Some NPCs have moxie, its typically a pretty low number (1-3) though, because generally they don't stick around as long as PCs, so giving them a lot is disproportionately powerful. High moxie NPCs make really strong enemies though, the From Blinding Heights adventures have some Moxie, reliant NPCs in them. That said, there are a lot of games which use GM narrative tokens of one kind of another, like Doom Die and such, so its not unprecedented, nor does in imply GM vs players Shadowdragon. If I were to bring it into EP, I'd give a GM moxie point for every moxie point the players use, but not use much beyond that.

I would advice against feature creep. Each extra house rule you add is one more rule you have to remember and keep track of. Just remember that as a GM, you can fudge the dice, change your mind whats around the corner at the last minute, or make something up. If you need justification, you can make it up. Maybe the guard or system admin missed a coffee break and is fighting exhaustion, or maybe the players were chasing an illusion because their mesh inserts got hacked.

Because Moxie does more than make you succeed at failed rolls, and is an expendable resource, especially in combat or hacking. The best way to counter a skilled PC hacker is a skilled sysadmin with Moxie, because critical success is super important in a hack. Moxie has the most uses in combat, and ignoring armor, and generally Fray, going first, or making misses into hits are all very strong abilities which NPCs can totally have access to, but shouldn't be able to do them as much as they want. You can ignore NPC moxie, and just let them use Moxie-like cheats every so often, but the lack of moxie is essentially semantic at that point.

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So, NPCs should not get much MOX. And by that I mean only Named, Important NPCs should get MOX, and they should never get more than 2, maybe 3-4 if you're talking about the BBEG.

The game designers seem to think otherwise. Personally, I see no harm in having NPCs have Moxie or MOX scores (what, NPCs have no luck? Nuts to that) as per stuff like the NPC file. After all, every PC starts with at least one, right? And there's no magic PC halo in this setting, you are no chosen people. An important factor in the GMs control is that you have no requirement to spend Moxie points, nor should you all the time. However, the inherent nature of random numbers means that PCs can do inordinately well. Spending Moxie on notable or skilled NPCs can seen as them pushing harder when things don't go their way. A good example of this "narrative control" aspect is the Bad Luck trait, too, which I believe is the only thing that gives a GM free floating moxie to spend against a player's rolls (or rolls related to them). Another important factor in giving NPCs at least basic Moxie is just because they're non-players doesn't make them antagonists. Patrons, allies, hirelings and partners need to make rolls too, it can easily make sense for them to have that "moxie" quality too. The last thing is that MOX x10 can be a pretty important roll in mechanical terms. Exsurgent stuff goes flying GM might decide to add some random element to that. Pure fiat has it's own problems in this case, and randomness may be more reflective of what the GM is going for. Giving a GM tools to influence the narrative they're trying to convey or the beats they're trying to hit is not antagonism. In fact, I think it's more balanced if the GM must spend limited resources to do so besides just make more shit up.

ShadowDragon8685 wrote:

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A good example of this "narrative control" aspect is the Bad Luck trait, too, which I believe is the only thing that gives a GM free floating moxie to spend against a player's rolls (or rolls related to them).

That trait could be worth 500 points and I wouldn't fucking take it.

I agree. I don't think it is a good trait either. It grows in power as the players moxie levels increase which makes raising moxie a bad idea. Moxie is supposed to be good luck or power to control your own destiny, not something that creates equal amount of bad luck. It is a good way to get players to *not use* a game mechanic. Any player who does pick that trait would do well to keep moxie as low as possible. Maybe even go out of their way to get their character hardened as many times as needed so the cap on maximum moxie possible is reduced to 0. At that point, you have 2 penalties cancelling each other out, which should show that the rule system isn't perfect.

Trappedinwikipedia wrote:

Read NPC file 1. Every single stat block except for the security dog has at least 1 Moxie. Most have 1-2, the most is 6 I think (Immortal Oligarch). Basically every NPC which isn't a ALI or partial uplift should probably have Moxie.

