Rewarding good deeds... but without "Rewarding" them...

[Arkusus]

So okay, I'm pitching a very dark world at my players. Last city of light surrounded by darkness kind of thing, a world that at it's heart is a struggle between good and evil.

I was looking to try and find ways to drive the struggle home to the players, by regularly putting them in moral dilemmas. Some of them would be purely to have them decide between two courses of action where one is blatantly the "good" thing to do, but the other one is grey, and they have to decide what they're willing to resort to, to achieve their goals that themselves are good. (Make them decide what means are worth the ends)

But the one I care about touches more to the heart of adventurers.

My party, (like most parties if I can tell) slides towards neutral, in a "Selfish, but not cruel" type of gameplay. They'll help get the orphans out of the burning orphanage sure, but they probably expect compensation. (Mind you, they're nice enough to probably negotiate pay AFTERWARD). But I want to create a world that drives them towards either good or evil.

Basically what I want to do, is create situations where they have to decide between what's good, and what's profitable. The only thing is, I'm not sure where to draw the line on "These quests are pointless and aren't fun" and "See? You aren't told what the reward is, but the good guys always give you better loot in the end"

Essentially, I'm looking for a way to reward the players, so they get the same warm fuzzy feeling players so often get when they look at the loot they got from their latest dungeon, but... you know... without the loot.

I toyed with the idea of delayed rewards, where basically you help someone now and they just say "thank you" but after a few more quests/dungeons whatever, you start seeing people show up again, remember the good thing you did for them, and helping the party out in unexpected ways. But that kinda tips towards the "Oh, don't worry, we'll get the loot later, the DM will see to that" kinda mentality. But I do think it's better than "Here, take this old relic my father had that I forgot to tell you about. It's +4 flaming burst enchantment doesn't helm me out much, but maybe it will come in handy for you"

One thing I have pitched to my players (particularly the ones who have a divine class), is that it's fine to worship a philosophy or ideal. You can always find exactly the philosophy you want, that has the alignment you want, with the domains you want, and the favored weapon ect... that you want. BUT... if you worship a god... And this is important... That god actually exists in D&D. He's out there and he's watching what you do. Which means... If you are committed to being his champion, and fight to defend truth and justice and all that, and stand up against all odds to do the right thing... You might just see a miracle.

Now, I don't intend (And I don't want my players to think I do either) to throw out miracles regularly. I intend to (if the players let me) throw out one, or at most two major miracles in this campaign, but assuming the party has earned the intervention, they will be a big deal.



So, what kind of things have you given out to your partys in the past, or have you had given to you, or thought would be nice to give/receive that you liked? Something other than an item out of the magic item compendium that is...

[JusticeZero]

I toyed with the idea of delayed rewards, where basically you help someone now and they just say "thank you" but after a few more quests/dungeons whatever, you start seeing people show up again, remember the good thing you did for them, and helping the party out in unexpected ways. But that kinda tips towards the "Oh, don't worry, we'll get the loot later, the DM will see to that" kinda mentality.Well, yeah - that's how real life works.

At one point, we were in a game where alignment was actually a big deal. We had a holy sorcerer type - homebrew as it was 2e - who was dumping a lot of positive material energy around and being generally moderately nice on top of it. It meant that he had little to fear against holy attacks and could mix positive energy into some spells. As I recall, this became a big deal when we were fighting a torturer and his minions - ugh, so much good aligned damage flying around that I had to run for it.

Myself, I was deep into (L)E territory because of how often I used necromancy. Paladins shuddered when I shook their hands and devils addressed me with deference and would occasionally even offer assistance as a freebie. Negative energy attacks and evil aligned attacks I had a bonus against. I was actually a really nice guy, just way too many [evil] spells.

[Fax Celestis]

You could also come at this from the flip-side, what I like to think of as "Final Fantasy Tictacs rewards".

http://0.media.dorkly.cvcdn.com/12/69/a89782594e66c05b8c88a9d7c59beef3.jpg

Let them have the material rewards, but the bad guys get the credit. The bad guys get the benefits from the people who were helped, the Hero Discount at the local store, the Key to the City. What does the party get? Run out of the store for being seen as guttersnipes and thieves. Spit on in the street for being framed for the orphanage fire. Blamed for the murder of one of the bad guys, whose death has lionized them as a martyr.

