Opinions on the Inspiration mechanic?

[Bjarkmundur]

One of my players has practically been begging to have an inspiration system introduced. I've now been spending some time working on its implementation, and was hoping you could maybe give me a few pointers.

My current group is my first experience with 5e. I'm currently and constantly compiling tweaks and requests to apply to my next game. Inspiration is one of the addition I'm most looking forward to.

I also decided to add a secondary reward, which is the loot pool (see below). I can imagine the group rolling a bucketfull of d4s and having a blast. Rolling a ridiculous amount of dice is fun when used sparingly :)

Can you take a look at how I'm setting up inspiration and tell me if I'm missing anything? Is there a glaring oversight?

Can this be made more fun ?


Inspiration
Players are rewarded for the gaming equivalent of “sportsman's like behaviour” where other rewards don't apply. An Inspiration is a 1d4 that can be added onto any roll. A player can only have one inspiration at a time, and he can expend his inspiration to add the die to the result of any dice roll. You can choose to roll inspiration after you know the result of a roll.

Rewarded behaviour consists of, but is not limited to

Prioritizing narrative over mechanics
Coming prepared to a session
Bringing snacks/drink/offering to chauffeur players to or from sessions.
Special notice is made of any sub-optimal course of action made to maintain immersion in the narrative.
Engaging the narrative
Being Proactive within the narrative, and actively reaching for your character's goals.
Increase immersion with creative descriptions of one's actions, thoughts, senses and experiences.
Engaging in minor-world building, in or outside of sessions.
Offering to track various information, such as map drawing, player economy, in-game connections, Loot Dice count, consumables and goals-in-progress.
In game selfless acts.

Loot Dice:
Whenever an inspiration is awarded, a loot dice is added to the loot pool. Whenever a major direct conflict is resolved, or a goal is reached, the loot pool comes into play! Minor rewards are dictated by the number of loot dice, while major loot is the rolled outcome of all accumulated loot dice. The minimum number of loot dice in the pool is equal to the group's level, and how the number affects the loot is decided by the DM. A group of goblins might carry silver pieces, a band of thieving merchant might carry gold pieces (1 gold = 10 silver), and a dragon's hoard might contain of platinum pieces equal to the rolled outcome of the pool (1 platinum = 100 silver). The pool resets at the end of each session.

Please save the "why do it" and "don't do it" posts. I don't want this to become a discussion of the pros and cons of Inspiration system, but much rather different ways to implement it and how to implement it correctly. I just want to make sure I'm using the most effective version of it for its intent.

a) Help the group focus on the narrative, creating an enjoyable experience for the group as a whole, reward players for using character knowledge over player knowledge.
b) Introduce a predictive and reliable player economy.

Do you use inspiration in your group? Do you give any other rewards for good RP and positive behaviour at the table?

[Aaedimus]

I think it's underused. It can be used to support role playing and those having unique ideas, and advantage really isn't that game changing

[Laserlight]

I'm not using it yet with my current group because two of them are noobs and I don't want the learning curve to be steeper than necessary. With my regular group, yeah, I generally give everyone an Inspiration at the start of the session and I hand out a few more during it. I let anyone pay for anyone else's reroll. (Forex, Tom is making a save, Jesse can throw in an Inspiration to help). Only 1 Inspiration per attempt. (If Jesse paid one, Kris can't pay another one for the same roll).
And the DM gets a few Inspiration points too.

[Corran]

Do you use inspiration in your group? Do you give any other rewards for good RP and positive behaviour at the table?
Rarely. I avoid using it because I detest the mechanic. It's a big cliché phrase, but good rp and positive behavior are their own reward. If I am dm'ing, I don't want to influence a player's rp by giving them biscuits when the rp they do happens to particularly entertain me. When I am a player, I don't want to be tempted to ever rely on extra dice, because that might tempt me aligning my roleplaying to first please the DM and secondarily me, and I don't want that. I prefer to play dnd more like a game of consequences and as less as possible like a reward based (social) system.

[Griswold]

I feel like Inspiration is sort of a half-baked version of Fate points (from the Fate RPG).

