Rewarding invention

[Mandacaru]

I feel I need to reward players who come up with something off-the-wall, brilliant, mythical or downright daft, according to my interpretation of Wushu-style gaming - the more dramatic the more likely to succeed. I am running this online, PbEM, and I think I can do it as, when a player comes up with something special, they propose a bonus and I work on that as a basis.

Now, I feel sufficient familiarity, despite never having met any but one of them, with my players, that I think this will work on trust. In fact, I am sure of that aspect but wonder about the mechanic? You know you award a +10 as something is so brilliant it just has to have that advantage..?

So, is there anything out there better than a loose mechanic such as this, assuming the trust...?

Cheers,

Sam.

[Vaxalon]

One of the ways that other systems have used to ensure fairness is to make that bonus awarded by the other players.

[Mr Darran Sims]

So, is there anything out there better than a loose mechanic such as this, assuming the trust...?

Yes, Hero Points.
Give them one or very rarely two.

They can then keep the HP for improvements later or burn the HP now on the contest they are in.

[Mandacaru]

Thanks for the suggestions.
Voting would perhaps work FTF, but not for a PbEM.
Then, I already distribute a lot of heropoints, Darran. However, this does make me think that a bump for a particularly wonderful idea would be good. But then, that's just a +20 bonus. But then again, perhaps the very occasional bump as reward would be preferable to dishing out the odd +5.
Hmmm....

[Lamorak33]

Hi

Very well spotted! A very noticeable omission from a very narratavist friendly system. Other narrative games, such as Sorcerer give you one bonus die. I suggest that you just give a bonus to the player +5 to +20 for cool and inventive stuff. I'd be quite free with them as well, as it encourages the sort of play you  want. I had this discussion before with someone and they said that it punishes the inarticulate. I don't really subscribe to that view myself.

What I do like Darran's suggestion is that if you have a proactive, HP burning player is award additional HP to them as experience.

Regards
Rob

[Bryan_T]

A very noticeable omission from a very narratavist friendly system. Other narrative games, such as Sorcerer give you one bonus die. I suggest that you just give a bonus to the player +5 to +20 for cool and inventive stuff.

Well, HQ already has provisions for ad-hoc modifiers, by narrator discretion.  It is a very small extension to decide to give out modifiers more based on how cool the idea is than based on tactical soundness.  In other words to move it from a simulationist reward to a narrative reward.  Ergo, better reward for swinging from the chandelier than for knocking a table on its side to gain partial cover.

--Bryan

[Christopher Weeks]

What if any player could give any other player, at any time, as often as they want, using whatever criteria they value, a +5?  Is there any downside?

Mike!  Since I play in your HQ game and no other, why wouldn't you do this?

[Lamorak33]

A very noticeable omission from a very narratavist friendly system. Other narrative games, such as Sorcerer give you one bonus die. I suggest that you just give a bonus to the player +5 to +20 for cool and inventive stuff.

Well, HQ already has provisions for ad-hoc modifiers, by narrator discretion.  It is a very small extension to decide to give out modifiers more based on how cool the idea is than based on tactical soundness.  In other words to move it from a simulationist reward to a narrative reward.  Ergo, better reward for swinging from the chandelier than for knocking a table on its side to gain partial cover.

--Bryan

Hi Bryan

Agreed. I thought there was a bit in the rules for giving bonuses for cool stuff , so I had a look. No. Just for flanking attacks, nice clothes, You've had time to prepare - that sort of thing.

However, your use of the word simulationist I would say was with a small 's' rather than a large 'S' in this case. Most rpg's played in whatever Creative Agenda mode will allow for modifiers to any given die roll.

Giving a bonus for the player engaging in good roleplaying is Narratavist technique.

Rewarding a player for doing 'what the character would do' (think Pendragon traits) is Simulationist technique.

A Gamist reward is providing an opportunity for the player to step on up with his character and address a given challenge.

But to return to your point, I think both of your examples show good role playing so may get similar bonuses in my game! :^ )

Regards
Rob

[Mike Holmes]

What if any player could give any other player, at any time, as often as they want, using whatever criteria they value, a +5?  Is there any downside?

Mike!  Since I play in your HQ game and no other, why wouldn't you do this?

