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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jian" data-source="post: 9732448" data-attributes="member: 78087">Coming back to pitfalls in game design, I’d like to talk about one that occasionally comes up in the games I read, which is metacurrency.The word itself means a lot of things, but for now I’ll stick to “a game currency which doesn’t represent anything that corresponds to a specific effect or resource in the game world (such as hit points, stamina dice, or mana points) but is mainly narrative, perhaps representing luck, destiny, or plot protection.” Good examples include FATE’s Fate Points, Savage Worlds’ Bennies, Cortex’s Plot Points, and Unisystem’s Drama Points. As written, such metacurrency can be a nice little bolt-on to many systems. The players usually have a fairly small number (3-5 per session, say) and can typically spend them to reroll a failed check, reduce damage taken, heal damage, or make a Declaration about the plot (which, depending on the game, may vary between “there’s a fire axe on the wall here” and “I’m actually the Emperor’s illegitimate heir - how many Plot Points does that take?”).Their presence generally implies a more cinematic or fun system where you want the PCs to be big damn heroes of some sort. But there can be a couple of common pitfalls in their implementation.1) They can overshadow the players’ other choices or genre preferences. Some players don’t like the overt feeling of plot protection, or the fact that you can overcome an obstacle by throwing Plot Points at it rather than skill point investment, system mastery, or careful planning. This is of course an issue for discussion before starting the game in the first place, but it can crop up later especially if there are too many Plot Points in play. 2) Many metacurrency using systems aim for some version of the Fate point economy in FATE, where certain player choices (e.g, getting yourself in trouble) generates metacurrency which you can use later. That’s great, but it can be hard to get the cycle moving or to encourage players to use it, and attempts to get it moving can put too many points in play or vary through the session or campaign. For instance, I wonder if the Hope/Fear mechanic (where player and GM metacurrencies are generated both by events and by dice rolls) in Daggerheart could cause unexpected bumps and troughs in the metacurrency economy.</blockquote>

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