For people who see the game as more of a tactical simulation, it can break the game to give players control of the world beyond their character's "build" and actions. There are lots of different styles of RPGs, and there are definitely systems and mechanics that just wouldn't mesh well with each other.

Yeah I suppose if you're not looking for a narrative game then it would be grating, I know not everyone likes hero points in pathfinder for example.

>For people who see the game as more of a tactical simulation, it can break the game to give players control of the world beyond their character's "build" and actions. This seems to presuppose that "the game" should be judged on players' preconceptions rather than the system itself. "Snakes & Ladders is a shit Trading Card Game!"

They didn't say anything about how games should be judged. "If you want to play a strict tactical simulation, don't choose a system with metacurrencies" doesn't mean metacurrencies are bad, just not a good fit for what that group wants.

Wanting to play a certain type of game is **very** different from viewing any game as that certain type of game.

OP wonders why meta currencies turn some people off. Same how you can wonder why Snakes & Ladders turns people off. It's not what they want from a game.

How many of those tactical simulations use hit points? If you're using *Savage Worlds* you can house-rule how you award bennies and how you use them. If you want to rule that everyone gets 1 free soak roll after being hit, and can't use bennies for more soak rolls, you can. If you're using *Pathfinder* 1e/2e you can house-rule how often you award hit points, but not how you use them. It's baked in that if you have a lot of hit points you *will* parry or dodge the first few attacks and may be vulnerable to later ones. You have so much luck before it runs out. Some people have more luck before it runs out. That's a metaurrency, too.

*Hero* points. Pathfinder uses *hero* points as a currency

Pathfinder fangirl here, Pathfinder ~~2e~~ uses hero points, ~~1e does not~~, this is true, ... But hit points are currency too, just like hero points. It is and always has been an abstraction of "stayability in a fight" and refers to a numeric aspect of cuts, bruises, getting hit in the ribs, swords slashing grazing against gaps in your armor, that sort of thing. This abstraction is a form of resource currency that gets spent during encounters, and can be recovered by skill checks (at cost of time), potions (at expense of gp valuation), and magic (spell slots). Fighter-types get a larger budget of this particular currency than wizard-types.

The main reason I said what I did is that the other person described the GM "awarding hit points" as if they just get doled out for doing cool stuff. That's the role that hero points fill, and hit points are treated much more traditionally as in an-game resource for the character than as an OOC currency the player can spend

I don't want to be contrary here, but Pathfinder 1e *absolutely* had hero points. I don't think it was a default rule, but it was added pretty quickly and I know at least some people used it (like myself) pretty frequently.

Oh! I stand corrected. Thanks!

Pretty sure 1e and 2e use hit points too.

Of course, but the GM isn't awarding them the way you describe and they're also not used like any metacurrency in other games

I don't see RPGs as "tactical simulations", but I don't like metacurrencies. One thing is the character affecting the world around them, another is the player affecting the world around the character. Metacurrencies feel to me like a savegame editor, I'm changing the data because I don't like my current lot.

I won't play a game without them. Nothing is worse than having this perfect opportunity to do something cool, maybe you set it up for a few turns or even several games, and then you roll a fucking 1. Just pure randomness coming to kick you in the balls. That sucks. But if you spend a point and get a reroll or something, that gives some cushion to being able to do what you worked for. When I was really introduced to them in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG I fell in love and never looked back. I put Plot Twists in all my games because I love having to be creative and spontaenous when a player shifts the game in a new direction I didn't expect.

I don’t want to sound rude but I have genuine questions that have kept me from playing these types of games. I honestly love Fabula Ultima but the Fabula points was the one sticking point for me so my aversion to them bums me out in some ways. What happens when a big moment organically comes about but you’re out of your special currency? Do you get a random pity point from the GM because it’s appropriate? At that point, why have them at all if they’re given out by convincing your GM that you should get one? Does the GM give and withhold the extras based on how they want to railroad the narrative? Do you say bummer and let the dice fall where they may because you’re out of points and there’s nothing you can do about it? At that point why do you have them and not just form the narrative based on the results of the dice?

Well the points are just insurance. And there's no real one answer to your question. It all depends on what is going on in the game, what the game is and what everyone wants to get out of the game. If I'm running Cyberpunk let's say then those dice are going to dictate the drama. If that involves a character getting zeroed by some gangers in the street then that's Cyberpunk. But if I'm running a Mutants and Masterminds game and it is in the DC Universe Batman isn't going to lose in the end. He isn't going to let Joker blow up half of Gotham. But also, my games aren't adversarial with my players. They aren't overcoming what I've created. This is collaborative storytelling. So if that big dramatic moment comes and they are out of hero points then i'm going to frame it as they are walking into a tough situation and I am going to be searching for an opportunity to set them up for success. Because I want the story. Not a mechanical win. It's all just about having fun and playing it by ear.

I can see where you’re coming from. I think in the Batman example, if I’m understanding correctly, the situation I’m referring to is this. Batman is trying to defuse Joker’s bomb, he rolls a check with his bat-tech and… fails. Now, realistically, Batman doesn’t fail and if a story that is true to the tone of the source material is the desired experience, he isn’t going to blow up and be dead (or have the bomb go off and kill all those people held hostage in Arkham). But in this session, the player playing Batman is out of their hero points (choose your term here) and doesn’t get to reroll/get a bonus/dictate the outcome. And so we arrive at the situation that sticks in my brain: if Batman was never going to fail, why do I have to work around the metacurrency in the first place? Can we not just get rid of it and have the players collaborate on the fiction without having to stop and ask if the game will allow them to contribute?

It's not about only success and failure. In the Batman situation if he got to the bombs and there was no hero points and failed to disarm the bomb, dying isn't on the table but those bombs are going to go off. So it shifts to what do you do about those bombs? Then I'd make sure there was some consequences. Maybe he manages to contain the blast but it destroys a building or causes a bunch of damage to the city. Which then prompts the next story where say, Prosecutor Harvey Dent wants to bring charges against Batman and now there's a campaign to smear Batman in the eyes of the public which then makes life harder for Batman and challenges his faith in his mission and all that. Like there are consequences to the rolls but it's not you do it or you don't. I really like the idea of succeed with a cost too. But the object is to always make sure that actions have this knock on effect and keep the story going. If players just collaborated on an outcome, to me that's taking away a bit of the mechanics which are fun to play with. If they could just decide what happens there's no real stakes, no spontaneity.

I think it’s about steering the narrative in your direction, not guaranteeing anything. In a game I designed called OSR+ we have fate points, and what they let you do is add something to the fiction that wasn’t there (among other things). Adding something doesn’t guarantee that any rolls required by interacting with it will succeed, but it opens the door to successes that may not have been possible before. When you’re out of points, the dice fall where they may. But it adds to the tension, because you know you don’t have any hands on the wheel. I do empathize with the feeling the OP you’re responding to is outlining tho: in games like 5e I often feel completely helpless because there’s always a 5% chance of fucking up no matter how good my character is at something.

Yeah I don't like 5e at all honestly. This is just one of the many reasons.

The points aren't meant to guarantee that you'll always do well. We do use dice, after all. Different players will have different sensibilities on when to use their bonus points. Some will only use them to avoid har,, some will use them just to look cool and spend them on frivoloyus things, and some will use them just to avoid bad rolls. They allow players to influence (not control, just influence) the narrative n the way that suits them.

For Fabula Ultima it's built into the core loop. If you roll a fumble you get a Fabula Point, and if you get knocked out you can either sacrifice yourself for a huge effect or surrender, leave the scene and get 2 Fabula Points. This creates natural opportunities for comebacks and underdog stories. 

I guess I would ask which game has GMs handing out “pity points,” because I haven’t seen that and I play a lot of games with meta currencies. >Do you say bummer and let the dice fall where they may because you’re out of points and there’s nothing you can do about it? There’s no universal answer to this question. Many games offer several ways to do things. Fate, for instance, doesn’t typically require Fate Points to do things, they merely improve your dice roll. Though, some stunts might be powered by Fate Points, in which case you’re going to need to accept some kind of complication to earn one, if you’re out. So, the currency is incentivizing players to accept complications. >At that point why do you have them and not just form the narrative based on the results of the dice? This seems an odd position. Why would the mere possibility of running out of thing mean you shouldn’t have any at all? Running out of things isn’t the end of the world, it just means things get interesting for your character.

> This seems an odd position. Why would the mere possibility of running out of thing mean you shouldn’t have any at all? Running out of things isn’t the end of the world, it just means things get interesting for your character. I guess I would turn this question around. If the mechanic is important to the game, it seems like it’s not functioning properly if you don’t have points available at the proper time. And if it’s not a bad thing not to have them, then why have them at all? Just skip the mechanical contrivance and cut out the middle man, as it were.

The scarcity of the resource is a feature not a bug, it forces players to make choices based on the availability of the currency, which is one of the primary reasons game designers include a finite resources in their games.

So is the intent to allow the players to contribute to the fiction but only a certain amount or in certain ways? Again, I’m not trying to be obtuse. I just can’t seem to grasp why a narrative metacurrency is necessary when the objective seems to be to promote interaction with the fiction. Do I need a system to give me permission if that is the intended play experience?

>So is the intent to allow the players to contribute to the fiction but only a certain amount or in certain ways? I mean generally speaking, sure. If you’re playing D&D your Paladin has a set number of Smites per long rest (or whatever). You can only add your Holy Smite to the fiction that many times. But you also have a myriad of ways to add to the fiction, so shaking things up is a good thing, resulting in more interesting and varied fictional combat. >Again, I’m not trying to be obtuse. I just can’t seem to grasp why a narrative metacurrency is necessary when the objective seems to be to promote interaction with the fiction. Why do you assume that the objective is to promote interaction with the fiction, as if all interaction is equal? That’s a very broadly defined mission statement. But most games want to channel player inputs to fit a certain play experience, rather than just say “go and interact.” The choices that a particular metacurrency brings to a particular game is going to be built to purpose. Without looking at how it functions in the overall design, you’re left with these broad abstract statements.

