Let's Talk About Metacurrency

[Micah Sweet]

So, that's actually an interesting bit.

Because, those of us who have doe or currently do actual simulation of reality for, say, scientific purposes, know you can't simulate it all at the highest level of fidelity. You don't have the simulating power required.

So, really good, effective simulations pick their battles. They simulate at highest fidelity the bits that they need there, and sketch other bits only to the level that's absolutely necessary.

That's absolutely true. Perfect sim is impossible. But acceptable sim, for me, definitely is. As far as picking your battles goes, I will fight against narrative conceits in general and PC exceptionalism in specific every time.

 

[Micah Sweet]

yes, even Micah does not have 10 million NPCs going about their daily lives in detail when ‘no one is looking’ and the characters are in a town a continent away. There might still be things going on at a higher level, cults plotting evil plots, thousands of soldiers dying in a horrific battle between two rival kingdoms, but we will never know the names and story of every single one of them.

That is very different from saying that conceptually PCs and NPCs are the same and you just not detailing out every NPC to that level. That conceptual equality is bleeding into the setting itself.

If you design the setting and take the premise of PCs and NPCs being fundamentally the same thing into account, your setting will look different from one where the PCs are indeed the chosen ones and none of the NPCs are anything like them. The latter can be much more varied in what the setting is like, because there are fewer rules / restrictions imposed by the rules

If you follow through with basing the setting on the game rules then a high magic system like D&D will have a high magic setting. Eberron fits the D&D rules much better than Middle-earth does.

I base my game on the world I want to create, and make sure the mechanics fit that, not the other way around.

 

[mamba]

I base my game on the world I want to create, and make sure the mechanics fit that, not the other way around.

that’s great, but my claim was not that whatever system you are concocting would not lead to a low magic setting, it was that when basing the setting on 5e rules it would be high magic

 

[pemerton]

I mean, I don't know anyone (not even myself!) who actually communicates the number of hit points a character has within the fiction. Generally, it's something like "a little banged up" (more than half HP), "I'm pretty hurt" (less than half HP), and "about to fall over" (single digit HPs, assuming not level 1-2.)

But presumably the players communicate their remaining hp to one another? As part of the rationing of healing resources, making choices about whether to retreat/avoid, etc.

 

[pemerton]

To me, if you grew up in a world where having 2 HP left from your baseline of 20 HP means 1) you are still fully functional, 2) you cannot really take another hit without dropping dead, and 3) you will bounce back from this after a good rest, the characters are aware of and familiar with all of this, so they can make the decision just as informed as the player does, nothing meta about it

Unlike @TwoSix, I find this posited world just too ridiculous to take seriously in my RPGing.

I'd see it as an argument that they are an abstraction that intentionally is not simulating the real world. That does not make them any more meta when spell points or spell slots

To me, this seems to raise the same silliness issue. If hit points are a "thing" that get ablated in combat, such that when you run out of them you die; but having them ablated doesn't affect your physical capabilities; then what the heck are they?

Losing them can't mean being injured - because injury (eg having a limb broken, being maimed, even being bruised, etc) affects a person's physical capabilities. So what are they? And why does a greatsword take away more of them than a dagger?

None of it makes any sense to me.

Whereas Gygax's treatment of them as essentially "meta" - at one point he calls them "metaphysical" - does make sense, and the 4e implementation of that treatment makes the most sense.

 

[VHawkwinter]

how do you feel about metacurrency? Do you like it? Does it bug you?

I don't like how it forces me to step out of planning my actions in-character to essentially "spend time as the GM". It's kind-of like when you're working on something while you're in the flow-state and someone comes up and distracts you, and you're suddenly pulled out of 'the zone' and now it's going to take half an hour for you to get back into it. Every time I step out of character to manage metacurrency points, or we halt in-character interactions for the other players to juggle metacurrency points, I feel like it takes me 20-30 minutes to get back into the game again - before which point I am often hauled out of it by more metacurrency mechanics. Definitely not my thing. When I want to GM, I'd rather just GM.

