Experience points are bullshit.

This is one of my more contentious opinions regarding TTRPG design. It often prompts some of my fellow gamers and some designers to grasp for their pearls.

“But Stephen,” they’ll start. Nothing good comes when the butts come first. “XP was one of the significant innovations created by Dave and Gary.”

No, progression was the innovation borrowed from Fight in the Skies and its descendant Dawn Patrol. XP is merely a way of measuring it amid the random and sandboxy version of D&D developed in the 1970s and endured later (though not much later) in narrative styles of play.

Do you think ‘endured’ is a bit strong? How many times have you reached the play session at the end of some dramatic event, asked about XP, and received some amount short of your next ding? Hopefully, you had one of those GMs who gave some bonus XP that was just the amount you needed to level. XP is the tool of choice for grinder games, especially in computer games. It’s an excellent method for keeping someone engaged and playing longer. One more room. Just one more room and I’ll go to bed.

And while the early days of roleplaying featured this style of play, and some OCR games still do, TTRPGs work best when they serve as an avenue for action and storytelling. Some of that is personal bias. I like action in my story, especially around the table. And I don’t run a post-modern critique of roleplaying games and their tropes (though I do enjoy subverting tropes from time to time). I’m a good old-fashioned success merits progression sort of fella. Maybe I just read too much Joseph Campbell when I was younger.

But even in a sandbox, the story will emerge. Shadowdark and its popularity seem entirely predicated on such emergent stories. Eventually, pattern recognition and our impulses for narrative take over. A grind of beating down one monster after another might be fun for an hour or two, but before long, players will seek our purpose, and if they are not given purposeful hooks, they will create their own.

There are numerous memes and stories about this phenomenon. The GM presents a throwaway NPC for comic effect or to fill space, and the players become fixated on that NPC. The GM must then work to divert attention (which seldom works) or weave the oft ridiculous NPC into the narrative. I think this presents an excellent opportunity for storytelling and solidifying the player’s investment in the story. Still, without ad hoc solutions, an XP schema often lacks the ability to work in concert with the progression mechanic that drives real investment and play.

When brainstorming the progression mechanic for Delve RPG, I knew I would rely on story-based, often referred to as milestone, progression. Finishing quests, awards levels. How fast will the progression be? That depends on the type of game you’re running and the story you’re building.

Do you want a fast-paced, just-for-fun, or story-lite game, only a few sessions long? You can have the players ding after one completed quest. If you plan to run a longer, story-driven campaign, you can increase the number of quests to two, three, or even more before leveling up. Do you want to create a game where higher levels require more work? You can create a scheme where achieving the 2nd level only requires the completion of one quest, while reaching the third level requires two quests, and so on, replicating the narrative style created by early D&D and adopted by social network games and MMOs. For the players, this aligns with what their characters are trying to achieve through their progression, rather than metagaming a subsystem of points that could lead them on artificial or even nonsensical quests for achievement. While in our modern culture, mathiness often provides the illusion that something is more authentic or concrete, in this instance, XP distorts the map into the territory with its large numbers and semblance of rigor.

Once the quest system was in place, however, I realized that I wanted something more to augment it. Quests work well for driving characters or allowing characters to drive the story, but they are relatively big-ticket items. What they don’t do well, unless proliferated, is provide individual or micro areas of progress or throw out possible hooks.

Of course, the hard part is figuring out how to add such micro-quests into the progression scheme. Leveling in Delve RPG is straightforward. First, all six of your primary attributes increase by 1, causing a cascade of linked increases to defenses and secondary attributes. Second, you gain more Hits determined by your class. Lastly, you gain new talents based on the level you’ve achieved, but you always gain a class talent and a general talent.

Completing these micro-quests and achievements allows you to gain something from the next level early. You gain your choice of:

• Boosting a primary attribute by one. You can’t boost a primary attribute that you have already boosted this level. When you gain a level, you don’t increase primary attributes you have already boosted by way of last level’s achievements.

• Roll your Hits die at the table, so all players can see, and increase your Hits (both current and maximum) by the rolled amount. You can only do this once each level. When you gain a level, don’t increase your Hits by the normal amount; instead, increase it by the number of Hits you would normally gain minus this roll.

• Gain a class talent that you meet the requirements of. You must progress in that class next level. You may only gain a class talent via achievements once each level.

• Gain a general talent that you meet the requirements of. You may only gain a general talent via achievements once each level.

All in all, this gives you nine micro-rewards to distribute before leveling. It gives you fewer than that. You probably don’t want to give out more than five achievements per level to each character, so as not to devalue that progress.

So, what do these achievements look like? Well, anything you want. They work best when they talk directly to how the player wants to play their character or through emergent play. But at the same time, adventures can be seeded with all sorts of achievements. They can serve as hooks for possible side quests or to add complications or story conflict.

Shown is one of the four example achievements that can be picked up or accomplished within the town of Mohan in the adventure Goblins Stomp. This achievement can serve any underlying goal that you want. The area of Five Cairns is kept relatively undetailed in the source materials, except for the Mist Cairn, which is the subject of a mini-quest available to Delve RPG Patreon members when the adventure is released as part of the Delve RPG Fast-Play Rules. It serves as a perfect introduction to that Quest. It can serve as the introduction to the “supernatural aid” portion of a Hero’s Journey or help illuminate the world around the characters.

I like giving the participating players cards with basic information about the achievement. At the very least, it’s a friendly reminder between sessions to ward off the question, “What were we doing last time?” That’s met with mixed success. Players? Am I right?

However, a nimble and creative use of achievements is an excellent way to allow players to guide their own story and utilize those occasional distractions of player attention to earn their own rewards. This can even help to nudge the action back to either the main storyline or new storylines they are more focused on.

If you want to see more examples of achievements, you can find them on the Delve RPG Patreon for Delver level and higher.

Lastly, I’ll leave you with some wonderful and entertaining commentary on the shapes of stories. It’s good advice.