I am much in favor of how experience works in Vx's games, where a concrete thing happens in the fiction that generally isn't up for much debate. Stuff like "for good roleplaying" or "when you take a really big risk" leaves me going bleah. Who judges that? Me? No thanks. Notice how in Primetime Adventures the players give XP to each other instead of the GM? Yeah.
Keeping that in mind, I would like to figure out how to incorporate just a bit of "what the game's about" into Vanguard's XP subsystem. Some ideas I had:
- Mark XP the first time you take harm during a session.
- Mark XP when you do a thing that improves the well being of the Planetary Commonwealth.
- Mark XP when you discover a new world.
- Mark XP when you make out with a totally hot alien.
- Mark XP when you get in a chase scene.
They're still a little debatable, right? Was it a chase if it only took one move? Did that thing we did improve the Commonwealth in a meaningful way? Was that alien hot enough? etc.
Some of these might be good as role-specific, like the scout would mark XP when making discoveries.
I suppose they need to be a modest sized list, which includes events that can happen regularly enough to keep the characters checking off thingies on the sheet.
Do cool stuff with your guy and you get to fill in circles. That's the bottom line, right?