Finding the fun: reward cycles

Since the Forge has lost some currency in popular RPG discourse, we don’t much talk about its theoretical fruits. In the following blog post, I’ll recover the Forgie notion of "reward cycle", with copious examples, mostly from actual play, disambiguating it from other concepts and showing how it sometimes works in play or goes astray.

In the Forgie concept of games, a game is an instrument that a skilled play group uses to focus its play. We play games, not the other way around. I've written this blog post  to show how a skilled play group relates to a good game. I'm not writing for designers, though I do offer some tips for design, but for anybody interested in the phenomenology of play.

Collective affective response and skilled play

Group RPGs are social games. When I play well, I get a collective affective response. When things are going well, creatively, I can literally see it on the face of everyone playing. We’re all leaning in. (Note that “things going well, creatively” is not the same as “things going well for our characters”, as I will discuss.) Likewise I can see it when we’re not creatively engaged, because we’re leaning back, our eyes are neither widened nor narrowed.

In some games, “good play” usually means the same as “tactically effective play”, stepping up to the bat, meeting a challenge. In such a game, I lean in when I see someone making a bold, well-considered maneuver, or when a new challenge is introduced. I’m likewise hooked when I get to see the results of those maneuvers, whatever those results are. I even like watching people make mistakes, as long as they're doing their best.

The main characters have ambushed some monsters and the survivors are running back to their base. They’re right at the door. I have my character charge past them and block the way. He’s alone, and he might die, but he’ll slow the monsters down enough that the rest of the group can kill them before they alert the base.

By contrast, I check right out around sloppiness, silliness, laziness, and foolishness. Dickering too. Lengthy white room strategizing too.

Going forward, I’m going to call a maneuver “good” or “brilliant” or whatever when it gets the play group’s approval, and “bad” when it doesn’t. These evaluations are always relative to a single play group.

I once played a session of a game where players could buy a day’s rations, or a pack of 12 eggs, for the same price. One player suggested that they buy eggs, and everybody, including our horse, could simply eat one egg per day. This was almost unanimously hailed as a brilliant maneuver. They saved money, which they used for more equipment, which they were able to carry more of, since they needed less inventory space for rations. Eventually they stopped tracking rations entirely.

That play group, sans me, had a certain idea of what good play looks like. They were interested in using cartoon logic and technicalities of the game's equipment list to circumvent equipment restrictions and the game's economy. If you see that kind of move as skillful, you'll agree with them believe that that is skilled play, and you'll be pleased by the results. I do not view that move as skillful, and was not pleased by the results. 

The main characters enter a dangerous area and encounter their first token opposition. They win a fight, though they are slightly wounded. One player suggests that they immediately retreat to regroup and strategize. Everyone nods slightly in approval. They consider this good sober judgement. In another game, months later, with an entirely different play group, we find ourselves in the same situation. One player suggests the characters should retreat to regroup and strategize. Another player objects: “I know you guys play a bit differently – I don’t know if – I hear about simulationism – but I’m here to have fun”. The rest of the play group agrees: they think retreating at this juncture would be bizarre.

In the example above, I saw two play groups evaluate the same maneuver -- retreat after the first (successful!) combat encounter, and spend in-game downtime, and real life play time, healing and preparing to fight more of that specific enemy. One group sees that as skilled play. The other group, a boring waste of time.

Reward cycle 

I say a game has a reward cycle if, through its structure, it reinforces or intensifies my play group's collective affective response to fictional events. I’m paid off by a reward cycle through further fictional events, some kind of formal game-mechanical consequences, or both. I'm only in a reward cycle if my play group does in fact have a collective affective response, and we actually do deepen our response by continuing to play the game.

To be clear about the structure here. Every reward cycle looks the same when you zoom out enough.

• We play into some situation.
• Someone makes a skilled maneuver, whatever "skilled" means in this game.
• The group values the contribution and responds to it affectively.
• Somehow, the through the normal course of the game, the maneuver brings about new formal or fictional consequences, which become part of a new situation for play.
• The group values these consequences and responds to them affectively.

In this account, I am deliberately cagey about how the reward cycle comes about in the game, because there is no one "reward cycle mechanism".  We would have to look at specific instances of play in specific games to see how they did or did not belong to any reward cycles. We cannot say in advance, as armchair game designers and critics, what will or will not count as a reward cycle. At best we can make rules of thumb from experience.

Note, in many of the following examples, through the rest of the post, you'll have to add in the collective affective response, which is simply implied. Remember, no collective affective response, no reward cycle.

After much fictional struggle and tactical brilliance, the main characters have snuck into their enemy’s headquarters, where they catch the enemy leader unawares. They kill him. Shouts of triumph from the real-life players. When they next meet their enemies, they are disorganized, and have made poor plans. More shouts from the players.

The effects of an important maneuver ripple through the game. Everyone was engaged by the initial maneuver (which was itself the culmination of a prior reward cycle) and found that engagement paid off when they could press the advantage from their prior success.

