Rewards in RPGs

I strongly believe that the reward system of a role-playing game is one of its most important components. It gives players incentives to act in a certain way, and thus heavily influences what kind of play happens.

A related point is to what extent one could do the opposite, i.e. punish non-favored player behavior. Personally I think the carrot works much better than the stick in the context of RPGs. Probably for this reason, very few RPGs have “punishment” mechanisms, although some have vague GM advice to this effect. I won’t discuss this further in this post.

When analyzing RPG reward systems, there are two aspects to consider: What kinds of behavior are players rewarded for, and what can the rewards be used for. There is also a third “meta”-aspect of reward systems: I said that players are rewarded, but this is perhaps controversial. Some would say that it is the characters who are rewarded. Of course, rewarding a character does indirectly reward that character’s player. But on the other hand, some games have rewards for players that are not directly tied to their characters. However, let’s put aside this distinction for the time being and get back to the main story.

There is one category of “reward” systems that I will not include in the discussion, because they are not rewards so much as they are a “story progression” mechanism. I am thinking of things like the love attribute in My Life With Master, or the zeal and weariness attributes in Polaris. These games are designed for short-term play (a few sessions), and the mechanisms I mentioned are mainly used to drive the story towards its inevitable conclusion, not to “reward” players.

I am going to make some generalizations in the following. My point is not to criticize individual games, so please don’t take offense if I am missing some subtle point of your favorite game.

Reward Situations. What kind of actions are rewards given out for? I can think of five types of situations that produce rewards in RPGs.

1. Playing character motivations. For example, playing your beliefs in Burning Wheel, your passions in Mortal Coil, or your keys in The Shadow of Yesterday.
2. Playing character weaknesses. For example, getting into trouble because of an instinct in Burning Wheel, using a trait against yourself in Mouse Guard, or using an aspect against yourself in Spirit of the Century.
3. Succeeding at the GM’s plot. For example “quest XP” in D&D, or deeds point awards in Burning Wheel.
4. Conflicts/skill rolls. Many games have a reward for attempting to use skills or abilities, often regardless of whether the attempt succeeds or not.
5. Killing monsters. For example D&D, Rolemaster. I am not sure that this should be a category of its own. It does have some aspects of the other categories above (except #2). Note that it is quite different from #4, because only certain kinds of conflicts (fights) and skills (fighting skills) are awarded, and only on a certain outcome (the monster dies).

Reward Use. What are rewards used for? This is probably not as important as reward situation. The important thing here is that the rewards are sufficiently useful to players, so that they feel that it is worthwhile to engage in the reward-producing behavior.

1. Getting better at killing monsters. For example, D&D. While there are also skills that can be improved in this game, the main thrust is to get better at fighting.
2. Improving a skill or ability. This is very common in RPGs. Typically this is awarded for the same skill that was used to get the reward, i.e. you use a skill and get a “check” or something that denotes a chance of improvement to that same skill (e.g., Harnmaster, Burning Wheel, Mouse Guard, Call of Cthulhu). Some games have rewards that allow you to improve any skill(s) you like, for example The Shadow of Yesterday and level-based systems like D&D and Rolemaster.
3. One-time boost for die rolls. For example, artha points in Burning Wheel and Mouse Guard, power tokens in Mortal Coil, fate points in Spirit of the Century. These can be saved to be used later, for rolls that have nothing to do with the situation that produced the reward.
4. Out-of-character narration rights. This is a very interesting category, common to “narrative” style RPGs. This type of reward allows players to add facts to the game world without the use of their character. For example, fate points in Spirit of the Century, power tokens in Mortal Coil, and (maybe) trait checks in Mouse Guard.

So, this is a first cut at a categorization of reward mechanisms. I am sure it can be improved greatly. But anyway, with this or something like it in place, we can discuss each of the categories above and ask questions like “is it good/bad?”, “what kind of play does it encourage?”, “does it usually work smoothly in practice?”, and so on. I do not know the answers to these questions at this point, but I will certainly discuss this more in the future.

Another question is which things go well together, i.e. which reward situation should give which kind of reward use. Sometimes the two are surprisingly loosely connected. For example, in Mouse Guard, you get rewards for hurting yourself with traits, and you can use those rewards for some player spotlight time (I have categorized this above as a type of out-of-character narration rights, but I’m not sure this is entirely correct). Other games have a very “tight” reward-situation-use connection; in D&D you are rewarded for killing monsters, and you use the rewards to get better at killing monsters.

What is your experience of reward systems? How important is it, and how did reward systems of different games affect how you played? Let me know in your comments.

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