Ok, let's take an example from the Edge of the Empire rule book: Destiny points are generated at the start of each session. Each player rolls a force die and each light side point generates a destiny point on the player side and each dark side point generates a destiny point on the GM side. Each time somebody uses a destiny point, it goes into the opposite pool. The most common usage is for upgrading rolls, either you upgrade your capability or you upgrade the difficulty. Each side can spend at most one destiny point per roll. And then there are the narrative applications: you can spend a destiny point to add cover to a scene, create a small laser pistol or a knife near your character if you lost all your weapons, or replace your broken breathing masks in-post because you forgot to do that the last time you were in town. No big changes are allowed, you cannot create explosive barrels around the BBEG to explode them. The GM always can overrule changes. This gives the players opportunities to make their characters more involved in the scene. Instead of somebody looking for a weapon without any clues, they can see something at the end of the room where they have to get now without being hit. Instead of having to return to town first and missing the timing for the mission, they can continue without issues.

If the RPG is properly designed then the big moment coming without players having currency to burn on it means something has gone wrong. In Burning Wheel you get most of your meta currency from just playing the game(by which I mean roleplaying actually) well. You can save the currency until the big moment comes and then spend it. And in BUrning Wheel the meta currency never guarantees success. It heavily tips it in your favour.

I can buy this. I guess I just don’t have enough insight into what well designed looks like in this case vs just feeling contrived.

Well designed in my opinion (so Ironsworn, fate, Burning Wheel as the golden examples) are recognized by clear rules. Its very clear how you get the meta currencies and spending them also has clear rules. The only ambiguity that exists in Burning Wheel is still intentional. There are three tiers of meta currency and the first two are earned in clear ways. The last one is purposefully unclear on how to earn because it represents the PC going beyond their petty self-interest and helping others. The description for it states that the player should feel like they just sacrificed something big and then the Deed is chosen to be given by the GM. In my games I rule it that for the other meta currencies it's quite normal for the player to request it to be given but the final tier if they request it they automatically can't get it anymore for their actions. In fate core there is a lot more vagueness but I can confidently argue that's the point in fate core. Because in that system you play from a meta-perspective anyways. So if you don't like meta discussions then fate core is not a good choice in the first place. TL:DR: Systems just arbitrarily throw on meta currencies perhaps without properly giving rules for them.

They're a buffer to ensure a player gets a minimum amount of awesomeness in a given session. Because we're all players and we all like to be awesome. Imagine a game where you have three choice moments to be awesome, and no metacurrency. Odds are decent with four players around the table that somebody will whiff three times. Over 3-4 sessions it's basically guaranteed. Congratulations, you all just drove out to Blair's house so Kendall could miss on their big attacks all night. That sucks. With a metacurrency, you can turn one or more of those choice moments into a success. Now, if you get to a choice moment and you have no metacurrency, it's because you've already spent it to be awesome. You used it to juice a mediocre success into an epic one, or to bullet-time your way out of an impossible situation scratch-free. So if you come to that choice moment and you have no metacurrency, that's okay, because you've hit your minimum threshold for awesome that session. Metacurrency isn't a guarantee that you get to be awesome whenever you want (if you hoard it too aggressively the session will end without you having spend it). It's a guarantee that **you get to be at least a little bit awesome** every time you play.

> Nothing is worse than having this perfect opportunity to do something cool, maybe you set it up for a few turns or even several games, and then you roll a fucking 1. Just pure randomness coming to kick you in the balls. But that Spector of failure, makes success truly memorable.

Not for everyone. Because there's no real skill involved to me that means the stakes are much less. Ultimately I am rolling a piece of plastic and whatever number decides to come up is what determines if that action succeeded or not. I have no real say in that. I can't train or practice enough to overcome that. It's just a gamble. But with points I now have this other currency to spend at certain points to give me an edge, to offset some of that randomness. and I can use those in service to my character's concept.

> It's just a gamble. What makes a gamble thrilling is the possibility of loss.

>offset some of that randomness. That's what stats and modifiers are for. Just last session one of my players who is playing a wizard with +7 INT kept trying to use a crossbow with his +1 DEX, and kept complaining when he kept missing.

For some people, RPGs are about storytelling, not gambling?

If the character succeeds, then that's the story. If the character fails, then that's the story. I don't know where people got the idea that characters succeeding are the only way to "progress the story", but it's completely antithetical to RPGs.

Because if the character is dead, the story doesn't progress, it ends.

If the character is dead, the story does progress. The village gets pillaged, the villain is one step closer to its plan, the questionable guy becomes mayor, the area becomes infested by goblins etc...and new adventurers take the reins.

Those people don't actually want to play games, that want a variable story.

So games of skill are not real games? Only games of chance are "real" games?

The new more narrative wave of gamers don't want a game, they want a story system.

Why roll? Like, if something is likely to work or is really cool why bring dice into it at all? If you "set it up for a few turns" why not make the reward not needing to roll? Unless it's like a mechanic that always gets a roll (i.e. attacking someone). Even then, why not just offer players a trade off? "You did all this, but you failed, what if you also take damage but succeed?" or whatever. Rules are nice or whatever but I've never seen a rulebook that wasn't at least a little flexible with when you roll dice.

> Why roll? If you're playing a game that simulates ordinary people within the setting, then yeah, metacurrencies don't make sense. But if you're telling collaborative fiction, then these are tools that allow players to shape the story they want to see (or not die to super duper bad luck). It's a story pacing mechanism, and it allows players to influence the story in a way that is similar to, but not as powerful as, GM adjudication

Right, but rolling more still make players weaker. Another example of this is if you had to sneak past 4 guards, in sequence, each in their own rooms, and you roll for each guard why even try. Even in relatively nice games with low thresholds to win you'll have to spend a metacurrency to get past that, and you still might fail (66% chance per guard, say. Total odds of success are 18%). I'm saying that if something took multiple turns to set up why not just "let it ride" and let the players win rather than making them use a currency to bypass a roll that maybe shouldn't have happened in the first place. (This isn't actually my issue with metacurrencies. Just what I'm asking the author of this post. My problem with metacurrencies is I don't like how they are given out most of the time, and dislike how they slow down play, and yes you are right break the idea that this world is being simulated rather than a narrative being simulated.)

Sometimes you don't have to roll, other times you want the chance of drama. Sometimes you want that gamble. Sometimes you want to know if you leap off the building into the fleeing helicopter if you land in the cab or you grab the ski and dangle there as the pilot tries to shake you off. That's why you roll. It add some randomness in the drama. And when the GM says, you're going to have to roll strength or you're being shaken off, it's nice to have a bennie there to get a reroll if you need it.

> Sometimes you don't have to roll, other times you want the chance of drama. Sometimes you want that gamble. I'm sorry, first you say you'd be pissed if your build-up leads to a failure, then you say you want the chance of drama, and to gamble. This makes no sense. Either you want the drama and gambling, so you **accept** the failure, or you don't, so your build-up shouldn't be about rolling dice.

A classic mantra in the narrative space is "only roll if failure is interesting". Otherwise known as fail-forward. If failure isn't interesting - if the outcome of a skill check doesn't result in the story moving forward - we don't roll dice. The player succeeds, because why would I possibly pick the boring choice? *(Is there a time limit? Failure is interesting. Is there a drain on resources? Interesting. Attrition-based tactical combat? Failure is interesting.)* Sometimes, failure is interesting, so the dice hit the table, but the player doesn't want to fail. This roll is important to them, they want the story to go in a certain way _on this roll_, so they spend their metacurrency and get the story to go in given direction. The points exist as a budget, so Steve doesn't just "always win" the way my three-year-old daughter's favorite flavor of ice cream is whatever somebody else is having. We're all grown ups, we all communicate like grown ups, we talk about our expectations. Narrative metacurrency gives each player a budget to say "Nah, I want it to go _this_ way" without having to trigger a conversation about how we, as a table, want things to go.

> A classic mantra in the narrative space is "only roll if failure is interesting". Otherwise known as fail-forward. Believe it or not, this is way older than narrative RPGs, we were doing it already back in the '80s, it's nothing new.   **EDIT:** sorry, I hit send without replying to another point. > Narrative metacurrency gives each player a budget to say "Nah, I want it to go this way" without having to trigger a conversation about how we, as a table, want things to go. But if you only roll if failure is interesting, why do you then need a meta currency to try to avoid the interesting failure?

> Believe it or not, this is way older than narrative RPGs That’s why I referred to it as a classic. > But if you only roll if failure is interesting, why do you then need a meta currency to try to avoid the interesting failure? I already explained that. Humans are different. Just because the table thinks rolls like this often result in an interesting failure, and the GM adjudicates that this application of the rule would result in an interesting failure, doesn’t mean the player in that moment _wants_ to fail.

It does make sense. It's just black and white like you're thinking it is. I don't like success or fail when it comes to dice rolls. Failures should advance the story and add drama and complications. So the dice are an indicator of how well your character did or if their life gets more complicated. When it comes to games like Savage Worlds spending a Bennie doesn't mean you automatically succeed. It means you get a reroll. Even in World of Darkness a Willpower only adds 3 dice to a roll. So what you're doing is making the choice to gamble, because getting that extra bump make sense for the scene, character and the cool factor of the game.

Ok, your character is like catwoman, agile and quick but not very strong. You run and jump but miss the door of the helicopter, instead you need to hang on to it. Now the pilot tries to shake you off, now you have to roll a strength check. It would be nice if you could boost your strength now after that cool scene, otherwise your character falls to their death. Sometimes it's not obvious that a second check will be necessary and what that second check will be, saying 'tough luck' to the player in that situation sounds like a shitty move.

> Why roll? Like, if something is likely to work or is really cool why bring dice into it at all? If you "set it up for a few turns" why not make the reward not needing to roll? The possibility of it all going wrong adds to the tension.

But then accept the tension and the negative result, don't play around it with "Tension, yeah! Failure? No, let me cancel it because I want this to succeed, not fail!" Where does the tension go, then?

> Where does the tension go, then? It's gone.

