One of my players thinks he roleplays, I don't

I award xp for roleplay based off the system used I think by Matt Mercer (each time a player roleplays, I make a checkmark; at the end I award that multiplied by character level multiplied by 25). This player consistently has the lowest amount of checkmarks. The other players have started talking in character and taking actions based on what their character would do. This player makes out of character jokes a lot, rarely speaks in character, and doesn't really do many in-character actions.

Yesterday after I tallied up the xp he asked what I meant by roleplay so I defined it as above. He now seems annoyed that I don't think he roleplays.

I mean, if his character was a jokey sarcastic character and it was all in-character jokes, fair enough. But he's not. He now thinks I'm biased against him. It didn't help that he nearly died to a swarm of crocodiles and giant frogs yesterday.

How would you explain the difference between in-character roleplay and out-of-character joking?

>exp for roleplay
>matt mercer
uggh

>taking the piece of sharp metal out of OP's hand and putting it in your mouth
Ugh.

KYS

>giving exp for roleplaying in a roleplaying game is bad

>How would you explain the difference between in-character roleplay and out-of-character joking?
Tell him to role-play like you want or you'll put his family in a labour camp.

>I award xp for roleplay
Proud Stalin.

This seems like a terrible system that incentivises playing loudmouths and cutting in when others speak.

Being a twat isn't roleplaying, user.

Roleplay exp always causes that sort of conflict. It's better to just give it out when someone does something really impressive that nobody will really question rather than create some sort of system for it

Sure, so they'll just be a twat IC

You realize the group doesn't have to play with you right?

And why would the party keep them around if they are an abrasive asshole?
Why wouldn't the GM pull the player aside and tell them to stop the bullshit.
Again, being a twat isn't roleplaying.

>Ugh
taking the piece of sharp metal out of OP's hand and putting it in your mouth

You are inherently biased, as you are a human being. Don't fucking base something as important to a player's sense of contribution as XP on whether or not you like how they have fun. If you have a problem with his behavior, deal with it out of game, not in game.
Also fuck you for giving out uneven XP, regardless of how you do it.

How is giving out uneven XP bad?

I would do it like this:

Tell him that when people play online, they usually keep 2 channels in chat, one for OOC chat and jokes and table talk, and one for in-character actions and jokes and mechanical stuff. Tell him you would only get points for what is done in the latter room. In real life you just have to draw a distinction somehow- using a character voice or saying "my character says" are good ways to draw that distinction.

Help him work his jokes into his character. I empathize because I used to do stuff like that and what helps players like this go from joking pariah who has a chip on their shoulder to good player is a bridge of some kind. You can use the things he already does well to help him.

Anyone who says running a game isn't part therapy is fucking wrong.

>all these triggered "roleplayers" desperately running damage control so they done miss out on precious EXP
thanks for the idea op, if my players react like these animals i should finally be able to get a real group going!

>I'm going to be a shit GM to make Veeky Forums mad!
Congratulations?

>shit gm meme
Explain this. It's like , screaming about "bias" when roleplay is a fairly neutral term.
Player says the characters attributes and personality motes are ABC, I expect ABC, not ADE. Now I also expect for them to change, perhaps radically , over the course of the game, but I should be able to see the change as it happens organically.
If there is a whiplash, or a radical departure from the established character as presented to me when I greenlit the pc, then I will pull the player aside and ask what is going on. Sometimes a player just isn't feeling it, or realizes their character idea isn't gonna work, and that is alright, too.

you know how 'no prep survives first contact with the party', I find the same goes for PCs, sometimes you find that when played off the other party members your character winds up playing a different role than you expected

>And why would the party keep them around if they are an abrasive asshole?
>Why wouldn't the GM pull the player aside and tell them to stop the bullshit.
Your mistake was assuming that you were replying to someone who's actually played an RPG.

And it isn't that hard to see that.
What I'm talking about is radical departures from what a player said they were bringing to the table that make little sense IC. At that point, I'll approach the player so everyone is on the same page.
The gm and the player not being level with each other is the basis of most game problems.

Everyone is, presumably, working together to have a good time and putting their best effort into it.

