Let's Talk About Metacurrency

[Reynard]

Alright. Fine. I'll listen to it before I complain any more. Jeez.

 

[TwoSix]

Alright. Fine. I'll listen to it before I complain any more. Jeez.

"One of us! One of us!"

 

[Umbran]

Alright. Fine. I'll listen to it before I complain any more. Jeez.

Narrator: And so began Reynard's decent into obsession....

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

Its a fun series, book 3 with the Iron Tangle is my favorite and I really want to run a version of it (but you know, designed to be played) at the table someday.

Metacurrency is interesting because I usually like the systems they create, but I tend not to like the way they're framed as abstract and prefer for them to be diegetic, although that's easier and harder to do with different systems.

I think we've gone too far in the direction of making mechanics abstract, and it often feels like literally everything has an expectation that it 'doesn't count' in the fiction, which creates way more separation than it should.

We're seeing more gamist worlds blossom in the fantasy space right now, both ones that replicate game expectations through the lens of that world's physics, and one's that have explicit 'systems' overlaid on their physical reality. I wonder if it's going to catch up to TTRPG and lead to more of a focus on game worlds that embrace the mechanics of their own rules.

I really enjoy momentum in storypath ultra, that one is a little hard to translate into diegetic terms-- Curseborne, of the games that use the system, could probably handle it by writing around curses and karmic justice.

 

[Kannik]

Late to the game here, but I do like metacurrency. Perhaps it's because it has been in my gaming toolbox since the first RPG I bought/played, TSR's Top Secret.* It isn't a hard requirement for me to like or enjoy a game system, and there are even ways where it can be not quite a detriment but feeling odd (like when to me it feels isolated and/or tacked on, such as the Lucky feat in 5e.) But a game that integrates it well and that supports either the flavour/theme/tone/genre of the campaign or is tied into a particular style/emphasis of gaming system, then I'm all in and I think they very much enhance the game. And that's true whether the metacurrency is purely "mechanical" in nature (forex, bonuses or re-rolls, even better when in order to use them you have to tie it to a character's belief or value or concept) or when it's use is much more narrative influencing (forex powering abilities, introducing things dirrectly into the narrative, affecting the world more broadly).

* Not only was the metacurrency use there thematically appropriate, it was also neatly enhanced by using two equivalent yet separate metacurrencies, Fame and Fortune.