Ideas for Improving Inspiration

Here’s a tweak to Inspiration I have used that I’ve found very successful (though I don’t use it in every campaign):
• Everyone gains Inspiration automatically at the beginning of each session.
• Your Flaw(s) give you a way to gain Inspiration. Any time you or your party suffer a setback as a result of your Flaw, you gain Inspiration.
• Your Personality Traits, Ideal(s), and Bond(s) give you ways to spend Inspiration. On any action where one of your personality traits is relevant (often, but not always, social rolls), any action taken in pursuit of your Ideal, and any action taken in defense of your Bond, you can spend Inspiration.

This change does significantly restrict the opportunities you have to gain and to spend Inspiration, but in my experience, at also significantly increases how often Inspiration is gained and spent. When you have specific conditions under which you can spend Inspiration, you are constantly looking for opportunities to spend it, instead of saving it for just the right roll. It also puts the onus on the player to keep track of their personality traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws instead of the DM. And by tying Inspiration gain to Flaws, and specifically to setbacks caused by the characters’ Flaws, it encourages the players to choose flaws that are relevant, and to play them up as actual flaws.

Another tweak I have considered, but not actually tested, is replacing Inspiration with Inspiration Dice, a-la Bardic Inspiration. I think this would solve a lot of problems with Inspiration in its current form. Currently, spending Inspiration gives you Advantage on a roll. So, you have no reason to spend it on rolls that already have Advantage, and you have to decide to spend it before you know whether or not you’ll need it. With Bardic-style Inspiration Dice though, you can wait to see the result of the d20 roll before deciding if you want to use it, it’s useful on rolls that have Advantage from some other source, and it doesn’t negate disadvantage, which are all benefits in my opinion. And, crucially, it gives you a way to deal with gaining Inspiration when you already have it - just increase the size of the Inspiration Die by one step. Plus it clears up some potentially confusing terminology by removing the distinction between Inspiration and Inspiration Dice.

Blue said:

No, I don't accept that we should use a derogatory name on them just because the concept has had different names across different RPGs. It's like calling HPs or AC a gimmick, because it also has a lot of terms in different RPGs. If you want to call them a neutral name, go ahead. But don't pretend you're just giving them a common name and not putting them down when you use the term gimmick.



Now this is fair. I was focused on the getting of them, but this is a real criticism of spending them. At my table, they are usually spent in way of people going above and beyond because they are inspired (or Inspired) because they are Fighting for Queen and Country, or whatever the appropriate trait was. But you are right - by the rules there needs not be any connection. I agree, that's something to fix.

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My background and other interests does not use the term gimmick as derogatory. In various entertainments, its often used to indicate anything intended to be "believed" or followed as if its part of the scene but which is really not "real".

The "Quuen of Sheebah" is maybe from Detroit but at the show its treated as if she is not. The "brass knucks" the "heel" pulls from his tights are not real but his opponent and the fans act like they do.

Similarly, these types of points add to the "scene at play" advantage or actual physical features that were not there by either the design/intent (layout - no torch was written as in the drawer prior to the spend) or that are acquired by action/mechanics (advantage was not gained by HELP or flanking) etc **but** when we spend the gimmick as a player to create these we are agreeing to pretend its normal play of a scene.

An example of non-gimmick "points" or abilities - the wizard conjurer can conjure a torch as a known in game thing - a class ability. Similarly, certain rogue subs can generate advantage in opening round. Another could be the gradual acquisition of "edge" by hitting a foe in combat where you can spend x token for gains such as advantage **against that foe** (representing gradual setup of the enemy for an exploit strike.) Another are systems where you can use limited numbers of rerolls in certain cases only because your character is built as "very good at..." sometimes referred to as specialties.

All of those have direct in game, in scene, in build, in fiction link between cause and effect.

Hence the term gimmick used to represent the various outside the character/scene interventions - particularly ones without ties between earn and use.or any need to explain how they are occuring. 5e inspiration RAW requires not one grunt of "why does your character have advantage on this roll". It doesnt tie. it to stuff you are good at. It doesnt help you with the work it into scene bit, just expects it to be treated as normal as real within the scene - like the brass knucks or Queen of Sheebah.

