[Theory] Reward Systems -- A Look at Experience Points and Advancement

[adamdray]

I had a discussion with some FiranMUX players about reward systems in gaming. There's also a Story Games thread brilliantly titled "The reward cycle - who else doesn't give a shit?" that addresses some of the same topics. I had some thoughts about the purpose of reward systems in a lot of games and wanted to share

Comments

[selentic]

This is a great exploration of D&D's troublesome reward system

[adamdray]

Completing quests as the reward cycle works, sorta. The problem is that the rewards come too few and far between this way. I should have said something about this in the original post

[yeloson]

I always figured the key to rewarding with Quests was:

a) either breaking down rewards to check points

b) Layering -LOTS- of quests together, so that players are always finishing up something or other and getting points while progressing on the others.

[selentic]

That layering sounds like an idea well worth trying to work with!

I like checkpoints, and i think i've used something like that in the past with Iron Heroes.

[yeloson]

Layering tends to happen naturally in long campaign games provided the GM picks up on player goals -

"Oh, you're interested in the history of the Elves? Turns out, there's supposed to be an Elven Sage who lives on the Forgotten Mountain, but right nearby are a few monastic orders devoted to his teachings.. etc"

As players pick up multiple goals and events spawn new ones, an expert GM doesn't need to preplan much, just be ready to play with a few of the threads and the players can choose what they're interested in.

[selentic]

Pretty much! ;)

Before 4e came out i played around with re-building 3e to make it work with a different sort of advancement/reward system, but gave up when it became apparent that this basically means making a whole new game system...