Playing a fun game is its own reward, but part of the fun of any game is earning the rewards you get when you “win” something. Roleplaying games do not end when someone wins, but there are still victories. D&D rewards victories over monsters, traps, and other challenges that characters face with experience points and treasure. Experience (XP), the currency to advance a character’s abilities, is the usual carrot dangled before players as the main game-mechanics reward for their actions. Games about storytelling reward showing up for the session, having creative ideas, roleplaying well, learning and developing character, and other similar things with XP. Other games reward using skills with experience in those skills.
Experience points are a meta-game reward. They allow a player to make her character better at doing things. Other meta-game rewards are often more active - many games give players resources they can spend to get one-time bonuses, such as increased chance of success at a task or the right to describe elements of the scene instead of actions of their characters (a privilege normally reserved for the GM). Some games use the same resource for active expenditure in play and improving characteristics long-term, or at least link the two in some way.
There are also in-character rewards, such as money, status, equipment, and accomplishing goals. If a player really wants his character to marry the princess, then when that wedding finally happens, it’s a reward for him. He will probably get an especially big kick out of it if he gets to describe the wedding, or otherwise play it out, particularly if the other players share his enjoyment of it. This kind of reward is the meat and potatoes of the game itself: facing challenges in the hope of success, in whatever character appeals most.
The GM’s job is to manage challenges and rewards for the players. As the authority figure for the rules of the game and the story, the GM also has the opportunity and responsibility to manage his or her players as a social group. In-game rewards are usually best used to encourage certain in-character behavior; that is, the character is rewarded for her actions, not for her player’s actions in another context. To do otherwise harms suspension of disbelief, which is essential in any story medium. Meta-game rewards, on the other hand, can be awarded for meta-game reasons with impunity.
As a GM, I often award players XP and other meta-game rewards for providing soda or food for the gaming group, enabling other players to get to the game, coming to play from out of state, buying the GM lunch during game, and other things which help the game happen more smoothly. I also award XP to players who draw their characters or other people’s, who write logs of game sessions, who keep quote logs, who bring props that add to the game experience, and so on. The idea behind this: invest time, money, and emotional energy into the game, and get back more of what you want. That could be more combat action, more detective/mystery scenes, more social intrigue, or more control over in-game scenes. Players who are more invested in the game make it more fun for me, and so I try to make it more fun for them in return.
Meta-Rewards
I will use a hypothetical example game here, in which there are three meta-rewards: favors, insight, and luck.
Favors are handed out by the GM for anything he is glad the player did, particularly things which help the game go. A hilarious in-character comment, a lunch bought for the GM, a story written about characters during downtime; each GM can decide when and why to hand out favors. It isn’t good to give out favors for too little, nor is it good to be too stingy with them. GMs, find a balance that works for you and your players. Favors can be used in three ways: exchanged for Insight or Luck, or offered to the GM. In this latter use, the player offers the GM the favor in exchange for reversing a decision the GM has made against what the player wanted; if the GM accepts, the favor passes into a pool of “bought favors” which the GM holds, and the ruling is reversed (Let’s be honest with ourselves here, GMs: no individual ruling is going to be so important that you can’t reverse it - work out with your players how much of a reversal is a fair exchange for a Favor). The GM uses “bought favors” to cause players to automatically fail at tasks - though each time he does so, the Favor passes to the player who was caused to fail. The player does not have the option to refuse this failure, not even using a Favor.
Insight is XP. This is your currency for the advancement of character traits. It is gained in play for learning experiences in character, and a certain amount is gained at the end of each session of play. The exchange rate between Favors and Insight is 1:1, and Insight cannot be changed into Favors. Insight can buy Luck, if it was not awarded to a particular trait, at a 2:1 ratio.
Luck is success. Each play session, all players gain one Luck at the beginning, and these may be saved. A point of Luck may be spent to succeed at any task the GM has allowed an attempt with a chance of success at. Favors can buy Luck at 1:1, but Luck cannot buy Favors. 1 Luck can be bought with 2 Insight, or 1 Insight can be bought with 2 Luck. It is intentionally inefficient to convert Luck and Insight, so that it will be a considered decision to do so.
