How often in a session (assuming say 3-4 hours long) do you see fortune refresh?

I'm getting a little frustrated with players who focus exclusively on the mechanical (e.g., you wouldn't know they had an insanity currently but for its mechanical effect). Their fortune pool is not refreshing very often but they don't seem to be minding, essentially accepting 3 points a session.

valvorik said:

In three session there has been only one "refresh". It keeps the tension up as they know they have to save their fortune for when they really need it.

I have asked my players to use fortune points more often, as I want to give them points for small things too. A fortune point is a minor bonus to a dice pool.

In our games it generally refreshes once per session, but it's a lot up to the players to do smart/cool stuff.

As an example I generally give them a fortune point to their pool if they describe a chaos star result in a good way (if there's not a chaos star result on the action card that they used), that way I don't have to come up with all the chaos star results and my players are often good at coming up with results that are rather interesting. Plus they get more "control" over the fortune refreshes.

Again, once per session (3-4 hours) seems to be working well for my group. The bonus a fortune die add has such a minor effect on a die roll that 6 fortune dice per session is not game breaking but getting a fortune refresh during the sesion does motivate my players as they know that hard and important checks might occur, and then it's good to spend some luck.

Two or three times. I usually bump whenever they do something cool, or take a solid step in moving the story forward. I also have them choose a weakness for their character, and whenever they roleplay it to their disadvantage I throw in a fortune.

I agree with the above posters in that Fortune points give a very small bonus, so being free with them doesn't break the game at all. Being stingy with them makes them seem like they are more powerful than they are.

Roughly refreshes twice a session (of 4 hours), I constantly reward fun roleplaying, creativity and cinematic descriptions.

I've pretty much said, that whatever they do that entertains me (and to some extend the others...) gets rewarded with fortune points. This is on top of me giving fortune dice to rolls where Players show good roleplaying/creativity etc...

Spivo I envy you your table then.

Rob

valvorik said:

Well... it will allways depend on amount of players, and party sheet. My group uses that which puts one fortune point back when it empties, and they're 4 players. So I roughly award 6-8 points a session.

I was struggling with the problem: to give or not to give fortune points to the pool and what deserves to be rewarded. Thus I've come up with an idea, nothing special, but it works fine for us, I believe.

Every session I give each of my players 2 fortune points which they can pass to other players in reward for good roleplaying, staying in character, making cool/fun moves and, above all, thinking.

Nevertheless, I haven't stopped sticking my oar in the fortune points pool

Cheers!

That's actually pretty awesome Armoks. I have noticed that even in other game systems there are times where the players find certain things praiseworthy that I would have skipped right on by. I ran the first session of Eye for an Eye this past weekend and the fortune system worked fine for us, but I might need to be more generous with it going forward because we only had a refresh one time.

Your method is a pretty nice way to encourage roleplay and to give some "real power" to the players. Of course you'd have to have a group that would respond well to that kind of thing. Otherwise you could end up with nepotism, power gaming and other forms of abuse. I personally plan on trying it next time to see how things go. Way easier than tracking pools and auto-dispensing it. AND I can continue to be a grumpy old miser with fortune points I put into the pool, because if each player has 2 to give and gets one from the pool they could theoretically spend three per session consistently as long as they keep up the good gaming.

It's generally been once or twice a session, for my table. Mostly I hand out fp rewards to one guy who roleplays well- he's a zealot with an insanity that, flavor-wise, gives him the compulsion to attack on every round. He even runs after retreating enemies and the other, near-dead players have to tackle him and hold him down until the compulsion passes .

But then, everyone else on the table has come from other games is are first-time WFRP players. They're still getting a handle on the world and aren't sure how to roleplay their races and backgrounds.

k7, your Chaos star translation rewards system sounds cool, and I might want to try it. Generally my rule of thumb is, each Chaos star adds 1 misfortune to the player's (or NPC's) next roll. Having them tell their own story of how it happens sounds like fun for everyone involved.

Raymz said:

Depending on the description of the result I might do the following after their description:

• Add a condition card as an example 'ead 'urts for example if they describe baning their head into a thick branch.
• Add a wound if they for example describe a fall of the horse (on a ride check).
• Give them some (1 or 2) fatigue or stress.
• Add one or two black dice to the next roll, or one or two white dice to an NPC acting against the character.
• Make them drop something, like swining their axe and loosing the grip of the handle sending it flying.
• Raise the party tention meter one step.
• If the description is good/entertaining enough but it doesn't really fit to add any of the things above I can let it pass as a good roleplaying moment and not add any negative effects in game terms.
  As an example of this we had one human character "knowing" (from a failed folk lore check with chaos stars) how to spot if a dwarf was male or female (in my world both male and female dwarfs are equally bearded). She proceeded to tell an intricate story about how to spot this and this was done to much amusement of the group and especially for the dwarf character in the group.
  Sure, I could have added a stress point as the dwarf laughed his (or her?) ass off but I though that it was enough that the dwarf found it so hillarious (later the dwarf re-told this story to fellow dwarves over a mug of ale as soon as he got the oppurtunity to much embaressment for the character).
• And a good/fun/appropriate description also adds a fortune die to the pool.

I've noticed that this leads to a co-creation of chaos star results, if the acting player can't come up with any result the other players generally have some ideas. If they have good ideas for chaos star results, I might also ignore chaos star results found on the current location card(s) and go for the players description.