Long term project mechanics

[Yakk]

This is an attempt to sketch a "long term project" system for game with a power curve similar to 4e.

A long term project is a project that is going to last over many days of in-game time, many sessions of play, and many levels of character advancement.

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The core unit is the Enterprise. An Enterprise can be a business, a settlement, a castle, a road, a network of contacts, a trading company, a guide, an artifact being constructed, or most anything else.

Enterprises have levels. This represents roughly how "powerful" the enterprise is.

Players can Invest in Enterprises. This investment can come from spending "downtime" boosting them, giving them resources (like gold or magic items), or from getting help from other powers that be (convincing a King to give your trading company a royal charter).

Enterprises have Challenges. There is a Kraken destroying ships along the trade route, an Orc horde is approaching a settlement, the artifact needs the blood of a dragon to temper its heart. If you fail to overcome those challenges, the Enterprise could fail or be diminished. If you succeed, the Enterprise can survive or grow.

Enterprises can generate Rewards. This could be in the form of surplus gold, magic items, boons, or even resources you can invest in another Enterprise.

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An Enterprise has a level and a pool of resources, represented as dice (usually d4s). [R] represents "roll all of your resources, and take the highest value".

Growth

Enteprises sometimes can do a Growth check. A Growth check has a value, like Growth(19). Roll the Growth check value, plus [R].

If it exceeds the level of the Enterprise, average the roll and the Enterprise's level. That becomes the new Enterprise level. The Enterprise also loses half (rounded up) of its resource dice, starting with the best ones.

If it is within 3 of levels of the Enterprise, the Enterprise instead gains a d4 resource die.

If the Growth check is 4 or more levels under the Enterprise level, the Growth check does nothing.

If you have no Resource dice and you gain a Growth check within 4 levels of your Enterprise, gain a d4 Resource die. If it is 5 or more levels above your Enterprise level, gain a d6 d8 d10 or d12 resource die for <=6, <=8, <=10 or >=11 levels above the Enterprise level.

When you appropriately Invest in an Enterprise with a magic item or gold, do a Growth(level of item) or Growth(level of magic item you could buy with the gold). An Investment must be appropriate for the Enterprise.

Tasks and Quests can also Invest in an Enterprise. Usually the difficulty of the Quest is tied to the Growth check value you gain from it.

Number of Encounters + Level of Average Encounter - 10 + number of PCs might be a good rule of thumb for the resulting Growth check value. So a Quest involving 5 PCs going on 5 encounters of average level 13 would generate a Growth(13) Investment.

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Downtime placeholder. During Downtime, Enterprises have a chance to generate Challenges, and players can spend their downtime working on them (Investing with downtime).

I think want I want is that during Downtime, we spawn Events. These can be Invest opportunities, Rewards, or Challenges.

We could make a random encounter table (!) for Downtime events?

Rewards placeholder. Basically, sacrifice Resource dice for toys instead of leveling up.

Challenges placeholder. The Enterprise is threatened by something "level appropriate". Ignore it and the Enterprise is damaged. Defeat it, and there is a Growth opportunity.

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Some means to change how "risky" a given Enterprise is. Low risk Enterprises are mostly a place to park resources, basically an alternative to buying/selling items using gold piece value, with a bit of crunch. Tweaking the system so that selling stuff to an Enterprise then harvesting Rewards generates something similar to selling items and buying new ones?

Higher risk Enterprises should spew Challenges at the party more often.

DMs can tweak what kind of Enterprises are available in order to make them a more "passive" thing or a more campaign-driving thing.

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Converting Enterprise level into in-game fiction. What does a level 10 settlement "look like"? A level 10 castle? A level 20 kingdom?

Magic item construction as an Enterprise. We could steal the common/uncommon/rare distinction, and make more-rare be "more risky" (see above). Common item construction would then look like a "passive enterprise", a proxy that matches the math of buying/selling stuff roughly. Uncommon and Rare would align with a riskier enterprise that would drive adventures.

Maybe you'd have a slightly different system for it to "melt down into an item". Instead, you could imagine investing in "magic item creation research" as an Enterprise, which then could spawn complete magic items. You'd fold ingredients in, and get to spawn items out. However, this doesn't distinguish between rare and uncommon and common items as well.

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Behind the curtain: The dice system is designed so that a level X character can, with modest invetment, generate an enterprise at or just above their level. If it falls behind, "leveling it up" becomes easier. If it gets ahead, "leveling it up" becomes harder.

The resource pool provides a way to ensure that every "serious" attempt generates progress without having to track XP or something like it. You track dice. These dice are used to level up the Enterprise. Most failed level up gives you more dice, unless it was a really pitiful investment.

