Thoughts on an abstract wealth system

[Talakeal]

I'm sorry to say it again Talakeal, but as others have pointed out, you really need to get better at explaining what you mean. When reading this, I also understood it that the character's money had disappeared after a few failed rolls.

Mechanically the character's money does indeed disappear at the end of each mission, I don't want to deal with hoarding or book keeping.

Narratively it is going into long term investments or upkeep.

The problem with this system is that you can't save up for big ticket items.

Instead big ticket items have a chance each month proportional to how much you invest in them.

So if a +10 sword costs 1,000 gold and I put 100 gold towards it, I have a 10% chance for my investment to pay off.

Assuming average rolls you will still get the sword after about 10 sessions.

Narratively you are still saving up the money, and if you get a good streak of luck something happens that you get it sooner (say you call in a favor and find one for a discount) or you have a run of bad luck if you happen to get it later (say you find one but can't talk the seller into a reasonable price).


At least this was the initial idea, but I am kind of moving away from it do to the massive unpopularity.


I just think that it's funny that the OP came here asking advice - and since then he's done little but get frustrated/defensive when people point out his system's issues. It's sort of a hybrid system between concrete & abstract - but it seems to have the worst of both worlds.

And you don't see how a comment like "but it seems to have the worst of both worlds" would cause someone to get frustrated or defensive? It is both objectively false and, even if 100% accurate, completely non-constructive as it doesn't point out what those "worst qualities" are or offer any suggestion as to how to fix them or what the best qualities are.

Also, I have rewritten the system four times now, thanked people repeatedly, and spent long posts elaborating on my initial statement. While I certainly have gotten frustrated and defensive, I would hardly say it is fair to say that I have done little else. /end getting frustrated and defensive about being called out about being frustrated and defensive


It's easy to say this in theory, but there are all sorts of situations where focus fire is unfeasible. For instance, what happens when you have the guy with +5 armor blocking a position while someone with a +5 bow is shooting past them? Moving away from specifics, I'll just note that historically speaking troop homogeneity has been deliberately avoided. Tactics video-games deliberately avoid it as well. There's a real benefit to having distinct resources, so that you can put the specialists where the things that they're better at count for more and the things that they're worse at count for less.

How are you getting both a +5 armor and a +5 bow in this scenario?

Also, why not just give the armor and the bow to the same guy so you don't have to worry about positioning?

Even if it were tactically sensible (and I am having trouble coming up with a scenario where that is the case) would the players agree to it? Would you enjoy a game where you funneled all of your wealth into one player and then sat in the background contributing relatively nothing?

Have you ever seen players do this in an RPG? Say like a D&D game where the players don't buy any gear for the first 12 level and then spend it all on buying a single end game item for a single player?


I already mentioned that "wealth" while shopping should be called time, but he wasn't evidently interested in making that change since he thinks that wealthy people can make more shop checks than people who aren't wealthy.

Already made that change actually.


And yes, yes I do think that shopping is faster when you can easily afford to pay whatever price the seller is asking vs. someone who can only afford the items if they are able to find a great deal. Do you not?

Remember, time is the same for everyone. The check is to see if they can find the items they need at prices they can afford within the amount of time allotted.

[georgie_leech]

Mechanically the character's money does indeed disappear at the end of each mission, I don't want to deal with hoarding or book keeping.

Narratively it is going into long term investments or upkeep.

The problem with this system is that you can't save up for big ticket items.

Instead big ticket items have a chance each month proportional to how much you invest in them.

So if a +10 sword costs 1,000 gold and I put 100 gold towards it, I have a 10% chance for my investment to pay off.

Assuming average rolls you will still get the sword after about 10 sessions.


That's not how probability works, actually. What 10% chance means is that after 10 sessions, you'll probably have about 1 after ten sessions. You break the 50% odds of having at least 1 after 7 sessions. After 10, you still have about 35% odds of not getting any yet. It's not anything like putting money towards it.

[Talakeal]

That's not how probability works, actually. What 10% chance means is that after 10 sessions, you'll probably have about 1 after ten sessions. You break the 50% odds of having at least 1 after 7 sessions. After 10, you still have about 35% odds of not getting any yet. It's not anything like putting money towards it.

Isn't that what I said?

Keep in mind I did have the caveat "assuming average rolls" and "about ten sessions".


I agree that its not exactly like putting money towards it in a vacuum, however I would imagine that it is actually significantly more reliable than putting money towards something in real life where you have to worry about all sorts of fluctuations in prices, availability, expenses, and income.

[NichG]

Saving actually helps protect you from those fluctuations like variations in income and expenses. Here's a comparison, saving up an average of 1 unit per time to buy an item with price 100, with different fluctuations in income. I'm also comparing to a rolling system that gives you a 1% chance each time of just successfully purchasing the item. The plot shows the probability that you've obtained the item by N sessions.

http://games.urbanhermitgames.com/saving_vs_rolling.png

So it turns out that the random rolling system is roughly equivalent to having an session income of 1 +/- 10 - that is, at least in this case, it models fluctuations that are 10 times the size of your mean income.

It does depend on what you're saving for. If you're trying to buy something 10x your sessional income, then it turns out the random system is roughly equivalent to an income of 1 +/- 5.

[Talakeal]

Saving actually helps protect you from those fluctuations like variations in income and expenses.

Saving up helps protect you from fluctuations, but I am talking about the fluctuation's effect on the amount that you have saved up.

Having a savings account will protect you from losing your home and having to live on the street if you are out of work for a few months, but being out of work for a few months is going to wreck the balance of your savings account.


Thanks for the table, it is a handy visualization for what I was imagining.

Keep in mind though, that we aren't looking at fluctuations in total income, rather at the fluctuations in the amount we are able to put towards the widget in any given month. Being able to squirrel away ten times as much in a given month doesn't mean your total earnings increased ten fold; indeed you might actually not be able to put away anything or even need to take stuff out of your savings to get by in a lean month.

[NichG]

Saving up helps protect you from fluctuations, but I am talking about the fluctuation's effect on the amount that you have saved up.

Having a savings account will protect you from losing your home and having to live on the street if you are out of work for a few months, but being out of work for a few months is going to wreck the balance of your savings account.


Thanks for the table, it is a handy visualization for what I was imagining.

Keep in mind though, that we aren't looking at fluctuations in total income, rather at the fluctuations in the amount we are able to put towards the widget in any given month. Being able to squirrel away ten times as much in a given month doesn't mean your total earnings increased ten fold; indeed you might actually not be able to put away anything or even need to take stuff out of your savings to get by in a lean month.

Just to be clear, the process that I simulated for that plot does include the possibility of losing money from your savings in a given month. Specifically, what I did was to generate a random process:

y(t+1) = y(t) + mu + sigma*eta(t)

where eta(t) is a Gaussian random variable, mu is your average income, and sigma is your income variance. The quantity 'mu+sigma*eta(t)' is the change in your savings account each month. That number can be negative, positive, etc in this model.

[Lorsa]

Mechanically the character's money does indeed disappear at the end of each mission, I don't want to deal with hoarding or book keeping.

Narratively it is going into long term investments or upkeep.

The problem with this system is that you can't save up for big ticket items.

Instead big ticket items have a chance each month proportional to how much you invest in them.

So if a +10 sword costs 1,000 gold and I put 100 gold towards it, I have a 10% chance for my investment to pay off.

Assuming average rolls you will still get the sword after about 10 sessions.

Narratively you are still saving up the money, and if you get a good streak of luck something happens that you get it sooner (say you call in a favor and find one for a discount) or you have a run of bad luck if you happen to get it later (say you find one but can't talk the seller into a reasonable price).


At least this was the initial idea, but I am kind of moving away from it do to the massive unpopularity.

Uh, how did you intend for this to work and how exactly does it limit book keeping?

Assuming I just got 800 gold from an adventure, and decide to put down 100 gold towards a sword, 100 gold towards an armor, 100 gold towards , I now have 8 lines total with the listed "investment" level on my character sheet, instead of just one line that says "gold: 800".

After the next adventure, I might decide to put down my 1400 gold into 14 different 100 gold investments, so I now have 22 things to keep track of. How on Earth does this [i]decrease book keeping?

Also, what happens if a player don't put down any gold towards any investment? Does it just "disappear" then? What sort of upkeep costs 1000 gold a [in-game time frame of your session]?

What if I "invest" 1000 gold into the +10 sword? Do I get it right away as the chance is now 100%?

What happens narratively if I invest 100 gold into a staff of the archmage and roll extremely good, but the group is currently living in a small village? Do I just happen to "find it" (but my money is still gone), or did a random farmer happens to own such an item and sell it to me for only 100 gold (the sucker)?

Also, I am sure you have considered the scenario where one player is lucky and gets ten 1000 gold items in ten sessions from 100 gold investments into each, whereas another unlucky player only gets one 1000 gold item after investing 100 gold per session into the same item. Are you prepared to deal with the jealousy that will occur and also the vastly different power level due to the item difference?

[Talakeal]

Assuming I just got 800 gold from an adventure, and decide to put down 100 gold towards a sword, 100 gold towards an armor, 100 gold towards , I now have 8 lines total with the listed "investment" level on my character sheet, instead of just one line that says "gold: 800".

After the next adventure, I might decide to put down my 1400 gold into 14 different 100 gold investments, so I now have 22 things to keep track of. How on Earth does this [i]decrease book keeping?

You make the roll immediately. If you succeed you mark down the item. If you fail you are assumed to still be saving up for your next roll and don't write down anything.


Also, what happens if a player don't put down any gold towards any investment? Does it just "disappear" then? What sort of upkeep costs 1000 gold a [in-game time frame of your session]?

I can't think of any reason why you would ever decline to roll (unless you are just doing so out of spite in an effort to prove how bad the system is :smallbiggrin:).

If for some incomprehensible reason you did decide to do this the rolls would indeed be wasted.

You can justify this in character however you like; your character was robbed, you invested all your money in a retirement fund, the treasure you brought back turned out to be worthless, you gave it all to charity, you threw a big party, you replaced all of your existed gear with new gear that was functionally the same but in better condition or a different style; whatever you want.


What if I "invest" 1000 gold into the +10 sword? Do I get it right away as the chance is now 100%?

You would get 10 rolls each with a 10% chance, which comes out to about a 66% chance.


What happens narratively if I invest 100 gold into a staff of the archmage and roll extremely good, but the group is currently living in a small village? Do I just happen to "find it" (but my money is still gone), or did a random farmer happens to own such an item and sell it to me for only 100 gold (the sucker)?

Again, narrate it however it makes sense. In such a situation I would probably go with a traveling caravan, some local person finding it in an old abandoned wizard's tower and selling it for cheap, or making the purchase through a broker in a larger city.


Also, I am sure you have considered the scenario where one player is lucky and gets ten 1000 gold items in ten sessions from 100 gold investments into each, whereas another unlucky player only gets one 1000 gold item after investing 100 gold per session into the same item. Are you prepared to deal with the jealousy that will occur and also the vastly different power level due to the item difference?

Well, that specific scenario would only happen 1/10,000,000,000 times, so I don't think I need to worry about it too much :p

Seriously though, the party makes rolls as a group. It is up to them to divide it fairly, but I would personally not let the same person continually roll for big ticket items if the rest of the party hasn't gotten any yet.




But yeah, people hate randomness, abstracting saving up to a dice roll feels like robbing people (although as I said earlier I think it is actually closer to reality than the static D&D model), and stubbornly refusing to buy anything but trying for an end game item is just flat out poor strategy, so I think I am going to ditch the system and just go back to the "NOPE!" method of making it flat out impossible for people to obtain items that would normally be above their weight class.

[georgie_leech]

You make the roll immediately. If you succeed you mark down the item. If you fail you are assumed to still be saving up for your next roll and don't write down anything.



This is the part that's confusing me. Normally when you save up for something, you accrue resources until you can afford the item in question. The system presented though.. well, doesn't do that. Yeah, the odds of not getting an item over so many sessions decrease, but not in a direct way. Like, the fact that you put 100 gold towards an item last session, has exactly 0 impact on the odds of your 100 gold put towards that same item in this session. They're independent events. It's just like how a dice roll is unaffected by previous rolls.

...Actually, scratch that, it's not like that, it is that. Unless that 100 gold you put down last session plus the 100 gold this session means you're rolling 200 gold, in which case I missed something?

[Lorsa]

You make the roll immediately. If you succeed you mark down the item. If you fail you are assumed to still be saving up for your next roll and don't write down anything.

Except, you don't actually save up for anything? Failed rolls never improve the odds of succeeding with new rolls?



I can't think of any reason why you would ever decline to roll (unless you are just doing so out of spite in an effort to prove how bad the system is :smallbiggrin:).

If for some incomprehensible reason you did decide to do this the rolls would indeed be wasted.

You can justify this in character however you like; your character was robbed, you invested all your money in a retirement fund, the treasure you brought back turned out to be worthless, you gave it all to charity, you threw a big party, you replaced all of your existed gear with new gear that was functionally the same but in better condition or a different style; whatever you want.

Well yes, if you get the choice of rolling and loose your money, or not rolling and still loose your money, I think everyone will roll.




You would get 10 rolls each with a 10% chance, which comes out to about a 66% chance.

I think a bit more info is needed here. Can you never roll with a higher than 10% chance? Can you roll with a lower? What determines the %? Is the number of rolls always the same, so if you have 1000 gold and go for a 1000 gold item you get 10 rolls with 10% chance but if you go for a 2000 gold item you get 10 rolls with a 5% chance?



Again, narrate it however it makes sense. In such a situation I would probably go with a traveling caravan, some local person finding it in an old abandoned wizard's tower and selling it for cheap, or making the purchase through a broker in a larger city.

Follow-up question then: if a character manages to get a staff of the archmage for basically free, can they then proceed to sell it, or is selling randomized as well?




Well, that specific scenario would only happen 1/10,000,000,000 times, so I don't think I need to worry about it too much :p

Well, maybe not, but someone getting 6 items and someone else getting 2 WILL happen.