Wow, really? That's fucking insane. Giving every single mook the ability to say "Nah, your good roll doesn't matter, here have an extra helping of lead?" That's shitty. Super-shitty. So shitty I question whether that's intended or a mistake made by rigorously making these NPCs to PC chargen guidelines.

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As for the Bad Luck trait, it's a 30CP negative trait, in the same category as Subverted Mind. Those one's are never worth taking IMO, unless you want to mess around with some bad stuff. They're basically there as traps I think.

Yeah. Like I said, it could be 500 points and I wouldn't take it.

ORCACommander wrote:

Just because its in the stat block does not mean it needs to be used. Further NPC prime is meant to give you a bunch of templates to use. Nothing is stopping me from the power of handwavium to turn generic npc on page 23 into a named character.

Sure, if that generic NPC becomes a Named Character, somehow, then they should get Moxie, because they're now important. They shouldn't have [i]much[/i], of course, because they're not that special, but they should have some.

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Further iirc there are 3 different ways to use moxie. not just ignore a die roll

No, but my point was that if an antagonistic NPC is using Moxie, it's going to be to the player's detriment nine times out of ten, which I feel is inappropriate given that the players are already taking the risks inherent with far-greater exposure to RNGesus that comes inherent to being a Player Character.

Yeah, Moxie is definitely going to be a thing in my future NPCs. Say what you will about it being anti-player, the fact is players wipe the floor with most enemies. If it can make a battle against a named NPC last an extra round or two and be more dramatic, I'm all for it. Trapped, thank you for reminding me that you can use Moxie to jump in initiative. That's super powerful for the enemy, and players pretty much never do it. Half of combat in EP is getting to go first.

God forbid the game be interesting, with actual risk of failure.

I think they had already mentioned that they were only planning to use it for named NPCs. Which is a pretty common sense convention. Security Drone R01-00C-7380-1290 doesn't need Moxie. There's plenty more where he came from, and using Moxie to fiddle with his dice rolls would just disrupt the flow of play. The Big Bad nemesis on the other hand could use a few points, just to make him that much more of a royal pain in the rear while he cackles and twirls his mustache. Though he might usually use it to make his escape while yelling about how he'll get you next time, if you want him to be a recurring character. Regarding odds of failure in general, the actual odds of a TPK should generally be kept very low regardless of how grim the in-universe odds look. This is because the goal of a pen and paper game is mostly to generate a narrative, and the PCs are Main Characters. The show can't go on without them, and the show must go on, so they must survive. Of course, the definition of a TPK is a little more flexible in Eclipse Phase. As long as they can resleeve and try again it's not technically a wipe. But when you get down to last-chances and the solar system doesn't have time for you to resleeve, you have to start getting a little more cautious about killing PCs off.

MOX is also the GM's way of keeping important NPCs alive (which can be hard in EP) — if you want to be that kind of GM. It's a fair point about MOX on the mooks in NPC File, though. That might be something we should revisit on a revision.

It really boils down to the fact that the NPCs don't use the same rules as the PCs. If an NPC is making an “independent” roll, then you're using the dice to select which of a set of acceptable outcomes occurs. If you use moxie to change the roll then there's only one acceptable outcome, so you don't need to roll. The only time moxie should ever be relevant is when the NPC is rolling in direct opposition to the PCs, which 99% of the tie will be in combat.

ShadowDragon8685 wrote:

And the more random die rolls you make, or are made against you, the greater the likelihood of ridiculous, improbable, and asinine dice rolls happening, like when the Infosec guy with an adjusted modifier of over 100 is rolling Infosec to crack into a hypercorporate system, literally can't fail which is good because if he [i]does[/i] fail, the hostile IC will pinpoint his whole team and Reapers will be dispatched, and then he rolls a fucking natural 1 on a d100 roll.

