Ideas for Improving Inspiration

[Guest 6801328]

Agreed.

I deliberately kept it vague to avoid focusing on specific systems, but since you ask:

The specific game I have in mind is Western the RPG.

Characters get advantages and disadvantages. Examples of advantages include Artistic (bonuses to skills like acting or painting), animal handler (calm wild beasts, bonus to animal training) or "indian friend" (as a non-native PC).

To enable these you need points from your disadvantages, such as Illiterate (can't read when that would be beneficial to you), Wanted (you have a bounty on your head; you only get a point if bounty hunters show up or you're compelled to disguise yourself), or Female (you get a point when you allow your gender to be as much of an obstacle as it would have been in the real world).

Hope that clears it up

Well, no, not really. The first thing you said was "Agreed", but then you offer an example where advantages and disadvantages are distinctly separate, which is the exact opposite of what I was describing.

I do understand and even like games that have you choose between "Boons" and "Flaws" or whatever. "Keen Eyesight" is pretty much always a good thing, and "Nearsighted" is pretty much always a bad thing.

So far, so good.

But how you play those things can be either beneficial or detrimental. The following is admittedly a stretch, but it illustrates the point:

1) The guy with keen eyesight sees something terrifying that the others can't make out clearly, and roleplays being shaken and scared, refusing to go closer. The DM grants him Inspiration.
2) The party sees some magical glyphs that force them to all make saving throws, and the nearsighted guy asks if he can spend Inspiration roll with advantage because he can't make them out clearly.

When it comes to granting inspiration, what should (or could, since we are discussing a hypothetical improvement to the mechanic) matter is not whether the traits/features/whatever that you chose are "good" or "bad", but how you play them in the moment.

I hope that clears it up...

 

[5ekyu]

You seem to be very focused on flaws, but, as I'm sure you know, there are lots of other personal characteristics a player can portray to gain inspiration. The sensible, calculating character can gain inspiration by being sensible and calculating, and what I'm saying is one way to use inspiration is for the DM to put that character in situations that give him/her opportunities to exhibit those qualities and see how far they go. For example, play can focus on whether that character will be sensible and calculating even when it goes against moral beliefs s/he might hold. The character can gain inspiration for staying true to that characteristic, but at what cost?

Actually as i have previously addressed system with more detailed systems for this go to the point of recommending the double edged nature of traits - not just advantage or flaw binary but traits which both provide opportunities for good pushes and bad pushes - at what gain and at what cost situations.

Really, systems have bern doing this for decades before 5e. Been there, done that.

 

[CapnZapp]

I hope that clears it up...

Thank you.

Your point is that even if a given ruleset still groups "good" and "bad" traits separately (for easier reference maybe), the rules (or at least the GM) should still allow you to gain a trait point from a "good" trait by you using it to your disadvantage, and still allow you to spend a trait point on a "bad" trait by you using it to your advantage.

Fair enough.

I would still consider this somewhat of an "advanced" usage, however. For gamers new to the idea of personality traits used by the player to influence the story (such as most old-school simulationist D&Ders), I still think it is more newb-friendly to do it the D&D way with personality traits clearly grouped by function.

(Again, that still doesn't preclude an optional variant box (or whatever) instructing the DM to feel free to use traits "the other way round" in the manner you explain.)

Just that in D&D, traditionally there's a (very) clear dividing line between bonuses and abilities that are good for you, and limitations and penalties that you must suffer to balance up the good parts. Using an ability to your disadvantage, or eking out advantages from penalties has historically been almost unheard of. (I can just hear the cries of outrage if somebody had the gall to try to "cheat" the system by suggesting you could gain something out of a dwarf's slow speed or a halflings strength penalty, or whatever ).

(Again, not disagreeing. Just showing you that what you might consider to be natural can be a wide gulf - especially for D&D gamers not used to (read "actively hostile to") narrative mechanics)

 

[CydKnight]

I admit that I often forget about it when I DM and probably remember enough that 1 ends up getting awarded about every 3 game sessions.

 

[Hriston]

Actually as i have previously addressed system with more detailed systems for this go to the point of recommending the double edged nature of traits - not just advantage or flaw binary but traits which both provide opportunities for good pushes and bad pushes - at what gain and at what cost situations.