Seriously though, the party makes rolls as a group. It is up to them to divide it fairly, but I would personally not let the same person continually roll for big ticket items if the rest of the party hasn't gotten any yet.

Alright, if they make rolls as a group, it would diminish that issue a bit.



But yeah, people hate randomness, abstracting saving up to a dice roll feels like robbing people (although as I said earlier I think it is actually closer to reality than the static D&D model), and stubbornly refusing to buy anything but trying for an end game item is just flat out poor strategy, so I think I am going to ditch the system and just go back to the "NOPE!" method of making it flat out impossible for people to obtain items that would normally be above their weight class.

I haven't seen a fully written version of what your system actually is to decide what is a good or bad strategy. It would help if you'd write everything down clearly rather than us having to collect bits and pieces from your reply.

People hate randomness without purpose, this is correct. The type of randomness I typically dislike the most is the one that involves character progression (which is what items in D&D are). I mean, you could abstract the XP system in the same way, to avoid even more book keeping, just have the group roll a 10% die after each adventure and on success they gain a level! Hurray simple system!

Do you honestly feel that this is closer to reality than the static D&D model? I don't see it myself. Basically the only thing D&D doesn't take into account is inflation, or price change over centuries of time. I am pretty sure the rules say something like "prices may vary a bit depending on quality or region".

The thing with your system is that it is actually impossible to SAVE FOR ITEMS. You haven't "abstracted" it, you have removed it entirely. If you did some form of abstraction, the random chance would actually INCREASE for each failed roll.

You don't need to make it impossible to get "big ticket items" using the normal D&D economy. You can let them make some form of skill roll with a DC modified according to ratio of standard price vs. how much they're willing to spend.

If you want to model market fluctuations, you can simply roll a d20 and let that decide how much the price differs from the standard. On a 1 it's 10% less, and on a 20 it's !0% more.

I mean, what, exactly, is it that you want? You think the book keeping of adding a gold total to your character sheet is too much work? You are upset that people save up for stuff they want?

[GloatingSwine]

You are upset that people save up for stuff they want?

That was the opening sentence of the thread...

The problem with "my players save up all their money and don't pay for an "extravagant lifestyle" is that the extravagant lifestyle isn't there for itinerant adventurers to pay for.

The best inn and coachhouse in town is aimed at merchants because they're the only ones who travel. Peasants can't afford to and nobles don't need to, they own property anywhere they're likely to be for any reasonable length of time or know someone who can lend them the use of a townhouse for a while if they have to be away from their actual estate, and even the basic nonmagical adventuring equipment that the party will own and use is an order of magnitude more expensive than several years worth of board and lodging at that best coachhouse in town (and once they're up to eg. full plate they are literally wearing enough to buy it outright).

Just assume the players are staying in decent inns and eating decent food and don't even charge money for that **** because it's not worth money to adventurers, its costs are on a whole different (and insignificant) scale to their experience of money.

Adventurers' lifestyle is not a money sink, don't try and fiddle a system to make it one.

[Talakeal]

This is the part that's confusing me. Normally when you save up for something, you accrue resources until you can afford the item in question. The system presented though.. well, doesn't do that. Yeah, the odds of not getting an item over so many sessions decrease, but not in a direct way. Like, the fact that you put 100 gold towards an item last session, has exactly 0 impact on the odds of your 100 gold put towards that same item in this session. They're independent events. It's just like how a dice roll is unaffected by previous rolls.

...Actually, scratch that, it's not like that, it is that. Unless that 100 gold you put down last session plus the 100 gold this session means you're rolling 200 gold, in which case I missed something?

The player doesn't save up anything.

The player can roll a dice to simulate the character saving up something, and assuming average rolls they should get the item in the same amount of time as if the player were saving up for it themselves.



Except, you don't actually save up for anything? Failed rolls never improve the odds of succeeding with new rolls?


I think a bit more info is needed here. Can you never roll with a higher than 10% chance? Can you roll with a lower? What determines the %? Is the number of rolls always the same, so if you have 1000 gold and go for a 1000 gold item you get 10 rolls with 10% chance but if you go for a 2000 gold item you get 10 rolls with a 5% chance?


See above.

I actually did have it so that after the roll you could spend additional treasure units, each adding +1 to the roll, to remove the randomness and simulate a character being willing to get the item at any cost.


Follow-up question then: if a character manages to get a staff of the archmage for basically free, can they then proceed to sell it, or is selling randomized as well?

The character can trade it for an item or item(s) of lesser or equal value, but actually selling it for cash is not directly supported by the system.


I haven't seen a fully written version of what your system actually is to decide what is a good or bad strategy. It would help if you'd write everything down clearly rather than us having to collect bits and pieces from your reply.

I wrote down a full copy of my (then current) draft of the system for PhoenixPhyre a page or two back.




People hate randomness without purpose, this is correct. The type of randomness I typically dislike the most is the one that involves character progression (which is what items in D&D are). I mean, you could abstract the XP system in the same way, to avoid even more book keeping, just have the group roll a 10% die after each adventure and on success they gain a level! Hurray simple system!

I actually don't track XP. Haven't for over ten years now, I got tired of arguing with players about whether or not they should get XP for avoiding an encounter, or picking a fight with some random guy, or whether they should get XP multiple times for defeating an enemy who used hit and run tactics, or extra XP for encountering a monster in its own environment, etc. And it was really bad if someone missed a session and fell behind the rest of the group. And god help us if I the DM decided to grant bonus XP for good RP or dock XP for disrupting the game...

But yeah, I agree that rolling a dice would be stupid, instead I just tally the number of sessions and decide that every X sessions the entire party will gain a level. When I run D&D that is, which is rarely, usually I play WoD or a homebrew in which case I can just award 1 XP per session.


I agree that randomness in character progression is pretty dumb. The thing is my economic system is built to minimize that. As things get cheaper over time a run of good or bad luck will eventually be smoothed out, and the sheer number of rolls to find loot means that the law of averages will overpower fluctuations fairly quickly.

The only time it could screw you would be if you refused to spend anything on realistic gear and just tried to get end game gear from day one, which in my system at least gives you a chance to handle, if you tried that in 3.5 you would be running around naked well into the low teens and would be wiping on virtually every fight unless your party was all sorcerers and druids.

To continue the comparison to D&D, by RAW it is far more random and punitive than my system is.

In earlier editions of D&D loot was totally random. There was no system for buying magic items, and crafting cost permanent ability scores AND involved a random dice roll which could mean the item was ruined or came out cursed. You were totally up to the mercy of the random treasure tables.

Likewise in 3.X they have a magic item economy, but players are still at the mercy of the treasure tables. In 3.X if you drink a lot of potions you WILL be significantly behind your expected WBL for the rest of the campaign. And if you find a +5 flaming battle axe and decide to sell it and buy a +5 icy long sword, well you are going to out 50% of the item's cost FOREVER.


So yeah, IMO RAW D&D is far more random and punitive than my system is, people just don't notice it because the randomness is mostly hidden behind the screen and most DMs will step in and "fiddle with the system" to place exactly the item that the character needs right in their path if they start to fall behind; and there is nothing stopping similar DM FIAT in my system.



Do you honestly feel that this is closer to reality than the static D&D model? I don't see it myself. Basically the only thing D&D doesn't take into account is inflation, or price change over centuries of time. I am pretty sure the rules say something like "prices may vary a bit depending on quality or region".

The thing with your system is that it is actually impossible to SAVE FOR ITEMS. You haven't "abstracted" it, you have removed it entirely. If you did some form of abstraction, the random chance would actually INCREASE for each failed roll.

You don't need to make it impossible to get "big ticket items" using the normal D&D economy. You can let them make some form of skill roll with a DC modified according to ratio of standard price vs. how much they're willing to spend.

If you want to model market fluctuations, you can simply roll a d20 and let that decide how much the price differs from the standard. On a 1 it's 10% less, and on a 20 it's !0% more.

I mean, what, exactly, is it that you want? You think the book keeping of adding a gold total to your character sheet is too much work? You are upset that people save up for stuff they want?

D&D also doesn't take into account supply and demand or any sort of living expenses. Also, when dealing with big ticket items, you are not buying them off the rack but you are instead haggling with people. Think of buying a car, nobody pays the sticker price, but the exact amount people do pay varies greatly depending on their skill at haggling and that of the salesman.

And I don't just mean "living expenses" as in the cost of food and inns. Think about real life, how taking a vacation, or getting sick, or having a car or other major appliance break down, having your home damaged in a storm, getting robbed, get a traffic ticket (or actually be arrested!), being out of work for a month, or just splurging on an entertainment item like a new video game console, etc. can wreck the balance of your savings account and long term financial plans.

On the other hand money can increase to, you could inherit money, or win a small fortune in some game or contest, or get a big tax return, or find some old baseball cards and comics in your attic that sell for a ton of money on e-bay, or get a bonus at work, or find a huge sale on some big ticket item you were planning to buy.

And that isn't even talking about the massive fluctuations that could come from someone who invests heavily in the stock market or owns their own business.


As I said to Georgie, it is in fact impossible for the playersto save money, but the system is in place to simulate their character saving money. Using the roll system will, assuming random rolls, get them the same number of items in the same amount of time as if they were allowed to save up. And, when you factor in the controls built into the system I believe it is actually more reliable than trying to save up for something in real life.


I am not trying to do any one thing, but a dozen things at once, many of which are modified by other things. Writing a gold total on your character sheet is not hard, although at high levels it does get pretty tedious when you have to write "18,541 platinum, 106,734 gold, 73 silver, and 22 copper" and then keep track of the costs of torches or iron rations that cost several copper pieces each.

But it also makes the character think that they are carrying around exactly that much gold (and by RAW remember they need a place to carry it and / or factor in the encumbrance value and / or the volume and weight capacitates of their bag of holding).

Once you start counting individual coins then the entire game becomes an exercise in penny pinching and hoarding. The optimal move for the players is to loot every scrap of enemy gear and bit of dungeon dressing and get the maximum value of it, and it makes them loathe to spend any sort of money that doesn't directly upgrade their gear.

The whole system wastes a ton of time, creates a ton of stress, and requires a lot of book keeping from session to session. Compare, for example, "You loot the orcs and are able to savage 3 units worth of treasure," vs. "You loot 126 flight arrows, 7 suits of used chainmail, 4 suits of damaged chainmail, 1 suit of masterwork chainmail (also used), 13 rusted short swords, 71 silver, 3 medium diamonds, 6 bottles of wine, 18 battered helmets, 4 suits of goblin sized leather armor (damaged), 16 used short-bows, 8 long swords, 2 master work short swords, 4 goblin sized daggers, 6 goblin sized short-bows (used), 18 orc sized helmets, 6 goblin sized helmets, 2 ogre sized helmets, 2 ogre sized great clubs, 3 gold pieces, and a statue of a porcelain unicorn." Not only does the player need to determine all of this, but the players need to record it, figure out a way to transport it back to town, appraise it, calculate a price on each individual piece, sell it for 50%, and then finally convert and record the coins in what is going to be some random 9 digit combination of platinum, gold, silver, and copper.

So I created a much more streamlined the system that abstracted the exact same thing with a fraction of the time, math, and book keeping. The problem was that there was no way to save for big ticket items, so I created a system to simulate the process instead, which is what one of my players took objection to; without only a statistical rather than a concrete reward for saving he felt like his money was being stolen or vanishing into a plot whole, he couldn't wrap his head around the idea that his money was still there, it was just stuffed into a (probably metaphorical) vault labeled "do not open until you find a +5 sword for sale" and that he couldn't access immediately.


That was the opening sentence of the thread...

The problem with "my players save up all their money and don't pay for an "extravagant lifestyle" is that the extravagant lifestyle isn't there for itinerant adventurers to pay for.

The best inn and coachhouse in town is aimed at merchants because they're the only ones who travel. Peasants can't afford to and nobles don't need to, they own property anywhere they're likely to be for any reasonable length of time or know someone who can lend them the use of a townhouse for a while if they have to be away from their actual estate, and even the basic nonmagical adventuring equipment that the party will own and use is an order of magnitude more expensive than several years worth of board and lodging at that best coachhouse in town (and once they're up to eg. full plate they are literally wearing enough to buy it outright).

Just assume the players are staying in decent inns and eating decent food and don't even charge money for that **** because it's not worth money to adventurers, its costs are on a whole different (and insignificant) scale to their experience of money.

Adventurers' lifestyle is not a money sink, don't try and fiddle a system to make it one.

Creating a money sink is so far from my goal it isn't even in the same solar system. Remember, the average character worth significantly increases in the system to mitigate the effects of randomness.

Earlier in the thread Phoenix Phyre accused me of trying to tell only a single story, which was actually the opposite of my intention.

Itinerant adventurers who sleep in inns and eat iron rations all the time is certainly one story, but it isn't the only one.

What about playing a character who is spending money on a magical or alchemical research project?
What about someone who seeks out the best trainers and tutors during downtime to improve themselves?
What about someone who is saving up to retire or for some other big expense like Haley?
What about someone who doesn't care about money at all?
What about someone who is a hedonist and blows all of his money on food, drink, whores, and recreational drugs?
What about a nobleman who insists on living a posh lifestyle even while on the road?
What about someone who donates all their profits to charity?
What about someone who is funding a business of some sort with their adventuring, be it a family plantation, a shop, a merchant cartel, or something more adventurey like a church, war band, monastery, thieves guild, or wizard school?
What about someone who has a family or a household staff to support back home?

And again, I don't even charge money for that ****; all of the characters lifestyle and background expenses are completely abstracted away and do not effect gameplay in the slightest*.

Also, by D&D RAW, players do have to determine their lifestyle and pay upkeep costs accordingly. It seems kind of odd that you are telling me not to fiddle with the rules one moment and then to ignore the same rules in another.

*: Although characters can spend the equivalent of a feat to have a steady source of income based on their social class, which does need to be tied into the character's backstory somehow.

[GloatingSwine]

What about playing a character who is spending money on a magical or alchemical research project?


The player tells you they're doing that and crosses some gold off their character sheet.


What about someone who seeks out the best trainers and tutors during downtime to improve themselves?

