Like any other gaming group, ours has a few house rules that we play by. When I was first reading through the 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons books, it occurred to me that leveling characters would be a little slower than I would like it to be. The reason for this is largely due to my style of playing (as in not a lot of hardcore hack and slash). So I made up a couple of rules to help the player characters level up a bit faster.
Part of this is also to a) involve the players beyond showing up and rolling dice every other weekend and b) to introduce an element of competition. Let me start with the latter.
I actually stole this idea from another old classic RPG, namely Paranoia (awesome game, btw). Here, the more outrageous and stupendous a character’s actions are during a fight, the more likely they are to succeed. Now, I didn’t want my D&D to turn into a Michael Bay movie, so I’ve simplified it some by introducing: Man of the Match.
How it works: after each encounter, I pick someone who either did something smart and original, did something very in-character that made us all laugh or was utterly heroic. I don’t let any dice rolls determine who gets Man of the Match. Despite my initial doubts that the players would dislike this competitive element, they in fact seem to enjoy it more than me at times.
The second house rule is the homework. Between each session, I send out a message to all the players with some kind of task included. If they complete this task before the next session, they get an XP reward in game. As a few examples, I’ve asked them to answer simple questions in their character’s voice, back up their character sheets and prepare around-the-campfire monologues. Besides the reward, these extra credit things make the players think about their characters in different ways, other than simply learning to play whatever race and class they happen to have picked. And it inspires me to build on their ideas.
As a rule of thumb, the reward for Man of the Match is 75 XP, and Extra Credit is 25 XP x the level of the party. And it works. We have lots of fun with it and characters level just about every other game session. I may adjust these numbers later, but for my heroic tier campaign it seems just right.
I’m down with this idea. I started giving out XP for homework. Though I started giving homework first then after they had done a few weeks worth I gave them XP for it. I wanted to make sure they were actually interested in doing the home work before they knew there was a reward.
It’s a huge hit with my group. To the point where they remind me if I haven’t sent any assignments out. Not everyone completes it every time, but that’s the beauty of it – the dedicated players get a bonus and the rest are okay with it.
Level every other session? Wow, that’s fast. How long and how many encounters (combat or otherwise) do you have every session?
I’m finding that leveling is slowing down a little, so every 3-4 sessions is probably more accurate.Which is also the number of encounters/scenes we get through in an average session.
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