A New System for Handling Level-Ups

Emergent Experience is a setting agnostic XP leveling system designed to function as a replacement for most Tabletop RPGs handling of levels. It can be used freely as a house rule in your games, or implemented in any RPG you create that includes a level system!



The work is © Valory Fox 2019, released under the Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license, found here.

As used in OmniMyth!

The Problem with Levels

Where a level system exists, the thorny issue of how to award them will inevitably rears its head. Players are often left wondering when they’re going to get the chance to pick out and use their new features.

Maybe you've played in games with XP systems where any time not killing the “bad guys” feels like a waste. Or perhaps your GM just decides when you level, which even with the best GM in the world, can feel a little arbitrary, without a sense of tangible progression.

The idea of Experience Points holds potential for giving the players a clear sense of progression, all too often however, these systems quickly feel arbitrary.

Rewarding Directly

In many tabletop RPGs (and many video games!), the game rewards players with XP and levels directly for certain in-game actions. While this system maps to specific actions, they are often detached from things that actually enrich the game.

Emergent experience takes a simple approach, directly rewarding the storytelling factors that move the game forwards.