Interpersonal reward system

[clehrich]

I actually think the Pavlovian system can be made to work well, but the trick is to do it without it becoming the GM and all his dogs.  A trick I'd like to see done more is to have the player group assign rewards at the end of session.

In my own game, http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=4948" target="blank">Shadows in the Fog, each session ends with the players voting on a series of "bests": best scene, best action, best player.  The GM should try to establish pretty early what he or she has in mind, and make them fit the style of the game.  For example, "best action" might be the action which best moved things forward, or saved everyone's bacon, or was simply too cool, or whatever; best scene might be anything from the funniest to the one in which a character was most clearly and powerfully expressed as a person, depending on group priorities.  I have proposed that (1) you can't vote for yourself, and also (2) you don't have to vote for anyone for each of these things, meaning that not every session will have every one of these rewards handed out --- a really dull session might have none.  The reward for a "best" is something fairly important in game terms: experience, privileges, money, beer, whatever.  Ideally, what happens in a great session is that the voting is obvious: everyone immediately agrees, "Oh yeah, Frank's crosstalk number with the big spider was awesome, he gets best scene, no question about it."

The idea is that the players will start competing to be the best, and will also think back across each session's play in terms of "highs."  This encourages them to strive for "highs."  To take the converse, the Blorg example, this player isn't likely to get voted "best" much, because he's annoying the other players.  But in terms of positive thinking, a system like this really works on social rewards: you may get some experience points or whatever, but what you really get is the adulation of your friends.  In order to get that, you have to make the game good for everyone.

One additional point to make here is that I think this system would be helpful for GMs struggling with their player groups.  If the group is adamant about rewarding things the GM thinks are stupid or annoying, and they do not want to reward the things the GM likes, then the GM has to accept that this group has different priorities from his or her own.  I think Simulationist play especially can be quite tricky to figure out, in the sense that it's not always clear exactly what the players really want.  Once you know, you can give it to them, and by this system you will quickly find out what they like in very specific terms.

[Paul Czege]

Hey Chris,

The idea is that the players will start competing to be the best, and will also think back across each session's play in terms of "highs."....what you really get is the adulation of your friends. In order to get that, you have to make the game good for everyone.

Unless you proscribe OOC conversation, players will quickly learn that their personal receptiveness to input from other players will have a big positive impact on the post-session voting. Someone taking your suggestion creates an investment by you in their character.

And people in general have very sophisticated story intuitions; whether they can articulate them or not, whether they can tell a story well or not, most people appreciate characters who struggle with meaningful issues, rather than merely stylish or well-characterized characters.

What I'm saying is, expect your voting system to provoke Narrativist play.

Paul

[clehrich]

What I'm saying is, expect your voting system to provoke Narrativist play.

This may well be true; I wondered about that myself.  I do think that a group very focused on Simulationist priorities may tend to vote within that perspective, for example voting "best player" to someone who is clearly entirely Immersed and/or does a great job of acting.

Even if it does encourage Narrativist play, however, I think this could be valuable as a temporary measure.  If it gets players thinking concretely about what they want, and about making that happen, then the fun level is likely to rise.  Once the campaign is back on a stable footing, as it were, and everyone is having a lot of fun, the voting system could well be phased out as unnecessary and excessively reliant on meta-game dynamics.

Another possibility is to vote for "bests" which match the goals of Simulationist play.  I'm not sure what these would be, or how you'd formulate that, but then my own game is perfectly content with the label "Narrativist."  My primary point here is that it should be possible to create rewards for Simulationist play, as I think everyone agrees, but that this would be most effective if the rewards were handed out by players.  Otherwise you can rapidly end up in a GM-vs-Players sort of mentality which is likely to make a shaky social dynamic go bad.

[Le Joueur]

Personally, I skip Pavlov and go right to Skinner.

Like Collectible Card Games, lots of 'rares' at first; Skinner says it makes high learning curve more palatable.  High numbers of rewards later on causes the learning to fail to be 'steady.'  As your set increases, the frequency of 'rares' you don't already have goes down; Skinner says infrequent rewards benefit 'later learning' stages.  I'm super-generalizing, but if you're going to use behavioural psychology (is that what it's called?) Skinner's work is probably a better model.

So think "Rats!" not "You dogs!"

Fang Langford

[Mike Holmes]

I think Paul's Narrativist bias is showing. People have a razor sharp sense of simulation as well, donchaknow. And what about all of our inner gamists?

