Kizan's page

If you go with the "oh I just tell my players when they level up" approach, you make your player miss out on the joy of receiving XP as a reward and the anxious conversations on "are we there yet?".

Not to mentions things go bananas when a player pulls out a piece of paper and demonstrates that you gave out the previous level way too early and the current one way too late. And it's rather hard to defend yourself in either case.

We do a middle ground approach. The first person to level triggers an XP jump in everybody up to the minimum needed for the next level. This was especially useful when there were 8 players with rarely more than 5 or 6 showing up on any given night. So that nobody was penalized for missing nights, we're all ... uh ... well past graduation and jobs frequently get in the way, everybody's levels are kept the same. It also keeps a character from falling a few levels behind and becoming more squishy.

There's still the thrill of getting XP, but it isn't awarded in lockstep. Somebody might get an XP boost for exceptionally good roleplaying or doing something worthy of a bonus. So everybody still looks forward to getting a number at the end of the night.