Replacing Dolmenwood's Engine Part 2: Motivating the Players
So different players are going to be motivated to play for different reasons and will want different things out of the game... but regardless of the reasons they might of had when they sat down at the table, they quickly change their tune when they get their first hit of the best drug in table top roleplaying games: XP Carrot and Stick In plain terms when you want certain behaviors out of your players, reward them, and when you want to discourage other behaviors, punish them. XP and gold are the primary ways we reward players. Now the game has a long history of tying gold and xp together. And people have noted that this produces games where the players begin to act like thieves, grave-robbers and scoundrels. And that's great, if that's the kind of tone and genre your after. But that's not necessarily the game I want. I could go for milestone XP, but unless players are intrinsically motivated to roleplay, it usually leads to players who show up and expect a plot to be de...