The Dice Pool at Two Hundred (posts)

Milestone Levelling vs XP

There’s a strong argument for XP levelling in D&D type games. The pursuit of XP can be used to promote certain behaviours from the PCs, leading them towards the bigger, badder monsters and the shinier, more valuable treasures. I have been using XP levelling in our OD&D game to preserve an element of authenticity, and in UVG to stay true to the rules. But I have been more than generous with the provision of experience points in both. The GM has the privilege and responsibility of controlling the XP tap to speed up or slow down the progression of the PCs as seems appropriate, but it is an imprecise instrument. For instance, in OD&D a Magic user requires more than twice the number of XP to level up than a Thief does, and PCs with high prime requisite scores are getting 5 or 10 percent bonus XP as well. So no-one is really levelling at the same rate, even if you ostensibly give them all the same amount of hit points.

So, when I first encountered milestone levelling in D&D 5E, I saw it as a way to unburden myself and our group of the calculations XP levelling lumbered us with and to reward PCs with levels at narratively appropriate points in the campaign. I never really planned when I would give them a new level, I would just tell them to level up at the end of a particularly significant session. This method, or lack thereof, had the added bonus of it being a nice surprise for the players. They were still able to plan ahead for what new feats, spells, etc. they were going to take when they levelled up, they just were never sure when it would happen, unlike with XP levelling.

Anyway, I have been thinking about my progress with the dice pool dot com in a these terms recently. Obviously because I’ve known this 200th post was coming for some time. I’ve certainly hit a few big milestones, like when someone first subscribed to the blog, or when the blog was first linked on the Indie RPG Newsletter, or when John Harper reposted my bleet (skeet?) about my Blades in the Dark posts on Bluesky. All of these milestones built my confidence, motivated me to continue and improve and got more eyes on the site. It felt like levelling up each time. Every unlooked for goal that I reached made me want to write more and se what might come next.

In the time since my 100th post my views and visitor numbers have grown enormously. This has been true since the start of the blog in fact. My guilty obsession is checking the Jetpack app to see what the daily/weekly/monthly numbers are at. I often do it a few times a day. This feels like the accumulation of XP. Each view is another point towards the next level. You can even measure the effects of the milestones I mentioned above in this way. John Harper and Thomas Manuel granted the site a lot more XP than it got most days. It was like completing a quest I didn’t even know I was on.

If I’m honest, I have to admit that the everyday XP grind feels more like where the real progress is made. The milestones certainly come up, but if I were to rely on them, I would level up pretty infrequently. Also, I like the ability to measure the progress through numbers, as you will have noted from my New Years post. Not that the numbers really influence me to write on any particular topics. I have and always will write what I want, whether its Triangle Agency Character Creation or half-assed flash fiction. Maybe I’m obsessed with the numbers because I’m just old school, maybe I crave XP.

Anyway, here are some links to a few of the last two hundred posts that I’m most proud of:

• The Editioning is my current series on our project to play an adventure in every major version of D&D from OD&D to 5.5E. We’re still only on OD&D and B/X but stick with me!
• I created a terrible OSE character. I think this was the first of many character creation posts.
• Fictionalised recaps of our two sessions of the DCC module, Sailors on the Starless Sea. Here’s session 1 and session 2.
• My advice on how to run a heart one-shot.
• My series on the advice on running Blades in the Dark from John Harper in the core book and Deep Cuts comes in a series of posts.
• I wrote a review of each and every adventure in the Sutra of Pale Leaves campaign for Call of Cthulhu, which I’m quite proud of.
• Another review, this one of A Perfect Wife, an old school adventure by Zedeck Siew

Conclusion

It’s a short one today, dear reader. I just wanted to acknowledge the milestone, as it were, and reflect on how the blog has built and changed over the last two hundred posts. Thanks for reading!

I’ll be back soon with the promised discussion of the Hand of God x UVG.