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Monday, March 28, 2011

Success Points and Drama Points

I'd been asked by Thomas if I had a different name for SPs used to determine how a Drama works out vs. SPs that characters "carry around with them." After some thought here's what I think:

Drama Points
I think that points you rack up on 3-roll (or whatever) Dramas are called DRAMA POINTS (which seems pretty clear) and so you need to get 35 DRAMA POINTS to succeed in hacking the main-frame or whatever. Points that you can use to alter your amount of Success are called, as they are now, Success Points.

Success Points
Right now our best thinking is this:

  1. Success Points (SPs) are gained one of several ways--primarily you will buy a Trait (usually an AP Trait) that gives you an SP "pool" (a number of points) that refreshes at some stated point (each game session, each combat, etc.). This takes care of the "how many SPs does an NPC have?" question. More APs spent on a trait results in a bigger pool.
  2. You can get SPs for playing a Trait. Especially if you do so in a way that's disadvantageous. Our experience with that is hit and miss but a lot of people seem to think it's a good idea so we're thinking about it. We've done it and have had some success--but it's not a primary source for now.
  3. You can find them as treasure. We find SPs as treasure works for certain kinds of (weird) games. In our have-not game SPs are represented by spinning glowing 'coins' and you can find them. Some bad-guys "drop" them when you kill them. You absorb them by touch and can then burn them (spend them).
Kinds of SPs
We are thinking about how SPs work. There are probably several different kinds. I was going to go with the D&D metals-taxonomy (Copper, Silver, Gold, Platinum) but, since several of us work for banks, I am thinking about the Credit Card taxonomy instead.

STANDARD SPS: As they work now. There may be a limit as to how many you can spend at once on any one roll and they likely have specific uses (like only to improve your block or lower the damage effect vs. SPs that can increase what you hit by or improve the damage Mod effect on a target). There might be Standard SPs that only apply to science rolls or whatever.

GOLD SPS: These would allow you to spend them even if you miss the roll thus increasing your roll. They might be a lot less restrictive as to what you can spend them on--and GOLD SPs usually have no limit on how many you can spend.

PLATINUM SPS: Burning one of these can do things like "ignore a wound effect" or "reverse a death result." They might also "auto-make" a roll in some cases. Stuff like that. They would be rare and valuable.

-Marco

1 comment:

  1. Its funny, but I'd associate these exactly the other way (though I understand why you do it the way you do)because of experience with other game systems (such as Unisystem) that use "Drama Points" for the metagame usage (and because the yield in dramas indicates how close to success you are).

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