Doing Back-Flips for Drama Dice

Just an anecdote I was reminded of the other day... I don't think I've told it on this blog before. 

Many years ago, I played in this 7th Sea campaign where one of the players had clearly figured out that every time he described his action, if he said he did a back-flip as part of it, the GM would give him a Drama Die.

Drama Dice in 7th Sea are a resource you can spend to boost the effects of later rolls, or to trigger special powers like the magic his character used.

So, of course, he thereafter did a back-flip in every single turn of every single fight. I'm not exaggerating in the slightest. In fact, I remember one fight scene where with his two actions of the first Round of combat he did two back flips, and got 2 Drama Dice. Then in the second Round, he did two more back flips, and the GM gave him a Drama Die on the third action of the fight, but not on the fourth action, and the player actually had the nerve to complain. "I don't understand why I didn't get a reward for that? I thought I did something really cool?" To which the GM said "You know what, you're right. Here, have a Drama Die."

That's the moment it went from cool, to frustrating for the rest of the party. Nobody had complained up until then, because it didn't really hurt us for him to be swimming in Drama Dice. Objectively, it helped the group, and let us take on bigger challenges. And his character had a version of Sorcery that required him to spend at least one drama die every fight scene to use his powers at all, so everyone was pretty okay with him being able to consistently use his magic and not be hosed for a risky character creation decision. We could have done back-flips as well, but it was sort of his signature move, so we didn't want to steal his spotlight. 

Part of the problem was, of course, that in the 1st Edition of 7th Sea, at the end of each session, any unspent Drama Dice turn into bonus XP. The GM liked to cap each session with a climactic fight scene, so this player would always have 1 extra XP at the end of the night. The backflipper was very slowly he was pulling out ahead of the rest of the PCs. That edition of 7th Sea had an uneven character creation process, so the PCs weren't particularly balanced. My character was pretty solid right out of the gate, maybe a little too good, honestly, so it took a while before the envy monster started to get under my skin. And everyone was a friends, so, y'know, you don't want to rock the boat,  or make a big stink about something the GM's probably not even consciously doing.

You've got one player who's being constantly rewarded by the GM, punching above his weight in action scenes because of it, and also slowly getting better than everyone else. It's not a recipe for a happy, healthy game in the long term. One of the other players was a coworker of mine, and we ended up with an inside joke about difficult tasks on the job. "This one's gonna be a real chore, so you probably wanna do a back-flip before you start on it!" That little giggle definitely helped.

Bennies, Drama Dice, Fate Points, and Gumshoe

Some RPGs (7th Sea, Savage Worlds, FATE, PDQ, etc) include some small budget of tokens you can spend for the rolls that really matter. Bennies, Drama Dice, Fate Points, Aspects, etc. They are often represented by poker chips, glass beads, or unusually-colored dice. You usually get 3 or 4 of these things at the start of each session, and opportunities to earn a couple more as you play.

In their simplest form, these give a bonus on your roll, or maybe a reroll. The point of this is so that you're not screwed when the dice misbehave at a critical moment. My life depends on this roll? I'd better spend a Bennie.  The bad guy's getting away? I'd better spend a Bennie.  The plot stalls out if I don't get this NPC to confess? I'd better spend a Bennie.

In many of these systems, you can also spend your Bennies to gain narrative control. Each point spent lets you add a detail to the setting, improvising some fact or development that is to your advantage in a way that is more flavorful (and flexible) than just another +X to a die roll. It's all about empowering the players. If you had enough Bennies, you could totally take over the game and leave the GM in the dust.

The GUMSHOE system, in a nutshell, is a game where your entire character sheet is nothing but Bennies. It's like starting every session with about 80 Bennies per player, and I find that to be awesome.

It was probably Fate

Played in a great session at the Fate Steampunk  campaign yesterday.  My character came very close to dying, repeatedly. Surprisingly, I took hardly any damage, just a single "clipped" result, but to get by with so little injury took activating all six of my aspects, spending all three of my fate points, and getting three different assists from other players (using the optional rule where they can spent two fate points to give me a +1 bonus).  I boarded two enemy vessels, one in the traditional "boarding party melee" fashion, the other more sneakily to plant a bomb. Trying to sneak back off the enemy battleship, I was accosted by guards, and had some bad luck trying to escape. I barely got off the ship before it blew up, and was left adrift on the luminiferous aether. Luckily, one of my fellow PCs was able to fly over and save me. Had it not been for the assistance of my team-mates, I would have gone down in a blaze of glory. Instead, I waded through the carnage virtually unscathed, as though I were protected from on high.

