To Everyone: This video spun way out of control, regarding the comments. And unlike most of my videos, I cannot provide a detailed reply to everyone. But whether you agree with my position or not, I really do appreciate the engagement and the civil debate. But now I think I need to do a follow-up video, to more fully explain why I now use milestone leveling, instead of XP tracking, like what I used to do. So, watch for that video to be uploaded soon!

In a sense old modules did have milestone leveling - it was just disguised as gold based experience.  I was looking through Night Below, 2nd edition, and at various intervals there were very deliberate treasure dumps.  This is in other longer, campaign form, adventures as well. It was enough treasure to level most PCs in it.  It was, essentially, milestone leveling.

I think Tenkar Is not talking about punishing recklesness, he Is talking about rewarding carefulness

Both have a concise logic to them.

The first time as a DM this time around, I did a milestone on the first adventure, and I have regretted it ever since.

It feels... video game-y.

It’s also funny how one at the table always assumed 5e rules.

“No, that’s 5e. In 2e...”

I do prefer XP, as I can reward things like good RPG, thus encouraging new players.

I'm not sure why I don't see a hybrid version of miletone and xp advocated for. Almost every video game with xp  does this. You do get xp for gold and killing monsters, but you get big chunks for completing quests. It motivates players to do good in the world and follow the plot, and it motivates them to get treasure and defeat monsters by sword spell or wit. I use this hybrid in my home campaign.

I think leveling can be managed in a variety of ways. That said, milestone leveling with B/X is not great for the reason you gave in its favor. The xp leveling rate is a part of what balanced the game. The squishyness of low level characters teaches good game play. It allows powerful classes to remain useful for longer. By level 8 you can feel the problems from high powered characters. The different rates allow characters to shine in their own time. Milestone leveling takes away that momentary spotlight.

I started playing in 1977 w/ the LBBS. We had a 5 person group, we all ran our own games and played in each others games, wildly different. I almost immediately dropped gold for xp They got rewarded for smart play, and accomplishments.  Gold for XP encourages a style of gameplay I never cared for and still don't.  I've even gone to just handing out "levels" at times. But that only works with specific player types. Most like seeing those XP awards in small chunks.

Ends of story arcs/modules are generally higher risk higher reward. Even without milestone, clearing the adventure, killing the big bad guy and getting the primary loot is XP more likely to pop several players over the level than a normal side quest adventure. So unintentionally basked into the equation.

Never done it but the way you described it, Milestone leveling kind of sucks for thief and benefits wizards and paladins. One thing that is kind of nice (in theory at least) is everyone training and taking down time together.

Maybe not strictly gold for xp, but there needs to be a clear incentive structure for the players to encourage exploratory play, in player driven games.  Milestone leveling means the players often fall into playing a guessing game of "what's the DM want us to do, so we can score the points" and/or to unlock the next section of DM content.  They fall into the habit of passively waiting for the DM's instructions to trigger the next milestone, instead of driving play by choosing a goal and going for it.  For example, in a sandbox campaign with resource management, the players need to acquire funds to build a magic item, retain hirelings (including an expert sage who is researching lore for them), and maintain a base.  They have several options (and additional quest hooks from the DM, offering treasure as a resource & xp), and they decide which way to go to achieve their goals.  

I've found that players of more linear or storyline based games have been trained to not do this, and wait to be spoon fed the plot hook so as not to "derail" the DM's scripted story that has all the pre-loaded milestone awards loaded into it.

I agree, Tenkar is wrong. In my experience (nearly 50 years as a GM) milestone leveling means I can actually thrown MORE encounters at the players, not less or easier ones. I am not restricted by the accumulation of XP forcing me to allow the PCs to level after they reach some predetermined "score." If the story needs the characters to level quicker, or slowly than the XP values would indicate, I do not have to manufacture some justification for why they leveled so quickly or why it took longer. The story simply required it for whatever reason I choose as the GM. If they encounter more random events than I originally planned, it does not force them to level too quickly. OTOH, if I need to include more challenges that the XP tables would allow before the next threshold, I can simply delay the leveling until the time is "right."

Character death is a HUGE incentive to not act recklessly. You do NOT need XP to regulate behavior. IMHO, if your players need XPs to regulate their behavior, they are bad players.

I have used milestone leveling long before formal rules were published about it. As a GM I will never again use XP. I might accept XP as a player, but only if I do not have to manage it. If the GM takes the responsibility of doing all the tracking and all I have to do is add a number to a running total, I'm fine with it.

