I'm thinking about including some kind of realism reward in my game. If a player decides to inject some basic reality (running out of ammo, tripping, "whiffing", etc.) then they are awarded a benny for doing so. These would be available at any time but would maybe be given more liberally when used at times that are less convenient for the players, e.g. running out of ammo mid gunfight would be worth a benny while running out after might not be worth anything.

My thinking:
I want things to be boiled down and condensed as much as possible, but I think that in doing so I'm going to make things too fantastic, too superhero movie-ish. This would give back some of the details that might have been lost and make them interesting and could even become a part of a group or player strategy (e.g. “let's pile on the reality in this fight so we are loaded up when we get to the boss”).

My hesitation:
Is including a Realism mechanic going to create dissonance itself? The fact that the game is so fantastic that it needs to be grounded with a Reality mechanic may just be pointing out the unrealistic nature of the game and encouraging players to become distracted. This could be solvable with something as easy as calling it something else (e.g. Difficulty points, Complication points, Color points).

Any thoughts?

Or...

Make a prerequisite before you play that the players should play their roles realistically. The GM will create realistic stories and the players will act realistically in them.

e.g. “let's pile on the reality in this fight so we are loaded up when we get to the boss”).

I know realism is in the title, but as a different line of thought, maybe MJ has a narr agenda.

"This would give back some of the details that might have been lost and make them interesting" 

could even become a part of a group or player strategy (e.g. “let's pile on the reality in this fight so we are loaded up when we get to the boss”).

I have that problem with my group of players, they keep milking the system, searching for rules to bend and holes in the mechanic. It's just the way they like to play, but I found they also love challenges and respect the dice more than they respect me :) if your players go like that, well, you can give the benny whenever they apply reality to add tension, once to only one player every escene. And even then, they have to roll for it. The difficulty could be higher when their aren't risking anything. You can also take bennys from players when they fail if they still abuse this mechanic too much.

What you are doing is pretty much a detail incentive mechanic, but one that works in a direction I had not normally considered; most detail mechanics work by having players take advantage of previously background features of the situation, in order to gain a bonus to their rolls. So they find out that the guard is not a nameless mook, but has a family, who they blackmail him with! Or they remember a relevant detail from before and put that in, or they even describe in detail the form of their character's martial art.

All of these focus on the awesome details, the things that can help you, that can be utilised for advantage. In contrast, your prospective system encourages people to think up details that will wreck their character, which I find interesting.

The real realism issue (or at least "internal logic issue") with such points is where the bonus comes from when it reappears. Is it an extra element of circumstance that pops into existence? If so you just recreated the fate system's aspects, but with the assumption that players can pile on as many aspects as they want, in order to boost the complexity of the world. The difference in the fate system is that the players are expected to provide a constant forwards pressure, with the GM creating the ups and downs via offering fate points for compels (I can't recall if he also offers fate points for minuses, but that would be a good addition too). In this version players would get more influence over the pacing, because they can trigger the minuses themselves, which is probably no bad thing, although the conflicting abilities to shift pace could be interesting. Now in such a situation there is the problem of "Oh no I failed my lottery tickets 17 times, at least my enemy got hit by a meteor!", where an unimportant problem is milked for bonuses for what they are really after. Perhaps an alternative is where the player offers up aspects for their equipment and various other things, showing the aspects they are interested in dealing with, and other players and the GM pay them to take an appropriate fall when they want it. So a gun might run out during shooting practice, or more likely during a raid that must succeed, but is accompanied by other unexpected good fortune.

JoyWriter wrote:
The real realism issue (or at least "internal logic issue") with such points is where the bonus comes from when it reappears. Is it an extra element of circumstance that pops into existence?

Wha? It's supposed to bring in realistic elements in the short term, isn't it? What's all this examination of what happens to the benny latter? Your not supposed to draw a story connection between it and the latter benny use. Crikey, if you start drawing connections between all bits of mechanics in any game, all realism goes to hell - so you don't do it? I mean...bennies....it's not exactly a 'the rules are the physics of the universe' kind of game to begin with, eh?

jp_miller wrote:
You see, I think this is your problem. You are assuming the players are there to milk the system, so that they can 'win' all the time, rather than playing the game to simulate realistic stories.

jp_miller wrote:
If realism is important than somehow encourage the players to have their characters lose as well as win - and enjoy doing both.

What's so good about realism anyway?

Callan wrote:
Wha? It's supposed to bring in realistic elements in the short term, isn't it? What's all this examination of what happens to the benny latter? Your not supposed to draw a story connection between it and the latter benny use. Crikey, if you start drawing connections between all bits of mechanics in any game, all realism goes to hell - so you don't do it? I mean...bennies....it's not exactly a 'the rules are the physics of the universe' kind of game to begin with, eh?

Something murmers to me to have a second bonus or something, for players who explain (ie, invent) a connection themselves.

Generally what's important is not so much that the rules make sense causally, but that the players themselves try and mesh together/invent some way in which everything comes together. It's easy to start forgetting that in the heat of gamist battle, but not so easy to forget when bonuses/your winning edge comes from remembering to fit it all together.

The game I'm working on is a competitive game (I probably should have mentioned that), and winning is the goal.

I actually like the idea of extra elements of circumstance popping up, providing they do not contradict anything previously invented. If a player says "I'm in a bank, so I hit the emergency signals under the cashiers desk" by spending a fate point or whatever, then they have added an extra advantage by looking at the situation another way, and investing in the imaginary world you have created. That's a pretty good thing in my book.