Of particular personal pride was that I used my "Phlogiston of the Sierra Madre" Aspect and my Fireman (+1), Mining(+1), and Midshipman(+0) skills to destroy the enemy ship. These were some of the wackier elements of my character, the sorts of things you take that give flavor and a sense of history. At the same time they make you worry that perhaps your wasting your points because they're rarely going to come up, and they're really outside the purview of the what your character was built to do.  Yesterday, however, they were absolutely vital to me having the tools and training to get into weird places on board the enemy vessel, and deploy the dynamite.

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This seems as good a time as any to discuss the probabilities behind the mechanics of Fudge (which is the basis of Fate, and several Fate-derived games, as well as being the basis of F#). All three systems use Fudge dice (though, you can also play Fate or Fudge using two d6 instead, and just subtracting one from the other). The dice rolls end up having quite a pronounced bell curve, with around 20% of all rolls netting a +0 result, and the odds dropping off pretty fast as you approach the outer ends of the curves. Here's a graph comparing the three die mechanics I've played with for Fudge-based games.

Nothing terribly surprising in that chart. Four Fudge Dice provide more variance and a gentler curve than 3 Fudge Dice. The steeper curves emphasize your Skills, the gentler curves emphasize the random element. So F#, which (ironically?) abstracts and downplays skills, actually makes skill level matter more definitively than it does in vanilla Fudge, simply by using one less die.

You can compare these odds to the d20 system by extending the chart out to about +/- 10 and just drawing a horizontal line at the 5% level. Fudge characters have very narrow results windows that are very skill-dependent, unlike d20's haphazard and wide-ranging variations.

One more note: Your odds of rolling a -3 or -4 on 4dF are about 6%, but we always seem to get them more often than that at the table top. :)  I actually rolled -3 on three consecutive rolls last session!

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The real point in making these curves was so that I could figure out when to use Aspects in Fate. In Fate 2.0, an Aspect can be invoked for either of two major dice-related effects. You can turn 1 Fudge die to it's "+" side, from a blank side or a "-" side. Alternately, you can invoke the Aspect to reroll all four dice.  At the tabletop yesterday, I had a hard time deciding which to use when my dice came up "+---". Flipping a die to it's best side was a guaranteed boost of two ranks, but since that would only generate a +0 result, it felt like maybe the odds favored rerolling instead. Looking at the 4dF bell curve, it becomes obvious that the reroll option is okay at -2, but really shines at -3 and -4.

• If your roll is +4 or +3, obviously you don't want to (and really can't) use an Aspect at all. Be happy with your good luck, and don't get greedy.
• If your roll is +1 or +2, you may consider using an Aspect to turn a "-" into a "+". Doing so would get you a lovely roll that's likely to be a success even if your skills are only fair or average. Personally, though, I'd only do that if this were a critical roll, with a life on the line. Otherwise, I'd hold on to my Aspects to save my bacon further down the road. You definitely don't want to reroll, as that has more than an 80% chance of being a wasted effort, and is very likely to backfire.
• If your roll is -1 to +0, then it's definitely time to swap a "-" into a "+". Fudge-based systems tend to have a very unforgiving results ladder. The step from "nearly impossible" to "stupidly easy" is just about two or three points away. The sweet spot from the GM's point of view is difficulties just 1 above the PCs skills, as that gives them a less than 50% chance of success on rolling alone, but is still easily within the reach of a single Aspect of Fate Point to correct. If you're playing with a GM who's challenging but fair, there's going to be a lot of cases where the difficulty is 1 above your skill, so boosting your roll from +0 to +2 is frequently going to pay off. (At least when I'm GMing, my goal is for the players to win, but only after a hard-fought battle.) On a roll like this, never use an Aspect for a reroll - rerolls have a less than 40% chance of improving your position, and are just as likely to make things worse.
• If your roll is -2, you'll want to reroll if your action is offensive (an attack roll, or a skill check that will advance the plot but not ruin you if it's failed).  If your current result is -2 on 4dF, the reroll has an 80% chance of improving my situation, and only a 6.17% chance of making things worse. If you reroll an attack, you can afford to be risky, as it's not usually the end of the world if the reroll fails. Your only real downside is that you've spent a resource (the Aspect) and wasted a turn. There's big benefits to be gained if your attack roll rockets up from -2 to +4, as not only does your chance of hitting go up, but the damage you do on a successful hit goes up as well. On an attack, a high roll always means more impact.
  However, if your roll is something defensive, you're actually better off flipping a die instead of rerolling all of them. Turning the die is a guaranteed +2 boost, which means it will always reduce the type of damage you suffer by category. Getting a bad reroll means not just depleting a resource, it usually means taking even more damage. A defensive reroll when you're sitting at -2 has only a 40% chance of saving you more damage then the single die flip would, and equal odds of being less effective. On a defense, a high roll is often no more effective than a medium roll, as either cancels all the damage - it's more important to assure you don't have the crummy below average roll that would amplify your injuries.
• At -3 and -4, reroll, reroll, reroll. It doesn't matter if your roll is offensive or defensive in nature, you've got a better than 90% chance of improving your situation, and your average improvement is nearly double what you'd get if you just flipped a single die.

