with no other development. Also, keep in mind that it is easier (and better for players) to start cautiously and give players more XP if it proves too little, compared to starting with them receiving lots of XP and then needing to cut it back. Not only does giving too much fast-track them past ‘lower level’ encounters (they grow up so fast), but suddenly going on an XP diet can feel like a punishment.
Hope that helps.
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Thank for all the suggestions and replies! I think I’m going to use a slow progression for the PC’s. Xp’s are after the mission/adventure depending on the nature of the event 2-10 max. Going to run a session this weekend and I’ll see how it goes.
I prefer a slow burn on xp straight for playing. That allows me some room to award extra based off things the players do. And places some emphasis on those extras. With new role players this helps to coach them into a more in-depth play style versus just hack and slash.
Examples of bonus xp:
Staying in character
Playing character well
Creating a backstory - the more detailed the better. Pictures encouraged
Out of the box thinking/problem solving
And so on…
This also tends to get players more attached to their characters, which then adds some weight to their choices later. Because their invested.
And it gives me ways to muck with them as the DM…muahahahahahaha…
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Thanks for the advice!
I guess there are two aspects to XP awards - the first is figuring out at what rate you want PCs to accumulate new abilities, but the second (and probably most important), is understanding the impact that those new abilities have on the power level of the PCs compared to their opponents.
I could have figured out that 250XP means 3 dice in most skills and a handful of extra perks… but I have absolutely zero guidance around what that actually means in terms of gameplay. What are the capabilities of a character with 3 dice in most skills? What is the impact on gameplay? Do I need to ensure that every task requires X levels of impact and has Y levels of resistance? Which opponents are suitable for such a character, and how should they be equipped?
I realise such answers can have some level of variation between playgroups and PCs, but honestly the only people who can answer these types of questions are those who have sufficient experience running the game - i.e. the Modiphius devs and playtesters. Expecting someone new to the game (much less people potentially new to RPGs in general, which is likely given the RPG builds on a tabletop game, and will have a lot of interest from tabletop gamers), to be able to eyeball this stuff and come up with judgement calls that result in a good play experience is… well, very optimistic to put it mildly.
I hate to say it (as someone who wants to love this game, and has already invested in the deluxe limited edition), but this game has a number of rough areas like this where it seems more time and thought beyond just porting from the tabletop game is required. Not to denigrate the efforts of those involved, but this game really needs another pass of playtesting, development and editing IMO (I do a fair bit of playtesting myself, so I know not to blame the people - who IME always do the best they can in the time they have - but rather the project/time constraints). However it seems the books are already at print so that ship has already sailed (probably quite literally).
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