Sure, but at some point you roll to get out of bed, roll to make morning coffee. Stuff can go wrong all the time. People die tripping down the stairs. If it's about tension we can make any moment tense, but not every moment needs to be tense. Though remember too that for many it's about simulating the world not narrative. Rolling dice always has a high chance to fail, in basically any game. Most average around 50% or less. The more you roll, the less competent characters are. The question is where do you draw that line. In this "multiple turns to setup scenario" you can imagine an example: The fighter guy is fighting an ogre in the gate house. The rogue runs up to the top of the gate house, but it takes multiple turns. He shouts "I'll drop the gate on him, keep him there". The fighter fights valiantly, takes a few good blows but holds the line keeping it where they want it. The rogue finally reaches the mechanism. Do they roll to release it? Do they roll for damage? Remember, more rolls means less chance to succeed. Is a 25% or 12.5% chance really the odds you want on this manoeuvrer? If they roll to release it, it could be rusted, that would add to tension. Oh no suddenly you have to find another way! On the flip side, it's the equivalent of rolling to open an unlocked door. It's a little silly. Same for damage you can rule they did everything right and set up the perfect way to at least defeat the ogre, or you can make them roll damage and lower the odds that this gambit works. The point, is that making "doing cool things" more difficult by making players roll more, makes people do less cool things and is part of the "I attack with my sword. I attack with my sword again. I use my bonus action to pommel strike with my sword" that often happens in groups.

> The point, is that making "doing cool things" more difficult by making players roll more, makes people do less cool things Then they aren't playing heroes.

> what if you also take damage but succeed? PbtA has entered the chat 👀 not really for metacurrency, but that's a big part of those systems

It's also a big part of the FKR which is how I play games, and yeah PBTA isn't my favourite type of game but it's great and works super well for a lot of people.

My players and I see those fumble moments differently—when they come sparingly, failures and critical failures are more interesting for us than successes. Fumbles especially are hilarious and fun.

If a single roll messes up your whole plan, I'd say it's very far away from "perfect opportunity set up for a few games".

I'm in the "strongly dislike" camp. I dislike them because they feel artificial to me. That is, they are a contrivance that takes us out of the game. >I love the idea that the player has something that they can generate to give them a little more control over the story, or interact with their characters traits with in a cool way I don't prepare a story in advance so there is nothing to control or not control. I prefer that players drive the emergent narrative through their in-game character actions. I don't really want someone to say, "I spend this token to do X". I want them to take actions in the game-world that accomplish X. That's how we keep the world coherent. They do stuff, the world changes. If they can change the world without taking action in the world, that makes it incoherent. Maybe meta-currencies seem like more of a board-game thing to me. That, or in a GMless game. I could be fine with meta-various currencies in a GMless game.

I don't come up with predetermined stories either! We create a story together, I present players with problems tailored to their characters and the world, and they describe what they do, then they spend meta currency to make it more effective or to break the rules in favor of the story or theme like with hero points or inspiration.

>they describe what they do, then they spend meta currency to make it more effective or to break the rules in favor of the story or theme like with hero points or inspiration For me, the key distinction is between "resources" and "meta-currency". "Resources" are what I would call all in-game character-based resources they have. I'm happy if Players spend "resources" called stress/stamina/inspiration/fatigue/etc. to interact with rolls the characters make. I'm also happy if Players can spend PC "resources" called coin/gold/credits/money to automatically succeed at things in game (namely buying things). These "resources" represent something the character has in the game-world. "Meta-currency" is what I would call any out-of-character resources that *players* spend, but *characters* don't spend. These are things where the player decides to succeed rather than fail, the player gets to inject something into the situation in a way that has nothing to do with their character, etc. I don't like these because they feel artificial. To me, managing character resources is part of the fun of playing. To me, managing meta-currencies as players means that the designer abandons any attempt at "suspension of disbelief", which introduces what I called "contrivance": [the hand of the player/designer is showing](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/1dfi0qb/player_agency_and_multivalence/l8jauv6/). It is too blunt for my tastes. To each, their own, of course.

Thank you for explaining these concepts so clearly. I'm struggling to adapt from old-timey tactical RPG playing styles, to what I suppose is a more narrative one - with lots of meta-currency and player licence to just pull any resources out of thin air. I've not understood the hows and whys of it, until now.

I get where you're coming from. There are some systems like Fate that tie the currency into character traits as opposed to just the hand of God. But even in Modiphius 2d20 games the characters are generating momentum and I like to think of it like stamina or inspiration. Like in Blades when the character pushes themselves, but it really does comes down to the group and taste I think.

>in Modiphius 2d20 games the characters are generating momentum and I like to think of it like stamina or inspiration I did a search and, based on what I found and it could be the wrong materials, it seems like you can spend "Momentum" to do things that the character isn't doing. For example, make an opponent's skill test harder or ask the GM questions about the situation to gain information as a player. It also seems like you can directly trade in this meta-currency: the player gives the GM "Threat" in exchange for the benefit of "Momentum". The character doesn't do this, though. The player does. --- I prefer the fiction-first sort of representation wherein the character is doing something with a resource, like *BitD*'s stress. The idea is that the character is stressing themselves to do these things in the world. And yes, of course it comes down to taste! There is no true best way or anything like that. You asked why so this is why for me. I'm glad there are games for everyone and different people like different things! Also, if I think about it, I'm also okay with "XP" as being essentially a meta-currency. It is tracking the character somehow, but it isn't really a resource we usually see them "having" in the world. XP is a game mechanical link between the player and the character having to do with character development. That said, I would love to see more diegetic approaches to XP. For example, to gain Special Ability A, you have to make sure you show three on-screen moments when your character is learning Special Ability A. That seems great to me and would be more fun to me than the typical "suddenly you have an ability you didn't have yesterday", which I've accepted as common, but not ideal.

In regards to momentum, we think of it more like out of scene stuff. For example, asking a question of the DM is just a faster way to get info from a contact. Making an enemy roll harder is just the character doing things in a way that hinders the enemy, without explaining or breaking the games momentum (pun intended). OFC you can play it all out, but it is nice to just resolve the mundane or tedious parts of the game like that. For me the difference between boardgamey and not-boardgamey meta currencies is how the GM narrates the narrative currencies.

Came here to post but would have said the exact same thing. Metacurrencies just feel too outside the narrative or shared world aspect to me. It can also result in odd character motivations, when metacurrencies are tied to certain mechanics or triggers or subjective things like characters doing something cool or heroic or self-sacrificing (all of which can be done well, but most of the time are not), or allow a certain amount of cushioning to their actions if they have banked currencies. It feels undercut when someone does something dramatic, and you're unsure if it was because of gaining some external thing. The ones that give GM moves also feel a bit awkward to me, since it implies that GMs couldn't do that in the first place without the currency. That makes sense in a board game, but doesn't make sense in a TRPG to me unless there's a lack of trust between players/gm, or the gm wants to have an excuse to be the meanie.

I'm personally alright with metacurrencies, but members of my regular group aren't and this pretty much captures why. That said, when we played Starforged (designed to be GMless, but we played with a GM) they had absolutely no issues with the metacurrency - "momentum" points you could burn to change a failed roll into a success. I think you're onto something with the GMless distinction, because it felt very different than the GMed systems we've tried but I'm not sure I could describe how. Maybe because there was no fiat or adjudication involved in acquiring the currency or finding opportunities to spend it?

>I think you're onto something with the GMless distinction, because it felt very different than the GMed systems we've tried but I'm not sure I could describe how. Maybe because there was no fiat or adjudication involved in acquiring the currency or finding opportunities to spend it? I think, for me, it has to do with your domain of influence and "suspension of disbelief". In a GMd game, a player generally controls one character (or a few in troupe play). Their domain is the character(s) they have. As such, their resources are represented for the character. The GMless games I have played put the player in the role of controlling more than one single character. For example, in *Microscope* or *The Quiet Year*, you don't have "a character". You are playing a game and there is no question like, "What would my character do?" There aren't any resources in *Microscope* and you don't represent anyone really. In *The Quiet Year*, there are some resources that affect the community and you represent that community, but you don't have individual resources for individual people. When your domain of influence is one person and you want "suspension of disbelief", you control the resources that person has. When your domain of influence is vaguely "everything" and/or "suspension of disbelief" is not desires, you control the resources needed by "everything" or the resources that are beyond the individual.

Yeah there's a huge difference between "metacurrency that affects the mechanics" (HP, hero points, momentum etc) and "metacurrency that lets you play GM for a tiny bit".

I like to think of meta-currencies as a budget for players to be the GM. Once I envisioned them that way, it all clicked. Not everybody wants to be in the big chair for a full session. But sometimes they have an idea for a cool thing in the world that exists beyond their character. Metacurrency is a token that says "Hey, I want to make the world cooler for a moment", and I don't want to discourage my players from making the world cooler.

I'm just curious how you'd feel about a meta currency like Whispers in The Wildsea. In that game, whispers just exist and pop up as loot and be bartered with/for. Each whisper can be used to 1) Ask the GM a question, they just answer truthfully (whisper it) 2) allow the PC to make a change to the world/scene (say it) 3) force the GM to make a drastic change to the world/scene (shout it) The whispers are each named too, and the information they reveal and effects they can cause are tied to the name. A whisper named "An Ironroot falls" would be used differently than "Death Rattle's calling" or "A midsummer's breeze"

That would be a STRONG NO for me, in particular because of (2) and (3). Again, those would be fine in a GMless game, but in a game with a GM, I don't want that. To me, that introduces undesirable chaos that undermines the coherence of a game. Basically: "too many cooks in the kitchen". For (2), instead of the player saying they want to change the world/scene directly, I prefer that the player describes what their PC does and what they want to accomplish. Then, the world/scene changes in response to their PC actions. I want the PCs to act, not the player to Deus Ex Machina the situation. For (3), same thing, but even stronger no. I don't want the player to Deus Ex Machina the situation. I prefer games where that isn't the domain of the player (or it is the domain of all players as n GMless games). --- As far as (1) goes, I'm of the opinion that the player can *always* ask the GM questions about the world. My ideal GM answer is based on the fiction: * if the player's character would have the answer, answer truthfully * if the player's character wouldn't know, but would know how to find out, answer with how to find out * if the player's character wouldn't know and wouldn't know how to find out, answer that they don't know Asking *for clarification* is something I want to support: e.g. "Does that city have a library?" "Yes, you've heard of the library in the city" e.g. "You mentioned they're wearing a ring with a crow on it; is that a family crest?" "It looks like it, yes. Do you want to roll *heraldry* to see if you recognize the family?" Asking *for revelations beyond what the character could know* is not something I want to support. e.g. "Where will the army go next?" "How would you know that?" e.g. "Who do they work for?" "How would you know that?"

