I'm planning to use some form of hero/fate/luck points in the next game I run, but I have reservations about the standard methods.  Namely, giving them a fixed number at the start of each session/story.  Have to be careful not to give them too many to start with.  But a lot of systems seem to assume that the GM will be awarding them freely during play.  Which then gives me another thing I have to worry about during the game...

It will be a superhero game, I should mention.

One option might be to borrow from the new Star Wars game, the force point mechanic.  For those not familiar, at the start of each session, each player rolls a die to find out how many light or dark side points are added to the force pool.  During the game, players can spend a light point to add to their rolls, while the GM can spend a dark point to add to his rolls.  And the interesting bit is that whenever a point is spent, it flips to the other side, so that there is a constant number of points in the pool.  It's just the polarity that varies.  A neat system, but I'm not sure it gives me the freedom I'm looking for.

The other option I'm considering is adopted from an obscure source (Superbabes, believe it or not).  Instead of giving the players a fixed supply of hero points, instead I keep a running tally of each time they use a hero point.  The catch is that I roll a die, and if it is under their total, karma catches up with them somehow.  And their counter resets to 0.

1.  I'm currently thinking a d20 for the die of doom.

2.  I'm not sure if I should roll every time they use a hero point, or at the beginning of every session.

3.  My GM villain points; I'm thinking that when I use them, it subtracts from the players hero points.  I'm not sure whether a villain point should only subtract from one player, or from all players.

So, what do people think?  Any clarifications you need?

In reply to novi (msg # 1):

What exactly are you looking for in terms of "freedom"? Freedom to take the game in the direction you or the players want? Freedom from resource tracking?

What are the key benefits you think these points provide? Are there any other ways to obtain those benefits?

If you don't want to keep track of things during play (which I totally get) then the best thing is to put it entirely on them.

One thing I've used to great effect is the idea of Aspect, or Thematic Batteries. Each character has some number (I go with three usually) of 'Aspects' or 'Batteries.' And whenever the player chooses to invoke one of them to their detriment, they "charge" that Battery. And that then allows them to 'spend' that Charge to their benefit at some other time.

Example, your character is an underworld-y, thief-y rogue-y type. So one of your Batteries is 'Complicated past.' So then, when the group meets up with Underworld NPC #1, the player says "I actually screwed this guy over once on a deal and he swore he'd return the favor."

So then that's part of the story. And that player 'charges' that Battery. So then, later on, when they make their way to Random Mob Boss, they can spend that charge to say "I took the fall for this guy once when he was just coming up in the world."

The hard part is getting the Batteries just right. Not too broad, not too vague, flavourful and colourful. But once you have that down, and everyone understands the system, the players kep track of everything for you and they get to do a lot of things in-game that the numbers on their sheets probably don't cover.

In reply to truemane (msg # 3):

That sounds an awful lot like how House of the Blooded deals with this kind of system, only that particular system also allows other players (and the GM) to trigger your Aspects by spending their own pools of Style Points (which are gained/lost in the manner you just described). I love that system. Where did your version come from? Thematic Batteries seems like a very specific term.

In reply to Tyr Hawk (msg # 4):

I cribbed it from a little indie game called Full Light, Full Steam. Which I adore beyond all reason. That's where the term 'Thematic Batteries' came from as well.

It's not a million miles distant from how FATE handles things, too. With Invocations and Compels.

I like it because, with the right players, it allows me to transfer responsibility for this whole process to them. So each player can pretty much choose their level of involvement. It rewards players who like to figure out ways to engage with the setting, but doesn't punish players who don't. And it's pretty much cut and pastable onto any other system (I've used it in games using Pathfinder, Palladium, FATE and others).

And players love it because even the most robust system can't cover everything, and even the most forgiving system generally rewards allocating resources in some places rather than others. This allows them to inject things into the game that serve and reflect the 'between the cracks' things that crunch sometimes doesn't deal with.

The main key with hero/action points I find is that you need to engage the players "complications" to use an M&M term

The GM can't just be expected to hand out points if the group is being inconvenienced, the players need to build the momentum of the game through their flaws. A perfect character is a weak character, it's what makes them not make the optimized choice that is the best sort of character stuff

A hero/fate/luck system should encourage that

In reply to engine (msg # 2):

I guess what I mean by 'freedom' is that my experience with hero/fate points is always that I never seem to have the right amount.  Either I feel that they are too rare, and I can't afford to spend them, lest I get caught later on.  Or that I've got enough that I can spend them on every important roll for the session.  And neither option seems like a desirable option.  I want to find a system that comes in between those extremes, where players aren't afraid to use a scarce resource, but where they have enough disencentive to not overuse them.