I'd like to see something which was more in line with that:

Inspiration points, i.e. you can have more than one of it at a time. And you start with 2 or 3.
You can get inspiration by having one of your traits (ideals, bonds, or flaws) cause a complication (and you can explicitly suggest complications to the DM
Inspiration points need to be spent by tagging one of your traits, rather than just whenever.
When you do tag the trait, you can choose to either reroll or get a +4 to the roll.
Inspiration points can also be used to ask the DM to change something about a scene or bend the rules a bit, that you might ask for to get some sort of advantage. "Is there anything to hide behind?" "Maybe if you spent a point of inspiration..."
Have more integration into the game, like some feats or class abilities which trigger off of inspiration, or get you inspiration. Perhaps the Champion Fighter should get a point of inspiration every time they roll a 1 on an attack (or a save?) during combat. Maybe the assassin can spend a point of inspiration to make an opponent which they are hidden from count as being surprised.

[Tanarii]

I use it.

Players (in general) aren't very good at remembering to spend it. But that was a problem in 4e with Action Points too. It's kind of weird, because players will go to extremes to find ways to get advantage using spells or class abilities, and still forget the have inspiration. I have to periodically remind them they've got a poker chip right in front of them, do they want to spend it.

Same thing happens with Bless or Bardic Inspiration or the like. The person granting the benefit has to watch like a hawk and remind the other player they get the benefit. Like ... how can you forget you got to add +1d4 to your attack roll for every combat so far this session, and it probably applies to this one too?

On the DM side, I find it hard to remember what personality traits (Personality, Ideal, Bond, Flaw) the players have to reward them, because I have different players and charcaters every session. It'd probably be much easier if I had a single group of players with one character each.

Otoh I do have some players that are both good at using inspiration, and perfectly willing to asking for inspiration for playing their traits when appropriate. And I like the latter, it brings the traits and their effect on decision making (aka Roleplaying) into the open for the entire table to see clearly.

IMO one way to make it feel more holistic and less forgotten is what Angry DM suggests: immediate benefit. Instead of getting a point that the player banks to spend later, just give advantage when an action plays to a trait. Downside is it would make it much harder to get advantage on attack rolls, unless the player tailored their traits pretty carefully.

[MeeposFire]

I use it.

Players (in general) aren't very good at remembering to spend it. But that was a problem in 4e with Action Points too. It's kind of weird, because players will go to extremes to find ways to get advantage using spells or class abilities, and still forget the have inspiration. I have to periodically remind them they've got a poker chip right in front of them, do they want to spend it.

Same thing happens with Bless or Bardic Inspiration or the like. The person granting the benefit has to watch like a hawk and remind the other player they get the benefit. Like ... how can you forget you got to add +1d4 to your attack roll for every combat so far this session, and it probably applies to this one too?

On the DM side, I find it hard to remember what personality traits (Personality, Ideal, Bond, Flaw) the players have to reward them, because I have different players and charcaters every session. It'd probably be much easier if I had a single group of players with one character each.

Otoh I do have some players that are both good at using inspiration, and perfectly willing to asking for inspiration for playing their traits when appropriate. And I like the latter, it brings the traits and their effect on decision making (aka Roleplaying) into the open for the entire table to see clearly.

IMO one way to make it feel more holistic and less forgotten is what Angry DM suggests: immediate benefit. Instead of getting a point that the player banks to spend later, just give advantage when an action plays to a trait. Downside is it would make it much harder to get advantage on attack rolls, unless the player tailored their traits pretty carefully.

I suppose a DM could keep track of the times they would hand out inspiration and then use it spontaneously for the player's benefit during combat. Players may not know why they get it but you could certainly let them know that it was from a previous act that they did. I guess you could look at it sort of like RP karma or some such.

[Tanarii]

I suppose a DM could keep track of the times they would hand out inspiration and then use it spontaneously for the player's benefit during combat. Players may not know why they get it but you could certainly let them know that it was from a previous act that they did. I guess you could look at it sort of like RP karma or some such.
I've got enough to keep track of, I'd rather it be a resource the players spend. I'm also happier if it be something the players keep track of to request in the first place.

I dislike systems that award XP based on actions in game long past for the same reason. I never liked it in palladium for example. Tallying it up from encounters defeated and total treasure recovered is simple.

Personality traits are useful for players playing their charcaters, and I think it's a great idea to tie something mechanical to them. Is just that anything that increases the burden on an already overloaded DM is a pita. Same reason I love the 5e ability check system, and (relatively) simple 5e monster stat blocks. I don't have to take time referencing tables or statblock printouts as much.

[Bjarkmundur]

Based on your suggestions I've come up with this:


Read how FATE works, that sounds awesome.
Add inspiration tags on my custom character sheets. Add one or two places where a character might GAIN inspiration and one two places he might EXPEND inspiration.
Try to make the reward as immediate as possible, for example timing the rewarded inspiration die just before a roll, so it can be used right away.