#RPGaDay2025 - Day 30 - Experience

It's the penultimate day of #RPGaDay2025 and the prompt "EXPERIENCE" showers me with guilt.  

For thirty years I was that meticulous bookkeeping GM when it came to experience.  Regardless of system, I prided myself on giving out the appropriate amount, tracking all the players' action that generated those numbers  The true high point was Hackmaster from 2001-2004, when it wasn't just  monsters and gold, but individual awards, class rewards, and, dare I say, tracking alignment infractions for giggles.  

While I have no issue with rules light, I've always had issue with the "everyone levels" dynamics prevalent in 3e and up.  Levelling for the sake of levelling, a participation trophy for RPGs, even if the person wasn't around to participate, but just to keep numbers right.  

I admit that after 25 years since I noticed it was a thing, when we returned to Gulluvia to try and wrap up a long-running filler campaign, I finally moved the calendar nine months to a year and levelled up the existing characters.  

An even worse sin is my Gamma World Campaign, I now they're cleaning out a massive facility currently, but by the time we wrap it up, it will nearly thirty sessions without giving out xp, and I haven't been doing a good job keeping track of it when I was on the ball.  

If they can get out of the facility in Batteries Low, Getting Dark, I'm going to need an abacus, a slide rule, and one of those giant boards they used to keep election tallies on to calculate the numbers.. And they still might not all level up.