In not defining "best" players will assume that this means whatever they want it to mean. Thus a player who kills the most monsters in one scene could be considered to have had the best scene by Gamist players. Further, the rewards seem to be malleable as well, meaning that they can promote any style based on what the players select.

I think that what C has is a really interesting transitional reward system.

The problem becomes incoherecy amongst players. If three are playing Sim, and another want's to play Gamist, then that player isn't going to ever get rewarded, and feel left out. This will teach him to play the way the other players play, certainly, but may make him unhappy in doing so. Which may cause a player to drop out.

I can't decide if this is a bug or a flaw. It would make the game the first to have a self-correcting mechanism for incoherence. But at the risk of alienating players. Perhaps if there were a priority bitch sessoin before the game, players could decide if they could survive the given group. One could suggest what he'd vote for, and what sort of rewards would be given.

BTW, how are the rewards chosen? By whom?

Mike

[Paul Czege]

Hey Mike,

People have a razor sharp sense of simulation as well, donchaknow. And what about all of our inner gamists?

I completely agree. But I think it's irrelevant to the conversation we're having. Outside the context of explicit guidelines about what a "best scene" might be, people are going to rely on their instincts to inform their voting, the same instincts responsible for whether they even pay attention to the scene at all. Dramatic, emotionally resonant, Narrativist play will capture votes at the expense of otherwise well executed Gamist or Simulationist play.

Paul

[John Kim]

Outside the context of explicit guidelines about what a "best scene" might be, people are going to rely on their instincts to inform their voting, the same instincts responsible for whether they even pay attention to the scene at all. Dramatic, emotionally resonant, Narrativist play will capture votes at the expense of otherwise well executed Gamist or Simulationist play.  

I'm not sure what this translates into in GNS terms, but I have had experience in several games with having a "role-playing" award for the session which is given based on the votes of the players.  This is extremely common in tournament play, and was also used in two campaigns I played in.  My observation was that it tended to make players compete more for spotlight time, and emphasized many of the more obvious acting bits like doing accents or mannerisms.  Personally, I didn't like it -- which is why I have never used it in my own campaigns.  However, it may work differently for other groups.

[clehrich]

Couple of thoughts here,

John wrote:

My observation was that it tended to make players compete more for spotlight time, and emphasized many of the more obvious acting bits like doing accents or mannerisms.

This also sounds undesirable to me.  My thought was that by having more than one "best" award, and making them a bit narrower than "roleplaying," you might downplay awarding pure shtick.  I also suspect that this shtick emphasis would tend to be heightened in tournament play, and become less focal in regular play.  Furthermore, I think this effect would be lessened by the fact that no one of these awards needs to be handed out every session: if everyone dithered all session and nothing happened, there really shouldn't be a "best action," for example.

This reminds me to point out that I also have listed a "special award."  This is the one that should never, ever be handed out unless it seems almost unanimous.  You all have seen this session: the one where everyone can hardly wait to start rehashing the scene or the moment, where everyone's going to be talking about this bit for weeks.  Who caused this?  If it's obvious to everyone that Fred over there just made the whole game kick ass and take names, then Fred gets a special award.  It's not worth anything more mechanically, or it needn't be, but when it happens it's worth a lot in pure glory.

Mike wrote:

I think that what C has is a really interesting transitional reward system.

Thanks --- that's sort of what I was hoping for, actually.  Transition, rather than specific GNS-prioritized rewards.

The problem becomes incoherecy amongst players. If three are playing Sim, and another want's to play Gamist, then that player isn't going to ever get rewarded, and feel left out. This will teach him to play the way the other players play, certainly, but may make him unhappy in doing so. Which may cause a player to drop out.  I can't decide if this is a bug or a flaw.

I could see this going several ways.  On the one hand, if you have one player who really is determinedly at GNS-odds with the rest of the group, it's probably going to cause friction.  On the other hand, it might well be that this player, if he expresses his dissatisfaction as a question ("How come my cool things never get rewarded?"), may begin to pinpoint an already-present tension.  Sort of like using GNS as a problem-identifier, but without any terminology.  If the player's conclusion is that he does not like the priorities of the other players, and he chooses to leave the group on that basis, I think this is better than the player leaving because of some unspecified annoyance, which is more likely to be ascribed to pure interpersonal problems.  It might also be that the player will try things more in line with the rest of the group, and have something specific to shoot for, leading to increased group coherence.

