Do Rewards Matter?

Something of an observation.
 
Every now and then I see someone make a claim about how in-game rewards drive player behavior in RPGs. One example is the thought that giving out XP for treasure and killing monsters provides a different play experience than giving the XP only for killing monsters. The concept of 'reward what you want players to do' was one of the holy revelations of Forge gaming theory... and like they were right about so much else (Not!).

I have to admit, it does sound reasonable. Incentives are powerful motivators in many fields.

But I have my doubts. In my own gaming history we went from XP for treasure and monsters, to XP only for monsters, to XP for playing that evening. At no time did our actual play experience or gaming methods change.

I think the reason why there was no link for us, is that we really weren't playing to advance our characters. Not directly anyway. We were playing to have the adventure, and while I don't think we stopped to think about it- we realized that XP just raised the bar on what we'd be with dealing next time. In a real sense, it didn't matter. Sure having new spells or more HP is nice, but nicer was having a good time in the adventure currently being played.

Since we had a different goal, the in-game incentive didn't alter our play. And we ended up changing things only because we grew tired of calculating what the XP was.

So the advice of 'reward what you want' in game design doesn't really apply to me. And it doesn't appear in my game designs as a result. And I'm happy that way, and upon reflection realize that I likely wouldn't be happy in a group that really cared about the offered rewards.