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And now a brief rant about a house-rule that's been used at the game I'm playing in. This house rule, which apparently originates in Spirit of the Century (and I've been told appears in Starblazer Adventures, Dresden Files, and other Fate-based games), goes like this: "Spending a Fate chip gives +2 on a roll instead of +1." Man, I think that rule is awful. I don't think I would never use it in a game I was running.

Aspects are cool character-specific things you can invoke to boost your rolls. They help differentiate between characters, because not everyone will always be able to invoke all their aspects in every situation. Finding a good use for your "Phlogiston of the Sierra Madre" Aspect is, as previously mentioned, a spotlight moment where your character stands in stark relief from the rest of the party. So it's very cool that the Aspects have a little bit of complexity, a great deal of variance, and some serious power potential. Aspects are hugely potent, but not very reliable - they're great for saving your bacon in a tight spot or fumbled roll, but don't tend to be helpful on average medium rolls and are useless if the dice are deliver their top natural results.

Fate points, per the default Fate 2.0 rules, can be spent on any roll to get a flat +1 boost. This can help take the sting out of a failure, but it can just as easily turn a home run into a grand slam.  While a Fate point's over all power is less than an Aspect, they're simpler to invoke and much more reliable. They also don't add to character flavor or differentiation at all. An Fate point says to the world "I'm a Hero", where as an Aspect says "This is the type of Hero I am." Fate points make any hero a little more capable of doing the same things everyone else can do. They make the other stats on your sheet matter less, and make the characters less unique.

Given the steep bell curve of the system, I completely understand why Fate points are needed, as the odds can be pretty harsh if the players lack the most relevant skill. But I think the balance between the two mechanics in Fate 2.0 is very deliberate and intentional. Aspects are meant to be more powerful, but narrower in scope and less reliable. Aspects make you an expert. Fate points make you a generalist. If you had to choose between getting an extra Aspect point or getting an extra Fate point, it'd be a tough call.

Once you've applied that house-rule, however, that balance is upset. Suddenly Fate points grossly outstrip Aspects, because they're now just as potent as an Aspect 98.77% of the time and yet still much easier to utilize. This really degrades character niche and uniqueness. I'll admit that's a personal hobgoblin of mine - I really like it when characters act and play differently, and I'm known for playing some oddball characters.

I just feel that if a game like Fate or Spirit of the Century is going to have a long involved character creation process (where you chart out the PCs life and assign skills using complex little tree diagrams, and dream up these catchy flavorful Aspects), it's really counter-productive to have some mechanism overshadow all that. If Fate points give +2 to a roll, making them better than Aspects, and more beneficial than most of the skill ratings on the typical character sheet, then they really do threaten to dwarf and trivialize all other mechanics. I think that's a shame.

If someone else is playing the Mad Scientist and I'm not, I really don't want my character to be able to build steam mechs and reanimate corpses. That's their "thing", their niche, and I'd rather they get to keep that spotlight for themselves. But a double-strength Fate chip means I've got a decent shot of duplicating their efforts. It filled in the conceptual gap between our characters.

I despise that house rule, but not to such an extent that it's a game-breaker. I'm still really enjoying the campaign I'm playing in, and yesterday's session was incredible. A big chunk of that is because our GM is really good at improvising and putting us in difficult positions with no obvious solution. I enjoy having to squirm out of the situations he creates for us. But honestly, I took some ridiculous risks in that last session, and I probably should have at least been badly injured. Fate points are what saved me, and they're what allowed me to pull of three stupidly high-risk rolls that I really had no business succeeding at. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.

