Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kannik" data-source="post: 9863959" data-attributes="member: 984">If one prefers no metacurrency, PbtA games, FitD (which as been a large part of the discussion in this thread) games, and Legend in the Mist, as examples, all do not  have metacurrency.  For systems that do have a metacurrency, a quick note that they operate differently than the type of metacurrency such as, for example, Inspiration or the Lucky feat in D&D, or (from my understanding) Bennies in Savage Worlds, all of which are mostly independent of the character.  Instead, metacurrencies as they are in, for example, FATE or Cortex Prime tie directly into a character’s narrative/history/personality/literary makeup.  Both in their use, but also, critically, in terms of acquiring them.  There’s no disconnect or not “thinking as the character would think,” because in order to gain the metacurrency you have to lean into those very things.  You are thinking as your character would think.  You are acting as your character would act.  They reinforce each other.  (In addition, through that same design they also help reduce the temptation to not think/act as your character would think/act in those situations where doing so would put them at a disadvantage in terms of outcome.)  As for the “rules” aspect of it, there’s nothing about metacurrency rules that is any more intrusive or onerous (and I would argue often less onerous) than any other rule in an RPG, be it tracking Hit Points, or looking up that spell again, or etc.  Further, metacurrency use tends to only come up a handful or three of times over the course session.  Even when the game includes them, they truly do not dominate.  It is as organic as any other game, and they fade into the background.If there’s an assumption that someone playing these games are automatically going to and only try to exploit the mechanical rules and ignore the fiction, that concern can be put to rest.  Firstly, for, as noted above, the design of these types of games is to more fully put the character (again, in the literary sense) front and centre and encourage the player to come from that character in all situations presented to them.  And as the mechanics flow from the same, they encourage the same.  Secondly, as many people who come to these games are already committed to their more character-forward nature.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

Verification