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This is very rough and not playtested.

[Leewei]

I like the idea of at least putting together a framework for this sort of thing. It'd be neat to playtest it and see how it goes.

Superficially, something of this nature could be handled as an extended skill test as well.

[MoutonRustique]

I don't have anything to contribute at this time, but wanted to make my interest known - also, subbed.

[ScrivenerofDoom]

I posted this a couple of years ago over at ENWorld:


My first question: are the players expecting this to be a mini-game within D&D or are they happy with it being something that is largely hand-waved?

If they want something that is more of a simulation, um, try Pathfinder's Ultimate Campaign or something like that. Or read up on medieval economics.

In short, urgh.

Here's how I would do it. Any investment generates an annual return of, say, 5% after all costs are taken into account. That's your baseline and remind them that the money they invest is tied up in these assets and businesses: it cannot be used to purchase new magic items and fund their nascent corporate empire.

Assuming you all agree with 5% as the rate of return, payable in cash say, once per quarter, you can have things start to affect that rate of return. Forging a new trade route might add 1-5% but cost time and money. A new thieves' guild starts causing losses until it is stopped. The city increases taxes and that cuts into earnings but maybe the PCs can install new leadership.

So you have a base that makes sense (historically stock markets, for example, average 6% returns per generation or so) and then you can tinker with it in the context of generating adventure hooks. The beauty of this is that you don't really need any bookkeeping beyond keeping track of the total invested.

If you want to make it a little more complicated, you could have different types of investments produce different returns, some of which may even be random.

Anyway, for the sake of your sanity, don't delve into the minutiae of salaries. Work out a reasonable rate of return and go from there. (Personally, I would probably start with 2%.)

The thread is <here (http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?358732-DM-Advice-and-Ideas-Needed)>.

[Yakk]

Iterative work:

Some changes.

I'm getting rid of the "within 3" and "4 or more".

Enterprise
An Enterprise has a Level and a Resource Pool set of d4 dice.

The Level determines roughly what "scale" the Enterprise is at. The Resource Pool dice determine how much available resources it has for that "scale".

Resource Pool Roll

Roll the dice in your Resource Pool. Find the lowest pair of equal values, if any. Remove both dice, and replace them with a single die 1 higher in value. If the result does not fit on that die, bump it up to the next larger die size. Repeat until there are no pairs or until their value is 12 on a d12.

Now take the highest value. That is the result of your Resource Pool roll.

So if you have a 4d4 Resource Pool and you roll 1 1 2 3, you'd first take the pair of 1s and replace it with a single 2. So you'd have 2 2 3. Now you take the pair of 2s and replace it with a 3. You have 3 3. The two 3s combine to create a 4.

Opportunity Check

An Opportunity Check for an Enterprise has a Level.

Do a Resource Pool Roll and add the Opportunity Check Level.

If the result is under the Enterprise Level, the Opportunity is wasted.

If the result is 4 or more higher than the Enterprise Level, you can choose to sacrifice a single Resource Pool die. Roll the highest die from your Resource Pool Roll (including larger dice produced by duplicates), and add that many levels to your Enterprise Level.

Otherwise, if the result is at or over the Enterprise level, you gain a d4 Resource Pool die.

Events

Enterprises should drive plot. This is an adventuring game after all! Enterprises should be measured in how Active they are. Low activity enterprises drive plot rarely; high activity enterprises drive plot more often.

If more than one character is involved in an enterprise, you should make it more active usually.

Here are some kinds of events:

Investment You have a chance to invest. Sacrifice a suitable level X magic item to generate a level X opportunity check.

Danger (Something comes up. If not dealt with, the Enterprise takes damage. If delt with, the Enterprise gets an Opportunity Check.)

Dividend (You have a chance to withdraw something of value from the Enterprise. This costs Resource Pool dice.)

Maintenance (You spend time working on the Enterprise. Some kind of extended skill challenge? Being able to invest gold or similar into a Treasury somehow (with work), and then turn Treasury into an Oppotunity Check?)

DMs can trigger the above events. A system to generate "random" events during downtime should be useful as well.

Kinds of Enterprises

The above is a highly abstract structure. Having some categories might help.

Colony Enterprise - Build a new point of light in the darkness.

Workshop Enterprise - A blacksmithy, wizard's tower, church.

Trade Enterprise - A ship, trade route, shop, toll bridge.

Military Enterprise - A castle, mercenary company, order of knights.

Just had a thought: what if somehow your Resources where tied to these "themes".

So Colony, Workshop, Trade, Military as Aspects of your Enterprise, each somehow measured by dice. Zero dice in an area are possible.

The Enterprise would keep an overall level. The Aspects might spawn different kinds of events somehow.