The funniest part of the XP-for-gold debate is how everyone loves to point out examples of games (I'm assuming they're not just making it up, which is another possibility) that do it stupidly and poorly, and almost no one refers to how AD&D does it. In AD&D, you will never gain XP from looting a bandit's corpse, no matter the circumstances. You get XP for gold when that gold is recovered from a dungeon, expressing the return of value from entropic forces to civilization:
"Treasure must be physically taken out of the dungeon or lair and turned into a transportable medium or stored in the player's stronghold to be counted for experience points." (DMG pg. 85)
In ACKS, Macris is even more explicit on this point: "Characters gain XP from treasure they recover from the dungeon or wilderness and bring back to civilization." (RR pg. 310).
Even in BMD which arguably does not suffer from this particular irrealism of levelups, there is still the game's equivalent of XP for recovered wealth (the currency value of wealth recovered from an operation is tithed 10%, and characters are awarded "XP" as their tithe grows).
Some people will just never read a rule, no matter what.
Fighters gain exp for killing men, killing monsters, and saving treasure from evil, bringing it back into the folds of civilization to bring wealth and prosperity to man?
Sounds pretty heroic to me.
There is also an adjacent conversation about gold from the dungeon being outside the closed system of resources the local lords have at their disposal, but no one is ready for that yet.
The XP for _x_ and leveling systems are meta game abstractions that provides the players with discrete incentive and motive for interacting with the game world. Defining _x_ as gold cleverly reshapes the war game into an adventure game. It is consistent with much of the Appendix N literature, which also happens to be largely by American authors.
RpgPundit doesn’t elaborate on how his game solves the issue. Perhaps one has to buy the book to find out?
Good post - thanks for sharing! I agree with most of your post but I think the reason that Boot Hill to AD&D PC conversions are in the 1E DMG is a little bit more prosaic than some grand reflection on "manifest destiny". IIRC, Boot Hill was the only other RPG that TSR was actively publishing when the DMG came out (Gamma World had not come out yet and Metamorphosis Alpha was never actively supported by TSR).
You are correct, however I think the fact that the only other game they were publishing was literally a western speaks to shared ancestry between the two concepts which was more my point.
Do you have any thoughts on what a Catholic rpg might look like? I don’t think I’ve seen anyone frame things this way, it’s extremely striking. I’m getting a taste of this with Dolmenwood, as a more unified setting with explicit ideas around religion and alignment. What might dnd look like if the domain play was forced into a sprawling patchwork of kingdoms and duchies? How much of the wild-west is dependant on there being free frontier land?
I have pondered this, it's a difficult question. A "Catholic" RPG would reflect the old-world of Europe and as a result of this I think the "frontier" would not exist as it does implicitly in D&D and its derivatives. The type of Braunstein play going on the BROSR and other related circles is actually closer to a "catholic" RPG than most campaigns because they revolve around receiving a role to play to your best ability rather than coming up from level 1 and making all your own goals. In the TTRPG rules I am slowly drafting I have investigated reframing "elves" as an old-world inversion of the adventuring archetype that can only earn experience from completing "Quests" in the form of alignment war objectives handed down from priests or mystics. I think progression for PCs (whether that takes the form of leveling up or gaining new magic items or whatever) is completely inextricable from the chassis of the game. The best Catholic TTRPG is reading the Lord of the Rings, lol.
" Boiled down, this is an appeal to realism styled argument against XP for GP which is the most common sort levied. What makes it frustrating to refute is that it’s correct. "
I will disagree. XP for GP can be realistic, if you carry it through. It is a simulationist tool, but if you have a very gameist environment, then it will stick out. In a heavily simulationist environment, it can be excellent.
Take ACKS, Adventurer Conqueror King. This system uses the 1:1 ratio for everything. ACKS is pretty famous for how deeply simulationist it is and how realistic its economy is. The whole thing revolves around the 1:1 ratio which is why it works.
How much do henchmen get paid at different levels? How much does it cost to make a magic item? How much XP does a magic user gain for creating a magic item? How much divine power does a congregation of worshippers generate vs the level of priest estimated to be appropriate for that size of church? How powerful of a lord is likely to be able to control and hold this size of realm? How much XP do you get for killing a creature? How much power goes to the God and how much to the magical ritual if you use a creature as a sacrifice? How much total power does this deity have and what can it do with that power? How many spell slots does a caster get at each level vs the XP it takes to reach that level? What about spell points instead of slots (ACKS calls this elven spell singing)? How about how much it costs to pay a caster to cast a level X spell?
Literally all of those are answered with a formula that at its heart has 1 GP per 1 XP, or that ends up balanced against 1 GP for 1 XP. Macris has published many articles where he breaks down the math for all sorts of things, including each example above.
Most games don't use the formula for anything except as a source of XP. That's their failure. If you are building a simulation, you need to have your tools balanced with each other, if you don't do it, that's your failure as a developer, not your tools' problem for failing to inherently line up with each other.