I wouldn't agree with this either, exactly – if an outcome of a roll would be detrimental to the story, then it simply shouldn't be an option. If the Hacker failing would break the story, then he can't fail, or at least, not in that manner. He may only get a part of the information he wants, or he manage to put a delay on the alarm, or trigger an alarm but conceal his location... failure should mean more difficulties, obstacles or twists down the line, rather than a flat game-over. This also applies if success would be a problem – they get something useful or an obstacle goes away, but the game keeps running. What the PCs can and can't do is always subject to GM fiat.

MAD Crab wrote:

God forbid the game be interesting, with actual risk of failure.

ORCACommander wrote:

Every scenario needs a risk of failure to create gravity and drama for the situation. That risk of failure should not hinge on a single die roll but as a GM for this setting you should have to broad outcomes, One for failure and one for success. To do otherwise is to pander to power fantasy.

The possibility of failure should always be present, but that failure needs to be dramatically appropriate. The characters always get to the end of the story – it's the nature of that end which is in question.

MAD Crab wrote:

What's supposed to be a super competent, plot central bad guy fumbles so badly that he dies to the unarmed neotenic? As the GM I'm getting robbed, and so are the players.

This should never, [i]ever[/i] be a possibility. If your BBEG needs to survive, then he survives. Giving him Moxie means he will have a greater effect on the PCs, or sticks around longer, but ultimately he will either win or retreat to fight another day.

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The possibility of failure should always be present, but that failure needs to be dramatically appropriate. The characters always get to the end of the story – it's the nature of that end which is in question.

This is a pretty meaningless statement. The end of the story can be "the firewall team got compromised and killed by reapers" now you've got to deal with the fallout of whatever you were trying to stop, likely from backup. If you're carefully curating how the game can end, and what bad things are allowed to happen by what you deem "dramatically appropriate" you should write a book, as the players are being robbed of agency. They aren't allowed to fail, unless you say so. You're basically reading them a story and letting them roll dice every so often at that point, and once they cotton on to how safe they are, they game will be a lot less interesting for them. Additionally, I think people are seriously overestimating the power of Moxie. It isn't a "you auto pass this roll" resource. If you needed a 60, and roll a 67, you *can't pass that check*, as flipping it to a 76 won't help. There's always a decent range of unavoidable failure in the failure range, which means that moxie for roll flipping is generally worse than bonus stacking, which is the primary guard against failure. So in this example of the hacker who needs to penetrate a system or the mission ends, here's what he should really do. Lets say he has Infosec 70, and 6 Moxie which is pretty high. You could just YOLO it and roll, hoping Moxie can save you from a bad roll, but if you fail the mission is over. Now there's a decent set of rolls where you can unavoidably fail (77, 78, 79, 87, 88, 89, 97, 98, 99), and because this is an opposed roll, there's a number of failures which if swapped give you a really low roll, likely meaning failure anyway. (71, 80, 81, 90, 91) Then there's the natural range where you pass, but roll low, and that makes you lose the roll anyway (00-~20) Moxie can't really help you with all of that. So what you really want to do is take time or get help (which is better depends on how much time you have, and who can help you) to get your Infosec to at least 100. With 70 Infosec you can stack enough bonuses to hit 100 while going for admin access. You also probably want to invest in some signal stealthing/bouncing so if you fail the Reapers will need more time to hunt you down. The rest of the group should be focussing on other methods to break in