The player tells you they're doing that and crosses some gold off their character sheet.


What about someone who is saving up to retire or for some other big expense like Haley?

The player saves up gold on their character sheet. This is not possible in your system because gold goes away even if you don't spend it because of reasons.


What about someone who doesn't care about money at all?

The player tells you they're doing that and crosses some gold off their character sheet.


What about someone who is a hedonist and blows all of his money on food, drink, whores, and recreational drugs?

Literally impossible for an adventurer beyond level 1, they are incapable of spending even a slightly noticable portion of their income on that kind of outlay because their income is several orders of magnitude above what those things cost. They can walk into a tavern and buy it, not just drink there.


What about a nobleman who insists on living a posh lifestyle even while on the road?

No such thing. A posh lifestyle is a country estate, mansion, and servants, or a townhouse with servants which the nobleman owns and pays for with the proceeds from his estate and the tenant farmers on it. Nobody exists to provide the noble lifestyle "on the road" because nobles have no need of it, they or one of their friends own the places they go to, and they have staff to provide the lifestyle which travel with or slightly ahead of them.


What about someone who donates all their profits to charity?

The player tells you they're doing that and crosses some gold off their character sheet. Potentially they are rewarded for good roleplay if the charity is something their character should be interested in eg. clerics or paladins who are priests or adherents of a particular church donating to that church.


What about someone who is funding a business of some sort with their adventuring, be it a family plantation, a shop, a merchant cartel, or something more adventurey like a church, war band, monastery, thieves guild, or wizard school?

You roleplay that with the player. They add to or cross off gold on their character sheet depending on the outcome of the roleplay.


What about someone who has a family or a household staff to support back home?

The player tells you they want to play this. You roleplay it with the player, they cross some gold off their character sheet.


And again, I don't even charge money for that ****; all of the characters lifestyle and background expenses are completely abstracted away and do not effect gameplay in the slightest*.

Except you do, because not spending money now fails to increase your ability to spend money in the future. If a player makes a roll and does not buy anything, they lose the "money" that roll represents. That is the case because the next roll they make has the same odds of success as the one that failed. If your system simulated saving money then every adventure which passes without players making a successful purchase roll, whether they tried or not, should increase their chances of success on all purchase rolls until they successfully purchase something.

You claim your system is not intended as a money sink, but you've actually made the harshest money sink in history, a money sink that doesn't even wait for players to spend money before taking it out of their pockets.

[Talakeal]

A bunch of contradictory nonsense.

Ok, whatever, at this point it seriously isn't worth my time trying to discuss this with you anymore.

Also, rust monsters and mordenkainens disjunction say high.

[georgie_leech]

Sorry, I really don't know how to respond when someone says 'this doesn't seem like, or feel like, it's doing what you claim it does,' and the response is 'yes it does.' At this point, looking back at the OP, it seems like you're asking for help convincing someone that your system has a quality it doesn't have. It's fine to have a system that lacks certain qualities, like the ability to plan ahead or save up resources for a bigger purchase. You don't care for that kind of resource management, so you built a system without that, and that's fine. But you can't then go and pretend that the system has those qualities.

[NichG]

Basically, this is the Gambler's Fallacy - the perception that a failed roll is 'banking karma' or somesuch towards the next roll.

If the average number of rolls needed to obtain an item is 10, and you fail the first 8, the average number of rolls needed to obtain the item for you is still 10 more.

The stuff about the instability of real life savings is only true if you spend proportional to what you have. The idea of 'saving' is to intentionally not do that. Random incidents don't automatically get more expensive as your income goes up, that's down to your behavior.

[Talakeal]

Sorry, I really don't know how to respond when someone says 'this doesn't seem like, or feel like, it's doing what you claim it does,' and the response is 'yes it does.' At this point, looking back at the OP, it seems like you're asking for help convincing someone that your system has a quality it doesn't have. It's fine to have a system that lacks certain qualities, like the ability to plan ahead or save up resources for a bigger purchase. You don't care for that kind of resource management, so you built a system without that, and that's fine. But you can't then go and pretend that the system has those qualities.

It is also pretty frustrating on my end; so far I am 5/6 for explaining the system to people IRL (that sixth is why I started this thread) but find that I have much less luck explaining it to people online.

Let me try and give you one last explanation using only objective facts:

The system does not allow players to save up money.

The system does have a system to simulate characters saving up money.

The odds are set up in such a way that in the long run the number of items acquired by the simulation will be almost equal to the number of items acquired by saving.

In real life there are all sorts of fluctuations in income, expenses, and market prices that are not reflected in a simple GP system like D&D.


And the last part is my opinion, but my view is that any anomalies or short term randomness in the simulation can be explained away by such fluctuations by a suitable creative DM or player and the system, while not as random as D&D, is actually less random than most real life situations.


Basically, this is the Gambler's Fallacy - the perception that a failed roll is 'banking karma' or somesuch towards the next roll.

If the average number of rolls needed to obtain an item is 10, and you fail the first 8, the average number of rolls needed to obtain the item for you is still 10 more.

The stuff about the instability of real life savings is only true if you spend proportional to what you have. The idea of 'saving' is to intentionally not do that. Random incidents don't automatically get more expensive as your income goes up, that's down to your behavior.

I am well aware of the gambler's fallacy, I am absolutely not taking that into consideration.

I am relying on the Law of Large Numbers to assume that in the long run the fluctuations will more or less even out.


I think we are somehow talking past each other about the nature of savings, because I don't think you are understanding what I am saying and I certainly don't understand what you are saying.

[Segev]

Alright, Talakeal, it is clear that you like the system you've invented, here. You want to use it. You believe it will do what you want.

Then use it. Don't try to "sell" it to your players. If they don't like it, encourage them to use it how they think is most advantageous. Then watch to see what they do. See if their behavior matches what you want from the system. If it doesn't - and this is the important part - don't blame them for "not getting it." Ask them why they're doing what they are. See what goes into their decision-making. Then consider whether adjusting the system will change the things that are motivating them to behave differently than you wish.

Berating and blaming players of a game for not playing it the way the designer wants is foolish. It never works to brow-beat people into doing it "right" when the system, as they perceive the rewards, punishes them for doing it "right" and rewards them for doing it "wrong." So experiment.

If they do play it "right" by your lights, then you've succeeded. If they don't, you'll need to figure out why and make adjustments. We'll be happy to help if you want it.

[NichG]

Let me try and give you one last explanation using only objective facts:

The system does not allow players to save up money.

The system does have a system to simulate character's saving up money.

The odds are set up in such a way that in the long run the number of items acquired by the simulation will be almost equal to the number of items acquired by saving.

In real life there are all sorts of fluctuations in income, expenses, and market prices that are not reflected in a simple GP system like D&D.


Bolded point is what is in contention. It's objectively false for the system you presented. That's what I and others have been trying to point out. That the mean # of items acquired is the same in the long run is not the same as simulating saving, because the behavior of 'saving' isn't about the mean outcome, its about the variance (edit: and, maybe more than that, its about the causal relation between denying onesself now and benefiting later)

For example, another way you could get the same mean outcome is to give all players all items their characters would expect to receive over the course of the campaign in the first session, then have no mechanism for players to ever gain or lose any items. But hopefully you agree that that would be wildly different in important ways from something where players acquire items continuously over the course of the campaign. Even if the mean outcome is the same, I would not say that it's a system which 'simulates' shopping because there's no shopping in it.

Similarly, the system you propose has the same mean result as saving, but it does not 'simulate' saving at all because there is nothing in the system that feels like saving or works the same way that saving does in terms of the things that distinguish saving from, say, receiving rolls on a random loot table or having a flat budget to select items from each mission and being able to completely re-equip yourself each time or rolling for acquisition.

[The Glyphstone]

Since 5/6 of your players understand it, have you tried outsourcing your explanation? Get one or more of them to try and explain it to your lone ranger, see if that fixes the translation error.

[Talakeal]

Bolded point is what is in contention. It's objectively false for the system you presented. That's what I and others have been trying to point out. That the mean # of items acquired is the same in the long run is not the same as simulating saving, because the behavior of 'saving' isn't about the mean outcome, its about the variance.

For example, another way you could get the same mean outcome is to give all players all items their characters would expect to receive over the course of the campaign in the first session, then have no mechanism for players to ever gain or lose any items. But hopefully you agree that that would be wildly different in important ways from something where players acquire items continuously over the course of the campaign. Even if the mean outcome is the same, I would not say that it's a system which 'simulates' shopping because there's no shopping in it.

Similarly, the system you propose has the same mean result as saving, but it does not 'simulate' saving at all because there is nothing in the system that feels like saving or works the same way that saving does in terms of the things that distinguish saving from, say, receiving rolls on a random loot table or having a flat budget to select items from each mission and being able to completely re-equip yourself each time or rolling for acquisition.

Ok, then we are in agreement.

It does not function in a manner identical to saving up money manually, but it allows players to acquire roughly the same items they would by saving up in roughly the same amount of time by expending roughly the same amount of money, which is all I intended it to do.

It "simulates" saving in the same manner that an attack roll "simulates" combat, in a very vague and abstract way with roughly similar outcomes in the long run.

Would you be ok with my statement if I had said "It has a system to replace saving up that has the same mean result, and which I feel is an adequate simulation of the process?"


Alright, Talakeal, it is clear that you like the system you've invented, here. You want to use it. You believe it will do what you want.

Then use it. Don't try to "sell" it to your players. If they don't like it, encourage them to use it how they think is most advantageous. Then watch to see what they do. See if their behavior matches what you want from the system. If it doesn't - and this is the important part - don't blame them for "not getting it." Ask them why they're doing what they are. See what goes into their decision-making. Then consider whether adjusting the system will change the things that are motivating them to behave differently than you wish.

Berating and blaming players of a game for not playing it the way the designer wants is foolish. It never works to brow-beat people into doing it "right" when the system, as they perceive the rewards, punishes them for doing it "right" and rewards them for doing it "wrong." So experiment.

If they do play it "right" by your lights, then you've succeeded. If they don't, you'll need to figure out why and make adjustments. We'll be happy to help if you want it.

I already said I wasn't going to use the system; I did not count on people's outright hatred from random chance and tendency to fixate on the worst possible outcome, which means that even if it works completely fine from a mathematical perspective, the players won't enjoy it.

Also, I think you are kind of misunderstanding the situation. I expect player's behavior to find a place between "most fun" and "most optimal" which works for them. It isn't the players fault if that point falls outside of what the game designer intended, although it might be the game designers fault, most likely it is just a difference of opinion, the player is simply not the target audience for that particular game.

Now, there wasn't really any berating or brow-beating. I explained the system, one of my players couldn't wrap his head about how the rules jived with the in game world, and thus intentionally played in a manner that was both extremely un-fun and extremely sub-optimal in an effort to prove how bad my system was, so I created this thread hoping that I could find ways to polish up the system or explain it to the player without throwing it away entirely.



Since 5/6 of your players understand it, have you tried outsourcing your explanation? Get one or more of them to try and explain it to your lone ranger, see if that fixes the translation error.

I don't have a lot of time to sit around and gab with my players as a group (Heck, lack of face to face time is one of the reasons I wanted to cut out book-keeping in the first place). I was hoping to outsource to the forum; and in effect I did, as trying to explain it for the last ten pages has made it a lot clearer in my head and given me a lot of practiceat explaining it in different ways.

[NichG]

Ok, then we are in agreement.

It does not function in a manner identical to saving up money manually, but it allows players to acquire roughly the same items they would by saving up in roughly the same amount of time by expending roughly the same amount of money, which is all I intended it to do.

It "simulates" saving in the same manner that an attack roll "simulates" combat, in a very vague and abstract way with roughly similar outcomes in the long run.

Would you be ok with my statement if I had said "It has a system to replace saving up that has the same mean result, and which I feel is an adequate simulation of the process?"


Yes, then it's factually true, so from that point we would just disagree as to whether or not it's adequate. For me, it's not an adequate simulation because it doesn't actually capture the important aspects of what 'saving' is (variance reduction leading to the ability to plan ahead, causal relation between taking a penalty now for a gain later which produces the psychological impression of a sacrifice 'paying off' rather than just being a loss).

To put it another way, I think this system does model the life experiences of some people, but primarily people who for whatever reason are incapable of actually saving money (be it from living paycheck-to-paycheck, having an infinite sink for their money in the form of people asking for their support, feeding an addiction, trying to live beyond their means, etc). But I wouldn't want to be forced to play a character from that archetype if thats not what I was intending to play.

If I were e.g. playing a wizard whose wealth was constantly draining into his magical experiments, I'd want a payoff in proportion to how much wealth I let drain into those experiments. I want to feel like going out and getting more wealth is a good use of my time because it makes my experiments more successful, not just narrate 'and I burn off all of my failed rolls on random stuff that doesn't work'. Maybe that suggests a fix in the form of granting a different benefit on failed rolls - basically, a roll determines whether that unit of wealth went into gear or infrastructure, but infrastructure is tracked and actually does something for the character and their ambitions - maybe it gives points into a specific dramatic editing pool that allows the player to make something about their side expenses suddenly become plot-relevant?

[Cluedrew]

As for the rest of it - the system is all sorts of screwy, and it made it off your notepad because if you don't actually do the math and look at it it looks superficially reasonable. Coming up with systems that turn out to be iffy and need to be scrapped is routine - I have a fairly sizable computer folder of rejected mechanics, and that's without even getting into the scattered notebooks. There's some die-number/die-size attribute-skill linkage stuff that turned out not to work, there was my difficulty dice roll-them-all-under mechanic with a variable skill score that turned out to have a screwy failure curve, there's at least four* attempts at getting a functional thoroughly mechanized spirit-binding magic system for Fudge that haven't panned out, so on and so forth. Heck, I have a few hundred lines of MATLAB code for a tactical combat system which runs a bunch of calculations, and those hundred lines revealed that the system behind it was generally screwy and it had to be dropped.I have been there so many times. Making a good system is hard and the thing people seem to forget is: You will fail, you might occasionally get something right on the first try, but you will have to refine the system almost every time, and throw it out and start over a lot of the time as well.