So if someone gets more of a reward for it than they did, all sorts of negative feelings can arise.

They could become agitated at the player getting more XP like kids in school get agitated at the kid with the better grade and call them "DM's pet" or "asskisser".

They could think the DM is playing favorites.

They could even think "Maybe I'll just fucking stop trying since I'm not going to get anything for it anyways" and be a shittier player - right up until the other possibility that they just say "fuck this" and find a different DM to play with kicks in.

And last, but not least, among the negative effects I feel are worth mentioning: If you give out varying amounts of XP, some players will start gaming whatever XP system you've set out, trying to maximize the XP rewards they get even at the cost of becoming a spotlight hog or neglecting the actual story and fun portions of the experience.

All of what you are saying is predicated on mistrust and lack of communication.
If you assume all gms and players are shit, then yeah, you have a point.
I've done xp based on player actions, and so long as you are transparent and shut down foolishness, it's not an issue. You talk to your players, tell them exactly what the situation is, and I personally put a cap on how much xp you can get per session on it anyway to prevent disparity.

>roleplay is a fairly neutral term.

Dogg homeboy explained how it was not and you're just going "Nuh-uh!" like a child.

But, y'know, that's cool-- I ain't in your shitty ass game, so I don't really have a problem with it. Just find it funny to point out.

Uneven XP is universally terrible and should die out as a concept.

The thing he didn't touch on is mechanical imbalance. Even in a balanced system, uneven XP can end up with a party of wildly different levels of capability, which is a headache for a GM to deal with. You can kind of compensate for it if you keep the range of XP within the group relatively small, but at that point why bother with individual XP? Temporary rewards like metacurrencies or rerolls are a lot more effective if you want to acknowledge cool player actions without risking the long term integrity of the game.

>I am going to say my opinion and ignore the definition of something as it applies to the situation because it lets me troll!

Depends on the system.
Take WoD, which has an award for driving or opening plot arcs, offered for 1-3 players.
It's 1 XP, and you generally get 4-10 XP a game. It may be an issue after 20 sessions with the same one or two people always getting it, but realistically, that won't happen, unless the GM is stupid and weighting things artificially, and the GM should be called on it.
Like I said, though, I don't assume incompetence the way Veeky Forums does when someone wants to argue.

I think you screwed up that quote mang.

It's not about incompetence. It's about bias and the tendency for exploitation.

If you give out XP for things you think are cool, and one players idea of 'cool' more closely aligns with yours than the other players, you'll end up rewarding them more, and it's very easy to miss it, especially if it's just 1 XP here, 1 XP there.

As I said, sure, you can monitor it and try to keep the gulf narrow... But if you're doing that, why bother with uneven XP? It's just extra work for no real benefit.

>If you give out XP for things you think are cool
That isn't what is being discussed, however, it's XP for roleplay, which can be objectively defined with all parties involved and be informed to.
For "cool" things, Scion, for example, offers extra dice to your pool, not XP.
>It's just extra work for no real benefit
It's a psychological carrot, no more or less.
I have seen it abused, and I've seen it work as intended. It is a tool, and I don't really know why people get so bootyblasted about it.

>I have seen it abused, and I've seen it work as intended.

...

>I don't really know why people get so bootyblasted about it.

Dawg it's literally the first half of the first sentence quoted. They haven't ever encountered it used well, and HAVE encountered it used terribly.

Roleplay is in no way objective. No matter how hard you try, it will be informed by the GM's preferences, and they'll tend to reward the kind of thing they enjoy.

And, as I said above, why not use temporary resources instead? Willpower in WoD, some sort of combat resource, metacurrency or reroll token. It achieves the exact same thing with significantly less potential strain on the GM and less consequences if and when inherent bias does play a factor.

>That isn't what is being discussed, however, it's XP for roleplay, which can be objectively defined with all parties involved and be informed to.
Roleplay is not objectively defined in this situation at all. If a player makes a quiet character that likes to stick to the background unless they're only with their friends, is it roleplaying for them to completely sit out of a social encounter, or is it roleplaying for them to speak up? Both are valid options. Literally anything you do in-character, even inaction, is roleplay. But OP is using XP as a means to reward things HE sees as roleplay, not necessarily what the player sees as roleplay. Using imbalanced XP based on your personal definition of how "roleplay" should be defined is just punishing badwrongfun and rewarding players who make character concepts that with high participation in whatever events the GM decides to include.

