Power Management: The Inspiration System

[The City [EclipseZwolf]]

Inspiration Power System

    In almost all games, players are handed a power, perk, or some other ability that relates to their choice of character. These powers are meant to reflect the skills/personality of the player's character, giving them a sense of uniqueness and power. The Inspiration Power System is inspired by a table top game mechanic known as "Inspiration."



    "Inspiration" in table top games that use it is a collectable resource that players may spend to increase their chances of success. Essentially you burn it to roll more dice and have an easier time accomplishing a task, the kicker is how you get Inspiration. Inspiration is handed out to players from the GM/Mastermind when a player performs an in character action that would be detrimental to themselves. This is to essentially reward the player for being in character, but also balance out the self induced punishment of being in character.



    I decided that this might be useful in our format of powers with some slight tweaks. The MMG version of Inspiration isn't just handed out when performing self detrimental actions, but whenever the mastermind feels the player is heavily "In-Character." This could be by interacting with other players in certain ways, acting in certain ways, or even more in depth long term actions. Before I get a little farther into examples let me explain my reasoning for considering such a system and then it should make sense why players would want Inspiration.

    In many games these days there is an EXTREME lack of players being In-Character outside of conversations with the mastermind. Players tend to just ignore their character choice and act however they please, with some exceptions. This results in a very... redundant experience as players continuously play with the same personality and play style with minor tweak. The only thing that changes constantly is the character itself and the power. So the goal of Inspiration is to link these two changing factors with the players desire to Role Play and act In Character.

    This system does that by changing SHSL/Special Abilities to not work on a Cooldown Period as normal, but rather work with a Fuel System. Using an ability would require X amount of Inspiration, gathered from role playing and being a part of the world. Ideally, a player who picked the SHSL Philosopher shouldn't receive the benefits for being the SHSL Philosopher unless they truly PLAY the SHSL Philosopher. This player, as they get into the role can start affording their special ability and that ability can actually be very powerful since its blocked behind this "Earn-it" wall. Random players who just want to troll can't abuse the powers as they cannot simply walk in, piss off as many people as possible, then leave as they have to spend quality time playing and acting to get high abilities. That aside, allow me to provide an example, with our taoist character from Season EE.

Inspiration Power: Toyo, The SHSL Taoist
Personality: [From a person's App and used in order to determine when a player deserves to receive inspiration]
Minor Passive(Have Earned at least 1 Inspiration since game start): This character can carry items solely for use in spreading taoism as if they possessed weight 0.
Inspiration Active: 5 Inspiration to Activate: Call upon the god of Taoism and pray for them to unleash their wrath. Choose any door in the game and through some natural disaster the door(and any links through it) are destroyed.

    So essentially through the act of their character acting religious and spreading Taoism they gain an ability that can truly augment their ability to murder and affect the game. They could even spend a long time spreading Taoism and pull of incredible shenanigans with multiple Active shots. The Minor ability is an optional addition, however I prefer the idea of having a minor(that you attain simply by starting to RP as your character) that encourages a player to play their role. It doesn't really help them solve the mystery or commit murder on a base level, but it further encourages a playstyle and role playing format.

    One of the major caveats of this system is the fact that its up to the mastermind to determine when a player deserves Inspiration, which can be both good and bad. It gives the mastermind a more direct way of punishing and praising players but if the mastermind isn't careful it could spiral out of control. Of course a player who gets way out of control by being the only person to TRULY PLAY the game deserves to win in my book anywho.

So I was curious what you all thought of having such a system where you have to earn the fuel to use your powers by actually playing your character instead of just waiting X Time or waiting for some random mechanic you can work with in a special way. Again, obviously it gives leading players a way to snowball, but I honestly think that's fine as it gives devoted players who are being good sports a leg up on the other competition.

So, What do you all think?
        

[John Dark Souls]

『I really like this system. It would be very nice if RPing not only made the game kinda more fulfilling but also gave you rewards for doing it. There are also times when people kinda choose their characters and then end up limiting their actions due to RPing because they characters wouldn't do that or something and thus a reward for that would be awesome. But I do feel like there might be few issues with it:』

『Over-the-top super unique SHSLs. If the Inspiration is earned by doing your SHSL-like actions, in example: SHSL Fighter picking up fights with everyone, SHSL Hero helping everyone, SHSL Stalker stalking everyone. These 3 are all straightforward and easy to understand what you have to do for earning Inspiration. But lets look at Emerald Application thread. We have SHSL Homunculus, SHSL Venus Adept, SHSL Red Magma, SHSL 7th Child of Gears and SHSL Fox Boy. Just what kind of activity would be considered SHSL-like for them? This already creates a difference of difficulty of earning Inspiration between different players.』

『Player acting skills. For some players like Sea, you, Mystio and maybe Ravan, Makoto and me, acting in-character is kinda like a walk in the park. But for all others it might just be very difficult. So while the more RP-able people already RP all over, the less RP-able people would kinda struggle if the character they picked because they looked cool or something was hard to RP. There are also people like Klea and Poke who kinda can RP only certain types of characters very nicely. That also encourages them to pick same types or maybe even repeatedly pick same characters again and again just because they are more used to RP them.』

『Not exactly beginner-friendly. When beginners join the game, they usually are busy just getting used to exploring and whatnot and have kinda less time to RP or might not know where and how exactly to RP. So this might just create an even further gap between beginners and seasoned players.』


『All in all, difficulty of SHSL could be adjusted by how much Inspiration actions give and abilities cost or how powerful they are. Maybe introducing something like "Spend Inspiration for a hint of more ways of getting Inspiration" might just completely solve that first issue. But the other 2 are kinda still up to players. So if a seasoned player picks something easy and beginner picks something hard, it would be easy to see how it might just create a severe gap of capabilities between two. But if these issues can be all solved somehow, I would really love to see this implemented.』

[The City [EclipseZwolf]]

After the Events of Azure.

Dear god please no.