like stealing credentials or whatever. Now that you have a stupid high skill, you can't actually fail this roll, which is about a gorillion times better than spending Moxie on it. It's basically a roll off. You have a couple of options from here. You can roll, and upgrade success to critical success, making you win the opposed check unless the system's guardian has Moxie and matches you. The downside is that you can only spend one Moxie per roll, and if you didn't get exceptional success you won't get the coveted Hidden status. The upside is that if the system's guardian has Moxie, if you upgrade to critical success, they're matching you, while if you opt to flip, and the succeed and upgrade (less guaranteed than you, but it's not hard to get a really high defensive Infosec either) than you auto lose. Once in, the hacker's first move should probably to get whatever they were there for, if they had good enough access, or plant a backdoor if they didn't so they can try again. From a GM's standpoint the Moxie isn't all that important. The physical response time, signal tracing capabilities. and whether the defender has assistance (say from a team of Security ALI) matter a lot more. Of course, the mission should probably not come down to a "win the opposed test or fail everything forever" kind of thing, but that's why the rest of the party is looking at physically sneaking into the server, or finding a sysadmin and spoofing/social engineering/beating with a wrench them. In this case, both the Attacker and Defender in the hack had access to success ranges so high that it's literally a D100 version of war. Whoever rolls higher wins. In an intrusion attempt specifically, if both succeed, the hacker gets in at Spotted status. They'll probably attempt to upgrade status to Covert though, which is a straight opposed test and requires excellent success from the hacker. (further weakening the roll flipping role of Moxie) This is the real straight up roll off. Without Moxie, the defender is very likely to lose: Outcomes: Hacker rolls <30, Defender rolls worse, but passes. A flip might make the hacker win, and might not help. If the defender has Moxie they can upgrade success to crit success, winning the attempt, should the hacker opt to flip. Hacker rolls >30, Defender rolls worse. Hacker wins. If the defender has Moxie they can upgrade success to critical to win, but so can the attacker, gaining Exceptional Critical Success. The defender rolling higher than the hacker has essentially the same outcome options for each. The hacker has more trouble winning this, but the defender likely loses the entire intrusion struggle if they fail. If the defender lacks Moxie, and the attacker has some, they'll lose almost every time. (This is a check which can be attempted multiple times after all) If the hacker has access to multiple complex actions (mental speed/multitasking) they can attempt this while trying to do other stuff though. This can be a useful side strategy to get the defender to expend Moxie of tests which the defender must pass, but the hacker doesn't absolutely have to. My point being, that in cases where both sides have super high skill ratings, NPC Moxie gives the game something more interesting the D100 War to be based on, with some reasonably complex game theory decision making involved. I think that makes the game much more interesting to play, and this is even before Motivations get involved. A hacker with relevant motivations can spend Moxie with great abandon, likely getting Moxie back every few rolls. Something like +Cracking systems or +Outwitting The Man or something can carry a hacker *really* far in this kind of protracted contested hack. Moxie can also make combat more interesting. So, for a TLDR-y conclusion, I think that NPC moxie makes the game much more mechanically interesting in cases where both sides have good or very good chances of success, and provide a way to keep extremely skilled PC's in check without simple GM fiat "You just can't do that" kind of thing. It's definitely worth keeping around, as another layer of play. Moxie is one of the weaker ways to influence success, but no one says that NPCs shouldn't be allowed to take cover or aim actions which help them more.

