Saturday, August 21, 2021

CONSTABLE CAMPAIGN XP IN WHOG

I am currently running a Wandering Heroes of Ogre Gate campaign, in the Lady 87 region of the setting, where the players are constables. Normally in my campaigns the players are either heroes or criminals, and the Lady 87 book assumes criminals as the default, so having the players take on the role of constables meant I had to rethink certain things, like how some of the encounter tables function for example. One area where it became clear a change was needed was XP. The XP system in Ogre Gate gives 1 XP for any of the following: 

  • Defeating a Powerful Foe
  • Growing Your reputation
  • Performing a great deed

These all function fine for constables. However, the bonus XP was not working as well. In Ogre Gate you can get bonus XP for: 

  • Performing an exceptional deed that saves the party (2 xp)
  • Finding a secret or forgotten manual through great effort (3 xp)
Technically you can get bonus XP for all kinds of things, those are just suggestions. But suggestions tend to matter in rule books and even I cleave to them a bit too tightly when running my own games. It became clear that constables, at least these constables, were not going to be spending much time, if any, seeking forgotten manuals. They have a job to do and the decision to go hunting this manual or that would interfere with it. 


This is very much playing out as them being officials going on patrols, being sent to deal with specific crimes or seeking out big cases to crack so they can gain prestige and rank. One of them has become the Assistant Sheriff of a district through these efforts. So I talked with the players to come up with an alternative to finding forgotten manuals for the 3 xp) and this is what we came up with: 
  • Capture or bring to justice anyone regarded as one of the top 10-20 most wanted (3 XP)
We will see how this plays out over the campaign. I am thinking of changing it to: 

  • Capture or bring to justice anyone regarded as one of the top 10-20 most wanted OR solve a particularly significant case (3 XP)
Presently they are investigating a major celestial plume network operating over three districts and I think if they got to the bottom of it, found the leaders, even though those leaders are too skillful and secretive to be on a top 20 list, it should still be worth 3 XP. 

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