[diablerouge]

IME the xp-for-loot system works really well for a very particular type of game, a type largely ignored by mainstream TTRPG media. One much pulpier and closer to the classic sword-and-sorcery source material like that written by Fritz Lieber. I use it in my games and really like it - it was a huge shift in the feel of my games, and I also think it leads to a game that fits more neatly with my own preferences for fantasy games (I love the aforementioned sword and sorcery materials.)

The author here seems to be someone still interested in the sort of narrative game evangelized by Wizards Of The Coast and popular D&D media like Critical role, which XP for gold would be a bit of an odd match for.

Additionally, one of the problems they encountered (players looting too much and leveling too fast) was of their own making, when they reduced the leveling thresholds by a factor of 10. Players won't worry about looting mundane objects worth 10gp if they know they need to get 6000 to level up - that effort is better spent on finding bigger hauls of treasure.

[setr]

More importantly he’s either not tracking weight/inventory size, or he’s not punishing players for burning time. You shouldn’t be capable of looting every possible item, because you’ll inevitably get attacked by more enemies, and you’d run out of space to hold it (and running in and out of the dungeon every ten items should be strictly punished, probably by limiting rations or torches found — and again, tracking time)

So even if you’re being meticulous, it’s just not a viable strategy — you have to focus on the more expensive items.

The key is not that it enables a simple XP system, it’s that it breaks the “kill everything in sight” gameplay loop, and allows you to toss overly-hard enemies at the players (because you’ll get the same reward by finding a workaround). TFA just replaced kill everything with loot everything by failing to follow through more thoroughly. Combat, and leveling, is no longer a necessity — it just opens up more options.

Resource management is fundamental to ADnD’s gameplay — it’s not an inconvenience you can skip. Without it all sorts of bad behaviors are enabled, and often optimal.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

>> The author here seems to be someone still interested in the sort of narrative game evangelized by Wizards Of The Coast and popular D&D media like Critical role, which XP for gold would be a bit of an odd match for.

Can you say a bit more about this? WotC are pushing a narrativist agenda? I'm surprised.

To be fair, I haven't really kept up with D&D editions after 3.5 (I played one session of 4th ed. but I haven't even looked at 5th ed.). So it's a bit of a surprise that it's WotC and D&D that are now the champions of narrative-based roleplaying. There was a time -as recently as ca. 2011-2012- that narrative-based roleplaying was the agenda of Indie PRGs and D&D was even considered the antithesis of that style of play. I appreciate it's more complicated than that, but I'd welcome your perspective, since you seem to be more familiar with modern trends.

[diablerouge]

Well, I would probably put WotC somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, but that's still pretty different from the old-school style of play that XP-for-gold really shines for.

WotC also isn't really pushing narrative play mechanically, but instead culturally aligning itself on the sort of role-play-heavy style that's growing because of the broad success of Critical Role and others. Because of those shows, most people's conception of D&D includes lots of talking in character and extensive character backgrounds and long story arcs carefully planned by the GM, which are all pretty narrative in my book.

The real big difference between 2011-2012 and now (in my, albeit biased, opinion) is the popularity of the OSR (old-school renaissance.) The OSR has gone mainstream (I can find OSR material at my local game store now!) So while the narrative indie scene keeps developing and the OSR scene does as well, WotC is sort of caught in the middle, and players fall anywhere along the spectrum (even when ostensibly all playing D&D 5E, which has hacks and optional rules to push it one way or the other.) But imo most are pushed to the narrative side because that's what most people are exposed to in the form of Critical Role.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

Thanks! I've been reading about the OSR and trying to understand what it is all about. It's funny but the last time I was keeping informed about the RPG market, back in 2011-12, is when the OSR started up, with retro-clones like OSRIC and so on, but I completely missed it back then. I guess it hadn't gathered momentum yet. My interest in the article I posted above follows from my attempt to get my head around the OSR.

Critical Role is another thing that had escaped my notice. The way I understand it, the "narrativist" agenda, following Ron Edwards' model (that first popularised the term) and that I know from a stream of "Indie" RPGs that came out of The Forge community, is specifically opposed to a story arc carefully planned by the GM and instead invests on rules for "collaborative storytelling", that give players "narrative control". Those games are sometimes styled as "storygames" rather than RPGs and they are, in my mind, exemplified by Dogs in the Vineyard [1] possibly because that was the absolute darling of The Forge crowd back when I was browsing the forums.

But I personally also think of the kind of character- and roleplaying-focused game you are talking about as "narrative focused" myself, quite aside from the academic discussion, of which I'm only dimly aware most of the time anyway.

All that said, thanks for clarifying! It's been a long time since I moved in rpg circles and I miss a lot of the nuance in online discussions and articles.

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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogs_in_the_Vineyard