I tried both reward systems as dm and as player. What I don't like with milestone leveling is:
1. It fuels the expectations that all PCs have the same level, always. When the PCs die, they roll a character at higher level. Levels and surviving should be a reward, otherwise it doesn't feel like an achivement.
2. If there is a PC of lower level, he never have the chance of gaining levels faster.
3. Milestone leveling always feels random to me and not as an achivement, and it is usually way too fast for my tast.
4. I play DnD 3.5e, where you can invest your XP in crafting magic items and powerfull spells. Milestone leveling has no XP so it doesn't work with XP investment.

Those are fighting words :-)

Rewarding smart play is important, and if players outwit a troll to follow a false trail and getting out of it scott-free, means they should get there without any issues.

Because "B/X" is somehow always the right answer, and hard mode is always the only way to go every time.

Another thing to keep in mind about Milestone Leveling is that it doesn't have to just be the story beat formula.

Luke Gearing's "Wolves Upon the Coast" is a OD&D hack that has the players explore a open world viking-themed sandbox and uses a milestone system for leveling in the form of "Boasts". Basically setting a goal that they will accomplish a great fear (slay a powerful monster, win a multi-day swimming contest while wearing full mail, steal a dragon's ring without being detected etc.)

If the player accomplished the boast they level up, if they fail they lose the boast and can attempt something different. If they shirk their boast they lose the chance to ever level up again. Everytime a boast is declared the other characters may attempt to one up them (P1: "I'll slay 5 men in battle single handedly!" P2:"I'll slay the same number and not take a single wound!") for an additional bonus.

It's a system that inventivizes the players to remain active in the world and sets a kind of rythtm for advancement as well.

The advantage of XP for my particular group is that progression is more transparent - players know exactly how much XP they have and how much they need to level up. We were also all gamers before we ever played TTRPGs, so milestone leveling is an uncomfortable thought for some, and XP feels like the natural way to progress. When we tried milestone, we didn't really like it, but we were still very inexperienced and made a lot of mistakes, so maybe it would go better if we tried again. Great video, you've given me a lot to think about.

I personally prefer openworld adventures where milestones are not applicable. Ideally my character shouldn't be trying to complete an assignment given by the DM. He is just trying to live within a fantasy world.

I think it depends on the game you play. If your game revolves around storytelling, tallying experience points is not going to get them anywhere. If you are playing the earlier games that mostly revolved around going into a dungeon to kill monsters and loot things, milestone leveling is not going to achieve much either.

When I played BECMI, 80s kid D&D, it was all XP all the way. When it transitioned to 2e it was still XP-based but we kind of did away with letting it hold back a story. Then 3.5 sent us in reverse and it would be kind of hard to do milestone leveling there, especially with the groups I played with. They expected that XP or you would be out one party. And that meant no free beer for a lonely DM. It was a time of college for me. Then we kind of skipped 4e, but I would say it was no different in that context.

But today, it is more likely than ever before to be a story, not a game of strategy necessarily. In such a game, milestone leveling is foreseeable. Without knowing how to call it "milestone leveling" it was something I think many DMs did when they felt it was right. So, it does fill a need, but so does using XP. But then there aren't enough ways to gain XP by doing other things. That would be the real middle ground, designate XP for specific milestones. Maybe make it a percentage of their XP.

In the end, it seems to become a case-by-case consideration where you must do a ratio of both.

I GM NSR and OSR style games and some have milestone advancement and others use gold as XP or some other system. I think milestone leveling can work if it really is a milestone. As in a full adventure that took many sessions and the characters were put in many different kinds of encounters that required careful play.  I will say doing gold as XP leveling adds the complication of needing to manage inventory but I think you should still manage inventory and have a different use for gold to make it worth having to bring back.  It is something I like about Electric Bastionland, the players are in debt so bringing back treasure is important so they don't get some group coming after them for not paying their bill on time.  Of course in that system there is also paying for a chance at advancement so it does offer gold for XP sort of.  But i think milestone can be done well and be done bad but the biggest reason it doesn't work is because there are players who play for the level up which for my table is a bad reason to play. I want players to use everything they have and not try to speed run leveling up.

Awesome video! I personally like mostly all ways of leveling. I think a lot of them just work for different games and different groups. One way isn't going to work for everyone, I think that's why there are different ways of doing it. I use milestone leveling most, but I think all of them have their perks. 😄👍