What system of leveling/progression do you enjoy the most and which do you hate?

That applies to any game, user. Miss a session miss some xp.

I hate progressions when you have to spend extra time in order to spend xp, get levels.

I'm willing to wait till we are back in town to let the DM plan around my new abilities, but anything more spoils the entire point of experience as representing sudden insights.

> spoils the entire point of experience as representing sudden insights.
>opinions

Oh, if the DM wants to time skip, I'm fine with the training my character does in the meantime explaining the exp gain and spend.

I just get extremely disinterested when character levels get treated like RTS unit purchases and upgrades... But even slower.

Depends on what you are going for.

I have always been interested in the idea of the players in-game looking for people or even things to teach them what they learn from a level up.

I prefer systems based on equipment and acquired traits rather then flat point buy systems myself.

It makes things much easier for newcomers to slot into and also keeps metagaming to a minimum if everyone at their core is just a human, or whatever race, and their abilities come from the equipment they have and the knowledge they've learned, with at most a basic list of base abilities and traits that form a class as a template to build from.

I have grown tired of all sorts of progression systems. Whenever there is a straight upgrade path to clearly better options, those options are not options and all prior options cease to be options also. Progression reduces choice and trivializes objects in the game world.

"It's ok, I have enough HP!"

This becoming almost-physically larger-than-life makes for dull storytelling and flattened gaming.

I have a weird weak spot forgot Call of Cthulhu does it:
When you succeed on a skill roll (by rolling under your skill with d100), you check a box next to that skill. If you survive the scenario, you then roll for every skill with a box. If you roll over the skill value, you get to add some points to it. So it's harder to improve skills you're great at.

I'm not saying it's the best way, but it's simple and clever and I kinda wonder why I haven't seen something similar in any other system, including those that borrow heavily from CoC.

Speaking of games that rip off CoC, the worst progression mechanic I've seen was in the Swedish RPG Western. Mainly because you not had to pay experience points to improve skills, but also pay an upkeep for skills you already had to keep them from deteriorating. I get what they were going for, but it was still terrible.

Everybody jumps a level ever X sessions, where X is the current tier of play (so low levels: every 1 session, mid levels every 2 session, etc.)

I hate tracking XP.

Except for point-buy systems, then it's fair cause you are spending it anyway.

I like the 40k RP MMO style combination of point buy and class levelling. You get a fair degree of customisation well gating off broken and inviable builds.

Better angels has the strangest XP system ever. After ever session and seen the players call each other out on their actions and give sins points

After which the player can argue how they repented and turn the sin points into virtue points.

It's intentionally mechanically beneficial for the player to sin as much as possible then earnestly repentance.

I like the way Rune Quest does it;

Skill improvement rolls at the end of each session targetting the skills you've made use of in said session.

No discrete character levels; can sacrifice a couple skill improvement rolls for a stat improvement roll.

1d4 for skills, which are percentile out of or above a hundred, 1d3 for stats

Basically, not awarding xp on a kill by kill basis discourages murderhoboing and actually makes players more likely to eye up engagements sensibly.

My players know not every challenge can be solved by a straight up fight, and the lack of an xp for kills system means they tend to avoid protracted fruitless battle; encouraging them to use tricks and skills to bypass fights.

Milestone XP, where players get some XP at the end of session or when they achieve a major goal of the party. The amount gained depends on how gritty or over the top the game is.

Hate XP gained from combat. That just encourages players to fight everything rather than think of other solutions, which in turn discourages the GM from strong encounters which the players are supposed to bypass or win through trickery, since the players will fight everything.

So, no character advancement, players get what they start with and nothing more?

It could work. Somehow.

My favorite is how Dogs in the Vineyard does it, but it doesn't really work in other systems. There's a lot of ways dice can change in ways that make it more likely you'll get your way without complications and ways that will lead to complications in the future, so getting badly hurt gets you stuff off the complicating list and letting other people win on scenes and completing chapters gets you stuff off the good list.

So you're constantly fine-tuning what your character wants to be involved in and when you want more "votes" on how the story goes. Which inside the DitV system is excellent.

But none of that generalizes. When it comes to things more D&D-esque I prefer either straight XP on an open table or milestones for a group play-through. In the past I played with "the table plays at level X for X sessions and then moves up to X+1 for X+1 sessions, new characters rolled at the current level, but it wasn't as engaging."

My next project I'm trying is letting the players decide themselves how to divvy up the XP rewards, too. Allowing them to catch people up faster or push key players into new levels more quickly. Should be an interesting experiment, regardless.