08-26-2014, 05:38 AM | #1 |
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Gothenburg, Sweden
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Power-Ups 5: Karma Pool
Has anyone tried what Marvel Super Heroes called a Karma Pool - i.e., a common pool from which characters can draw points to buy successes? For instance, every character may have 5 personal points and a common pool of 25 points. A character may draw from either pool to ensure success - although a polite player will at least consider using his own points first. Contributions to the pool may be set however the group votes, including having everyone contribute the same amount, different amounts or withdraw everything from the karma pool, effectively meaning the group has no pool.
I suppose you could also use the points in the pool to buy advantages, as long as such advantages make sense. So for 15 points, the characters could buy Luck, usable once every hour. The advantage would begin in the "Available" mode until a character uses it, when it switches to "Not Available" mode. When in Not Available Mode, no one can use it. I don't know if that's a good idea, but there are considerably more experienced GURPS GMs/players here to evaluate the idea. Has this been tried? Is it even in PU5, in which case I apologize for wasting your time? What do you think?
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08-26-2014, 05:42 AM | #2 | |
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Eindhoven, the Netherlands
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Re: Power-Ups 5: Karma Pool
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It seemed a cute idea, but then I saw where he was going with it when he said: "And that's why everyone in Star Trek: TOS hate Shatner! He kept spending all the Budget on himself!"
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08-26-2014, 06:19 AM | #3 | |
Join Date: May 2009
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Re: Power-Ups 5: Karma Pool
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08-26-2014, 10:44 AM | #4 |
GURPS Line Editor
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: Power-Ups 5: Karma Pool
Power-Ups 5 comes at the idea from an oblique angle. See the "Friends" option in Paying Fate's Price (p. 5). I think that's more fair than a pool, as no one person can suck up the full budget near-unilaterally.
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Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch <kromm@sjgames.com> GURPS Line Editor, Steve Jackson Games My DreamWidth [Just GURPS News] |
08-26-2014, 11:40 AM | #5 |
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Gothenburg, Sweden
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Re: Power-Ups 5: Karma Pool
You mean a "tragedy of the commons" situation? I count on the social cost of being a point hog stopping that. After all, these are friends and so they'll take measures not to make the others angry. I don't think it's a problem, but I would welcome an empirical test.
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“When you arise in the morning think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love ...” Marcus Aurelius |
08-26-2014, 12:05 PM | #6 | |
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: Power-Ups 5: Karma Pool
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08-26-2014, 12:06 PM | #7 |
Wielder of Smart Pants
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ventura CA
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Re: Power-Ups 5: Karma Pool
I played in a W20 game that used the variant of the Destiny(?) background that uses a common pool like this and the Storyteller additionally gave us all several levels for free because of this. In practice we almost never used any of the dice, I think because some of the player's forgot they were even available, and some didn't want to deplete the common resource. I made a point of using one or two per session, but I was generally the only one who did.
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08-26-2014, 04:04 PM | #8 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Portsmouth, VA, USA
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Re: Power-Ups 5: Karma Pool
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08-26-2014, 07:40 PM | #9 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: Power-Ups 5: Karma Pool
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08-26-2014, 08:02 PM | #10 |
Join Date: Sep 2007
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Re: Power-Ups 5: Karma Pool
To encourage teamwork, have a multiplier on points in the common pool so that they're more effective than keeping your points to yourself (or withdrawing them).
At the cost of some more bookkeeping, you could add a Point Hog rule that means increased costs for the same effect once a particular player has pulled out a certain number of points. This won't prevent the Point Hog from hogging, but it does increase the loss of group performance for doing so, thus risking success at the group's goal (and the amount of ire directed at the PH by other players). (This is one of those systems that's probably best done with poker chips to help with the counting and tracking.) |
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group mechanics, power-ups 5 |
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