Let's Talk About Metacurrency

[Reynard]

Of course they do, that is how it works.

If your a GM that loves metacurrancy then you love having a blank "sandbox" game where you don't have any big plans. You can just show up and react to whatever the players do. So you love it when a player "uses a point" to say something like "I want a plot twist"! It's great, as you had nothing planned anyway, but now you can do what the player tells you to do and the player will be happy. It is a win win for everybody: the player gets whatever they want and the GM likes being told what to do.

When you build strawmen, do you prefer plastic or paper straws?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Whoah.

We should game together!

Just because we share a definition of meta-currency doesn't mean I like it or want it in my games.

 

[bloodtide]

When you build strawmen, do you prefer plastic or paper straws?

Metastraws!

 

[Bill Zebub]

When you build strawmen, do you prefer plastic or paper straws?

Reusable stainless steel or titanium, tyvm.

 

[TwoSix]

Of course they do, that is how it works.

If your a GM that loves metacurrancy then you love having a blank "sandbox" game where you don't have any big plans. You can just show up and react to whatever the players do. So you love it when a player "uses a point" to say something like "I want a plot twist"! It's great, as you had nothing planned anyway, but now you can do what the player tells you to do and the player will be happy. It is a win win for everybody: the player gets whatever they want and the GM likes being told what to do.

Guilty as charged. Doing a ton of "prep work" as a GM is generally a waste of time.

 

[Reynard]

I do think it is probably worth differentiating some of the broad categories of metacurrency: currency that lets the player alter the outcome of rolls or at least their probable outcomes; currency that gives players some sort of authorial control (like cart full of straw); currency used to power abilities or other features; and then any or all of those, but in the GM's hands.

 

[Deadstop]

I greatly dislike metacurrency.

As the DM is running and making the whole game play plot story and everything, it is so odd to say "okay DM just sit there and do nothing. You canonly act if you have a DM point and your current total is zero, haha!" So then the players just dance around and have some sort of activity while the DM watches. And the whole idea of the DM being forced to do anything as "a player used a point" is crazy.

I hate 'fate points' or such where a player can alter game reality. It's so pointless. When the player stands up so proud and says "I use a fate point and the moon falls on top the the dragon god and my character gets all the XP and Loot! Huzza!", my reaction is more like "okay, fine your character rules the world. Whatever. Go home and rule the world, no point in playing a game with you."

Now, more like an inspiration point were the player can take some bonus action or effect, like the effect of the 'wish', but no the hostile alter game reality directed at the DM. I use such inspiration in my games all the time.

I do see most of the casual DMs loving metacurrancy. They can just show up to the game and have the players tell them what to do, or even go as far as let the players just run the game. I guess that is fun for some people, but not me.

What game or games are you talking about? It would basically have to be “improv governed solely by a metacurrency” to work like that, and no RPG systems I am aware of use metacurrency like that. Maybe Robin Laws’ DramaSystem? But how many games of that have you witnessed?

Even in systems where metacurrency can be spent for plot twists, or where GMs spend metacurrency to alter the scene, the GM or group usually gets to veto the “We just win forever” uses in the former case (nor should a player want to do something like that, any more than a GM should make rocks fall for an automatic TPK), and the GM already got to create the scene in the first place, only spending currency to make on-the-fly changes that increase difficulty or tension.

 

[bloodtide]

What game or games are you talking about? It would basically have to be “improv governed solely by a metacurrency” to work like that, and no RPG systems I am aware of use metacurrency like that. Maybe Robin Laws’ DramaSystem? But how many games of that have you witnessed?

Don't Fate Points in games like Fate work like that? How about Blades in the Darks dumb Falshback one? Were you can just alter things saying "yuck yuck, sure is a good thing my character packed that item as we needed it, yuck yuck".

A couple? Really one is enough.

Even in systems where metacurrency can be spent for plot twists, or where GMs spend metacurrency to alter the scene, the GM or group usually gets to veto the “We just win forever” uses in the former case (nor should a player want to do something like that, any more than a GM should make rocks fall for an automatic TPK), and the GM already got to create the scene in the first place, only spending currency to make on-the-fly changes that increase difficulty or tension.

The problem is more the Fox guarding the Hens and "everyone always agrees". Metacurrency only works in groups that chant "one of us". But then such groups don't have any problems anyway.

 

[Umbran]

So, all that said, how do you feel about metacurrency? Do you like it?

I am sure there are implementations I'm not a fan of, but broadly speaking, yes, I do like them.

Does it big you? Do you prefer a currency just for players, or for both GMs and players? Do you want it to be able to have narrative control (i spend a bennie to have a cart full of hay be below the window I am jumping out of) or do you prefer it to have only basic mechanical/mathematical aspects?

Emphasis mine.
So, that's not the normal way I approach thinking about the effects of meta-currency, unless the game rules make it explicitly so. Instead: you are jumping out the window - if you use a meta-currency, and succeed, then the narrative description of the success might be that there was a cart of hay there. Or you could narrate the classic set of awnings to bounce off/tear through, or whatever. The reason you succeed is part of narration, and doesn't need to be determined explicitly before the roll.

Do you want it to be essentially optional, or integrated?

When it is tacked on, like D&D's Inspiration, is when it is most likely forgotten, because nothing really depends on it. When it is integrated, and there's an expected meta currency economy, then people remember it, and you avoid the hoarding issue, because they learn that more meta currency is coming.

How much metacurrency should be "on the table" == a single point of Inspiration as in D&D 5E, or a constant flow like Daggerheart?

How much depends on how it operates.

 

[Umbran]

Don't Fate Points in games like Fate work like that? How about Blades in the Darks dumb Falshback one? Were you can just alter things saying "yuck yuck, sure is a good thing my character packed that item as we needed it, yuck yuck".

Mod Note:
Hey. You're free to not like things. But maybe save off outright disparaging them, or groups that like things you don't. Thanks.