Uninspired
One of my favorite mechanics in 5e is inspiration. If you’re not familiar, I’m talking about this rule right here:
Typically, DMs award [inspiration] when you play out your personality traits, give in to the drawbacks presented by a flaw or bond, and otherwise portray your character in a compelling way.
It’s a simple concept, but an important one. If you entertain your buddies with quality RP, you can walk away with a mechanical reward (in this case advantage on a single role). In effect, you’re incentivizing the rule of cool. I can’t think of anything I’d like to encourage more than cool moments.
If you’ve read this comic for any length of time, you know that my other favorite game is Exalted 2e. The stunt system in that game is all manner of interesting. It’s similar to 5e’s inspiration, but slightly more central to play. Exalted features a dice pool system, so the more dice you roll the better your results tend to be. Here’s a quick copy/paste of the stunting rules by way of explanation:
The rules of Exalted reward players with additional dice for describing their characters’ actions in an evocative manner. The out-of-game rationale for a stunt bonus is that well-described actions keep the game interesting for everyone and help the Storyteller set the scene. In game, stunts represent the capacity of epic heroes to be truly spectacular when they take risks and act like heroes. At the lowest level, one-die stunts require a good description of an action, adjudicated by the Storyteller. In return, the player gains one additional die, and the character may perform feats that border on impossible (such as running across the heads of people in a crowd, deflecting a blade or arrow barehanded and so on).
That’s just the basics though. If you get more elaborate you may get more dice. And let me tell you, there’s nothing quite as pump-a-fist awesome as earning that big three dice stunt for truly epic plays.
Of course, you may have guessed the downside by this point. These sorts of systems rely on GM judgement calls. If you’re the guy behind the screen, you’re in the uncomfortable position of deciding whether your buddies’ ideas are good enough to warrant stunt dice, inspiration, Fate points, bennies, or whatever other reward your system utilizes. That can in turn lead to player resentment when the scene-chewing comes up short.
Question of the day: Have you ever seen a player go for the Oscar but not quite get there? Have you ever witnessed the bizarre spectacle of a GM explaining to an indignant player why their best efforts hadn’t quite earned a reward? Let’s hear your tales of rule-of-cool turned rule-of-weird down in the comments!
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Why yes, I have. That player would be me. Whenever I play bard, I like to describe my vicious mockery. The only problem is, I’m truly terrible at insults. I’ll hear the result of a save that just fails to resist my vicious mockery by one, and feeling pumped and ready to insult them to death, I proudly say, “Foul dragon! You are a… a… thing that… idiot-face! You face is an idiot-face, that’s it! Burn…?”
I’ve tried carrying around a copy of Barbs from the Bard…
https://www.amazon.com/Barbs-Bard-Michael-Viner/dp/1931056420
…But pausing to page through a book, muttering “no that’s not right,” and then settling on, “I’ll tickle your catastrophe!” never feels quite right. Mad empathy yo.
I want so badly for my wife to play a bard, just for Vicious Mockery. She’s very quick with the jibes, and she has no filter. Half the time she’d probably say it, and then remember to roll. I need this in my life.
Get yourself a quote scroll. Witty players deserve quote scrolls.
I’ve mentioned this before, but I had a friend who was using Vicious Mockery a lot in his first run as a 5e Bard, and one time he used it, the GM prompted for an insult, and the best he could come up with was “You’re fat.” A boss DIED from that.
It’s true. Obesity kills.
Just say to the dragon that you are not afraid of a really fat gecko with a even bigger superiority complex.
Well, Cutting Mockeries is free on DMs Guild, and it has some pretty nice insults in it. XD (http://www.dmsguild.com/product/236600/Cutting-Mockeries?term=Cutting+&test_epoch=0) Might be worth grabbing.
“Son of a silly person! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries!”
I keep telling Laurel, “We should do a joke about Monty Python!”
And she’s all like, “That’s so old dude. We already beat that dead horse at every single session.”
And I’m like, “Exactly!”
It’s not that old. They started a long time ago but the last thing they did with the original cast (minus the one who died) was in 2014 (although apparently they only did that one because they forgot a clause in the contract of one of the execs from Holy Grail that entitled him to some money from Spamalot (2004-2017) that they had already spent by the time it was brought up)
Naw dude. Not Monty Python. The joke. It is the joke that is the dead horse. Nary a session goes by without elderberries or a little peril.
