Awesome Points as a countdown
One thing I love about Old School Hack is the Awesome Points economy. It turns all the players into fans of the whole party: Each player can give Awesome Points to other players when they describe something awesome; they can spend their Awesome Points to do something awesome; and they can only level up when everyone has spent a certain number of Awesome Points. It gives everyone the incentive to play awesome, but it’s also important to notice when other people are being awesome.
I never thought of using Awesome Points in DW until I saw this thread on BFA:
http://apocalypse-world.com/forums/index.php?topic=6163
I wasn’t quite satisfied with the idea of offering Awesome Points in place of XP, as suggested by some of the comments there. In my view, the reward for spending Awesome Points is part of what makes the mechanic work: Otherwise, people will have to weigh the tradeoffs between a temporary benefit and advancement, which will encourage miserliness.
Here’s my idea: Add a countdown to every character sheet, maybe six boxes. Players fill in a box whenever they spend an Awesome Point. Add this question to End of Session: “Were we totally awesome?” The answer is yes only if every player has all their boxes filled in.
Check out OSH here:
#awesome_points #countdown
Oops! I meant to ask: How many boxes would you make the Awesome Points countdown? OSH uses twelve, but that’s the whole reward system. I picked six because DW players have more to keep track of.
I wouldn’t use it i think. It detracts from the main mechanics and then everyone is just doing awesome point stuff.
Why role a move when i could just spend awesome points.
In Old School Hack, Awesome Points are conspicuously limited in what you can spend them on: they’re no replacement for Bend Bars, Lift Gates , Cast a Spell , for example, or any other move I can think of.
But I trust your caution about adding stuff like this to the game. That’s one advantage of making it a countdown: A countdown has an end, and you don’t have to start a new countdown if you don’t like it.
I like the idea of rewarding actual creative play. One way to do it is to write moves that do that. Consider “When you insult you opponent, roll + cha” against “When you insult your opponent. If the GM thinks your insult is creative, funny or very insulting take +1. Roll + cha.”