Gaining XP by defeating monsters, finding treasure... and making friends!

Hello everyone!

I recently had the opportunity to run the beginning of Dragons of Stormwreck Isle to old friends and my daughter. It was her first chance with a group of older players in a "real" RPG table. Since she was 5 years old I've been running games to her, solo or later with her younger brother. Well, she is now 12 - time indeed flies - and she loves to play different games, build her own characters, and learn the rules. She is excited to play in "real" game tables (in her mind) and I'm encouraging her to do it (and even to run her games). Anyway, long story short: her style of playing RPGs is very freeform, a result of all the crazy hacks and experiments we played through the years. She actually just started showing interest in commercial RPGs in the last year as, usually, I would create or own homebrew hacks and games. Therefore, when she sat at the table with members of my older campaigns, they loved it to see her trying to befriend EVERY single NPC in the adventure... and also quite a few monsters! When I noticed, she is creating - through roleplay and persistence - an entire retinue of friends!

That is totally my daughter playing!
Source: couldbeworse-comic.com

That got me thinking about ways to make our D&Ds and OSRs games more engaging and rewarding for players with different playstyles (especially my daughter). So I came up with the following "XP Tracking Sheets". Basically, the idea is that every time you defeat enemies in an encounter, find a cool treasure, or make a friend, you mark an XP slot. When you fill all slots you level up. I find this more fun than merely granting XP for the same goals. It also lets the players see and track their advancement, encouraging (I hope) their particular playstyles.

Finally, I am a great fun of ancestries and cultures letting you engage the narrative/adventure through unique iconic abilities (I mentioned this before that, of late, I find it more fun that each ancestry has just a few cool/iconic traits instead of a lot of modifiers, for d20 fantasy RPGs at least). So, I also gave each one of the traditional ancestries - Humans, Halflings, Elves, and Dwarves - a unique trait that can be activated once per adventure to solve a particular check, challenge, or even maybe an entire encounter. I still have to playtest it (...as usual).

I hope you like it and that it can give you ideas!