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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5563200" data-attributes="member: 42582">Crazy Jerome, I find this currency stuff a bit tricky, but will try to say something in response to your first question.I think that currency rules can apply both within the fiction, within the mechanics, and from one to the other.When the mechanical currency rules - whether purely mechanical, or also touching the fiction - are not supported by a play group's reward cycle, my feeling is that either (i) that aspect of the game will be ignored or tweaked, or (ii) playing the game will become seen as increasingly a chore or duty rather than a more spontaneous pleasure.A candidate instance of (i): part of the mechanics of classic AD&D is tracking each PC's alignment on the alignment graph, which can then result in change of alignment with all the mechanical ramifications of that - so we have fictional material (eg "My paladin slaughters the orc babies!") producing mechanical consequences (the GM marks the shift on the alignment graph) producing mechanical changes to effectivenss and resource ("Oh no! I lost my paladinhood") producing fictional consequences (the ex-paladin is now reviled by his peers, has to go on arduous quests, etc etc). For those groups who don't get any buzz out of alignment-focused play - it's not part of what they want to explore, they're not interested in it either as a source of challenge or of theme, and it's not a technique that helps them get something that they do want - then the alignment tracking rules are likely just to be dropped: players write an alignment on their sheets at PC gen and then it is reference only when an enemy casts Unholy Word etc.An example of (ii): at the high end of classic AD&D play, PCs get the ability to turn resources (namely, gp) into both fictional positioning ("Now I'm a lord!") and effectivness (castles, armies etc). The currency rules whereby this is played out tend to produce a very heavy degree of exploration in play - it's all about locating territory, reaching agreement with local nobles, hiring architects and engineers, designing the castle and calculating the cost, etc. The last time I played an AD&D game that reached these levels (about 25 years ago) I was still fairly new to RPGing, and we dutifully played all this out even though I don't think anyone particularly enjoyed it (even back then neither me nor my players were really into exploration-heavy play), because according to the rulebooks, Dragon magazine etc this was what playing D&D was all about.For me, well-written RPG rules would make it clear what sort of play experience the currency rules (express or implicit) supported, to help players work out what they can expect to get out of the game, and what parts of it (perhaps all!) they should just disregard. Given that most don't, it instead took me many years of play plus reading the Forge essays to work some of this stuff out for myself.If a group is all on the same page with respect to their attitude towards the fiction, then presumably they will be on the same page with respect to fiction-to-fiction currency rules, and will only apply these when it fits into some sort of reward cycle.But given that in many groups creative agendas differ at least somewhat, I suspect that fiction-to-fiction currency rules can be one source of intra-group tension or even dysfunction.For example, the whole "prone snake" debate seems to turn, in part, on different understandings of the currency rules that link the fiction "I am hitting a snake" to the fiction "The snake is now flipped onto its back and somewhat indisposed".My objection to the plot hook for the Open Grave buried tower scenario can also be seen as turning on a disagreement over fiction-to-fiction currency rules: my view is that entering the paragon tier (a change in fictional positioning) should produce sufficient social/metaphysical status (a type of effectiveness) that, absent special Aragon-like circumstances, picking up rumours while eating at local watering holes is ruled out. In my view, whoever wrote the hook to that scenario disregarded a fiction-to-fiction currency rule that the game implicitly puts into play (in virtue of its characterisation of paragon status). If I was playing with a GM who followed the lead of Open Grave, and continually disregarded (what I take to be) that implicity currency rule, I have to assume that this would interfere with my reward cycle.Does any of that make sense?</blockquote>

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