Ok, I’ve played around with XP as a resource before, but tonight I’m going for a new one entirely. Emboldened by another game powered by the apoc (Blades in the Dark), I’m using XP as a resource that lets you have a flashback!
When an Adventure is underway, and you hit a trigger that invokes a Flashback for a move in the past which impacts your current situation… Spend an XP and Role play it out.
Interesting. Let us know how it goes. I’m wondering what benefit players would get for doing this though. It seems like it could be really powerful.
Reminds me a bit of Numenera:
Immediate Benefits
The easiest, most straightforward way for a player to use XP is to reroll any roll in the game—even one that she didn’t make herself. This costs 1 XP per reroll. The player can reroll and use either the new roll or the original, whichever is better. She can continue to spend XP on more rerolls, but this can quickly become an expensive proposition. It’s a fine way to attempt to prevent a disaster, but it’s not a good idea to use of a lot of XP to reroll a single action over and over…a player can also spend 1 XP to refuse a GM intrusion.
In our cowboy game we use XP as Fate points: when a player invokes a character aspect he can pay one XP to add +1 to a roll after it is rolled. It works well.
It worked great! Our Druid was bummed when the newly uncovered necromantic river flooded the valley and covered her ancient stand of wyldwood trees. I said if she spent an xp she could flashback and make a move to counter the obstacle in the past. She took me up and rolled a 7 on her shape change move, taking on the form of a badger and damning the river long enough to save just one ancestor tree, but which one? Her mum or her dad? The other would become an undead abomination….
That was the cliffhanger!
Sweet! I’ve been playing with XP as tokens that can modify rolls or be saved for level-up, and I’ve been wanting to play with narrative functions as well, but I haven’t found a way to cleanly articulate that kind of use. “Spend 1 XP to narrate a flashback” is nice and clean. Thanks to this post, I’m going to incorporate this option when we play Spirit of ’77 on Thursday.
Sounds slick Nathan Roberts!