Have you actually run this system yet? If so how did it turn out? If not you should probably try it. We can guess all we like but if it works or doesn't work in the field, then that is what is important.

My one main concern is the bit where wealth loss (or debt accumulation) from a failed roll representing saving up for something. Not because I can't understand that abstraction, I save up for things all the time. But then again I am not an adventurer who is about to risk my life on something. If I can't afford the +5 sword, I'm going for the +4 sword, then the +3 sword and so on until I have every edge I need to survive.

Also, as someone who does a lot of game design let me tell you something; never defend your system. Feedback can never be wrong because even when it is factually incorrect, the fact someone made that mistake is in and of itself important feedback.

[Talakeal]

To put it another way, I think this system does model the life experiences of some people, but primarily people who for whatever reason are incapable of actually saving money (be it from living paycheck-to-paycheck, having an infinite sink for their money in the form of people asking for their support, feeding an addiction, trying to live beyond their means, etc). But I wouldn't want to be forced to play a character from that archetype if thats not what I was intending to play.

The system is not about modeling financial security, it is about having a way for players to acquire big ticket equipment that they couldn't afford with the proceeds of a single adventure.

As a rule adventuring is not the best job for someone who wants a stable and predictable life style.

Some people like the feeling of financial security, other people like playing a care-free wanderer who lives on providence. You can play whichever character concept you want without it affecting your mechanical effectiveness; if you absolutely need it to affect your mechanical effectiveness to feel the immersion and fantasy of the character, sink some points into the wealthy merit.


To put it another way, I think this system does model the life experiences of some people, but primarily people who for whatever reason are incapable of actually saving money (be it from living paycheck-to-paycheck, having an infinite sink for their money in the form of people asking for their support, feeding an addiction, trying to live beyond their means, etc). But I wouldn't want to be forced to play a character from that archetype if that's not what I was intending to play.

Again, I think we are talking past each other.

I am talking about saving up money for a single big ticket item that you couldn't ordinarily afford, not about having a savings account to fall back on if you encounter hard times.

For example, say I have a job and don't live beyond my means, and I want a new sports car. The sports car cots $200,000 dollars, and I decide I can spare $10,000 dollars a month for it, so I should have enough in just under two years.

Then I get hit by a bus. I miss six months of work and have to pay tens of thousands of dollars in legal expenses.

Are you telling me that if I am a "responsible person who is good with money and capable of saving money" I will continue to put $10,000 dollars a month in my sports car fund?

Where is this money coming from? Why am I not using some of the tens of thousands of dollars I have saved up for a sports car to pay down my hospital bills or to pay for my food, housing, and utility bills during the six months when I am not bringing home a paycheck.



If I were e.g. playing a wizard whose wealth was constantly draining into his magical experiments, I'd want a payoff in proportion to how much wealth I let drain into those experiments. I want to feel like going out and getting more wealth is a good use of my time because it makes my experiments more successful, not just narrate 'and I burn off all of my failed rolls on random stuff that doesn't work'. Maybe that suggests a fix in the form of granting a different benefit on failed rolls - basically, a roll determines whether that unit of wealth went into gear or infrastructure, but infrastructure is tracked and actually does something for the character and their ambitions - maybe it gives points into a specific dramatic editing pool that allows the player to make something about their side expenses suddenly become plot-relevant?

That is a fine system; but it is not the one I am trying to design. My goals are to separate "fluff" and "crunch" expenses and to reduce bookkeeping, this proposed system, imo, significantly increases both.


Have you actually run this system yet? If so how did it turn out? If not you should probably try it. We can guess all we like but if it works or doesn't work in the field, then that is what is important.

Once. The players each bought a few potions, and one guy wasted all his money and got nothing in return to "prove to me how stupid the system was".

Since then the players have been on the run from the authorities and unable to visit any markets, and we have had a sick player and had to cancel the last few sessions.

I planned and doing a lot more play testing of it, but given the massive negative feedback here I am probably going to toss it first.


My one main concern is the bit where wealth loss (or debt accumulation) from a failed roll representing saving up for something. Not because I can't understand that abstraction, I save up for things all the time. But then again I am not an adventurer who is about to risk my life on something. If I can't afford the +5 sword, I'm going for the +4 sword, then the +3 sword and so on until I have every edge I need to survive.

That is how the system is supposed to work from both a narrative and mechanical perspective.

The problem only comes up when someone says "screw the +3 and +4 swords! I am putting everything I have towards the +5 sword and lesser expenses be damned!"



Also, as someone who does a lot of game design let me tell you something; never defend your system. Feedback can never be wrong because even when it is factually incorrect, the fact someone made that mistake is in and of itself important feedback.

This is a true, if hard, lesson.

For me I have a hard time drawing the line between defense and explanation, there is always a little voice in the back of my head that says people would agree with me if I only I could explain it to them so they understand it as well as I do.

Also, knowing that someone is having a hard time understanding is useful feedback when you are at the presentation stage of actually writing up the rules, but I am still at the concept stage here, and if people don't understand what I am trying to do any feedback I get from them is going to be slightly less than useful.

[NichG]

The system is not about modeling financial security, it is about having a way for players to acquire big ticket equipment that they couldn't afford with the proceeds of a single adventure.

"You can spend your walking-around money on items within your means, or if you want big-ticket items that you couldn't normally afford, you can try to win them at the casino" would be a clearer description than "this system simulates saving money". If you aren't trying to model saving money, don't claim that you are. If someone says 'I want to be able to save money' then be honest and say 'this system doesn't model that' not 'well if you look at it this way, then maybe we can fluff it like when you happen to get a good roll, you were saving money all along'.



Again, I think we are talking past each other.

I am talking about saving up money for a single big ticket item that you couldn't ordinarily afford, not about having a savings account to fall back on if you encounter hard times.

For example, say I have a job and don't live beyond my means, and I want a new sports car. The sports car cots $200,000 dollars, and I decide I can spare $10,000 dollars a month for it, so I should have enough in just under two years.

Then I get hit by a bus. I miss six months of work and have to pay tens of thousands of dollars in legal expenses.

Are you telling me that if I am a "responsible person who is good with money and capable of saving money" I will continue to put $10,000 dollars a month in my sports car fund?

Where is this money coming from? Why am I not using some of the tens of thousands of dollars I have saved up for a sports car to pay down my hospital bills or to pay for my food, housing, and utility bills during the six months when I am not bringing home a paycheck.


Saving up for a rainy day and saving up for a big ticket item are both the same thing. Calling it a 'sports car fund' or a 'getting hit by a bus' fund is a way to help psychologically overcome the impulse to spend money, but in practice what it amounts to is spending less than you could, so that in the future you can spend more than you could.

Lets say you weren't saving up for a sports car and actually you spent that $10k a month every month - then in your story, the person just dies or goes bankrupt or goes into crushing debt or goes to prison (because of the legal expenses? huh?).

Whatever chance or happenstance is simply additive - it applies equally to the person who was saving as to the person who wasn't. Earmarking funds is just in the person's mind - the money is either there or it isn't.

I showed you the math of this a few posts ago with those curves - one for someone who saves money, the other for someone who randomly looks each month. In terms of saving for that $200k sports car, the model you think is realistic corresponds to someone averaging $2k ahead every month in the long term (including bus accidents and whatnot), but being hit by a surprise $20k extra expense on the odd months and winning a minor lottery for $20k extra on the even ones. If someone is regularly experiencing fluctuations of +/- $10k per month when their average savings is $2k, I'm going to say that they're doing something really really wrong with their life and they're being incredibly financially irresponsible.

If you make $1500 a month and you have $500 fluctuations, you can still have $500 fluctuations if you make $15000 a month. If somehow your fluctuations become $5000, you did something to change your habits or lifestyle - got a car (and corresponding risks/payments), bought a house, had kids, whatever. Or I suppose they invested in an incredibly volatile market, but that's still a willful action, not something inescapably part of life.

[Telok]

I think that the issue with the system is mostly a communication problem. That and some people really want more concrete money systems in order to micromanage wealth.

Speaking as someone who spent three hours last week watching four other people micromanage wealth while their characters spent six weeks living in the woods outside the city and drinking pond water, I would really have no issues with the sysyem as I understand it so far. Of course I also habitually avoid any money making abilities in that game because it is D&D and the "economy" is a bunch of made up crap.

[Talakeal]

I think that the issue with the system is mostly a communication problem. That and some people really want more concrete money systems in order to micromanage wealth.

Speaking as someone who spent three hours last week watching four other people micromanage wealth while their characters spent six weeks living in the woods outside the city and drinking pond water, I would really have no issues with the sysyem as I understand it so far. Of course I also habitually avoid any money making abilities in that game because it is D&D and the "economy" is a bunch of made up crap.

At this point I pretty much agree 1000%.



"You can spend your walking-around money on items within your means, or if you want big-ticket items that you couldn't normally afford, you can try to win them at the casino" would be a clearer description than "this system simulates saving money". If you aren't trying to model saving money, don't claim that you are. If someone says 'I want to be able to save money' then be honest and say 'this system doesn't model that' not 'well if you look at it this way, then maybe we can fluff it like when you happen to get a good roll, you were saving money all along'.

The system is a substitute for being able to save up. It has roughly the same input and output as traditional saving up and that is good enough for me. Like most systems in a single roll dice game it is a bit more swingy than reality, but not so much that it causes me to have a cognitive disconnect. It seems like a good enough abstraction to me, and it is generally easiest for me to imagine as a character making regular investments into a fund marked for the desired item. But, as I said, it is meant to be an abstract system, and if you have an easier way of imagining it then feel free to do so*.

If it is just too much of an abstraction for you then I don't think I am ever going to convince you, but I think at this point we both understand what one another is saying so we don't need to continue going back and forth talking about it.

*Your casino analogy is good enough. I personally don't like it because repeated visits to a casino tend to leave one deeper and deeper in debt and one will generally be destitute before one hits it big, but if it works for you as an explanation go for it.

[GloatingSwine]

I think that the issue with the system is mostly a communication problem. That and some people really want more concrete money systems in order to micromanage wealth.

Speaking as someone who spent three hours last week watching four other people micromanage wealth while their characters spent six weeks living in the woods outside the city and drinking pond water, I would really have no issues with the sysyem as I understand it so far. Of course I also habitually avoid any money making abilities in that game because it is D&D and the "economy" is a bunch of made up crap.

I think GMs having those experiences might actually have a different problem to what they think.

The players obviously have a different idea of how much material resources they should have at their current level to the GM. Which means it's time for a serious sit down and think about who's right, are they behind the curve? Especially if they're martial characters? Then stop ****ing them around and bring their equipment up to scratch. Are they on curve and looking for a leg up? Tell them that the items they want just aren't in this town no matter how frugally they live, tell them where they can go for them, and then do adventure to them on the way.

"Players micromanaging finances" is almost certainly a symptom of something else.

[Telok]

"Players micromanaging finances" is almost certainly a symptom of something else.

Like what? Seriously, that dungeon had us go from levels 9 to 12 and there was literally tons of loot (start with 4000 sets of masterwork full plate). Then there's the decisions on how to split, a party slush fund, ressurection debits, and people who didn't spend personal time doing hours of research calculating different costs and setting up priority queues. I know of no good way to speed up a big loot split and the resultant buying spree. Worst of all, it's pretty boring.

If you know a better way to deal with D&D money management then I'm all ears.

[Cluedrew]

Once. The players each bought a few potions, and one guy wasted all his money and got nothing in return to "prove to me how stupid the system was".Abuse testing can be useful, but it is probably a little early for that.


That is how the system is supposed to work from both a narrative and mechanical perspective.Sure, but does it? How would it work if my character went through the shops of all the merchants who owe her a favour, saved their store at some point, looking for some item right at the top of what she can buy. None of them have it, so she goes again looking for another item of the same price, when that doesn't work starts looking for lower tiered versions of the items.

Or even lets try something simpler: I have my character go the market and look around and I ask you what is available in my price range. How does that resolve under this system.


This is a true, if hard, lesson.Its not easy and not always pleasant, but it is important.

[GloatingSwine]

Like what? Seriously, that dungeon had us go from levels 9 to 12 and there was literally tons of loot (start with 4000 sets of masterwork full plate)..

Two options: "Nobody can afford to buy all that off you, disregard it's value" or "You buy the country".

(or, design your dungeons so they don't contain several times up to several orders of magnitude the WBL of a level 20 character for levels 9-12)

[Lorsa]

Sorry to be so slow with responding, I have a very busy weekend (as is basically the case with my entire life).


The player doesn't save up anything.

Yes, this much is obvious.


The player can roll a dice to simulate the character saving up something, and assuming average rolls they should get the item in the same amount of time as if the player were saving up for it themselves.

Wrong. The players can roll a die to simulate the character playing the lottery a couple of times in a row. THAT is what random simulates, nothing more, nothing less.

"Assuming random rolls" is the bane of all progression systems. You put a lot of trust in the law of averages, whereas I have seen enough weird stuff to know it doesn't really work out that way.

The only time you can "trust" the law of averages, is if you roll a lot of dice at the same time and sum them together; you can trust the value to be fairly close to the mean value.



I actually did have it so that after the roll you could spend additional treasure units, each adding +1 to the roll, to remove the randomness and simulate a character being willing to get the item at any cost.

That seems only logical I think, although after having looked at your system, a +1 to the DC isn't really worth a lot?



The character can trade it for an item or item(s) of lesser or equal value, but actually selling it for cash is not directly supported by the system.

It seems as though if you were to follow your system, selling an item would give a certain amount of Wealth based on what item it is and the roll of the person selling it?



I wrote down a full copy of my (then current) draft of the system for PhoenixPhyre a page or two back.

I am sorry, I didn't see it before.

Now that I have I can join the group of people whose head hurt. What is the reason for you to prefer this sort of complicated system instead of, say WoD or Burning Wheel?



