A question to the group, and I apologize if someone has asked this previously.
I am running a convention one-shot session. The adventure is written without time for the party to take a rest and level up. The adventure takes place in the course of a few hours.
Part of the consolation prize for rolling 6- is marking XP, and I love that. For this game though, it does not seem like there is a way for players to utilize their XP.
Has anyone done on-the-fly leveling of characters or any other use for accumulated XP during the course of the adventure?
What do you mean by “the adventure is written”?
This kind of thing just always rings a warning bell around here.
What exactly is your point about players having no time/chance to rest and level up? Isn’t “play to find out” kind of against that? I don’t think that taking away the XP will help in any way. Even if you don’t get to level up, the feeling of having had enough XP to level up and looking over the advanced moves for one to take is a lot of fun still. People could go “man, i just was 1 XP short of leveling up… I want to play to get this XP!”
This is a feeling you want.
A game should be over before the players want it to.
Not to give everything away for some of my players who like this forum..this adventure has a Doomsday clock which counts down during the course of the adventure (via a Hard move). This is a short one shot in a hostile location, that does not make an evenings rest possible. It would not be impossible to allow for a rest, but the location (a floating fortress) is not that big.
The adventure is quite open ended and the actions of the players have a direct outcome on the course of how the adventure unfolds, so it is very much play to find out.
What I would like to do, is to allow XP as a reward in play, for a group who is never going to play these characters again.
I played in a very Old School inspired DW game this past weekend at Gen Con. The game had a 4 hour slot and due to the circumstances of the adventure we never stopped to rest (we only had 4 hours real time before something apocalyptic happened =p )
We still marked XP for the failures but no one at the tabled missed “leveling.” Everyone knew it was a one shot and just rolled with it.
I do it all the time, particularly in a time constrained one-shot where even state tracking might be a problem. Tell them to level up at good break points, like hour one of a two hour demo.
With experienced players in these situations I’ll set the level bar at 5XP, full stop.
On-the-fly leveling is awesome, it works fine, it won’t break the game.
(I don’t think that constraining the timeline of an adventure is a big sin. In fact, I think that DW is actually awesome at time constraints — the DM need only be aggressive about ticking off Grim Portents to create urgency and tension. edit: and from your crosspost, it sounds like this is pretty much what you are doing)
When I run Slave Pit of Drahzu, I always give everyone 8 XP when they reach the statue outside the lich’s lair so they can level up. If (somehow) they can afford two levels, then they can buy them.
All the time. I tend to break con scenarios halfway to show off the End of Session move and then curtain rise on level 2 characters to continue.
I recently ran a One-shot at a mini Con and Also had a mid-game break in mind, with the idea of allowing people to Level up during the break. I awarded 2xp per Failed roll to give them an opportunity to reach the next level.
However the part one of my story took some unexpected turns, and I ran with the players ideas rather then trying to speed them along. So by the end of the session they had only finished part 1 and didn’t get to level. Didn’t matter we all had a BLAST.
Mostly I just wanted to show off how easy and fun Levelling was, but I think I still succeeded in introducing new players to the game.
I was with Guy Sodin at the con when we ran through the old skool adventure. There was time to rest and heal up, but not “make camp” and thus no leveling. We Definitely didn’t miss it, so i suggest running it, and if there is no time, oh well, there is Super!
We did start out at level 5 for the adventure. So Alternatively, Perhaps you can start them at level 2 or 3 so when they roll that 6-, you don’t feel bad doing the hard moves because they won’t get to level up, because you let them level up in advanced ;-p
How about; for each 6- result, take +1 forward. Although it may not be ideal for regular play, it may help with a one-shot where you don’t want to/don’t plan to level up.
The last one-shot I ran had one player who actually rolled a 6- on everything he tried. He had enough XP to level up at the end of the session, while the other 3 players had four or 5 XP. If I had thought of this during that game, that poor fella would have been assured of at least one partial success 🙂