MAD Crab wrote:

Two things: One, if there was supposed to be certainty in outcome, we wouldn't be rolling dice. Two, you seem to be fixated on this GM vs player thing, which I think says a lot more about you than any of us. I can't imagine a GM actually screwing his players over on a critical roll with NPC moxie. Sure, characters get more rolls than enemies - but as a GM, I go through a hell of a lot more NPCs than there are players. And bullshit rolls happen to the bad guys too. What's supposed to be a super competent, plot central bad guy fumbles so badly that he dies to the unarmed neotenic? As the GM I'm getting robbed, and so are the players.

Re: Certainty in outcome. Then why do people gamble at casinos? If they have a brain in their head, they know damn well the odds are stacked against them and the house always wins. They play because they're chasing the illusion - the statistical improbability that the payouts that slip through the house's fingers will fall on [i]them[/i], not the guy next to them. They play because it's fun. Players do not, generally speaking, want to play a "realistic" game where they fuck-up their spycraft because they are not, in fact, 22nd-century spies, attracting the attention of enemy agents, who then leverage the full force of fully-fledged spy agencies to the inevitable conclusion that leads to the player's character's real lives being compromised, all of them being grabbed, thoroughly interrogated, and then their Firewall handler just burns their backups rather than resleeving them because it's cheaper for the conspiracy to do that than to actually carry through on their promises. Nor do they want to play a game wherein they arrive to investigate $HYPERCORP_BADSTUFF, only to find that $HYPERCORP_BADSTUFF has been fully-rigorous with their security measures and that penetration is impossible short of sending a literal army to shoot their way through all the corpsec, and that even if they did that, said literal army would be delayed long enough for $HYPERCORP_BADSTUFF to erase all the incriminating files and incinerate all the evidence. So, yes. As the GM, your job is to set up the story such that the players can - and, barring retardation on their part, [i]should[/i] - win. Defining "winning" as "achieving their objectives," and you might set things up such that, mid-way through, they may realize that the situation is so FUBAR that they need to revise their objectives to "escape alive and warn Firewall," but the players should never face the "realistic" situation of going up against an enemy who has and is intelligently leveraging massively more information, resources, and capabilities than they can possibly hope to succeed against, who have made no critical blunders that allow the players to find a chink in their armor - because they have mnogo redundant people whose whole jobs it is to find and plug such blunders - etc. Otherwise, it's not much of a game, is it? There's not much story to be had, and reporting back to Firewall to say "it's outright impossible, you're either going to have to send an Erasure team to level the place on a hunch, or sit back and wait for the apocalypse to happen and hope they aren't, in fact, playing with TITAN tech in there," isn't very fun. =-=-=-=-=

ThatWhichNeverWas wrote:

It really boils down to the fact that the NPCs don't use the same rules as the PCs.

There's a problem with this - if the NPCs are [i]obviously[/i] using different rules, then the game breaks down and players start not-having-fun, because the Rules as Written aren't being followed; suddenly the illusion falls apart, and they realize they're just animating semi-autonomous actors in the GM's play.

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If an NPC is making an “independent” roll, then you're using the dice to select which of a set of acceptable outcomes occurs. If you use moxie to change the roll then there's only one acceptable outcome, so you don't need to roll. The only time moxie should ever be relevant is when the NPC is rolling in direct opposition to the PCs, which 99% of the tie will be in combat.

Right. I agree with this statement entirely.

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ShadowDragon8685 wrote:

And the more random die rolls you make, or are made against you, the greater the likelihood of ridiculous, improbable, and asinine dice rolls happening, like when the Infosec guy with an adjusted modifier of over 100 is rolling Infosec to crack into a hypercorporate system, literally can't fail which is good because if he [i]does[/i] fail, the hostile IC will pinpoint his whole team and Reapers will be dispatched, and then he rolls a fucking natural 1 on a d100 roll.

I wouldn't agree with this either, exactly – if an outcome of a roll would be detrimental to the story, then it simply shouldn't be an option.

Except that the rules say you have to roll, and if the GM is going to ignore the results of the roll as interpreted by the rules as written, then you're no longer playing Eclipse Phase, you're on the GM's story-rails, and few players are willing to tolerate that.

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If the Hacker failing would break the story, then he can't fail, or at least, not in that manner. He may only get a part of the information he wants, or he manage to put a delay on the alarm, or trigger an alarm but conceal his location... failure should mean more difficulties, obstacles or twists down the line, rather than a flat game-over. This also applies if success would be a problem – they get something useful or an obstacle goes away, but the game keeps running. What the PCs can and can't do is always subject to GM fiat.

Nothing would make me quit a game faster than the GM exercising overt fiat like that, especially in my disfavor, by saying "Eh, I'm not going to follow the rules as written because that wouldn't suit my story." At that point, I'm like "okay, go fuck yourself, I'm not wasting my time on these rails." Even if the GM is obviously bending the rules in my [b]favor[/b], I'd say that, because it's bullshit, fiat, and not following the Rules As Written. That's what MOX/Fate/Destiny/Force/Action/Edge points are for: to write "the dice gave us a shit result, I'm going to change them using my heroic narrative prerogative." That's why it's okay for named, important NPCs to have MOX/Fate/Destiny/Force/Action/Edge points; because they have a villainous heroic (in the Greek sense) narrative, one which has some ability to force it's way. But when that NPC's MOX is exhausted, they need to go down like a little bitch. Juuust like players do, which is why I always like to pump up those points.