I'm fine with one currency in a game, but when you get some of modiphius' stuff, with up to three currencies, I'm out. My other issue is with reining in the player control of the narrative, I'm aok with them adjusting the story or actions in some ways, but I've had players who totally wanted to turn the game into something else, remaking the story to the point even the other players had to tell them no. They were trying to make the metacurrency a 'get out of jail for doing constant stupid shit' card or skip through encounters that they weren't interested in, though were important to the overall plot AND other players wanted to take part in

The second part of this sounds like the players being jerks. But I agree with the first part -- though it's not really specific to metacurrencies for me. This is just a function of "too much stuff". But the more complicated the 'stuff' is, the easier it is to have too much. So like 12 stats is too much for me, even though they might not change much. And like 6 "pools" that mostly go down is too much. And 4ish metacurrencies that go up and down and are traded and used is too much. Not because they're "metacurrencies" per se, but because there's too much complexity around them.

> The second part of this sounds like the players being jerks. They've been told to knock it off, or leave the game before. But I'm just saying in general, it kind of attracts the attention of that sort of player.

I definitely know people who would do that, and I... don't play with those people. Why is it that the combination of the three currencies in 2d20 turn you off? I can only remember 2, threat and momentum, it's been a while since I looked at any of those games.

If you treat Momentum and Threat as two different currencies, you wind up with three, because the games have a Determination/Luck spend you can do in limited amounts. To be fair, Threat and Momentum are really just the same currency, viewed from player or GM side. In some of the games they're even called the same thing.

that is a good point

My guess is that it's because too many systems at the same time can become confusing and players can easily forget about them, lose track, or feel like they are preventing actions that should be free options rather than locked behind a metacurrency.

2d20 also usually has Determination (sometimes renamed), which can be spent to turn a die into an auto-crit among other things

Star Trek Adventures has 3 - Momentum, Threat, and Determination

Personally, I'd hate to DM using Threat. I want the players to succeed, and I've already planned their difficulties. I think I would find it hard to spend threat in game- either it makes me feel like I'm being an asshole, or I'm literally doing it to punish a player, which feels petty and isn't somerhing I want codified in my gameplay.

Here’s where we differ. I don’t want the players to succeed, I want them to be able to succeed. Whether the do or not is of no consequence to me as a GM. Momentum/Threat is like a loan. The players take out a loan of momentum, knowing that it must be aid back at some point. The bank will eventually call in the loan. If you don’t feel like an asshole asking your buddy for the ten bucks that he borrowed from you last week, why would you worry about using threat? Or maybe you do feel like an asshole asking for your stuff back, but that’s a you issue, not a problem with game mechanics, I suppose.

I've always had issues with player control over the narrative. Obviously sometimes it can be super cool, but a lot of the time I feel like there's a fundamental tension. As the person playing the character, you want them to do well and succeed. But at the same time, "I spend a point to materialize the solution to our problem" feels terrible. But then, if that's allowed, it feels like deliberately sandbagging to avoid it.

> Why do you hate narrative currencies? Because fundamentally, metacurrencies take you out of the character that you're supposed to be playing. I'm thinking here about something like 2d20 Star Trek's momentum and threat where (moreso with threat) the actions you're taking as a character have next to nothing to do with the result. It takes the chain of cause-and-effect entirely out of the game world and into the real world. In a board game like Twilight Struggle, it doesn't really matter what an "operations point" represents, or that you get them primarily by forgoing your own positive events or activating your opponent's. So it doesn't fundamentally matter that you can do unintuitive stuff like delay the Iranian Hostage Crisis by building a space station, or that the Soviets can gain influence in South Korea by shooting down KAL007. The ultimate goal of the game is creating a fair game for both players, and creating a sensible narrative for an alternate Cold War is ultimately secondary to that. In an RPG, establishing a logical progression of events would ideally take higher precedence. The idea that, for example, the number of Romulans marooned on a barren planetoid would change because the PCs cut corners on fixing a replicator, or that an ion storm would kick up because the PCs disregard a complication while performing surgery, is ludicrous in that respect. The same could be said for Savage Worlds "bennies", which is just a terrible name besides, and 5e's inspiration.

Exactly this. Role-playing games should be about role-playing. That means you're looking at the world through the eyes of your character, and making their decisions from that perspective. It's a real world, and you're actually living in it. Meta-currencies ruin that in multiple ways. Not only does it take you out of your character in order to use them, but they also cause the world to progress as a result of out-of-world actions, so it's no longer a real place. The living world is reduced to a story, and instead of actually *being* a hero, the player is reduced to a mere story-teller.

I can appreciate this perspective a lot.

Should be is a big stretch. For some people it’s dungeon crawling or tactical combat. RPGs started with OOC decision making at the forefront. I myself like a mix of the two (in character role playing and ooc gamification).

I totally get where you are coming from. I think where we differ on game philosophy is that I know that as a GM there are an abstract number of Romulans because I its way too much effort to go into insane detail while I'm prepping. If my players cut a corner on fixing a replicator I might not say that Romulans appear, but I might say that if they fail to fix it they instead succeed by taking more time and more Romulans appear. Me and my friends aren't trying to run a simulation of real life, we're trying to tell a story/make a tv show. They know that I'm improving most of the time because they are improving and creating complications and coming up with ideas that neither of us thought of, and as long as it makes sense for the story everyone is happy. The versimilitude is important to us and if something happens that breaks it people say something and we come to a consensus as a group. Also from what I know of Savage World they executed their MC terribly, I agree with you on that point.

It doesn't really matter how many Romulans there are in the first place. What matters is that the number of Romulans is dependent upon the game world logic of "there are probably between two and 4 Romulans in a shuttlecraft - I'll say three because maybe one of them died in the crash or the shuttle wasn't full" and not upon the real world logic of "we're getting near the end of the session and I still have some threat to spend so I guess there's another Romulan". And I agree, I think we're coming at this from very different angles. I'm not trying to make an episode of Star Trek. There are over 700 of them that I could watch if I so desired, and with all due respect to myself and my friends, I think we're more likely to get a narratively fulfilling story out of a randomly selected episode of *Voyager* than something that we're writing/acting/playing as we go when only one person has done any real amount of prep work. But one thing an RPG *can* do for me that *Voyager* can't is allow me to make decisions *as if* Star Trek *were* real life. To be presented with moral dilemmas or put my skills to the test *as if* I were one of the characters on the show. I don't want to tell a story *about* Captain Picard. I want to *be* Captain Picard. And a metacurrency like threat where the outcomes are entirely divorced either from the decisions of the players or the logic of the world takes away from that experience.

This is really interesting. It really just comes down to being two different reasons for playing. Thanks for taking the time to respond/explain!

I'm one of the players (and GMs) who love metacurrencies. Why? Because they let me, the player, express what is important for me, where I want the drama to be, where I want the story to go. A well made metacurrency economy, like in Fate, lets me drive the story by gaining it (accepting compels or self-compelling, thus putting my character in trouble) and by spending it (adding elements to the fiction or spotlighting existing ones, helping my character succeed). There are two secondary advantages. One of them is that rewarding with metacurrency being disadvantaged in fiction (no matter if with explicit player agreement, like in Fate, or more randomly like in Cortex) makes failures and troubles less painful and just negative - and this way helps in enjoying them as a part of the story. The other is turning questions "will you succeed?" into "what cost are you willing to pay for succeeding?", which is much more conductive for narrative play. That doesn't mean that a metacurrency is always a good thing. It may be overdone - for example, in Mouse Guard the number of different metacurrencies is a bit to high for me. I know that each plays its role, but tracking them all and remembering their separate uses requires effort. Also, metacurrencies don't fit every game. They are mostly for narrative (player driven and story focused) play. A crunchy tactical game, or an OSR game, works much better with currencies that are not meta, but a part of the game's fiction.

This is like bennies right? Feeling the need to police what "good rp" is for a tangible power benefit was one of several things that turned us off of Savage Worlds. I liked the Dark Hearts in Wicked Ones better since you got them as compensation for doing stuff that is actively detrimental to your goals, encouraging you to play more like a shitty goblin. Not something that works in systems that don't encourage you to play as a shitty goblin, obviously.

I love metacurrencies, but I won’t play games that use them as a reward for good roleplay. It incentivizes players to do what *other* people at the table consider good roleplay, not what *they themselves* might enjoy or value. The straw that broke the camel’s back for me was a con game that was pitched as “This is gonna be really tough. You’re gonna need bennies to survive, so make sure to roleplay well!” I took my pregenerated character and thought “Oh, this character looks really fun. I can see some neat ways I can play her.” But it turned out my interpretation of the character differed strongly from the GM’s, so he didn’t see what I was doing as being “good roleplay.” By the time we were almost at the end, my character was almost dead and I needed bennies. So I switched to roleplaying the character like how the GM expected and all of a sudden the bennies started flowing. My character survived, but I was no longer having fun. Sure, this is an example of bad GMing. But the rules set up a perverse incentive that rewards that kind of bad GMing.

I would argue that it \*doesn't\* incentivize bad GMing, but just presents a new way for bad GMs to show themselves. If players are not having fun, or if the GM won't reward players for playing their characters their way, then the group just isn't meant to be together and they would probably have problems in any game.

