AbdulAlhazred
Legend
By Rewards, we're talking about Reward Cycles, as in the positive feedback loop that is a staple of indie design, yes?
Well, I was thinking specifically of the sort of rewards that exist in 'classic' D&D, where you gain some treasure. Treasure is of course sort of meaningless, but your character CAN use it to achieve various forms of power, so I suppose you can propose that this is analogous to leveling up in a sense (putting aside that said mechanism ALSO exists separately in classic D&D and also interacts with treasure in a couple of ways).
So. Definitely need to refine, conceptually, what we're thinking about here, for sure!
Now, I was thinking about rewards in terms of their influence on player (and character if they are in-game rewards) decisions.
1) Milestones - Well, its actually feasible to vary the effects of a milestone based on character/player decisions. It could be as simple as getting better milestones if you take more risk, or maybe just there's 'stuff' in high risk areas that you can achieve at a milestone that is better than normal (IE a 'healing fountain' or something). Of course this is a somewhat ephemeral reward, so I'm not sure its really what I'm getting at.
2) Quest System - Now, currently in 4e, quests are strictly an XP thing. I mean, they might also trigger a parcel, narratively, but game-structure-wise they just grant XP, so indirectly lead to faster leveling, but as with treasure they're kind of 'built in' to the system, unlike classic D&D treasure, which is a purely 'above and beyond' reward (albeit some is rather expected). Still, there may be something to look into here. Suppose for instance there was a 'stakes' measurement. You take a quest, in the fulfillment of that quest you wager stakes, that is take real risks, and the resulting XP is proportional. Wager too much, you may fail and get nothing. That's starting to sound more interesting and a possible a bit more gamist.
3) SCs (encounter rewards generally we could say) - Well, odd that you mention Strike! and invoking/allowing a complication, as I actually constructed such a mechanic for my HoML experimentation. I don't see ANY reason it wouldn't work in 4e. You create a 'character attribute' and you can generate 'inspiration' by playing against it, or generate 'advantage' by spending said 'inspiration'. It seems to work a lot better than 5e's version, which I didn't find to be very engaging. I'm still a bit fuzzy in my design on the details of what the 'advantage' is, it could literally be advantage (roll 2d20 take the best one) but I think allowing a favorable plot twist or something a bit bigger than a mere tweak to die roll is OK. This could also translate to permanent rewards via some simple narrative magic, you spend inspiration and create a new magic item, monetary reward, etc.