Gods and Religions, Part 4: Reward and Punishment

This week in our ongoing discussion of Gods & Religions, we take a look at mechanical incentives for roleplaying characters of faith and devotion.  Ultimately, a character's relationship with their god is a matter of roleplaying.  But GMs are always on the lookout for ways to encourage more roleplaying and reward good examples of it.  If you want gods and religions to take an important role in your campaign, and you want to actively encourage your player characters' participation in that system, we've got some ideas for you.  Specifically, we have three complementary systems that encourage GMs to hand out mechanical rewards or punishments to characters roleplaying their way through a world of fickle and demanding gods.

First, there are minor ongoing benefits for characters who maintain the day-to-day trappings of their religion, including performing sacrifices, praying, and adhering to dietary restrictions.  Then there are greater one-time rewards for characters who perform exemplary services in the name of their deity.  And on the other end of the spectrum, there are punishments for those who transgress against the ethos of their deity.  Examples and suggestions are provided, but the rules are not hard and fast; a GM should feel free to adopt and adapt them as they see fit for their own campaign.

Faith Rituals
   Every god or religion asks something of its worshipers, something that affects their daily lives and marks them as a follower of that god.  They might make regular offerings, pray daily, wear certain clothing, or refrain from eating certain foods.  In return for maintaining faith rituals in this way, loyal worshipers are granted minor boons.
   The particular details of what a worshiper is expected to do and what boon they might gain depends on the god or religion in question and is at the discretion of the GM.  Examples are given below.  As a general rule, maintaining faith rituals should be a roleplaying choice that does not adversely affect the playability of the game; a GM should not demand followers perform onerous tasks that slow down the game overmuch or impose penalties that affect the efficacy of a character unless this is core to the concept of the deity.  Boons for maintaining faith rituals should be minor ongoing effects such as a +1 to a particular skill, and should be no more powerful than the boon granted by a trait.
   If a character fails to maintain their faith rituals, they lose the benefits of the granted boon until they have flawlessly upheld the rituals for a week straight.

Food and Drink: Never Adventure on an Empty Stomach

"I'm starving.  Let's break out some rations before we rest," Folg suggested, patting his rumbling dwarven stomach.

"There are no rations," Kyliss shot back. "Daldreth was carrying all our food."  She cast a deadly glare at the cleric, who was dusting himself off in the corner.  

"Hey, if you guys hadn't taken your sweet time getting me out of that gelatinous cube, maybe we'd still have some rations left!" he shot back defensively.  "Or if you guys carried some of the food, for a change..."

"We had a week's worth of rations.  Your saying all of it's gone?  What are we going to eat?"

Kyliss thought for a moment.  "Well, we killed all those dire rats a few rooms back."

Daldreth pulled a face, but Folg lit up.  "Now you're talking," the dwarf said.  "Fresh meat!  Daldreth, go get some of those R.O.U.S.es! I'll break some of this furniture up and get a fire going; this is a vaulted ceiling, there should be enough space for the smoke to go without smothering us all."

Kyliss rubbed her hands together decisively.  "Right, I'll attach a rope to this bucket and draw some water from the well."

Daldreth turned.  "A dungeon well?  Do you want throat-leeches?  Because that's how you get throat-leeches!  No, I'll just cast create water."

"Into what?  That gross-ass old barrel?  It smells like someone stored jellied fish in it."

Kyliss sighed, walked over to the barrel, and cast prestidigitation.  With a flick of her hand, a cloud of dust and unidentifiable ancient muck shot up out of it and splattered against the wall.  "We're good."
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Food and drink should be important considerations for any adventuring party, because you need that stuff to live.  But, like weight and encumbrance rules, such things are often neglected in favour of gameplay expediency.  A lot of gaming groups feel that keeping track of rations is too 'simulationist' and slows things down or distracts from the fun.  Well I'm here to champion the right of every PC to eat a square meal a day, and not just for the sake of realism.

Treasure: 5 Tips and Tricks for Making Your Treasure Hoards More Memorable

The Fishpool Hoard: British Museum.  Photo: d20 Despot

Treasure.  It's a big part of playing D&D.  It is often one of the primary motivations for adventuring.  But how often is it truly memorable?  How often are your players as impressed by their haul as their characters should be?

So often, after a big fight, games of D&D turn into games of accounting.  "You find 2,500 gold pieces, 1,000 silver, and two rubies worth 500 gp each.  Also, everyone gets 1,200 XP."  While treasure and experience are both rewards for a job well done, they should not be treated in the same way.  XP is a numerical abstraction of your character's growth and skill - it is intangible to the character.  Treasure, however, is an in-game reward, and is very tangible to the character.  Yet too often, just as XP becomes a number that players use to invests in better powers, gp becomes just a number that players invest in better equipment.  Finding treasure should be a roleplaying opportunity, not a simple exercise in accounting.

Let's take a look at some tips and tricks to making treasure interesting, exciting, believable, and memorable.

Keeping the Mystery in the Monster Manual

Well, I made it through finals and I got my BA in history, and tomorrow I leave on a whirlwind trip through Iceland, Scotland, and Italy, so now is as good of a time as any to squeeze in a blog update.

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One of the first things I noticed about Dungeons & Dragons, while I was browsing through the books at my buddy Marc’s house way back in jr. high, was the vast array of crazy monsters.  I recognized some of them from Baldur’s Gate and some of them from mythology, but most of them I was honestly baffled by.  Beholders? Locathah? Those cheesy ice-skating dragons from Monster Manual IV? As I became more acquainted with the game, I quickly grew more appreciative of (some) of these monsters because of their history, their abilities, or the niche they fill in the game world. 

But familiarity can sap some of the mystery and marvel from the monsters themselves.  This is a problem many GMs face, even if they don't realize it.  For the most part, experienced players and GMs alike are pretty familiar with the contents of the monster manual.  Even players who are usually quite good at separating player knowledge from character knowledge can fall into the trap of recognizing a monster their characters have never encountered and immediately shifting tactics to account for what they know of the beast from the Monster Manual.