Nick Lewis wrote about his 40+ essential modules, and I really missed two modules there - Rules and Flag.
I commented that

My top 5 are: Views, CCK, Flag, Rules, Panels. I think that the Flag & Rules combo is less known in the community, but there are so many use cases they can cover. Because they are a bit abstracted it's hard for newbies to realize their potential.

I think there's no better way to show my point, than a tutorial. Lazy people can even download the feature from here. This tutorial will be about having "User points" functionality without using the user points module. I'm not saying that module is bad, but sometimes I need multiple user points per user. Also, re-using existing modules always feels me with great joy. GREAT joy! Also, thinking about Drupal 7 with fields API, suddenly _user points can become _any-fieldable-entity points...
The tutorial will cover the "Rule sets" concept in Rules module, which is also considered by many as a great mystery. Let's define our mission:

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