Variation 13: Peril Points

Peril Points (MGME2 pgs. 170 - 171)

Return to ToC

There are many ways of playing RPGs. In older games dating back to the '70s and '80 everything depended on your dice luck and ingenuity, when a character got in a tight squeeze, but Shadowrjun 1st edition you had the option of using Karma points (also used to improve a character) to reroll dice. Then the White Wolf Storyteller system allowed the use of Willpower points to add automatic success, and from that point on quite a few games had some sort of point based system to pull a characters fat from the fryer.

(Mythic Dad here. If there are older games that allowed PC initiated game alteration drop me a line in the comments section. I am no game historian)

In MGME2 peril points are suggested as a limited point system that could be used to offer a way out of character, or game, ending circumstances. It is a short section and a quick read, but it introduces a useful narrative tool.

The differ from Favor Points, found in the Mythic RPG, which were a total of points that could be used to shift rolls. This takes things from a numeric approach to a narrative approach, more fitting perhaps for a GM Emulator.

A quick read of the article shows that the point isn't to ease a character through an adventure, but so that the character doesn't just fall down a pit trap and die in the first encounter (looking at you Keep on the Borderlands). 

Though Peril Points don't show up in Mythic Magazine articles, the point of them, controlling an adventure to reach a satisfactory conclusion, makes an appearance several times.

• “Using Mythic With Published Adventures”

• MM Vol. 3, pg. 4

In this article we see how to balance encounters for solo characters in pre-published adventures. This of course makes them more survivable for the solo character. The same principles can be applied if you are using a system that has a group expectation.

• “Customizing A Solo Adventure Before You Begin”

• MM Vol. 7, pg. 4

In the "Customizing" article on pg. 9 it has a very useful section on asking the right questions. This is a very good way to steer an adventure that is going off the tracks. It points out that Yes answers and No answers are not opposites. They both could give RP opportunities (and an escape hatch, even if one escape is bumpier than the other.)

• “Conclusive Adventure Conclusions”

• MM Vol. 20, pg. 3

The article above is about conclusions. It presupposes that your character survived long enough to have one. It gives guidelines for making an ending, maybe even a fatal ending, meaningful.

• “Solo Setting & World Creation System”

• MM Vol. 38, pg. 3

In a way I saved the best for last. Pg. 8 has some of the best advice I have ever seen for solo roleplaying. Set up contextual rules. Some games fly out of control because there are no guidelines for the context of the game. One such context is to replace death with consequences. But if you are looking go guide your game to have a specific play experience, even though this is an article about world building, it is one about building within context, and that can be, and maybe should be, applied to any game in which we want to stick to some defined limits.