You know, I’m sure my group has had some great rule of cool moments turn really weird, but most of the time, but I can’t really remember them. They typically just stay cool, such as trogzor punching a dragon to death after being disarmed while being torn apart and suffocated as the dragon swims through sand, or weird, such as my reincarnated part frog bard having to seduce frog people to get out of trouble, turning into a dire mole to free trogzor from the sand only to be brutally mauled by him since he didn’t know it was me, or the entire saga of Alex Jones. My dm has had to explain a few times why people didn’t earn inspiration, but it has never really been that, even with disagreements. I don’t think anyone has ever tried to go full oscar on us at out table either.
I will have you know how amused I am at the image of a fighter gaining an unconventional suit of armor:
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71ra%2Bc7xVSL.SL1200.jpg
That link unfortunately doesn’t work.
Fixed.
Pretty sure that armor comes with the bonus of providing full cover as well, seems op, please nerf.
…Did Thaumaturge write this comic? Inspiration and Coup De Grace in the same system! Storms off in a huff
I roleplay to the hard, but my GM isn’t big on Inspiration. I prefer it that way.
My Paladin has given 3 separate Ms. Adbar speeches (“World peace.” Now it’s time for the swimsuit competition!) to rally and inspire. Not because it might get me inspiration, but because people needed to be motivated, and or dramatically told off.
He’s shoved 3 people into fires not because it’s tactically advantageous, but because after the first time it was funny so it became a thing he does any time there’s an opportunity in combat. Providing Inspiration for doing what I already would do would cheapen that.
If you’re in a group that already roleplays “to the hard,” inspiration becomes largely unnecessary. It’s an incentive after all. That said, my favorite part of the inspiration mechanic is this: You don’t gain “inspiration points.” You either have inspiration or you don’t. To my way of thinking, that’s the game telling you to use it early and often. Different strokes and all, but my taste runs towards too much inspiration rather than too little.
I very rarely award Inspiration. Not because I don’t think my players do a lot of cool things – they do! – but because, when I’m in the middle of adjusting the narrative to account for the cool thing, it honestly completely slips my mind. In principle, it’s a great idea to incentivise good RP and really creative strategies. In my experience, though, the idea of a mechanical reward for those things quickly gets lost in the moments between the attempt and its in-world ramifications.
I tried to fix this problem by letting the players nominate each other for Inspiration, but it still hardly happens. I think it may have something to do with requiring the person suggesting it to break their own immersion a little with a jump from story to mechanics and back again, right in the middle of the best part of the story.
I wonder if a post-game vote for inspiration could help? The session is over, and it comes time to have the players nominate one another for “play of the game” or whatever.
I mostly award inspiration for players doing something that I find especially clever or unconventional. My players don’t really need any incentive for role-playing or acting true to their characters, so I don’t find it needful to give it to them for that (they’d have inspiration constantly). I do give it to new players for getting in character though, especially when they typically find it hard to do so.
Is that a bad thing? I mean, if you’ve got theatrical types at the table, then those are the players that thrive on the applause of the audience. Inspiration is an in-game way to make that happen.
Otherwise, I don’t think that the RP incentive is the only design element going on here. Remember that players can award one another their inspiration, trading it around like some kind of RP conch. That means players applauding one another mechanically, and that’s good juju at the table.
Not necessarily, but I have no doubt it’d reach of point of “Did I have inspiration? Did I use the one I got last time? I don’t remember.” And since the players save their inspiration for clutch moments, gifting it around if they need to, I think everyone having it all the time would remove a lot of the tension from those moments.
And since they’re already fully immersed in being theatrical, I don’t think they value inspiration gained from that as much as they do for getting it from thinking/doing something really creative and clever on its own merit. It changes from “getting a reward everyone can and ‘should’ do”, to “getting a reward for doing something really amazing that no one else thought of”.
Maybe you could adapt the mechanic for your table? Inspiration disappears at the end of each session, so it’s very much a use-it-or-lose-it setup. You could also do physical tokens for inspiration, and even individualize them for each PC as player X-mas gifts.