The GM’s Bought Favors are a reward to the GM. The players get to play a certain way - whether it’s stacking certain modifiers that the GM wanted to rule didn’t, or changing the reaction of an NPC. In return, the GM gets to control how the game goes a way she normally wouldn’t: dictating when a player will fail. When the Bought Favor is expended, the player is refunded any Luck spent to make the action succeed, but any endurance lost by taking the action or other in-game resources all remain spent. The GM is free to describe any degree of failure for the action, though it would be bad form to cause a character’s death or crippling injury from the result of an action which wasn’t inherently dangerous to begin with.
Luck is normally gained at a constant rate, but Favors and Insight can be handed out at varying rates. How often to give these out, and when to do it, depends on the nature of the group and the story. Insight at the end of the session is relatively simple:
Realistic/Gritty Game - None (gained only in play through learning experiences). This produces characters who reflect entirely what they have done, and who grow slowly through practice and dedication.
Heroic Game - 1-5 per play session. This creates heroes whose power grows when the story needs it to, but not by leaps and bounds until the story has had a chance to progress a little.
Over-the-Top Game - 6-10 per session. This much Insight allows characters to improve vastly, rapidly.
Favors are another tricky beast. Since they can double as Insight or Luck, GMs should consider how many they want to hand out carefully. There are several options to limit yourself so that you don’t give away the farm:
- Grant Luck instead. This has less impact on character advancement, and still lets a player get what he wants by succeeding at a task in game.
- Grant “Limited Favors” which must be used that game session or be lost, so they can only be used for advancement if the player is buying it that session.
- Replace Insight awards with Favors, making the reward increased flexibility of what to do with that meta-game point.
On the other hand, sometimes the cool-factor the players bring out is just that awesome, and makes you not care about pacing anymore. That’s great! Go ahead and just award Favors flat out if you’re having that much fun, because you can probably trust your players to use them wisely at that point. After all, fun is the objective, so it is also the main criterion for whether something is working out.
In-Game Rewards
Every time you place a challenge in front of players, it should be rewarding to conquer. This can happen either because the challenge itself is something the players and/or their characters want to see done, or because beating it will give access to the desired rewards. When the challenge is defeating a hated rival or seducing a courted affection, completing the challenge itself is rewarding. Killing dragons may be rewarding in itself, but in that case the main reward is usually the vast sum of treasure to be gained by looting the beast’s lair.
Leading the players along a path of rewarding challenges is always best, if it can be managed. This can be assisted by very small things, like describing behavior quirks in NPC minions, henchmen, and villains. In a game I ran, players learned to distinguish zombies animated by a particular necromancer from others because only this particular necromancer’s creations’ parts would continue moving independently. The trick is to make the players remember, and thus make them care. It’s not rewarding to defeat the plots of “that whats his name guy who plants bombs,” but it’s hella rewarding to defeat “Pews Smith, the mad bomber we’ve been chasing since he blew up our car.”
It’s easier to make the challenges rewarding for themselves when there’s a mix of non-combat mental, social, and physical challenges in with the shooty/stabby/beating-y kind. It’s important to provide good context to make an encounter worth caring about, and that’s what these challenges are all about. When the game starts to take place in a featureless white void in players’ heads, the challenges are boring, and the rewards afterwards don’t feel well-earned.
Here’s a checklist to make sure you’re hitting the highlights:
- Have the PCs talked to any NPCs in the past 10 minutes?
- Have they talked to each other about in-character, non-tactical subjects?
- Have you described any sounds, smells, tastes, or textures in addition to the sights in the past 5 minutes?
- Do the NPCs in this scene have any interesting quirks?
- How about annoying ones?
- Do you know what the PCs are motivated by, have you dangled any hooks baited with that so far this session, are you currently reeling them in on such a line, and/or if not, are you talking with your players to change this?
If players and characters do a good job, eventually, there should be at least a temporary happy ending. This is the after-challenge reward: you get treasure to blow on ale and wenches. You get one or more wenches (or lusty lads depending on preference) enamored of you. You get declared prince of the kingdom and betrothed to the princess. Players are looking for this closure, and also for the benefits they’ll get out of it if they keep playing the character. So, at least half of your challenges should give something back when they are done well, especially those which come at the end of a story arc of some kind.
Not all challenges are like this - surviving a truly professional stealth assassination is its own reward, for example. But most have at least a small reward. Investigating the location indicated by the angle of the would-be assassin’s shot, for example, could reward the player with a clue where to look next.
