Players like to be rewarded.

This idea is baked into most roleplaying game design, like a Skinner box that spits out experience points, gold, and special items. While getting to play a different person with special skills and participating in thrilling adventures is a reward all its own, never seeing your character progress or gain any rewards is a fate few desire.

In many instances, the reward of experience (the currency used to increase a character’s capabilities) or gold (the currency used to buy everything else) is sufficient, but it isn’t necessarily the most exciting. Fortunately, a Game Master has other options for how to reward his or her players.

Alternate rewards can be immersive and engaging, and when it comes to adventures designed by Privateer Press, they’re almost mandatory. There is a soft rule of Iron Kingdoms adventure design: no “money” quests. What that means is every adventure needs to have some other reason to get involved in the story—simply dangling a bag of crowns in front of the characters isn’t adequate. Money can be a secondary incentive, for certain, but the real reward of the adventure needs to be something more substantive.

Those of you who visit the forums know that I’ve advocated for Game Masters to consider Connections as an alternate reward. Connections can be purchased with XP, but they can also be an immersive reward for the PCs. If the PCs help the Fraternal Order of Wizardry root out a minor Infernalist cabal, it stands to reason that one or more of the NPCs they interact with along the way becomes a Connection they can draw upon later.

Unique rewards are also great, because you can tailor them to the PCs. An alchemist character might be pleased to get his or her hands on enough gold to stay supplied with a stockpile of reagents, but an alchemist who discovers the one-of-a-kind formulae of a famous alchemist from days gone by will be delighted. Similarly, a priest of Menoth is more likely to be pleased to receive a relic blade carried in the crusades of the priest-kings or a mechanik thrilled to receive the prototype for a new and more efficient steamjack boiler.

A PC may also receive a title. This can be a noble title, which comes with a parcel of land (perhaps to renovate and one day defend against some hostile wilderness folk), the deed to a ship, ownership of a business, or even the control of an established mercenary charter.

In more than one game, I’ve started the players off in control of their own ship or town, and rewarded them with improvements, usually in the form of trained NPCs. Upon learning of the PCs’ reputations, these characters are willing to join up, bringing with them a new unique talent or skill that improves the performance or condition of the players’ collective asset.

What I try to do with rewards, which ties into all three of the above, is to give alternative rewards that also introduce more story options to the PCs. My Fraternal Order contact can serve as a Connection, but once he’s well established, I can also have him present the PCs with new adventure hooks. Once a PC is holding the title to a mercenary charter, I’ll be sure to sketch out the back history of that company to give them interesting rivals who want to size up the new people in charge. If the PCs are in charge of a town, then every NPC within it bears a potential plot hook to expand the story of the PCs and their adventures.

So what about you? Game Masters, do you use alternate rewards? Players, have you received them? If so, swing by the forums, and let us know some of your favorites.