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What's the difference between keys where the awards are in increments of 1/3 and 1/2/5? Motivations. When the motivation is fulfilled in play, gain an experience point. When the motivation is fulfilled against good odds, gain three experience points. Everything else. When the Key comes up in play, gain an experience point. When the Key presents a minor problem, gain two experience points. When it presents a major problem, gain five experience points. (Clinton Nixon) Eero Tuovinen: The difference is mostly in the means the player will utilize to trigger the key, obviously. Take my favourite example, vampires:
Key of vampire hate
1xp: the character acts on his hate
3xp: the character suffers because of vampires
buyoff: the character forgives a vampire
Key of the vampire hunter
1xp: the character is in a scene with vampires
2xp: the character fights vampires
5xp: the character destroys a vampire
buyoff: the character becomes a vampire or forgets their existence
Now, how do you score those keys? You'll note that while the motivation key directly concerns character experience (how the character views the world, specifically), the dramatic key is only interested in concrete events in the fiction. If you choose to have the motivational key, your best route is to open up your character to the other players and show how his actions are tied to his hate, how it's all part of it - even if there's no vampires in the story! The dramatic key, on the other hand, absolutely requires you to have vampires, and won't work without GM support. They're pretty different in what they do.
The natural question to ask is, of course, why the two key types have different reward profiles. For the most part you could well have them be identical, but I at least like the difference: motivations are ever-existing, so it's appropriate that their efficient use is predicated on constant harping and prodding of the motivation; I refer to the ability to activate the 1xp reward however many times you want, of course. Likewise, the big 5xp reward you get from a dramatic key is, indeed, dramatic. Those two differences give the key types their character.
Overall I'd like to emphasize that this key difference is not a big thing in the rules, at least to me. It's a nice additional option, but by no means crucial. I've been thinking that I probably should make the dramatic key the default type when playing with newbies, and introduce the motivation key as an "advanced option" after a couple of sessions. Usually it seems to me that new players have more difficulty in milking the motivations for xp, you see.
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