[Solar System] About Gift Dice

[Paolo D.]

These days, I'm going to play one Solar System and one TWoN campaign. In each of them, we are using the Gift Dice optional rule: in the first group, to "attune" our play preferences (mostly, we never played together); in the second group, more to encourage a shy player, to be true. :-)

I had some trouble understanding how it works exactly: it's like the Fanmail of Primetime Adventures, where you get the fanmail and you spend it later for a bonus? Or it's something different?

Thanks for the attention, and eventually sorry for the english... ;-)

[Eero Tuovinen]

Ah, perhaps this isn't as explicit as it should be in the text. The Gift Dice are usually tracked by chips of some sort. A player can expend a Gift Die to give another player a bonus die to a single Ability check. So the receiver of the gift doesn't get to store up the Gift Dice or anything like that - the gift giver determines when and where the dice are used. Aside from that the mechanic is similar to Fan Mail in many ways.

Also: be sure to tell us about your play once you get it under way. I'm especially interested in TSoY campaigns that use the World of Near - there's a lot of ideas in that book that I'd love to see adapted to use by other people!

[Simon JB]

Also, you could spend your gift dice to give an npc opponent a bonus die as well. My group does that a lot when we get excited about the coolness of some conflict and feel that it would be more interesting to se our fellow player loose! :)

Experiment with how many gift dice are right for you as well. We started with every player getting as many gift dice as players around the table, but these days we only get one gift die per person. Turned out to work better for us.

[Paolo D.]

Ok it's clear now. Thanks a lot!

We're using the Gift Dice in a TWoN campaign in Ammeni, and in a SS campaign based on Star Wars KOTOR. With the first, we'll start in a few days: I'll let you know how goes it with an AP of some sort. ;-)

[Simon JB]

Great, do that!