I do think, however, that the tendencies of such voting would have to be monitored somewhat, and be carefully kept above-board.  If one player never gets rewarded, everyone needs to think a bit about why this is.  Does the gang just like her less?  Is her GNS focus radically different?  Or could it be that she does something great that everyone isn't noticing within the context of these awards?  I'm thinking here of a previous conversation on the Scattershot forum about "Second bananas," the sort of player who's always just to one side of the limelight, but constantly facilitates other players' good play.  In my game writeup, I suggest that sometimes the best scene will really be the work of two players, and that each of those two players should try to decide on reasons why the other should get the prize.  This may discern excellent second banana play.  If this sort of cooperative work is something that works well in your group, you might add a Second Banana prize, perhaps replacing one of the others, thus encouraging people to seek glory through other players.

At any rate, I'm not wedded to any particular award or category.  I just think that having players focus positively on each others' play may accomplish a lot in terms of bringing clarity and drive toward the goal of good play, and help the group come to specificity about what they like in play.  Like any interpersonal device, however, it could go bad in a particular group, i.e. you could get a replay of horrible high school "who's the cool kid and who sucks" dynamics.  If that happens, you should drop the system instantly.  But I'm predicating this notion on the idea that everyone in the group is more or less friendly, and that they're all pretty serious about wanting to make their game great for everyone.

I could see this device being arguably Narrativist (emphasizing good play and enjoyment at the player level as a primary goal) or Gamist (emphasizing that good play is rewarded by "winning"), but I don't think it has to be absolutely anything; as Mike says, I think it's a Transitional device, and could even be used to facilitate a specific transition.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Chris,

I'm glad to see that you're considering the pitfalls of a voting or other interpersonal reward mechanic. In my experience, or from my perspective, such things don't fly well unless everyone already agrees - the same reason why voting often a poor way to decide things in small groups, because it doesn't handle disagreement. "So what if you three think we two are wrong?" is a pretty justifiable statement.

I'm a little puzzled about the goal of your proposed approach - is it to smooth out existing hassles about goals of play? Is it to reflect an already-existing set of goals in the absence of an EP/skill-increase system? Is it to accomodate a variety of goals at once? Or ...?

Best,
Ron

[Ron Edwards]

In case anyone's confused, I split the above posts from the "Likely" characters thread.

Best,
Ron

[contracycle]

I have a datapoint.  Some time ago, in our long-running mage game, we started compiling a list of "quotable lines", the kind of things you find in .sigs (which is what it was inspired by).  At the end of each session, people would try to recall the one-liners of particular humour or other interest into a list which appeared on a web-page since deceased.  It also partly arose becuase we knew we had laughed at prior sessions but not necessarily what about.  You coldn;t be nominated by yourself and anything that went on the list would need broad if informal consent.

Anyway, to the point.  This was not done for in game rewards of any sort, but did provoke a certain somewhat attention to what was said and by whom; people took notes sometimes.  This occasisonally intruded in play but was not too disturbing.  Overall I liked the result and wish I still had the list now, but unfortunately it was lost.  Overall, I think it did, certainly at first, add a certain spice to play, and perhaps a certain confidence in it as entertainment (rather than just wish fulfillment).  It should also be noted that there was a massive imbalance in who got recorded, in that some people are just plain funnier than others.  I also felt it helped improve IC play becuase none of these could be taken from OOC statements.  But I didn't feel, as I feared I might, that play had become stilted, probably because it was not geared to some sort of in-game benefit, and therefore could not be exploited for tactical benefit.

[Bankuei]

I'm not sure how I feel about the voting aspect, but I definitely see a value in creating a system that allows the players to give in-game rewards for metagame values.  I think the best example of this to date is Fang's Scattershot experience dice, when folks just start handing them to the player that's doing good.

One option if you do consider going with the voting system is to save the final vote to the end of the session, but give each player a set of chips with their initials, perhaps with different colors to represent best scene, action, and player, and as someone does something cool, people put their chip over to that person, with the right to move them if someone else does something better.   What it causes is for folks to actively look and see "who's got the most chips?" and try to out do whatever that person last did.

Chris

[Wulf]

Most of the games I play have something like Hero Points, Drama Dice, etc. (Silhouette games, Unisystem games, Hero Wars). I have been considering (basically in fact I decided, but I haven't GM-ed since then) that I will be handing these out for anything that gets a round of applause, a good laugh, a cheer, etc.