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MAD Crab wrote:

God forbid the game be interesting, with actual risk of failure.

ORCACommander wrote:

Every scenario needs a risk of failure to create gravity and drama for the situation. That risk of failure should not hinge on a single die roll but as a GM for this setting you should have to broad outcomes, One for failure and one for success. To do otherwise is to pander to power fantasy.

The possibility of failure should always be present, but that failure needs to be dramatically appropriate. The characters always get to the end of the story – it's the nature of that end which is in question.

I'm absolutely fine pandering to power fantasy. That's why I tend to pump my players up over "standard" chargen, because in my experience no "standard" chargen generates a character with what I would consider an acceptably heroic level of awesome. That having said, the [i]possibility[/i] of failure should [u]always[/u] be present. Otherwise, there's no point in rolling dice, and if there's no point in rolling dice, the GM should just narrate past it, or have it be something an NPC has already done successfully before handing it off to the PCs to roll with. If the PCs are rolling dice, they should always have the possibility of failing, hard; yet, contradictory to that, there are many rolls where, if the PCs fuck up, the entire adventure, and possibly the campaign, is completely FUBAR. That's what MOX is for. To allow you to take that risk, botch horribly, and recover by expending heroic narrative to force your way.

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MAD Crab wrote:

What's supposed to be a super competent, plot central bad guy fumbles so badly that he dies to the unarmed neotenic? As the GM I'm getting robbed, and so are the players.

This should never, [i]ever[/i] be a possibility. If your BBEG needs to survive, then he survives. Giving him Moxie means he will have a greater effect on the PCs, or sticks around longer, but ultimately he will either win or retreat to fight another day.

I would fucking desert a game if the GM saw the results of the dice roll and said "I don't like what that roll's result is, here's what happens." Because at that point, there's no pretense of following the RAW, which means everything on my character sheet is meaningless; if the rules as written do not dictate actual effect, then we're not playing Eclipse Phase, we're freeform RPing in the Eclipse Phase universe with some jackass telling us what happens. And if I'm going to freeform RP, I don't need a goddamn narrator, I can do a better job narrating than 9/10 GMs I've played with my own goddamn self. That's why super-competent, plot-central bad guys should have Moxie. So they can survive the dice giving them the finger, by grabbing that finger and bending it back until the dice cry uncle. Of course, they shouldn't have [i]much[/i], so if the dice [u]repeatedly[/u] give you the finger, then, well, you as a GM fucking rolling with it. This is a setting with literal character save and restore possibility, so that shouldn't be [i]too[/i] hard on the GM.

MAD Crab wrote:

On the other side, I hate saving bad guys with pure GM fiat. Sure, I can just say that he escapes and the players have to accept it, but frankly the kinds of people who like playing EP are going to resent that a little. Moxie is part of the game, they know it and accept it. It also still leaves an element of chance in, which is fine. I don't need to save every bad guy, I just want to reduce the frequency of players burning through them in one round.

ShadowDragon8685 wrote:

Except that the rules say you have to roll, and if the GM is going to ignore the results of the roll as interpreted by the rules as written, then you're no longer playing Eclipse Phase, you're on the GM's story-rails, and few players are willing to tolerate that. ... Nothing would make me quit a game faster than the GM exercising overt fiat like that, especially in my disfavor, by saying "Eh, I'm not going to follow the rules as written because that wouldn't suit my story." At that point, I'm like "okay, go fuck yourself, I'm not wasting my time on these rails." Even if the GM is obviously bending the rules in my favor, I'd say that, because it's bullshit, fiat, and not following the Rules As Written.

