Game Theory - Experience

There is a popular saying that goes "if the only tool you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail".

I am realizing that this is true of Dungeons & Dragons with regards to combat, experience, and the resulting affect on gameplay.

Apparently, I am not the only one. I was startled to see a new series of YouTube posts by a couple of my favorite role playing streamers discussing this very issue as it related to their desire to "hack" 5th edition D&D to better suit an online campaign that one of the them was running (Steven Lumpkin and Adam Koebel, Hack Attack, and the Rollplay West Marches series). I watched the episodes they had posted so far, and when they got to the part about experience and exactly this issue, I think I actually pointed at my computer screen and said "Yes, that's exactly it!"

I would summarize my feelings on the topic, synthesized with theirs, as follows...

The Reality - Looking at 5th edition D&D (and most editions of D&D for that matter), what stands out is this... Players want their characters to advance and increase in power, skills and abilities (duh...). The way to do this is to gain experience. The only way to gain experience (straight-up by the book) is to kill stuff - anything and everything that you can, as often as you can, whether it makes any sense in the context of the game or not.

This contrasts with:

The Goal - (in other words, what do I want the game to be like...) Players explore the world, have adventures, interact with the people that they meet and the locations that they visit, and become a part of the world. Exploration and discovery being the key. To boldly go where they have not gone before (or something like that). The goal is not "find the next thing to kill" (although there is a time and place for that).

The Disconnect - Many (if not most) activities related to The Goal don't include killing everything in sight, and thus do not contribute to the players' desire to gain experience and advance in all of the related tangible ways.

A Possible Solution - Award experience for activities that contribute to The Goal, regardless of whether they involve killing stuff or not.

This would mean providing experience for things such as:

• Filling in blank spaces on their map.
• Visiting places that they have never been before.
• Discovering new places and new things.
• Making friends and influencing people.
• Figuring things out.
• Surviving in the wilderness.
• Collecting new information.
• Encountering a new monster or creature for the first time (or finding out something new about a type of creature).

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a good combat encounter as much as the next person. And they have their place. But combat encounters shouldn't be the only thing the players are seeking out.

As an aside, there was an edition of D&D back in the dim recesses of time that awarded experience for treasure (1 GP = 1 experience point). If you ask me, that's the dumbest idea ever. But I digress.

The more I think about this, the more I like the idea, and will start moving our campaign in this direction. This will require some explanation to the players, but I don't see an issue in that regard. We'll see how it goes. Once I figure out how...