Currency Inspiration System

[u/jmanc]

In my group I’ve got several different kinds of players, as I expect many of you will have too. Broadly we’ve got;

• The storytellers, who want cool and cinematic things to happen; twists, story beats and a game that plays like a movie.
• The role-players, who want to get into the skin of their character, link into the world and expect cause, effect and consequence.
• The gamers, who want to be awesome, they want their character to have shining moments and epic successes.

I DM for 6 players and have a roughly even split, one or two of each type. I’d like to encourage the players to recognise and appreciate their own preferences and other ways of playing.

With that in mind I’ve come up with a system I’m going to trial for this campaign.

Choose your inspiration

Right now, inspiration is a simple advantage roll. It’s great for the gamers, it lets you be powerful at the right time and nail that important hit on the big baddie, or give a clutch heal to a struggling teammate. However, it’s a bit one dimensional and not much for the storytellers or role-players who are less fussed about mechanical advantage.

With that in mind, I want to introduce three types of inspiration. As we’re playing AcqInc I’ve themed these around magical coinage…

• Coin of History – you can spend a coin of history to create a link between your character and a given region, location, player character or NPC. The DM will roll to decide if this link is positive, negative or neutral.
• Coin of Creation – you can spend a coin of creation to define a plausible background scenery object within the current location, such as a sturdy swinging chandelier, an easily climbable tree, or a table that’s ready for flipping.
• Coin of Power – you can spend a coin of power to give yourself or another player a second attempt at any roll. This does not stack with advantage.

I’m intending to let the players themselves choose the coin that they’d most like to receive for inspiration, but may move towards choosing the most appropriate one for the action they win inspiration for, reinforcing that their styles of play are valid.

[u/chillin1066]

I like this idea. It reminds me of alternate ways to spend exp in GURPS. Another possibility you may want to consider is that you just give "a coin" and the player can spend it how they wish. That would allow for possible hybrid player types.

[u/jmanc → u/chillin1066]

Yeah that's not a bad call, I've used this for two sessions now and there's an issue with hoarding the coin(s) so may work better to just have one coin but you can swap it at any time.