I actually don't track XP. Haven't for over ten years now, I got tired of arguing with players about whether or not they should get XP for avoiding an encounter, or picking a fight with some random guy, or whether they should get XP multiple times for defeating an enemy who used hit and run tactics, or extra XP for encountering a monster in its own environment, etc. And it was really bad if someone missed a session and fell behind the rest of the group. And god help us if I the DM decided to grant bonus XP for good RP or dock XP for disrupting the game...

I would say that part of those issues really are more like non-issues. There's no reason why someone missing a session shouldn't also get XP, for example.

In any case, I didn't actually think you did use XP for some reason. There are some times I do, some times I don't. In any case, you don't let people roll a die for it.



But yeah, I agree that rolling a dice would be stupid, instead I just tally the number of sessions and decide that every X sessions the entire party will gain a level. When I run D&D that is, which is rarely, usually I play WoD or a homebrew in which case I can just award 1 XP per session.

Now, imagine if you did the same for loot...



I agree that randomness in character progression is pretty dumb. The thing is my economic system is built to minimize that. As things get cheaper over time a run of good or bad luck will eventually be smoothed out, and the sheer number of rolls to find loot means that the law of averages will overpower fluctuations fairly quickly.

It does seem like they get to do a lot of rolls. However, you should never put your trust in the law of averages. NEVER. It will screw you over, every single time.

I noticed that as the character's gain Essence, stuff gets cheaper. I'm not really sure what this is meant to simulate, except to put some form of floor to the characters' gear level.

If you agree with me that randomness in character progression is dumb, then it would be fairly simply to device a loo system that had almost NO randomness.



The only time it could screw you would be if you refused to spend anything on realistic gear and just tried to get end game gear from day one, which in my system at least gives you a chance to handle, if you tried that in 3.5 you would be running around naked well into the low teens and would be wiping on virtually every fight unless your party was all sorcerers and druids.

Which is kind of realistic, isn't it? If you don't buy any useful gear, you're more likely to die.



To continue the comparison to D&D, by RAW it is far more random and punitive than my system is.

In earlier editions of D&D loot was totally random. There was no system for buying magic items, and crafting cost permanent ability scores AND involved a random dice roll which could mean the item was ruined or came out cursed. You were totally up to the mercy of the random treasure tables.

Sure, if you are comparing it to early edition RAW. Who is playing that though? A handful of tables?



Likewise in 3.X they have a magic item economy, but players are still at the mercy of the treasure tables. In 3.X if you drink a lot of potions you WILL be significantly behind your expected WBL for the rest of the campaign. And if you find a +5 flaming battle axe and decide to sell it and buy a +5 icy long sword, well you are going to out 50% of the item's cost FOREVER.

Guess, what, the random treasure table is OPTIONAL. You don't have to use it if you don't want to. You could just as easily put the gear the PCs' actually WANT in the loot. Your choice.

If you drink a lot of potions, that's still a player choice, and maybe it helped them survive.

Also, I think 3.5 actually does expect you to sell most stuff for 50%, which I'm pretty sure is taken into account trying to use the random tables to achieve WBL.



So yeah, IMO RAW D&D is far more random and punitive than my system is, people just don't notice it because the randomness is mostly hidden behind the screen and most DMs will step in and "fiddle with the system" to place exactly the item that the character needs right in their path if they start to fall behind; and there is nothing stopping similar DM FIAT in my system.

True, you could still step in with your system. But calling it "far more random" is a bit of overstatement. A general loot pile will give you gold equal to 50% of the value of the items in it, which you can then use to buy what you want.



D&D also doesn't take into account supply and demand or any sort of living expenses. Also, when dealing with big ticket items, you are not buying them off the rack but you are instead haggling with people. Think of buying a car, nobody pays the sticker price, but the exact amount people do pay varies greatly depending on their skill at haggling and that of the salesman.

I'm pretty sure living expenses are listed in the Player's Handbook? And it DOES take supply and demand into account; that's the whole reason why the prices are the way they are.

Also, haggling is a cultural thing. In Sweden, you shouldn't be expected to haggle much with buying cars (or diamond rings or other expensive stuff). Sometimes maybe you can haggle a little, but cars are pretty much bought "off the rack" nowadays.



And I don't just mean "living expenses" as in the cost of food and inns. Think about real life, how taking a vacation, or getting sick, or having a car or other major appliance break down, having your home damaged in a storm, getting robbed, get a traffic ticket (or actually be arrested!), being out of work for a month, or just splurging on an entertainment item like a new video game console, etc. can wreck the balance of your savings account and long term financial plans.

Uh, okay.

First of all, adventurers have a kind of weird type of income. So yeah, if they go on vacation, I guess they won't earn anything. They probably won't have to either though, due to the pile of gold they're usually sitting on.

For me, I get a set amount of vacation days per year. I even get higher salary when I am off for my summer vacation, as it's expected that I spend more then.

Anyway, this isn't about me. Most of these things typically don't happen to adventurers. Except perhaps "getting arrested". D&D models these things by the DM deciding that they happen, just like with everything else related to "the world".



On the other hand money can increase to, you could inherit money, or win a small fortune in some game or contest, or get a big tax return, or find some old baseball cards and comics in your attic that sell for a ton of money on e-bay, or get a bonus at work, or find a huge sale on some big ticket item you were planning to buy.

Sure. And these things are modeled in D&D already, by means of the DM (and dice in the case of playing the lottery).

Also, I don't think I've ever seen such a "huge sale" on any big ticket items that your system seem to imply could happen. I don't think it matters how many deals I go to, how many people I talk to, I'm not going to be able to buy a brand new Lamborghini for $100.



And that isn't even talking about the massive fluctuations that could come from someone who invests heavily in the stock market or owns their own business.

Technically, the assumption in D&D land is that the stock market doesn't exist, as its invention came after the generic "fantasy Renaissance" that D&D takes place in. If you have a game WITH stock markets, I think there are better ways to model that than your system.



As I said to Georgie, it is in fact impossible for the playersto save money, but the system is in place to simulate their character saving money. Using the roll system will, assuming random rolls, get them the same number of items in the same amount of time as if they were allowed to save up. And, when you factor in the controls built into the system I believe it is actually more reliable than trying to save up for something in real life.

Except, as said before, it doesn't simulate the character saving money. It simulates the character playing the lottery a bunch of times in a row. It's not the same thing, and don't try to sell it as such.

Still, if you're happy trusting the law of averages, I agree that over time, it should provide roughly the same amount of items as if they'd save up for them.



I am not trying to do any one thing, but a dozen things at once, many of which are modified by other things. Writing a gold total on your character sheet is not hard, although at high levels it does get pretty tedious when you have to write "18,541 platinum, 106,734 gold, 73 silver, and 22 copper" and then keep track of the costs of torches or iron rations that cost several copper pieces each.

Then don't write down silver and copper pieces? And who in their right mind cares to keep track of the cost of individual torches and iron rations when they have over two hundred thousand gold? Just scrap off ten of them and say "we buy the stuff we need to survive now".

Or, if the players don't want to do that because they like to keep track of individual costs; why not let them? Alternatively, give them 10 gold less every time they loot stuff but tell them they'll always have torches and iron rations.



But it also makes the character think that they are carrying around exactly that much gold (and by RAW remember they need a place to carry it and / or factor in the encumbrance value and / or the volume and weight capacitates of their bag of holding).

Yeah, well, the character IS carrying around exactly that much weight. Which is why any decent adventurer converts it into gems.



Once you start counting individual coins then the entire game becomes an exercise in penny pinching and hoarding. The optimal move for the players is to loot every scrap of enemy gear and bit of dungeon dressing and get the maximum value of it, and it makes them loathe to spend any sort of money that doesn't directly upgrade their gear.

This is a very player specific problem. My players typically don't loot every scrap of enemy gear, just the stuff that looks valuable enough and they can carry. Also, they regularly spend gold on all sorts of stuff, like for example fancy clothes that cost a fortune.



The whole system wastes a ton of time, creates a ton of stress, and requires a lot of book keeping from session to session. Compare, for example, "You loot the orcs and are able to savage 3 units worth of treasure," vs. "You loot 126 flight arrows, 7 suits of used chainmail, 4 suits of damaged chainmail, 1 suit of masterwork chainmail (also used), 13 rusted short swords, 71 silver, 3 medium diamonds, 6 bottles of wine, 18 battered helmets, 4 suits of goblin sized leather armor (damaged), 16 used short-bows, 8 long swords, 2 master work short swords, 4 goblin sized daggers, 6 goblin sized short-bows (used), 18 orc sized helmets, 6 goblin sized helmets, 2 ogre sized helmets, 2 ogre sized great clubs, 3 gold pieces, and a statue of a porcelain unicorn." Not only does the player need to determine all of this, but the players need to record it, figure out a way to transport it back to town, appraise it, calculate a price on each individual piece, sell it for 50%, and then finally convert and record the coins in what is going to be some random 9 digit combination of platinum, gold, silver, and copper.

Alternatively, if you really want to abstract the process of looting and selling items, just tell them "you loot gear equivalent to 534 gold once you've sold it back in town" (if they can carry the stuff that is). Then you can skip your fairly complicated system and let them save up and buy stuff normally (which usually takes a very tiny amount of time and is easily understandable by anyone). Not sure why you want to remove the "figure out a way to transport it", but if you're not concerned about it, just say "it's 534 gold worth of stuff".



So I created a much more streamlined the system that abstracted the exact same thing with a fraction of the time, math, and book keeping. The problem was that there was no way to save for big ticket items, so I created a system to simulate the process instead, which is what one of my players took objection to; without only a statistical rather than a concrete reward for saving he felt like his money was being stolen or vanishing into a plot whole, he couldn't wrap his head around the idea that his money was still there, it was just stuffed into a (probably metaphorical) vault labeled "do not open until you find a +5 sword for sale" and that he couldn't access immediately.

Something that is abstract is still supposed to model something. Your system doesn't "simulate" saving, it simulates playing lottery over and over, with a higher chance of winning depending on your "Essence".

Also, I am not sure how your system requires less math. The way I read it, it requires way more. And it's a whole lot more complicated than "pay a price listed in a table".



Likewise I don't know why weight and cost being correlated is weird to you; it seems perfectly logical to me that the bigger something is the more materials and time will need to go into making it. Again, if you look at D&D equipment lists and compare similar items there is an extremely strong correlation between cost and weight of similar items, great swords cost and weight more than bastard swords, which cost and weigh more than long swords , which cost and weigh more than short swords, which cost and weigh more than dagger.

I will be sure to tell that to clerk next time I buy Saffron. Or an engagement ring. Or a microchip.

For the example you said here, that is Blades, the increase in cost does indeed have to do with requiring more materials and more work. That's because they're all made of steel with the same process (blacksmithing).

It does not hold true for everything.

[Knaight]

The system is a substitute for being able to save up. It has roughly the same input and output as traditional saving up and that is good enough for me. Like most systems in a single roll dice game it is a bit more swingy than reality, but not so much that it causes me to have a cognitive disconnect. It seems like a good enough abstraction to me, and it is generally easiest for me to imagine as a character making regular investments into a fund marked for the desired item. But, as I said, it is meant to be an abstract system, and if you have an easier way of imagining it then feel free to do so*.

If it is just too much of an abstraction for you then I don't think I am ever going to convince you, but I think at this point we both understand what one another is saying so we don't need to continue going back and forth talking about it.

This isn't a matter of the amount of abstraction. I suspect that pretty much everyone here arguing with you is fine with abstraction, frequently on the level of having less than 10 total wealth levels, and you either have enough or spend enough to move down a level or you don't.

[Segev]

Players micro-manage wealth when the system rewards them for doing so. If they're staying in the wilderness and subsisting on pond water for six weeks, it's because the cost of doing that - abject discomfort and misery - has no mechanical impact on them and is not something their players endure. They don't spend 20 gp/week on the finest luxury living in town because the PCs' pleasure and comfort means nothing to the players; it has no impact on how they get to play the game.

Either introduce costs for living rough (and I don't mean financial; something to do with making the characters' misery impact the players, or making there be fewer opportunities or greater risk to real, mechanical things) or introduce benefits for living well (more opportunities, better ability to trade on goods or services, better connections). Or both.

If there was a chance each day that the rough living did damage to their loot such that it lost value, they'd seek the minimum living conditions to prevent loss of wealth. Or the point where living conditions cost less than the lost wealth.

If rummaging around with NPCs and rolling a bazillion different skills makes them better able to get the gear they want, they'll do it.

[Telok]

Two options: "Nobody can afford to buy all that off you, disregard it's value" or "You buy the country".
So essentially your solution is is that the character's efforts have no real rewards. I'm sorry but that's not actually useful.


Either introduce costs for living rough...
AD&D did that, you could get diseases and had to roll for random encounters. But that was declared 'not fun' and thrown out. So we have filthy, unwashed, homeless bums wearing a king's ransom as the new normal.

And neither of the above solves any problems that Talakeal is having in explaining the system or addresses the boring aspects of the concrete wealth loot/shopping cycle.

Honestly at this point I'd just play-test the system for a couple months and see if it gives the desired results. Most of the issues seem to be presentation and explanation of the abstraction and rolling results. Most of the complaints seem to surround things that are part of the abstraction (things that people don't want to be abstracted) or that it breaks when people engage in abnormal behaviour (and the concrete D&D model has that same issue).

[Cluedrew]

Slightly random comment: Earlier in the thread someone said that this system was not a real abstract wealth system. Which is untrue according to all the definitions of abstract I can think of. But I think I realized what their point was.

They were confusing abstraction and simplicity. Because honestly there are only two reasons you abstract things 95% of the time, and both of them are variants of simplicity. This system, while it introduces abstraction, does not get a lot of simplicity out of it.

Your bog standard shopping system has a list of items, each item has a price and is either available or not. Although availability can change, price and the items themselves usually don't. Then each player has a number which represents their current wealth. By reducing your current wealth by the price of the item, you gain the item.

That's it. Sure systems will put things like economy and haggling on top of that, but that is really your default. OK now how many relevant numbers does your system have to every transaction, 5?

[Talakeal]

Wrong. The players can roll a die to simulate the character playing the lottery a couple of times in a row. THAT is what random simulates, nothing more, nothing less.

