Rewarding Your Players
It's often difficult to judge how to reward your players without it feeling underwhelming or game breaking, lets see if we can leave them whelmed...
The Trophy of Awesome in all it's glory!
A fun exercise I have started doing is the 'moment of the game award'. I throw this out to the group to vote on which moment, other than your own, was the funniest/most impactful/coolest in the game. Then I get them to vote and the winner receives inspiration and The Trophy of Awesome. It encourages riskier play and highlights some of their favourite moments so you can see what your players enjoy.
How would you like to do this? Matt Mercer's method of creative killing allows the player to take the spotlight and have some roleplaying fun. It is very important that each of your players gets a 'moment'. Getting a stoic player/character talking is a great way to get the table roleplaying. You can also gain incite how the character wants to seen by the other characters and the strengths that they are highlighting when they execute their enemy.
Resolving some of their backstory. Focussing the narrative on a particular character for a while can be reward enough for some players, I know it worked on me! It makes the player feel special and you get a free storyline from their backstory, thats a win win!
Finally items. 5th Edition has removed the need to use magic items in order to defeat bad guys, they are a tool to be used but not necessary. However, players love loot, they REALLY love loot. Striking the right balance is hard as you don't want your players to feel like they have wasted their time on a dungeon but you also don't want to give them items that render all other dungeons trivial. Xanathar's Guide to Everything has given us some common and fun magic items that don't break combat like permanently clean armour or magical watches. Giving a flavour of magic and something to show off in town is always nice and can play into the social aspect of the game.
In one of my games I am experimenting with a type of evolving magic item. As the characters progress through the storyline one of their items is being improved by a God of my choice. Jernau (a monk of Tyr) has a set of now magical prayer beads and has completed two of the major plot points so one of the prayer beads casts Healing Word and the second casts Zephyr Strike. As the campaign progresses more powers will be bestowed on to the prayer beads. I don't have a fixed set of abilities that the item will finally have but I have some fluid ideas that will be shaped by how the character progresses in terms of skills and personality. In game terms this keeps the players on the main storyline and gives them incremental improvement and a signature item that has been tailored to them. You can play around with this concept by having abilities that can be unlocked with rituals or appeasing the sentient being trapped in the item, have fun with it!
Have a go at some of these methods and let me know how you get on, remember rewards aren't always items.
May you roll well!
