OK, it’s end-of-session. The characters have triumphed. Or at least they aren’t dead, which is a triumph in and of itself. The time has come to divvy up the good stuff – or whatever passes for good stuff in your campaign.
What does that look like?
Dungeons and Dragons and similar fantasy games have a definite advantage here. Everyone knows what the good stuff looks like. It’s shiny and spendable, glows with magic power, or increases your character’s level and therefore prowess. It’s all easily quantifiable. A +1 sword is a +1 sword, which by default is better than that nasty old ordinary sword you were using five minutes ago. Gaining 500 experience points is an undeniable rush, particularly when you can look at your current totals and think ‘I’m only a few hundred more points from the next level!’
Call of Cthulhu has a similar reward system, where at the end of the scenario your characters get Sanity rewards depending on what they did and how well they did it. Sanity, for those not in the know, measures the characters’ mental state and can be reduced to 0, through various shocks and trauma. 100 is the theoretical human maximum. 0 = time to book you into a long-term-stay at Casa de Soft Walls, from which you shall not be returning. Nobody’s ever explained what 100 =; I presume you leave your physical body and ascend to the heavens on a cloud of sunshine and rose petals, at which point something quite nice happens beyond the ken & barbie of mortal folk.
Point being that, in theory at least, if you gain enough rewards you can exceed your original Sanity total. Which in a game like this, where Sanity is the oil that keeps the engine going, is a reward prized above rubies and titles.
However, there aren’t any other rewards. That’s pretty standard for horror games. You’re not meant to be the dashing hero; you’re meant to be the weedy academic, or similar. Victory for you means survival, not advancement. Sometimes you get to save someone’s life, which is great; saving lives is a good thing. However, it doesn’t fatten your wallet.
Nor does it have the same impact as that +1 sword or those 500 experience points. It’s not easily quantifiable. The gold you swiped from that dragon all adds up to a total which can then be spent on goods and services. The fuzzy warm feels you got from saving little Suzy from the shoggoth cannot be spent on goods and services. Not unless your in-game economy is radically different from the norm.
So, to the question: in games where the reward isn’t easily quantifiable, what will make those rewards fun?
Sometimes the game makes it easy for you. Bookhounds of London is a little like that. You have a shop, which your players are constantly trying to improve. That shop has stock, which your players are constantly trying to get. The obvious reward there is more stuff for the shop, more stock to sell. Replace that dingy little cash box with a shiny new cash register. Design custom book covers for your collection. Thanks to your efforts the shop now has a valuable collection of grimoires on vampire lore (effective increase 2 points Occult). That sort of thing.
However, as a rule rewards can be characterized as one of three things:
Reputation
Resources
Shiny Things
Reputation is a bit like pornography. Nobody really knows what it is, but they know it when they see it. There’s a really good reputation tracker in 13th Age which has since been ported over to Night’s Black Agents and other GUMSHOE systems: the Icon system. There are a number of Icons – powerful entities or organizations – whose favor brings a range of powerful rewards, and whose enmity can bring terrible destruction. Your reputation with that Icon helps determine whether or not that Icon will lend aid.
Point being that reputation is useless without someone to acknowledge it; if, however, the CIA knows you and respects you that could mean you can rely on the local station chief for aid, or get a cache of weapons at just the right time, or transport, or whatever it may be. Reputation = tangible reward.
This can apply to pretty much every gaming world. Cyberpunk has its corporations, gangs and medias; City of Mist has its avatars and proto-demigods; Troubleshooters has world governments and sinister organizations. Any and all of these can become Icons, which in turn reward gains in Reputation.
But! It follows that a gain in reputation for one Icon results in a loss for another. If you gain reputation with Scotland Yard because your actions helped foil a cult conspiracy, those cultists are going to have an unfavorable view of you. That can lead to future plot – conflict often does. But it’s something worth bearing in mind.
Resources are those things that the characters can use either in the current adventure or in future adventures. GUMSHOE has a habit of reducing these things to pool points rather than specific items, which is useful. Pool points can be anything; a gun can only ever be a gun.
Night’s Black Agents has a fun idea which could probably be ported over to other systems: excess funds. For whatever reason your characters have money to burn. Maybe they had a good run at the local casino; maybe they stole it from some luckless villain. However they got it, they have it and more.
In fantasy this is often the reward that a swords and sorcery campaign gives. Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser were always rolling in excess funds after a job, and by the start of the next story they were broke again. Easy come, easy go.
The great thing about this kind of reward is first, it can be abstracted, but second, you can make it more concrete by asking the players how they want to represent this resource. It’s one thing to say you have excess funds; something else to say you have a bag full of cash. That bag can be stolen. It can break open mid-chase, scattering bills all over the street. It can be given to someone else. It can be gambled at the casino.
Alternatively, it’s one thing to say you have transport; something else to say you have a cherry Ford Mustang with custom detailing. One is an abstract. The other is style.
Bullitt
Let the player choose the physical representation. They’ll have more investment in something they chose as a resource reward. You can abstract it initially if you like, or need, but they give it form.
Finally the Shiny Things.
Those are a little bit like Resources in that they have value, but really, they’re trophies. Let’s say that the characters come away from an alchemist’s lab with a half dozen jars that contain God Knows What, but it’s glowing and has little eyes. Fine. It probably has value to someone. But really, it’s the in-game equivalent of a lava lamp. Pretty, meaningless, and there’s a non-zero chance it might explode showering hot wax everywhere.
It’s often the case that characters choose their own trophies, but it can be fun to design a few as rewards. The hat made entirely of shadows. The golden spider pendant. The illustrated scroll with alchemical writing on it that nobody living can read. The crystal skull that glows in the dark. The mirror that shows your reflection as it appears in an alternate dimension. The framed Nosferatu poster signed by Bram Stoker. These are the meaningless in-game things that players find attractive; they make excellent rewards.
I started by asking: in games where the reward isn’t easily quantifiable, what will make those rewards fun?
The answer, ultimately, is by giving those rewards weight and attraction. Reputation has weight: it confers easily understood in-game benefit. Resources also have an in-game benefit. Shiny Things are a bit different but can be equally useful, because they have attraction. The cool tchotchke that they put in their office, to impress visitors. Nobody asks why the hell Batman wants a giant Lincoln penny in his cave; but all eyes go to it whenever they walk in the room.
It’s just too fun to ignore.
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