Reward Systems in LRP

[Simon Marks]

Ok, after taking some time to think abouty it, I'm going to punt this one out to the field.

In Ron's article "GNS and other matters of roleplay theory", he said

Reward systems have been very deeply researched by me, but they await a rigorous discussion, as the baseline concepts of GNS, Stance, and the components of Currency must all be integrated. Some of the issues include:

What is being rewarded? Attendance? Role-playing per se? Player actions? Outcomes of conflicts? In-game moments?
Who is being rewarded, the player or the character?
Are reward systems necessary? At what scopes or time-frames of play are they more or less important?
If we are talking about character improvement, how does it proceed? Linearly or exponentially? If exponentially, is the exponent positive or negative?
Do changes in the values and aspects of the character affect the exchange rate of Currency itself?
[/list:u]

Now, unfortunately I am unable to track down a concise dissection of reward systems (pointers would be nice), but we get into the rather unusual issue of L(a)RP reward systems.

A lot (and in some cases, almost all) of the action in LRP systems takes place outside the view of the 'refs' - or more specifically those who administer the reward system.

I am looking at the reward system generally, and in LRP in specifics because in LRP the 'organisers' - the Game Master in this system - is remote from the actual action of the players most of the time.

It is a problem that MUD's often had, if a Mod didn't see it - it may not have really happened.

It seems to me that there are quantifiably three types of reward possible for the character or player.

1) Efficency Rewards
Your character is better at manipulating the world (better spells, more money etc.)
2) Social Rewards
We state that you (the player) are cool and groovy
3) Involvement Rewards
Kickers and Bangs, this style of reward is us (the organisers) sending the world to your door.

These are the only reward systems that I can identify.

At this point, I suppose, I think a discussion about "Are these a good statement of what reward systems need to be in place" - as in, "What have I missed?"

And from there on the question arises "How can I (we) distribute the rewards both fairly and remotely?"

Simon Marks

[Andrew Morris]

"Are these a good statement of what reward systems need to be in place" - as in, "What have I missed?"

Sounds like that about covers it. I don't know that all of them need to be in place, but they do cover the range of rewards.

And from there on the question arises "How can I (we) distribute the rewards both fairly and remotely?"

You can't. Or at least, you can't be sure that you will. Why not try putting it in the hands of the players? To get efficiency rewards, do X in order to get Y. Furnish proof of X, and here's your Y. Social rewards pretty much have to come organically, otherwise they're meaningless. Involvement rewards could also come from the players. You want a plotline about your character? Write up a summary, and hand it in.

That's just an idea. It might or might not work in a particular case, however. LARPs range tremendously in size (from, say, three people to thousands) and flavor (anything from pregen mystery games that take place in a small closed room to huge boffer-combat style games), so what works in one might not work in another.

[Albert of Feh]

I have used peer-driven rewards to good effect. In a 15-person Kabuki-themed larp which I ran about a month ago, any player could nominate any other player present for an Honor reward or penalty based on recent actions or behavior. A quick vote was then taken and an Honor point given to the nominee if a majority of players witnessing the event ruled so.

This mechanic had the effect of pressuring players to have their characters act in an Honorable fashion (where the concept of 'Honor' was very particularly defined for the setting), encouraged players to do interesting and cool things in front of other players (in hopes of getting an Honor award), and required absolutely no GM oversight or participation.

Admittedly, it did nothing to ensure that things were at all 'fair', but that was actually a feature, not a bug, given the nature of Honor in this particular game. Also, the players involved are the type who almost reflexively choose not to exploit what they would see as an unfair loophole in the rules.

[Callan S.]

There seems to be a bit of a preconception here, in that only the GM is interested in keeping the game fair.

Alberts example shows that everybody is interested in keeping the game fair.

I think rewards for remote LARPing should require a set number of witnesses (three or four). Not to police anyone or stop any cheating, but to ensure the players attempted contribution to the SIS will indeed be absorbed into the SIS. Any game reward is essentially about giving a reward for the right sort of contribution to the SIS. But beyond rewarding it, you need to make sure the act actually is seen to be absorbed. That takes witnesses.

[Simon Marks]

Callan, thats a powerful idea - but one that runs counter to a Sim premise.

If a tree falls in the wood, then it makes no odds (in a sim sense) how many people see it - it still falls.

However, I am also aware that there is the Holy Grail of Sim/Gamism - where you can Game effectivly within a Sim premise (maybe the opposite of El Dorado?)