+1, -1, +1, -1 ≠ 0

Yet another post on the interesting dice pools of Warhammer Fantasy RPG 3rd Edition. This time, we'll be taking a look at Fortune and Misfortune dice (the white and black d6's that are half blank, and which represent situational modifiers).

GM Tip: If your players do something crazy in character, that might just work but could also backfire, the proper reward for that is to add 2 white and 1 black die. It's mostly a benefit, but has a small chance of making things fail spectacularly.

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We're going to start this one off with a graph that's not even Warhammer. Here's your standard graphs of normal rolls of ordinary 2d6, 3d6, or 1d20, the cornerstones of many a gaming system.

Now, let's say you were rolling one of these systems, and there were a lot things going on. The GM applies a bunch of modifiers, and they just happen to be an equal number of positive and negative modifiers. Maybe it's an archery roll, and you're shooting a top-quality bow (+1) with a magic arrow (+1) at a stationary target (+4), but it's kinda windy out (-2) and the sun is low on the horizon (-2) and it's beyond your first range increment (-2). What would that do to the graph of your odds to hit a particular target in one of these kinds of systems?

The answer, of course, is nothing. The graphs would look exactly the same, because the equal modifiers balanced out. Despite all these crazy details being in play, it ends up with you having the exact same odds of making the shot that you would normally if none of the modifiers were in effect. In most systems, conflicting modifiers just cancel each other out (sometimes literally, sometimes just effectively, but the result is the same). If a truly complicated situation comes up, you can end up doing a fairly large amount of math only to discover that the end result is the same, or very similar to, the unmodified default roll. I don't know about you, but I find that a little frustrating.

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In contrast to that, Warhammer fantasy role-play involves less math, and makes sure the conflicting modifiers actually have an impact. Nearly all modifiers in Warhammer are abstracted out to either one Fortune Die, or one Misfortune Die. It's easy to remember, and the GM is free to tweak it on the fly. If something crosses your mind as a possible modifier, you throw another die into the pool. As you can probably guess from the tone of my description, I'm inclined to like this. I'm a sucker for elegant flexible systems, so I'll acknowledge that bias before going on.

One area I was worried about though, was whether or not these dice would effectively just cancel each other out. I know that in general with normal numbered dice, the more you put into a pool, the steeper the bell curve gets. I was a concerned and suspicious that a big handful of fortune and misfortune dice would just make the average result happen a lot more often. Much to my surprise, the exact opposite occurs. Additional dice leads to greater variance in the dice pools.

On the right is a simple graph of a very small dice pool (3 Characteristics dice vs 1 Challenge Die). The blue line shows what happens when we add an equal number of Fortune and Misfortune dice to the pool. Odds of basic success and failure barely changed at all. Success dropped 2 points from 59% to 57%, a variation that's hardly going to be noticed. At the same time, however, the chance of scoring the important triple hammer uber-success line of most action cards nearly doubled, shooting up from 6% to over 12%.

How exactly that happened is better illustrated by the next graph, which also shows the same die pool, but breaks out the possible results a little differently. Instead of showing the odds of scoring a particular result or higher, it gives the percentages for every discrete number of successes possible. Here we can see where those extra results are coming from. The odds of getting exactly one success have actually dropped rather far, but the improved odds of scoring the bigger hits have compensated for most of it.

Extrapolating from the 2 charts, we see that with the Fortune and Misfortune dice added, you're only 25% likely to score exactly 1 success, but you're 32% likely to score 2 or more successes. Without the extra modifier dice, the numbers are essentially reversed, and you're more likely to score 1 success than 2 or more.

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Of course, as I noted in last week's articles about the Challenge Dice, looking at successes is only half the equation in Warhammer 3rd. To get the full picture, we have to look at boons. Here's a pair of graphs of a somewhat larger pool of dice. I've graphed what it looks like as an unmodified pool, as well as what it looks like with 1, 4, and 7 sets of matched Fortune and Misfortune dice. Not that I have any desire to roll a 20+ dice pool that's been loaded down with 14 situational modifier dice (on top of the realistic pool of Stance, Characteristics, Skill and Challenge dice) but since the Warhammer probability tool made it easy for me to calculate those odds, I thought I'd share them. They do make for some interesting graphs.

