One of the key rules we use in the Reavers on the Seas of Fate campaign is Infamy Points, colloquially called “gold coins” because I hand out actual replica pirate coins to represent them.
I asked for feedback on hero point mechanics prior to the campaign starting, and then I had posted them quietly on one of the Reavers pages but never really talked about them. Recently, Paizo has started to unveil their “new take” on Mythic rules in Pathfinder 2e and it seems like a step in the right direction, but still a little fiddlier than it should be.
Infamy Points (2 page pdf) in my piracy-oriented Pathfinder game are gained rarely, by performing significant acts of derring-do that get the populace’s attention. They don’t have to be “evil”, but do have to be “dangerous and badass” (a paladin who killed an apartment building full of criminals is as scary as someone who just mass murdered; no one wants to hang out with Judge Dredd). You get one a level, and one each time you do something super notorious – not every game session, not tied to “completing an adventure”, you have to do something really badass. Maybe that’s once every 4 sessions, maybe less if you don’t have a local populace to impress.
I have a list of things they can be used for but over time it’s basically boiled down to “anything.” Spend a coin, tell me what you want to happen. This is a big level up from the usual “Inspiration” type mechanics you see in D&D and D&D clones. “Oh you can add a couple points to your roll!” “Oh, you can reroll it, but before you know the result!” A bunch of fiddly crap if you ask me – kinda OK if you get a fistful per game session but if you only get it once in a while (like 5e inspiration) – why are you so afraid of making it powerful?
Get out of death? Sure. (Proactively you get off scot free, if you do it reactively after you already took the death blow I give some kind of drawback – like Sindawe lost an eye after being critted through the head with a rapier). Save someone else from death? Sure. (It’s a pirate campaign so this is a great source of people needing peglegs, hooks, and eyepatches.) Just take out some goon? Sure. I don’t let them take out a major villain with it but “they cackle and run off” or something is fine. Change the narrative somehow? Super! Oh the guy that runs this bar is your old buddy? Why not.
This is a place where I feel like D&D/Pathfinder has been too conservative – there are plenty of games out there that let you use actual narrative control but here everyone argues about “oh but if you can decide to roll inspiration afterwards it’s so powerful“…
Because, you see, here’s the secret. It’s not a tool for the players, it’s a tool for the GM. Whoops, you unleashed something too hard on the PCs and their ship is about to get eaten by a shoggoth? Well, they spend an infamy point and look there’s another nearby ship they can speed by and have the shoggoth eat them instead. The PCs are finding a plot thread boring? They short-circuit it. In Reavers, Sindawe had set up in his background a whole thing about his family so later I have his long-lost brother show up to fight him in a shark cult temple – “I kill him. Here’s an Infamy Point.” Uh, OK – I was surprised, I thought that was something he wanted, but this gave him a way to say “nope” that has his character come out well in the fiction, so fine!
Also, getting them is based on interacting with society ™, and it’s always good to promote that. Heck, my PCs use these rare and valuable things on saving their favorite NPCs fairly commonly!
So don’t be afraid of letting your PCs thwart death and accomplish things. A limited powerful narrative currency is IMO much better than fiddly ass shit like action points (add a 1d6 to a roll if you declare it before you roll! You get 1d8 of them a level! Please.)
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