Table of Contents
Front Cover Front Matter Introduction Welcome to Season Four! What You’ll Need to Play How to Read This Book The RiM: S4E Team Character Creation D.A.S.H. Design Aspects Statistics Headway D.A.S.H. Example Playing an Episode Structure of Gameplay Making Checks Advantages & Drawbacks Acting in Harmony Damage, Recovery, & Sidelining Using & Restoring Valor Ending an Episode Character Advancement Learning Lessons Experience Points Purchasing Edges Edge List Library of Edges Magic & Spellcasting Magic Is as Magic Does Creating Spells Casting Spells The Canterlot Archives Running an Episode Being the Game Master Collaborative Storytelling Getting Things Started Checks & Difficulty Targets Damage & Sidelining Lessons & Experience Variant Rules Plot Points Equestria Girls Paragon Ponies Wide, Wide World Epic Experience Encyclopedia Equestria Premade Episodes The House of Enchanted Comics Ars Unicornia Mutants and Maresterminds Whinnystrad Miscellaneous Character Sheet A Note for Developers Updates & Resources Single Page Version (for print)
Lessons & Experience
The basis for how a group of characters earns Experience Points is the identification of Lessons those characters learned, and listing these Lessons in the ‘Letter To The Princess’ phase at the end of an Episode. As the GM, ultimately the decision of whether or not to award XP for a given Lesson is up to you, so it’s important to have an understanding of how to fairly award XP for Lessons.
In essence, the GM should consider each Lesson in the light of the character’s actions during the Episode itself. Any Lesson which has a basis in the character’s actions has most likely had a meaningful impact on that character (and hopefully the player, too), and is a good candidate for awarding XP. There are two scenarios, however, which you should look out for during the Letter To The Princess.
Firstly, a group of characters who have very few Lessons at the end of the Episode; for example, a group of six with only one or two Lessons between them. This can be remedied by having a discussion with the players about the Episode, and bringing up Lessons which you may have seen reflected in their characters. There’s no reason you can’t help your players (after all, the GM isn’t the enemy), and not all players are good at (or comfortable with) discussing personal character growth.
Conversely, a group of characters who have a very large number of Lessons at the end of the Episode; for example, a group of three with six or seven Lessons between them. This is often a sign of overly-intricate analysis, and can be remedied by consolidating similar Lessons.
Normally, a group of characters should have one or two Lessons per character; five Lessons is a significant increase, although the pace of character advancement is ultimately up to you as the GM.