The advice in the rulebook on awarding Rez points seems very unusual to me.
How the passage is written is almost like you are telling how to run the game according to your standards. Like it is unadvisable that the characters should attain a major achievement at the end of every session, for example.
That is not to everyone's tastes.
My preference would have been a more generalistic approach in how Rez is awarded. If the math is important, it roughly goes: "1 point per every session, 2 points when a major plot point is reached".
This is very simplistic, but it does not award anything for roleplaying.
In my experience, I have found out that you really can't coerce players into roleplaying by making their characters advance just a bit faster than other characters. Besides this favors players who are all mouth all the time (roughly speaking) and penalizing the ones that prefer to stay in the sidelines. I'm a firm believer that players should not be penalized because of their PERSONALITY! (Sorry about the caps. How do you embolden text around here?)
I do like to encourage roleplaying though, and it would be nice to award the players that do it somehow. I would do it by granting temporary Moxie.
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Awarding Rez points
Wed, 2009-10-21 08:01
#1
Moracai
Awarding Rez points
Regarding rewarding with XP versus penalizing without:
I don't want XP to be a way for me to tell them that they've having fun correctly or not. I don't want it to be a way for me to rate who is doing "better" at playing the game. I've generally found the best policy is to give out experience equally, based on how the group does, and then allow the players to nominate each other for sort of a "best moment of the session" at the end.
Sometimes it ends in one or two people getting nominated and getting a couple extra points, and sometimes they go around and end up mentioning everyone at the table and so everyone gets an extra point. It could be something someone did in-game, or a plan someone game up with, or anything someone did to make the session better. Basically anything that can end with "...that was awesome."
I find that players rarely nominate themselves, although it's always allowed, and they generally notice when someone hasn't been nominated in a while and try to do things to encourage them, draw them out, or sometimes simply go out of their way to look for the little ways that person does contribute, and nominate them based on that.
Oh, and if they don't participate and I don't really collect (m)any nominations, then fine, no bonus XP. There's no mandate, no pressure, no demands, but you know, they do it anyway.
It's always been a positive experience for me.