Myself personally, I prefer the more socialism approach. While in the games you do control everyone and have to make that choice, you're not really 'competing' with anyone. Here, there are quite a few players - And at the moment, we're all only controlling one character. So while in the game i'd feel its okay to have a level 3 soldier and a level 5 myrmidon in the same group, I feel it might bea bit lame for a player to always feel under leveled compared to others. Plus I do feel for other characters - Mysterica sacrificed combat and XP to talk to Ashton and I highly appreciate she did that, so I feel it would be a little but of a bummer if she didn't really get anything for such. And she's not the only PC who got 0 XP this combat. I wouldn't mind a level discrepancy on average (That is, some characters being a level higher then others), but to me the game shouldn't always be only rewarding tactics and dicussing killing blow. Since this is a player/GM RPG, I do feel RP and everything that it entails should see some reward. My .02 anyway.