Pace And Other Systems….. - Evil Hat Productions

5: Concerns for the GMPlayers and Their PipsPips are a pretty powerful resource, and the playersusually have the means to provide themselveswith them as needed.Encourage deficit spending; sure, any healthilyparanoid player will look at you with suspicion,but they should also know that youll make a goodstory for them with those pips in your hands.Dont be afraid to do deficit spending yourself.The mechanic is there so your villains can succeedwhere they need to, even if it ends up leavingthe heroes in a stronger position. Do beafraid to overdo it, though; if you deficit spendoften enough to consistently undercut the playersexpenditures of real pips, youll probably endup generating some resentment.PACEIn the meantime, if youre looking for something toreward your players with from session to session,pips are your answer. Keep the awards small allthe same; a few extra pips in the hand can makea big psychological difference in terms of whethera player decides to spend or conserve.Non-Player CharactersThere are three fuzzy categories of NPCs outthere, mainly in terms relative to the PCs.Lackeys and mooks will tend to have descriptorratings that are at least one or two shy of the bestof the PCs. At the least, this guarantees that thePCs can fairly easily outclass them with minorexpenditures of pips. These NPCs may also oftenbe thinly characterized, with only a single descriptorto their name (City-Guard[2]).If youre giving players pips outside of a deficitscenario, be sure you know exactly why maybeyoure planning on this adventure being tougherthan usual (some guidelines on that below), ormaybe they overcame a challenge particularlyhandily and should be getting rewarded for that.My main point being, dont do it willy-nilly. Pipsare story power, and are best and most valued when earned.Notions of AdvancementAdmittedly, Pace is not a game rife with possibilitiesof advancement. The system is simple, thin,and has certain issues of granularity that couldmake for problems when trying to give out experience.Characters should gain potency in their descriptorsonly very slowly. If youre the kind of GM thatdivides her adventures up into story arcs spanningmultiple sessions, then its at the conclusion ofthose arcs that PCs should have the possibility ofgaining a single point of potency.Generally they will come into a scene for a specificpurpose, and if they are called on to dosomething outside of that purpose, theyll likely failat it, since its unlikely their descriptor will coverit, and spending pips on them is a dubious investmentat best.The next category is made of those who are PCcompetitive, often referred to as named characters.Their total descriptor potency is about onpar with the PCs.To ensure that some differences of potential arepossible when these NPCs come into contests withyour PCs, you may wish to deliberately seek outa different distribution of potency in their descriptors.If you have a lot of spiked PCs (6 and 1, 5and 2), going for a balanced NPC (3 and 4)could be a good idea. The opposite is true aswell. If your PCs are a mix, thats fine thinkabout which PCs your NPC is liable to come intostrongest conflict with, and make his descriptors aresponse to the PCs.14