Has anyone come across or developed their own DP house rules? The back-and-forth flipping of DPs seems a bit meaningless to me. Feels less like a destiny point and more like a hot potato.

Has anyone experimented with using them as rewards for good RP or penalties for bad RP? I know they’re not meant to be an abundant cheap resource, so you’d have to use them sparingly, but at least it’d make more sense.

42 minutes ago, RalfieT said:

Has anyone come across or developed their own DP house rules? The back-and-forth flipping of DPs seems a bit meaningless to me. Feels less like a destiny point and more like a hot potato.

Has anyone experimented with using them as rewards for good RP or penalties for bad RP? I know they’re not meant to be an abundant cheap resource, so you’d have to use them sparingly, but at least it’d make more sense.

It's supposed to be a "hot potato", so to speak. That's the point. The developers want a continuous flow of Destiny points between the players and GM.

51 minutes ago, RalfieT said:

Has anyone come across or developed their own DP house rules? The back-and-forth flipping of DPs seems a bit meaningless to me. Feels less like a destiny point and more like a hot potato.

Has anyone experimented with using them as rewards for good RP or penalties for bad RP? I know they’re not meant to be an abundant cheap resource, so you’d have to use them sparingly, but at least it’d make more sense.

Yes

On 10/2/2018 at 2:37 PM, Tramp Graphics said:

It's supposed to be a "hot potato", so to speak. That's the point. The developers want a continuous flow of Destiny points between the players and GM.

Yes I get that. But is the hot potato system fun and does it make sense? Not to me.

There must be other ways to keep the players and GM using DPs constantly. I was just wondering if anyone here had ever tried it.

I guess I just don’t understand the reasoning behind the hot potato element.

Just now, RalfieT said:

Yes I get that. But is the hot potato system fun and does it make sense? Not to me.

There must other ways to keeps the players and GM using DPs constantly. I was just wondering if anyone here had ever tried it.

I guess I just don’t understand the reasoning behind the hot potato element.

Part of the reason is to simulate the ebb and flow of fate and the Force between the Light and Dark, between good and evil. As such, they are indeed intended to used routinely, in order to influence the outcome of the story by either side. The old D6 and D20 system used to use Force Points for this. However, unlike in FFG, these were only used by the players, and were not replenished unless used while performing a heroic act , and you could only get more if said act was at a dramatically appropriate moment . Once used, they were gone . As such, players horded them and hardly ever used them out of fear that they wouldn't have them when it "counted". That isn't the case here, and that was deliberate. The designers wanted players to use them freely, so to do that, they designed Destiny points to flow back and forth between light and dark, with the players using the light side Destiny points and GM using the dark side ones.

3 minutes ago, Tramp Graphics said:

As such, players horded them and hardly ever used them out of fear that they wouldn't have them when it "counted". That isn't the case here, and that was deliberate.

Ah, I see. That makes sense, ty.

Still, I’m gonna tinker with it, see how it goes.

1 minute ago, RalfieT said:

Ah, I see. That makes sense, ty.

Still, I’m gonna tinker with it, see how it goes.

You're welcome.

1 hour ago, RalfieT said:

Has anyone experimented with using them as rewards for good RP or penalties for bad RP? I know they’re not meant to be an abundant cheap resource, so you’d have to use them sparingly, but at least it’d make more sense.

For what it's worth, Destiny Points in this system aren't meant to be used sparingly; if anything they're meant to be used almost constantly, with a back and forth between the players and the GMs.

That said, as a GM I'll occasionally flip a dark side Destiny Point to light if one of the players does something really cool in terms of RP.

1 hour ago, RalfieT said:

Ah, I see. That makes sense, ty.

Still, I’m gonna tinker with it, see how it goes.

Let us know how it works out. I had the opposite problem. My GM would never flip any so once we were out for the session that was it.

38 minutes ago, Ahrimon said:

Let us know how it works out. I had the opposite problem. My GM would never flip any so once we were out for the session that was it.

Sounds like he was stuck in the D6/D20 mindset.

3 hours ago, Tramp Graphics said:

As such, players horded them and hardly ever used them out of fear that they wouldn't have them when it "counted".

Really? We used them ALL the time. But then I guess we made sure that everyone got their Crowning Moment of Awesome at least once a session.

2 hours ago, Ahrimon said:

My GM would never flip any so once we were out for the session that was it.

Guilty as charged. Although its more that I might forget to use them rather than a deliberate hording of points.

I'm sure that this post will annoy some people, but since the spelling problem was repeated, I'm going to stick my neck out nonetheless in the interest of clarity.

Dragons gather a "hoard" (also a verb). Orcs gather in a "horde". While they sound the same (being homonyms) they don't mean the same thing.

9 hours ago, Desslok said:

Guilty as charged. Although its more that I might forget to use them rather than a deliberate hording of points. 

Same here; plus they also tend to need them most when they've gotten in over their heads, at which point I feel like a jerk for making things even more difficult.

8 hours ago, Bellona said:

I'm sure that this post will annoy some people, but since the spelling problem was repeated, I'm going to stick my neck out nontheless in the interest of clarity.

Dragons gather a "hoard" (also a verb). Orcs gather in a "horde". While they sound the same (being homonyms) they don't mean the same thing.

What? You've never had a horde of destiny points dome over the horizon to lay waste to your settlement?

FWIW, double flipping should only happen on some rolls. The player making the check has a chance to upgrade and the other side has the chance to respond, then the check is rolled. If the player making the check decides not to then they can’t later decide to flip “in response.”

On other ways to get them to move, player will likely get talents which require flipping and you can also make up NPC abilities that use DPs as fuel.

I agree with most of the above; it’s not a bad thing for the DP pool to go from totally light to totally dark and back over the course of several rounds.