I'm very tempted to say that in Remote Reward systems that 'realistic rewards' for actions is impossible - because the person giving the reward isn't there when the action happens.

Example - in Call of Cuthulu, skill advancement may happen when you use a skill successfully. This happens within the view of the Referee - or if it doesn't then it implies a level of trust amongst the participants unlikely in any event/game with a large number of participants.

Which leads to 'an action is only valid when percieved by the Ref(s)' - what you are simply doing Callan is changing that to 'an action is only valid when percieved by other players'.

But one of the strengths of LRP is that I can walk in, move a glass, and walk out without the needing to tell anyone else. Maybe "It's important if we see it" is a retrograde step.

[Albert of Feh]

In my experience, the most important, interesting, and powerful contributions that a given player makes to the SIS in a larp are his interactions with the other players. Sure, the player can move a glass when nobody's around, but why does anyone care? I can think of two possibilities:

1) The movement of a glass is a signal to another player. Chances are good that this will result in inter-player interaction potentially suitable for reward.

2) The movement of a glass is part of some larger puzzle or sequence of required actions that the player is required to follow. If anything is rewarded in this instance, it can be done on completion, which will again almost certainly involve interaction with some other player of GM.

Simon, my question to you is this: What things can a player do that are worth rewarding that do not at some level result in inter-player/GM interaction sufficient to address the issue of an appropriate reward?

I suppose you could go do things in total isolation from the other players to increase your skills ("I go to the gym a few towns away and lift weights for four hours"). I think that most players would probably contact a ref in that sort of situation. I'm a bit leery of a reward system that encourages players to essentially leave the SIS to increase their in-game effectiveness, no matter how 'realistic' it might be.

[Andrew Morris]

Albert, I'll offer an example of something that had a significant effect on a game that did not involve any interaction. This was in one of those boffer-combat fantasy LARPs. There was a particularly large and difficult-to-hide item that was wanted by just about everyone in the game, which vanished one night. A player had managed to steal it without being seen. Since he couldn't carry the item around with him, he actually buried the item in a chest in the middle of the woods. Then he never mentioned the item to anyone. People tore the place apart looking for it, and a small war broke out over it. Then, when someone was offering a huge reward for the item, he went back, dug it up, and collected his reward.

Sure, that's a bit more involved than moving a cup, but the fact that physical space and props often overlap the SIS in a LARP means that significant actions can occur without interaction.

[Albert of Feh]

Okay, granted that significant contributions that aren't directly interaction can occur.

From the perspective of remote rewards, though, the actual reward the player received (the money for 'finding' the item) was a result of the interaction that resulted from that isolated action.

[Harlequin]

My experience of LARP systems has been that they massively divide into two categories: pregenerated characters, or not.  The two groups are almost not even the same beast, in terms of the mechanics.

Paradoxically, one of the two finds it very easy to figure out what to reward and when.  The other finds it easy to give meaningful rewards.  Each one's weakness is the other's strength.

LARPs with pregenerated characters have several ways to reward behaviour.  Most of these are goal-oriented rewards; succeed at doing X in game, and the reward is Y.  In many cases Y is simply the continued play of the game or the character; I'm looking at Amor Fati here as an extreme example.  But when the GM can see all the character sheets ahead of time and arrange things on them to suit this end, you don't need to rely on random (possibly self-interested) witnesses, the role of witnessing goals of people you're interacting with is implicit in your pariticpation in their characters' plots.

Unfortunately, many of these games are one-shots, and whether or not they are, they suffer from comparatively low player-investment in the characters, and from the degree to which everyone acknowledges that the GMs need to be able to set character effectiveness as they need to, in order for the structure to work.  Thus although it's easy to find things to reward, effectiveness rewards are harder to implement and less meaningful.  Likewise to a lesser degree for involvement rewards.  Social rewards are pretty much all you've got, here, and they're the hardest of the three to structure robustly.

To fix this up, what you would need to work on is ways to make the rewards (of whatever type) meaningful and valued.  Some settings and systems will lend themselves better to this than others.

On the flip side, LARPs with player-generated characters have it easy in providing meaningful effectiveness and involvement rewards, but have a hell of a time detecting when they're appropriate to bestow.  This is where Callan's post, and some more formal methodologies (I've seen some things sort of akin to TSoY's Gift of Dice, for instance), come in.  They all run up against the low-trust environment that is the average LARP; it's much, much harder to design for a low-trust environment.  It can be done; in fact, one of my friends wrote his master's dissertation in Philosophy on "The role of detection in rule enforcement," generalizing it out to things like law but working primarily off his experience in designing LARP.  But it adds a whole layer of additional requirements to the design.

