Welcome back. This latest tangential game feature of mine hasn't been the most engaging to build unsurprisingly, but it's no less necessary for the kind of experience I'm aiming for. A PC's Level/EXP and Team Ranking would preferably be less so an allowance from the GM, and more so an attainable reward rooted in player decisions, from delving into dungeons to choosing what quests to take on, for the sake of a rewarding sense of progression. That's the idea anyway. But make no mistake, I have no real idea what I'm doing. The Explorers games have given me a clear framework along with its Team and Mission Difficulty Rankings. But what I have in store might only be a crude attempt at imitating its inner workings. But let's give it a go anyway!

Player Leveling & EXP
Very quickly I found that EXP "by the enemy" was out of the question, mostly because of how annoying it would be to tally. Instead I scaled everything back to make it as manageable and simple as possible. Have I gone too far in that direction? Probably. Yet it's the process of trial and error (me learning things the hard way) that appeals to me so much. Anyway, here's the plan.

• Current level determines the EXP required to level up (lvl 1 needs 1 EXP, lvl 2 needs 2 EXP and so on)
• EXP is earned by each PC through certain actions (especially completing dungeon runs)
• Every dungeon will be assigned to a Team Rank, which will determine the amount of EXP received upon a successful run
  (Example: Normal Rank = 1 EXP, Bronze Rank = 2 EXP, etc.)

Team Ranking & Mission Difficulty
Naturally, my first instinct is to run with all the unique Team Ranks (Normal to Guildmaster) and the Mission Difficulty Rankings (E to ★9) from the Explorers games. They aren't in contention, but everything else I got is pretty up in the air. See for yourself.

• A range of levels is recommended under each Team Ranking, for where members ought to be at that point
  (Example: Normal Rank = Levels 1 - 10, Bronze Rank = Levels 11 - 20, etc.)
• Team Ranking also determines what Mission Difficulty Ranks will be available to choose from among jobs
  (Example: Normal Rank = E - D, Bronze = D - B)^{(As of now)}
• The amount of Rank Points (RP) a team earns is based on mission difficulty
  (Example: D.Rank E = 1 RP, D.Rank D = 2 RP, etc.)

That's where my mind is right now. As you can imagine, the exact total amount of RP a team needs to reach the next rank cannot be set in stone for now. The Explorers games seemed to have always set Bronze Rank with 100 pts, but I might only follow suit as a tentative mark as I see how quickly players progress towards it within that first in-game year. I'm sure I've made mistakes somewhere in here, but regardless, some of it will be ironed out with testing. Anyway, I'll be back eventually with more on dungeons sometime later. Take care until then.

Hello! First off, not dead. Secondly, I'm back after a while to post my progress after what time I had to work with. There was some finagling here and there over how a dungeon's details should be laid out, especially considering how certain elements like the number of loot items and enemies can vary significantly over the course of the campaign. Now of course, I've never made anything like this before, but I believe I have something approaching a functional template, which I arrived at by piecing together what significant bits came to mind for that first lowest rank dungeon, and then stripping it all out, leaving just the formatting behind. Have a look!

---

---

I thought about showing you all the full version for the first dungeon, but I kinda thought to keep it a secret for just a little longer. In it, I've taken to using plenty of abbreviated text for the finer details. Perhaps more annoying still, I very much intend to see all tables forcibly extended horizontally for accommodate everything included in later dungeons. The online references (bulbiedia and such) I used had additional things recorded, but I hope I've zeroed in on the most relevant. There may be changes in the future.

And of course, since I imagine an eyebrow or two has been raised because of the last of that checklist, I'll say that it's by no means a new concept when it comes to dungeon crawling, but I liked the idea enough to feature it in the future, with a decent idea of how to implement it. It isn't that I'm looking to push players to go through dungeons faster, merely that I like the tension that it brings. Needless to say, this info is for the DM's eyes only, you understand. Anyway, that'll be all for now. Sorry again for the delay. Till next time.