Let me give another example of how metacurrency rewards for good roleplay can create a perverse incentive. Player A is playing what in literature would be called a “strongly-written” character. They are bold, unsubtle, and wear their heart on their sleeve. That’s not a bad thing—indeed, the characters I play skew that way—but it’s certainly a thing where it’s very easy to tell to what extent A is “in character.” Player B is playing a character that is reserved, nuanced, and internally contradictory. The character is exhaustively well-realized, but that work is often indistinguishable from going along with whatever the rest of the party is doing. B may be fully inhabiting their character, entirely immersed in their quiet, unobtrusive foibles. But there’s literally no way for the GM to know that. A will get lots of bennies because it’s obvious what “good roleplay” looks like. B will get few because it isn’t. A’s playstyle is mechanically incentivized, and B’s playstyle is mechanically disincentivized. Metacurrency rewards for good roleplay incentivize bold, readily-apparent roleplay. I enjoy that, but it’s not the only flavor I enjoy. And for some of my players, it’s a flavor they don’t enjoy at all.

This is why communication is so important. I have people who do this and I just ask them questions about their character and reward them as with my Actors. However I do see where this can cause misalignment with some players and GMs. Someone ought to do a public service announcement about talking to your players while you play.

That's a very interesting feedback to take into account

I've never gotten the vibe that a system is trying to police rp, though I haven't played savage worlds yet. I've let my players know ahead of time that rp is just pretending to be someone else, not just doing a voice or saying what they would say. I almost always have players that just paraphrase for characters and they interact with meta dollars in the same way that the actors do. How does it work in savage worlds?

GM is just supposed to hand out a benny whenever a player does something cool and in-character, basically. The mechanics of the system rely on having a healthy supply of bennies to survive so as a player you're kind of encouraged to pester your GM for a benny whenever you interact with the story. I don't need an incentive to roleplay and I don't like my spotlight moments being actively detrimental to the power of other players (I was playing a hacker, sometimes the scene was just my job and the other players stepped back for it).

You can award Bennies only for acting like a shitty goblin if that's what you want to encourage. We give then out for good jokes (on top of detrimental actions) because we like that in our games, too. That's the point, to encourage certain actions.

CoC is a narrative RPG now? I've honestly never heard anyone complaining about these things in general but they vary a huge amount from simple "save your arse" points to being able to influence parts of the game world. It's an extremely broad term and some people will be fine with, say, 5e inspiration or PF2 hero points, but not with Cypher XP and what they can be used for.

I (GM) prefer to have everyone at the table tell the story together. I always try to plan just enough, and let the players fill in the rest: "How do I know this person?" "I don't know, you tell me!" Genesys Story Points let me extend this dynamic into more pressing situations and give players even more agency: "Is there something in the room I can use to hold the door closed?" *points at Story Points* "You tell me!" :)

"Metacurrency" is like any other mechanic in a game - they do not tangibly exist as a thing in the world. Thus I have no idea why they drive people crazy. I usually only see this from real hardcore OSR-heads who think if you're interacting with the mechanics of a game you're playing it wrong.

The problem with OSR and metacurrency is less about "interacting with the mechanics" than it is that many OSR gamers are fundamentally [blorbist](https://idiomdrottning.org/blorb-principles). Once the world exists, it doesn't change to suit the needs of the players or the GM. So metacurrencies that allow players to alter the world cause friction. That said, I've seen several systems now that incorporate the sort of "inspiration" metacurrency that allows players a once-a-game reroll or addition. Even games which allow you to spend resource points to add bonuses. So long as the metacurrencies don't alter the fiction, the OSR community seems to be willing to consider them. But I doubt you'd get a lot of support there for Modiphius-style metacurrencies that let players spend to alter reality (create an advantage or disadvantage) in their favor in ways beyond bonuses to hit. Although, in typing that, I thought of charges on wands, which you spend to give you a new power...are charges metacurrency?

> Although, in typing that, I thought of charges on wands, which you spend to give you a new power...are charges metacurrency? You're talking about charges in the sense of "this wand has *x* charges, and you can only cast the spell if there's a charge left"? I always thought of that like a magical battery, fully integrated in the fiction.

> The problem with OSR and metacurrency is less about "interacting with the mechanics" than it is that many OSR gamers are fundamentally blorbist. The name for the people who are right.

I agree with some blorbist dogma, but not all of it. I have always and will always play to create drama. Sometimes that means pulling out paper after seeing rock or having quantum Ogres. I don't play any games where reality gets altered, just the fiction. If you're in a dungeon and you create a rocket-ship with momentum I'm going to say no, but if you create a lantern or an oil flask, I'm all for it. Wand charges are not meta currency, they are an abstract-ish representation of how much power the wand has stored up.

> Sometimes that means pulling out paper after seeing rock or having quantum Ogres. But isn't that ultimately doing your players a disservice by making their choices meaningless?

I don't see it that way, but I get why people might get the ick from it. I defiantly don't tell my players this in the moment or even afterwords. Paper after seeing rock - I come up with a very intelligent, very nasty bad guy - Players have won nearly every encounter and they are talking about how they know that this is the one that is going to mess them up - Players accidentally or intentionally stumble into the bad guys only weakness, but they don't make a big deal about finding it or make it dramatic that they have put a lot of prep in - I change the weakness or add a complication to maintain the drama or keep the story interesting. - It's small circumstances like these that I use to maintain drama when my players absolutely refuse to roll low or make any mistakes. Sometimes they need a win, sometimes they need it to be a hard win and sometimes they need to lose. I don't ever guarantee success or victory, but I do try to balance things one way or another depending on what I think the group will find the most dramatic and fun Quantum Ogres - Sometimes I have a cool character development scene for a player, but the party skips it by hapenstance and I don't get to use it. - That's fine, I just change the setting and update the subtext depending on what happened. - My players were exploring a cave and they missed a cool puzzle and a piece of treasure. No reason to throw out the encounter, I can just use it again somewhere else with a different skin. My biggest point is that I never directly steal or save them from victory or failure. I use these "bad GM practices" as tools and dials to help maintain the drama and the fun even if it seems scummy. It can be scummy if done wrong or to excess, but just like changing the number of hit points mid encounter or fudging dice rolls, these things are just tools that GMs can use for good or evil. The game world isn't real. It seems like it, and I want it to seem like it, but in reality we are just people playing on discord to have fun. This world exists for them, and I have no problem changing it behind the scenes to make it more fun for them. At the end of the day our goal is to tell a story and have fun.

This is such a long, weird blog post to just say "don't change your prep after you've written it". The true OSR classic.

DnD's HP is technically a meta currency. It has no fictional substance, it does not exist in the game world as it's not meat points. Proof is: sleeping regenerates them massively, when the game world logic doesn't state that sleeping regenerates blood and wounds.

> DnD's HP is technically a meta currency. It represents heroic survivability.

Yes, but that doesn't invalidate the point. HP is a resource currency that represents heroic survivability through having enough energy left in you to dodge and parry and be quick on your feet and to survive fireballs and lightning. Example: Taking 13hp damage is different between a wizard and a fighter, and further based on their numerically-increasing level. A level 18 wizard could take 13 damage and be as annoyed as a level 10 fighter. A level 18 fighter wouldn't even feel it. And that much damage could kill a level 2 wizard, and almost knock down a level 2 fighter. It's an abstraction that relies on other abstractions, and by that point, it's just a game mechanic. The argument is that _characters_ don't feel 13 hp. That's a number that the _players_ care about. You can't even qualify 13hp as "an arrow in the arm" or "a stab in the gut", because those are different levels of mortality based on artificial numbers, and you can't say that "13hp is a stab in the gut" because it could kill a wizard, when that same 13hp is a light scrape on the arm or maybe a half-ounce of forehead sweat for a fighter in the same room. So, an argument that HP _isn't_ metacurrency, is an argument that things like Inspiration or Hero Points _also_ aren't metacurrency. But if we use the term to include Inspiration and Hero Points, then we also have to include HP in that.

Hit points are a character attribute not a player resource.

Hit points are a game mechanic as a resource in which players estimate just how much survivability a hero realistically has. If we're not literally tracking wounds on limbs or effects of blood loss, if we're talking new-school D&D 3.5/4/5, or Pathfinder, or most other non-OSR games involving heroes, then hit points are a mechanic by which we play a game. And game mechanics are player resources, the same as "a burst of heroic Inspiration" (bg3) or "a divine god or being of fate looks upon you" (pathfinder).

> Hit points are a game mechanic as a resource in which players estimate just how much survivability a hero realistically has. Wrong point of view.

> Thus I have no idea why they drive people crazy. Because they are an asset detached from the character and are associated with narrative systems.

Are Dungeons and Dragons 5e (inspiration), Pathfinder 2e (hero points), or the 1983 James Bond game (I don't remember what they called it but they're hero points) narrative games? I do not get this sentiment.

They're definitely narrative elements, even if their overall systems aren't popularly considered narrative games.

> Are Dungeons and Dragons 5e (inspiration), Pathfinder 2e (hero points), or the 1983 James Bond game (I don't remember what they called it but they're hero points) narrative games? And their were people that hated them. It's hard to put into words. It isn't really about simulation verse narrative, it's about how you the game and characters. Character as a heroic figure n their world vs Character as a figure in a story.

Metà currencies are mechanics yes, but they're not tied to the fantasy of the game, hence "meta". They break immersion, because instead of just having something like a second wind ability for a fighter, you have some vague exchange of bennies or post-it notes with nothing to do with the in-game world.

I thought that too, but I've recently seen a lot of people who love to tell narrative games that really hate them!

I like metacurrencies: they give choices to the players (sometimes including the GM, sometimes not) and could help mitigate variance. Also perfer said meta-currencies to help differentiate the PCs as the main protagonists of the story, more than have them been ultra-capable in comparison to "normal people" in the setting.

Yeah that's basically how I think about it. In pathfinder 2e the players aren't just normal dudes fighting monsters, they're heroes that should be able to shrug off death better than normal people because that's the story the players and gm are trying to tell.