The players will resent the bad guys and will go out of their way to seek recognition and exoneration, probably even to the point of forgoing the material rewards--"No, ma'am, we've got enough. You keep that gold for your kids," as some sort of damage control PR scheme gone crazy.

[NichG]

One thing you could do is implement a sort of self-worth mechanic. Whenever a character compromises their ideals for the sake of their own convenience/safety/profit, this goes down. Whenever a character sticks to their ideals despite there being a downside, it goes up.

Having high enough self-worth makes you immune to certain effects and manipulations. Lets say its a 0-10 scale with most people sitting around 5. If you have 10 self-worth, you're outright immune to all mind-affecting compulsions. At 7 self-worth, you're immune to fear effects. If you have at least 3 self-worth, you have full agency with respect to your decisions, whereas if you have 2 or less self-worth, certain situations can force a 'save or capitulate' from you, e.g. if someone is threatening you with something that is a credible threat or if someone is offering a big enough bribe.

For the 2-or-less mechanic, I think it makes sense that such forced capitulations don't further harm your self-worth or it becomes a death spiral. In fact, maybe whenever that happens, you get one back for free. That way you don't get a player sitting down in the low numbers, constantly having their agency taken away from them without ever having the ability to get it back.

The tricky thing is how to be fair about the character being true to their ideals. Players can game the system by making a character whose ideals are 'I will do anything to benefit myself'. As such, it might make sense to create a small list of 'balanced' ideals that the players have to select from, or just do a simple 'good/bad' thing.

[Lafaellar]

Actually, doing good things because of the reward is not good at all.

For a character to be good, he has to have some intrinsic motivation that drives him to do good things. So the question is rather how you can instill this intrinsic motivation in a character, that mostly operates on getting paid for the stuff he does.
The most common way to do this is to activate some kind of protective instinct in the character. Make him want to defend something, regardless of what he gets paid for it, if he gets paid at all.
You already tried the burning orphan thing - a classic.

But as even this seems to fail since they are still asking for payment, you need to go deeper into the characters and try to figure out what actually motivates him beside money.

Then you can try to use this to push him into the right direction.

[TriForce]

a reward without actual loot? my first guess would be reputation, if they do good things, let them become the kind of guys people look up to, let smalltime badguys speak their name with fear, and let random strangers offer them drinks "because you saved my son/wife/father/little puppy"

[Arkusus]

Actually, doing good things because of the reward is not good at all.

For a character to be good, he has to have some intrinsic motivation that drives him to do good things. So the question is rather how you can instill this intrinsic motivation in a character, that mostly operates on getting paid for the stuff he does.
The most common way to do this is to activate some kind of protective instinct in the character. Make him want to defend something, regardless of what he gets paid for it, if he gets paid at all.
You already tried the burning orphan thing - a classic.

But as even this seems to fail since they are still asking for payment, you need to go deeper into the characters and try to figure out what actually motivates him beside money.

Then you can try to use this to push him into the right direction.

This is exactly what I was meaning.

My conundrum goes basically as follows: D&D is a game, games are played to have fun, getting loot is fun. Basically I need to figure out a way to remove loot from certain tasks without removing the enjoyment from it.

I do like what you said about their characters, and their values. I may try and play off that.

One way or another, I intend to follow a few guidelines:
1: If there is a mechanic at work, the players will never know how it works, or that it is working. I'll just know, and make the necessary adjustments as the game progresses.
2: Doing good will (on average) result in less profit than the alternatives presented. Doing a good thing MIGHT result in a reward, but even if it does, the reward might not be worth as much as what they gave up.

