Let's Talk About Metacurrency

[Crimson Longinus]

I am not missing the point, I am saying it is entirely irrelevant to the original argument. This is nothing but a distraction because I chose Middle-earth as my stand-in for a low magic setting

On top of that I do not see any of those guys do anything special anyway, so I am not even sure why their heritage is supposed to be a counterargument

Apparently low magic worlds don’t have aristocrats. Today I found out that I live in a high magic setting.

 

[Maxperson]

at best that was a +1 to the attribute. They lived longer sure, Aragorn at least, not sure the house of Denethor did

Dude. When they marched on Sauron and his armies, Sauron surrendered, because he couldn't beat them. It was a lot more than a simple +1. However, even if it was a +1 to every attribute, that's still a significant difference from regular humans.

+1 to every attribute. Prophecy. Telepathy. Healing hands. The ability to see into people and see the truth. And more. vs. Nothing.

 

[Maxperson]

wouldn’t all dwarves trace back to the first dwarf

Actually, no. More than one dwarf was created by Aule. Durin was the first.

 

[Maxperson]

Don’t look at me, I made the Rambo joke. Doing my part to keep things not painfully nerdy.

This shall not pass!

 

[Benjamin Olson]

The two games I've played a substantial amount of that use metacurrency ubiquitously are Daggerheart and Star Trek Adventures.

I'm not generally a fan of GM metacurrency. Not only do I not want the GM (and hence the game universe) bound by such rules, but the methods that generate it can encourage player inaction. For example, in Daggerheart I don't feel comfortable taking a turn in combat unless I have something particularly good to do because I am risking both generating Fear and the GM gaining the spotlight. Now there always seems to be something cool for me to do at some point during the combat, but we're like 10 sessions in and my wizard has only made the basic magic attack with his greatstaff one time because it just feels like a waste to take a turn if that's all I have to offer, and there are definitely times when I'm stuck waiting for enemies to get into a position where I have a good move. When I played a Daggerheart oneshot and was handed a pregen Ranger character with (to my mind) less optimized abilities I just felt uncomfortable taking a turn. I would also say that in my Star Trek Adventures group not wanting to generate threat for the DM seemed to sometimes just cause inaction.

I've been looking into playing the Star Wars: Edge of the Empire rpg and hold out hope that the back and forth economy of Destiny points will work in a way that pleases me better there. On the DM side they seem to mostly just be usable to give hostile NPCs a modest advantage, rather than constraining their action so much that players are likely to fear generating them.

I also dislike metacurrency used to power abilities that should be always on, like Daggerheart spending hope to apply experience bonuses. What sort of ludonarrative is that? There isn't one, it's just a game being gamey. The Modiphius 2d20 system effectively makes you spend momentum to have a realistic chance of succeeding at anything difficult outside your skill set, which for Star Trek feels very appropriate sometimes since the shared momentum is generated by individual successes, and banding together to solve problems is the whole vibe of the show and of a Starfleet crew. But other times it just creates awkward situations of someone not being comfortable spending the group's momentum, or of people wanting to do easy little unrelated tasks just to generate momentum before a difficult task. Yes some things you individually do abstractly help the mission, but others don't. And this is the system applied to represent the beats of a show whose narrative conceits it fits relatively well. I suspect I'd probably like how 2d20 runs less with some of the other 2d20 games where it seems a less natural fit.

But Star Trek Adventures also has my favorite use of metacurrency, which is the much rarer 1 point of Deterimination that players get each session, which can only be spent when attempting something which aligns with one of the character's values, and has several powerful uses to vastly increase the chance that you succeed in what should be a spotlight moment. The need to invoke your character values feels very Star Trek and the rarity of this metacurrency keeps it from swallowing up the whole game.

I also like the new Cosemere RPG's use of a small pool of Focus to power various special attacks and abilities (it feels like a good way to have "you can try anything" rules while limiting how often things that slow down combat like parrying can be used), but I haven't played enough of it to render judgement. I've played enough Outgunned that I should be able to render judgement on it's Adrenaline/Luck and Spotlight metacurrencies, but we always forget to give them out and usually forget to use them except for with explicitly Adrenaline/Luck powered feats.

 

[Maxperson]

In Rolemaster, which is rather heavily influenced by Tolkien, you have three "ranks" of Men: High, Mixed, and Common. High Men are basically Dunedain, and have a specific culture as well. Mixed and Common men have different stat bonuses, but both have the same variety of cultures available (e.g. City, Plains, Woods, Mariner) (which determine starting skills). So under that paradigm, Gondorian nobility would be Mixed Men, and most other Men in Middle-Earth would be Common.

Yes, but in some families the blood is nearly pure, and in some members of those families the blood runs true. Denethor and his sons were in that category and would be High Men.

 

[Maxperson]

what did Boromir do that regular people could not have done? I am not aware of anything

You do know that he was attacked by around 100 orcs, was not in particularly defensive terrain, and many of the orcs had bows. He still killed TWENTY of them.

Regular folks can't do that.

 

[Maxperson]

Apparently low magic words don’t have aristocrats. Today I found out that I live in a high magic setting.

Wrong thread. This belongs in the "Today I learned" thread.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I'm not generally a fan of GM metacurrency. Not only do I not want the GM (and hence the game universe) bound by such rules, but the methods that generate it can encourage player inaction. For example, in Daggerheart I don't feel comfortable taking a turn in combat unless I have something particularly good to do because I am risking both generating Fear and the GM gaining the spotlight. Now there always seems to be something cool for me to do at some point during the combat, but we're like 10 sessions in and my wizard has only made the basic magic attack with his greatstaff one time because it just feels like a waste to take a turn if that's all I have to offer, and there are definitely times when I'm stuck waiting for enemies to get into a position where I have a good move. When I played a Daggerheart oneshot and was handed a pregen Ranger character with (to my mind) less optimized abilities I just felt uncomfortable taking a turn. I would also say that in my Star Trek Adventures group not wanting to generate threat for the DM seemed to sometimes just cause inaction.

This is exactly the effect I anticipated when I first saw Daggerheart's initiative system but people were dismissive and said it's not gonna play like that in practice.

 

[Reynard]

This is exactly the effect I anticipated when I first saw Daggerheart's initiative system but people were dismissive and said it's not gonna play like that in practice.

That isn't inevitable. It does require that players actually be engaged and willing to fail, tho.