Thursday, December 08, 2005

Rewards for pulling other players in?

While playing our Burning Wheel Orient campaign, I've been thinking about how players can tie each other into their actions and goals. In Burning Wheel, you've got a great system of Beliefs and the reward, Artha, along with the fact that characters and campaigns are collaboratively built. But after the character burning session, the way the reward system works essentially ends up being a silo for each player being rewarded for their own stated goals/actions. There are some other humor, great deed and personification rewards which are great, but I think there could be more. In the character burning session, you pay attention to what others want and collaboratively develop the beliefs. Could there possibly be a reward system in place for a game that mechanically reinforces this during play? I think having a specific reward system for tying in other player's beliefs into your own actions might help people do the things they should already doing at the table. I've become a firm believer of "System Matters," so if this is a behavior that is wanted/needed at the table, then an explicit reward system should exist.

Or maybe this could also be the kernel of an idea for an entirely new game...