At times i have seen these referred to as meta-game points but i think we might be able to agree meta-game is pretty loaded term as well.

TaranTheWanderer said:

One of the things you get good at playing FATE is making traits that are double-edged. If they are too positive, you don't gain Inspiration and, if they are too negative, you can't spend them.

Something like, "Always Ready" hardly nets you anything because it's good to always be ready. But "Always Expecting the Worst" still lets you be ready, but can lead to some interesting complications and rp situations.

But Fate points are an economy in FATE and not a 'gimmick' as someone put it. The game doesn't really work without them and you need them to flow back and forth. That said, you might want to specify in D&D that some Traits should be positive and some should specifically be 'flaws' if you're worried people would game the system.

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The issue is that in FATE you only get a FP on a compel - so you have incentive to write traits with negative sides. In inspiration, it's if you RP is - so you could do some broad positive ones and still get Inspiration.

Think if you could get Fate Points for "Always Ready" just by pointing out how you are ready for X. No downside, no GM actively offering, just agreeing passively that you fit the trait.

That's why for this change I was suggesting you only get Inspiration for negative traits.

Hriston said:

I have a couple issues with the way inspiration is presented in the rulebooks.

The first has already been mentioned. It's how the way the mechanic is used doesn't match what's implied by the description, most notably the sentence about the Beggar Prince. It just seems sloppy.

Second, and I think this is more important, DMs should be encouraged by the rules to put their players' characters in situations that address their characters' personality traits. This can drive a more narrativist style of play and seems to be one of the untapped strengths of inspiration as presented.

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In some systems where these gimmick points are tied to replace by troubles, they go to lengths to emphasize to the player **and** GM that you should pick/reccommend traits that lend themselves to coming up.

Often such systems push "double-edged" traits where it can commonly in play create as many opportunities for gains as for losses, etc.

But, also, those systems tend to link the "spend" to go thru the same kind of traits - if not the exact ones.

From what i saw, this seemed (both part) to grow out of a reversing of early mechanics where you got up-front chargen gains for "disads" and then often the player worked to minimize the in play impact of them since they already got the gains.

In some ways, those early up-front gains did more of what you describe because they often "valued" the disad by explicit statements of frequency and impact - that the player choose and then the GM was to enforce.

So, let me suggest, instead of the rulebook telling the GM to create these situations or give them any expectation of a given frequency or such, this be implemented by agreement between player and GM.

Blue said:

The issue is that in FATE you only get a FP on a compel - so you have incentive to write traits with negative sides. In inspiration, it's if you RP is - so you could do some broad positive ones and still get Inspiration.

Think if you could get Fate Points for "Always Ready" just by pointing out how you are ready for X. No downside, no GM actively offering, just agreeing passively that you fit the trait.

That's why for this change I was suggesting you only get Inspiration for negative traits.

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Yeah, I guess that's why I run Inspiration exactly like FATE. I use compels, self-compels and have player 'invoke' traits to use their Inspiration. Honestly, it's not a lot of work and it encourages the players to really push their rp. IMO.

But getting Inspiration for only acting on Negative Traits would work just as well.

The only down side is that they should sometimes get inspiration for Positive Traits. Let's say you have a Trait of 'Charitable' , I think it would be worth an Inspiration if the character gave up a magic item or a considerable amount of money to, say, an orphanage. While it is a positive trait, it puts the character at a disadvantage because they've lost something that could have made their character 'more powerful' or whatever.

So, for that reason, I'd be look at it differently.
Does the Trait disadvantage you? take an inspiration.
Does the Trait give you an 'advantage'? Spend an inspiration.

TaranTheWanderer said:

Yeah, I guess that's why I run Inspiration exactly like FATE. I use compels, self-compels and have player 'invoke' traits to use their Inspiration. Honestly, it's not a lot of work and it encourages the players to really push their rp. IMO.

But getting Inspiration for only acting on Negative Traits would work just as well.

The only down side is that they should sometimes get inspiration for Positive Traits. Let's say you have a Trait of 'Charitable' , I think it would be worth an Inspiration if the character gave up a magic item or a considerable amount of money to, say, an orphanage. While it is a positive trait, it puts the character at a disadvantage because they've lost something that could have made their character 'more powerful' or whatever.