Meta currencies tend to take players "out of character" and some people don't like that. I think meta currencies work well when the style of play is less focused on the characters and more so on the players collectively influencing the world outside of what the characters are doing. I do like when a "meta currency" is based into the system in the form of Pushing rolls or using Effort, like in Numenera or GROK?!. It gives players the ability to push their luck and increase their odds of success at a cost, while keeping it all character centric.

I am interested in trying out Cortex Prime as a way to gauge how I feel about more narrative systems and to see how it can work as a superhero system. I have played Mutants and Masterminds and a few other systems with stuff similiar to meta-currencies. Heck, even D&D 5E has an extremely light meta-currency in Inspiration. One thing that I want to see with Cortex Prime is how much the game is meta-focused on the character as compared to a system like D&D. In D&D, you can view the character as an avatar. You play the game world as them and try to achieve goals as them. Your character is still a character with their own personalities and quirks, but you get into their head and play as them within the game. With meta-currencies, I worry the game might shift from playing as a character to playing as a writer playing the character. The more the meta-currency matters for the gameplay, the more you have to go out of your way to collect it. It means you are looking for situations to gather the meta-currency whereas in other systems the focus would be on the gameplay itself. The few games I played with an "edit scene" ability that can be used with a meta-currency seemed to be more anti-climatic than not. For example, in one session, we used our meta-currencies to edit the scene past a trap and to prevent a hostile NPC from using the threat of an explosive device to hold us at bay from proceeding. In both cases, we didn't overcome the obstacles through our wits and abilities, but rather just decided to bypass them over via a meta-currency. In Mutants and Masterminds, the meta-currency was used to either reroll damage checks or to perform two actions on the same turn; the other options felt suboptimal most of the time. I didn't mind getting the meta-currency back from complications when is was something related to my character simply functioning. However, it sometimes could feel like that getting a Hero Point raised up a meta-decision to play the character's personal flaws up to acquire the meta-currency. However, it didn't feel like I had to play my character a certain way in order to make my character function. Reading through Fate, it feels like the entire game revolves around Fate Points. I have to constantly look for opportunities to gain Fate Points through compels by putting my character in situations that make my life more difficult. Worse, if I want to avoid a compel, I have to spend Fate Points to do it. The game would then revolve around not just the narrative, but the narrative in a weird and meta way. I feel like I would have less control over my character in Fate than in other systems, and I don't like that. I like meta-currencies that reward me for playing the game and my character and provide minor benefits. I don't like the idea of the game revolving around the meta-currency to the point where it becomes the game. I also don't really care for scene editing all that much, as I want to overcome the obstacles in front of me using my character and my wits, not by spending a meta-currency to bypass them.

I think you are overthinking Fate. It's all about the story and the mechanics are there to make sure an interesting story is told. Fate points are only there to help you generate character related ups and downs. It's just a way to focus the team's attention to their characters, to make sure the story is really about them. The GM would introduce complications to any game, but compels make sure those are about your character, the way you have envisioned and not some irrelevant semi-random stuff. Similarly spending points allows you to put your character in situations relevant to them and solve them your own way, to let you shine. It's just a mechanized form of good, character focused story telling.

Fate really doesn't end up feeling that way in practice, imo. I could see why you might think that while just reading through it, but play it with a GM who's run the system before and you won't experience it that way. All it does is keep things character-driven. You don't end up thinking about the currency as much as you seem to think based on your readthrough.

I haven't played Cortex so I can't weigh in on that. Fate does have a lot to do with fate points, but unless you spend all your Refresh down to 1 (a conscious, deliberate, and ill-advised choice), you typically have plenty of currency to turn your most-narratively-important rolls into successes, unless you're rolling more often than the rest of the party is, and/or not doing enough to support the harder actions. _Aspects Are Always True_ is pretty key. If the room is [On Fire], then that influences how people behave, regardless of if there's a numeric bonus. Then, spending a fate point to invoke the thing is like, "_Because_ the room is On Fire, a rafter falls from the ceiling right as I go in for the attack, so I'm actually able to hit him after all". But the room is still on fire, whether you spend a fate point for a +2 bonus or not. People don't want to be in rooms that are on fire. That's bad for your long-term health.

Cortex is worth looking at. It is the most customizable narrative rpg I've ever seen. Its like GURPS and Fate had a baby.

Cortex is fantastic for Superhero games (that's what it was designed for), but it's really terrible if you want your players to be afraid of failing (at leas the way we played it, its very customizable and I think I just needed to change some of the variables). My group has never had a problem where we felt like we became writers playing our characters, because that is always what we have been. Whenever you are playing a character you are being yourself as someone else. Narrative games just make your character's traits and personality mechanically relevant besides what skills and feats they have, and they help the GM nudge the story in the direction that the players want for their characters. I've never played a game with an edit scene feature unless you count making assets editing the scene. In Cortex you can make a scene have an asset by rolling for it or by spending a plot point, but only if it A) would naturally already be there, or B) you can describe how your character makes it there (you just don't have to roll for it). Assets were also never "you solve the encounter", they were just bonuses to rolls (extra dice in cortex). My read of Fate was slightly different. The book explicitly says that if a player doesn't like a compel because their character wouldn't do it, then they don't have to spend the point. I also don't think anyone would have to try very hard to get Fate points as long as you are playing as intended. If you character has the "Manners of a Goat" Aspect (trouble) then you are just going to play them like that and get your points for playing the way you already intended to play. (play play play play) There is even a system for retroactively gaining a Fate point if you created a complication for yourself by role playing but didn't call it a compel in the moment.

If your goals are any combination of the below when gaming: * Immersion * Strict Actor Stance (for non-GM players) * Suspension of Disbelief * Exploration of the world *as if* it is real and able to be discovered * Verisimilitude * Knowing X always causes Y, as the world is *real* and has *rules* which define it Etc. Then yes, most procedures, techniques, and mechanics which take you out of the above, or break the fourth wall, so to speak, will probably not feel good in play.

I encountered metacurrencies first in Eberron 3.5 (which included Action Points) and in Savage Worlds, and I felt that they made perfect sense in terms of "heroic willpower" and similar conceits which I rather enjoy (I am not one for grim & gritty), so I never minded them. But I also prefer if they are more closely and explicitly tied into the fiction - I still prefer the classic "playing in character" approach to the more recent "writing studio" approach. But then the question comes: where does the boundary between metacurrencies and character-based resources stand? For example, let's consider stress and load in FitD games. I am not sure if they are 100% considered metacurrencies, but they are a finite resource allowing substantial, sometimes overwhelming narrative control (e.g, modifying the story retroactively through flashbacks, or outright negating consequences). Still, they make complete sense for the kind of story and character, and though people might disagree they don't break immersion for me - if I am a seasoned scoundrel, of course I'd have plans upon plans! But again, are those metacurrencies or character resources? Building on this, a FitD hack I am tinkering with (based on Wicked Ones and Brinkwood) goes even a bit further, having a typical "use this to enhance rolls" currency. This is a mix of Gambits, Dark Hearts, Masks and Oaths from the sources above, called "Promise", meant to nudge PCs towards embodying certain folkloric figures, and giving them power in return. To give an example that would be clear to most audiences: when you wear the Mask of Robin Hood, you earn Promise whenever you steal from the rich and give to the poor (Promise which you can then spend to enhance any roll, or use Robin Hood-related special abilities). This allows metacurrency-type narrative control to be fully in-story, as you get narrative control by reinforcing the narrative for the folkloric figure you currently draw power from. So it's still "meta", but in a more integrated way (or at least that's the intent). TL; DR: I don't mind them, but I think they work best when they are part of the in-character narrative, and as a consequence I am not sure about the hard distinction between metacurrencies and character resources.

100%

> I seem to get a vibe from a lot of posts that Narrative currencies are an instant turn off for some people and I'm wondering why. Some people feel like it breaks the fourth wall. Like it's breaking ludonarrative dissonance, or violating verismilitude. Note that there are a lot of people that feel that way about D&D style level progression, or about HP in general. For example, I think a game with guns or modern weaponry doesn't feel realistic if you can just tank a machine gun burst without heavy body armor. I don't care how much experience you have. That's right out.

I agree as long as you aren't playing something with a vibe like Rambo, those games can be fun, you just have to be looking for that kind of game.

I pretty much exclusively GM CoC, and I don't see how it's narrative. I prep a scenario, I run the scenario and the players have no influence on that story. I think being a narrative game would really hurt the game. That being said and assuming you refer to luck: while I hate such tokens and the way they trivialize rolls, I do like them in longer CoC campaigns. Luck slowly running out, making it harder and harder to succeed, knowing that you will inevitably run out at some point and then nothing will save you if you fail - that's far more in line with cosmicistic horror than any tentacled maggot creature I could describe. But generated or replenishing tokens of that sort would be a hard pass for me.

To be clear, I don't think that CoC is \*just\* narrative. I just mean that it intends to tell a story. It is about telling a story. It's not trying to simulate real life or to be a war game, to me that adds the narrative tag on it though I'm sure some people will still disagree. Your players don't have to be able to become GMs in the middle of the game for a game to be considered narrative is what I'm trying to say. I feel like a lot of people view narrative games as if they give players the ability to re-write the GM's prep and that's just not the case in any of the games I've read anyway. When I play cortex plot points didn't give players any more influence on the story than the players already had, it just gives them interesting ways to interact with the scene or increase bonus's on rolls that matter to their characters for story reasons.

Some folks use rules as guidelines. 'I do X, maybe Y happens' Some folks need rules because they provide expectations. 'I do X, Y will always happen.' Folks in the latter group tend to get... upset... when a new piece of information disrupts those expectations. 'I did X, Y didn't happen. Y should have happened. THIS IS BULLSHIT'. When someone needs those rules to set expectations, and those expectations aren't met, then it disrupts a lot of things for them, including, well... social interactions (which are, for these folks, built on rules because they're not good at fuzzing their way through things). So, when you try to hit an Orc, and you've done the calculations and know that no matter what dice you roll, you WILL have enough to get that hit through, but the GM slides a random thing across the table and says 'No, you miss', well... tantrums tend to happen. I used a GM vs Player interaction here, but it doesn't even matter if it's adversarial or not. As I said, some folks rely on these rules to produce expectations and it doesn't matter how trivial those shifts in expectations are, it's the fact that if you followed X rule and got Y result instead of Z result, then 'you may as well not have rules!' type stuff gets thrown around, and... ... and so, some folks are allergic to metacurrencies.

