Review: Feats of Exploration

Feats of Exploration is a short (15 pages), cheap ($3 on DriveThruRPG) PDF describing a way to give experience points to PCs in D&D-like games for stuff besides defeating monsters and finding treasure.  Most players are at least somewhat motivated by XP, so if you want them to do things besides killing and looting, giving them incentives to do other things seems like a good idea.  On the other hand, giving them more ways to get XP without removing the existing ways means your players will earn more total XP, which can be good or bad depending on whether you want them to advance faster or not.

It's written by Jon Britton, the GM on the 3d6 Down The Line Actual Play series on YouTube, which I watched because they're doing Arden Vul.  I don't normally have the patience to watch Actual Plays, but Arden Vul is a huge and complicated adventure, and I wanted to run it well, and I figured watching another experienced GM run it might give me some helpful hints.  (The usual spoiler disclaimer: don't watch their series beyond Session 0 if you might want to be a player in Arden Vul.   Even Session 1 has a huge spoiler.  But I do recommend it if you know you'll never be a player in it and you like Actual Plays, and especially if you want to GM it.)

Anyway, there are 13 categories of feats: exploration, lore, rumor, secret, puzzle, trap, hazards, skills, location, NPC, faction, quest, safe haven.  And there are 4 levels of feats: minor, major, extraordinary, and campaign, which each give a different number of XP.  The rest of the pages are XP math: here's how you calculate the exact amount of XP each PC gets for doing each level of feat.  (There's also a spreadsheet for this somewhere, not included in the download.)  And there are some lists with checkboxes, in case you want to print out the PDF and then check a box when a PC achieves one of the feats.

Anyway, I'm not running D&D or anything D&D adjacent, so I didn't buy this for the XP math, so I'm not going into the details of that part.  I don't really care if a 4th level thief needs 8000 XP to get 5th level so carry the zero and a minor feat should be worth 275 XP this week.  I am, however, running a fantasy RPG and giving out character points for loot, exploration, and achievements, so I basically bought it for ideas for achievements to add to my game.   (And also to tip Jon $3 for making all those videos.)

Looking at Jon's categories, "exploration" is redundant with one I already had, though he gives an exact threshold (5 rooms) which it at least a hint that I should try to set objective levels for what counts as "enough" exploration rather than winging it too much.  (My thinking is to have two levels for exploration and loot, where the first levels should be easy to achieve and should be hit in most sessions, and the second levels should be hard to achieve and should only be hit when the PCs actually do a lot of exploring or bring home a great haul.)  "Location" feels somewhat overlapping with "exploration", but I guess the distinction is importance: if you map a bunch of empty or boring rooms you still get credit for exploration, but only important rooms give a location bonus.  So maybe in addition to giving 1 point for exploring a few new rooms and 2 points for exploring a lot of new rooms, I give a bonus point for finding an Arden Vul Iconic Location (tm) or a significant secret area.  (Not for just a random secret door.)

And "quest" is kind of obvious.  I thought of that one myself.  But I did not think of "establish a reliable safe haven," and it's a good one.  Getting a base in or close to the dungeon so you don't have to go back to town as often sounds cool, and if my players pulled that off I'd throw them an extra point.  (It's not quite as critical in Arden Vul as in some megadungeons, because Gosterwick is only a half-day's walk away, but I can see not wanting to make that walk every session if you could find a good alternative.)

I think "puzzle" and "trap" and "hazard" are a bit overlapping and a bit too generous as written; I would only give extra points for solving a puzzle or defeating a trap or avoiding a hazard if it was non-trivial.  Making a single skill roll to spot a pit or disarm a poison needle on a chest doesn't feel points-worthy, but if it's a really complicated puzzle or trap that requires a lot of thought or teamwork or especially formulating a plan and going back to base for knowledge or equipment and coming back later, sure.

"Faction" and "NPC" also kind of blend together to me; I guess you could define "NPC" as town NPCs and "Faction" as dungeon NPCs, but I'd lump it all under "if you do serious roleplay (not just a one-minute negotiation or a single Diplomacy roll to avoid a fight) to serious benefit that's probably some points."

Finally "skills" is for using equipment or abilities in an unorthodox way.  I think that falls under the general umbrella of Rule of Cool bonus points for me; if you have a clever solution that amuses everyone that might be worth a bonus point, but only once per distinct idea.  The first time you use knockback to put an enemy into lava that gets called out as the highlight of the session.  The seventh time you do it, it's just another attack mode.

The last couple of pages of the PDF list examples of other feats you could add.  Some of the examples are pretty good.  I think this is all obvious (if Jon can make rules you can make rules too, you outrank him in your game, as you're the actual GM of your game and he's just some guy on YouTube), but some new GMs haven't yet figured out that they make the final rules and what's in books are just suggestions, so maybe this is helpful for them to start spreading their wings.

On balance, should you buy this PDF?  It's $3.  If you're a 3D6DTL fan or an OSR completionist collector you probably already did.  If not, and $3 is significant to you, you don't really need it, but it might be helpful.  It's probably a bit more helpful if you're running D&D (or something D&D-ish) and doing XP calculations, because he gives you concrete numbers of XP with some examples and a spreadsheet.  (Note: if that gives you a headache, you have my permission, as someone who's played RPGs longer than most people on this planet have been alive, to never precisely compute XP and just hand out levels once in a while.  I think there's even an "official" name for that now, in some versions of D&D-ish games: Milestone XP.  Remember, the points are made up and the math doesn't matter; it's a game.  Do what's fun for your group.)

If you're not running D&D or you don't care about XP math, then this is really just a list of ideas for ways to reward your players for playing in ways that your group finds more fun.  If you need those kind of ideas, get it.  If you already have plenty of ideas, you don't need it, but it's $3 so it doesn't take much value for it to be worth it.  I only got a couple of things out of it and I think I got my money's worth.