Story Points

Story Points let a PC start without any backstory - instead you get 5 Story Points, and spend them to:

  • know an obscure fact
  • know a language/ culture
  • introduce an ally to help with the current mission
  • et c.

By the time players spend them all, they should have a chonky backstory which was always relevant to the current mission, so no info-dumping required.

  • If all your points were spent introducing cousins and siblings, we have established the character has a big family.
  • If all your points were spent knowing languages, and knowing highly obscure knowledge, we have established the character as a very clever, and well-travelled person.

Good features

  • Speeds up game (no lore dump!).
  • Players are less pissed about their characters dying early on session 2 they haven’t invested the work of writing an essay on their origin story.
  • It’s probably the most popular part of the game whenever I receive feedback from someone reading (not playing) the game.

Bad features

Nobody spends Story Points

It doesn’t replenish, so players hoard the points, refusing to spend them.

So far, I’ve tried:

  • granting 1 new Story Point over a long Downtime period.
  • granting XP in return for spending Story Points
  • adding a one-page rules summary to the table, including notes on what you can spend Story Points on.
  • demanding all new characters come from the pool of allies created through Story Points, meaning that:
    • it’s better to have more allies, so new people have a wider pool of characters to select from, and
    • new PCs are never entirely new - they’re known to the party.

…nothing works. Everyone likes it in theory, nobody uses it in practice.

The only idea so far is massively raising XP rewards for spending Story Points.

Is there another rule, or a better way to present this system, which would encourage actual use?

  • reentryEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    Is there a reason you are putting limits on defining facts like this? Most games I play have flexible GMs, and I define facts (both beneficial and detrimental) on the fly for my characters. Of course, making sure things aren’t broken/stupid are up to you as the GM - ie: a player couldn’t declare themselves as a king (depending on setting/tone), for example, but a prince or exiled royalty would be more likely.

    If you do want to use points and/or want to maintain a balance, I would recommend the story point system in SWFFG - where a player can spend a lightside point to define a beneficial fact, which turns into a darkside point the GM can use to define a detremental fact later. That way, players get their points back, and the story gets more interesting overall.

    • GhastOPEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      Is there a reason you are putting limits on defining facts like this?

      Yea, the system’s meant to do all sorts -

      • provide a limited deus ex machina
      • encourage making backstories (once there’s a lever, players will pull it)
      • pre-emptively gather new characters to replace dead PCs, without shoehorning a randomer [ Hail strangers! I notice your party has no mage… ]
      • provide a limited system to gather ‘henchmen’ for dangerous missions.
      • provide a system which prompts backgrounds being ‘fair’ (this character’s rich, the other knows many languages, et c.)
      • slot backstory into the world, rather than asking players to do homework for a backstory

      It’s not so much a Storytelling system, as an anti-storytelling system, designed to complete the job of a backstory systematically, so the rest of the game continues procedurally.