>They haven't ever encountered it used well, and HAVE encountered it used terribly.
Everything related to pnp rpgs can be done poorly, it doesn't make the concept invalid.
>Roleplay is in no way objective
see
I argue it is objective because a player is obligated to inform the GM what kind of pc they are bringing to the party. If a player says their pc is a courageous barbarian from the west and repeatedly acts craven, that isn't "good" roleplay as it is counter to the concept they presented to the GM. Like I said, at that point, I'll pull the player aside and ask them what's up.
You are relying on a one note character that wouldn't exist in an actual game to make a point, user.
For your example, I'd expect the player to interact with the party, and look at their other presented character ideals. I don't expect every pc to be jumping into every social situation, that's silly. But if the sole thing about the character is that they are quiet, I'd tell the player they need to figure out more to the character before I greenlit it.
Example: In my current game, I have a pc who does poorly with social situations involving authorities and strangers. They are, however, devout in their faith, interested in magic, and bonds easily enough to companions to consider them something near to family. So rather than judge them based on a singular circumstance (social situations with npcs), I judge them based on all the things the player said the pc was about. For this player, they roleplay very well within the party, haltingly with npcs, albeit not refusing when the spotlight is on them, and often invokes their other traits.

So you're just going to ignore the point about temporary resources fulfilling the same role with far less potential problems?

>I argue it is objective because a player is obligated to inform the GM what kind of pc they are bringing to the party.

...And this is irrelevant? No description will every completely capture the nature of a PC, because a huge part of who a PC is emerges in play. Any concept, no matter how much detail you describe it with, can be roleplayed in a number of different ways.

And some GM's will prefer some of these ways over others, purely because it appeals to their personal preferences, rather than because any particular interpretation of the character is more or less valid than the other alternatives.

>I award xp for roleplay
>based off the system used I think by Matt Mercer
Kill yourself

>But he's not. He now thinks I'm biased against him.
Because you probably are.
This is why D&D is so popular and why it has rules for everything.
Just because shitty DM like you might be who think they aren't biased fucking over players with their judgement.

A good sign that someone is strongly affected by their bias is them being very certain that they aren't. All human beings are biased, and being self aware and acknowledging that is the only way to actually work to correct it.

This post helped me remember the phrase that's been on the tip of my tongue this whole thread. Uneven XP is essentially mechanically reinforced "Mother-may-I" GMing.

>Matt Mercer
>XP for "roleplaying"
Probably That DM who doesn't actually care about roleplaying and only notices EPIC XD bullshit.
The player is probably not a spotlight hog and just does subtle shit you are ignoring in favor of I'LL BEAR HUG THE VAMPIRE AND WRESTLE HIM OUT THE WINDOW horseshit.

No, because some games do expressly that.
You are comparing different wrenches and declaring one superior.
>...And this is irrelevant?
You are saying that honest communication between player and GM is irrelevant, user. It makes sense that your next lines are
>some GM's will prefer some of these ways over others
which is problem that comes up because the GM isn't communicating expectations to the players. Why isn't the GM telling the players plainly what they are looking for in their game, what they expect the players to bring to the table?
Overarching descriptors like brave/cowardly, polite/crass, subtle/blunt are all easy to convey and pick up on, and if the player describes themselves as such, then the GM has every right to expect those concepts to come up in play. If they do not, then why were they stated?

One wrench works fine, one wrench has a chance of screwing things up horribly. Yes, I think it's fair to call the one without associated risks inherently superior.

>XP
Not even once. Milestones are the only system that work.

>I need rules to protect me from the GM
This is Veeky Forums's problem.
It has the same risks, just in a different fashion.
Giving a player an overbearing bonus to their rolls is just as bad in the long run as giving them overbearing xp bonuses.