I am inclined to mention that I am a huge proponent of ACKS and you will see, reading this substack, that I have been running ACKS 2 campaigns since well before the kickstarter began. I am intimately familiar with ACKS. I agree with your analysis of how XP for GP works within ACKS, but one needs to qualify what counts as "realism". I would argue that XP for GP is a concession ACKS makes in it's realism. Simulationism does not equal realism in all contexts.
ACKS simulates and entirely coherent world, but XP for GP is not a realistic trapping of that simulation. Rulers being personally potent combatants is similarly not realistic, the entire demographic scheme of how rulers stat out is not "realistic". Which was the point of my post, it is good and fine that these are not realistic, they are fantasy adventure games. The way society is structured in ACKS is representative of a fantasy world where the emperor of rome is a superhero who can personally slay 25 men in single combat.
yeah... this is actually very _easy_ to refute because it's obviously _not_ correct... You just reject the obviously false premise that the gold is the cause for the increased capabilities.
Once you reject that premise and replace it with the correct one, which is that gold is an abstraction over the actual _lived experience_ of going into dangerous places and doing things and achieving things, the argument is simple, obvious, and correct.
The gold you get from your adventures is a loose but linear correlation with the lived experience, which makes it... wait for it... loose but linearly connected with XP.
This argument completely fails to address the fact that there are a plurality of sources of "lived experience" that do not award any experience points, characters at intermediate to advanced levels are operating on degrees of power completely unattainable within the framing of "lived experience", training or practice, and that the actual adventure associated acquisition of gold pieces is often divorced from the skill set the characters are actually cultivating in leveling up. Outmaneuvering some goblins to steal their hoard is not providing "Lived experience" tangible to mastering a new level of spell, and yet it provides experience points.
It is so that gold pieces are largely a stand-in for the amount of danger overcome, but that only really translates to lived experience for fighters and arguably thieves. Magic-users, clerics, and other archetypes are gaining some obvious metaphysical power from these adventures without doing any study, arcane ritual, or any other such. I think it is pretty clear then that stealing away gold pieces form another creature has some second order implications.
Sure... that's why it's an _abstraction_. And it's for particular types of games whose principal focus is going into dangerous places and finding magic and wealth.
Applying it to other modes of play that aren't related, even half related, to that zeitgeist of gaming is like following a recipe for a cake and saying "i substituted all the eggs for cottage cheese and it didn't work at all!" and getting upset with the author lol.
The funniest part of the XP-for-gold debate is how everyone loves to point out examples of games (I'm assuming they're not just making it up, which is another possibility) that do it stupidly and poorly, and almost no one refers to how AD&D does it. In AD&D, you will never gain XP from looting a bandit's corpse, no matter the circumstances. You get XP for gold when that gold is recovered from a dungeon, expressing the return of value from entropic forces to civilization:
"Treasure must be physically taken out of the dungeon or lair and turned into a transportable medium or stored in the player's stronghold to be counted for experience points." (DMG pg. 85)
In ACKS, Macris is even more explicit on this point: "Characters gain XP from treasure they recover from the dungeon or wilderness and bring back to civilization." (RR pg. 310).
Even in BMD which arguably does not suffer from this particular irrealism of levelups, there is still the game's equivalent of XP for recovered wealth (the currency value of wealth recovered from an operation is tithed 10%, and characters are awarded "XP" as their tithe grows).
Some people will just never read a rule, no matter what.
Fighters gain exp for killing men, killing monsters, and saving treasure from evil, bringing it back into the folds of civilization to bring wealth and prosperity to man?
Sounds pretty heroic to me.
There is also an adjacent conversation about gold from the dungeon being outside the closed system of resources the local lords have at their disposal, but no one is ready for that yet.
The XP for _x_ and leveling systems are meta game abstractions that provides the players with discrete incentive and motive for interacting with the game world. Defining _x_ as gold cleverly reshapes the war game into an adventure game. It is consistent with much of the Appendix N literature, which also happens to be largely by American authors.
RpgPundit doesn’t elaborate on how his game solves the issue. Perhaps one has to buy the book to find out?
Good post - thanks for sharing! I agree with most of your post but I think the reason that Boot Hill to AD&D PC conversions are in the 1E DMG is a little bit more prosaic than some grand reflection on "manifest destiny". IIRC, Boot Hill was the only other RPG that TSR was actively publishing when the DMG came out (Gamma World had not come out yet and Metamorphosis Alpha was never actively supported by TSR).
You are correct, however I think the fact that the only other game they were publishing was literally a western speaks to shared ancestry between the two concepts which was more my point.
Hah...yes, fair point! Nobody ever accused EGG of not thinking grandly LOL
Do you have any thoughts on what a Catholic rpg might look like? I don’t think I’ve seen anyone frame things this way, it’s extremely striking. I’m getting a taste of this with Dolmenwood, as a more unified setting with explicit ideas around religion and alignment. What might dnd look like if the domain play was forced into a sprawling patchwork of kingdoms and duchies? How much of the wild-west is dependant on there being free frontier land?