Really, systems have bern doing this for decades before 5e. Been there, done that.

I think we may be talking past each other. To me, you seem to be saying there are other systems that do this sort of thing better and that you would be playing if you wanted to have this sort of thing in your game. You also seem to be saying you don't want this sort of thing in your D&D. That's fine, of course. Inspiration as written is pretty much optional. But since the point of this thread is to improve inspiration, I don't see what would be wrong with it working a little more like some of those other games as an option that you would be free to not use in your game.

 

[5ekyu]

I think we may be talking past each other. To me, you seem to be saying there are other systems that do this sort of thing better and that you would be playing if you wanted to have this sort of thing in your game. You also seem to be saying you don't want this sort of thing in your D&D. That's fine, of course. Inspiration as written is pretty much optional. But since the point of this thread is to improve inspiration, I don't see what would be wrong with it working a little more like some of those other games as an option that you would be free to not use in your game.

Actually i was responding to the post claiming i was overly focused on the negatives since one post of mine dud not cover every possibility again and again.

You seem determined to mine out of posts other intents.

Thats cool

Everybody needs a hobby.

 

[Hriston]

Actually i was responding to the post claiming i was overly focused on the negatives since one post of mine dud not cover every possibility again and again.

You seem determined to mine out of posts other intents.

Thats cool

Everybody needs a hobby.

I try to understand what someone who takes the time to respond to me on the internet is trying to say. Sorry if I haven't correctly interpreted your posts.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Thank you.

Your point is that even if a given ruleset still groups "good" and "bad" traits separately (for easier reference maybe), the rules (or at least the GM) should still allow you to gain a trait point from a "good" trait by you using it to your disadvantage, and still allow you to spend a trait point on a "bad" trait by you using it to your advantage.

Fair enough.

I would still consider this somewhat of an "advanced" usage, however. For gamers new to the idea of personality traits used by the player to influence the story (such as most old-school simulationist D&Ders), I still think it is more newb-friendly to do it the D&D way with personality traits clearly grouped by function.

(Again, that still doesn't preclude an optional variant box (or whatever) instructing the DM to feel free to use traits "the other way round" in the manner you explain.)

Just that in D&D, traditionally there's a (very) clear dividing line between bonuses and abilities that are good for you, and limitations and penalties that you must suffer to balance up the good parts. Using an ability to your disadvantage, or eking out advantages from penalties has historically been almost unheard of. (I can just hear the cries of outrage if somebody had the gall to try to "cheat" the system by suggesting you could gain something out of a dwarf's slow speed or a halflings strength penalty, or whatever ).

(Again, not disagreeing. Just showing you that what you might consider to be natural can be a wide gulf - especially for D&D gamers not used to (read "actively hostile to") narrative mechanics)

I agree that a halfling's strength penalty is pretty hard to spin as a beneft, but the "wide gulf" you mention is only between the two extremes of a continuous spectrum. What about a halfling's small size? Good or bad? And those are just physical traits; personality traits can be especially vague. What about "Suspicious"? Or "Loyal"? Stubborn? Hot-tempered? Patient?

Now, if we are trying to reward "voluntary disadvantages" (that is, moments where the player intentionally does something sub-optimal because it fits their character) then the benefit of the more clearly negative traits (e.g. "stupid") is that it's easier to get that reward. The advantage of the clearly positive traits ("eagle-eyed") is that they are (or can be) their own reward. And the advantage of the ones right in the middle ("suspicious") is that you get a little bit of each: sometimes it's useful to be suspicious, sometimes you get a roleplaying reward.

Is that harder for beginners to both understand and implement than the current system? I dunno. Given that the current system seems so widely underused I'm not sure the bar for "at least as easy to understand" is very high.

 

[CapnZapp]

It would be interesting to learn more about why the system isn't used more.

In my case, my first reason is: it doesn't feel right for Inspiration to give advantage as it shortcircuits the game-within-a-game of achieving it... and because it does nothing for the character that already got it.

For at least some of my players, it's a bit of the simple old "don't want to bother with giving my playing piece a personality".

But is this really true of the D&D community at large?

I hope not.

This means that if WotC ever comes around of fixing Inspiration per this thread (unlikely before 6E), it could gain a higher adoption rate.