14 hours ago, Desslok said:

Guilty as charged. Although its more that I might forget to use them rather than a deliberate hording of points.

So a funny story.

I was in a GenCon EotE session run by Sterling Hershey the year the actual book came out, and as we got towards the climactic encounter of the module, he asked why nobody was spending any Destiny Points to boost their rolls or make things harder for the bad guys.

Someone answered, "Probably because there's no white tokens for us to spend."

At which point Sterling (after a brief expression of puzzlement) looked over his GM screen and said rather sheepishly, "Oh. Yeah, should probably be spending those." He was a class enough act to 'retroactively' flip a couple of them over to white, and be more cognizant of spending during the end combat encounter.

11 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

So a funny story.

I was in a GenCon EotE session run by Sterling Hershey the year the actual book came out, and as we got towards the climactic encounter of the module, he asked why nobody was spending any Destiny Points to boost their rolls or make things harder for the bad guys.

Someone answered, "Probably because there's no white tokens for us to spend."

At which point Sterling (after a brief expression of puzzlement) looked over his GM screen and said rather sheepishly, "Oh. Yeah, should probably be spending those." He was a class enough act to 'retroactively' flip a couple of them over to white, and be more cognizant of spending during the end combat encounter.

Been there, done that

On 10/2/2018 at 3:54 PM, Donovan Morningfire said:

(...) as a GM I'll occasionally flip a dark side Destiny Point to light if one of the players does something really cool in terms of RP.

Great idea, I’ll probably do that too.

Right now I figure we’ll follow the published rules for establishing the starting DPs. I’ll flip dark to light as rewards for good RP, or simply add some if I have no more dark DPs left.

I think I’ll also have everyone flip their DPs if they’re using them for mechanics, such as activating a power or upgrading a dice. But if they use the DP for narrative effect in a pertinent way, I’ll let them discard it, rather than flipping it so I could use it against them.

Thanks everyone for the great discussion, I’ll report back after I’ve tried it

Another option is to offer the occasional “temporary” story point to a player for some exceptional role play or hilarious moment. These temporary points are removed from the pool once spent, the gm never gets it back.

Wether I'm the story teller or a player I burn thought them to keep them flowing. My groups had balance most of the time. The biggest point my players started hoarding them is when they bought the super abilities that require 2 (real name is escaping me). To help with that I would alwayd make the pool larger, adding 1 or 2 of each. This way their is a bigger pool and the don't need all of it for there ability.

The other call out is trust, if your players feel you will screw them with those points then they won't give them back. Make sure to use the points on trivial stuff to show them they will get them back.

Also talk to them about how it is supposed to work and make sure they understand it. Also 1 group I had only used it for upgrades, since they didn't understand the narrative power of it.

I hope this helps.

It always seems like you explain to players and even GMs how it's *supposed* to work, but old habits die hard and without real game mechanics to de-incentivize the hoarding behavior, it's hard to break people out of it.

The problems I've had with the DP system is the reactive double-flipping: The players use DPs until they have all but one flipped to the dark side, and then flip a DP in response to the GM uses one. I think this is supposed to be in part handled by giving the players more abilities that need DPs, but it just doesn't work well in my experience.

In part I've mitigated this by house-ruling that only DP can be spent per roll, and the active party gets priority. For example if stormtroopers are shooting at PCs, the players can only spend a DP to upgrade difficulty if the GM *doesn't* choose to upgrade the ST's ability, and if a PC is trying to con an NPC, the GM can't use a DP if the player chose to use one to activate an ability or upgrade a roll.

That helps a little. I'd like to introduce some system that is comes up unpredictably and whose effect is proportionate to how unbalanced the DP pool is. Like if both a triumph and a despair come up on a single roll, the players lose or gain strain equal to the difference of light and dark side points, and then the pool goes back to a neutral position. Thematically it represents the strain of the players constantly calling on the force catching up to them, and that situation comes up more frequently with the constant double-flips, but it's still *really* rare.

Overall, I gotta agree with the original sentiment in this thread and say the force pool has never really -felt- good in FFG SW games.

On 10/4/2018 at 3:16 PM, Richardbuxton said:

Another option is to offer the occasional “temporary” story point to a player for some exceptional role play or hilarious moment. These temporary points are removed from the pool once spent, the gm never gets it back.

That’s something they added through Genesys right? I’m not sure if it’s in the crb or ROT but I feel like I remember reading something to that extent in there. Either way, it’s a good idea.

For one campaign that we played in a store, to incentivize us to support the store, the GM offered us one free reroll if we spent $5 or more in the store on game day and the reroll along with one personal Destiny Point if we spent $10 or more.

The personal DP could be used only by or against the player who had it, but could stack with use of the community DP pool (2 upgrades, for example, instead of just 1).

2 hours ago, ghatt said:

That’s something they added through Genesys right? I’m not sure if it’s in the crb or ROT but I feel like I remember reading something to that extent in there. Either way, it’s a good idea.

Yeah ffg put it in as an effect of a Heroic Ability, although in that instance they’re automatically given rather than at the will of the gm.

1 hour ago, Nytwyng said:

For one campaign that we played in a store, to incentivize us to support the store, the GM offered us one free reroll if we spent $5 or more in the store on game day and the reroll along with one personal Destiny Point if we spent $10 or more.

The personal DP could be used only by or against the player who had it, but could stack with use of the community DP pool (2 upgrades, for example, instead of just 1).

That’s a cool idea!

15 minutes ago, Richardbuxton said:

Yeah ffg put it in as an effect of a Heroic Ability, although in that instance they’re automatically given rather than at the will of the gm.

I like your version better. Reminds me of the inspiration mechanic 5E has.