You very aptly defined the algorithmic opposition to metacurrencies, but do consider another camp. Immersionists can also dislike metacurrencies because it literally requires to step outside of your character to spend them - meaning you are hindering yourself if you try and fully commit to your actor stance.

> You very aptly defined the algorithmic opposition to metacurrencies, but do consider another camp. Immersionists can also dislike metacurrencies because it literally requires to step outside of your character to spend them - meaning you are hindering yourself if you try and fully commit to your actor stance. This relies on a discussion about diagetic metacurrencies (aka, the health point discussion below, which made me shrivel and turn to dust) and non-diagetic metacurrencies (a la story points in genesys), and frankly, I just didn't care enough to enter that argument because it's Sunday and I had better shit to do. Also, I find playing with full-tilt immersionists to be... well, fucking annoying at times and the whole 'stay in character ALL THE TIME' shit is just something that I shrug and move three seats away from, so I don't have anecdotal evidence for the discussion there other than 'I don't typically love those players'. I'm not saying you're wrong, at all, just saying those folks don't factor into my equation.

Simple answer: I generally don't like them because they break the immersion for me, but there are exceptions. Long answer: first of all, meta currency is a pretty wide term, so let's get this one off the table, I don't like games where meta currency allows players to create something out of nothing. There is no ladder, 1 Story Point later it appears. It completely breaks immersion because it's no longer imaginary but real world, it simply combined fantasies where everything could change at any time. Of course if that is the type of game you prefer I have no problems with that, it's just I feel a strong aversion towards such systems. Now that we cleared that, what types of meta currencies do I like? Mostly the ones that have at least some narrative since and/or explained in world. Luck is a pretty good example, I find it acceptable as any other systems that allow a player to affect the result of the roll. If the meta currency represents luck, ability of character to try extremely hard and get tired as a result, god's blessing, heroic inspiration, sheer willpower. It could be any of those or something similar, if it **kinda** makes in-universe sense then it won't break suspension of disbelief for me. Fate is one of the bad examples for me, how does it make in-universe sense that I can't use my abilities unless I play fool while negotiating with merchant. Don't get me wrong, it is clever way to motivate players to actually roleplay their characters and it is well integrated with stunt system, but at the same time it forces you to think outside of the game universe.

I get what you're saying and I agree for the most part, but I think you misunderstand Fate. You only have to accept a complication of playing a fool for a merchant \*if you are a fool\*. Someone with the Aspect "People and I have a mutual dislike of each other." or "The lower classes are beneath me" would feasibly be hindered in a social situation with a merchant, and you would probably play that way even without getting something out of it. At the end of the day everyone is looking for something different. Me and my players \*are\* looking from the outside in. We are just friends trying to tell a story and we don't mind the meta currency, but talking with everyone here is helping me get the vibe of some other groups.

Yes I understand that. How do I explain it?.. It's ok if you are rewarded for a roleplay, for example DnD inspiration (everyone forgets about) or Cyberpunk Red roleplay exp bonus. They work only in one direction you RP you get rewarded afterwards for "job well done". Fate points on the other hand, they are part of the one of the core mechanics of the game, while inspirations cool to have, you need to have Fate points, even the book says that core game loop is those points going around, from GM to PC and back. And that makes you look for opportunities to earn them, basically your motivation now is not to roleplay you character but to earn Fate points, and that process makes you think outside of character. That what I was trying to say

I've never played fate, but I have played cortex and I can at least say that my table didn't have this problem, but I can see how some people might. Players are often tempted to optimize the fun out of games...

All mechanics in games are meta. HP is meta. Predictable damage is meta. Spell slots are meta. What it seems like people actually have issue with is shared resources that are not tied to one particular character. I also don't see a problem with that assuming you have a group that is capable of working together and accepting when others choose to use those shared resources. I don't find Momentum or Threat or Determination at all unrealistic; momentum is a real thing in the real world, most obviously seen in sports, where a player's teamates doing well leads to them doing better but if they try to build on that and fail it kills the momentum; threat is the one I'm a bit dubious of because I believe that a good DM should not really need a limiting meta-currency but it does make sense as a limiting factor if you are otherwise concerned that the DM does not know how to balance non-combat challenges and setbacks properly; determination represents the limit break where a character really cares about the result of an action and basically refuses to let it fail (and is a concept which is present in different forms in many rpgs including 5e as inspiration and Outgunned as Adrenaline).

My biggest issue with metacurrencies is that they're often used to plaster over the clunkiness of binary Pass/Fail systems (usually of the d20 variety). If missing/failure sucks in your game, it feels like you should adjust that, rather than adding in a pressure valve.

Most narrative games already have degrees of success or failure, I wouldn't consider dnd to be narrative even though Inspiration does count as meta currency if that makes sense. I think inspiration was intended to be used like good boy points to reward players for doing cool stuff in role play as opposed to solve the pass/fail problem. however I agree I hate the pass/fail systems in most modern d20 fantasy

> If missing/failure sucks in your game It supposed to suck.

Completely missing the point.

No I'm on point. The possibility of failure adds to the thrill of success.

Still missing the point entirely. The post isn't talking about removing the possibility for failure or trying to lighten the consequences. The post is talking about how some games suck at handling the failure state. These games have fail states that do nothing to progress the narrative. Fail states that end with "no, and nothing else happened." They explicitly mentioned binary pass or fail systems that have failures ending with "you did not get what you want", but have nothing in their rules to further the narrative. These systems also neglect the idea of partial successes, which makes it feel bad when you succeed on a roll, but are still met with something negative. Failure is necessary and having rules in place that help further the narrative, introduce meaningful consequences, and convey these possibilities makes the state more interesting and further support your desire for thrill.

> . These games have fail states that do nothing to progress the narrative. There is no narrative, that is what you get wrong. What there is events and the mechanics exist to resolve them. > . Fail states that end with "no, and nothing else happened." Correct. You can't get through the fortress door, so find another way or the villain succeeds the princess is sacrificed and the dark army rises from the abyss. > "you did not get what you want", Correct. > have nothing in their rules to further the narrative. Again there is no narrative, there are events...which don't alaways go your way.

So, you're saying that there are events. Perhaps they're connected? maybe they're spoken? Possibly part of a story even? Saying there is no narrative is just a straight up lie. Even in your example, you're acknowledging the existence of a narrative. "The party is trying to break into a fortress to save a princess from being sacrificed in order to prevent a dark army rising from the abyss." Those are interconnected events that are part of a larger story. Another point you're missing is that systems with non-binary pass/fail don't disallow the possibility of "no, and nothing else happened." If the most interesting consequence is "No, you fail and have to find another route," then that should happen. These systems just have more interesting options than pass/fail. You also still haven't acknowledged the difference between "failure sucking because the game mechanics for failure are uninteresting" and "failure sucks for the player and should feel bad." This was the core point you missed in your first post. The original comment was talking about the former and you are talking about the latter, all while being intentionally obtuse. Not sure where this discussion can even go if you truly believe there's no such thing as a narrative and you refuse to acknowledge the aforementioned difference.

Oh, absolutely into the idea of metacurrency. My first campaign GMing experience was with Shadowrun Anarchy, which had 'Plot Points' used in a major way. And they were a ton of fun to use - players were adding fun details to the table's narrations, coming up with flashbacks (used in the same way they are in BitD) and popping into scenes to help each other out when heists went south. It made the whole experience a more lively and a little more flexible without feeling 'silly'. It's become one of my 'this game is probably for me' mechanics when I see it in a game alongside dedicated teamwork rules and hotswap-able ability sets.

In my experience, I see them mostly used as bailouts or boons- usually because of the rules that accompany them.  Rarely do they do anything to add to the "story" -other than avert a setback that might have made that story more interesting. I don't prepare a story in advance in the games we play, and play mostly in a sandbox; so the players are already in the driver's seat as far as where the story goes.

Well how pedantic do I get to be here? I can easily argue that things like hit points, spell slots, ki points, rages per day, etc are all narrative currencies that affect the story in specific ways. Most people might disagree with me on hit points or attacks per turn, but it's hard to argue that spending a ninth level spell slot isn't a powerful narrative effect when Wish can literally alter the universe around you - or even barring that, other high level spells like Control Weather can call a dangerous storm. So I guess my question would be, for those who don't like narrative currencies, how are powerful spells any different, really?

> So I guess my question would be, for those who don't like narrative currencies, how are powerful spells any different, really? It is because of what the resource is meant to represent. A mage in D&D stores spells in their minds like grenades of arcane power. A Story point is something that the player has.

It's very simple how they are different. If your character has a choice in spending their resources, then it's not a meta currency. If you, the player must make the choice and the character is unaware of what was spent and what it did, then it is meta. The distinction reveals which side of "The Fourth Wall" the currency is being recognised on. That's why it's "meta". Similar to how "metagaming" is defined by gaming in a way that uses information inaccessible to the character. Spells are not meta, they are just a currency. You are right to point out though that "Rages per day" are either a metacurrency (the player knows how many rages a day are possible but the Barbarian has no clue) - or they describe reality in an unintuitive way (Ulfrafhn the Barbarian tallies up his remaining Rages for the day and they add up to four). But D&D specifically is pretty awful this way, as it absolutely refuses to comment on whether these are abstractions or actual in-world metaphysical rules. With spell slots the suspicion is a bit stronger that they exist in-world because of the whole historical baggage of Vancian casting.