Do you prefer a currency just for players, or for both GMs and players? Do you want it to be able to have narrative control (i spend a bennie to have a cart full of hay be below the window I am jumping out of) or do you prefer it to have only basic mechanical/mathematical aspects? Do you want it to be essentially optional, or integrated?

Either optional (and then I will not include it in the campaign / steer clear of campaigns other people run with it included), or integrated as a passive / automatic triggered in-world ability - where hte player does not make any decision to use it or not.

Something Like this, I'm more than happy with:
Plot Armour: somehow, you are tremendously lucky when it comes to avoiding death and debilitating injury. If damage rolled would kill or main you, roll 1d%. If you roll over 90%: the attack / spell to hit you, and any damage it would have dealt is rolled again. The second attack and damage roll stands.
You may take this ability more than once. Each time that you do, your current non-triggering threshold decreases proportionately. (0.9^(number of ranks in Plot Armour you have). 90%; 81%; 73%; etc.)

How much metacurrency should be "on the table" == a single point of Inspiration as in D&D 5E, or a constant flow like Daggerheart?

Here, I'm more flexible.

As usual, thanks for your input.

Hope it's of interest / helpful to you in some small way.

 

[pemerton]

The problem has been these always treated a normal hit as enough to deliver poison. As such you pretty much have to assume some damage.

As Gygax explains in his DMG, only if the attack hits and the saving throw fails. Not in general.

 

[Lanefan]

How many does it take, if every 100th person picks it, your setting is overrun with low level mages already...

A few things to note here.

First, it's not likely to be 1 in 100. 1 in 1000, though, I can see; higher in urban areas and lower-to-near-zero in rural areas.

Second, while there can be quite a few low-level mages in a setting the great majority of them are liable to be stay-at-home types who putter around in their labs studying magic and maybe very slowly getting better at it over the long term.

Third, assuming a typical degree of lethality in the adventuring side of the game/setting, most of the low-level mages (or low-level anyones) who set out into the field don't come back.

 

[Lanefan]

But the in-world reality isn’t “picks a feat, which everyone gets a choice of at adulthood.” That’s how the ability is gated for PCs. It is not a necessary consequence of that rule that any particular percentage of NPCs have acquired that exact mix of learned abilities, nor does it say anything about how hard it was or how long it took. Other than the real-world reality that they use a different set of build rules because they serve a different role in the campaign, PCs don’t have to be diegetically Chosen Ones (tm) to possess abilities that are rare in the general population.

I oppose design that leads to the bolded. I want the PCs to be directly representative of the population, or at least of what anyone in the population could be or become. Everyone could pick a feat at adulthood but the in-setting reality is that most of 'em don't, as they're too busy being farmers or bakers or blacksmiths or merchants or etc.

Further, there's a fairly big difference between possessing abilities that are rare in the general population (which is fine; if everyone could adventure there'd be little need for adventurers) and being the only ones in the population who possess those abilities (which is not fine, as if-when a PC dies or leaves play the "only ones in the population" clause denies by RAW the existence of a replacement PC. No-one ever seems to think this all the way through...).

 

[Lanefan]

But presumably the players communicate their remaining hp to one another? As part of the rationing of healing resources, making choices about whether to retreat/avoid, etc.

In play I try - in vain, often, but I do try - to discourage the use of actual numbers when talking about hit points, preferring instead that they (and I) use terms like "I'm in great shape" or "I'm a bit beat-up" or "I'm wobbling pretty bad here" when discussing their state of health (as abstracted by hit points). As DM I narrate the foes' condition likewise.

This is a good reason for having hit points always be at least a bit "meat"; it means simple observation can give a vague idea of how badly off someone is. An observer in the fiction can see from the presence or absence of nicks and bruises, as well as fatigue, whether someone's in great condition or is a bit beat-up or is in rough shape.