Namely, I just offered a player to use meta-game currency to introduce a sequence of events!
Everybody had fun, but it still feels wrong, somehow. I mean, most of us are used to adding Hero Points to checks in order to succeed: that's easily represented by extra effort.
But using them for introducing a turn of events that's more favourable to the characters? I've still got issues accepting that.
What actually happened:
Currently running BASH: Legends of Steel, and my party has split, as I find that a normal thing to happen in any S&S game.
Some of the players went to explore the rumours of the Forlorn King of Tyros and Aragos...what the one who decided that doesn't know is, she's going to walk into a heavily modified Death Frost Doom, where instead of thousands of zombies, she risks releasing an immortal necromancer king, modeled after Koshtchei the Immortal.
Another player went to explore the star-crossed love story of two scions of powerful noble families. Her, a scion of the Montevaggios, him, a scion of Kapi branch of the Omurt clan, a.k.a. the Capiomri.
Yes, there is a joke for the players in here, too. She noticed it already, too... but I'm not going to tell you what it is (because I might actually get around to publishing this as an adventure! Yes, complete with the in-jokes.
Anyway. She went thinking about the best approach to exonerate the guy from accusations of a murder, so I switched to the other party. When I switched back, she still hadn't decided anything decisive. So we played an information-gathering scene that didn't result in much new data, either (she didn't push an NPC that would have talked, but was unwilling to offer the info freely).
And then I couldn't switch, because the leader of the other group was making tea in the kitchen, and was unavailable. In my group, making tea is A Big Deal!
So I decided to spare everyone some dithering, and said.
"By the rules, you have exactly a single Hero Die remaining, and we can give you some clues for that. Do you want to do that?"
"Sure! Thank you for reminding me, too! You know that I'd have forgotten to use them, if not for you, right?"
Yes, I knew that. I'm the one who reminded her to use a Hero Point last session. That's why she only had a full Hero Die (by the BASH rules, you get 3 HeroPoints per session, and can bring them from one session to the next, up to 10 - or you can spend them separately as a dice bonus. If she hadn't earned some Hero Points for style and daring, and spent even more in a hard fight, she'd have forgotten to use any, I'm pretty sure. I should know, I've been playing with her for over a decade!
Then again, she was fighting a minotaur all by herself. Which is a suitable endeavour for a S&S character, in my book. Stunts like provoking a surprise attack in order to counter-ambush an assailant are also very much in-genre from my point of view - and this is what she did.
So, she got to witness people leaving after an encounter they'd rather have kept secret. Everybody had fun, and considered it in-genre, as I said.
And yet...I haven't used meta-game currency to give leads or "advantageous circumstances" in years. It just felt wrong!
Not sure I want to do that again any time soon.
And I guess that there went my qualifications as a simulationist sandbox Referee? Ah, well, I'd have to live with being a hidden narrativist!
I wonder what a suitable penance would be?
WARNING: The events happened as they were described, but this post might still contain traces of humour!
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