XP Per Year for Darkening of Mirkwood

[PencilBoy99]

How many XP overall do you end up handing out per year of adventuring? I know some of you do 1 adventuring phase per year and others of you do 2. I know the game has rules for how many to hand out per session, but I'm worried that that might be too aggressive if I'm running a 30 year campaign w/ 2 phases per year.

[Otaku-sempai]

I haven't helmed a campaign, myself, but one thing to consider is that it's not that unusual to run more than one Adventuring phase per year, though a really complex adventure might not leave time for more. Some years you could run two or more adventures with short Fellowship phases (of at least two weeks apiece in duration) in between in addition to the year-end Fellowship phase. Naturally, you would end up handing out more Experience in such a year.

The Loremaster's Guide suggests that players receive 1 Experience point each at the end of each session they attend. If you feel that the group has made substantial progress towards achieving its chosen objective then each hero should receive 1 bonus Experience point. Finally, it is suggested that at the end of the Adventuring phase each hero should receive 1 Experience point for every two game sessions in the adventure.

If you are routinely running two or more Adventuring phases per year then maybe you could consider limiting your players to 2 additional Experience points for the end of each adventure (plus the 1 point per session and any bonus point(s)). This note might be helpful:

Experience Points Awards Ratio
The amount of Experience points to give to players has been calculated considering an average of 3 sessions of play for each complete Adventuring phase. Keeping this pace, each player would receive an average 6 Experience points, plus 1 or 2 additional points at the end of each story.

This ratio can be adjusted based on the gaming habits of your group: if your games tend to be played in long single sessions (4 hours or more), cutting the number of sittings down to approximately half our average, then you should compensate handing out more supplementary Experience points at the end of the story. If on the contrary your games tend to take multiple sessions, then cut down the final Experience bonus.

[Majestic]

My PCs end up getting about 6 XP per year as they've been playing through the Darkening of Mirkwood. My group tends to have longer sessions.

[doctheweasel]

Our group usually gets two Adventuring Phases in each year, and I give them around 12-13xp total a year.

Since we have longer sessions, I end up making up the difference at the end of the phase so that they up with six-ish.

[aramis]

My last group averaged 8-10 XP per year... typically 2-3 per "session", and two "Sessions" per week - we played 6-7 hour sessions, with 2-5 adventures per year.

[mica]

This is a difficult one as the campaign seems very much at odds with the normal xp mechanics.
From the perspective of the 30 year campaign I would argue that it sees new characters progress and achieve renowned status for the final scene - so you are looking at completing the campaign with around 120xp. Based on this you are only looking at around 4xp/year. The problem though is that as the campaign continues baggage is generated (in our case Mogdred). This meant that with the fire-fighting of events some years may easily take 5 sessions to complete with 2, possibly even 3 adventures. This according to the mechanics would generate around 7-10. Add to this courage (which we have since scrapped at least for the campaign) and characters could be getting to 100xp after completing less than half the campaign which with named items, dundain, 5 valour/wisdom means the hunt goes crazy. The result is that characters are almost forced to retire.
So I would argue that if you are not looking for a rolling cast of characters throughout the campaign, to really limit either the amount of activity the company can get involved in per year or seriously nerf xp (and do not use courage).

[Rich H]

I do think the initial rules made a mistake tying XP to each session and the revised rules should have, not just offered advice, but removed it completely and moved to XP awards per adventure. Awarding XP, and other in-game resources, by session, is a pretty broken mechanic when you do the analysis on it - eg, long session lengths get less XP per adventure but face more challenges and use up more resources when compared to shorter sessions.

I'm fortunate that I spotted this early on, and the fact that there isn't a great deal to spend XP on in the original rules, and structured my campaign accordingly and added house rules to spread out the XP spend (eg, Vigour trait, languages, additional specialities and distinctive features, etc). I still think some or all of the PCs will retire at some stage *but* it will feel more of a natural retirement based on fatigue and age rather than maxing out on XP and exhausting all the options to spend it on (ie, high Valour, Wisdom and a Weaponskill).

[Otaku-sempai]

I can see how ditching the 1 XP per session rule might be completely reasonable and especially desirable in an extended campaign. Players could be compensated by the Loremaster being fairly generous with XP awarded at the conclusion of an Adventuring phase.

[Rich H]

I can see how ditching the 1 XP per session rule might be completely reasonable and especially desirable in an extended campaign. Players could be compensated by the Loremaster being fairly generous with XP awarded at the conclusion of an Adventuring phase.

Depending on how much you award for an adventure, there isn't really a need for bonus XP at the end. That's just perpetuating the issue that many people have that progression is too quick although, like I say, that is dependant on the initial reward of the adventure.

[Otaku-sempai]

There is that. Good point, Rich.