"Assuming random rolls" is the bane of all progression systems. You put a lot of trust in the law of averages, whereas I have seen enough weird stuff to know it doesn't really work out that way.

The only time you can "trust" the law of averages, is if you roll a lot of dice at the same time and sum them together; you can trust the value to be fairly close to the mean value.

On an average lottery "roll" you don't break even. If you could find a lottery that, on average, caused you to break even it would, indeed, by almost identical to a savings account (assuming a large enough sample size).


That seems only logical I think, although after having looked at your system, a +1 to the DC isn't really worth a lot?

The effect is cumulative



It seems as though if you were to follow your system, selling an item would give a certain amount of Wealth based on what item it is and the roll of the person selling it?

That might seem logical superficially, but it totally breaks the entire system (both conceptually and mechanically).

The system is designed to avoid players hoarding everything and stripping the dungeon bare, and meant to minimize math, book keeping, and time spent number crunching and selling.

To find a fair value for an item you would have to take supply and demand in, as well as the item's age, condition, and the fact that most items (particularly armor) need to be tailored to an individual wearer's body shape (this is especially true in a world of ogres and goblins, or centaurs and gargoyles). Then you have to factor in the buyer's profit margin and overhead.

And then you would have to find a way to tie that into the business skill of both the buyer and the seller.

And once you do all that you are right back to the penny pinching and number crunching that I am trying to avoid.[/QUOTE]



Now that I have I can join the group of people whose head hurt.

Here is the system:

During their adventure characters will acquire treasures and debts. At the end of the session subtract the characters debt units from their treasure units, the result is their wealth.
Wealth is then used to buy equipment.

Items have a value as listed on the following chart:
2: Potion, Bucker, Helmet
4: Skill Tool, One Handed Weapon, Shield, Functional Clothing
6: Light Armor, Tower Shield, One Handed Firearm
8: Medium Armor, Two Handed Weapon
10: Heavy Armor, Two Handed Firearm

When buying an item you can either buy a number of wealth equal to its value or choose to haggle.

When haggling roll a business skill test. On a success you get the item for a number of wealth equal to half its value. On a failure you pay full price.

The difficulty to haggle is based on the item's quality and the following chart:
(15 + (Qualityx5) )

-2: 5
-1: 10
0: 15
20: +1
25: +2
30: +3
35: +4
40 +5


All items have a quality rated from -2 to 5.
All characters have an essence score rated from one 1 to 5.

Characters buy items with a quality equal to their essence score normally.
Each point by which their essence exceeds the quality gives them a +5 bonus to haggle rolls.
Each point by which the quality exceeds their essence doubles the item's value.

When buying an item in bulk every 10 units can be bought as if they were a single item of one point higher quality.




That really is complex enough to make your head hurt? That is significantly shorter than the economics section in most games that I am used to dealing with, and if this taxes your brain that badly I would hate to see you after reading the 3.5 rules for calculating the value of a custom magic item.




What is the reason for you to prefer this sort of complicated system instead of, say WoD or Burning Wheel?

As I said above, in my mind it is fairly simple compared to a crunchy system, and is not too dissimilar to that found in a moderately abstract system like d20 Modern, Dark Heresy, or Atlantis the Second Age.

The reason I don't go to a fully abstract system like WoD is:

1: The setting is about colonialism and technology, wealth, and power are all linked. Doing away with mechanical effects of wealth would hurt the narrative.
2: I want to have merchants and crafters as viable player archetypes.
3: It allows me to award people for going above and beyond; completing bonus objectives or finding hidden treasures over the course of the adventure as well as giving skills like search, larceny, reason, or survival a little extra boost.
4: It allows soft failure states that don't end the game. If people can drink potions to avoid a wipe, or after losing can pay a ransom in exchange for their lives it allows the players to be "punished" for failure without actually wrecking the game.


I noticed that as the character's gain Essence, stuff gets cheaper. I'm not really sure what this is meant to simulate, except to put some form of floor to the characters' gear level.

Basically, wealth is worth more. It allows me to keep the numbers small while still letting the players feel like big shots.

Not only are they capable of getting more money, but they have a reputation and more lackeys / contacts to help them with acquiring items.

Basically, every essence level increases the value of a "unit" of treasure by a factor of ten.

So an essence 1 character deals in single gold pieces. An essence 2 character deals in 10s of GP and ignores singles. An essence 3 character deals in hundreds of GP and ignores tens and singles. An essence 4 character deals in thousands of GP and ignores hundreds, tens, and singles, and an essence 5 character deals in tens of thousands and ignores anything less.



Which is kind of realistic, isn't it? If you don't buy any useful gear, you're more likely to die.

Yes. Yes it is. Which is why I don't know why so much effort is put into focusing on a weird situation that is clearly sub-optimal and borderline suicidal, and I decided to simply drop that aspect of the system rather than argue about it.




Sure, if you are comparing it to early edition RAW. Who is playing that though? A handful of tables?




Guess, what, the random treasure table is OPTIONAL. You don't have to use it if you don't want to. You could just as easily put the gear the PCs' actually WANT in the loot. Your choice.

If you drink a lot of potions, that's still a player choice, and maybe it helped them survive.

Also, I think 3.5 actually does expect you to sell most stuff for 50%, which I'm pretty sure is taken into account trying to use the random tables to achieve WBL.


True, you could still step in with your system. But calling it "far more random" is a bit of overstatement. A general loot pile will give you gold equal to 50% of the value of the items in it, which you can then use to buy what you want.

Looking at the 3.5 DMG randomly generating treasure is still the default; although it says the DM can customize treasure for very special occasions such as when the players defeat the BBEG at the end of the adventure. I believe 4E and 5E still use randomness as default, but I don't have the books to check so don't quote me on that.

My point is not that this is ideal, merely that random treasure generation worked fine throughout most of the history of RPGs and is hardly the end of the world like most people are putting it.

And again, I don't much care for randomness and I believe my system is far less random than most traditional games. Especially when you bring rust monsters, mordenkainen's disjunction, and improved sunder into play.

Also, from what I can tell the expected PC WBL assumes that they have the full value of everything they find, not the 50% they would get for selling it and having their own gear custom made.




And it DOES take supply and demand into account; that's the whole reason why the prices are the way they are.

Where do you get that D&D factors in supply and demand? As far as I can tell every item in the book has a flat price which is based on the value of the goods that went into it (also a flat price) as well as the time and possibly XP costs to craft it.




Also, haggling is a cultural thing. In Sweden, you shouldn't be expected to haggle much with buying cars (or diamond rings or other expensive stuff). Sometimes maybe you can haggle a little, but cars are pretty much bought "off the rack" nowadays.

Must be nice; in the good old USA we are still expected to haggle with the dealer and I absolutely hate it, but I do usually only pay about 75-80% of the asking price.

But the campaign setting is not modern Sweden or USA. It is centuries behind us in a near post apocalyptic world that never went through an industrial revolution, most things you buy are hand made or salvaged from ancient ruins, so "off the rack" isn't really a thing that exists.


Except, as said before, it doesn't simulate the character saving money. It simulates the character playing the lottery a bunch of times in a row. It's not the same thing, and don't try to sell it as such.

Still, if you're happy trusting the law of averages, I agree that over time, it should provide roughly the same amount of items as if they'd save up for them.

Something that is abstract is still supposed to model something. Your system doesn't "simulate" saving, it simulates playing lottery over and over, with a higher chance of winning depending on your "Essence".

If you don't like the world "simulates" that is fine.

The idea was that it was a replacement for saving money that had the same mean results.

You can "fluff" it however you want, for you it works best as playing the lottery, for me it works best as investing, for NichG it works as gambling, and for my PC it apparently works best as robbing and being robbed by NPC merchants, it really doesn't matter unless you choose to fluff it in a way that you don't like, choose to play it in a sub-optimal fashion, and then bitch about.

I am not going to use the system because players hate randomness and it really isn't necessary.



Also, I am not sure how your system requires less math. The way I read it, it requires way more. And it's a whole lot more complicated than "pay a price listed in a table".

It only deals in 1 and 2 digit numbers and everything operation is either simple addition / subtraction of 1 or 2 digit numbers of multiplying / dividing by factors of 2 or 10. That's all real simple math that, imo, most people can do in their head easily and quickly. Also all of the base values are even so you don't have to deal with rounding.

There is none of the +50%, or 1/25, or equal to the bonus squared, or mixing multiplying flat values by weight, or rounding to the player's disadvantage, or any of the other funky math in D&D. Just compare what I listed above to pages 282-288 in the 3.5 DMG.



I will be sure to tell that to clerk next time I buy Saffron. Or an engagement ring. Or a microchip.

For the example you said here, that is Blades, the increase in cost does indeed have to do with requiring more materials and more work. That's because they're all made of steel with the same process (blacksmithing).

It does not hold true for everything.

None of those things are equipment.

The system only applies to potions, weapons, armor, and skill tools, all of which are placed into broad weight categories rather than given exact weights.

The only real disconnect is that weapons that are mostly wood should probably cost less than weapons that are mostly metal, but to me that falls into the realm of creating rules bloat and imbalance for the sake of overly realistic rules, which is the opposite of trying to switch to a faster and more abstract system.

[Yukitsu]

Slightly random comment: Earlier in the thread someone said that this system was not a real abstract wealth system. Which is untrue according to all the definitions of abstract I can think of. But I think I realized what their point was.

It was accused of being non-abstract when it wasn't clarified on the mechanics behind "debt" and why that was not an expenditure. Prior to that clarification, it was a simple pay wealth numbers and then acquire debt which eliminates wealth. That's called currency. It has since been clarified that wealth when purchasing is time and that debt does not reduce wealth.

[Lorsa]

On an average lottery "roll" you don't break even. If you could find a lottery that, on average, caused you to break even it would, indeed, by almost identical to a savings account (assuming a large enough sample size).

No, it wouldn't be almost identical to a savings account. With a savings account, if you have put in 5 savings, you still have some money in there, whereas if you're playing the lottery, you'll have 0 saved up for your "bus accident" until the time you hit the lucky number.

The only thing that would hold true is "the mean time frame required to get X money by saving and playing the lottery is equal". That doesn't make them functionally identical (just compare a lucky streak to a loosing streak vs. saving for example).



The effect is cumulative

Cumulative in the sense that you can spend more than one wealth unit to improve the DC, or cumulative that it carries over to the next roll?




That might seem logical superficially, but it totally breaks the entire system (both conceptually and mechanically).

The system is designed to avoid players hoarding everything and stripping the dungeon bare, and meant to minimize math, book keeping, and time spent number crunching and selling.

Your system would only have this effect if the amount they declare that they loot have no impact on the treasure reward you grant them after the adventure.




Here is the system:

During their adventure characters will acquire treasures and debts. At the end of the session subtract the characters debt units from their treasure units, the result is their wealth.
Wealth is then used to buy equipment.

Items have a value as listed on the following chart:
2: Potion, Bucker, Helmet
4: Skill Tool, One Handed Weapon, Shield, Functional Clothing
6: Light Armor, Tower Shield, One Handed Firearm
8: Medium Armor, Two Handed Weapon
10: Heavy Armor, Two Handed Firearm

When buying an item you can either buy a number of wealth equal to its value or choose to haggle.

When haggling roll a business skill test. On a success you get the item for a number of wealth equal to half its value. On a failure you pay full price.

The difficulty to haggle is based on the item's quality and the following chart:
(15 + (Qualityx5) )

-2: 5
-1: 10
0: 15
20: +1
25: +2
30: +3
35: +4
40 +5


All items have a quality rated from -2 to 5.
All characters have an essence score rated from one 1 to 5.

Characters buy items with a quality equal to their essence score normally.
Each point by which their essence exceeds the quality gives them a +5 bonus to haggle rolls.
Each point by which the quality exceeds their essence doubles the item's value.

When buying an item in bulk every 10 units can be bought as if they were a single item of one point higher quality.




That really is complex enough to make your head hurt? That is significantly shorter than the economics section in most games that I am used to dealing with, and if this taxes your brain that badly I would hate to see you after reading the 3.5 rules for calculating the value of a custom magic item.

It makes my head hurt because it isn't entirely obvious from the presentation how it works, and also partly because it is somewhat removed from how how I view shopping transactions normally working.

To see if I got it right:

If I have an Essence of 1, I can buy a Quality 1 Two-handed weapon by spending 8 units of Wealth?

Alternatively, I can attempt to buy a Quality 2 Two-handed weapon by spending what? Is it still 8 units of Wealth or only 1?

By reading the system, I get the feeling that if my haggling roll succeeds (which has a DC of 25), I can buy the Quality 2, 2H weapon for 8 units of Wealth (half price of 16 which is 8x[number by which quality exceeds essence]). If I fail, it would cost 16 Wealth (which I may not have)?

What happens if I choose to haggle, but fail and don't have the Wealth to pay for full price? Do I loose the Wealth units or do I still have them?

Also, if I read the system right, if I have a +5 Essence, I could buy a +2 Quality helmet for only 1 Wealth by rolling haggle against a DC of 25, except I have +15 to the roll so effectively DC 10?



Where do you get that D&D factors in supply and demand? As far as I can tell every item in the book has a flat price which is based on the value of the goods that went into it (also a flat price) as well as the time and possibly XP costs to craft it.

If I look around me IRL, basically everything has a flat price as well, save for houses and unique collector's items.

The price of stuff at the supermarket hasn't changed significantly over the past decade, nor has the price of cars.

These flat prices are the result of a supply and demand market economy; basically prices gravitate towards a number stated by supply and demand. Same in D&D. The only thing D&D doesn't take into account is market fluctuations, it basically assumes the market is stable (like Sweden for the past 10 years).



Must be nice; in the good old USA we are still expected to haggle with the dealer and I absolutely hate it, but I do usually only pay about 75-80% of the asking price.

It IS nice. It also saves up a lot of time, which is good. Basically, in Sweden we "haggle" by going to the dealer with the best listed price. We are also a very conflict-avoiding culture, so that may have something to do with it. By and large though, haggling is a big waste of everyone's time. Time is an extremely valuable resource, as it's hard to get more of it.