A monster is chucking rocks at the main characters, who are behind heavy cover. My character has a bow and arrows. I suggest that it’s worth leaning out of cover to shoot the monster, and I do so. Following a resolution procedure, my character is hit with a rock and dies. I literally scream.

I made a risky maneuver. Tension abounds. We find out I am unsuccessful. Tension dissolves into grief, on my part anyway. (How "collective" was the affect here? I don't know, because I wasn't paying attention.)

My character has gone through many trials and tribulations, and achieved her goal. I have reached the then-peak of my strategic ability. Everyone is buzzing with our newfound power. Unfortunately, my character is almost dead. Following the normal procedures of the game, another player introduces a potential enemy. Tension. I do not think I am strong enough to fight him. He will let her pass, but he demands an awful toll. (I won’t even write it out, it’s magical realm bullshit, blame Adam.) She pays the toll. Everybody else laughs in disgust. I feel my stomach curdle. My character is forever marked by this.

We had achieved a moment of triumph (which was the conclusion of a prior reward cycle, not detailed here) and we were riding high. A second reward cycle comes about with the introduction of the threat, which changes our situation. A third reward cycle, when we passed the threat by paying the toll. And countless knock-on cycles, every time the toll was relevant, and we, or I, cared about that.

So far I've given examples about direct violent conflict, in games where we want to step up to challenges. But of course there are other kinds of games, with other topics. In some games, we want a reward cycle that triggers when I, the player, make a big thematic statement, when I show what my character cares about.

Last week I played a game in which my character tried to psych out her husband’s affair partner. I was making a statement: this is what is important to me, right now, and it’s worth using my force of will to get it. We move to the game’s resolution procedure, and we find out that my character has failed. She’s humiliated. I put my values on the line, and I got a big return, though obviously not the one I wanted.

Maybe the simplest reward cycle comes from the distribution of authority in a game, and occurs when my contribution has been satisfyingly reincorporated.

I've established a relationship between my character and many other characters. We are stuck in an impossible moral deadlock. (If I had acted differently earlier in the game, I would not have been stuck. I didn't know that then; nobody could have foreseen it.) My character cannot, morally, help one side or another. She can only give them best wishes and farewell. Her heart, and mine, is heavy. I say: she says farewell to the woman she's closest to, who is responsible for much suffering. Another player, playing that woman, says: She grabs her and hugs her tight. A moment of pathos.

Nested reward cycles

A reward cycle can be long or short, and shorter cycles can be nested inside longer cycles.

Adam organizes the play group to conquer a town. His plan is good, he has enough force to succeed. One player makes a bold maneuver, breaking his troops off and charging through the town hall, in turn dividing the enemy troops. Shortest reward cycle. Adam’s whole army wins the day. Reward cycle. Several characters improve in formal game-mechanical terms. Reward cycle. But ultimately taking the town was an expensive endeavor, in lives and gold, which cost is compounded by bad weather. Reward cycle. But by conquering the town he was ultimately able to rule it, once he built his forces back up. Longest reward cycle. The short cycle here took about five minutes to resolve; the longest, several real-life months.

I want lots of nested reward cycles in my games. If I’ve only got immediate, short reward cycles, I’m not establishing anything permanent. I’m only seeing payoffs from the past five minutes of play, which is nothing. (You’ll get this when you play “conch-passing” games, where anything can and does happen, based solely on the whims of the current speaker. Not recommended.) If I only have long reward cycles – if I only get excited when I level up, or my character makes the occasional lasting impact on the world – I’m going to be bored most of the time waiting for that payoff. (In the 1980s and 1990s, this was a very common dysfunction kind of play.)

What reward cycles are not 

Let's now disambiguate reward cycles from other, similar concepts: gameplay loops, resolution procedures, feedback loops, social feedback, and the entirety of the game.

Reward cycles aren’t the same as gameplay loops.

In the 1977 Holmes D&D rules, the DM describes the situation, the caller asks a question or states their action, we follow any necessary resolution procedure, and the DM describes the result, which is in turn a new situation. In some of these gameplay loops we’ll find a reward cycle. Sometimes we’ll find multiple reward cycles within that single loop. Or we might find none, for quite some time.

(For the following, imagine that there’s no particular affective response in the play group.) “I attack.” [Procedure.] “He dies.” | “I search the room.” [Procedure.] “10 minutes pass. You find [whatever].” (On the other hand: “That description sounded a little hinky… I want to search that room!” [Procedure.] “10 minutes pass. You find a secret door on the north wall!”. Everybody’s pumped. Or: “10 minutes pass. You don’t find anything.” “Damn!” What seemed like a good lead was just a waste of time. – Can you see the difference?These latter exchanges are expressions of player skill, part of reward cycles.) 

In old-school D&D, an individual round in combat is rarely the event of a full reward cycle. Usually we’re more interested in combat as a whole.

Nor are reward cycles the same as resolution procedures.

