I’m GMing Bluecoats: The Ghoul Case with Lauren and Stras. I have a feeling this game is going to inspire a bunch of threads, podcast episodes and blog posts for me (the prep that goes into an investigative game rather than a scoundrel’s game, having a rules wing-man and the GM+2 player dynamic) but for now, this is what is up.
Last night we played for four hours or so. With a GM and 2 players, we cover a ton of ground. We move quickly and often get done 2 jobs (investigations in this case but you get my drift) per session. The problem is that they get XP at the end of the session, not after each investigation.
They are very often getting 2xp in almost every category.
Are my players being cheated out of sweet, sweet XP because we move quickly and efficiently?
Should we figure out a different way to measure our sessions?
Should someone note XP gains on a side sheet and when we are mostly full up jump into XP awards at the next good opportunity?
first of all I love the premise of Bluecoats Ghoul Case and am looking to forward to watching more of it.
Now the obvious advice: ask your players how they feel. I suppose getting to say yes to all those questions each session and earning all the XP must feel pretty nice already. Do you think they feel cheated because they don’t take even more XP?
Next I think it’s a matter of what kind of pace you want for the campaign. Earning XP means crew and individual characters get more powerful and may take on tougher challenges. Taking maximum possible XP each session already sounds like fast progress there. Do you think it could ultimately hurt the game a little to progress even faster?
Nah, don’t worry about it. What they miss out in XP (and they probably make up some of the loss with double points in everything) they gain in coin and rep, or whatever Bluecoats get.
My experience so far is that XP comes faster than coin anyway, and the characters eventually feel overpowered for a tiny T2 gang