All the graphs I compiled for all the pool sizes shared a few traits in common. In general, more black and white dice meant more extreme results. They increased the chance of triple-hammer successes, but also the chance of failure. They increased the odds of scoring banes, but also increased the odds of scoring 2 or more boons. Reckless dice (the red d10's) are a little more complicated, and probably deserve a blog post of their own, but the charts shown here are very representative of a wide array of pools composed using Conservative Dice or Neutral Dice. In many of the pools, adding more black and white dice (at least in the quantities likely to be seen in-game) would have almost no impact on the odds of scoring at least one boon, but would pump up the more extreme boon and bane results. It would accomplish this by reducing the odds of scoring a "boon neutral" roll where the boons and banes didn't come up, or came up in equal numbers and cancelled each other out. The odds of a single boon goes down at the same rate that the odds of multiple boons goes up.

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Ultimately, the amount of variance provided by the Fortune and Misfortune dice wasn't huge. The green lines on these last too charts look impressive, but that represents 14 dice of modifiers being added to the pool. You're just not likely to use enough modifiers or dice to get to the point that the numbers really get interesting.

I find that I'm happy that the dice don't just cancel each other out, and that they lead to increased chance of the more extreme rolls occurring. At the same time, I'm a little let down that it takes so many dice to achieve these effects.

Warhammer 3rds die rolls get interesting because of the Boons and Banes, they provide the subtle nuance of the system, the extra oomph that other rules sets lack. Boons and banes are also more sensitive to large variance. There's very few cases in the default rules where getting 5 successes is functionally better than getting 3 successes (mostly just for first aid and recovery rolls). But, there's often something useful to do with a 4th or even 7th boon, and frequently some horrible side-effect waiting to be triggered by yet another bane. Looking at it from that perspective, there's plenty of reason to want boons and banes to be the most likely result of the Fortune and Misfortune dice. Sadly, they're not. Each such die has 2 Success or Failure symbols, and only 1 Boon or Bane symbol. They're twice as likely to impact success as boons. I see them as a step in the right direction (since a ton of modifiers actually does something, instead of just canceling out), but they strike me as being a little bit of a missed opportunity. If they had it all to do over again, I would encourage FFG (the publisher of Warhammer 3rd) to swap the Boons and Successes ratios on these dice. That way more modifiers on a roll would result in a more dramatically increased chance of side effects stemming from the roll.

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One last observation (and this is where I stole the GM tip from for the start of the article): Let's say a PC at your table does something really risky, but which might just pay off. Swinging across a chandelier and kicking an enemy, for example. Throwing themselves against a foe on or near a clifftop. Muckraking and name-calling during a social event. Having seen these numbers, I'd feel pretty comfortable "rewarding" such behavior with both a Fortune and a Misfortune die - the net result will be about a percentage point or two against them, but with a big impact on the odds of making the likely result more extreme either way.

If you want to genuinely reward such behavior, and encourage it in the future, then I'd consider giving 2 Fortune and 1 Misfortune die to the action. That will probably help them out a bit, but also open up a small chance of it backfiring. I think this is a lot better than the example in the rulebook where a PC dives out of a tree at a beastman. In the book, they just give him two Misfortune dice (and no Fortune) because it's tricky and dangerous, which is just going to discourage your players from taking such colorful actions again in the future.

2 Fortune and 1 Misfortune is also fun because it mirrors the effects of being drunk. The "intoxicated" condition card gives 1 Fortune and 2 Misfortune. The subtle difference of these pools shades the distinction between bravery with a side of foolishness, or foolish with a side of bravery. Plus, if a PC is ever drunk, and the player does a good job of hamming it up with outrageous actions, they'd stand to roll 3 Fortune and 3 Misfortune total, which as we've seen does a great job of making something unusual (for good or ill) come out of the roll.

Power to the Players

In my Deadlands campaign, the PCs have a lot of power.

• 3 of them started out with the Veteran O' The Weird West edge.
• We're using the fate chip rules, so Bennies have a bit more power than vanilla Savage Worlds. What's more, I hand out the bennies like drama dice were goin' out of style.
• Two of the PCs are Blessed, the arcane background with unlimited power (as long as you don't sin).
• We're using the Adventure Deck*, which really empowers the players. I'm using some house-rules on damage that favor the posse, too.
• During story time (the start of every session) they can improvise elements into the setting or back story with really no restriction.

