Meta-currencies in roleplaying games (and why I don't like them)

There has been a trend in rpg design the last couple of years to add empowering player currencies to the game mechanics of roleplaying games. I use the term "meta-currencies" to describe a quantity that is only under the player's control that can be spent at a time of their choosing to gain a mechanical benefit in the game.

I assume the reason for its inclusion is an ambition to hand over more control to the players to give the PCs more of a heroic shine. I also suspect that ideas from board-games have crept into the rpg-design zeitgeist. The Venn-diagram between board- and role-players overlap a lot.

The most well-known example of a meta-currency is the Inspiration mechanic from our juggernaut Dungeons & Dragons 5ed. The GM can reward a player with inspiration, giving them an ace up their sleave, to use on any check that they choose. Using their inspiration gives them advantage on that check. This mechanic didn't exist in any previous edition of the game, not even the 4th edition, the gamiest of them all.

You can even buy a fancy inspiration coin to have beside your character sheet, coveted by your fellow players.

Last year's kickstarter megahit ShadowDark, has something similar called Luck tokens. The difference from dnd here is that players can stockpile more than one luck token and they can also give them away to other players.

Luck rubs off on others in ShadowDark.

Daggerheart is still only in playtest form, but already it seems to lean heavily into meta-currencies using tokens as a kind of tug-of-war between the players and the GM, the former adding tokens to a tracker to take actions and the latter spending the same tokens to activate monsters.

This seems to be a handy card to use when playtesting Daggerheart.

Why do I not like these new cool mechanics? I mean, as a player, finally I can get something tangible for my acting talent, when I lean into my character flaws or when I reach a story milestone. Something more than just a nod of approvement from my GM and the other players. Now I have some leverage over my destiny - I can use my well-earned token when I as a player feel that it really matters.

Well, my reason for not liking it has something to do with what I experience at the table. First some background: 

I started playing roleplaying games in the 80s when I was ten or eleven. Nobody taught us how to do it - someone just bought a roleplaying game and then we tried to understand how it worked.

This...was....us.

I can still remember the appeal, being able to play pretend but with actual rules. It almost started a craze in the small town where I grew up. We played rpgs all the time. During weekends, before and after school. But for us it was always theatre of the mind in focus. That was the draw, that was the drug. We didn't know there where people playing with grids or painted miniatures. This was pre-internet. Our small town was truly a bubble.

Over the years we experimented with techniques to enhance our experience further. We tried taking away the dice from the players so that they could focus solely on describing and acting without the immersion-breaking need to find the correct die among the crisps and cookies. We also at some point took away the character sheets from the players - the rational was that the numbers and stats on the paper was to "gamey" and would distract the players from their image in their mind. We were also quite strict about staying in character during sessions. A poorely timed or anachronistic joke was very much frowned upon. Most of these experiments reverted back to a more classic style around the table in the end, mostly because the mental load of the GM became so much that it was deemed not worth it. Still the somewhat lofty goal always remained: maximum immersion, minimum distraction.

A couple of years later we were in our teens and went to a larger school in a larger town. This was the first time that we came into contact with other role-players and other roleplaying games. I remember that I was blown away by the cornucopia of games that I had never heard of, and it was a period of exploration and trying new systems, styles and genres. 

It was fun to try new games, but I eventually learned which game systems helped immersion and which took you out of it, and for me as a player - staying in the theatre of mind as much as possible was the experience I wanted to have. So goodbye Rolemaster and your flipping between tables trying to find the right one. Goodbye Shadowrun and your convoluted dice pool system that only seemed to kill the action.

The Broadsword attack table from Rolemaster. There is one of these pages for each weapon. Yes, I know...but imagine the nuances it brings.

So, here I am. Many years and many games has passed, and I find that although I am still enthusiastic about new games coming out, I have become a little wary of the apparent popularity of meta-currencies in role-playing games. I mean, clearly, moving tokens around on the table distracts from what we are supposed to focus on - the scene we paint in our minds. The same argument could of course apply to other gimmicks, such as cards (looking at you Dragonbane) and, dare I say it, miniatures (bracing for impact).