Game Master Meta Currencies
This week I discuss my thoughts and changing opinion on GM meta currencies and use in tabletop roleplaying games. This article won’t touch on the use of player meta currencies, but I have always been a fan of those ways to affect the narrative, either with or without a cost attached to them. Giving everyone a way of guiding their character’s story and destiny is a great tool to keep people invested in a GM’s world, but giving them appropriate boundaries for use. They really help engagement by allowing choice for special moments that they need that power boost, reroll or bonus.
Examples
There are many games that use these currencies:
Modphius 2d20 games (Start Trek, Conan etc)
Fate Core and its variants
Tales of the Valiant
Coriolis
Some Powered by The Apocalypse like Monster Hearts
Limited effects in Dungeons and Dragons 5e with Monster Legendary Resistance
There are also games that encourage this sort of play without the actual currency:
Blades in the Dark
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (4e)
Some Powered by The Apocalypse games that just use GM Moves
They are an accrued (or limited) tool that give the power to the GM to intrude on the action, in ways outside of normal GM responsibilities.
Concerns
I have read a lot of articles and discussion online that these tools bring fear to the worried game master. That these tools will prevent a GM from creating tension, or doing their normal duties. This fear often comes from Old School Renaissance (OSR) GMs who are used to the rulings-not-rules mentality, or the idea that they need to keep all the power to themselves in order to create a consistent world. The usual issue comes from people who have a strong want to build good narrative pressure and have tightness around the characters. To be candid, I once thought this way. I thought that I would lose the ability to bring in consequences for players if I ran out of the currency.
Realisations
Meta currencies could be viewed as a way of limiting the GM, but the introduction and flow of them actually does the opposite. It empowers them to do things to make the story more interesting, like giving a legendary monster a reason for its legendary status, giving complications in travel scenes etc. They empower them to make moves against their players that they wouldn’t normally should they feel too bad about it. Players want tension and from this tension, come more reward of overcoming it. I have moved to this way of thinking. I used to be the sort that hated bringing bad vibes to players, but actually these tools encourage and allow me to. In collecting my feedback, I found that players typically want more tension and drama in scenes, and have wanted things to feel more deadly. I have come to love the use of them, but have found a few rules to live by with them.
Guidance for Use
Meta currencies should be extra ordinarily bad, allow monsters to break rules
They should only be accrued from player misfortune or from accepting consequences as a part of allowing something else to progress
They can be embedded in legendary foes
Typically they do not overwrite player choices, they just employ extra danger
They don’t forbid regular story action and consequences from flowing from player in/action.
Rift Walker Implementation
I have tried a few in the campaigns I have done fro Rift Walker. In the Rift Plane Alpha Campaign, players tracked corruptions points that meant they could succeed on rolls for a price, the price usually meaning that if they accumulated enough, they would roll for mutations and corruption. It showed the darkening of a soul. I would also use it to say that that I could remove corruption from a character in return for my monster doing something wicked. This was good as it gave people a Blades in the Dark style “devil’s bargain”, to think through. It was usually a choice too, unless they went for seriously corrupted gear. It meant that one character did get totally corrupted and sent too the work of darkness.
In my Luminvale campaign, I have now started using Doom Points that are consequences of player failure in clutch rolls. They are also a meta currency that comes with legendary creatures. They allow for auto hits, extra attacks, bending the luck of the creatures, and environmental effects. I have only briefly used them and so far mean great engagement for my players, so looking forward to testing them more!
