The Dungeon Master Workshop - Advice for New DM's continued - Leveling

Last week we got a huge response from you guys with our article about questions form new DM's and my advice on those subjects. Well, this week we are continuing that theme by answering an important topic for the striving DM's/ GM's.

Should I use experience points or a milestone leveling system?

I think the choice of which leveling system you should choose to use largely depends on the table that you run. If you have a table that is a little bit competitive with each other and enjoys the feeling of competition and trying to race each other to the next level, then using experience points can be a great way to level up your party. splitting the XP equally amongst all the players at the table and those involved in the engagements, you can also set a system in which players receive a minor boost to their XP for in character role-playing, thinking tactically, not meta-gaming, making decisions that are detrimental to that player's character but make sense for that character. You can come up with countless ways in which your player can gain those minor boosts to XP to encourage them to role play and make interesting decisions in a game. The downside to this method though is that if you have a group who's players cant guaranty that they can turn up to play each week, it, unfortunately, can lead to a party who members can be wildly different levels. If your players are ok with this level differential then you don't have a problem, but for some people, they like being the same level are everyone else and while they enjoy the game, they don't want to be penalized for having real-life, force them from coming to the game.

Milestone leveling is (for those who don't know) the system of leveling in which a group levels up together at the same rate and is controlled by the DM, more often than not the reaching of these Milestones happens after a crucial moment in the story or when it seems appropriate to the DM. This system is great if you have a table that really enjoys storytelling and a more narrative game, the more the players feel like they are exploring the world and your story the more powerful they become, they don't need to be competitive because it's more co-operative. Its also far simpler on your end as the DM, you no longer have to think about what creatures are going to give "X" amount of XP, do the maths to divide it amongst the players and you don't have to keep elaborate tables containing everyone's minor boosts to XP, it also doesn't penalize people who have miss sessions because of real-life commitment, they can turn up to the game and just level up to the same as everyone in the party.
However, if you run a table that is more placid and doesn't do as much roleplay as you would like, and you want to try and coerce them into doing some more role-playing,  the milestone system isn't the best one for this. It has no positive re-enforcement for doing things in game that you wish to reward, once the players can see the activity that you enjoy seeing, then they will do it more until they find it enjoyable themselves, this is only possible in milestone-based leveling if you tell the players you want to see them do more roleplaying.

Because of the downsides to both systems, I have developed my own system of leveling I call "Hatchmark leveling". It has the positive re-enforcement of experience based level while keeping the universal leveling aspect of milestone leveling.

Next to me on a, very visible to the players I have a slate and some chalk, every time one of my players does something that I want to reward I add a hatch mark to the slate, and I keep doing this throughout the game. Rewards are given for defeating monsters in combat, escalating the story, roleplaying, natural 20's, making decisions as a player that is detrimental to the character but are fitting to what that character would do and do cool things in game, I also award them for making jokes as well , but that's just me, there are a tonne of things you can award hatch marks for to your players. I am generally quite generous to my player so, in a rough approximation, levels 1-5 took about 12 sessions to complete. You can be as generous or stingy as you wish to be, you control when your players level up to a certain extent, have in your mind, aspects of the game you wish for your players to always be rewarded for and improvise from that point. I for example Award the group two hatch marks for each player that turns up to the session that week, this gives my players a little bit more incentive to turn up every week because they know, if they have a full party, they will receive at least 10 hatch marks towards their next level.

At each tier of play, to reach the next level the players have to reach a certain number of hatch marks. For example, from level 1-5, each level requires the party to gain 125 hatch marks to level up, 6-10 the party requires 250 for each level, 11-15 is 500, levels 16-19 is 1000 and to reach level 20 the party has to acquire 1250 hatch marks. Having the accumulating hatch marks visible to the players re-enforces the ideas that I want my player to play with. When they work co-operatively i award hatch marks, when someone actively works against the party's interest, for anything other than a story/roleplaying moment I have been known to (although it never happens often) to take hatch marks away from the party, which very quickly shows the players, what they are doing wrong and what they are doing right . I have found this to work incredibly well. In fact, I have had friends who run their own games, implement this style of leveling into their own campaigns and get amazing results, especially from the roleplaying front. I find it encourages creative thinking without encouraging the kind of play that is disruptive to your game, and most importantly it works for me, and I hope it works for you too.

Thanks for reading this week's blog people, please go to the blogs main sight and check out some more of my articles, we have advised from "naming NPC's , magical items and places", "expecting the unexpected" and "finding a creative place to do your DM work", and don't forget to go to our Youtube channel and watch my show "Fantasy Folder" where I talk about other problems facing the DM and GM and an episode where I recount the start of my current campaign .

If you have questions you want me to write about please leave them in the comments down below or send us a message on facebook on the CardBoard Arcade Facebook page!

Thanks again guys, and until next time.

Bye!