Actually, forget your game. I’m doing this!
The only time a DM has ever given me inspiration (all of my DMs have never really focused on it much…) was when I was playing a Dragonborn Barbarian named Ghesh. Ghesh was paranoid that demons and devils were going to drag him (back) to the lower planes, so he was constantly drinking. However, despite his cowardice, he was also quite loud. So here’s what happened:
We were in an underground cave, and there was a lake. On the lake, there was an island. Our rogue climbed the ceiling of the cave and dropped onto the island. He whispered that there was nothing on the island. (NOTE: We had been hearing scuttling noises while adventuring, so we were kinda on guard). Ghesh responded by shouting at the top of his lungs, “WHAT DID YOU SAY I CAN’T HEAR YOU FROM HERE!!!!” The table laughed. The DM facepalmed and gave both me and the rogue Inspiration. Then we got attacked by some kind of bug. It happened a year ago so some of the details are a bit foggy, but it was hilarious.
DM facepalm into bennies is pretty much the way my Savage Worlds game goes. Well done, dude!
I just game from a Savage World game where I had to hint pretty heavily that ‘gee, I sure could use some bennies for all this rping I’m doing.’ I don’t usually say anything, just rping for the sake of it. This round though I felt like I really put myself out there for my character’s ‘heroic’ hinderance including gifting 1/2 of my character’s amassed funds as charity to a down on their luck npc prisoner/slave and climbing up 200 feet of rope while having giant boulders hurled at him because 2 of our party members were in trouble near the top. My character has 0 climbing skill and making any kind of unassisted climbing role is flirting with death, let alone the 4 required to scale the cliff side while also having to make agility rolls to avoid being turned into a grisly cliff decoration. His agility is… not great. The dice were kind and my teammates managed to distract the boulder hurlers so I could get to the top safely. After all this and a few bennies spent to avoid death by falling I then had to spend another bennie to keep from being flattened by the elephant-sized gorillas throwing the boulders at the top. I was down to zero bennies out of three at the start.
We weren’t done though because just before the night ended our quest led us to a boss battle with another angrier elephant sized monster who had a toughness somewhere between of ‘Oh, hell no’ and ‘The Incredible Hulk’. I knew that one hit from this guy without a bennie to soak damage was a one way street to a fresh character sheet. Dispensing with any subtlety I just said, “Man, it’s tough being heroic. Good thing I get those extra bennies to compensate,” and stared pointedly.
The DM awarded everyone a bennie for some cool group role-playing we had done earlier. He’s a really solid DM, but is sometimes forgetful about the bennies. Overall, it was a pretty boss session and I enjoyed putting my character through suffering just to play it out.
This sort of thing is especially tricky in SW, where the bennie economy is absolutely essential to play. Good on you for finding a way to drop the hint without being obnoxious about it. In the heat of the moment, is is crazy easy for a DM to forget.
I run exalted 2e (and play it as well). I have hard and fast rules for handing out those sweet stunt dice, 1 dice on describing a new/unique action to wjat you have done, a repeat will not earn you additional dice. 2 die stunts require utilizing your environment in cool amd creative ways. The coveted 3 die stunt is often out of my hands, i use the rule of cool, did the plays at the table just all go hot damn that awesome? Did they gasp at what was suggested? You get that 3 die stunt. I explain this from the onset, as what i feel is cool amd wjat the table does as a whole may differ so i give them the power as a whole for this.
Now ive also awarded dice outside of these conditions based off of the amount of danger doing whatever action could cause a character.
Have you ever encountered a player who felt short-changed on stunt dice?
Aww look at the Thief’s blushing cheeks
She’s totes digging that drama
Found the chaotic neutral player! 😛
Once the girlfriend of one of my companions try to do something like that.
BETRAYAL! Yonder lies the castle of my father! – She shouted, or something like that. Well, in that kind of castles accidents happen. Like a chandelier falling in his head, she falling three stories of ladders and a fall from a balcony into the moat full of nasty animals. All that effort only for her PC to survive because of a mechanic like that. Yeah i really love that kind of mechanics.
