Writing a Mission for Solar Echoes (part 5)

A final consideration for mission design involves player rewards. If players have put themselves at risk and worked hard to achieve mission goals, they need to know how well they did. At the end of every mission, I review all the challenges and decide if any of them are significant enough to deserve an experience (XP) point. Usually, an average mission will yield 10 to 15 XP. In Solar Echoes, characters level up every 20 XP, so these points aren't given out for every single thing that is done. We usually don't award XP for killing anything, unless the mission was an assassination mission. XP rewards are sometimes in the negative, too. For instance, if the players' characters didn't bother to question an important non-player character (NPC) and just killed him outright, then they will earn -1 or -2 XP points! In other situations, if players managed to avoid a fight with a dangerous foe and bypassed or defeated him in another way, there might be an extra XP point or two awarded for their creative approach. Another important consideration with player rewards is loot—players should find interesting items, weapons, and armor during the course of the mission. Also, at the end of the mission, players should be awarded with several thousand credits for doing their job. The UG typically awards 2,000 to 5,000 credits per mission at beginning character levels. I want the players to be excited about the things they find during a mission, and to have enough money to start making long-term plans for their characters—buying better equipment, cyberware prosthetics, or even their very own starship!