What's your favourite system for rewarding and advancing characters in a game?  This could be something classic like XP for D&D, Karma for Marvel Superheroes, or something more modern.

What sort of things do players get rewarded for in these games?  Combat and Treasure?  Roleplaying?  Accomplishing mission objectives?  Something else?

What effect do these rewards have on the characters?  Level advancement?  Skill advancement?  Hero Points to use in future adventures?

If you like a few different systems equally, what specific parts do you like most from each system?

Quote from: StuartWhat effect do these rewards have on the characters?  Level advancement?  Skill advancement?  Hero Points to use in future adventures?

Does it have to be stuff for the character, or are you also interested in systems where the reward is for the player?

Quote from: TonyLBDoes it have to be stuff for the character, or are you also interested in systems where the reward is for the player?

I'm interested in both what gets rewarded, as well as the reward itself.  I was thinking in terms of rewards for the characters... but I think rewards for the player could be just as interesting.  What did you have in mind?

In the past year I have GMed GURPS, Fate and RuneQuest. RQ doesn't use any kind of xp so "no reward" is the answer. For GURPS and RQ I used much the same rewards,

• Player shows up ready for action: Player showed up, on time, with character sheet, dice, pencil and so on.
  
• Munchies: Player brings anything consumable to the game, whether food, drink, papers, etc. Applies also to hosting the game at the player's place.
  
• Acting: For good roleplaying of the character's personality; particularly good roleplaying may give a double bonus. "Good acting" means, "we can tell what traits your character has without looking at their character sheet."
  
• Bravery: For self-sacrifice of character above and beyond the call of duty. This can also mean avoiding a combat - it's something which is personally very confronting for a character.
  
• Constructive: For actions or ideas which significantly helped the mission to completion, or at least kept things moving.
  
• Journal: player writes at least a one-page journal of the game session, and/or makes an illustration of its events.

I used to have negative awards for particularly bad examples of each, but found these to be counter-productive and to make things nasty. So it's just 0-5, and you could only get 0 if you didn't show up! In practice the minimum has been 3, and average 5; some people got double awards for really good examples.

The aim was to have awards be about half for what players do, and half for what their characters do. So if you're not a genius roleplayer and tactician but show up, bring munchies, host the game and are generally friendly and nice then you get to advance your character anyway.

What do they spend their xp on? Well, GURPS has the "Character Points" spent on skills, advantages, easing away disadvantages, etc. Because some of the players wanted things cinematic and others realistic, I left the level of realism in individual players' hands - you could spend a Character Point as a "Hero Point", to turn a failure into a success, halve any wound after a combat, bring some new element into the game - "hey, isn't that guard my long-lost cousin?" and so on.

Fate was much the same in spending of the xp.

PTA's fanmail is a straightforward system that encourages players to reward each other for whatever makes the game entertaining.  This has the benefit of self-correcting to whatever the group manages to zero in on ... rewarding comedy in a comic game, and tragedy in a tragic one.  It's the most straightforward and uninflected version of "Let me say how cool that was with this poker chip!" and has inspired numerous applications in other systems.

Both TSoY's Keys and Nobilis's Restrictions do a good job of rewarding the players for gleefully embracing suffering and adversity (and, indeed, for seeking them out).  I like Keys slightly better simply because they also have an in-built system for evolving the character, in a way that Nobilis fails to provide.

Those are the two that leap to mind as being more about awarding player action than character action.  I mean ... it's all player action, even if it's only the players action in channelling the character, but these systems are explicit about singling out the ways that the player contributes and rewarding those (in order to see more of them!)

Quote from: TonyLBBoth TSoY's Keys and Nobilis's Restrictions do a good job of rewarding the players for gleefully embracing suffering and adversity (and, indeed, for seeking them out).  I like Keys slightly better simply because they also have an in-built system for evolving the character, in a way that Nobilis fails to provide.

Actual character advancement in Nobilis takes place through somewhat traditional XP (or character points), of course, although the players together may choose to forgo personal benefits from a scenario in return for improving their realm in some way. It's also in keeping with the setting that a character might never "evolve" in the terms of the mechanics, and remain the same for thousands of years.

Still, I'm in the habit of awarding additional "dedicated" CPs for successfully pursuing specific goals during play. This bonus point can only be spent on whatever purpose the player has decided beforehand.

For traditional play, I like goal-oriented rewards. XP for treasure or completing the adventure I enjoy more than XP for killing monsters or roleplaying. I do think people should get something in a traditional game for doing well in-scene, but I also think the big rewards are more appropriately provided for tackling the big picture/problems of the scenario. If the win is to steal the 10,000 gp gem from the idol, you might fight the balrog for another 1000 xp to get there, but you might also use lateral thinking to avoid the balrog and get the gem with less risk to your character.

I think the larger goal-oriented reward puts a stronger focus on strategic thought (how do we handle this dungeon/mission/scenario as a whole?), which is important, because a lot of gaming time will be spent on the tactics (how do we handle this scene/situation/encounter?) regardless. In traditional play I like to open up that extra dimension a lot.

