Player Rewards That Invoke A Bronze to Classical Age Setting

I've been diving into the OSR scene over the past couple of months and something that I've seen discussed is how different experience and levelling up mechanics incentivise particular types of play. The idea being that if you reward players for doing a particular thing they will then focus on that and shape the game experience accordingly.

I've seen it mentioned that the rules of the first edition of Dungeons & Dragons state experience points are awarded for acquiring treasure (gold pieces). Later editions switched to ruling that experience points should be given for killing monsters. I'm not a D&D player so I'm sure there are rule variations from edition to edition (as I'm sure there are a million different house rules) but I think that's the way it is now.

Some old-school players have said that this wasn't a trivial change because it changed how the game was played. Instead of allowing players more options to go about acquiring gold and treasure, which might have included minimising combat encounters, players were now incentivised to go into a dungeon and kill everything that moves.

Before, players were not specifically incentivised to seek out encounters. This allowed for more deadly combat and unbeatable bad guys (at least in a straight fight). Giving experience points for fighting led to a game rebalanced for less deadly NPCs, fewer characters deaths, balanced combat and increasing power levels. People were still playing and having fun, but it became a different game experience.

So what kind of experience rewards would help immerse players into a Bronze to Classical Age setting?

Here's a list of some possible ways to reward experience points or trigger levelling up.

1. XP for acquiring treasure and money (gold pieces). 
2. XP for killing monsters.
3. XP for spending or investing. On training, weapons, tools, resources, titles, land or buildings.
4. XP for acquiring fame, renown or otherwise increasing your social standing.
5. XP for carousing. Spending the gains in interesting ways that might kick off new adventures.
6. XP for good roleplaying. Contributing to the story in an interesting way or playing your character against player interests to the benefit of the overall playing experience.
7. XP for milestones. Usually in the form of an adventure achievement and sometimes specifically a milestone in a (somewhat) scripted story.
8. UPDATE: I found a great article which gives an idea on how to give XP for exploring, this is highly relevant to this setting: Ibn Fadlan is Not an Adventurer: XP Rules for Travelers and Diplomats

On the face of it all of these options are quite neutral in terms of invoking a time and place. They seem to suit various genres or play styles like Sword & Sorcery for the carousing option or RPGs as a form of story-telling with options 6 and 7.

I think option 4 is the one that attracts me most because for me it invokes a world where social standing is important. This is not a setting where you acquire bags of gold and go to the local smith to buy a new sword. Money is a rare concept if it exists at all and the economy is perhaps not developed to the extent that there are shops selling weapons in every town or city.

For me it's a world where after completing a quest you have elevated your social position and with that comes the reward of say land or a title and as well as a new sword. Be careful to avoid medieval conceptions of titles and landholders like Earls and Barons or anything that is too close to a feudalistic system.

From my research it seems that there might have been more private enterprise and a concept of money in earlier times than I at first thought (more about that in a future post). But I still think it helps to de-emphasise free-market concepts. It's a very modern idea that a people live without any class or caste system and that their power is derived more from their skills, money and wealth and less from their social status.

I'm not saying to get rid of it completely because it gives players freedoms they might not have if you try to authentically model a highly stratified society. But perhaps think about how you frame the personal freedoms the characters have so that it doesn't just become a medieval or modern setting with a superficial nod to an earlier time. Of course it's up to you to determine what you think is enough to invoke the feeling you want.