Rewarding Player Behavior in Mechanics

Ironically, after my last post about rewarding good roleplaying, I noticed here and there other forms of "positive reinforcement" psychology being applied to role playing. These discussions brought, to the forefront of my thoughts, the necessity of rewarding your players for doing the things you want them to do.

This is often called a "reward cycle", and most often is applied to the in game experience or treasure players get to progress their characters in power. But one thing that I haven't thought enough about is how to reward the players by playing the game "well". I've created an "aces" system that acts much like the standard fate point, benny, or cypher XP. This is a good mechanic, as it rewards players that make the story more interesting by highlighting their failures and later letting them emphasize their awesomeness.

But there are little things we can do to the core mechanics to get the most "fun" out of each little action the players take. First, I decided to take out "disadvantage". Advantage rewards the players, but disadvantage only serves as a take-that punishment. Instead, I will choose to increase the difficulty ratings, which players are already expecting. This both simplifies my rule set and removes an unnecessary deterrent.

Second, we award advantage to players for good role playing and good combat tactics, but what about good exploration? First, what is good exploration? Is it finding all of the traps? Uncovering the whole map? Is it discovering all of the clues within a messy, chaotic scene? While story elements can always reward players for exploring, I want something more mechanically driven. So, we should make sure to give advantage to those players who do something specific: run their hands along the walls looking for switches, look under the rug for a trap door, or break all of the jars to see what's inside.

But, some might ask, if the players do these things specifically, why not just automatically give them what they're searching for? Because, I say, for the same reason we do not automatically give players who role play well an automatic success. Player skills should have an effect, but not be the only factor in play. Even if you are looking directly at something, your ability to perceive what is around you can affect whether or not you realize what you're looking at (i.e. a perception or search skill). Anyone who's been locked up in a mystery room knows how true this is!

Another reason is simply that in playing role playing games, we play to find out what happens. This means rolling the dice and letting fate decide, no matter how close or obvious the players think something is. It also gives opportunity for "exploration" type characters, such as investigators or scouts, who specialize in exploration type scenes. In this way, you don't also have to make the rogue character a DPS fighter.

Unfortunately, another simple thing you can do is use a "roll over" system and go big numbers. While obvious, I'm going to take the hit on this one and keep with my inverse dice mechanics. I balance this with an increased critical hit rate due to the higher chances of rolling a "1". Hopefully this and all of my other efforts offset the unfortunate setback of low success numbers.

What are some other simple rewards players get mechanical rewards for playing a game the way it's designers intended? What other mechanical bonuses have you seen in games? Remember, we want to avoid the complexity of +2 +2 +2 +2, but still give players little boosts here and their so they're not always counting on the next level up for a confidence boost.

Rewarding "Role-ing" while enjoying "Roll-ing"

Despite the experience of running D&D for over ten years, there are still simple things about the game that trip me up. This has been especially true as I adjust to running 5e. While new, shiny, and fun, some of the same types of questions pop up with every new campaign. Luckily, 5e also finally gives us some answers to help with these reoccurring issues.

One of the biggest questions digs up an age-old debate about "role-playing" vs. "roll-playing". The trouble with this dispute is that it's one of pure personal preference. On one end of the spectrum, there are those who are nearly improv thespians - those who talk in character, act in character, and believe that no roll should interfere with the social aspects of the game. On the other end are the hardcore crunchers, min/maxers, and system mastery folks who love digging deep into rules, math, and strategy.

Let's be very clear: there is nothing wrong with either of these extremes. RPGs are meant to be played exactly how the players who are playing them want them to be played. Both sides of this particular coin are not only fun, but rewarding in their own ways.

However, there can be tension when a group gets together and has varied opinions on how a game should be run. So my goal as a GM is to figure out which side people prefer, and lean in that direction using whatever rule set I'm presented with. My goal as a game designer is to figure out how to get the best of both worlds without the GM having to bend the rules (as much).

D&D 5e is an interesting case - it gives us a "charisma" stat that is more or less used for all social interaction. So when a character wants to haggle with an NPC to lower the price of an item, it technically doesn't matter what they say "in character" - they simply take the action and roll charisma to see if it worked. For those of us with less social aptitude, this is a wonderful mechanic that lets us roleplay as something we would not normally be able to. For those who are actually skilled in wordplay or bartering, it can be frustrating to have a clearly well thought-out statement be completely ignored in favor of a random die roll.

You can argue that if they were actually playing their character (let's assume with lower charisma), they wouldn't say such intelligent things. But much like it's hard not to meta-game monster information, it's hard not to try your best when interacting with NPCs. Worse, it's completely unrewarding for those who do try, which makes them try less. Eventually, all actual role-playing can be sucked right out of a game of D&D simply because of failed charisma-based rolls!

My goal as a game designer is to figure out how to get the best of both worlds without the GM having to bend the rules.

To help us solve this, 5e has given us a wonderful tool: the advantage. Advantage/disadvantage is mostly applied through character skills and abilities, but it's also supposed to be a very versatile tool for the GM to apply situational bonuses. If we use this rule, and award advantage on charisma rolls to players that role-play well, this keeps everyone happy (in theory)!

• The cruncher who plays a bard can still take an ability or feat to give them natural advantages on such rolls, without having to be actually good with their words.
• The thespian who doesn't have the best charisma, but comes up with an awesome argument or funny joke can be granted advantage on their roll. Even if they end up failing, they at least were acknowledged for their effort, and that's often all they need to keep it up.

When everyone else is happy, the GM's happy, and they did it all both without ignoring roll-play, and encouraging good role-playing.

For Hostargo, I was already planning on using advantage/disadvantage as a core mechanic. It's simply too good and too powerful not to. The trick is just explaining exactly when the GM should apply adv/dis vs. raising or lowering the difficulty of a given task...

Action Economy Magic

Work continues on the Animancer class. The next step was deciding what type of magic system to use. To do this, we need to keep in mind our main goal for the Animancer, which was to give the players a wide array of tools to use during play.

First, I decided to piggy back off of the spell and ritual idea from Dungeons & Dragons. "Spells" in this case being something you can cast immediately (most importantly during "action" scenes, such as combat), and "Rituals" being something that takes more time. Second, because of how the Animancer gathers "memory" to use magic, I decided on an action-point based economy for spells. Third, I really like the sword-and-sorcery version of rituals, where in order to cast crazy powerful magic, you need certain ingredients, such as pixie dust, the stars aligning, or blood sacrifice.

For magic in general, I don't like the idea of using up resources, like D&D. I prefer games that keep the action rocking, like Shadowrun. So for each "action" spent during the turn, an Animancer can gather memory and gain a "Spell Point" (SP). Then at any time, the animancer can release his memory and turn it into a spell, spending all SP to have some effect. The difficulty of casting the spell will be directly based on the SP gathered, but the effects-per-SP should be exponential, to balance the time spent gathering memory, and the difficulty of casting the spell.

For rituals, I went the way of D&D and said that most minor rituals can be cast in just a few minutes with only a light ingredient or two. But, I will also be including an array of more complex rituals that require much more time and ingredients. The effects of these rituals, of course, will be far greater as well.

When animancers "level up", they'll be able to choose different areas of study, which will unlock new spells that they can perform. There's no spell levels, so the players have the option of unlocking the spells they want earlier.

As always, thanks for reading, and if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, I love hearing them!