I don't know if any of the rest of you follow the indie RPG scene, but they're big into this kind of idea, enough so that they've got pretty standardized terminology. When a player does something that deserves a reward, he gets a special token that he can trade in later for benefits; these tokens are called "bennies." And so, for my latest stab at this idea, I present the Almighty Bennies. And they work like this:
Any time one of your enemies does something cool that makes the game better, you can award him an Almighty Benny. Examples include:
- - building awesome models
- bringing doughnuts
- doing anything that causes everyone to laugh their butts off
- doing anything that causes everyone to say "that was AWESOME"
- something about beer
- etc.
The rules governing the Almighty Benny are as follows:
- 1. Each Almighty Benny can be used once to add 1d6 to any roll or stat, except when rolling for What I Say Goes or a Heroic Feat. This is awesome. Each individual Benny can be used only once, but if a player has multiple distinct Bennies he can use up as many of them in a single roll as he likes. He must decide whether or not to add Bennies before he makes the roll, however; no fair waiting till afterwards.
2. You can only give Almighty Bennies to your enemies, knowing that they'll almost certainly use them against you. Theoretically they could use them against someone else, but it's way better if they use it against the player who gave it to them. Don't try to give an enemy an Almighty Benny hoping that he'll use it against someone else, because that sucks.
3. You cannot place any conditions on the use of an Almighty Benny. Once it's in your opponent's hands, he can use it however he wants. If he can save the Almighty Benny for something related to the rewarded action, that's best; but he can really use it for whatever he wants (excepting the Feats and What I Say Goes rolls, of course).
So that's the pitch. Comments?