It just means that "bennies" must be spent adding helpful details to the world, and are bought by adding detrimental details to the world. They are a sort of luck equilibrium! In terms of internal causality, it would be required that these details could have been unnoticed in the background as part of "all the other things happening in the world". This mechanic would be used to pull details from the background into the foreground, while also shifting them from undefined to defined. Like in those portraits where the background is misty, except for those things that the subject is interacting with.

Now is this realistic? Well that word covers so many positions it's not true! For example, realism can mean respecting the GM's world by restricting events to what could happen there in it's pre-established rules, or trying to model scientifically proved or at least consensus reality within game by dice rolls or adjudications, except when the world causes deviations. It can also be about building up the levels of detail and verisimilitude, in terms of the number of moving parts in the story, while still sticking to the GM's concept of the world or the players concept of their character (basically stuff players have primary responsibility for in more troupe based or participative games).

I'd say that this kind of mechanic fits to the latter, providing players with primary responsibility can veto uses by giving alternative details, keeping the detail level increasing.

I just listened to that podcast you linked to, so as another way to explain it, imagine that you are giving each player a "thematic battery" which is tied to your world. Not exactly the same obviously, but it means that exploration of world is being emphasised over exploration of character, although presumably you have other mechanics heading in that direction?

M.J.,
Re: your initial proposal:
Does a "benny" help me win more than a narrated rifle-jam prevents my winning?  If so, you can bet I'd be narrating colorful flubs until the GM or another player forced me to shut up.

In a competitive game, my inclination would be to have "earn a benny for colorful narration" be one of many strategic options -- more available and effective in some situations than others, and something players could plan for and incorporate into an overall gameplan.

Example brainstorm:
You progress faster toward winning if you don't impede yourself with rifle jams etc.  However, whoever has the most bennies at any moment can knock the winningest player back a significant amount.  So, when you have, say, the second-most bennies, and you have a chance to get the most, or a chance to move into second place, which do you go for?  Early in the game, you might want to wield the "most bennies" clout, and late in the game, you might want to be #2, assuming #1 will get knocked back soon, leaving you in position to win.  (I think there's some video racing game that works like this.)

Separately, are you trying to encourage contribution of just any detail?  Or only contributions of a certain aesthetic (presumably "non-superhero")?  The rules on what qualifies you for a "benny" ought to be clear on that.

David wrote:
Does a "benny" help me win more than a narrated rifle-jam prevents my winning?  If so, you can bet I'd be narrating colorful flubs until the GM or another player forced me to shut up.

David wrote:
In a competitive game, my inclination would be to have "earn a benny for colorful narration" be one of many strategic options -- more available and effective in some situations than others, and something players could plan for and incorporate into an overall gameplan.

David wrote: However, whoever has the most bennies at any moment can knock the winningest player back a significant amount.

David wrote:
Separately, are you trying to encourage contribution of just any detail?  Or only contributions of a certain aesthetic (presumably "non-superhero")?  The rules on what qualifies you for a "benny" ought to be clear on that.

mjbauer wrote:
Maybe you aren't guaranteed a benny for adding realism, instead maybe your chance of getting a benny increases depending on how intrusive or difficult the realism is.

mjbauer wrote: For example: If you run out of ammo during a gunfight with the henchmen you roll a d6 and if you get a 5 or 6 you get a benny. If your gun jams before you take the final shot on a boss you roll a d6 and get a benny for the result of anything but 1.

That's obviously just a quick example (not well thought out yet), but the idea of gambling for future benefits seems interesting and potentially really fun. 

mjbauer wrote:
A gunfight is fast and adrenaline filled, rolling 3 times, adding, comparing, checking stats and flipping through charts is not.

Well one solution to overuse of bennies is to limit the amount you can "save up" at a time and then keep strong track of proximity. By that I mean that flubbing in events strongly connected to what you are saving up for is risky, and so people can't just get wrecked metaphorically just before the door to their main objective, and have none of their problem pass through. Now obviously doing that a little bit should be encouraged, it's part of why incentivising detail works, but how to stop absurdity?

To make such a system work failures cannot just be blank time, they must lead to something. Another idea is that repeated failures due to adding details make the failure penalty worse, or at least more persistent, as a kind of alternative death spiral, so people don't just kick their own asses for luck! But how to give that internal cause? Well firstly if you mix "appropriate" danger into the failures and require escalation in severity of the problem created for each extra fate point gained in a scene. I almost feel that this and a saving limit is too much restriction, because of how the diminishing returns would limit overuse, especially as everyone gets bored of loosing eventually. Also it could be so funny to bury an enemy in coincidence and circumstance, especially as they would have to get increasingly creative to use it! I suppose the enemy is spam and not creative ad-hoc tactics.

On the other hand, I'm not sure how realistic escalating dangers would feel; the requirement to fit it into the setting might make it fine, or it might get a bit daft. There's also the puzzle of deciding what constitutes an escalation in a consistent way.

David, that mechanism you mentioned reminds me of the power-ups like blue shells in mario kart, although the latest game shows what can happen if you push that mechanism too far; the "help you catch up" power is so good in close games you actually prefer being last because of how you can rocket to a win! In D&D 3.5, there is another example of that in the "xp catch-up" mechanism when you intentionally de-level via crafting, so as to grab xp more efficiently.