Awarding XP

Matt Miller

Hearsay has it than in early DnD, treasure was the goal, as (originally) players could translate gold into XP.  Over time, this switched so that  most XP came from defeating enemies in combat. I don't think the intent was to make combat the main source of XP, but good tables on appropriate amounts of XP are available for combat, but none for other types of encounters. People respond to incentives.

Dan Felder

This is why all my systems and campaigns in other systems always shift things to have XP awarded for accomplishing goals. Combat inherently provides nothing, but you can use it as a way to achieve a goal. 

Keith J Davies 

Indeed. Reward the behavior you want to see. If it's 'kill everything', give XP for killing stuff. If you want to see 'cunningly recover..treasure', leave combat out of the XP calculation because it's only an obstacle, and reward 'recover...treasure'.

Owen Wylde 

I interpreted "gold to XP" to mean paying for training. Some of my DMs only allowed levelling up after gaining enough XP then paying for training. 

Alexander Staniforth

The difficulty with it was that gold is reward in itself as it allows you access to rare goods etc. So in getting gold you are rewarded twice. I prefer pure accomplishment and GM decision (with a smattering of group decision should everyone be impressed).

Cory Magel 

The group I play with most regularly moved to mission/goal based exp. ....it removes the need for tracking and encourages a team effort. I, personally, will just tell the group when to level. So long as everyone is happy with the pace and progress it lets you slow and speed up the pace of the campaign as desired.

 Nathan Dowdell 

....there are a number of systems that handle character growth in different ways - Fate uses milestones in the story to govern changes to characters, while Smallville (Cortex Plus Drama) based character development on stress and challenging personal beliefs, so that characters suffer dramatically in order to grow.