But the campaign setting is not modern Sweden or USA. It is centuries behind us in a near post apocalyptic world that never went through an industrial revolution, most things you buy are hand made or salvaged from ancient ruins, so "off the rack" isn't really a thing that exists.

True enough, haggling is part of many cultures. I just wanted to point out that it isn't a universal default.




If you don't like the world "simulates" that is fine.

The idea was that it was a replacement for saving money that had the same mean results.

You can "fluff" it however you want, for you it works best as playing the lottery, for me it works best as investing, for NichG it works as gambling, and for my PC it apparently works best as robbing and being robbed by NPC merchants, it really doesn't matter unless you choose to fluff it in a way that you don't like, choose to play it in a sub-optimal fashion, and then bitch about.

Well, I like to fluff things in ways that is at least somewhat related to the system at hand. This is why I can't get on board with your "investing" idea. It really doesn't simulate investing, it simulates, as NichG pointed out, gambling (or playing the lottery). THAT is how you should present it.



I am not going to use the system because players hate randomness and it really isn't necessary.

Alternatively, you could use parts of your system, that is, the part that doesn't involve haggling. You can buy stuff for wealth units with a quality depending on your essence. Nice and easy!



It only deals in 1 and 2 digit numbers and everything operation is either simple addition / subtraction of 1 or 2 digit numbers of multiplying / dividing by factors of 2 or 10. That's all real simple math that, imo, most people can do in their head easily and quickly. Also all of the base values are even so you don't have to deal with rounding.

There is none of the +50%, or 1/25, or equal to the bonus squared, or mixing multiplying flat values by weight, or rounding to the player's disadvantage, or any of the other funky math in D&D. Just compare what I listed above to pages 282-288 in the 3.5 DMG.

It's not so much a problem of calculating, as remember what actually goes into the formulas, or how many calculations you need to keep in your head at the same time; that is, how many math operations you need to do and how many numbers you need to remember while doing them.

In general, I have no problem with maths, I can do multiple integrals or differential equations just fine. But I'm not sure your system much easier than what a typical player has to do in D&D (look at a table, sum values, divide by 2).

[Talakeal]

No, it wouldn't be almost identical to a savings account. With a savings account, if you have put in 5 savings, you still have some money in there, whereas if you're playing the lottery, you'll have 0 saved up for your "bus accident" until the time you hit the lucky number.

The only thing that would hold true is "the mean time frame required to get X money by saving and playing the lottery is equal". That doesn't make them functionally identical (just compare a lucky streak to a loosing streak vs. saving for example).

As I said, assuming a big enough sample size. If tickets are 1$ and have 1/10 odds of winning, if I buy 1,000 tickets I can be almost guaranteed to have about 100 winners in there.

The problem with gambling is that the odds are never anywhere close to an even payout. Even if played perfectly casino games always favor the house by about 2%, and most gambling has far worse odds. Plus the time investment would be astronomical.

As I said, the system was a replacement for saving up; same average output but with less book keeping. If you don't feel that it is a good enough replacement, well, we just have to agree to disagree, and since I dropped it from the system you don't need to worry about it on the odd chance you ever did happen to play my game.



Cumulative in the sense that you can spend more than one wealth unit to improve the DC, or cumulative that it carries over to the next roll?

You can spend as many as you want on a given roll.


Your system would only have this effect if the amount they declare that they loot have no impact on the treasure reward you grant them after the adventure.

No, because I would have to calculate the value of each individual piece.

If I tell the players "You can get three treasure for the orc's armor" but I have established that a suit of chainmail is worth .75 units of treasure (ugggh and I would also have to deal with fractional treasure units) then the players would throw a fit that the five suits of orcish chainmail were worth 1.25 treasure units less than last time.

And people would try and save up used equipment as a proxy currency, which would mean that I would need to increase the base prices of all the high end gear to compensate.



It makes my head hurt because it isn't entirely obvious from the presentation how it works, and also partly because it is somewhat removed from how how I view shopping transactions normally working.

To see if I got it right:

If I have an Essence of 1, I can buy a Quality 1 Two-handed weapon by spending 8 units of Wealth?

Alternatively, I can attempt to buy a Quality 2 Two-handed weapon by spending what? Is it still 8 units of Wealth or only 1?

By reading the system, I get the feeling that if my haggling roll succeeds (which has a DC of 25), I can buy the Quality 2, 2H weapon for 8 units of Wealth (half price of 16 which is 8x[number by which quality exceeds essence]). If I fail, it would cost 16 Wealth (which I may not have)?

What happens if I choose to haggle, but fail and don't have the Wealth to pay for full price? Do I loose the Wealth units or do I still have them?

Also, if I read the system right, if I have a +5 Essence, I could buy a +2 Quality helmet for only 1 Wealth by rolling haggle against a DC of 25, except I have +15 to the roll so effectively DC 10?


Aside from using approximations for value and the opportunity to haggle for items, what is different than your normal experience?




If I have an Essence of 1, I can buy a Quality 1 Two-handed weapon by spending 8 units of Wealth?

Correct.

Alternatively, I can attempt to buy a Quality 2 Two-handed weapon by spending what? Is it still 8 units of Wealth or only 1?

Neither. You buy the sword or you don't, there is no try.

By reading the system, I get the feeling that if my haggling roll succeeds (which has a DC of 25), I can buy the Quality 2, 2H weapon for 8 units of Wealth (half price of 16 which is 8x[number by which quality exceeds essence]). If I fail, it would cost 16 Wealth (which I may not have)?

Correct

What happens if I choose to haggle, but fail and don't have the Wealth to pay for full price? Do I loose the Wealth units or do I still have them?

You go into debt and cannot make any more purchases until you have a positive total.

Also, if I read the system right, if I have a +5 Essence, I could buy a +2 Quality helmet for only 1 Wealth by rolling haggle against a DC of 25, except I have +15 to the roll so effectively DC 10?

Correct.




If I look around me IRL, basically everything has a flat price as well, save for houses and unique collector's items.

The price of stuff at the supermarket hasn't changed significantly over the past decade, nor has the price of cars.

These flat prices are the result of a supply and demand market economy; basically prices gravitate towards a number stated by supply and demand. Same in D&D. The only thing D&D doesn't take into account is market fluctuations, it basically assumes the market is stable (like Sweden for the past 10 years).

That strikes me as extremely odd. Having every market stable for a ten year period seems absolutely bizarre and alien for me. I have to take your word for it, but I can assure you that is not the norm for human history or for most of the globe. For example, in my town going to the same store the price of beef fluctuates by about 50% over the course of just a few weeks time.

Even if D&D was assumed to take place in a period of global (actually multiversal) economic stasis for some reason, it still seems pretty weird that every item just so happens to have a supply, demand, materials cost, and time to craft cost that all follow the exact same formula.





Alternatively, you could use parts of your system, that is, the part that doesn't involve haggling. You can buy stuff for wealth units with a quality depending on your essence. Nice and easy!

I still don't get why people are so adamantly opposed to any sort of randomness in the system, I want to have merchants be a valid character archetype in system, and this really isn't much different from the crafting / profession skills in a game like D&D.



It's not so much a problem of calculating, as remember what actually goes into the formulas, or how many calculations you need to keep in your head at the same time; that is, how many math operations you need to do and how many numbers you need to remember while doing them.

In general, I have no problem with maths, I can do multiple integrals or differential equations just fine. But I'm not sure your system much easier than what a typical player has to do in D&D (look at a table, sum values, divide by 2).

I really can't think of an operation in D&D which isn't more math intensive. Even if you are just buying a base quality item of the rack D&D is going to be using a larger number.

When you factor in masterwork, material, size, enchantments (some of which are exponential, others are linear, and still others are modified by caster level), and then divide that amount by two (for crafting or selling) or by 25 (for XP costs) it can get pretty tedious.

[NichG]

Well, now that haggling has been changed so that you get the item even on a failed roll, I have much less of an objection to the randomness part.

That you acquire the item and then go into debt does actually model saving in a way, in the sense that gains cumulatively contribute towards removing it.

This is much improved over the previous versions. But, I suppose a party could just go thousands into debt to acquire a couple hundred +5 swords following the first game. I suppose at some point the seller just says 'you aren't good for it, I won't let you roll' for obvious exploits like that.

[Lorsa]

No, because I would have to calculate the value of each individual piece.

If I tell the players "You can get three treasure for the orc's armor" but I have established that a suit of chainmail is worth .75 units of treasure (ugggh and I would also have to deal with fractional treasure units) then the players would throw a fit that the five suits of orcish chainmail were worth 1.25 treasure units less than last time.

And people would try and save up used equipment as a proxy currency, which would mean that I would need to increase the base prices of all the high end gear to compensate.

So, if I understood your answer correctly; players saying "we loot everything in sight" or "we don't loot anything" will generate the same amount of treasure units at the end of the adventure? I am not saying this is "wrong", just making sure I understood your answer to my question.





Aside from using approximations for value and the opportunity to haggle for items, what is different than your normal experience?

Well, with the way you describe it now, it is closer to my normal experience. Before there seem to have been an idea that a failed roll to acquire items still removed the wealth units.

I guess the only weird thing is that haggling seems to be extremely powerful. But that's up to how you want to run the game.





If I have an Essence of 1, I can buy a Quality 1 Two-handed weapon by spending 8 units of Wealth?

Correct.

Alternatively, I can attempt to buy a Quality 2 Two-handed weapon by spending what? Is it still 8 units of Wealth or only 1?

Neither. You buy the sword or you don't, there is no try.

By reading the system, I get the feeling that if my haggling roll succeeds (which has a DC of 25), I can buy the Quality 2, 2H weapon for 8 units of Wealth (half price of 16 which is 8x[number by which quality exceeds essence]). If I fail, it would cost 16 Wealth (which I may not have)?

Correct

What happens if I choose to haggle, but fail and don't have the Wealth to pay for full price? Do I loose the Wealth units or do I still have them?

You go into debt and cannot make any more purchases until you have a positive total.

Also, if I read the system right, if I have a +5 Essence, I could buy a +2 Quality helmet for only 1 Wealth by rolling haggle against a DC of 25, except I have +15 to the roll so effectively DC 10?

Correct.

So where did this gambling/lottery discussion come from? Have you suddenly changed the system or was it due to some misunderstanding?

Going into debt when you can't afford an item is perfectly logical; however it seems like the merchants are rather trustworthy. Not that there's anything really wrong with that, it's just a bit odd (although I guess the way the system work, NOT paying off your debt isn't an option).




That strikes me as extremely odd. Having every market stable for a ten year period seems absolutely bizarre and alien for me. I have to take your word for it, but I can assure you that is not the norm for human history or for most of the globe. For example, in my town going to the same store the price of beef fluctuates by about 50% over the course of just a few weeks time.

Well, fine, obviously the price of beef changes somewhat from week to week, as well as some other types of meat and vegetables. Some products also occasionally go on sale, like after Christmas when you can get a TV for like 75% of the usual price.

However, those are fairly small market fluctuations, and most goods rarely go over some value which has been steady for a long time (like say, a chocolate bar). The point is, the market is fairly stable and doesn't fluctuate like a... I don't have the metaphor... the weather? Prices are very predictable, with the occasional "sale". This means you can actually save up for a car, as you have a pretty good idea what a car will cost 10 years from now.

My point is that having a set cost for all items is a fairly decent "abstraction". They will vary a bit based on the season and availability, but that is something the DM should fill in, as the complexity level would have to be fairly high in order to model it.

Your system ALSO works by fixed prices, except with the possibility of getting things for exactly half price if your skill is good enough.



Even if D&D was assumed to take place in a period of global (actually multiversal) economic stasis for some reason, it still seems pretty weird that every item just so happens to have a supply, demand, materials cost, and time to craft cost that all follow the exact same formula.

Sure, it is a little bit weird. I can agree with that. However, as an abstraction for a generic market, it isn't that far off the mark. Prices will gravitate towards the "sweet spot" based on supply and demand, which, for most items, only fluctuate a little bit. D&D just decided to leave the fluctuations to the DM.



I still don't get why people are so adamantly opposed to any sort of randomness in the system, I want to have merchants be a valid character archetype in system, and this really isn't much different from the crafting / profession skills in a game like D&D.

It's not "any sort of randomness". It is a very specific sort of randomness that now seems to have been removed.


I really can't think of an operation in D&D which isn't more math intensive. Even if you are just buying a base quality item of the rack D&D is going to be using a larger number.

When you factor in masterwork, material, size, enchantments (some of which are exponential, others are linear, and still others are modified by caster level), and then divide that amount by two (for crafting or selling) or by 25 (for XP costs) it can get pretty tedious.[/QUOTE]

Most of all that stuff can be found in a table though. But yeah, I don't think it's the amount of math that is the problem, which D&D has plenty of as you said, but rather being unused to keeping track of all those Essence, Quality and Value stuff what enters where.

With some time to get used to it, it may not be that bad anymore.

Also, since characters can't loose money to nothing, I see no big flaws anymore.

[Max_Killjoy]

Sometimes, an abstracted model of a complex thing sounds really neat, but just doesn't do a good job of modelling the real thing.

At those times, it's best to step back, and reconsider.


Also, keep in mind that money itself is something of an abstraction, adding a layer of exchange medium between what you provide other people and what they provide you.

[Telok]

Question: Is modelling a real economy (modern or ancient, because they are different) more important than an easy/fast model that matches what the game needs?

[Amphetryon]

Question: Is modelling a real economy (modern or ancient, because they are different) more important than an easy/fast model that matches what the game needs?

I would think that's both game-dependent, and table-dependent. If the game you're playing focuses heavily on economic matters - either via broad game design or through a particular adventure arc - then model needs to be robust enough to handle this sufficiently. Similarly, if the folks with whom you game are (future) economists, bankers, and stock-brokers, they are probably going to demand a more 'realistic' model for the game's economy than those with less direct experience in that world, in the same way that gaming with folks who are heavily involved in fencing and Medieval weaponry will likely demand a more 'realistic' or detailed combat model.