Fred has long pined for something like Fan Mail for HQ. And I see the point. That said, you guys don't seem really to need much more in the way of incentives to do cool stuff.

That is, I'm sorta loathe to mess with the system when it's already performing as well as it is. I'm not a "if it ain't broke" sort of person - I meddle with unbroken things a lot. It's just that I'm not particularly seeing what this will do that the cheers from the OOC channel don't already do. Other than create more victories on average. That is, I can see almost every character in every situation in our game getting a +5 from somebody in the room. If these stacked, I think that soon we'd see no failures.

Actually, if we were to do this, I'd prefer to give out HP. Because then the player retains his control over whether or not he wants to alter victory in certain cases. Using something like the Fan Mail system, what I'd do is to give out a pool of HP to each player to distribute as they see fit. Being limited, then players have an incentive not to reward willy-nilly, but to put some thought into it.

The potential downside of this is that only players who have lots of screen time in any session will get lots of HP. In PTA, this is monitored by the scene creation rules to some extent. I often unfortunately have to leave some player with only a small part in one scene in some sessions. Meaning that they'd get less reward. I'd worry that this might steamroll into not wanting to play. Not that the current method really incentivizes playing - just that an imbalance might seem prejudicial. "Oh, they don't like my play - maybe I'll go play elsewhere."

Not a huge downside, I'll admit, but...also it might be true that if I had such a measure to watch that I'd better monitor spotlight time. I dunno, tho, that sounds dubious.

If I did do Fan Mail HP distribution, I'd probably get rid of the normal distribution entirely, and have something like that rate instead going to refresh HP pools for distribution. That is, instead of getting 4HP at the end of a session, you'd get 4HP at the beginning, to add to your pool of HP available for you to hand out. 

I've considered several other schemes for HP distribution as well. Goal pursuit rewards somewhat like TSOY Keys, for instance. They always somehow seem a tad hinkey, and are targetted at behaviors that the game already produces in any case. It seems to me that the refresh on HP is simply a matter of feuling the internal system that already tends to produce the play that I'm looking for.

Still, I might try out the Fan Mailish idea for a while and see what happens with it.


Anyhow, I actually do subtly use the rules to reward creative players in the way that matches what Bryan was saying. Yes, Rob, the examples given are all for your typically simmy things like flanking attacks. Bryan did say it was a tiny stretch to use the rules this way. Basically in giving the narrator the authority to make such decisions, it's simply a question of him changing his criteria slightly from what the book suggests.

What might interest people is that what I reward is actually kinda creative simminess. That is, I reward players creating the details of situational things that help their characters. For instance, if they say that they're going to find a highly spiritual grove in which to try to bind a spirit, I'll give a bonus for that, ala the ritual bonuses. Or if a player describes a place as having good acoustics, I might give them a bonus to their oratory. In this way, I encourage players to take some of the burden off of myself to create setting details. Which has other interesting side effects.

No, I don't reward cool sounding descriptions of character actions with bonuses unless it also creates some detail like this. Looking cool is it's own reward, IMO. If I had dull players, maybe I'd reconsider. <shrug>

Mike

[Vaxalon]

Some of the games I've been in have had "quotes" pages... most notably Amber games.

Being "Immortalized" on the web for saying or doing something cool or noteworthy is a benefit that has no mechanical implications but is definitely a reward.

Given all the cool stuff that has come out of Mike's game, this might be the way to recognize them without giving extra HP for them.

[Mike Holmes]

While that's a fun idea, Fred, it doesn't address the issues that I have, or for this thread. For the thread, the question is how to reward invention...I suppose that players could have their inventions posted for all to see in a prominent space.

But my particular problem is that I'd prefer to have a less arbitrary way of distributing HP to the players than I have now. That is, the appeal for me of the Fan Mail system is that it's self-monitoring, and I don't have to feel guilt about the rate of HP I'm giving out per session being just a stab in the dark at what I think makes sense. You'll note that I've varied it, somewhat, and sorta base it on how much play happens. But I really have no rhyme or reason to it. And that bugs me mightily.

To avoid hijacking this thread, I'm moving this part of the discussion here: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=17638.0

Mike