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It seems unnecessarily complex to me that there are two systems for what essentially amounts to the same thing. It doesn't help of course that I find the advancement point rules quite fogettable and a little confusing in their own right.

Are there any solid house rules out there for this?

I'm fine with the xp/ap divide. I use similar methods in other games too.

On the other hand I don't like the way ap are assigned. In the end I choose to simply give 2 ap per session.

I generally run The One Ring as PbP, which means AP is as simple as defining the start and end of a "session" and asking my players to call out where they think they earned APs at the end of the session. I've also experimented with allowing the to use XP as AP for advancement (but not the other way round).

I understand your concerns about the multiple systems, but it does create a distinction between "soft" advancement (APs) and "crunchy" advancement (XP).

I like the idea in theory, but I have found in practice that the paradigm of RPG's, whereupon Players are silent recipients of the GM/LM's generosity is almost impossible to overcome. I just about never got my real-life players to request AP's, and I also do a PbP where I'm just about the only person that is requesting AP's.

It has gotten so that my feeling is to just grant a fixed amount of APs based on adventure "length" 8-short, 12-medium, 16-long, with the possibility for players to boost that for magnificent deeds/actions.

I *do* think that having the division ensures you don't have "combat-monsters" walking around. If you pooled it all into one XP economy, players could then ignore their common skills and just pump up combat skills and Valour or Wisdom. You might say "Well that's not going to work in Middle-earth" and to an extent that's true, but here's the thing about human nature: when all you have is a hammer, all problems look like nails.

Rocmistro wrote:I just about never got my real-life players to request AP's

Really? Mine do all the time... to the point that I get slightly annoyed when they do useless rolls, hoping to get APs.

Good let's put my group and your group into a room together with no food or water and hopefully they'll all come out doing things the right way

Rocmistro wrote:Good let's put my group and your group into a room together with no food or water and hopefully they'll all come out doing things the right way

You'll probably end up with my group in the end, half of my players forget 9 times out of 10 to use the Traits and mark the APs, the other half is constantly pushing to get more.