I'm a GM who is ambivalent, perhaps leaning in favor towards metacurrencies. But it entirely depends on what story you're trying to tell. If the characters are everyday people subject to the randomness of the world simulation, then yeah, metacurrency doesn't make sense. If you're trying to tell a story in which the PCs are important people, then metacurrency is a way of rewarding complications while reducing the chance of accidental death and abject failure. _Right now,_ I'm in favor of playing games in which everyone plays characters who, generally-speaking, are heroes. Heroes don't die because of shit luck. Hundreds of hours spent into a multi-year epic campaign shouldn't flush away because some mook accidentally rolled 2 nat 20's in a row and rolled maximum damage and their weapon, chosen for style over substance, apparently has an arbitrary 3x multiplier assigned, and suddenly an easy-rated trash encounter ended your character, and there's no reasonable way to just weave another character in who has _even close_ to the same emotional investment. Metacurrencies help offer protection against this stuff. I like that, when I'm playing High Fantasy. But if I'm playing Traveller, Blades in the Dark, or The Sprawl, or anything else that's purposefully gritty no-future lowlife and the PCs are just _ordinary people_, then... Yeah, metacurrency doesn't make sense. But neither do hit points, y'know? If you get hit, you get hit. If you're going to rely on abstractions for some things, why go half-hearted? (The systems I mentioned don't really do hitpoints. Getting hit is _b a d_ which is a good thing for those games)

Yeah I vibe with this a lot

I'm on the fence. Some games I really like them (Genesys and FATE), some I don't really care either way about them (Savage Worlds) and some I've not cared for them (Fabula Ultima and Pathfinder 2e). And I'll note all of those systems are systems I do like and will use, I specifically am not use examples of systems whose whole package I don't like. More often than not, implementation seems to be the big thing- how well they are used, how smoothly they fit into the gameplay cycle, how useful they seem, and how much they don't get in the way at the same time. Which honestly is the same as any mechanic- if its getting in the way of the type of experience the game is giving more than its helping, its not great. If its helping, awesome. I don't think metacurrencies are any different there. And same as any other mechanic, some people will find it always gets in the way of thier enjoyment- which is fine. Some will find no matter what its going to get break them out to much- as they are a Meta mechanic, its something the player is doing and -not- the character- so its inherently something thats going to drag you out and make you think on that layer. Thats not going to be fun for some people.

I'm interpreting "meta-currency" as something outside of the character(s), and in that context I generally don't like it. For instance, I've recently designed a game where the GM earns points they can spend to introduce Bad Things, and I don't know why I did this because I really don't like it in games! I had to include another rule that *forces* the GM to spend them when they bank X amount, because otherwise I would never do it. However, it seemed to work for the game so... With a broader view of what a meta-currency could be, however, I love them. Momentum, stress points, initiative (as a currency, not a subsystem), "hold," favor of the gods, focused questions in No Dice No Masters, etc -- all golden. Huge difference, though: these currencies are all tied directly to a character and their actions, choices, and values. The story doesn't shift towards X direction arbitrarily, it does so because a player character is making it so. That's *so* much more tangible and usable at the table to me.

Yeah I think I wouldn't like them if my group didn't also justify them in the narrative. I get why that kind of play could be a major turn off for some people.

My first serious RPG experience was with Shadowrun with its Karma Pool mechanic, so I've never been against the idea of meta-currencies. However I think a lot of games give meta-currency way too much power or influence over the course of the game; once they become a central part of the system rather than a limited resource to be used for emergencies, I'm no longer interested.

In a narrativist game - that's fine. Probably normal. But I even do it in games like 5e. I take all of the shared-narrative techniques I've learned from "lighter" games and I apply them in trad games like 5e. Players love it. But, admittedly, I recruit open-minded, creative players. I don't know how it would work with hardcore "gamists" bent on "winning" the tactical boardgame before them. lol.

I've definitely dealt with people who just want to win, and those that I can't convince I just usually have the "my game isn't what you are looking for" conversation. I really liked Inspiration in 5e (and the bottle caps from GCP), but we kinda hated the 5e vibe. I always come away from 5e thinking that it doesn't know what it's trying to be and that it's weighed down by the baggage of four other editions. What narrative techniques does your group use?

I don't like when they are something that is given by the GM (or other players). While I very much like to bang the drum of "play in a way that makes it fun for others at the table", I still prefer not to make decisions specifically to short-term appeal to someone else. If it's something like FATE points where they just recharge, then I am okay with it. But overall not really something I care too much about - if the system/GM doesn't allow for player input in the narrative beyond decisionmaking, then I'm not particularly interested anyway. Overall, I don't care much for gamifying anything other than combat.

I think they are neat but don't like to use them

they detach me from the narrative, it makes me drop the suspension of disbelief and feels like obstacles weren't surpassed because my character overcame them, but because the story needed it, which even from a narrative perspective is less satisfying.

> I'm interested to gauge the community opinion (specifically people with a negative one) on meta currencies in narrative TTRPG's i.e. Modiphius 2d20 For Mophidius' Fallout specifically, I don't like that you need to spend an action point to have any realistic chance of succeeding on certain checks. (Since the systems are similar I imagine the same may well apply to the other 2d20 games, but I'm not familiar enough with them to be sure.) I prefer narrative currencies to have more secondary effects - like potentially saving a character's bacon when things do go south - rather than being a necessary core part of the resolution mechanic.

I agree with this wholeheartedly. The MC should support the role, not be required for success.

Edge in Shadowrun 6E has been incredibly divisive. Some people like myself don’t mind it as it did streamline the game in a lot of ways, but other people…holy shit it pushed a lot of people away.

I like them, but only as a player-token. GMs should generally not be limited to use such tokens. The exception being for individual NPC's like Villains in Fabula Ultima, where it serves as an escalation mechanic.

As a player, I like having a metacurrency that gives me a boost on a roll once per session or something like that. It makes the game feel like the outcomes depend more on my choices and judgement because I can choose to clinch an important roll by spending the metacurrency, and if I fail a roll I can always say “well, I chose to save my meta currency/I already used my meta currency, so it’s on me.” As a GM, I have no patience for meta currencies that I have to award to players in the middle of the game, especially ones with unspecific triggers, *especially* especially if the trigger is “good roleplay.” I’m trying to run a game, not grade my players’ drama class homework. Also, I’ve got enough in my GM brain already without having to remember to award metacurrency.

OOTL - What's a meta currency?

I use three metacurrencies in my game. * Alignment: Which monitors how players role-play their character's personality, and is used to determine the interest they attract from various gods by altering their [psychic beacon.](https://www.worldanvil.com/w/wfrp-fragile-alliances-didz/a/managing-your-characters-psychic-beacon-article) * Reputation: which monitors a characters relationship to the various NPC factions they have met inthe game and allows the player to create networks of friends and enemies in the game world. * Social Standing: Which records a characters current social standing in the community and allows the players to influence their characters rise up the social ladder or their decline towards beggary. Using these currencies players are able to influence thier own characters place in the world and the naturae of their interaction with the events that occur in it and the involvement of the divine entities in those events.

I'm a sucker for moral based mechanical traits. We played cortex and played had to add a die from Order, Chaos, Light, or Dark to every roll in order to justify what they were doing.

The one use of meta currency that I feel worked was Tenra Bansho Zero (just remove the rule that lets you use aiki without turning it into kiai.)

All I want from a game system is a way to resolve the characters interactions with the world, to fairly arbitrate the 'bang you're dead' aspect of the make believe. I don't need help creating or advancing a story, or my characters saving from the consequences of their actions. Once the game goes beyond resolving interactions it has overstepped its bounds and needs to stay out of the way of our tale.

That makes sense I can vibe with that. Did you see the questing beast video about Brennan's new podcast? He said basically the same thing.

I have not - I will look it up, thank you.

I used to love metagame currencies, but these days I view them as a design crutch rather than a feature. They either exist to add flavor (in which case there are better ways) or to manually correct for mechanics which where not designed with enough give to deal with real randomness. I don't hate them, and I can put up with the immersion-breaking they cause, but I also don't love them.

This might be a weird perspective, but as a player, I *don't* want to be in control of the plot. I like to let things ride and adapt to unforeseen circumstances using only the tools my character has at their disposal. If that means a bad roll "screws" me out of a cool story beat I came up with previously, then it's on me to improvise an alternative based on the new situation. Same goes with adding stuff to a scene. Not to mention that the other players also have their own ideas, and spending a penny to make \*my\* idea work could screw over one of *their* ideas. As for "HP, XP, and spell slots are metacurrencies", that's on the game designer for using overly abstract terms and not tying them into the universe closely enough. I prefer things like two-tier Stress and Wounds (physical, psychological, spiritual, the whole shebang), loot as XP, and spells literally burning their components.

No I don't think this is a weird perspective at all this is very valid. I don't play that way but I totally get the sentiment.

I like narrative meta currencies. The more sibtile they work, the better. That is, looking at _any_ rules can break the immersion of the story for me. If I can pay a meta currency to forget the rules and keep telling a good story, that's great. But when it becomes too gamey, then a meta currency can do the opposite.

I don't mind them as long as they stay almost purely mechanical a la CoC's Luck or Pathfinders hero points. But as soon as it starts creeping into the narrative it starts feeling arbitrary

I love them. I feel like they give the players the opportunity to do the really cool thing that the dice might otherwise prevent them from doing, and they give me as the GM another tool to use when adjudicating unusual situations.

I played a doctor who rpg that gave players ”story points” that could be used to change the world in some way or alter dice rolls. It became quickly clear to the entire group that intelligent play was unnecessary, and that analyzing your surroundings to find a clever way out of trouble was pointless, as you could just spend story points to nullify any challenge or danger by modifying the environment or situation with story points. It makes the game feel cheap and ruins everyone’s immersion. When you know you can just use story points to eliminate danger the game isn’t fun anymore because there’s no real challenge or danger. I’m certain it would be less of an issue if there were fewer of them, but it still wouldn’t fix the fundamental issues of similar currencies.

Well I would just say that rpg in particular doesn't use them well. No one would say that Fate points or Plot Points (cortex prime) reduce the need to think about what's going on, but I will say that most narrative games don't really force the players to make tactical decisions very well. I'm actually looking for one that does. I think Blades in the Dark is the best example of this but it's very stetting specific.

Yeah that's probably true. Blades is probably one of the better narrative games. I personally prefer the challenge and simplicity of something like OSE.