Let's Talk About Metacurrency

[Umbran]

Sure, if the game is designed that way, it’s certainly then the “job” of the GM to run the game accordingly.

My point was about why someone would enjoy that. It’s not a necessity for doing the job of GM in general. It’s about enjoying the play experience that is created by handling things that way.

You realize there is a load of space between "necessary" and "about enjoying" that you are excluding?

Like, I don't absolutely need a 12" cast iron skillet in my kitchen. I didn't have one for decades, and got on just fine. And it isn't like the cast iron is particularly fun. Indeed, it is awkwardly heavy, and cleaning it is more work than cleaning my non-stick skillet. Using the cast iron is more work, generally speaking. But it does support some bits of cookery better than a non-stick skillet. So I have it and use it when called for.

Meta-currencies are tools. You use them for the same reason you might use any other tool - it assists you in getting something done.

 

[hawkeyefan]

You realize there is a load of space between "necessary" and "about enjoying" that you are excluding?

Like, I don't absolutely need a 12" cast iron skillet in my kitchen. I didn't have one for decades, and got on just fine. And it isn't like the cast iron is particularly fun. Indeed, it is awkwardly heavy, and cleaning it is more work than cleaning my non-stick skillet. Using the cast iron is more work, generally speaking. But it does support some bits of cookery better than a non-stick skillet. So I have it and use it when called for.

Meta-currencies are tools. You use them for the same reason you might use any other tool - it assists you in getting something done.

Yes, I realize that. However, I was responding to Micah’s comment which seemed to indicate that such was necessary. So I was pointing out that, like most things, it’s much more about preference than anything else.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

Many games that have GM-side meta-currency also routinely restrict the GM's authorship rights. Not my bag, but a lot of people here seem to want that for reasons I don't understand.

It appears you think that authorship is a zero-sum game; if the players get to do more, it means the GM gets less. That really, really has not been my experience. When my players author parts of our game, it drives my creativity, sparks new ideas and helps me author better.

For me, a GM who doesn’t allow their players to author parts of the game is not only limiting the players’ fun — they are limiting themselves. Obviously, they are more likely to fall into routine patterns, and more likely to railroad, but I think the greater loss is that by not allowing others to add to their creativity, they are curtailing their own ability and diminishing their own creations.

I think the reason people want to allow players to author things with minimal GM supervision is really simple — it makes the game more fun for everyone. Why wouldn’t it?

 

[Staffan]

For D&D, I’ve gone full LitRPG. Hit points are explicitly supernatural resilience, that people are aware of and talk about. Not the actual numbers, but a general sense of magnitude. No one is surprised to see a 5th level character heal up from multiple stab wounds after some rest.

I'll just put this here:

 

[Reynard]

The PC can't experience their luck being ablated. I mean, ablation of luck doesn't even make sense in the fiction (unless it's a very particular fiction).

The goblin doesn't stab you in the luck. Yes, yes, there is a handwavy explanation about hit points being everything but meat, but we all know they represent injury -- even if it is John McClane kinds of injury. It's disingenuous to try and wink-wink that away.

 

[dbm]

I like a well implemented meta currency system. They are all over the place these days so that’s fortunate for me, I guess.

The implementation of Inspiration in 5e D&D was an example of a poorly implemented meta currency in my opinion, primarily because you had to choose to use it in advance which can be very disappointing as a player. ‘Heroic Inspiration’ in 5.5 is better since you can choose to use it after the fact and therefore it feels more likely to make a difference as a character.

I really like bennies in Savage Worlds. You need to see them in the context of the system as a whole. Bennies have three primary uses.

First, they allow you to soak wounds. In a system where pretty much any character can only take three wounds before being incapacitated this is an important use of bennies and allows you to keep your character up and active for longer. It also hooks in to increasing stats (since soaking involves a stat-based roll) so it reflects one aspect of character advancement in a system where, again, you don’t really gain any more ‘hit points’ as you level up.

The second major use is allowing re-rolls. This helps mitigate those rolls where your character should be really good at something but you still managed to roll a 1 and a 2 on your dice (usually you can’t re-roll a double-1 crit fail). It adds to the ‘big damn heroes’ feel of the game without needing to simply increase the overall skill of a character and is one of the things which means PCs feel capable from the get-go.

The third major use is to automatically stop being shaken (you get a roll for free, but can buy automatic success) which helps player characters, again, feel more capable than most others.

All these things apply to NPCs as well as PCs in the system, so the GM also has both a general pool of bennies plus specific bennies for their NPC wild cards. The bennies are helping smooth out some of the spiky elements of the system. There are other things that bennies can be used for but these three primary ones are so important they tend to dominate use at the table. If you consider hit points to be a combination of luck and ‘meat points’ then bennies are providing a very similar output but in a more differentiated way.

So, in the context of the system as a whole, bennies are an important tool to help the game create its pulp-action feel.