I was reading Vespers' post on "General Rules for Any Role Playing Sessions" and his first house rule brought one of our tables' own to mind that I thought some of ya'll might find useful. I figured I'd post this in it's own thread to avoid hi-jacking Vespers' thread.

Our group has been playing pretty much everything for well over 10 years now and the one rule that stuch which everyone has always seemed happy with is what we call "Food XP".

If you bring food or drinks for the entire table or otherwise pitch in to help pay the cost to the person who did, then you get awarded Food XP for the session. Food XP is always small, but decent, and can only be awarded once per session. For instance, a 10% XP bonus is the standard for whatever game we're playing, but in Dark Heresy (and the Warhammer Fantasy RPG) the Food XP is a simple 50xp. In Storyteller games it's 1xp. This means that, for most games, if you show up and do something to gain food XP every session, then you will gain an extra level over everyone else after 10 sessions. In Dark Heresey it means you can get a free 100XP skill or talent every two sessions.

Basically, it started as XP for food, but has since migrated to any sort of benefit to the entire table. If someone brings extra paper for the printer so everyone can print out more character sheets and the like, then they get Food XP. If someone ran a game for everyone last week and get to actually play in one this week, then they get Food XP. Again, it's only awardable once per session, so none of this bonus XP stacks for those players with an eye for exploits.

Some people always bring food or sodas, but since we implemented the Food XP rules, everyone pitches in alot more, and even the people that normally wouldn't pitch in, now pitch in every other week or so. Players that aren't getting food XP don't mind, because the person getting food XP brought them food or some-such. If they get jealous enough of the bonus XP, then they'll give the person who brought food $5 and share in the Food XP. After numerous years of playing, it's always been a win-win situation.

At our games we have included a couple of XP conventions from other games, because they work :-)

1. On Time Bonus: +20 xp per session for arriving and being ready to play at the given start time (usualy 7pm). You wouldn't believe how this has improved the tardyness of certain habitually late players.

2. Most Valuable Player: +50 xp per session, peer vote. Basically the players vote for the player that brought the most to the table, wether by realy entertaining role-playing, saving the other acolytes from certain death or even just giving up some in-game-advantage for the good of the party.

3. Snack Run: +10 xp Volunteering for the snack run / pizza duty or even bringing food / drink to share during the game.

As the games at these sessions tend to be heavy on role-play and light to medium on combat (though when combat occurs it tends to be fast, furious and deadly) the extra xp doesn't impact too heavily on game balance and keeps the interest of players as they don't feel that they have to shoot up every bar in sight to earn xp in some kind of a KODT "kill 'em for the XP" copy ;-)

I always favored Abstract XP over Combat/Resolving xp.

I find it silly when all we done one session was roll dice to kill thugs and get piles of XP. But when we spend a whole night roleplaying we get piddly squat. It's the old D&D xp per encounter genes in the players that kick in i think.

Great rule. Had a similar rule in college when I ran DC Heroes/Blood of Heroes. It was called "Buy the poor GM some Burger King and a can of Pepsi and get 100 Hero Points!"

They racked up some great gadgets and gear (which cost Hero Points) and I got to eat!