thread: 2006-10-05 : Reward systems
On 2006-10-08, John Laviolette wrote:
I think "reward mechanic" is a very bad term. It should be spanked and sent to its room.
It's causing a lot of confusion. A reward system is not the same as character advancement, but "reward mechanic" seems to make people want to equate the two. Character advancement, like anything else in a game, can feed into the reward system, but it's not the reward system itself.
Case in point: OD&D/D&D1e experience points are part of character advancement, but are not the reward system. The reward cycle is the *delve* in these D&D games, and also The Fantasy Trip (and probably D&D2e/3e, but I haven't played these to verify.) You take your characters to a dungeon, you explore for as long as you are willing, then you haul your treasure back to town and advance your character. Cycle repeats, if desired, same dungeon and characters, or different ones of either. XPs can be directly tied to the reward cycle, if the DM only awards XPs when the party returns to town. Not all DMs do it that way, though; some dole out XPs after every combat, some do it at the end of a session. Almost no DMs allow character advancement in the middle of a delve, however.
