Experience as a meta currency

It’s been a while but im back working on Unbound (my icrpg hack) and instead of just giving players milestones etc, I want them to build it into their story. So I give to you the XP POOL

How it works is that during a session, players can earn XP by doing the following

  • rolling a natural 20
  • defeating a boss
  • defeating an encounter
  • gm fiat
  • session start

The spend xp during the session the following ways

  • re roll any dice
  • gain a bonus
  • find a useful mundane item
  • story beat

Each player contributes towards the pool and when they have a long rest or the session ends, the total in the pool is divided amongst the players which they use towards learning new things.

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Cool! Tell me more about how it is used to learn new stuff?

During town stays or in safe havens, instead of players getting milestones they hace to spend xp to learn them. Still working out whether the cost will be fixed or they roll effort to see how far they progress. I can see arguments for both methods

This is kinda similar to how XP works in Numenera and other Cypher games. You earn XP when the GM makes an “intrusion” (basically adding extra complications to the scene) or when you complete a mission. You can either spend XP in-game to reroll dice or gain other benefits, or spend it between adventures to level up. It’s a pretty cool system, and my group enjoys it. Sounds like adding it to ICRPG would be a lot of fun!

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