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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Barastrondo" data-source="post: 5661022" data-attributes="member: 3820">Very much enjoy non-combat rewards, and more to the point, enjoy being in games where everyone involved values them. I'm not convinced, though, that there are good systems for them. The most obvious thing I do is strike out the idea of magic-for-purchase and use either inherent bonuses or an explicit "Don't worry, you will get the items you need, if not necessarily the specific ones you have in mind" social contract. I thoroughly dislike gold as a way to purchase some of the most vital bonuses in the game: that puts social purchases like lands, ships, taverns, businesses, investing in charities and the like in direct competition with getting the pluses you need to hit monsters as you rise up in level. If gold's siloed out as a resource, then players begin to get creative in the ways that they spend it -- and they also become more creative in viewing potential rewards. A deed to land that's worth about 1000 gp? If you use gold to buy magic items or the like, then 9 times out of 10 that will get sold. But if gold buys more non-combat rewards, then maybe the land itself will be tempting. And non-combat rewards drive the game, specifically in sandboxy ways. I agree that they're not going to be as useful if, say, you're on an Adventure Path and come hell or high water, you'll be going through DF3 once you're done with DF2. But in a "write your own adventures" milieu, non-combat rewards drive the adventures the players choose to go on. The newly anointed champion of the forge-god wants to build an impressive temple: the player starts asking about magic anvils and where one might be found. The dragonborn wizard is granted permission to open an embassy for his people: it's time to select some land and start currying favors. It's trickier to run a game like that, to be certain -- there's no guarantee that players will want to go into a dungeon and kill a dragon because it's there, and they may actively resent adventures that feel more generic. Any group of PCs can go overthrow a Dark Lord or ransack a tomb; the generic quest can be seen as taking time away from the personalized goals. But I personally find it a lot more rewarding. Last week a player in one of my games said it was one of the best D&D campaigns he'd ever been in -- and this is the same guy who's delighting in the fact that his character's motivation is "find a good husband for my daughter, and make sure they're financially secure." For us at least, I'm pretty sure those two things are connected.</blockquote>

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