Mark’s article Token tells us about the importance of having small, sometimes seemingly insignificant, rewards for players during a game. While Mark speaks to the campaign as a whole, I’d like to look into PC specific token rewards. I’ve found that these kinds of personal rewards can go a long way to giving players a feeling of accomplishment and increases enjoyment of the game.



One of the things that most gamers in your group will do when building a PC is to create personal goals/desires along with the list of skills and character history. What fun is it to have an elven fighter who was exiled from his homeland without a personal goal or agenda? These things give the character life, and that’s what most players are looking for.



Some gamers I’ve spoken to over the years have told me that it’s the player’s responsibility to try to realize their PC’s goals. They argued that the player needs to role-play their PC’s desire to achieve these goals so that the GM knows that the player wants to delve into them. If the player doesn’t make them a part of the game then the GM doesn’t need to waste his time working on something that the player isn’t interested in. I disagree.



Yes it is important for players to, in game, remind their GM of their PC’s goals. It’s also important for the GM to include these goals in his adventure and campaign design, giving the player a chance to experience the joy of attaining, or the heartbreak of falling short. I see these goals as I do the PC’s disadvantages – if the GM isn’t going to use them, then they’re useless. The player took the time to create these goals and desires for their PC, that means they want to experience them in game.



The hard part for a GM is to implement PC goals into his adventures without seeming like he’s directly tooling the entire thing just for one or two PCs. To combat this when we set up an adventure we only place bits of our PC’s goals into things so they have a chance to step into the spotlight briefly and grab some of that token reward goodness. The thing all GMs run into eventually is that the players are going to do something unexpected and you can bet they’re going to miss out on the token reward goodness that you planned.



Let’s say you have a thief PC who wants to find the rival master thief who killed his teacher. Our PC is hungry for clues for the whereabouts of the master thief, so you’ve planted a note in the next adventure for him to find that will clue him into the fact that the master thief is running the guild in the next town. And then, as you dreaded, the poor PC passes by your obvious hints to search the bookshelves and fails to get his token reward. At this point, I see two options: Find a way to get the info to the PC, or let things go and don’t give the info to the PC.



For me the choice is often to let things go. The idea of a reward, no matter how token it may be, is that it must be earned by doing “the right thing.” The right thing may be taking the time to search the bookshelf, questioning the local snitch or not shooting the bad guy who pleads for his life - but if you don’t do that right thing, you don’t get the reward. But, I’m also a softy for players. I like rewarding them, so I can’t always play hardball.



To help combat a PC’s failure to find our token reward I build in more than one way for the PC to obtain the reward. Doing this really isn’t all that much extra work, and once the PC finds the token reward point you can remove the reward from the other locations, or keep them in place. There are advantages to each approach.



If our PC thief fails to search the bookshelf for the information, but questions the snitch in the alley and gets it that way, you can not only remove the bookshelf note, but also fact that he could get the information by talking to the barmaid at the inn. Removing these cleans up loose ends so you don’t have to worry about the other reward points and can focus on the rest of the game.



Removing these reward points also let’s you limit the amount of token spotlight time each player gets. These are only token rewards, not major plot points so we don’t want one player getting all the glory. Sure, you can eventually turn a PC’s goals or desires into major plot points, but right now we’re only giving token rewards. These rewards are best used as way to build towards the attaining (or failure to attain) a PC’s goal.



There are some advantage to leaving all your token reward points in place however. If you leave things in place your PC thief has various was of corroborating the information he received (Which is always a nice thing to do when dealing with advice on thieves). The fighter who’s vowed to kill all trolls from the Bloody Hand tribe because they killed his brother now has a chance to lay waste to more than just one because he happened upon both of your Bloody Hand trolls. Leaving things in place will also give you the ability to hint at bigger rewards to come.



When our fighter slays his fourth Bloody Hand troll in the town, when he normally finds only one or two at time in infrequent intervals, he is tipped off to the fact that the Bloody Hand trolls must have a strong presence in the area. There must be something up. And something up means more token rewards or maybe a major plot point and even bigger rewards!





In my years of gaming I’ve found that token rewards for the group are fun, but we can’t forget the individual PC. By paying attention to the PC’s goals and desires we have a chance to help bring that PC to life, make the game world seem real and give them a sense of accomplishment even when other things in the campaign may not be going so well. I’ve also found that it’s a lot of fun for me as the GM to give the players individual things they can accomplish on their own. Sure it’s fun to be on the winning team, but there’s a greater pride that comes with doing it yourself.





That’s it for me – See you in the forums!