Ideas wanted for narrative-style token-based mini-system

[ender_wiggin]

Hi Enworld,

I'm in the midst of dreaming up a supplemental narrative ruleset to go along with a more battle-crunch system (4E) and I wanted to crowd source for a few ideas.

The basic concept is that the characters earn tokens by developing their character. I've hammered out / blackboxed a system for this, the discussion of which is beyond the scope of this thread. The players will be earning on average 1 token per session.

Players then use these tokens in situations where, by narrative standards, the fates should be relied upon to align in their favor (ie the climax or turning point of many stories). Since dice are never reliable, the players drop tokens to ensure that drama/tension/plot doesn't turn into a farce because of the limitations of the tabletop medium. I can think of a few examples of this, but I would like you all to help me think of a few more.

The ones I have so far are, with their reasoning:

1. As a daily, any PC may spend a token to take 10 on an attack roll or 20 on a skill check: when the adventure rests on a single momentous, heroic action (that's both reasonable and cool), nothing is lamer than rolling a 3. Having the DM rule an autosuccess has been suggested in the past, but I've always found it unsavory -- the boundary between what's clever enough and what's not... This seems to solve the issue. If a gamist player who could care less about the plot uses his tokens on making sure his Lead the Attack hits th BBEG, I'm ok with that as well.
   
2. Once per character per level, a player may spend a token to avoid dying when mechanically dead: note that in my campaigns, character death is usually permanent. After using this ability, the character is still removed mechanically from the encounter, but may recover afterward at the DM's discretion. Since our games are going to be more focused on character development, it would be a shame to have characters die because of bad dice rolls. In addition, this would also give me the freedom of mind to start coup de grac'ing people.
   
3. Once per session per party, spend a token to gain a revelation: You know that situation where the group is trying to solve some mystery, and the DM thinks of a clever answer to the mystery, and the PCs all think of their clever answers and go after them, except that everybody's thinking of something different? The players are left, their leads all exhausted, and the only thing left to do is this awkward dance where the PCs try to guess what the DM was thinking iteratively until one of them gets close enough for the DM to nudge over the prize. I don't think there's something necessarily wrong with that (as the aforementioned dance can certainly be elegant), but I like the idea of one of the characters having a flash of inspiration (like they do in movies and books) that ends up leading the party somewhere interesting. It would certainly save a lot of time when nobody is particularly feeling up to the dance.
   
4. Once per tier (or section of campaign) per group: a deus ex machina, to pull the group out of a sticky situation. Once in a while, the group misses the little metagame cues and rushes into a fight they're severely underleveled and underprepped, and they left themselves no escape option. Oops. Before, the options were to either have to group pay for their mistake with a TPK, which was too harsh, or pay it for yourself by having to come up with some way to get them out and/or pulling punches on that monster that was designed to roll over stuff until half a tier later. This is a good compromise, in my imagination.

What else to this list do you guys have to add?

Perhaps a more focused question would be: what useful tropes do we want to implement in a roleplaying game, but were previously unable to?

Thanks for your help!

NOTE:Before somebody says something, I am perfectly aware that if I want a more narratively oriented game, picking a different system would be a good choice. However, in addition to being a narratavist DM I also like the wargaming side of tabletop and 4E is perfect for that. So please just entertain me.

 

[nedjer]

These seem pretty much along the lines of stunt points or bonus cards, which often offer extra actions, acrobatics and 'miraculous' escapes. I'd usually give more of those meta-game warnings and make PCs use up stacks of any stunt points to escape; rather than give a whole party a get out of jail free card. Less of a concern for me, as a few scraps of flesh and some loyal allies are often enough to come back from the dead.

Like the revelation idea - looks a good way to slip a little meta-gaming in alongside a skills check system.

 

[ender_wiggin]

Thanks for the comment.

I have used stunt/bonus tokens in the past, and while they did work in the way they were supposed to, I didn't find that they embellished the story much since PCs used them exclusively for mechanical benefit (pretty much just like another feat or class feature).

I think what I'm going for isn't to give the PCs more options mechanically (as 4th edition already suffers from option overload), so stunt/bonus cards wouldn't really work for me. Rather, I want them to make a normally random event non-random at critical moments in the story, and do damage control when random events go awry.

As far as the 'get out of jail free card', I think one advantage they have is that they don't require me to the bend the situation in their favor. One GM-player dynamic I've frequently encountered in the past is when the PCs desperately start searching for an exit (can we do this? can we do that? is this stunt plausible?), but there isn't a doubt in the room that if they do find an exit, it is because I opened the door for them. I want them to feel like they opened it themselves. But perhaps the 'get out of jail directly' is too strong. Maybe it should be, metaphorically, 'find a lock pick in your jail cell'. Except I don't know what that looks like.

Anyone have any ideas?