It’s almost a cliché at this point to say that modern life is distracting. Social media, smartphones, crumbling political systems, etc. It all feeds into short attention spans and feeling left constantly on read while everyone else is busy flitting around in their own lives putting out various fires. As a tabletop RPG fan I like to pretend that me and mine are immune from these troubles, but we aren’t. I’m fortunate to have a pretty focused weekly group, but I still find that I have to struggle for player mindshare between sessions.
While we’re at the table everyone is mostly present, but sometimes there are bits of housekeeping between sessions that need doing. Discussing rules changes, talking about which system to play next, or just asking general questions about what players plan to be doing next session to help with prep gets very easily ignored. I don’t take it personally, we’re all busy. Life is busy. At first I thought it was just me, but after trading out GM duties my friend who took over had a similar complaint. Everyone was present at the table, but getting any game-related conversation outside of our weekly two hours of gaming was as impossible for him as it had been for me.
During my friend’s final few sessions before I took the GM reigns back we devised a feedback system that incentivizes players, but let’s set up some context first. We shift back to my “main” campaign that I’ve been running for a few years in an off-and-on fashion. We’ll travel back there for a few months to a year and then get a wild hair and take a vacation in a different system.
Eliciting Feedback
I use the Old School Essentials ruleset, which is basically a cleanly stated version of BX D&D. In OSE, XP is largely obtained only through the accrual of treasure at a 1 GP = 1 XP return rate. Found a chest with 1,000 gold coins? Great, that’s 1,000 XP to distribute amongst the party. Clean, simple, straightforward. What I love about this method is that it incentivizes exploring and being opportunistic, but does not incentivize killing every monster you come across.
What I don’t like about it is that it’s slow, often dependent on luck, and can lead to strings of sessions with no meaningful XP. Players just don’t have the patience for that kind of pace in the shorter sessions we play weekly, and, frankly, neither do I. But instead of just cranking up the XP dial for exploration and monsters (which I’ve also done a bit) I’ve also started to reward XP for actions taken outside the game entirely.
I had wanted to implement a more formal feedback system for our games to allow players to voice grievances in a more formal way. Just a place to say “hey, I didn’t like this part of the game very much.” Not in a confrontational way, just in the interest of us playing the most enjoyable game possible. We’re all here to have fun, right? I landed on the Stars and Wishes system, but was hesitant to introduce it because it was before I took over GM duties again (I had already been thinking about returning to our regular campaign for a while) and because previous requests for feedback were nearly unanimously met with “yeah it’s all fine.” Which is nice to know, but that’s not feedback.
So I met with our GM at the time and we decided to hand out XP bonuses for submitting Stars and Wishes after each session. A meaningful amount of XP, not a pittance. Instantly we saw player feedback coming in. People wanted that XP, and if all they had to do was say what they liked and didn’t like about a session then they were definitely going to do that. Occasionally a player didn’t submit feedback, but it was rare and often met with “Oh, I meant to! I just forgot” during the subsequent session.
Expanding the Rewards
I continued this system when I took over GMing and it continued to truck along without interruption. I was finally getting meaningful feedback! Actionables! Validation! And then we had a string of absences because real life just happened to stack up poorly for a few members of our group. As a rule I like to have players recap sessions for those who miss, and I decided that if metagame XP rewards worked for feedback then why not for recaps?
I put out a 50XP bounty on a player recap from the missed session for our player who missed out. The player who responded gave a beautifully written, dramatized recap of events, and I doubled the XP reward for the effort put forth. I didn’t think that the increase was important, but it ended up showing my players that not only am I rewarding engagement but that it’s a sliding scale. The rewards can increase for more engagement.
Concerns and Other Rewards
It feels a bit antithetical to allow characters to grow for things that are explicitly not in-game actions. Many systems use metagame currencies for this sort of thing, and often only during the session proper. But what I’m finding is that between-game engagement is often as important as being present at the table. Being a GM is a lot of work, and GMing every week for the same group of people often requires a bit of tweaking and lots of communication. If your mind is on the game, whether we’re playing or not, I’ve learned that rewarding that has merit.
I do hold some concerns that this can get out of hand. I try to stick to feedback and recaps for my metagame XP rewards so that people who just legitimately don’t have the time to think about the game aren’t left behind. But to play devil’s advocate to my own concerns: aren’t the players more invested, more present, and more active the ones that should be getting extra rewards? Not enough to create an imbalance, but enough I demonstrate that it’s not going unnoticed? In an ideal world we all show up to the table for the simple thrill of the game, but in real life we’re all conditioned animals looking for a hit of good brain chemicals.
I do see myself expanding this system even more. We’ve flat out stolen the Bonds system from Dungeon World and implanted it into OSE wholesale. So some sessions the bonus XP from feedback, recap, and fulfilling in-game bonds can add quite a boost. We’ve even implemented carousing, which allows players to spend gold gained on adventure for additional XP once they return to town as long as it’s “wasted” in a frivolous way that does not materially benefit the character. This has the added benefit of often keeping players poor and hungry, which is my preferred state for players to be in.
Final Thoughts
Right now this increase in XP seems to be going well and we’ve had more chatter in our group Discord server than ever before. Several players immediately submit their feedback at the conclusion of a session. And they’ve started to truly celebrate the dramatized recaps that one player is now incentivized to put out. The only downside is that the players are progressing at a pretty decent clip, but given our shorter play sessions it seems to be enhancing the situation rather than taking away from it. There’s always the worry that this could turn into a Monty Haul situation, but for now: I’m quite happy with it.
Glorb's 11 Foot Ladder 