They are in an evil world, and I intend to show them how corrupting it can be, to see how willing they are to stick to their guns. (But it's pointless to throw the big stuff at them at first, before they've decided where their character would draw the line)

[Thrudd]

The rewards for being good should become apparent to the players in social settings. Townsfolk will welcome them, they will get free healing, free room and board, etc. People will be open to giving them information that they need, making some of their adventures easier. There might even be people who volunteer to go help them, the local ranger to guide them, cohorts when they get higher level, etc, who are more likely to be loyal and trustworthy. Some average folk will go out of their way to help them, the same way they were helped. Eventually, they may be considered leaders in the community, perhaps even officially appointed or knighted or voted in as mayor or whatever.
Evil characters will always need to be looking over their shoulder. Townsfolk will avoid them, not be free with info, the temple doors will be closed, etc. Hirelings or henchmen will be untrustworthy because they will be just as greedy and self-serving as the players are. There will be no trustworthy allies to be found. People may be afraid of them sufficiently that they won't oppose the PC's directly in general, but if they go too far in the evil direction people will actually start fighting back or calling law enforcement for help. Eventually they may be ostracized or banished from town/civilization.

A simple mechanic can be used similar to some video games. You've got a sliding scale of reputation. Every good action sets you in the positive, evil actions slides the other way. Some events will add or subtract more from the reputation. Risking life and limb to save people from the burning town will be a pretty big one. Looting the town while it burns will be big in the opposite direction. Helping a person who is lost in the dungeon (who may or may not be telling the truth about themselves), or choosing to leave them and not trust them will be a smaller adjustment. The total reputation number, positive or negative, will be a modifier on relevant social interactions. At various thresholds, NPCs will begin exhibiting different general behaviors around the PC's. You can easily keep track of it secretly, either for the party as a whole, for individual players, or both.

[erikun]

It sounds like you want some kind of Honor/Reputation system. If party do good deeds and become well known, people around town begin looking up to them. They willingly help them out, give advice and information, and even provide discounts when shopping because they know the party will help out the town.

By contrast, a party with a poor reputation and known to basically be graverobbers will be met with distrust. Payments will be requested for any sort of information exchange, and most shopkeepers will demand payment upfront. At the worst, NPCs may not be willing to talk to them at all or buy any of the goods the PCs are trying to sell, assuming they are fake or stolen. And, of course, a scorched-earth approach in the only town of civilization in the campaign will leave the PCs likely dead when left alone with the monsters outside.

[Ekul]

You could offer an experience bonus to the players who do good deeds, since you're doing things the hard way, and an experience penalty to players who do evil deeds for doing things the easy way. That characters themselves have no incentive.

You could also offer (a limited selection of) feats for specific acts of good will, provided they seek little to no compensation in the encounter. For rushing into a burning building, they might get some bonus against fire spells, or for their own fire spells, or they might be tougher for braving the flames.

Again, that's encouraging the players for their good deeds, but not the characters. Maybe it's not what you're looking for? The idea of a great deal of fiction is that adversity builds character, and goodness takes the adversity of others onto themselves.

Then again, the players may just see this as a call to do dangerous things so that they get these rewards, and to that I say, A: it's metagaming, so don't allow it, and B: in that situation they're electing to do something pointless rather than something meaningful, so it doesn't actually build character.

[Lafaellar]

Typical rewards for being good are:

- Being held in high regard by other people and organisations. Take the Harpers in the Forgotten Realms for example. The approval of the Harpers in the populace varies strongly by culture, but a Harper can almost always count on finding a friend when in need. Showing your Harper token to somebody can even mean he would take serious risks just to help you out.
However, this also comes packed with a few serious enemies, but isn't adventuring about making some villain really angry anyway?

It can be very rewarding to be allowed to be part of such an organisation because it comes with a lot of interesting advantages, roleplay and style.

If the DM would make me choose between a Harper Pin or a
+5 Sword I would always pick the Harper Pin.

- Make them feel good about doing good.
This requires a lot of investment from you as a DM. You need to describe and play out stuff that is rewarding to the player and his character. Studies show, that being praised for doing something well is a really powerful experience so use this to your advantage.
I once did the orphan thing too and had one child draw a picture of the heroes. I actually drew something on a paper ( I am really bad at painting but so is a 4 year old child) and handed it to a player - he still has this picture in his "nerd stuff box".

What you actually do is to show them that loot is boring while roleplaying good is interesting. If he would have gotten a monetary compensation he would have what? 100 Gold Pieces (if at all, an orphanage would be really poor) or something?
Now he has some picture he can keep.
This of course strongly depends on the player. Some people can be swayed by this, others can't.

