Which Metagame Special Effects do you like/use?

Hello fellow DMs,

I'd like to talk shop about Metagame Special Effects, a term coined (as far as I know) by the Alexandrian.

Simply put (as I see it), a Metagame Special Effect is any tool that

• uses information accessible to the players to convey a feeling or an information without having to explicitely state it
  • "the DM just did a hidden dice roll, something's up - we should pay attention"
  • "the DM just asked about our Will Saves, Uh-oh..."
  • "there were three tokens on the boss monster and the DM took one away when it used it's special attack - it can probably do it twice more"
• is not a "default" tool of whatever game you're playing (i.e. miniatures/battelmaps for many DnD games) but used for a specific purpose in selected situations only

While I have a few I've tried or found promising enough that I *plan* on using them, I'm also highly interested in yours.

So, without further delay, here's my shortlist:

Tension Pool

(Source: the Angry DM)

Everyone and their mother have probably heard about the Time/Tension Pool concept by now (if you don't, read the linked article, it's worth it).

tl;dr: Whenever the party is in a tense situation where you want to represent a growing risk of Bad Stuff^TM happening:

• whenever "time passes", visibly add a dice to the pool
• whenever the party does something riksy, roll the current pool right now (if it's empty, roll one die)
• whenever the pool is full (standard: 6 dice), roll the full pool, empty it and note that an hour/a day/time has passed
• whenever the pool rolls one or more 1s, Bad Stuff^TM happens

It's an excellent tool to implement/represent a cost for "taking your time" (i.e. carefully searching for traps/secrets) and can easily adapted to different situations: overland travel/dungeon diving (Bad Stuff: Random Encounters), infiltrating a party (Bad Stuff: the vizir becomes suspicious of the "Party Guests"), break-ins (Bad Stuff: someone stumbles across the intruders) etc.

There's some wonkiness in that the cost of doing risky stuff varies with the state of the pool, i.e. it's less risky to be noisy just after the pool has been emptied - but I feel that this is an acceptable side-effect. The tension temporarily going down (especially after a nail-biting roll of the full pool) seems like good pacing anyways.

Double Blind Checks

(Source: the Alexandrian)

Imagine a PC trying to perfom a task where they can't verify their result, but they should have a general idea on their overall performance. Common example are when they try to research a subject in a library or hit the streets for information.

The common solution here is for the DM to make the roll behind the screen and just tell the player what their PC thinks they just found out and also mention how confident they are in their result. And while this works, it can be quite boring - players love to roll their dice themselves, because it reinforces the feeling of "I did that, it's my PC".

The Double Blind Check is a fun little method that can be used in situations where

• the result of an action is not immediately verifyable
• the result of said action can be graded on a scale if "success" - "partial success" - "failure"
• the dice roll can be read as a binary "hit" or "miss" result (i.e. a Skill Check)

Here's how to do it:

• the player has to know the mechanics, if necessary, explain them quickly (once the mechanics are known, asking for a "Double Blind Check" should be enough)
• the player rolls the dice and gets either "hit" or "miss" (if the DC is secret, the player still knows whether they rolled high or low and the DM knows the "hit" or "miss" result)
• the DM rolls the same dice again behind the screen and gets "hit" or "miss"
• the overall result is:
  • "hit" + "hit": success (i.e. the PC obtains a true information)
  • "hit" + "miss": partial success (i.e. the PC obtains a half-truth)
  • "miss" + "miss": failure (i.e. the PC obtains a complete falsehood or simply finds nothing at all)

Since the player only knows the result of one roll, they can guess at the overall quality ("hit": It can't be completelty wrong; "miss": It can't be completetly right) but don't know exactly how reliable their result is.

This creates a nice layer of uncertainty where players don't treat information obtained with a succesful check as gospel, yet still can influence the result with their own rolls.

Doom Pool Charge-Up

(Source: Everyone - countless DMs have come up with similar stuff)

Common boss fight scenario: There's a bunch of minions, but as long as the BBEG remains undisturbed, they can tap into the Demon Prince's ritual circle / keep consuming the captured spirit / go Super Sayan.

Instead of constantly narrating how the BBEG gets stronger / more dangerous, use tokens. Every other round, put a new token next to a starting pile of doom tokens. Every other other round, put said token onto the pile itself.

It doesn't matter what the tokens actually represent mechanically - passive bonuses, inspiration charges, Fate Points, whatever. The simple act of moving a token every round represents a clear and growing threat.

Deck of Dread

(Source: An old inofficial module for The Dark Eye, can't remember the name anymore)

This is a method of handling (and handing out) dread to the players in a horror scenario where the players only know that Something Bad^TM is slowly happening/being done to them. The slow accumulation of a curse in a haunted place is a perfect example.

(The original adventure was about a haunted castle where the resident powerful spirit would regularly devour part of the PCs "Soul Energy")

The key distinction is that the players know that they're accumulating something dreadful/negative, but they don't know what it is, mechanically speaking.

What the adventure suggested (and what I did) was to take a standard deck of cards and remove all the red cards from it, leaving only black cards in it, because that fit the theme of a horror adventure. And whenever the Bad Stuff^TM happened/was done to the PCs (after a certain amount of time, whenever they fail a Will Save, whatever you decide), I gave them a card fromt the deck and asked them to keep it for now. I also described a strong, momentary feeling of dread and hopelessnes that their characters felt. That's all I did.

And the player started dreading the damn things. Not knowing what happens, not feeling in control, is an excellent source of horror.

In the end, I don't even remember what the cards actually represented. Might be that I allowed the PCs to get rid of them after they'd defeated the spirit. Might be that I defined a negative consequence and how they might get rid of it (waiting it out, getting cleansed in a temple, whatever). It was decades ago. The point is, it doesn't matter. Handing them out at the table, that was the point of the mechanic - and it worked excellently.

The Unreliable Narrator

(Source: An old DM of mine, don't know their reddit handle)

For DMs, possessing or magically dominating PCs can be a brilliant tool. For the affected player, it sucks. No matter how you handle it - turn the PC into an NPC temporarily, hand over folded pieces of paper with explicit orders - it drains all the joy out of one of the core concepts of playing your PC the way you want.

For a possession plot involving a cursed dagger, an old DM of mine invented (or found somewhere) a brilliant Metagame Special Effect: "This isn't what happened".

The player of the affected PC got to play their character as normal for the whole evening: Interact with the party, go shopping, and while alone, killing some crazed assailants that simply wouldn't retreat. It was a brilliant short fight, played and diced right at the table in front of everyone.

Except we later found out that it never happened. What we did find were shocked witnesses describing a suspiciously familiar PC going on a murderous rampage in a public park. It was a genuinely awesome, terrifying moment because no one had seen it coming.

A few caveats for using this trick:

• do not "retcon" more than a few occasional scenes for one or two PCs and leave major decision points / victories "untouched" - the "it was all just a dream" trope is universally hated for a reason
• once the players know what's up, wrap up your use of this method quickly and don't touch it (with these players) for a long time - trust in the DM and the illusion of choice are essential for a good RPG experience

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So - what Metagame Special Effects do you use? Or know about and consider using if the appropriate scenario ever comes up?

Submitted December 12, 2019 at 05:47PM by foyrkopp https://ift.tt/2RLFK7G