It's not about honest communication. I am a huge advocate for open communication between players and GM's. But communication is not the same as telepathy. It's perfectly possible for a player to describe their concept to a GM, and for the GM's mental image and expectations of the character to be different to the players intentions. As a GM, you shouldn't build up your own expectations, and instead work with what the player gives you. Punishing them for not living up to your expectations by giving them less XP is just being awful.

Again, you're ignoring the core point. All those descriptors give a general direction, but they can all mean many different things that only really become fully defined in play. Communication is not the problem here, setting up unfounded expectations and potentially creating problems for no actual gain is.

That is incredibly subjective and almost always false.

Fuck off.

They're completely different.

A guy with an extra reroll a session has an extra reroll a session. Sure, if you realise it's happening you should try to balance it out for other people, but every session is isolated. There are no long term effects after that resource is spent, and it's quite easy to correct.

An XP advantage, on the other hand, is much more subtle and insidious, the potential problems slowly growing over the time, and there are far fewer good solutions. Either you rush all the other players back to the same level, making your entire attempt at uneven XP pointless, or you try to catch them up slowly over time, meaning more time spent feeling shitty and underpowered compared to the guy whose roleplaying style you prefer.

>the GM's mental image and expectations of the character to be different to the players intentions
Why is that the case then? That is an example of miscommunication writ large, and I had already said that the player and the GM not being on the same page is the root of nearly all problems.
>every session is isolated
Not so. You are saying that player actions and successes have no long term impact on the game, and further assuming that there will be an XP divide so vast and insurmountable as to destabilize the game, when the above example of WoD is proof that is not the case unless the GM is actively pushing it to be so over the life of the game.

But the player and the GM cannot get on the same page just through description and discussion. No amount of communication will convey who a character is, because it has to emerge through play to be fully understood. The GM setting up extensive expectations before that is pointless and actively harmful since it creates a feeling that a player, through no fault of their own, is playing their character wrong.

>player actions and successes have no long term impact on the game
Going further on this, the FFG 40k games are full of experiences where a reroll can, and does, dramatically change the game, and I've experienced them as both GM and player.
And now I bow out, time to go to work.
It was fun, y'all.

>I award xp for roleplay
shit tier DM confirmed

You're missing the point.

Someone getting extra rerolls is isolated. Things don't get worse the longer they've been getting the occasional extra reroll.

Someone getting XP is an ongoing issue, as the longer it happens, the worse it will get, and the harder it is to fix.

Can you actually acknowledge my point about fixing the situation if uneven XP does create a problem?

And can you actually articulate any advantage uneven XP has over the alternative of temporary bonuses or simply nothing of the sort? Because I honestly don't believe one exists. It's a harmful, pointless concept that should have died a long time ago.

Y'know, I'm suddenly curious if the time I gave a couple of karma in SR to my entire group for making me laugh my ass off continuously for most of a session pisses off Veeky Forums.

Like, if it's evenly distributed, and doesn't hinge on any one player's actions but rather the group playing off of each other, is *that* an acceptable usage of "XP for roleplaying" according to y'all? I mean, y'all probably won't change my habits, but that's mostly because I've played with this one group for years now and know what works specifically for them.

Entirely okay by me. My big bugbear is uneven XP. Handing it out to the whole group for doing something awesome seems perfectly fine, I can't see any potential negatives there.

I agree. Especially in d&d, your in a team game. Your are meant to defeat enemies together, and reap the rewards together.

What if you gave experience for dealing damage ibdividually. Support characters like bards would get next to nothing, though they may have been quite imoortant to the victory.

I actually do award experience for good roleplay, but as a group award. Some players are awkward and not great orators, or their characters dont work well for heaps of roleplay opportunities.

If nothing else, individulal experience for roleplay punishes characters that are quiet and reserved. What if someone is roleplaying a mute?

Being fair, roleplaying a mute, in a lot of cases, is a pretty dumb idea. It's an interesting thought experiment, but unless you have some way around it it severely restricts your ability to interact with the game.

When it comes to awards, I often also consider the ability of a particular player. If someone is an experienced, competent roleplayer, it'll take something really special to earn that recognition and acknowledgement. But if someone who is newer, less confident or socially anxious actually sticks their neck out and tries something, even if it isn't the best RP in the world, I'm likely to reward them for it. Positive reinforcement, and an acknowledgement of them trying to step outside their comfort zone. I've found it to be very effective in helping less able players slowly build up their skills, competence and level of comfort with RPing.