The closest thing to a favorite I had was the karma system from marvel [faserip].  In that, you were rewarded for stopping criminals (more if you also have them arrested), defeating villains, and roleplaying.  You lost karma by causing damage, being defeating in combat, ignoring crime, killing people, or letting people die.  The penalties were harsh.  Karma could be used for advancement of stats, resources, popularity, powers, talents, and contacts, but I don't think we ever earned enough to advance.  Mostly, karma was used to modify your rolls and doing feats.

I intend on using something like the karma system, but adapted to my setting and with character advancement in mind.

I've never really found a reward mechanic that motivates me much.  Even in D&D, where the cycle of kill things to get better at killing things is often held up as a paragon -- I find myself being "in the zone" and doing my tactical planning and such without any sort of mental reference to the XP I'm going to get at the end and the new Kool Powerz my character will get as a result.  I pretty much play in the moment.  And for me, the reward mechanic is not part of the moment but rather something that comes afterward.

Thats because the idea that people play D&D because they like to "kill things and take their stuff" is false.

The reward is obviously levelling up through granted XP, but the point of levelling up (amongst others, always subordinate to this one thing) is to make the game more interesting.  You go from fighting goblins and giant rats to taking on demon lords and behold swarms. Characters don't actually accumulate much wealth, they accumulate gear and powers.

The gear and powers are used to provide multiple options and multiple facets to the character. Players are building up their characters throughout the game. Everytime they level up, it's like they are adding things to their character construction. The character sheet is almost like a bingo card; players are constantly adding in cool little bits, taking ownership of those bits, and incorporating them into the high-level tactical decision involved in actually playing the character.

To illustrate:

adding in cool little bits (discovery)

GM: "Amongst the things scattered in the ghoul's hoard, you find a 2nd level pearl of power.."
Player: "Whoa, I grab that and put it in my pack.. what's that do?"

taking ownership of those bits (familiarity)
Player: "Well, I only have one 2nd level spell slot, but I can use my pearl of power to recall a spell. So it's kinda like I have two slots of the same spell!"

incorporating them into the high-level tactical decision (mastery)
Player: "Ok, we need two guys to sneak in invisibly but I only have one invisibility spell. How about this? I cast invisible on you, and then recall that spell with my pearl. Then I cast it again on myself. Does that sound like a plan? alright! Let's go."

THAT is the reward system of D&D.

 In the meantime, there's a notional storyline and a series of tactical battles that are fun in themselves.

Quote from: Lee ShortI've never really found a reward mechanic that motivates me much.  [...] I pretty much play in the moment.  And for me, the reward mechanic is not part of the moment but rather something that comes afterward.

I think that there are two things that contribute to the way the discussion of reward mechanism are framed.

First, a lot of the people who discuss reward mechanisms as being important seem to stress meta-game mechanics and thus meta-game play.  In other words, the assumption is that players aren't deeply focused on what's going on inside the "shared imaginary space" or game world but are playing a game as a player deliberately deciding what to do with considerations both inside and outside of the game world.  Thus they assume that the player needs to be motivated.

Second. a lot of people who discuss reward mechanisms as being important seem to stress outcomes and stakes, which places the focus on results, not the moment.  I believe that many people actually play for the moment, not the results. For a player playing in the moment, considerations outside of the moment might not even be present.

What this all means is that for players who play the game from a different perspective, the whole emphasis might seem a bit useless, if not strange.

Quote from: StuartWhat's your favourite system for rewarding and advancing characters in a game?  This could be something classic like XP for D&D, Karma for Marvel Superheroes, or something more modern.

What sort of things do players get rewarded for in these games?  Combat and Treasure?  Roleplaying?  Accomplishing mission objectives?  Something else?

What effect do these rewards have on the characters?  Level advancement?  Skill advancement?  Hero Points to use in future adventures?

If you like a few different systems equally, what specific parts do you like most from each system?

My group's preferred form of advancing characters (which we've used in our homebrews and Fudge, where we could have based experience on anything we wanted) is a flat experience reward for everyone in the session (everyone gets the same experience) based on how long and interesting the session was (usually minor variance) and then toss out "good idea points" every now and then to acknowledge cool ideas that players come up with during games.  In our homebrew-Fudge hybrid, we used "good idea points" as a sort of lesser Fudge point.  They were good for a +1 to a roll and you could only use one per roll.

Quote from: Abyssal MawTHAT is the reward system of D&D.

I think you're missing one little thing in your example:

Peer Recognition
Sweet dude, that's an awesome move!  Let's kick ass!

Woof! *drool*

Sincerely,

- Pavlov's dogs

Quote from: LostSoulI think you're missing one little thing in your example:

Peer Recognition
Sweet dude, that's an awesome move!  Let's kick ass!

Oh definitely. Peer recognition is a big part of it as well.

There's probably more parts, some of them really subtle.

My point is, it's not "to kill monsters and take their stufff in order to become more powerful and kill more monsters to take their stuff." That's a popular but ridiculous assertion, and I suspect that many people trying to advance that notion are only doing so because they want to insult rather than understand.

It's a lot more complex than that.