GM Rewards

Dragon's Lair by Tim & Greg Hildebrandt

While I will mostly be posting things with an ATOMIC bent, hopefully some of my ideas translate to other tabletop RPGs, too. I will try adjusting descriptions away from specific ATOMIC rules when I discuss them here.

 

The players in ATOMIC gain skill points and experience to improve and diversify their characters. They gain fame and cultivate contacts, find loot and make names for themselves in the wasteland. Rewards are an integral part of the process of doing the stuff of adventuring.

But the players aren’t the only people playing the game.

Most GMs think the rewards of world-building, creating a memorable session and hearing players talk about for years to come is plenty, and they’re right. It takes a certain kind of person to master a tabletop game. However, wouldn’t it be fun if players could reward the GM in-game for surprising them in an unexpected way, or when they discover how all the plot threads come together, or just for doing something uniquely GM-cool? Glad you asked.

When you, the players, think the GM has done something cool, give the GM a poker chip (or some other token that won’t easily get lost or eaten). Now, don’t do this just because the GM lets you get away with something or has to pull a deus ex machina to save you from your own stupidity—that’s just manipulation. A GM should get a chip when s/he surprises you, awes you, fascinates you, deepens your immersion or just makes things more fun for everyone at the table.

That’s it! Well, okay, no, that isn’t it. The GM hangs onto chips until s/he has 5 or more, enough to purchase assorted Mayhem, Mishaps or Miscellany (or M) of their choosing.

So if the GM designs the whole world and what happens in it, what’s the point? The point is to create GM agency by giving them one-shot tools to bend or break rules without the players holding it against them. Think of them as Get Out of Bitching, Free cards, if nothing else.

Each M can only be chosen once, and can only be used one time unless specifically noted otherwise.

Encore Performance

Bring back one killed NPC or boss of your choice. No explanations, no excuses, no need for backstory. And the NPC is pissed about it. Bonus to attacks. New loot, though!

Poker Face

Is he lying? Is he telling the truth? Who knows? For one day, you do not have to tell them if an NPC is lying or not. Watch ‘em squirm.

Redundant Systems

If the players kill an NPC or boss too quickly for you to show them off properly, roll 1d4. The result is how much of a check interval passes before it stands back up, at full health, but slightly weakened. Don’t use this if combat took half an hour or more to play out—that’s just sadistic. Players gain a little XP or other minor reward when this second combat is over.

Forewarned

Somehow, they knew the players were coming. You don’t have to figure out how. NPC combatants cannot be surprised or subject to cheap shots and have higher defense for this combat. Players suffer equipment damage or loss of supplies/henchmen/vital fluids, but gain double cash and supplies. If they live.

How’d They Get One of THOSE?

Bad news? An NPC in a random encounter is equipped with a heavy pristine weapon (in ATOMIC, a pristine weapon is extremely rare and generally powerful--on par with a +5 weapon in the world's most popular RPG, not the kind of thing to toss into a random encounter, typically). 

Good news? The PCs can have it, if they don’t wreck it first. Or, y’know, die.

(GM, are the players gone? Good)

Bad news? The self-destruct countdown begins at 10 seconds!

Genre-Bender

When you roll a Special encounter on an encounter check, it can be any type of creature you want—specifically, from another sort of genre or game entirely. Optimus Prime? Red dragon from D&D? Introspective vampire that operates along Storyteller rules? Cyberpunk mage from Shadowrun? Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland? Check. If using a creature from another tabletop game, have that creature use the rules from that game and try your best to make it work!

You do not need to justify the encounter’s presence or extrapolate it any further in the campaign. Players receive 100 XP from this encounter (in ATOMIC, encounters don't usually grant XP), and probably should get at least a memento of the occasion (loot, achievement, even a perk).

Gamist

When the players are traveling, instead of using a map, pull out a board game that uses dice. Travel takes one trip around the board (so obviously, it needs a board where you can do that). You take the first turn. Whenever you and a player are on the same space, make an encounter check. Ad-lib interesting encounters for landing on special spaces, and establish one or two spaces that will give you a chip each time anybody lands on it.

Afterwards, have each player make a LUCK check if they wish. Success means they permanently gain +1 LUCK, and a critical failure means they permanently lose -1 LUCK.

Notice in each of these examples (except Poker Face), the players get something out of it, too. This keeps the Ms from feeling like arbitrary punishments, and (in theory, anyway) encourages the players not to be too stingy with the chips unless the GM is being boring, nor too generous with the chips because the Ms can ramp up danger and/or uncertainty kind of a lot.