I’m currently into Chris McDowell’s idea of “Foreground Growth” — character change and advancement because of specific things that happened in play, with no metagame rules invovled. Partly this is because I’m running Electric Bastionland and thinking about running Cairn, and neither has traditional advancement rules. The problem is that it’s not always obvious how to make it happen — while XP and level and skill point and advancement systems guide you to use them, foreground growth is something that the GM has to support.

So I’ve started a list below of foreground growth opportunities, along with sources that say how to do this or that glisten with examples:

• Provide treasure that is worth money, and thus lets the PCs buy equipment and property and favours and titles
  • Some examples of exotic treasures, things more interesting than coins and gems while still not having great non-monetary use — https://www.bastionland.com/2016/05/odd-treasures.html
• Provide items that have interesting power and capabilities
  • Oddity examples from McDowall —
    • https://www.bastionland.com/2016/01/the-death-of-arcana-plus-oddities-to.html
    • https://www.bastionland.com/2018/12/a-stocking-of-oddities.html
    • https://www.bastionland.com/2016/04/d6-urban-oddities.html
    • https://www.bastionland.com/2016/04/d6-urban-oddities.html
    • https://www.bastionland.com/2016/01/d100-oddities-for-new-characters.html
  • Joseph Manola’s list of magic items with effects that work well in OSR play — https://udan-adan.blogspot.com/2021/10/game-enhancing-powers-game-ruining.html (note the links within to his further lists, including of “double-edged potions” and useful mundane items)
  • (Don’t forget that you can tune an item’s usefulness in lots of ways, e.g. by making them single-use, fuelled by something rare, only usable in sunlight/above ground/by an ordained priest etc)
• Threaten them with monsters that can change them if they wound them, kill them, or get them to swear fealty to them
  • Some from McDowall — https://www.bastionland.com/2016/11/messy-characters.html and https://www.bastionland.com/2017/04/imprints-foreground-growth-in-context.html
• Threaten them with monsters from which interesting treasures can be extracted
• Use a “scars” system that’s triggered by certain mechanical situation
  • An early verison is at https://www.bastionland.com/2016/05/active-survival-scars-and-afflictions.html
  • A revised version is in Electric Bastionland (including the free version)
• Provide pets and hirelings with useful abilities but challenging instincts or personal goals
• Give them access to organisations who can, if membership criteria are met and/or suitable service is rendered, provide training or services
  • McDowall’s early thoughts on Unions — https://www.bastionland.com/2016/05/unions-and-strength-in-numbers.html
  • Electric Bastionland text on Unions (in paid version)
• Let them worship at the shrines of dubious gods and receive blessings and punishments and strictures thereby
• Let them hear rumours of locations with strange properties — stone circles, ancient temples, swamps with weird moulds (thanks to Adam Hensley for pointing this one out)
• Use any of the above to give them distinctive personal properties
  • McDowall’s examples of “behavioural oddities” — https://www.bastionland.com/2020/06/behavioural-oddities.html

Here are, also, some examples of foreground growth that don’t fit into the above categories (thanks to Yochai Gal for pointing these out):

• https://cairnrpg.com/resources/frequently-asked-questions/#how-do-pcs-advance-without-things-like-levels-or-xp
• https://lichvanwinkle.blogspot.com/2021/11/coins-in-d-and-found-advancement.html

If you have more categories, or can point me to more good examples, please let me know in the comments and I will expand the above.