If it is down this road that the problems lie, the first thing I'd suggest is to read over Tom's thesis linked above.  It's mostly not about reward systems per se, but those could easily be considered a subset of what he's talking about.  Then play around with various schemes according to his central premise, in that the observer must have a positive incentive to fulfill his function in the manner the designer needs, and a negative incentive to do otherwise.  If the rule can't have this property, then it's not appropriate for a GM-poor LARP environment.

So I guess my point would be that this question, how do you do LARP reward systems, breaks into two questions depending on the kind of LARP.  Which one did you have in mind, Simon?

- Eric

[Andrew Morris]

Good points, Albert and Eric.

Also, the size of the player group can affect this sort of thing.

[Callan S.]

Callan, thats a powerful idea - but one that runs counter to a Sim premise.

If a tree falls in the wood, then it makes no odds (in a sim sense) how many people see it - it still falls.

Hi Simon,

That's actually a big problem sim has...denial that your playing a game. Sure, the tree should fall in the woods. But if you talk to someone who didn't play in your game when that was said to happen, will he recount that event to you? No.

It didn't fall for him, because this is a game and games need witnesses.

I'm very tempted to say that in Remote Reward systems that 'realistic rewards' for actions is impossible - because the person giving the reward isn't there when the action happens.

Example - in Call of Cuthulu, skill advancement may happen when you use a skill successfully. This happens within the view of the Referee - or if it doesn't then it implies a level of trust amongst the participants unlikely in any event/game with a large number of participants.

Which leads to 'an action is only valid when percieved by the Ref(s)' - what you are simply doing Callan is changing that to 'an action is only valid when percieved by other players'.

Emphasis mine.
Remember the big model. It doesn't differentiate between player and GM...everyones a player. A GM is just a player with GM duties. In my example, the other witness players take on GM duties.

That said, that trust issue is a byproduct of trying to centralise GM duties in just a few, set individuals. If you tried to spread out GM duties, you'd soon find who wont forfil such duties and you could then weed them out. You can have that level of trust...it's just that you'll never get it unless you spread GM duties and weed out those who wont take them on. If that seems like a bad thing to do, check out the five geek fallacies, especially the 'Ostracizers Are Evil' one.

But one of the strengths of LRP is that I can walk in, move a glass, and walk out without the needing to tell anyone else. Maybe "It's important if we see it" is a retrograde step.

If the moved glass doesn't end up effecting the game at all, then it was a waste of energy to move it. If it does effect the game, it will have effect someone else in the game and thus someone will have witnessed its effect.

Moving a glass because it might effect the game, is worth doing. But you'd agree, if it doesn't end up being witnessed, it was a waste of energy to do so?

[J. Tuomas Harviainen]

If the moved glass doesn't end up effecting the game at all, then it was a waste of energy to move it. If it does effect the game, it will have effect someone else in the game and thus someone will have witnessed its effect.

Moving a glass because it might effect the game, is worth doing. But you'd agree, if it doesn't end up being witnessed, it was a waste of energy to do so?

Not necessarily so.  For certain kinds of players (read: the "immersion" issue rears its head again here...) the moving of a glass might be an extension of simply being in character. It's an autotelic expression of a character habit.  "I'm playing (or being) Michael, and he has a habit of rearranging small things. Thus it is pleasurable for me to act out that habit of his, witnesses or not."

But that's going towards directions not part of the original topic...

-Jiituomas

[Simon Marks]

On the flip side, LARPs with player-generated characters have it easy in providing meaningful effectiveness and involvement rewards, but have a hell of a time detecting when they're appropriate to bestow.  This is where Callan's post, and some more formal methodologies (I've seen some things sort of akin to TSoY's Gift of Dice, for instance), come in.  They all run up against the low-trust environment that is the average LARP; it's much, much harder to design for a low-trust environment.  It can be done; in fact, one of my friends wrote his master's dissertation in Philosophy on "The role of detection in rule enforcement," generalizing it out to things like law but working primarily off his experience in designing LARP.  But it adds a whole layer of additional requirements to the design.

