Ever since I’ve been running D&D I’ve been opposed to using experience to level up characters.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d rather they level when I tell them to level.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t hand out experience, but I do hand out a level after roughly three sessions (don’t ask how crafting works, nobody has ever wanted to do it in one of my games and I’m not going to bother figuring it out till someone wants it).<\/p>\n
But it’s important to give your players some sort of reward for their actions.\u00c2\u00a0 Especially in a greedy game like Dungeons and Dragons.\u00c2\u00a0 I blatantly ripped off Fate Chips from Deadlands to use as a D&D reward.\u00c2\u00a0 They’ve been very popular, or so my players tell me.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I think I botched my implementation of chips in the first game I ran.\u00c2\u00a0 Fate chips had clearly defined mechanics.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t know what they were anymore, but at the time they did things like heal 10 hp, confirm a crit, emulate a feat for a turn, etc.\u00c2\u00a0 Nothing game breaking, but fun little effects.\u00c2\u00a0 They were given out for doing a character journal or amusing me in game.\u00c2\u00a0 Usually players could earn a couple chips per session, though I held back if the player was hoarding.<\/p>\n
It worked, but didn’t help the game in the way I wanted it to.\u00c2\u00a0 What I’ve come up with since is that fate chips are better left undefined.\u00c2\u00a0 I give the players some examples of what chips can do, but refrain from telling them straight up what powers it has.\u00c2\u00a0 Instead I tell them that the chips let them fudge the dice or story in favor of their character.\u00c2\u00a0 GMs have been fudging things to make the story better for years, why shouldn’t the players get in on it?<\/p>\n
The idea is that characters are supposed to be good at certain things.\u00c2\u00a0 There are certain goals they should accomplish.\u00c2\u00a0 Fate chips let players bring the character they envision into the game even when the dice say otherwise.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, they even bring the character into the game when the player says otherwise.\u00c2\u00a0 For instance, we had a halfling rogue, who may or may not have been a prince, trying to con a merchant.\u00c2\u00a0 The character was a good talker, but the player was slipping over his tongue that night.\u00c2\u00a0 The player panicked and dug his hole deeper.\u00c2\u00a0 For the low, low price of one fate chip, I gave the player a suggestion for how to turn the conversation around and not botch the con job.\u00c2\u00a0 He still had to roleplay the rest of the conversation, all I did was give him an idea his character should have had.<\/p>\n
Characters in stories have it easy.\u00c2\u00a0 Sherlocke Holmes will always find exactly the clues he needs.\u00c2\u00a0 Tyrion Lannister will always have a scathing retort.\u00c2\u00a0 Not just because George R.R. Martin spent hours crafting the retort, he also spent hours crafting the line that set up Tyrion’s witticism.\u00c2\u00a0 Player Characters do not have that benefit.\u00c2\u00a0 Even in a story heavy game, the characters are still part of a game, which may limit what they can achieve and how they show themselves.\u00c2\u00a0 As a GM who favors story, I like to be able to throw my players a little deus ex machina without it feeling like I’m working in their favor.\u00c2\u00a0 This lets them play the character they want to play instead of the bumbling oaf who would be competent if he’d just stop rolling 1s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ever since I’ve been running D&D I’ve been opposed to using experience to level up characters.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d rather they level when I tell them to level.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t hand out experience, but I do hand out a level after roughly three sessions (don’t ask how crafting works, nobody has ever wanted to do it in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[24,37],"class_list":["post-73","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gm","category-homebrew","tag-fate-chips","tag-rewards"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gm.sagotsky.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gm.sagotsky.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gm.sagotsky.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gm.sagotsky.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gm.sagotsky.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=73"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/gm.sagotsky.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gm.sagotsky.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=73"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gm.sagotsky.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=73"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gm.sagotsky.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=73"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}