The XP not taken

This came up tangentially in my last session, last session summary, and some offline discussions.

What XP would the PCs have gotten if they cut off the end of the session last time and just departed the dungeon instead of staying to fight their former allies, the Crazies.

Per our current set of XP award rules:

Loot: Under 20% of the threshold for each character. 0 xp.

Exploration:

"No exploration or no significant exploration is a -1 xp penalty. Exploration of at least one new area of significance (which generally will be clearly significant) or exploring many areas in general is 0 xp. Exploration of many new areas or multiple areas of significant is +1 to 2 xp. +2 xp is reserved very significant exploration, and will be rare."

Tough call - what areas of significance did the PCs explore? The teleporting book was there for a long time, and until the Warden brought it up the PCs totally ignored it even when I mentioned it a bunch of times. In any case, it wasn't a new discovery. The room they teleported to was new, so were the two areas behind the secret doors. One was a lucky find and didn't have anything in it (it's a mild special, a safe zone), the other they couldn't puzzle out. The cave and dragon were clearly significant.

So, multiple areas of significance seems to fit, even if only for the NMZ room and the dragon. I think 1 xp. Why not +2, because a few new rooms that don't lead to anything (literally all were dead ends!), and if this is the top-end of exploration, what do I do when people do major exploration? It'll actually encourage people to only find just enough for a +2.

So, 1 xp here.

Roleplaying - people generally did enough. Still a lot of "my character has (disadvantage X), so he does this" stuff, instead of demonstrating disadvantage X, but I know that's a matter of taste.

Awesome Bonus - None. You can't argue this, this is me saying, "Holy crap this is awesome! Here are some points!" If that doesn't pretty much happen exactly that way, it doesn't apply. "Dragons waking up are awesome" is a valid argument, of course, so I'll give the dragon +1 xp. Heh. Just kidding.

Most Valuable PC - The players voted this, Hasdrubel got it.

Never Leave a Man Behind - A "clean run" is +1 xp. I still think this immediately turns from "bonus for everyone living" to "assume +1, and losses means -1 xp" because all predictable bonuses become expected returns. Even so, they earned it.

In any case, they'd have gotten away clean. 1 xp here.

Total: 0 (Loot) + 1 (Exploration) + 1 (Clean Run) = 2 xp, 3xp for the MVP.


I think I gave the impression that last session's exploration wasn't significant. It was mostly minor, mostly leads to places that could be useful but aren't directly leading to new and bigger things. The dragon and its cave are significant enough to warrant a +1. No +2, because of what I said above, and no "special bonus" or anything. Not even if they'd just gone after it and attacked it, but jumping down the hole and saying, "We're fighting this damn dragon right now!" would have been an awesome bonus for sure.