Savage Worlds Rule Guidance: Bennies Part 2
In Part 1 of this article, I covered what bennies are and how to use them as a player. Today I provide a system for Game Masters to handle giving out bennies, as well as various house rules.
Game Master Advice
As a rule, you should give three to five bennies to each player each session (assuming a session of four or more hours), though this will change depending on the tone of the campaign. Fewer bennies means a grittier, more dangerous game, where more bennies leads to a very pulpy game. Many Game Masters see this baseline as being rather high, but I suggest you start high and adjust to taste.
As a Game Master, you can help prevent player hoarding or overspending of bennies by carefully managing the number you give to players, but at the same time they are a great reward to give players. Here are some tips for keeping a smooth benny economy:
- Use physical tokens to represent bennies. All the advice that follows is reinforced when you hand the physical benny to someone. Make the action of giving a benny overt. Poker chips work very well and fit the feel of the game, but cards, glass beads, or polished stones can work just as well. You can even find or make custom bennies for a particular setting or campaign to enhance verisimilitude.
- Give one benny per encounter to each player. Choose to give this out either at the beginning or the end of the encounter, but be consistent once you’ve made the choice. This same advice holds true for any non-combat scene that involves a lot of rolling. This ensures that the players have a steady flow of bennies that they can count on. Of course, you shouldn’t give our bennies for really easy encounters, lest the players wind up with a thick pile of them, making future encounters too easy.
- Take pity when bad luck strikes. Sometimes the dice really hate your players, and the only way they succeed or survive is to blow through their bennies. If this happens, give everyone some extra. In essence, you can use bennies to help balance out bad streaks and keep the game fun. Still, don’t do this until it’s obvious that the players are struggling. This should never be a common occurrence.
- Use your GM bennies, especially to soak damage or have wild cards recover from shaken on their turn. This helps remind players that they can do the same thing, but it also allows you to raise the difficulty of a challenge when the dice truly love your players. They can also be used to make your boss fights more difficult.
- Give extra bennies as a reward for behavior you want to reinforce, whether it be good roleplaying, playing up hindrances, or a vivid description. Every campaign has it’s own tone. In a lighthearted game, you might give a benny for a witty remark, but in a gritty, serious game, you should reward someone who plays the dark tone to the disadvantage of their character. Other reasons to reward bennies include doing something cool, clever planning, or just about anything that adds positively to the game.
- Don’t hold every player to the same standard. An experienced roleplayer with a strong personality should work harder for a benny than a newcomer or typically shy player. Rewards don’t have to be equal so long as you’re giving out a steady minimum of bennies. Rewards are to encourage improvement in players and in the game. Make them earn them, then proudly give the reward.
- Limit bennies for hoarders. It’s alright for players to be frugal with their bennies, but if a character starts to amass a pile because they aren’t using them, subtly avoid giving them any additional. A player with too many bennies during the big boss fight will outshine the other players at the very them when you want them all to feel important.
- Take Edges and Hindrances into consideration. A player who took the Lucky edge, which grants an additional benny each session, should also receive more bennies during play. Similarly, a character who took the Unlucky hindrance should occasionally be denied a benny when everyone else receives one. In both cases, do this approximately a third of the time, and make sure to mention why you are doing. This will make your game more fair and reinforce the effect of Edge and Hindrance choices.
Common House Rules
Bennies are one part of the rules that people seem to love to play around with. but several house rules seem to crop up regularly.
- No Re-rolling Snake Eyes. Many groups do not allow bennies to be spent to re-roll Snake Eyes, seeing this as the price wild cards suffer for having the wild die. Alternatively, you can allow a re-roll of Snake Eyes, but require that it cost two bennies. Some game masters even give players bennies when they roll snake eyes.
- Give a benny when a GM benny is used. Essentially, when the Game Master spends a benny, he gives it to another player, usually the one it most directly affects.
- A true benny economy. As an extension of the previous idea, player bennies, when spent, are given to the Game Master to use. In this setup, there are a finite number of bennies in the game, and they simply pass back and forth among the players. If someone hoards bennies, he is actively denying them to others, but spending bennies empowers your enemies.
- The Golden Benny. This is a special player benny that can be given to another player at will (this normally can’t be done without the Common Bond edge).
- The Super Benny. This can take many forms, but essentially there is a single benny that does something very powerful, such as an automatic success with a raise. The Game Master can reward this to someone, or perhaps it gets passed to a new player when spent or is handled like the true benny economy above.
- Cookie Bennies. Use cookies as your bennies. When you spend it, you eat it. This will prevent hoarding, but there are other consequences.
Have I missed anything? Got a killer house rule you can share? Let us know!
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