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Elfcrusher wrote:I'm struggling with these issues as well. And to build upon Rich H's point about game session durations, some groups also play faster/slower than others. (More jokes, longer time looking up rules, etc.)

I'd love to see XP recommendations included with Adventures. I.e., each chapter of DoM could include recommendations at the end, depending on which goals were accomplished.

Yusei wrote:Well, sure, we all tweak the rules at some point. But it's good to talk and define guidelines, because, when it comes to XP, it can already be too late when you notice a problem. You can't easily remove XP from the characters if you suddenly find out you've given too much

Exactly guys, totally agree. I've followed the RAW and I'm in the same boat as you are. I'm now having to artificially scale XP gain back because of this, for many of us, flawed mechanic. Fortunately I've explained this to my players and they are okay with it and understand the issue but for other groups I can see this would not be the case - some players would be dismayed if they suddenly started accruing lower amounts of XP 'than usual'. What's frustrating is the RAW, built differently, could have avoided this. I really love this game but it certainly has its fair share of issues. If it was a lesser game I may have walked away but thankfully its positive elements are truly brilliant so it means I'm more than happy to 'struggle' on! It's good to discuss these things here though...

Rich H wrote:

PaulButler wrote:Then do that. The CB7 rules police aren't going to knock on your door.
I'm sure you probably make your own NPCs and adversaries, yeah? You certainly write your own stories for your campaign. So tweak the rules.
It's not like we're all gonna go play in the World Championship One Ring tournament and compete against each other using a mutually agreed upon rules set.

Oh, come on fella, that's a cheap shot and a pretty snarky comment to be honest, and it's stating the obvious so not really helpful at all. We're discussing here what appears to be an obvious issue with the game for many people. It's what this forum and these threads are for after all.

Hey, sorry if I seemed snarky. That was not my intent. My liberal use of smiley faces was sadly not enough.
So again, apologies. I work in a game store and so very frequently RPG discussions devolve into arguing about the minutia of the rules and so rarely about anything else. It's frustrating.
But MANY people that I attempt to have these conversations with look at me like I'm crazy when I suggest tweaking the rules to taste. Like, they simply must have an *official FAQ* or something for them to use a ruleset.

My sincerest apologies. I forgot where I was for a moment.

Rich H wrote: I deliberately picked the 2 hour session and the 8 hour one because those times relate to the two game groups I play in. If the same TOR campaign was being run for both groups then the challenge level of the written adventures for one group as opposed to the other would noticeably become an issue.

Ah, see. This was not an angle I had even remotely thought of.

PaulButler wrote:Hey, sorry if I seemed snarky. That was not my intent. My liberal use of smiley faces was sadly not enough.
So again, apologies. I work in a game store and so very frequently RPG discussions devolve into arguing about the minutia of the rules and so rarely about anything else. It's frustrating.
But MANY people that I attempt to have these conversations with look at me like I'm crazy when I suggest tweaking the rules to taste. Like, they simply must have an *official FAQ* or something for them to use a ruleset.

My sincerest apologies. I forgot where I was for a moment.

Cheers Paul, that's very decent of you to reply in such a way, and much appreciated. We all have strong opinions and I enjoy the discussions; I just got a bit upset by what seemed like a dismissive comment but it's okay and forgotten about now. I enjoy reading peoples' thoughts and opinions here and find it really valuable discussion but sometimes I do get overinvested in the debate so take things personally every now and then and get a bit arsey - that's when Jon usually sends me a PM.

I know I'm pretty annoyed by the XP system, mainly because I failed to spot the issue before I started playing and like others have said, you can't take XP back you can only slow down future accrual which seems really jarring for players and for me as a GM.

PaulButler wrote:

Rich H wrote: I deliberately picked the 2 hour session and the 8 hour one because those times relate to the two game groups I play in. If the same TOR campaign was being run for both groups then the challenge level of the written adventures for one group as opposed to the other would noticeably become an issue.

Ah, see. This was not an angle I had even remotely thought of.

Cool, I suspected we may have been talking across each other and I hadn't explained it clearly. Glad I spent the time to reiterate my point and have another stab at clarifying what I meant.

Well, you could just step up the challenges.

Powerful PCs might be accounted among 'The Wise' and get their orders from the White Council instead of lesser authorities.

Angelalex242 wrote:Well, you could just step up the challenges.

Powerful PCs might be accounted among 'The Wise' and get their orders from the White Council instead of lesser authorities.

Not sure who you were responding to here as you haven't quoted anyone, but that's fairly meaningless to the point I was making as it's all to do with rates of XP gain tied to game sessions and not adventures.

You're right, I am off topic.

Perhaps something else is in order, then.

Maybe somebody should have a default XP per published module list.

Something like "Marsh Bell should be worth 16 XP to the average group of PCs when they're done, and they should have at least 20-25 AP as well."

Angelalex242 wrote:Something like "Marsh Bell should be worth 16 XP to the average group of PCs when they're done, and they should have at least 20-25 AP as well."

I think that's an excellent idea and would be really useful, definitely.

I posted (in another thread) how much XP it would take to raise one Weaponskill, Valour, and Wisdom to 6; 169 XP, assuming a beginning PC starts with the weaponskill at a rating of 3. Playing through TfW, how far along this road do people think a character should get? Once we establish that we can take a stab at breaking it down by adventure?

Angelalex242 wrote:
Maybe somebody should have a default XP per published module list.

Something like "Marsh Bell should be worth 16 XP to the average group of PCs when they're done, and they should have at least 20-25 AP as well."

I second this idea. I would love to know this.
Especially with two very substantial adventure sourcebooks out some idea of how fast characters are expected to progress through them would be good.

It will also give us all a benchmark to compare homegrown adventures to.