In InSpectres, players can ascribe traits to other players' characters. If the other player plays into the trait, at the end of the scenario their franchise gets an extra die. The player who suggests the trait has to choose something that will be interesting for the other player to play, while the other player has to weigh the odds that the trait will get the franchise into more trouble with the benefit of the extra die at the end of the scenario. (Bad play would be ascribing boring positive traits -- who cares? Nobody will get excited over that. Or refusing all traits out of paranoia. You can feel the productive tension in the group evaporate when somebody refuses a provocative trait.)

Reward cycles aren't feedback loops either; they don't simply make positive affect more positive, and negative affect more negative.

The main characters are in a dangerous place. The ground ahead is dotted with man-sized holes, some of which probably contain monsters. We want to draw them out and kill them one by one. I have my character advance alone, sans heavy armor, and toss rocks into holes, waiting a little while between each throw. (At least I think that was a pretty good plan!) A monster emerges from a hole. My character, who is very fast, tries to run away to his allies. We go to a resolution procedure, and my character trips. The monster catches up to him and kills him. “I can’t believe he tripped! What were the odds of that?” “One in twenty, as you saw.”

In the example above, our positive affect, from approval at a good play well-executed in a high-stakes environment, turned to negative affect, as the plan collapsed, and a powerful character died.

Nor are reward cycles the same as simple social feedback.

A player describes a character, an immense, immensely hairy woman, climbing out of the ocean. She shakes her hair. I ask: “Like a L’Oreal model, or like a dog?”. Laughter. We don’t need to answer the question. Obviously she shakes like a dog. -- Then, following the procedures of the game, another player answers: "She doesn't shake her hair at all. She lets it fall on her, wet."

This was a fine question, and a fine response, which contributed to our understanding of the fiction. It wasn't part of a reward cycle, though. This information, this contribution, went nowhere, and was not reinforced by the game. Another player could have chosen to reincorporate it somehow, in which case it may have become part of a reward cycle, but in fact this did not happen.

Finally, a game is not simply a series of reward cycles. Tunnels & Trolls and Holmes 1977 can provide similar or identical reward cycles, but they are nevertheless very different games.

Reward cycles not rewarding 

Here are some potential failure modes, in which our play is not enriched by a reward cycle.

We expect a reward cycle, but the game doesn't give us the scaffolding to create one.

“You said he’s wounded badly, particularly his sword arm. Ok, I press my advantage, driving hard from his right!” Everyone is impressed with the player’s mastery of the fiction. The play group goes through their normal resolution procedure, which does not take this specific fiction into account. In some different game, this would have been part of a reward cycle. (Not saying those are better or worse games, just that this game had an opportunity for a reward cycle, and for whatever reason doesn’t have one here.)

Or we might find that the game expects to provide a reward cycle, but none of the participants actually care about what's going on.

"Since you fended off the merfolk army, the princess is willing to marry you!" Ok, whatever, I don't care. I didn't fend off the army to marry the princess, I fended off the army because fending off the army is cool and fun. Marrying the princess is boring because I don't care about her. Worse than boring, even, because now my character is a prince, and I either have to ignore that fact or stop taking him on spelunking expeditions.

We might find that we inadvertently reward play which we don’t actually think is good.

I notice that we spend a lot of time having low impact conversations with side characters. I don’t care about the side characters, and I’m bored. “Ok, I punch the dude in the face.” What! Everybody reacts. Straight to combat. Now we’re cooking – from my point of view, anyway. Everybody else expresses unhappiness. Well, here we are, having affective responses! Reward cycle, right? -- But the affective response isn't shared. Most of the participants are turned off, creatively.

And we might find that there are simply not enough reward cycles in our game. It's a slog to play. We move from one action to the next, without feeling any creative reward.

We're playing a game about overland exploration. There's no challenge or spark. Some player says where they go; another, what they see and encounter. Who cares? None of us.

Suggested reward cycles for games about challenge

Here are some key places for reward cycles in a game where players step up to challenges:

• When I come up with a brilliant maneuver, and it goes off without a hitch, so that I hose my enemy.
• When my enemy comes up with a brilliant maneuver, and it goes off without a hitch, so that I am hosed.
• When I play poorly, and I am hosed.
• When I sacrifice an important resource, and it really is gone, and I feel its loss.

I'll have a hard time enjoying a challenge if I don't fall into one of these reward cycles a good chunk of the time. (In practice it's hard to know if a plan really is golden

As a rule of thumb, a game based around tactical skill and strategy should make losses hurt, fictionally. Crucially, this punishment should be meted out by the game itself; that’s what makes the punishment part of the game.

Conclusion

Next time you’re playing, pay attention to these nested reward cycles. How quick are they coming? How satisfying is each cycle? Are we all on the same page about the pace of the game, and the things we’re rewarding? If everybody thinks a particular maneuver is great, does it make a splash, good or bad?

When you notice someone making an important maneuver, reinforce it, socially and fictionally.

I’d like to hear about some reward cycles from your recent games. They’re my favorite part of actual play reports. They’re the reason I don’t like in-fiction play reports; I care more about the people playing.