Drama Points

Ever since I first encountered "Force Points" and "Character Points" in the old D6 Star Wars game, I have loved the idea of a metagame resource that can be spent to temper the vagaries of chance. I like dice and randomness in RPGs, but sometimes you really don't want your larger-than-life, dragon-slaying hero to go out like a punk just because some random goblin got a really lucky jab with a spear. A lot of games have Fate Points, Drama Dice, Action Points, Bennies, Luck, etc. Van Gogh is going to use this mechanic in the form of Drama Points. Also, I'm including "Event Bounties" as an optional way to earn Drama Points in play. Event bounties are another of Levi Kornelsen's excellent ideas from Amagi Games and can be adapted to many other games. The rules for Drama Points in Van Gogh are after the jump.

Drama Points

The major characters in a Van Gogh game campaign are not nobodies who get killed in Act I to prove the situation is serious. The player character and the important non-player characters are a cut above that. They have dramatic weight and just a bit of “plot immunity”. Sometimes they can do things that seem impossible for anyone else or even for themselves only a short time earlier. This is represented by Drama Points. Major characters can spend Drama Points for a variety of purposes:

• Before a roll to double all successes, not just 6s.
• To re-roll an unsatisfactory roll.
• To cancel or reduce an injury as it is received. Each Drama Point spent reduces the severity by one “wound” level.
• To automatically recover from being Dazed or Stunned.
• To add details to a scene with the approval of the group. For example, a character wants to get into a building but a broken key is stuck in the lock. The character doesn't want to break a window or make any noise so the player suggests spending a Drama Point to say the key broke off before the door was locked. The other players say that doesn't seem plausible because the person who tried to lock the door wouldn't have just walked off with the door unsecured, but the character may be able to get a pair of needle-nose pliers from a toolbox in the bed of a pickup truck in the parking lot and make an easy Repair roll to pull the key out quietly. The group agrees, the player spends a Drama Point, the character finds some pliers and sets to work unlocking the door with the broken key.
• To create a “contact”, a useful NPC that can help resolve a problem at a price. This allows characters to conveniently say “I know a guy who might be able to help us out” without requiring players to detail all the minor characters the PCs might know. As a general guideline, the NPC will have only one or two skills or abilities that are relevant to the player character's predicament and may require favors or payment of some kind (or invoke other complications in the PC's life). The contact will initially be a minor character but can develop into a major character in the course of play. The quintessential example is Lando Calrissian in “The Empire Strikes Back”.

Getting Drama Points

Major characters begin play with 3 Drama Points. More Drama Points can be received in play in the following ways:

• Roleplaying: The GM or another player can reward a PC with a Drama Point when they do something interesting, dramatic, and entertaining to the group. In a lighthearted comic romp through the middle ages, making the other players laugh with a cunningly timed Monty Python reference might earn a Drama Point. In a brooding, noir, cyberpunk thriller, those references would be inappropriate (even if they get laughs). The group should discuss the mood and style of the campaign before beginning play in the first session to make sure that everyone knows what to expect.
• Compensation: When characters suffer a significant failure due to one of their Drawbacks, they are compensated with a Drama Point after the scene in which they fail. Characters who succeed in spite of a Drawback penalty do not get this compensation because success is its own reward. They also do not get a Drama Point if they fail in an insignificant way. For example, if a clumsy character drops and breaks a vial of holy water while the group are loading up to go vampire hunting and the priest supplying them says “No problem, my child: there's plenty more where that came from”, then that's not a significant failure. If that clumsy character drops and wastes one of the group's few remaining vials while they are in the middle of fight for their lives against the undead, then the character will get a Drama Point (and will probably need it to get through that situation).
• Passions: Each major character has 4 Passions: Rage, Fear, Heroic, and Tagline. A character can get one Drama Point for immediate use by tapping one of the Passions. Each Passion can be used once per scene (but using more than one will be unusual for most characters). Passions provide a reliable source of Drama Points. If a character hates slavery for example, they will always have at least one Drama Point available when fighting slavers.
• Following Conventions: Also known as “troping”, this is when a character does something appropriate to the genre and style of the setting even when it is not an optimal strategic choice for the character. For example, in a horror setting, it is a very foolish idea to go into the basement alone to investigate a trail of blood instead of just running to the neighbors and calling the police, but going into the basement alone is exactly the kind of thing that characters in a horror setting would do. The genre conventions should be discussed and established at the beginning of the campaign but if an unforeseen situation comes up in play that feels very characteristic of the genre, the characters who go along with the genre convention are rewarded with a Drama Point.
• Event Bounty: Event bounties are a way to encourage specific scenes to occur in a session without scripting them in advance. Before (or even during) a session, the GM or another player may offer a bounty for an event (or events) that they would like to see happen in the session. The first character who brings that event about in play will get the Drama Points offered as a reward. For example, the GM might say “I'll give a Drama Point to see a formal duel this session” and the character who causes that event to come about would get the reward. Event bounties should be phrased as vague events (“a formal duel takes place”) rather than goals (“your character fights a duel”) so they can be brought about in more than one way: in the example of the duel, a character could earn the bounty by issuing a challenge, provoking someone else into challenging them, or instigating and manipulating two other characters into a duel. The player who offers a bounty cannot collect the reward for it (but they may still bring the event about if they have an opportunity).