Cautionary Tales

"Do not lose hope - what you seek will be found. Trust ghosts. Trust those that you have helped to help you in their turn. Trust dreams. Trust your heart, and trust your story." - Neil Gaiman

Gold-for-XP has never quite stuck with me, so I've decided to do advancement in a different and much more subjective matter for my new kind-of-weird-hackjob-of-West-Marches campaign with my friends. I really want them to seek out weird-ass-shit instead of just going places solely because "there might be money." So, I present:

Tales-for-XP
 Tim Mcburnie
(Breaking off from Jakub Rebelka, shocking, I know)

The rules are simple. To level up you must tell an amount of thrilling but true stories about your exploits and adventures equal to the level you're trying to reach. So, if you're at level 1 trying to reach level 2, you'd need to tell 2 stories. If you're at level 2 and trying to reach level 3, you'd need to tell 3 new stories, and so on. These stories must be told in civilized places where you can make a name for yourself. If you have enough stories to level up, you can spend a week storytelling. You gain the level after this week has passed.

I like this, a lot. It may seem quite easy to come back from a session with a story, but I think it's the time that puts a bit of pressure here. During the week that you spend storytelling, dungeons restock, evil plots advance, weird forces act upon each other, and the wilderness you enter is different. You can also slot in your favorite downtime activity rules or run a downtime session during the week it takes to level up.

You can also add some escalation with this. Once the party levels up, roll 3D6 on the table below to see who has heard of their stories and what is the effect of this newfound fame over time.

Your Wild Stories Are Heard By...
1.	A monster. They're scared of you and what you're capable of, but they're also cunning and calculating. Over the course of 1D6 days you will notice small traces of something big stalking you. At the end of these days, the monster will reveal itself during your most vulnerable moment and try to force a deal. Perhaps this deal is that they will get you out of the situation if you kill another monster. Or maybe they will give you access to some of their hoard if you wreak havoc on a town. In 1D6 weeks, if their deal isn't fulfilled, they will be angry and will stalk you yet again, looking for an opening to kill you. If the monster has already been killed, then their offspring has hatched, and they will grow motherless and hateful. They can see the blood on your hands.
2.	A fellow adventurer. They want to join your ranks. They've got a good sword-hand, excellent climbing skills, and don't want that much pay, just "glory". In 1D6 days the adventurer will form a very close bond to one specific party member. Very pleasant and friendly to everybody, but especially to the chosen party member. In 1D6 weeks while the chosen party member sleeps, the adventurer will open their distended jaw and suckle the chosen member's skin away, leaving companions to wake up and find a skinless corpse and a missing adventurer.
3.	Many drunkards and dunces. They sing crass songs about your tales over drink. In 1D6 days you will be approached by a group of 6 drunkards. They want to be a part of your party. These people are horribly stupid and prone to handling things violently. They only listen to you, but you better not disappoint them, otherwise they will spread word of what a giant coward you are. In 1D6 weeks, whatever drunkards remain alive will decide that the adventuring life is not for them and return to civilization. If all are dead, you will be ruthlessly hounded by magistrates who want their gambling arrears.
4.	Some unknown force. A large conspiracy that you've unwittingly become a part of. In 1D6 days some random will hand you something important and quickly dart into the shadows, never to be seen again. Over the course of 1D6 weeks, strange things begin to happen. You wake up and there are instructions and locations scrawled into the hilt of your weapons. Things disappear and are replaced with new things. Strange people nod knowingly at you. You feel as if you're going mad, but you are certain there is some pattern here. This will all escalate to some wild event where many specific people will die.
5.	A bard. They find you to be an inspiration and will travel the lands telling your tales! In 1D6 days people will give you a nice title. Shops will give you small discounts. Your fame is recognized and it's pleasant. Over the course of 1D6 weeks people will think that you have done amazing things that are either horribly exaggerated versions of your stories or fantastical lies made in interest of telling a better story. People won't let you live your reputation down.
6.	A noble with a position of power. They are utterly obsessed with you and are excitedly waiting for you to speak more of your adventures. In 1D6 days they will construct statues of you in town square. Murals and paintings of yourselves dot the walls nearby their estate. In 1D6 weeks they will mysteriously die and leave you an abandoned mansion in their inheritance. (A spookily good adventure hook for this October)

This rule makes it so that there is more natural game-fodder as you level up, which is nice. It helps the story advance (or take a different direction entirely), gives the party more to deal with and more to exploit. You can also insert your own little plot hooks or connections within this table. The table will have to be restocked often if you're running a longer campaign, but the time in between levels should be enough to gain inspiration. Of course, the events on the table don't always occur to the letter since a few days/weeks is a lot of time for players to destabilize these sorts of things, so trust your guts.

This is meant mainly for Into The Odd, which has like 5 levels. Though, it can be easily converted to other systems, like GLOG and etcetera. It just may take a LOT more time for people to gain levels if you use an RPG that goes all the way to level 20.

I get that this can be a bit too subjective for some more analytically-minded people out there. To put some order to things, here's some guidelines for what I count as a story:
- Must have a clear plot, conflict, and resolution.
- Must have no (or just very little) loose ends. So, for instance, if you're telling the story of how you lost your arm to a tiger, you better have killed that damn tiger that took it off. You must see weird shit and then deal with the weird shit in one way or another if the story is based entirely around said weird shit.
- Must be true. You may exaggerate a bit for flavor, but the core of the story cannot be entirely fictitious.
- You can only come back with one story per session. If you're running ItO, assuming you come back with an amazing story each session, it should take about 14 sessions to reach level 5. Of course, if this is too little for your tastes, add to the limit. For instance, players level up if they tell an amount of stories equal to the level they're trying to reach plus one.

Be generous with these constraints. Players do want to feel rewarded for what they do. In no time you will be watching as they witness and conquer the weird that lies in the dark.