Let's Talk About Metacurrency

[Vael]

My general take is that it depends on how the system uses them. They're a tool, and I'm more interested in how that tool is used in the context of a game system than just it in the abstract.

That said ... I'm really enjoying Hope and Fear in Daggerheart. It is satisfying to generate it, fun to use it, and it seems to generate good practices. By which I mean, I see a lot of GMing advice for DnD about eliminating extraneous roles, only roll the dice when there's a reason to. And since every action roll generates either Hope or Fear, I'm not calling for those kind of extraneous rolls anymore. I like that Fear gives me a resource to complicate the player's lives, spending Fear feels "fairer" than just GM fiat.

 

[hawkeyefan]

So hit points may be abstract, but they aren't meta-currency. But a Battlemaster's "expertise dice" are a meta-currency, even if the thing they are spent on isn't a "meta-game" intervention.

So I think this is the main issue with discussion about this. To me, there’s no discernible difference between hit points and expertise dice.

This is yet another reason why I chose to stop worrying about anything “meta” a while back. Very often, what people are calling “meta game” (as in beyond or outside of the game) is literally the game.