Also: “He could spend his action feeding his girlfriend a healing potion, but that wouldn’t be as dramaticaly satisfying.” So according to this Wizard thinks in therms of what is dramatic to do or not in a given moment. So Wizard is not another thing that a Fair Folk person. His necromancer clothes from his goth phase are really a assumption of cement and bone, right?
“Assumption of Cement and Bone” is the title of my next metal album. 😛
Your next metal album? What was the name of the previous?
My only run-in with Inspiration was from a brief 5e campaign. The GM set up two “PvP” scenarios (where he gave the players different objectives but kept the details secret from the other players). The first one was a magic circle that would compel anyone who went in to to lure other people into the circle. I was the only one who went in because my character, cowardly by nature, was guarding the rear, and found his partymates’ behavior suspicious – especially once he asked them to prove it was safe by stepping back in his direction. The second one was an extremely complicated hallucination (so no consequences if the players murdered each other) where everyone had been given conflicting orders by voices in their heads. Mine basically suggested that I betray the party and steal something to gain great power, but my character was dumb enough that he initially misunderstood the instructions, then he was too cautious to fight the party, then he began doubting the voice because of his natural suspicion (and he later proved that part of what it had said was a lie) and he never particularly wanted great power anyways – he’s a coward, but not a selfish one. I technically “lost” the Inspiration contest, but it was a great time, not the least of which because my character’s flaws totally saved him and the party both times. He even stopped the paranoid PC from fighting other people because he was too scared to do any betraying, so the paranoid guy never got even the slightest reason to doubt him. So I personally think I won the roleplaying side of things.
I have also played games with a player who would LIVE for Inspiration if it was in-system, because he does crazy stunts all the time anyways. Actual quote from me about something that player did:
“That’s exactly what I did the LAST time you threw yourself down a pit to kill a boss.”
(For the record, the first time he grappled a flying enemy who was on fire, asleep, laughing, and glowing purple, and then coup de grace’d her. Despite what this comic says, Inspiration and Coup de Grace are not mutually exclusive.)
I love that whole “intentionally misunderstand the mind whammy” scenario. We talked about it way back here…
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/prince-charming
…and I stand by what I said then. Letting players dictate how their characters interpret the mind whammy makes for fantastic RP.
So how many times have Thief and Wizard died?
How do they handle their deaths? I’m sure Thief does it with all the grace and subtlety of Fighter, but what aboot Wizard?
Wizard uses Matt Mercer resurrection rules, mostly because it allows him to make dramatic speeches.
How does Thief handle it though? Like Fighter?
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/send-in-the-clones
If Thief does it that way, does Wizard need to spend 5 sessions moping over his lost love and learning to move on with her identical cousin?
Matt Mercer rules?
As a reply to all questions, Matt Mercer resurrection rules:
https://geekandsundry.com/use-critical-roles-resurrection-rules-in-your-own-campaign/
That’s how Wizard tends to treat Thief’s deaths. We already know how Thief deals with Wizard’s death:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/the-worth-of-a-life
I’m very much not a fan of inspiration. Shouldn’t the fact that something is cool be motivation enough to do it? And if you’re playing in a game where you don’t care about RPing, why should you be forced to RP for mechanical benefit? And finally, if some people think you should RP and you don’t really care, them baiting you to RP is not a good solution.
I also assosiate inspiration with those boxes (“ideals,” “flaws,” and so on), and I really don’t like those. I think I can manage to role-play without a box on my sheet telling me to. Not to mention that a lot of characters have motivations that don’t neatly fit into those four categories. Overall, they both seem condescending.
If you got this far, I would like to thank you for reading my rant.
You’re welcome, I suppose
I think that 5e is new player-friendly by design. It’s part of the reason for its popularity. Those little character building nuggets can be a bit extraneous for a seasoned roleplayer, but I’ve seen at least one of my buddies fall back on them to help with the D&D equivalent of writer’s block: “Sailor, eh? Maybe he fights with a harpoon! And is a monster hunter by trade!”
I’ve also found them helpful myself. Check out the story below this one:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/courtly-dress
It turned out to be a lot of fun to actually randomize the traits and treat it as a challenge: How do I make a coherent character out of this mess? YMMV of course, but that’s why there’s 31 flavors when all you really need is strawberry.