You can also reward them with acknowledgement. In Baldur's Gate 2 you are to save the trade city of Trademeet. Upon completing the quest you get statures of your group set up in the market place and proclaimed protector of the city or something like that.
This also can get people invested. Now they are protectors of this city and all citizens awe them.
If now somebody would come and attack this city they might step forward and say "that's my city you're messing with, get lost!"

Or let them meet an NPC and play with them for a while. Make them like this NPC and then make this NPC need help from them, like kidnapping him for example. They will feel rewarded just by having their beloved NPC back.

I would also recommend reading the "Book of Exalted Deeds" on this subject, they have some ideas about that too.

- Make loot even more boring.
"Oh yea you looted the sword of whatever from the ugly villain and blabla"

Then set up an elaborated quest where the character can become some kind of paragon of a good aligned deity and receive some cool sword in a very cool way.

In my group I rarely have to drop loot for the players. If I do, it is some cool item from a cool villain that has a story attached to it.
I tend to get people invested into the items they have so in most cases I would have problems selling a loot-sword to them, even if it is more powerful.

"This is the sword king Rodric gave to me with his last breath when he was mortally wounded on the battle-field, how can I discard that for some stupid orc bread cutter?"

So yea, give them loot but make the items you give to them mean something, so players don't go like "Oh this sword deals 1 point more damage, I use this now."
Remember, for the player an item is nothing more than an entry on his item list and stats on his character sheet unless you make them care about it.
To the character it might be clear, that this is the sword he used for 5 years and it saved his live three times, but the player is usually not that deep in his character to think this way, so you need to link him to the item separately.

[Blightedmarsh]

Then off course you could ask what are they spending their loot on?

Acquiring money appears to be their fun but spending it can be even more so. You could give them investment opportunities and business offers, for example:

-Founding a magic school
-Building a local chapter house for a small paladin order
-Acquiring land
-Acquiring title
-Investing in a merchant convoy
-Building amenities
-Building fortifications
-Setting up their own magic mart.

This path could encourage your players to become investors, brokers, venture capitalists and perhaps philanthropists as well. The thing of it is that you have to show that their actions have long term consequences that effect the world beyuond themselves.

They get payed for stopping the orphanage fire
There is no money to rebuild
The orphanage closes
The streets are full of orphans and runaways.

[ArcturusV]

A potentially related aside. One thing I like to do, is delayed rewards for people who stick to the straight and narrow. I feel this is both in keeping with the intended feel of the game's alignments in some way, and make it so people feel like being Good isn't necessarily shooting them in the foot.

What I mean is that Evil is easy, cheap, seductive, and destructive. Taking darker (Or even "Greedy" or Mercenary) routes to accomplish your goals and get paid is going to give you fast returns. You get that pile of coins for saving the orphanage. You loot the dragon's horde and buy yourself a shiny new set of uber armor, etc. Your rewards are immediate, tangible, and instantly recognizable.

However if you take the good path, say rescuing those orphans for no reward asked or expected, or after slaying the dragon donating your share of the dragon's horde to help rebuild the villages it burned down, etc, you don't get immediate rewards. I don't WANT to pay people for doing the right thing. Because that's not good. Good people don't go "I do good things because I get gold for it". And that seems to be something that you're hitting on.

But it does build rewards. Being Good means that, someday down the line when you're in dire straights you can count on the more subtle and delayed payments that Good gets. Down on your luck? Oh you happen to run into someone who you helped save before who returns the favor. Need help kicking the ass of Archmagus Demilich Darth Evil McBadguy? Why that kingdom you helped restore lends some heroes to your cause to show up at the last set of battles. Things like that. Doesn't have to be as grand as popping a miracle in someone's ass. Nor does it have to be anything overt and obvious like "Because of your inherent goodness your weapons are now treated as +5 holy weapons whenever you hold them" or the like.

Ideally I keep the "Good" rewards as one shot things. High impact, sure. But temporary. Good people don't lord their owed favors over people, or expect those they save to serve them hand and foot after all. Just something happens that helps out, related to past deeds, and then is done. In that way it's kinda balanced against the usually physical, tangible loot of "evil" rewards. That Staff of Power probably isn't going to win encounters all on it's own. But it's handy to have. The good reward of a Deus Ex Machina showing up to level a playing field or chip in at a crucial moment will result in victories you couldn't otherwise achieve, but it only happens once.