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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Clint_L" data-source="post: 9231806" data-attributes="member: 7035894">In effect, the post is talking about the difference between positive and negative reinforcement, which is something we study a lot in education, for obvious reasons. Note that folks popularly confuse positive and negative with good and bad, but that's not really what those terms mean in a psychological sense. Positive reinforcement responds to a behaviour by adding something, while negative reinforcement subtracts.So in some contexts, pain can be considered positive reinforcement, in that you are adding something, pain, to an undesirable action - the classic example is touching a hot stove. Thus, though folks commonly think that negative reinforcement is the same as punishment, it is not - punishment often relies on positive reinforcement.According to most recent research, humans are generally more strongly motivated by negative reinforcement, using the term in the psychological sense. In other words, fear of losing something tends to be more motivating, in the sense of reinforcing a desired behaviour, than the desire for gaining something. So from a purely psychological perspective, the notion that players will be more likely to respond to positive than to negative reinforcement is incorrect.As has been astutely pointed out, in the context of an RPG this starts to become a matter of perspective. Adding 10' of movement for being lightly encumbered but starting from 20' of movement is functionally the same as subtracting 10' of movement for being heavily encumbered but starting from 30' of movement. Psychological research suggests that the latter would be more motivating, so the current system of, say D&D, actually has it right.But I think that only holds true if the DM is the one monitoring it, and if the rule is enforced consistently. Once the player is in charge of tracking the behaviour, the equation changes, because they are naturally going to be more attracted to enforcing rules that they perceive as beneficial, and ignoring or conveniently forgetting ones that they perceive as deleterious. So if you want the player in charge, I would only do it for rules that they can perceive as advantageous, whether framed in positive or negative terms.</blockquote>

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