I have pondered this, it's a difficult question. A "Catholic" RPG would reflect the old-world of Europe and as a result of this I think the "frontier" would not exist as it does implicitly in D&D and its derivatives. The type of Braunstein play going on the BROSR and other related circles is actually closer to a "catholic" RPG than most campaigns because they revolve around receiving a role to play to your best ability rather than coming up from level 1 and making all your own goals. In the TTRPG rules I am slowly drafting I have investigated reframing "elves" as an old-world inversion of the adventuring archetype that can only earn experience from completing "Quests" in the form of alignment war objectives handed down from priests or mystics. I think progression for PCs (whether that takes the form of leveling up or gaining new magic items or whatever) is completely inextricable from the chassis of the game. The best Catholic TTRPG is reading the Lord of the Rings, lol.
"...experience points as they are presented in D&D do not represent hard skills and practice but instead metaphysical and spiritual power."
Disagree. They represent all four of these things. They're not contradictory.
And D&D isn't about realism, it's about believability - specifically believability to Appendix N style books.
" Boiled down, this is an appeal to realism styled argument against XP for GP which is the most common sort levied. What makes it frustrating to refute is that it’s correct. "
I will disagree. XP for GP can be realistic, if you carry it through. It is a simulationist tool, but if you have a very gameist environment, then it will stick out. In a heavily simulationist environment, it can be excellent.
Take ACKS, Adventurer Conqueror King. This system uses the 1:1 ratio for everything. ACKS is pretty famous for how deeply simulationist it is and how realistic its economy is. The whole thing revolves around the 1:1 ratio which is why it works.
How much do henchmen get paid at different levels? How much does it cost to make a magic item? How much XP does a magic user gain for creating a magic item? How much divine power does a congregation of worshippers generate vs the level of priest estimated to be appropriate for that size of church? How powerful of a lord is likely to be able to control and hold this size of realm? How much XP do you get for killing a creature? How much power goes to the God and how much to the magical ritual if you use a creature as a sacrifice? How much total power does this deity have and what can it do with that power? How many spell slots does a caster get at each level vs the XP it takes to reach that level? What about spell points instead of slots (ACKS calls this elven spell singing)? How about how much it costs to pay a caster to cast a level X spell?
Literally all of those are answered with a formula that at its heart has 1 GP per 1 XP, or that ends up balanced against 1 GP for 1 XP. Macris has published many articles where he breaks down the math for all sorts of things, including each example above.
Most games don't use the formula for anything except as a source of XP. That's their failure. If you are building a simulation, you need to have your tools balanced with each other, if you don't do it, that's your failure as a developer, not your tools' problem for failing to inherently line up with each other.
I am inclined to mention that I am a huge proponent of ACKS and you will see, reading this substack, that I have been running ACKS 2 campaigns since well before the kickstarter began. I am intimately familiar with ACKS. I agree with your analysis of how XP for GP works within ACKS, but one needs to qualify what counts as "realism". I would argue that XP for GP is a concession ACKS makes in it's realism. Simulationism does not equal realism in all contexts.
ACKS simulates and entirely coherent world, but XP for GP is not a realistic trapping of that simulation. Rulers being personally potent combatants is similarly not realistic, the entire demographic scheme of how rulers stat out is not "realistic". Which was the point of my post, it is good and fine that these are not realistic, they are fantasy adventure games. The way society is structured in ACKS is representative of a fantasy world where the emperor of rome is a superhero who can personally slay 25 men in single combat.
yeah... this is actually very _easy_ to refute because it's obviously _not_ correct... You just reject the obviously false premise that the gold is the cause for the increased capabilities.
Once you reject that premise and replace it with the correct one, which is that gold is an abstraction over the actual _lived experience_ of going into dangerous places and doing things and achieving things, the argument is simple, obvious, and correct.
The gold you get from your adventures is a loose but linear correlation with the lived experience, which makes it... wait for it... loose but linearly connected with XP.
This argument completely fails to address the fact that there are a plurality of sources of "lived experience" that do not award any experience points, characters at intermediate to advanced levels are operating on degrees of power completely unattainable within the framing of "lived experience", training or practice, and that the actual adventure associated acquisition of gold pieces is often divorced from the skill set the characters are actually cultivating in leveling up. Outmaneuvering some goblins to steal their hoard is not providing "Lived experience" tangible to mastering a new level of spell, and yet it provides experience points.
It is so that gold pieces are largely a stand-in for the amount of danger overcome, but that only really translates to lived experience for fighters and arguably thieves. Magic-users, clerics, and other archetypes are gaining some obvious metaphysical power from these adventures without doing any study, arcane ritual, or any other such. I think it is pretty clear then that stealing away gold pieces form another creature has some second order implications.
Sure... that's why it's an _abstraction_. And it's for particular types of games whose principal focus is going into dangerous places and finding magic and wealth.
Applying it to other modes of play that aren't related, even half related, to that zeitgeist of gaming is like following a recipe for a cake and saying "i substituted all the eggs for cottage cheese and it didn't work at all!" and getting upset with the author lol.
There’s some good ideas here but this needs an edit. Pundit in his video explicitly makes the argument against realism in DnD.