If it is down this road that the problems lie, the first thing I'd suggest is to read over Tom's thesis linked above.  It's mostly not about reward systems per se, but those could easily be considered a subset of what he's talking about.  Then play around with various schemes according to his central premise, in that the observer must have a positive incentive to fulfill his function in the manner the designer needs, and a negative incentive to do otherwise.  If the rule can't have this property, then it's not appropriate for a GM-poor LARP environment.

So I guess my point would be that this question, how do you do LARP reward systems, breaks into two questions depending on the kind of LARP.  Which one did you have in mind, Simon?

- Eric

The fact that I am about to start reading Tom's Thesis should indicate that it's the latter.

Detection of apropriate times to bestow rewards is what I am looking at - I'll read Tom's thesis and come back later.

Callan - The biggest single issue with the 'weeding out' of people who can't be trusted to distribute rewards is finding them.

Afterall, who decides if they can't be trusted? Me?

There is only one of me, and if (for example) there are 300-3,000 players in a single event then I can't ever hope to find them...

So, I would need people to watch the players and remove rights to attend/distribute rewards from other participants - we may as well call them Referees at that point....

Simon

[M. J. Young]

It seems to me that there are quantifiably three types of reward possible for the character or player.

1) Efficency Rewards
Your character is better at manipulating the world (better spells, more money etc.)
2) Social Rewards
We state that you (the player) are cool and groovy
3) Involvement Rewards
Kickers and Bangs, this style of reward is us (the organisers) sending the world to your door.

These are the only reward systems that I can identify.

I'm not sure whether the word "quantifiably" in this section has some meaning that impacts what I'm about to say, but I don't think these are the only kinds of rewards a player can get.

[meandering story]

I recently discovered that a game called Spider Solitaire exists on one of the computers in the other room. It took me a couple tries to figure out the object of the game and how the rules worked, but now when I'm out there by myself or not interacting with others I will often play the game. I'm not really killing time. I'm playing it because I enjoy the challenge. No one watches me play, no one cares that I play (except my wife, who wishes I'd do something more constructive), and no one knows whether I play the game well. I still enjoy it.

The reward that I get from play in Spider Solitaire is that it allows me to meet my own personal gamist agendum, to prove to myself that I can beat this game. That is, I play it because it is fun, in one of the ways I have fun.

[/meandering story]

When we designed Multiverser, we didn't include a reward system. I'm not sure we even thought about it. We devised a rather simulationist method for characters to improve themselves through practice and use of their abilities, and having done that we saw no other practical need for experience points or similar rewards.

People play the game because they have fun playing it.

In fact, because the game doesn't have a rewards system built into it, players individually can drift the game in the direction they want to go--gamist, simulationist, narrativist--to a significant degree. They are rewarded by being able to do the kinds of things they want to do in a game. The fun of play is its own reward.

I've long maintained that a "reward system" either supports this or opposes it. That is, you can give a player a reward for having fun, and it's icing on the cake, or you can give a player a reward for doing what you want him to do instead of having fun, and it's "a stupid game". Note that the same reward system will be icing for some and stupid for others, because people play for different kinds of fun (creative agendum). Thus the introduction of a reward system inherently defines the kind of fun you want people to have in this game, and so limits your player base to those who want that kind of fun.

I was inclined to think that "having fun" is social, but since you can do it all alone, that's really stretching the concept of "social". Indeed, in dysfunctional gaming groups, some of the players are having fun doing what they want to do over the objections of others, so it would seem pretty clearly to be a separate concept.

--M. J. Young

[Simon Marks]

Hi MJ,

It seems to me, that you enjoy play for a reason - and this, being a theory thread, is us trying to work out what that reason is.

You say

When we designed Multiverser, we didn't include a reward system. I'm not sure we even thought about it. We devised a rather simulationist method for characters to improve themselves through practice and use of their abilities, and having done that we saw no other practical need for experience points or similar rewards.

Emphasis mine

According to my interpretation of Ron's article - this is a reward system.

Could you game run without any system in place for this? I have yet to come across a game that attempts to support Player Created Characters with Campaign play and has no identifiable Reward System.

Which leads to an alternate question "Is a Reward System needed", but thats not the purpose of the this thread - which I think I can clarify even further;

How can you identify the rewards that are due to players in LRP, when the actions that would gain these rewards are remote from the people distributing the rewards.

So far, the best suggestion has been "give the players the ability to distribute rewards" - and I think I like it.

Simon