Playing at #RPG conventions always reminds me that a shockingly large percentage of the RPG hobby doesn’t actually play the RPGs they purport to play. They’re just kind of improvising in the vague vicinity of a rough approximation of the rules. Not quite the same thing, but true story I'm reminded of:

Actual Member of the Design Team: Okay, everybody grab a d20.

Me: Isn't this a percentile-based system?

AMotDT: I don't like using all those rules for convention games. So we're just going to go with high roll = good.

— Justin Alexander (@hexcrawl) August 25, 2018

doesn’t use experience points. The rules in the book are a compromise by the design team for what they thought the fanbase would like. Home brewing is a core part of the hobby. Expect the house rules just; like every bodies goblins are different from each others. Though I’m actually using them in one campaign now, mainly to reward players for making it to the session (large group; about half is present for any given game). But RPGs are very weird in that the rules describe play, rather than prescribe it.

— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) August 25, 2018