>I'm suddenly curious if the time I gave a couple of karma in SR to my entire group for making me laugh my ass off continuously for most of a session pisses off Veeky Forums.
It pisses me off if you're giving it to individual players on this basis.
Basically every time I've seen someone has been rewarded for "role playing" it's been because they made the DM laugh. Never seen reward for anything other than "humor"

>having rewards for engaging in every part of the game is shit GMing
Play more types of games with more types of players and GMs.

If you ask me I say you should reward Inspiration more often than giving differential XP values. And because you can also spend Inspiration to help out teammates' rolls that'd probably mean he'd be a bit less at risk for getting death rolled by crocs.

If you're rewarding the XP unevenly then yes, it's shit GMing.

>to my entire group

So... does it still piss you off? Genuine curiosity, here, if it's the uneven treatment or the awarding of XP in the first place that annoys people.

It's fine if it's the entire group but it would still bother me even then because you're effectively punishing the other players for being serious or having a different sense of humor.

Giving xp is dumb. The only thing you should get is inspiration. That's the entire reason for it.

The only reason to have uneven xp is if somebody misses a session.

...How would I be punishing the other players if I awarded XP to the entire group? I'm not arguing that I'm not, I'm just unable to follow the reasoning here.

Moreover, would the fact that that's far from the only thing I award XP for make up for the focus on my brand of humor-- which I'll fully admit ain't everyone's, sure, even if it does work with every member of my current group-- or would it compound it in your eyes? I mean, I have my own aesthetic tastes and opinions about what's "cool", too, so I could see that swinging either way.

I don't think it's justified, even then. You're effectively levelling an IC punishment for an OOC problem, which is both weird and kinda pointless. If someone misses one session for a valid reason, they don't deserve to be punished for it. If someone is regularly not turning up to sessions, that's not a problem that docking their XP will fix.

>IC punishment for an OOC problem

This is one of the more compelling pieces of logic in the rather civil argument being put down here.

Not OP but I get my players to vote on the player they think deserves a small benefit for the most entertaining of the night. They're engaged enough to appreciate the quiet chars who nevertheless drove the story or were dramatic in their own way, but sometimes it's as simple as the one guy who scored a bullshit crit and saved the whole day like that. As DM I don't vote bc it's about the players doing cool shit with/for each other.

In systems that expect uneven xp (WoD, DH, MnM etc) it's enough to maybe bump a skill up or grab something cute; in dnd theres more of an expectation of group equality regarding levels so it tends to get them short boons or preferential minor magic items.

Now that I'm back in dnd I've been boring down the sorta stuff I'd give extra xp for, and putting it with the group xp at the end. It contributed to everyone's enjoyment soooo...

Well gee, it's like we struck upon something interesting to argue about instead of boring ass politics.

But ass politics are great! They're even better than boob politics! Although there's always that fringe that wants to bring foot politics into it.

>ass politics better than boob politics

Pleb.

>I award xp for roleplay based off the system used I think by Matt Mercer (each time a player roleplays, I make a checkmark; at the end I award that multiplied by character level multiplied by 25).

If you're going to do something like this you should democratize it. Like, at the end of the session ask the players to rate each other's roleplaying on a scale of 1-5 and take the average of all the votes to determine your checkmarks for their characters.

Basing it on your opinion alone is kind of asking for that kind of situation.

Alternatively: Don't do it.

You can't explain it to him, people who get upset over roleplay XP are autists and do not understand human social interaction.

This tbqhwy famalam

BB player here.
Giving someone an extra die roll will 100% snowball into massive xp and gold advantages for said player.
Especially if they aren't sharing.

There is nothing wrong with an "unbalanced" party.

There is nothing wrong with new characters joining at a lower level, either.

well, other than causing such a sheer level of vitriol among players that such systems are famous for massive infighting about said issues.

Yea I run it so that if you miss a session you still get the full XP from the previous session. However players who do turn up get bonus XP equal to 1 medium encounter of whoever the highest level player is.