The only encounter that I recall having with inspiration was when I gave it to the paladin, since he gave money to a dwarf to help him by a trip back home, and restart his future. I would give it more, but I just keep forgetting. I think that I’ll tell my players that they can ask whether something was worthy of inspiration (for when I forget) but I’ll have the final say
I kind of wish there was a feat for “improved inspiration” or something. Maybe it could give you more options for ways to use it, or allow you to use it yourself AND pass it to another player or something. I think there could be some interesting design space in there if you looked. It would also help to make the mechanic more than “that one thing that my GM doesn’t really do,” which seems to be pretty common from the responses I’m seeing.
Given the “GM problem” (which I’ve suffered from quite a bit) I prefer if the PLAYERS hand out inspiration. Or rather, when (most) everyone agrees that something’s done “right” it’s an inspiration (or whatever).
What the rule of thumb here? If everyone at the table cracks up and makes “oh snap” face?
I once played a Bariaur (a quadruped) with the heritage feat “Natural Heavyweight”. I maximized my Strength (since I was a Duskblade), and was allowed to use the Enlarge Person spell (a lenient DM). As such, I tried to maximize carrying capacity, and pulling carts was in my backstory (I was naive and tricked into slavery of a sort).
I kept trying to find moments where my carrying capacity was useful. Eventually, it worked in a very “save the day” moment, but that was my seventh or eigth attempt. The scenes usually played out like this
“Guys, I’ll move this boulder, let me just Enlarge and then we’ll be out of this accursed cave!”
‘Uh, Roc, I can just shrink the boulder.’
“Oh. Well be that way I guess.”
More like an attempted “Cool moment” that was just an “underwhelming moment”.
I am reminded of this one:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/know-your-role
I mean like… Why would you even say “I could just shrink the boulder” at that point? You’ve got another solution handy. At least give it a chance to work before stealing your buddy’s thunder!
Strangely enough, I’ve had almost the opposite situation in the last couple years.
Previously, I’d played with groups that were heavily into roleplaying. Whether we were playing a White Wolf/Onyx Path game, D&D, Shadowrun, or 10 Candles, we played for the narrative (big plots, character development, and everything in between). Designing rituals together (so that multiple characters from multiple magical traditions could participate) in Mage: the Ascension remains one of my favorite RPG memories.
Now, when I moved to Shanghai, I had to find new people to play with. Most of them were primarily interested in D&D or Dark Heresy. We’d roleplay, but it was something strictly done outside of combat (except for the necessary “For the Emperor!”). When I ran the Exalted 3rd edition jumpstart adventure for them (none of which had played a d10 system), the stunting rules were probably what took the most work to get them to integrate. They just weren’t used to flexing those RP muscles in combat situations. By the end of the jumpstart, however, they were stunting regularly and really enjoying themselves (rolling a ton of dice helps with that, too).
One thing I really appreciate about 5e is its work to bridge what I’d call a “ludonarrative disconnect.” It’s not that they work against each other (i.e. dissonance), but I’ve talked to so many players (primarily D&D/PF, but also other systems) that view the game in two modes: combat and RP. (Combat, RP, and exploration are the three modes Wizards of the Coast references, but I’ve not had experience with exploration being as distinctly separate.) A player/DM who vastly prefers combat may disagree with me, but I think bridging the combat/RP division helps a game feel more seamless and fun (so character personalities, desires, and flaws don’t disappear when initiative is rolled).
Just started this one last night:
https://www.amazon.com/Analog-Game-Studies-I-1/dp/1365015475/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=SXDJFEWM2EXQVBFRCNWW
The first essay uses phenomenology to posit three frames of play: social, game, and fiction. The author includes a little chart showing how often a session switched between exploration and combat, among several other categories. Learning to switch between those frames on the fly doesn’t come naturally, but I think it might be the big trick you’ve got to learn to be successful across multiple groups.
I dislike inspiration for the same reason I despise giving out experience points differently among characters, giving more to some and less to others.
It’s arbitrary, it’s unfair and it is one more thing the GM can mess up distributing to the party.
If the inspiration is given to a different player each week in a round-robin way, however, it is fine.