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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Barastrondo" data-source="post: 4988440" data-attributes="member: 3820">One thing to consider is the question of optimism as far the characters' ability to have an effect on their surroundings. Given players that like to make things better (which obviously isn't everyone, but there are enough to be significant), it'd likely be appropriate to look at the question of affecting one's environment as another form of character progression. If a setting starts out grim and gritty but isn't intended to stay that way, then you can hand out world changes as regular rewards. If the changes for the better are spaced out somewhat infrequently, then players who look forward to environmental change as a reward may lose interest. If the setting's meant to stay grim and gritty as a whole, then that's essentially capping a kind of reward, much like saying "this game will run only to 6th level" or "there will not be powerful magic items in this game."Now, I've obviously spent no small amount of time catering to players who are fine with worlds that start dark and end dark. But I've also gamed with people who have no interest in that kind of play style, and many times it's because they miss the reward track of "make one family's life better; improve something about a neighborhood; improve a town," and so on. Some of them care less about increasing their character's personal combat power than usual, so the social reward track is all the more important to that sort of gamer.Not everyone who doesn't care for a dark and gritty world as a player has necessarily had a bad experience with a GM who "did it wrong." Sometimes they just want access to the "make the world a better place" reward track, and they'd like it to go farther or provide more regular payouts than the game in question assumes.</blockquote>

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