[ROLPUNK] GM as Devil, XP as Soul

Say you’re playing in a game that doesn’t have a Hero/Action/Fate/Whatever-Point mechanic. The player characters get into some really, really serious trouble and need help. They’re going to die. Or maybe they just think they’re going to die, because you’re the gamemaster and you’ve built up a lot of suspense in their current situation. Are they willing to deal?

A Simple Trade
If you want to be kind and fair, you can offer their players their lives in exchange for the experience points they’d gain on this adventure. Hey, they failed their mission, should they be getting XP anyway? Well, yes, they still had the experiences and theoretically learned from them. Still, if they’re willing to trade XP for not dying, the players might learn something even if the characters don’t.

Intervention, Divine or Less Than Divine
Oh, it’s a serious situation. We’re on our way toward a total party kill. Bwahahah. We can fix that. As GM, acting on behalf of some in-game power or another, I’m authorized to broker a deal. Your characters can come back to life, and all they lose is some existing XP. Maybe that means you lose a level, maybe it takes you back to exactly the number of XP you need to maintain this level (and thus avoiding a re-write of your character sheet). Again, hey, you didn’t die. In-game, you’re going to owe that power a huge favor, too.

You Want What? I Can Arrange That
Once I had a player that really wanted his character to have a certain magic item. A very powerful magic item. Something utterly ridiculous for a low-level character to have. I made a deal. I would let him have that item, but it would cost him XP equal to the GP value of the item. I’d dock him 10% of his XP award each session, until he paid it off. There would also be vig — interest — but I would be kind and only charge him 2% per game session. In-game, this was a deal with what he thought was a wizard for what he thought were favors. Out of game, I actually wrote a little contract and made the player sign it. Bwahahah.

To make this easy, say the item cost 100,000. Let’s say each party member got 3000 XP this session. My 10% off the top, as regular payment, is 300 XP. That doesn’t hurt so bad, the player still has 2700 xp. Now take out the vig, 2% of 100,000 is 2000. That leaves the player character with 700 XP. Yeah, he levels up very slowly compared to the rest of the party. Am I a jerk? Hey, I wasn’t the one incessantly nagging about wanting a powerful magic item, was I?

Say for some reason the party doesn’t earn 2000 XP this session. The minions of the wizard, who, yes, is really a demon, come and breaks the player character’s legs and steal all of his potions of healing. And it gets added to next week’s payment.

While this really does seem like a jerk move, it drove story. Other members of the party were offering up their XP to help that one player character pay off his debt, causing them to become beholden to the demon and making some alignment checks. They were willing to go out and do some questionable and dangerous things to earn extra XP in order to keep up payments and even pay a little extra to make the balance go down quicker. They were working extra hard and not leveling up.

Yeah, they ended up working to benefit the story, not to benefit mechanically. It was pretty awesome.

Your Mileage May Vary
Obviously, these sorts of things don’t work for every group, and require a gamemaster who knows his or her players and can exercise common sense. You can really alienate players with this stuff, if you’re not careful. If you really need some heavy duty player management and your people don’t respond to social contracts and need system-driven discipline, give it a try.