Honestly, I have zero control over this campaign - all the power is in the Player's Hands. It's a hoot!

Of course, that'll change a bit when they catch up to Cobb. [Evil Laughter] I have plans for that session (or sessions, 'cause it might involve a cliff-hanger).

* = The Adventure Cards are a downloadable PDF (available at Drive Thru RPG for like $5 or $10) that you print off on cardstock. The cards have various one-time-use benefits. Some are bonus dice, some are plot elements, etc. Each player gets one at the start of each session. The players can trade them if they get something that doesn't fit their character, or if one player hates his card but the others like it. They go away if unused by the end of the session, so you can't horde them.

Four example cards to give you a feel for what they can do:

• Villainous Verbosity - play to make an NPC lose his next action by gloating or talking about his master plan.
• Love Interest - the player plays this card to create a romantic connection between them and the target NPC.
• Backstab - add +1d20 (!) to any single trait roll or damage roll vs any allied character, including PCs.
• Folk Hero - play after you save a group of people from dire circumstances. The community adopts you and your party as local heros, and you can always find aid there.

The cards give a lot of power to the players, but in really narrow and unpredictable ways - there's around 50 in the basic deck, IIRC. I love how they spice up the game. I put my in opaque-backed sleeves, and deal them out face-down, so the PCs can surprise me. Shakes things up nicely.

Wild-Die vs Drama Die

Please forgive my calling Last Unicorn's "drama die" a "wild die" in several posts the last couple days.

I've only played ICON Star Trek once, but I've played lots of d6 Star Wars and lots of 7th Sea.

In d6 Star Wars, the Wild Die is the one that indicates critical success on a "6" and critical failure on a "1". Last Unicorn / ICON Star Trek calls that The Drama Die. In some versions of the d6 system, this die explodes.

In 7th Sea, "drama dice" are something completely different. You get them for good roleplaying, or taking cool actions. Later you spend them to boost only the most important rolls.

Because of years of those contexts, I'm likely to continue to use Wild Die and Drama Die as I first learned them. If I say "Wild Die", know that I'm referring to a die you always get to roll that is somehow special (probably involving crits) from the other dice of the roll. If I say "Drama Die" know that it's some sort of reward die or limited resource die that will probably be used sparingly.

Origins of Hero Tokens

My previous post was about Hero Tokens, a mechanic I introduced to my Everway campaign. Hero Tokens obviously had two sources of inspiration, that being Pledges and Drama Dice.

First off, Pledges were taken from Amber. In that game, pledging to perform tasks that improve the gaming experience are rewarded with bonus character points. Examples in the Amber book include keeping a diary for your character, making trump card illustrations, maintaining the group's website with quotes and plot synopsis, etc. I often also allow pledges of providing snacks and drinks for the group, hosting the game in your spacious livingroom that totally outdoes the GM's apartment, etc. I don't consider the later to be bribes, since they enhance the enjoyment of the entire group - if, for example, you only brought snacks one of the players was allergic too, you wouldn't get the bonus. In Everway, we had Pledges grant Hero Tokens weekly instead of character points up front. As a result, pledges were fulfilled with a much higher success rate than any other game I've run.

The Hero Tokens themselves were lifted from the Drama Dice of 7th Sea. Drama Dice are special dice you get in 7th Sea when you do cool things. They mainly let you boost die rolls and gain XP. However, they have some other fun uses, like activating character traits. After a while of GMing 7th Sea, I found myself constantly broadening the definition of what a Drama Die could be used for. This gave a lot of power to the players, and has gone over really well in every game I've used something similar for. A couple of my former players (back in Albuquerque) use something similar in their campaigns now.

Making certain effects cost multiple Hero Tokens allowed Sarah and I to give them away like water during the Everway campaign. Any action done with the least bit of panache - if you made someone smile, you were probably getting a token. It also meant there was no danger in a PC starting the session with 6 or 8 Hero Tokens because we were gaming in their place, they provided food and drink, and they completed their diary from last week's session.

Hero Tokens

This is a house-rule/mechanic for use with Everway.

We allow pledges, much like in Amber. However, a pledge earn Hero Tokens, as opposed to character points. Each player starts each session with 2 Hero Tokens for every pledge they brought to tonight’s game session.

Spending Hero Tokens: At any point during the session you may spend Hero Tokens to do any of the actions on the list below.

