The moment we realized that the XP for GP system was thrown out for AD&D 2nd Edition, it changed the entire game for us. We became fans again. The "natural assumption" that experience means reward and story progression, rather than "cheating by finding a 50,000gp emerald" and rocketing up the level chart, made us reevaluate the game's core assumptions, and the system became fun again for us. Here is an example of why.
Let's use Old School Essentials Classic Fantasy for this one, and assume we are the referee laying out a sandbox world. Now, this is how I would never lay out a sandbox world, so this is just for our example. Let's say our party consisted of your typical fighter, mage, thief, and cleric foursome. We decide what the maximum level of the players will be in this sandbox, say, level seven, and then go to the XP charts.
We see that 80,000 gold pieces per character are needed to get everyone to level 7, which is level 8 for the thief, but it is close enough. Multiply that by four, and then we have 320,000 gold pieces of loot we need to spread through the world to get them there, and we can assume they will miss a lot of loot so we can be a little on the generous side, or "place unfound loot" in their path if they miss out on the 10,000 gp they walked by in the last dungeon.
We get minimal XP for monsters, so it is better to steal the loot rather than kick down the door and fight. This encourages creative thinking, which is a benefit. Wandering monsters give us minimal XP, too, so the fewer we meet, the better off we are. Wilderness encounters are the same, just a waste of time.
We are living in a BX, BECMI, 0E, and 1E world here. Gold and loot are experience. Rob, cheat, lie, and steal your way to fame and glory. Avoid fights. If it isn't bolted down, take it and sell it; every gold piece helps. Rusty weapons? Take those too, if we have the weight allowance. Also, for the most part, ACKS follows this model too, though it has the advantage of needing all that money in the domain game.
And, as a referee, I would stop handing out treasure; progression would all but stop. I can stop a campaign's progression dead in its tracks with a GP equals XP game. I just get stingy with the loot.
The key takeaways here are that the referee has strict control over progression through loot distribution and that fights are best avoided. Wandering monsters and random encounters are terrible things.
Back to the Second Edition, and I refuse to play the POD reprints as I fully support the community games. I recently watched a YouTube video by a noted OSR creator who said there is "no need" for retro-clones these days, now that you can buy the originals from Wizards. He is 100% and utterly wrong for saying that, as retro-clones are needed to protect against "future shenanigans" by Wizards, and also, there is NO WAY you can legally publish an adventure and say "this is for AD&D" or anything other than the current, supported version of 5E these days.
The community relies on retro-clones to publish new material for these rule systems. Do I want to publish and sell an AD&D 1E adventure? Use OSRIC. BX? Use OSE. Second Edition? Use FG&G.
You can't go on the Dungeon Master's Guild and write AD&D and BX adventures. They must be for 5E only. Until Wizards releases the previous editions of the rules to Creative Commons, supporting retro-clones and holding them up as "the definitive edition we should be playing" is the best way to go. Also, the POD reprints have errors that have not been fixed.
I take it a step further and play the retro-clones, and choose to talk about and only support them. This is how we immunize the community from a future OGL Crisis, and this is the only sane position to take in these "corporate times" of greed. To just say "buy them from Wizards" does a massive disservice to the entire community of creators, third-party adventure and expansion creators, and the entire market as a whole.
I can publish an adventure for OSRIC and sell it.
I can't publish an AD&D adventure at all; there is no way.
I am not sorry for calling this out, nor pushing the clones over the originals. We got into the OGL Crisis because of this laziness, and it will happen again the day DM's Guild goes away. This is gaming: every service and site gets cancelled someday, and all your digital content is lost, so you will need to repurchase it somewhere else.
When that day happens, all the people playing the POD reprints will flood YouTube to complain and be milked for outrage clicks, and I will be over here happily still playing and creating for my retro clones. I will get so much time back in my day, never need to watch the hundreds of hours of anger, and be happy with what I have.
All because of making the right choice today.
While I may use AD&D 2E PDFs in my games, For Gold & Glory is my Second Edition core ruleset. OSRIC is my 1E, forever, even with the sacred words of Gygax in print. I do not care, and I am making the right choices. If enough people do this, it creates the change we want to see.
Do you want to create change?
Or do you want the world to continue down the path it is on?
Be the change you want to see.
Back to the subject. The XP we get for a hill giant in BX and OSE is about 650 XP for defeating them, divided among party members, so about 150 XP. When your next level is over 20,000 XP away, that is a drop in the bucket, and given this is BX, and we could be 15,000 XP away from the next level, this would mean defeating 100 of them (with no treasure), just to reach the next level. Monster XP is near-worthless in BX games. There is no way a party could even fight 100 hill giants, even one at a time, without taking losses, not to mention that it would take forever.
Hence, treasure is the XP equalizer.
How about First Edition? In OSRIC, we are better off with the hill giant at 1,800 XP. Now we are getting somewhere. With 450 XP per party member, we are still talking about needing 33 of them (minus treasure) to clear that 15,000 XP. That is still a steep hill to climb without finding treasure, so even in OSRIC, it is better to avoid fights and just grab the loot.