I'm not saying that the GM should just force their will down the player's throat – I don't think [i]any[/i] player would accept that. This sort of thing needs to be 'consistent' with the rules, but the rules aren't the Alpha and Omega of the game – they describe Default which is altered according to circumstance. The BBEG doesn't just survive because the GM doesn't like the roll, he survives because he has unique aSync powers, or rare/unusual technology, or unique morph traits, or otherwise have something about them that makes them [b]special[/b]... and that should be connected to why they're BBEG. Awaken your inner PowerGamer! If the InfoSec character can't fail to hack the system, then it's because the Character is intimately familiar with the system using and knows an exploit, or a friendly has installed a BackDoor which the character can use (at a price), or the good old standby “You got into the system easily... too easily”. It means being upfront that something Special is changing the circumstances, not hand-waving what the character does into insignificance.

Trappedinwikipedia wrote:

This is a pretty meaningless statement. The end of the story can be "the firewall team got compromised and killed by reapers" now you've got to deal with the fallout of whatever you were trying to stop, likely from backup. If you're carefully curating how the game can end, and what bad things are allowed to happen by what you deem "dramatically appropriate" you should write a book, as the players are being robbed of agency. They aren't allowed to fail, unless you say so. You're basically reading them a story and letting them roll dice every so often at that point, and once they cotton on to how safe they are, they game will be a lot less interesting for them.

There's a big difference between restricting possibilities and denying player agency. Imagine you have a group which needs to infiltrate a secret base, and to get there they need to climb a mountain or cliff. They get there, start climbing/flying/whatever, fail their rolls and all die from falling damage. So they resleeve, but nothing's changed. They still have to go off scale the cliff. In this case death isn't an appropriate possibility because it doesn't add anything to the game, except eat time and annoy the players. On the other hand, if failing the tests means losing gear or taking wound penalties, then it becomes a meaningful possibility that effects the plot. It's an odd little tautology – if I send Reapers to kill the PCs then I'm okay with them being killed by Reapers, because there are consequences for them to deal with. If there aren't because whatever's going on is too subtle, long term or whatever, then the game/story [i]stops[/i].

ShadowDragon8685 wrote:

There's a problem with this - if the NPCs are obviously using different rules, then the game breaks down and players start not-having-fun, because the Rules as Written aren't being followed; suddenly the illusion falls apart, and they realize they're just animating semi-autonomous actors in the GM's play.

UnitOmega wrote:

We can argue about the philosophy of PCs being the focus of a story and how that relates to both the game as a meta-construct and the setting, but that's not really what this started as about. … It's like talking about the divide between "named, important" NPCs. To me, all NPCs you spend more than five minutes talking with should have names. That's a verisimilitude thing I've learned from other game systems. People have names, and treating everyone as faceless drones is not appropriate for every story (though I'm sure some Firewall Sentinels see it that way). To me, having a name is no particular sign of import - but that NPC is still a person in the world, and if it comes to it, maybe they have some of that fundamental spark-of-life in 'em too, just like PCs?

It doesn't matter if the NPCs have a “spark of life”, or are “people” in the setting. It's a simple fact (and this is what I was refering to by 'different rules') that PCs are always “Onscreen” whilst NPCs only turn up for a few minutes, and are usually gone forever afterwards. Even if the NPC “should” have moxie, chances are they will have used it for something else when the PCs weren't there. On the flip side, there's absolutely no reason for an NPC to “not” use a resource because they will essentially cease to exist once their interaction with the PCs is concluded. A Named/Important NPC is one that is going to be around long enough that them having resources or personalities will have an effect on the game – if Jim the Security Guard's dark past isn't going to be relevant, then thinking it up is just wasted effort.

I wouldn't give Moxie (or similar metamechanics in other RPGs) to anyone, PC or NPC. It doesn't represent anything in-universe, since a character can't decide "I'm just going to ignore the result of that roll, but only three times a day." Because of this, it also takes people out of character and breaks immersion. I do not play RPGs to write a story; I play them to play a character, (if playing) or a world. (if GMing) Because of this, creating a narrative is completely irrelevant to my roleplaying style, and breaking immersion with metagame mechanics like Moxie to "improve the narrative" seems bizarre and insane to me. If anyone is familiar with GNS theory, my playstyle is strongly Simulationist.