Frontloaded Experiences
Usually experience is gained at the end of an activity, but it doesn’t have to be. Take the following experience triggers:
- Entered a new dungeon, level, region or adventure site.
- Agreed to a quest or contract.
- Faced a terrible foe.
Compared to:
- Cleared a dungeon level.
- Completed a quest.
- Vanquished a terrible foe.
XP for entering the dungeon could be abused in theory – you could just stick your head inside and then go home, but I’ve never seen a player try that, and if they did you could just specify with intent to explore. It looks better in the campaign record, too – Entered the Mines of Moria is more of a milestone than Finally Killed the Last Seven Goblins in the Mines of Moria.
The quest one is fun, because it is definitely abusable, but abusing it has consequences. If the PCs want to go around taking on quests for every king, wizard, crime boss, dragon, count and merchant in the land with no intention of completing any of them, things are going to get interesting for them. It’s a little less satisfying on the campaign record – you want to know when you Rescued the Princess, not when said yeah sure we’ll pick up the princess if we have time I guess.
Similarly, slaying a dragon and surviving a dragon both feel similarly dramatic. If the foe is important and powerful enough, and the encounters are far enough apart in time, it seems fine to double-dip here – having to flee from the big bad and fight another day, and then finally bringing him down, both feel like significant experiences.