Second Edition and For Gold & Glory are the moments when everything changes, and they did for us. Even though they stripped out half-orcs, demons, and assassins from the game, this was still the best edition of AD&D we ever played, and it got us in the game for a full 10 years. We skipped 2.5E and just used the core rules, which are beautifully preserved by FG&G. We could still back-port in the missing elements from 1E, and when Planescape 2E came about, the demons were back under new names and management.
What about the Second Edition?
No XP for treasure. None. It is an option in the DMG, but discouraged, and it is not mentioned in FG&G. You do get "Story XP," which should be equal to the XP gained for overcoming encounters while accomplishing that goal, and the degree of challenge. The language is essential here! Overcoming encounters also means surrender, fooling them, helping them, turning them into allies, or any other way an "encounter" can be "overcome."
So the hill giant in FG&G is worth 6,000 XP, nearly ten times the BX experience amount. Double that if you defeated the hill giant in a quest where the beast was attacking a village, and you were helping people or doing something heroic. If you convinced the hill giant the town wasn't so bad, and got the townspeople to back off, and they all lived happily ever after? Guess what? You still got the full 12,000 XP, split among you.
The encounter was overcome. The story goal was completed with a positive outcome.
And you didn't need to grab a single gold piece to earn those XP. You never needed to worry about treasure, and its importance was secondary. Mind you, it was still nice to have, but having the game's focus shift from acquiring gold and wealth to heroism, accomplishing quests, and story goals was huge for us. This, even though the rules were 99% the same as First Edition, was enough to make us fans of the game again.
And let's factor in random encounters now. Overcoming random encounters on the path of completing a story goal means the XP value of those encounters, already very high, is added to the story XP for the quest. So that pack of hyenas you fought on your way to the hill giant cave as a random wilderness encounter? It counts toward completing the story, and the already high XP is doubled when the story is finished. Are the cave beetles encountered as wandering monsters in the cave? They all count.
Zero gold pieces were gained here.
Note, in FG&G, magic items do give XP. This is the only exception to the XP for treasure rule, but the XP values are about on par with defeating a monster, so it is a minor adjustment, and certainly nothing you can depend upon for leveling. Still, that XP does count towards "story XP" when they are calculated.
As a referee, I do not need to place 320,000 gold pieces around my sandbox to account for leveling anymore, nor do I even control progression all that much. Most of that is in the player's hands, with the monsters they defeat and the stories they undertake, which could also be their own stories and goals.
This is another essential thing. Story XP is not just "referee quests" but can be a part of a character's personal storyline, goals, and motivations. If a character starts a self-initiated "revenge arc," it could create Story XP for the various milestones and story points along the way. Never in the First Edition did they do this, yet it is possible in the Second Edition.
If players just wanted to "wander the map" and "kill everything," well, then that playstyle opens up, too. It is a bit pointless, but it is an option. Story XP will double progression speed, but they are free to wander the map like Grand Theft Auto and cause chaos if they want.
FG&G and the Second Edition rules do have the problem of "not needing money" at the higher levels. There are no prices on magic items here, nor were there in Second Edition AD&D, which openly dismissed the idea of "magic item shops" in the DMG. Is gold not being important really a problem in Second Edition? The entire concept of wealth as advancement was removed from the game, and characters had minimal need for wealth beyond hirelings and gear.
You have to remember: Second Edition was positioned as "the game for the novels," and the novels weren't about gathering all the gold to get progression either. In the novels, the characters performed heroic deeds, learned, and grew stronger, but never really reflected the original game's "gold for XP" concept. So Second Edition simulated the NYT Bestseller novels of the 1990s pretty well, and that is what the game was built for.
If there is no dominion game, and you don't need to buy magic items worth hundreds of thousands of gold, what do you need gold for? Gold is only required to buy a few things: travel, hirelings, mounts, and pay for lodging and supplies. You could run a "low wealth" game in Second Edition and never affect progression, player power, magic item availability, or any other part of the rules.
That is a feature, not a drawback, since chests full of gold tend to weigh down a party and limit their ability to travel and adventure. In a more story-focused game like Second Edition, if we need to get to "Danger Falls" to save the princess, we hop on our horses and head out. Who cares about securing 30,000 gold pieces of treasure in a bank or stronghold? Let's just focus on the story and go!
For groups wanting a more story-based game that focuses on heroics and not wealth, the Second Edition was built for that exact purpose. This may be the game you were looking for but never knew you wanted.
There is no way for me to stop progression in a Second Edition game as a referee, nor should there be. The game goes from referee-controlled to player-driven, with a much stronger focus on story arcs, quests, plots, and goals. The world and the NPCs become much more critical, along with factions and their motivations. If Orc barbarians are burning the northern villages and sacking towns, there is some instant motivation for players, and no treasure needs to be dangled in front of their faces for the players to want to jump in.
All the players need are goals and stories to go out and be heroes.
These will be driven by the NPCs, factions, and centers of civilization in the world. This is how the referee controls interest and drives player agency.
The rewards will be in the stories the characters tell. Not in the loot locked up in dungeon rooms.
And your characters are free to go wherever adventure calls them to.
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