This provides an incentive to players who turn up but doesn't harshly punish those who don't for whatever reason for the odd session. Likewise if they consistently don't turn up it does become that bit more detrimental.

>Your are meant to defeat enemies together, and reap the rewards together.
Which is why if a player doesn't contribute they don't deserve the reward

>You're effectively levelling an IC punishment for an OOC problem, which is both weird and kinda pointless. If someone misses one session for a valid reason, they don't deserve to be punished for it.

Why not? Their character did not overcome the challenge, which is the criteria for awarding XP

How?

There is everything wrong with an unbalanced party. In a cooperative game, people should be roughly equally able to contribute to ongoing events, and an XP disparity fundamentally undermines that.

There is no point to uneven XP or to making new players join at a lower level. It's entirely arbitrary and only serves to make the experience less interesting for one or more people.

But why? Why offer an IC punishment for an OOC problem? How does that make any sense?

Because that's entirely irrelevant? You're taking the OOC situation, that their player missed the session, and creating an IC consequence based on it. Do absent players just fall unconscious or vanish into mist in your games?

Sometimes you can't run with a full group, but there are ways to write around it, and none of them necessitate weird bullshit meta-punishments.

Why the fuck you award EXP in such retarded way?
Plan scenario. Account all the important bits in it. For each biggy provide 5n EXP, for each important 2n, for each random situation when player(s) shine just n. This way the entire party goes through the scenario with evenly spread experience, but you still can award additional points to people that do give a fuck.

Giving people points the way you described would mean everyone in my party would have max exp every single fucking game, because they roleplay all the time.

Please, this is just a copy paste from reddit. It's bait. Even the picture is bait. Sage and move on.

Kinda curious. Was the original OP called a moron too?

Yup, at least as much as reddit rules allow for that

>There is everything wrong with an unbalanced party. In a cooperative game, people should be roughly equally able to contribute to ongoing events, and an XP disparity fundamentally undermines that.
>This false assumption again

>now thinks I'm biased against him
Welcome to the unavoidable outcome of every game you will ever run where you reward experience to players based on their performance, by any metric, rather than just handing it out in equal chunks. There is nothing you can do to avoid this. It will always happen no matter how you explain it or how you do it. Literally, I have seen people who will pout if you dock them 1xp as a joke.

So the solution is either to stop doing it, or stop caring if someone feels discriminated against.

>There is nothing wrong with an "unbalanced" party.
That is entirely dependent on the system.

>So the solution is either to stop doing it, or stop caring if someone feels discriminated against.
This.
I was kind of suprised when I told my players about this sort of mechanic, where I reward both completing group goals as well as individual roleplaying. They completely snubbed the idea, and though they were OK with goals achieved dictating rewards, they wanted everyone to have the same reward regardless of performance.

I was a bit surprised, but if there's one thing that I have learned while playing tabletop anything, it's that the people I play with often dislike what I think what would be a good idea, whether that's random assignment tables in wargame campaigns, or making your own characters before session 1 in RPGs.

>Leading to situation when half of the party stays behind is good
>Not making sure all players have enough time to participate in the game is bad
>This stupid shit again

There is also something similar to what this user suggested. You award exp in more or less equal share, but leave tiny part of it depending on performance. So you still give enough initiative for people to give a fuck, but in the end it will take a really long time for anyone to be ahead of rest of the people. Especially if you organise the scenarios and campaigns in a way that would simply keep things in check, keeping different people interested in different bits of it.
Sort of pic related, really

Great argument dipshit

You can have both, you know.

>I was a bit surprised, but if there's one thing that I have learned while playing tabletop anything, it's that the people I play with often dislike what I think what would be a good idea
Well user, welcome to adulthood. And I mean it sincerely. The best thing improving games is the fact all people present act like grown ups and discuss things togeter, even before they start running the game at all and then keep up communication, rather than being passive-aggressive or only speak up once things are FUBAR already.

>It will always happen no matter how you explain it or how you do it.

Because you will always be biased as you are not a fucking machine, mate. It's not that hard of a concept to grasp.

...