By handing out Hero Points/Drama Dice rather than experience, I hope to encourage more drama and heroics, and to show that such action is rewarded (pretty Pavlovian, I think...). The same character may get extra experience as well, but that will necessitate a good game as a whole, rather than just one great moment.

I'd start doing this myself, but indicate that players should call for a similar award to be given to others when THEY thought suitable.

Wulf

[Valamir]

One of the half written games on my idea pile at them moment has in it an attempt to reward color by encouraging players to describe their actions and various setting details.  Since this was for a western game a certain amount of overblown purple prose is encouraged ("a gust of wind blows a lonely tumbleweed across the street.  The air is so clear I can see the wind blown lines of age etched across his face as he sweeps his long leather duster clear of the silver plated handle of his smoke wagon"...that sort of thing).  

The idea was that each session the GM would award some form of bennie to a player who fashioned a decent color statement during the game.  In addition to the bennie, the player would also get a token of some kind.  That token would allow him to award another player with a bennie for something he thought was good (the idea being that once a player did something the GM liked, than the GM could assume he'd be able to identify similar "good" statements by other players.)  That player would get a bennie and then take the token.

Basically, every time the GM awarded a bennie a token entered play, and players who held a token could pass that token to another player who would then recieve a bennie and the token to pass to someone else.  Each session would start with 0 tokens in play.

That was about as far as I got, and its certainly wide open to abusive players taking advantage and just passing the token back and forth a bunch of times, but the idea was to not only allow the GM to reward players but allow other players to award players.

[clehrich]

Bankuei wrote:

One option if you do consider going with the voting system is to save the final vote to the end of the session, but give each player a set of chips with their initials, perhaps with different colors to represent best scene, action, and player, and as someone does something cool, people put their chip over to that person, with the right to move them if someone else does something better. What it causes is for folks to actively look and see "who's got the most chips?" and try to out do whatever that person last did.

I think this sounds like an excellent idea.  It neatly forestalls the whole, "Uh oh, now we have to vote on who's good" problem that a number of people seem concerned about, and which I admit does sound potentially divisive.  If everyone has a fair number of chips or whatever to start with, then it's going to seem a relatively small thing to toss one to the guy who just said or did that cool thing.  Obviously, the system is open to abuse, but so is just about everything.

Ron wrote:

I'm a little puzzled about the goal of your proposed approach - is it to smooth out existing hassles about goals of play? Is it to reflect an already-existing set of goals in the absence of an EP/skill-increase system? Is it to accomodate a variety of goals at once? Or ...?

In the context that I originally mentioned it (pre-split of thread), the idea was that perhaps one could use such a system to get players to reward other players for whatever they consider important.  The question, at the time, was specifically about Simulationism, but I think it's a broader GNS question.  Someone recently mentioned "group incoherence," in which the various players have strongly differing GNS priorities.  Without making them learn a lot of theory just to figure out what their problem is (to put it over-simply), I think it would be helpful to get players to identify what it is that they consider valuable and enjoyable in play.  If the group can come to some general consensus about this, and the GM (if there is one) tries to make sure that these things are encouraged and rewarded, then it seems to me that you have a recipe for a happy group.

Now a few complications arise here.

1. If the group doesn't entirely agree about their priorities, is this a problem?  I think it only is so if there is a very radical split, and/or if there is only a single one (or kind) of these awards.  I can certainly see, for example, a "best action" prize going to someone with quite Gamist priorities, while a "best scene" prize might go to someone very into Actor-stance Immersion Simulation stuff, and so forth.

2. As to the EP/skill increase thing Ron mentions, in my own game these awards supplement but do not entirely replace such increases.  You don't ever have to be the "best" to improve your skills; to make it so would I think put far too much pressure and value on these votes, and lead to potential severe friction.  I have not yet figured out exactly what balance to strike here, but it's not one or the other.

3. As for accommodating multiple goals, yes, that's a big part of my intent.  I think that a hybrid game (which is what I see Shadows in the Fog turning out as) needs an extremely flexible reward system.  If your reward system has any bias, you've got an incoherent system, not a true hybrid.  But the problem is that, as you know, every taxon within GNS has multiple sub-taxa, and it may not always be apparent to the players that such sub-taxa overlap at all (after all, this is pretty hotly debated right here on the Forge).  So I think it would be helpful to have the players define their own preferences and priorities, flexibly, and let them set the groundwork for a stable reward system for that group.