Metagame currencies are one of those things that some people love and others hate, but "karma" is a core part of the Tricube Tales game mechanics and not easily removed—it fuels perks, and it is recovered using quirks.
I originally envisioned karma as symbolising the PC borrowing (and paying back) luck, which is admittedly rather a metagame concept, but it doesn't have to represent that, and I've wondered for a while how I might provide an in-game justification for the same game mechanic. One obvious solution would be to treat karma as "mana", particularly if the perk represents magical powers, but how would you justify recovering mana from quirks?
A couple of weeks ago, I published Eldritch Cultists, which is set in the same world as Eldritch Detectives and Eldritch Apocalypse—except that this time, you play as the bad guys! In Eldritch Cultists, I attempted to tackle the metagame currency described above by renaming "karma" to "mana", "perks" to "sorcery", and "quirks" to "sins".
The cultists' patron grants them mana when they indulge in sins, and the cultists can then invest that mana into strengthening their dark sorcery. I don't consider mana a "metagame currency" because it's something the characters are aware of within the world, yet mechanically, it works exactly the same way as karma.
This makes me wonder in what other ways it might be handled. Perhaps karma could represent stamina for fueling physical perks—although, once again, I'm not sure how you'd handle quirks in that situation.
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