Cost	Effect
1 or more	Improvise a small and/or logical detail into the background. The more unlikely the detail (in the GM’s opinion) the more Tokens it will cost. Examples: the keys under the welcome mat, weapons and crest of arms hanging inside a castle, a chandelier to swing from, a lone dissenter in any otherwise unified crowd, etc.
1 or 2	Causing an NPC’s Fault to manifest. This can only be done once per NPC per scene. Costs 1 for minor NPCs, 2 for major Villains. Examples: A henchman might betray his master, a cowardly or paranoid villain might flee or surrender, a prideful man would start making outrageous boasts about himself, an uncoordinated enemy might fumble and drop his weapon, etc.
3	Invert a Destiny Card that was just Drawn or Revealed. It is assumed that spending Tokens in this way sets the card to whatever orientation is best for the player who spent them. You must announce you’re doing this before the GM states whether the action that they drew a card for succeeded or failed. Example: You’re in a long battle and the GM draws “Summer Inverted: Exhaustion” for your attack. Expecting this will result in a miss or glancing blow, you spend 3 Hero Tokens to turn it into “Summer: Energy” which sounds likely to be a solid hit.
3	Gaining a significant boost in an effort that involves your own Virtue. The effect is as if your relevant Element score were 1 level higher for a single action related to your Virtue.
1 or more	Get advice from the GM when you’re stuck on how to solve a situation. The GM might say “I’ve got two bits of advice. One’s real simple and will cost 1 Token, but the really good advice will cost 3.”
2	Have a random helpful NPC arrive on the scene. If used with proper timing, this could get you an extra ally in a battle, or a friendly face in a tough situation. The GM determines which NPC shows up, but it will be someone your character knows. It might be someone you have a write-up on, someone you encountered earlier in this Realm, or we might say, “This old friend, a Spherewalker you haven’t seen in years, walks into the bar.” This effect may only be used once per session, total, by the entire group.
1	Reduce the severity of a wound as you receive it. Sucking up a wound so it doesn’t hurt as much or threaten your life so. May only be done to your own wounds, no one else’s. A minor wound is ignored for 1 Hero Token, a serious wound becomes minor for 1 Hero Token,and a lethal wound becomes a serious wound for 1 Hero Token. Must be spent at the time the wound is inflicted.

Earning more Hero Tokens:
The GMs may award more Hero Tokens as often as we see fit, and will often do so to reward good role-playing, heroic daring-do, or adding to everybody’s fun. Impress us, and you’ll reap the benefits.
Playing your character’s Fault at a critical, dramatically appropriate time may also earn you extra Hero Tokens. Using Sword of Vengeance as an example: his Fault is The Unicorn Reversed (Temptation). He won’t earn a Hero Token by giving in to temptation and having a second slice of chocolate cake. But he might earn a Hero Token by giving in to temptation and being seduced by a beautiful Villain.
We’ll also sometimes offer Hero Tokens for failure. For example, you’re walking a tightrope over a 100 foot chasm. The GM might say: “I can either flip over a card to find out if you make it, or you can choose right now to slip. If you do, you’ll be dangling by your fingertips and the other PCs will have to act fast to save you, but at the end of the scene I’ll give you two Hero Tokens.”

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow:
At the end of each night, all your Hero Tokens go away, and you start out fresh next session. So don’t be stingy with them – use the darned things, especially any bonus ones we give you for the cool things you do during a session.

Drama Dice in 7th Sea

Part One: Dice ≠ Challenge. Part Two: Decisions = Challenge. Part Three: definition of issues 1-5.

Drama Dice in 7th Sea have problem 3. Specifically, the best option was almost always to save the Drama Dice for the extra XP. As a player, it quickly became clear that it was only worth spending them on die rolls if someone's life rested on this one roll.

The GM could easily create situations that you could only solve by spending Drama Dice, and that lead to players feeling robbed of advancement points. Few things suck like blowing the big roll, and then contemplating that the three extra "ones" you rolled could have been +50% XP for the session if you'd held on to them.

The solution I implemented to this was to allow each Drama Die spent to give 1 XP that could only be used for the skill or attribute which you rolled as you spent it. That way, there was a small benefit to hoarding your drama dice (since you could spend their XP on anything that night) but you'd have no regrets when rolling a drama die on a knack that wasn't maxed out. Knacks that were maxed out rarely required drama dice to be successful.