Rewards are used to motivate players to accomplish (specific) goals .....
then this not be a "goals & rewards" type thing, this would be modeling how the player character accomplishing something that's important to them should improve their mood.
example:
right now i'm play testing a single high level character, started from scratch. she's a crafting/archer/tank build. flint arrows are her weapon of preference. when she starts running low on arrows, this creates a "goal" of "get more arrows". when she crafts an arrow, she gets a mood boost from the satisfaction of making something. but no mood boost because she now has more arrows - which would be of personal importance to the role playing character (shana - queen of the jungle) - as well as the human player, IE me. she has more arrows, so she has a better chance to survive encounters, so that's less i have to wait around while she heals, and less times i have to reload when she dies.
if she get arrows by trading for them or taking them off dead cavemen, she gets no mood boost, even though she's gotten more arrows, which is important to her.
so there's an automatic mood boost for crafting an item, or successfully gathering resources, but not for simply acquiring stuff by trade, scavenging from dead cavemen, or raiding storage pits you discover - which the other means of getting craft-able items other than by crafting.
and it seems to me that getting a mood boost for getting arrows (for example) should be modeled somehow. or killing a cave lion, or whatever the player deems important (within reason).
so i guess this really isn't about player quests and goals and rewards per se, its more about adding a new feature to the mood modeling used by the simulation. and the first stab at how to model and implement that just happens to be "user defined goals". "mood boosts" expanded to "rewards in general", as i was wondering if there were any things other than mood that "user goals" should affect, that's not already modeled somehow. but so far i haven't come up with anything other than mood boost, so it looks like accomplishing a user goal should give a mood boost, but nothing else extra. so it seems to boil down to user defined goals, and mood boosts for achieving them. a "user defined goal" wizard seems to be the way to go.
so what might the general goal types be?
you already get a mood boost from crafting, gathering, learning skills, weapons training, every time you hit in combat, and every time you kill in combat.
so acquiring items is not covered, and exploration is not covered.
band members and NPCs have "interests". interests are used in conversations and modeling relations between cavemen (both PCs and NPCs). band members (PCs) get an extra mood boost whenever they do any action related to their interest. so band members with the hunting interest get an extra mood boost from animal kills, and so on. "travel" is one of the interests. so PCs into travel do get a mood boost for traveling cross country, which is related to exploration. you get to choose your interests when you create your cave person, so in that respect, the human player can design a character who indirectly gets mood boosts for exploring via traveling cross-country. but there's no mood boost for exploring and discovering new lands, if that's what you're into.
sunandshadow has a recurring theme of a game that somehow knows what you like to do and rewards you for doing that. one way would be rewards for absolutely everything. so no matter what the player chooses to do, they get rewarded. and make them (the rewards) all automatic, like the mood boosts in Caveman. but in a game where you can do a lot of stuff, that might be a bit of work to make sure every possible action in the game has some reward. Caveman does this in a lot of places, but not absolutely every possible thing you can do in the game has an effect on mood (or anything else). actually, i think you get a mood boost from a successful trade with friendly cavemen or bands, but not from trade with traders. and that's a boost for sealing a deal, not for goods acquired. sealing a deal also improves relations (another action "reward type" besides mood boost). but quests and rewards is a misnomer. its actually actions and effects. so "trade with caveman" and "trade with band" actions have an effect on relations and mood. and the effect can be positive or negative depending on how the trading goes. this is above and beyond any actual goods exchanged.
so what kinds of things do folks like to do in games that don't get rewarded?
acquiring items and exploration aren't covered yet in Caveman.
what other things do folks like to do?