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 delivered to them rather than seeking adventure out.

Different Carrots for Different Players

An idea I've been toying around with a lot is expanding XP for gold to other kinds of things to do in a game and letting players choose the XP motivation for their character. This would align the players motivation for XP with their character's priorities.

Here's what I got so far:

  • Gold: The classic, good for thieves and scoundrels (the thief class is still part of the game afterall)
  • Discovery: XP for stepping in a new hex, seeing a new place or learning a new lore tidbit. Hopefully these players are going to be juicing every npc, book and artifact for lore so that I don't have to worry about lore delivery systems. Good for wizards, bards, friars and other scholarly characters.
  • Aid: XP for every time you heal an ally's injury and every point of HP you give someone else. Might also give a point of XP for every piece of gold given to charity. Hopefully these players will become death vultures jumping on fallen comrades like ambulance chasers. Good for friars and other healer builds.
  • Justice: XP for every "Monster" stopped and every point of damage taken in an ally's stead. I want this to be more than standard combat XP, its going to require me to GM fiat what is actually a "monster" and a "threat to truth, justice and the american way" verses something minding its own business in a cave not actively being a threat to normal people. Good for Knights, Rangers and other characters that fancy some daring heroics.

I would ideally like a motivation that is more roleplay npc or pc friendship based... like maybe making new friends (and maybe lovers) would grant XP... but I'm not so sure how I would balance that and its also a kind of motivation that would lead players to just stay in the cities talking to npc's, but this is still a Dolmenwood project and I want the XP sources to be located out in the woods, not necessarily in-town outside of some rare narrative exceptions.

That's all I have for today. These systems will need some tuning and adjustment maybe, but I'll see how it goes in play-testing.

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