So, okay, Alexander has suggested some radical reward restructuring for Unsung (http://ivanhoeunbound.com/unsung.html) here and elsewhere (http://ivanhoeunbound.com/unsung3_ooc.txt).
He suggest in addition to getting Gift Points (GPs) for giving Gifts, that a player recieve a GP when successful with a Lapse check. Together with this, it costs a flat 2 GP to automatically succeed at a roll -- but if you use it for an auto-success for Responsibility, you still get 1 GP "back" for succeeding, so successful Responsibility checks are still "cheaper".
I think this suggestion is interesting, but it emphasizes trying to go "upward" a little TOO much. What do y'all think?
The other suggestion that came up was to keep the GP costs as they are, but give 1 GP to a character every time they FAIL a Responsibility check, or every time they Lapse. This gives the player an incentive to Lapse, beyond the attention he or she is already getting as the fallout of the Lapse.
I have to admit that I like this suggestion better, since it seems that some players feel like there's no incentive to accept a Gift.
(Oh, and as an aside, it amuses me to use the term "GP" for "Gift Point" as the GP are a sort of Currency, tho by no means the only one in operation in the game.)