So, for that reason, I'd be look at it differently.
Does the Trait disadvantage you? take an inspiration.
Does the Trait give you an 'advantage'? Spend an inspiration.

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I'm on board with what you are saying. I like your definition better than mine, the "Charitable" example really brought it home.

So in the end we do move more to how Fate does it. Showing how the traits need to be invoked both to get and to spend Inspiration I think reinforces them.

With accepting this type of model, do you think the 5e rule of only one point of Inspiration at a time should be kept, or can that be relaxed? I sort of like that you ca't stockpile them beforehand for crucial scenes, since unlike in Fate where you refresh and use them in every scene, in 5e spending Inspiration is still a bonus on top of your existing competencies.

Blue said:

With accepting this type of model, do you think the 5e rule of only one point of Inspiration at a time should be kept, or can that be relaxed? I sort of like that you ca't stockpile them beforehand for crucial scenes, since unlike in Fate where you refresh and use them in every scene, in 5e spending Inspiration is still a bonus on top of your existing competencies.

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I'm not sure. I don't mind if they have one or two..or three The down-side to limiting it to one, is you can't use it as an incentive if they already have one and, even if they rp without the incentive, you can't reward them after the fact. (but maybe that's ok)

You could get complicated and say they can only use one 1/short rest which would work fine, but now you're adding a whole bunch of rules. It might even be easier to say 1/combat but you really want to encourage them to use them outside of combat.

Having different ways of using Inspiration besides getting Advantage would fix that and encourage them not to horde them. Someone mentioned powering magic items and I mentioned 'declaring' stuff. Once again, that's an extra rule and the declarations require a DM who has the knack for knowing what to allow.

In general I think that choices that are suboptimal but make for a better story (e.g. playing your flaws, or playing things like "charitable" that come with a mechanical cost) are good opportunities for Inspiration. How you codify that in rules I'm not 100% sure.

Elfcrusher said:

In general I think that choices that are suboptimal but make for a better story (e.g. playing your flaws, or playing things like "charitable" that come with a mechanical cost) are good opportunities for Inspiration. How you codify that in rules I'm not 100% sure.

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Well, in a sense, it already is codified because Inspiration is already part of the game. The problem is it leaves how you distribute Inspiration up to the DM. Adding a line similar to,

"Generally, if a character trait would disadvantage a character and/or create a more interesting story, a DM should reward a player."

I think it just comes down to DM style. Some people think it's a gimmick and others, like myself, let players do more than just advantage.

Thinking about it some more, regardless of how you decide to do it, limiting use to 1/short rest balances hording if the DM is inclined to allow more than one inspiration.

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While I'm on the topic, here's how I adjudicate Inspiration outside of getting advantage(this all assumes you have the necessary traits):

Auto-success: If succeeding a role with advantage would make for a more interesting outcome, the player need simply pay an inspiration to succeed. This might be decided by the DM or the player could ask the DM.

Auto-Failure: failing a roll might make for a more interesting outcome than succeeding, a DM may offer a player an Inspiration to fail a check instead of rolling.

Declaring interesting things: (i've mentioned this a few times) relationships with NPCs, adding interesting NPCs, having the right tools for the job, etc... (dm fiat, of course, with the rule of cool)

- side note: an interesting outcome of allowing this is it often stops arguments.
DM: you are ambushed
Player: my wizard casted Alarm earlier in the night, I shouldn't be surprised.
DM: I don't remember you saying you cast it and this is an important encounter
Player: ok, but my character is 'OVERLY PARANOID'. Can I just spend an inspiration to say I cast it so I won't be surprised?

(you'll notice they had to spend an inspiration to not be surprised but now they don't have one for ensuing combat...so it balances nicely)

My position on suboptimal choices is that it's not worth worrying about. Set some limits to the number of times Inspiration can be earned. Peg those limits to drawing upon the range of personal characteristics instead of just one or two. Then let it play out. Sometimes when portraying a characteristic the player will make a suboptimal choice. They won't all be suboptimal. And that's fine in my view because the more suboptimal the use of the mechanic is, the less the players are going to engage with it, and the fewer interesting portrayals you may get during your game. Think of the end goal here: Do you want players to portray their characters according to the established characteristics or don't you?