As I've said, I get the impression that the designers of these systems expect the GM to be rather liberal in handing out points in game.  But that's another thing that I would have to worry about as GM.  It wouldn't be so bad for PbP, but in RL, where I expect to run my next game, I'm afraid I would have enough other things to worry about that I would tend to forget it.


Though what others have said on getting them to engage through their complications would be good, too.  Something that keeps them engaged and keeping track of their own 'problems', without me having to remember everything about their characters.

In reply to novi (msg # 7):

In terms of having too few (which is the side I'd want to err on) what exactly is the concern with being "caught." If one doesn't have enough for every important roll, surely that means they'll be "caught" at some point, right?

As I see it, the key to getting people to risk spending resources is to make the consequences for not having them as interesting as having them. As in, yeah, things are bad for the characters, they're at a disadvantage, very likely to lose, but it's still exciting.

I'm not sure it was mentioned here, but that's the Fate approach. Failure has to be worth spending game time on, or it shouldn't be risked. If nothing else, failure itself becomes a rich source of new Fate points, perhaps more than the players had before, so maybe they even /want/ to get "caught."

For systems like Fate or Icons, the meta-points are the currency of the game.  Players need to spend them to activate things.  Since they're spending them, they also need to be earning them.

For a game like Mutants & Masterminds where the use of HP is optional, players might hoard/hold on to them.  A common fear is that they'll then use them to ride roughshod over the plot.

Meh.

If you can't choose your players, then just set up some limitations on how they can be spent.  If a meta-point could be used for, say, five different things, then limit it to one point per thing per round.  If you had three points, you could spend them all, but you'd have to go with options A, B, C, and not A, A, A.

The bottom line is that they're there to be spent.  Plenty of games have existed for decades without the mechanic.  Some games make them integral.  Others make them optional.

If you know your players, have The Talk with them about the style you're looking for.  If you're going to be running a game here, where you most likely won't know them, hack your rules ahead of time and anticipate how the rule might be exploited and cut 'em off at the pass, pardner!

In reply to novi (msg # 7):

In reply to novi (msg # 7):

In Mutants and Masterminds, a large number of Hero Points (those that aren't spent on Rerolls) are going to be spent on mitigating the Fatigue from Extra Effort.  Many players are so accustomed to this that they forget they can Extra Effort without a Hero Point.

I think there is a mechanical middle ground to be had here.  A push/pull mechanic would be quite interesting.  Imagine if, say Group Hero points were on a sliding scale.  The PCs can spend Hero Points anytime, and gain points normally, but if they spend points when they have none, the DM gains some kind of horrible doom points, that can be used to issue consequences or complications the way that these games normally have them.  It essentially would allow PCs to pay for Hero Points with a sort of karmic credit, which, when repaid, would push the dial back towards the center.

This would also let the GM get a kind of idea of how many Hero Points his players tend to spend in a given session, although free access to hero points could push the mechanics of some games out of whack.

In reply to novi (msg # 7):

A really great compromise I've seen is with Deadlands Classic, where fate points (well, chips) are something you can convert into XP. (In fact, they're the only source of XP.) Fate chips are given out for basically everything (with different colors representing different things: a white chip might just be for good roleplaying, while a blue chip is pretty much reserved for completing epic boss battles), so players inclined to use them for modifying rolls are always able to do so. Likewise, those who always want to scrimp and save and scrounge will be rewarded for letting the dice fall where they will (and they will eventually get the XP, as no one's allowed to have more than 10 chips at a time: you get more, you have to turn some in for XP). This compromise did get weird when the game ran on for too long, as those of us who saved (read "I") found ourselves a bit too powerful in the late-game.

(I don't remember about Deadlands Classic, but in Deadlands Reloaded, spending a red chip would allow the GM to pull a chip from the bag at random, which can be used to modify enemy rolls. When the GM spent a red chip, the players didn't get to draw one.)

But it's basically an issue just with making the players happy. Some players compulsively save any limited resource they get, while some are instantly shut down by the possibility of any kind of negative backlash, and some say screw the consequences and just love to do whatever it takes to make the big bad look pathetic. No matter what you do, you can't please everyone all of the time, unless every player is basically the same, which usually means the game itself isn't fun, which is a much bigger problem.