Reward problem.

Well with a poor definition of system types under my belt I think I'll move into an odd subject. Rewarding players.

Rewarding players is something that is done in most games, they do something, they get something whether it be a new item, a new contact, or the staple in rpgs the exp. Items and contacts are understandable but experience points is an odd mish mash of your character just making it through the world as well as acomplishing any task the DM deams worthwhile. Most of the time this is killing monsters but overcoming traps or moving plot seems to warent exp at times. This is done in a kind of positive reinforcment.

That is the strangeness of the practice, it is positive reinforcement for a game you should already be enjoying. A game where these sort of advancments and reinforcment being the only enjoyable thing about the game would be quite wrong. If the players are enjoying the game and you give these things to them you run into a problem for running the game, you just changed the dynamic of the characters. This sort of dynamic is understandable if the game is becoming predictable but when it's a common occurance it shows the problem of changing characters for the better, they just plainly get better, if the game doesn't scale properly or requires a lot of knowledge to do this bad things happen.

The characters might get overpowered and you start fighting some odd form of war to maintain a balance and give them a challenge, to once again they beat and becoming more powerful. The cycle doesn't end till you quit the game, which may happen to poor playing due to this rollercoaster of figuring out what to do with them.

Though an odd thing happens players tend not to like games that stay "static" and focus on just playing the character. There has to be something allowing the character to get "better" or else the game seems to lose it's playability in the long term. One shots are the best example of this, you make a character you play it and have fun with it then forget the character.