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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 4554338" data-attributes="member: 42582">By "reward" do you mean "reward mechanics" within the game?The mechanics of 4e reward completing quests (XP, treasure) and encounters (milestones, XP, treasure). Acquisition of rewards from encounters is on a diminishing returns basis, however, as many will cost resources that have to be renewed (most combat encounters, some skill challenges).I don't see why this reward structure is at odds with thematically satisfying play (for an appropriate range of themes - I don't think that 4e is ever going to give you The Human Factor, but it might give you Hero). Combat encounters bring theme into play (what is combat role + power source, after all, but a short hand way of identifying the thematic orientation of a PC?), as do skill challenges. Quests, both GM-designed and player-designed, presumably likewise will be based around thematically interesting material.The game won't reward unthematically satisfying play provided that the GM and players introduce thematically satisfying encounters and quests. As I've often said, I think this means that 4e is not well-suited to sandbox play (but as I've equally often said, it is a mistake to think that is therefore GM-driven - there can be player-driven but non-sandbox play, which 4e permits primarily via player-introduced quests, and secondarily via the character build rules and the skill challenge rules).The principal lack of thematic flexibility in the 4e reward mechanics is their focus on the party rather than the individual (which extends to the rules for new-PC introduction) - this puts some sort of limit on the capacity of the mechanics to support exploration of intraparty conflict, I think, although the DMG hints at such conflict with its idea of conflicting minor quests for different PCs - I'm not sure whether this should be seen as a tension in the rules system, or rather if the XP rules should be seen as simply a buffer against the otherwise potentially disrupting effects of conflicting quests.To be honest I don't see the reward mechanic in 4e as radically different from HeroWars. It's quite different from The Dying Earth, to take another example, but in that game the whole approach to rewards is quite a bit more metagamey.The reward mechanics are very different from 1st ed AD&D, though, to pick one contrasting example - no XP for gold (which means no pre-determined "quest" orientation of the sort that that rule leads to), no penalties for changing alignment (which means no pre-determined thematic resolution of the sort that that rule leads to).Why do you think that 4e is at odds with the reward of thematically satisfying play?</blockquote>

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