Path Least Traveled - Exp Marking?

[The Speaker in Dreams]

Ok, people in the Path Least Traveled game, here's the poll for markers and the amount of markers (or not).

Cast your votes and I'll keep the results for moving forward (I'll try and go with the majority rule here - or find a middle-ground somewhere).

[Evil66Drizzt]

I put six points, thinking about the suggestion I put up with regarding how to score marks. Six would be more difficult than five, but we are more advanced players, so it should just be an increase in difficulty and make it more enjoyable. We'll have to fight the harder encounters to get the 3 marks for the primary fight, 1 mark for an extra encounter on the way, and roleplay well (1 point for just rping through the adventure, another for rping to really move the game forward, and instead of the extra encounter, 1 rp for doing something major in an rp way.) Whole point is, we have to really earn our levels.

[The Speaker in Dreams]

I'd just like to make the distinction between "rp awards" and "challenge awards" (what I'll simply refer to all other exp awards). The "rp awards" will be things that a purely role-playing and/or character based and need not have any relation to the story/plot at all. It's purely character-development types of things - follow?

"Challenge Awards" by contrast are things that are 100% story-driven or plot-related in nature - combat or otherwise, these will make up the majority of awards.

The increasing "rp awards" # is meant to be an opportunity to reward anyone that's really taking their character and just role-playing the hell out of a situation with him/her given various situations. The story-driven stuff is based around moving plots forward it's not like finding a non-violent solution to something will mean you only get "rp awards" or something like that - if it's story-based, you've managed to push past the challenge and will be rewarded for doing so.

Make sense?

[Evil66Drizzt]

That makes sense. So, let's say we did either 5 or 6 marks, whichever is chosen. I'm fine with either depending on the group and the difficulty (leaning to more story driven (5) or balanced between story driven and rping (6)). If someone only received 4 marks while others got the 5 or 6 and the current objective is over, then the player could always roleplay afterwards to get that last point. For example, Max could go to the tavern and sing about the triumphs. He'd receive 1 point for RPing (I plan on doing this a lot as the bard.) The wizard would go do something wizardly afterwards. In effect, you just didn't go to sleep or go drink and waited for the group the next day. Or let's say we did six points, you have four, you do this to gain one more point and you need one more to level with everyone else before going to the next adventure, you choose to go volunteer around town to help out a neighbor with the lawn or if we have a small library, help the librarian put books away. This volunteer point/rp point improves your character's character (rounding out your character) and one would not get more than 1 of these points per level, and should only be used if they just need that last point to level, but it's not truly a freebie point, because you are developing your character. Remember, we could have gained a point from a side encounter one night while camping and we got attacked by a small band of goblins that was not a part of a boss and his minions.

[Evil66Drizzt]

I did put 6 marks. But at this point, I feel 5 marks might be better for our game. So change my vote for 5.