[Newtonsolo313]

I would think that's both game-dependent, and table-dependent. If the game you're playing focuses heavily on economic matters - either via broad game design or through a particular adventure arc - then model needs to be robust enough to handle this sufficiently. Similarly, if the folks with whom you game are (future) economists, bankers, and stock-brokers, they are probably going to demand a more 'realistic' model for the game's economy than those with less direct experience in that world, in the same way that gaming with folks who are heavily involved in fencing and Medieval weaponry will likely demand a more 'realistic' or detailed combat model.

I'm fairly sure the OP has expressed that his players are quest giver killin murder hoboes

[Yukitsu]

Question: Is modelling a real economy (modern or ancient, because they are different) more important than an easy/fast model that matches what the game needs?

It has to model it closely enough that it feels intuitive and that acting in one obvious way reacts the same way as it would in real life. If it fails at that, it stops being easy and fast in practice.

[Telok]

It has to model it closely enough that it feels intuitive and that acting in one obvious way reacts the same way as it would in real life. If it fails at that, it stops being easy and fast in practice.

You mean like the D&D combat/hp system? I don't feel that speed and ease of use directly correlate to being realistic and intuitive.

[Talakeal]

So, if I understood your answer correctly; players saying "we loot everything in sight" or "we don't loot anything" will generate the same amount of treasure units at the end of the adventure? I am not saying this is "wrong", just making sure I understood your answer to my question.
So where did this gambling/lottery discussion come from? Have you suddenly changed the system or was it due to some misunderstanding?

Not a misunderstanding, although there was certainly some failure to communicate.

Basically in the first draft of the system the option to buy items directly only existed for things with a quality equal to or lower than your essence.

Then during each period of downtime the players got a number of dice equal to their wealth score to represent them reinvesting some of their adventuring profits back into their equipment.

The dice represented a gestalt of time, contacts, patience, favors, barter, and liquid cash.

The players could then use the dice to try and acquire high quality items by making a business test with a difficulty equal to the item's haggle difficulty + value. If they succeeded they got the item at not cost. If they failed they could take on a number of debts equal to the amount they failed by to get the item anyway.

The idea was that is wasn't a concrete buying and selling thing, merely spending time browsing auction houses and antiquarians shopping for good deals.

The system was designed so that the optimal move was for the players to acquire consumables and minor upgrades first (which they were almost guaranteed to get a few of every session) and then spend any remaining rolls hopping to get lucky and find an occasional big ticket item.

The problem is that people would go for the end game items first and ignore day to day upgrades, and then if they didn't get lucky they would feel robbed when their wealth zeroed out at the start of the next mission and they didn't have any equipment upgrades to show for it.


So, if I understood your answer correctly; players saying "we loot everything in sight" or "we don't loot anything" will generate the same amount of treasure units at the end of the adventure? I am not saying this is "wrong", just making sure I understood your answer to my question.

Sort of. You still have to take the loot, it is just in abstract units. So instead of "exhaustive list is weapons and armor with varying conditions of quality and individual GP costs" it is "Salvaged enemy gear worth 3 units of treasure". Likewise if something is less than one treasure unit it can be ignored, so there is no real incentive to try and loot the dungeon dressing for a few spare copper.


Going into debt when you can't afford an item is perfectly logical; however it seems like the merchants are rather trustworthy. Not that there's anything really wrong with that, it's just a bit odd (although I guess the way the system work, NOT paying off your debt isn't an option).

A "debt" doesn't necessarily mean that you simply wrote the guy an IOU and will pay them later. If might, but it could also be a favor, or a barter, or just upfront payment that hasn't been marked off yet.

Still, if you want to rob / scam people the system does allow for it.

Also, there is a limit to how far into debt you can go, you can't just buy a +5 sword off the bat and write it off.


Your system ALSO works by fixed prices, except with the possibility of getting things for exactly half price if your skill is good enough.

Yes and no.

A unit of wealth is not a precise gold piece value, but a very rough abstraction. Also, the GM is encouraged to modify the difficulty of the roll to haggle based on local market conditions, and you can fumble / critically succeed at a test to haggle for even bigger swinginess.


Also, since characters can't loose money to nothing, I see no big flaws anymore.

Well, wealth still zeroes out between sessions, so if a player chooses not to spend their money they still loose it to nothing.

Honestly I think I am just going to remove that from the system and just say that when character's go up in essence they round off the last digit of their wealth score; if you have a transmuter in your party they can convert magic to wealth, and an alchemist can convert wealth to magic, and the combination of the two in the group can do some weird things with the system as is.

[Newtonsolo313]

wait you mentioned a while back talakeal that the players killed the guy who hired them why did they do that

[Talakeal]

wait you mentioned a while back talakeal that the players killed the guy who hired them why did they do that

Got me.

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?511212-Gaming-Story-With-a-Moral-Question

For a longer exploratiom of that question.

[Newtonsolo313]

Got me.

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?511212-Gaming-Story-With-a-Moral-Question

For a longer exploratiom of that question.

... what the hell:smallconfused:

now i am way more confused because don't know the system barely know the setting and i don't know whether your players are good, bad, or just playing around.

[Telok]

... what the hell:smallconfused:

now i am way more confused because don't know the system barely know the setting and i don't know whether your players are good, bad, or just playing around.

I'd say they're somewhere between enthusiastically amoral actors and random violence vectors.

[Storm_Of_Snow]

Players micro-manage wealth when the system rewards them for doing so. If they're staying in the wilderness and subsisting on pond water for six weeks, it's because the cost of doing that - abject discomfort and misery - has no mechanical impact on them and is not something their players endure. They don't spend 20 gp/week on the finest luxury living in town because the PCs' pleasure and comfort means nothing to the players; it has no impact on how they get to play the game.

Either introduce costs for living rough (and I don't mean financial; something to do with making the characters' misery impact the players, [snip]
Confiscate all the snacks from the table? Lock the bathroom door? Remove all the chairs and make the players stand? :smallamused:

[Max_Killjoy]

Players micro-manage wealth when the system rewards them for doing so. If they're staying in the wilderness and subsisting on pond water for six weeks, it's because the cost of doing that - abject discomfort and misery - has no mechanical impact on them and is not something their players endure. They don't spend 20 gp/week on the finest luxury living in town because the PCs' pleasure and comfort means nothing to the players; it has no impact on how they get to play the game.

Either introduce costs for living rough (and I don't mean financial; something to do with making the characters' misery impact the players, or making there be fewer opportunities or greater risk to real, mechanical things) or introduce benefits for living well (more opportunities, better ability to trade on goods or services, better connections). Or both.

If there was a chance each day that the rough living did damage to their loot such that it lost value, they'd seek the minimum living conditions to prevent loss of wealth. Or the point where living conditions cost less than the lost wealth.

If rummaging around with NPCs and rolling a bazillion different skills makes them better able to get the gear they want, they'll do it.




AD&D did that, you could get diseases and had to roll for random encounters. But that was declared 'not fun' and thrown out. So we have filthy, unwashed, homeless bums wearing a king's ransom as the new normal.


This would appear to be a problem that varies greatly between groups. The long-running group I gamed with never had these issues, even when running games where money/treasure was a big deal.

Simply put, no one wanted their character to be a bum or live out of a hole or be filthy unwashed. When traveling, the PCs always took advantage of the best accommodations they could get (when they weren't in the wilds and making camp) for both comfort and security. All else being equal, upstairs rooms are a lot more secure than a campsite, and better inns are more likely to have a watchman or guard.

E: maybe it's a question of what comes first for a player or group -- the mechanics, or the characters and the setting they're in. Are they thinking of what their character would want, and proceeding from there?

[Telok]

This would appear to be a problem that varies greatly between groups. The long-running group I gamed with never had these issues, even when running games where money/treasure was a big deal.

Oh I absolutely agree. But part of what's going on is that the current D&D game system mechanically rewards, even if the amount is trivial and the effect is illusionary, not spending money on anything but magic gear. Tal is trying to make a system that, as one of it's aspects, removes that effect.

[Max_Killjoy]

Oh I absolutely agree. But part of what's going on is that the current D&D game system mechanically rewards, even if the amount is trivial and the effect is illusionary, not spending money on anything but magic gear. Tal is trying to make a system that, as one of it's aspects, removes that effect.


Of the subset of gamers made up of those who enjoy D&D, I wonder what fraction consider prominent magic items -- multiple per character, of significant effect on game balance, and apparently mass-produced to the point of being generic -- a crucial part of that enjoyment.

One has to wonder if the game treating magic items as big-ticket consumer items, as opposed to something truly special, is part of the cause of the problem at hand.

[Segev]

Got me.

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?511212-Gaming-Story-With-a-Moral-Question

For a longer exploratiom of that question.See, this isn't "randomly killing the guy who hired them." In fact, from the narrative, I hadn't gotten the impression that they were even in the same town that had initially hired them when they got into the fight with the sheriff.

I still think your players acted foolishly. For whatever reason, they felt more responsibility to the beast men who'd all but surrendered to them than to their employers. ...perhaps that's it, actually: it's easy to see the situation as "we gave our word they'd be safe, so they were under our protection." That may not be how you saw it. That certainly isn't how the townsfolk saw it. I have no idea if it's how your players saw it. But I can see how it might be seen that way. Their actions make sense (albeit still aren't very clever), taken in that light.

This has nothing, insofar as I can see, to do with how they approach the economic/loot aspect of the game, so...probably isn't a good example to bring in to a discussion about an abstracted system meant to solve some sort of problem in the game.


This would appear to be a problem that varies greatly between groups. The long-running group I gamed with never had these issues, even when running games where money/treasure was a big deal.

Simply put, no one wanted their character to be a bum or live out of a hole or be filthy unwashed. When traveling, the PCs always took advantage of the best accommodations they could get (when they weren't in the wilds and making camp) for both comfort and security. All else being equal, upstairs rooms are a lot more secure than a campsite, and better inns are more likely to have a watchman or guard.

E: maybe it's a question of what comes first for a player or group -- the mechanics, or the characters and the setting they're in. Are they thinking of what their character would want, and proceeding from there?
The very concept of the "murder-hobo" comes from players who very much do willingly have their PCs live in the cheapest way they can as long as it doesn't impact them negatively, mechanically speaking, so as to maximize their resources for things that can mechanically impact them.

That said, I, too, know that players will buy the more expensive accommodations...but typically only when they feel like the amount is trivial compared to their current wealth. When the 20 gp/week is in the "left over change" category after they've bought all the gear they really want, and saving it won't meaningfully impact the next 20,000 gp purchase they're saving up for.

(Which is why it's usually safe to hand-wave living expenses when PCs get to that point.)

[Max_Killjoy]

The very concept of the "murder-hobo" comes from players who very much do willingly have their PCs live in the cheapest way they can as long as it doesn't impact them negatively, mechanically speaking, so as to maximize their resources for things that can mechanically impact them.

That said, I, too, know that players will buy the more expensive accommodations...but typically only when they feel like the amount is trivial compared to their current wealth. When the 20 gp/week is in the "left over change" category after they've bought all the gear they really want, and saving it won't meaningfully impact the next 20,000 gp purchase they're saving up for.

(Which is why it's usually safe to hand-wave living expenses when PCs get to that point.)


Again, I think there is a risk here of taking the experiences of some players, in some campaigns, at some tables, and/or with some systems... and treating them as universal -- whether we're talking about how players spend their characters' money, or how they connect with their characters' inner experience.

I've noticed a pattern in game design -- original or modification -- where a player (GM or otherwise) runs into a problem in their own experience, and sets out to solve it, never considering that maybe other players or groups or systems don't run into that same issue, or have already addressed it in an entirely different way that works for them. This isn't just about these threads, it's a much bigger pattern.

So many of the "best new way!" things I run across in RPG theory and systems turns out to be in reaction to either a problem most people don't run into, or a problem caused not by flaws in mechanics and techniques, but rather by plain old bad GMing or bad group dynamics or mismatched participant goals. So much of it starts out with someone noticing a legitimate problem... and then goes off in some direction that has nothing to do with the actual cause of that problem.

I guess I fundamentally disagree with The Forge's underlying assumption that all/most problems in gaming arise from the system not fostering the desired outcome.


I don't think that "murder-hobos" are created by the system encouraging players to play their characters that way. "Murder-hobos" exist because some players just want to kick down doors, kill the beings who live there, take their stuff, and sometimes trade that stuff for other stuff that makes them better at kicking, killing, and taking. Systems that get in the way of that aren't seen by those players as "encouraging in-character thinking", they're seen as just no fun, and getting in the way of their kick-kill-take-advance progression cycle.

[Segev]

I don't think that "murder-hobos" are created by the system encouraging players to play their characters that way. "Murder-hobos" exist because some players just want to kick down doors, kill the beings who live there, take their stuff, and sometimes trade that stuff for other stuff that makes them better at kicking, killing, and taking. Systems that get in the way of that aren't seen by those players as "encouraging in-character thinking", they're seen as just no fun, and getting in the way of their kick-kill-take-advance progression cycle.

To a degree, you're right. However, the fact remains that a system which empowers that also discourages "in-character thinking" that comes from characters with different goals or additional priorities.

The same things those people might find "in the way" could be the systems that empower players who want that kind of thing in their game. Just as the "kick-in-the-door" player wants combat and loot systems, a player who wants luxuries and economic decisions to be a part of his gaming experience would likely appreciate having them be more meaningful than "I waste 20 gp that I couldn't have used better" (or worse, "I waste 20 gp rather than getting a healing potion I could have used to stay alive on the next adventure").

It makes sense to get those mechanics out of the way if the game isn't about them. Hence the systems which simply say "pick a lifestyle; you live it, no cost in mechanical terms."

[Telok]

Also note that not everyone has the same breadth of RPG experience that some of the people here have. If someone has only played the recent WotC D&Ds and/or only done the organized play they may never have had exposure to anything but murderhoboing. I've especially seen it in the players who have come to the hobby through CRPGs and MMOs, they often just don't get the whole "character" thing at first.

So while some of us may have characters who own houses, pay taxes, buy drugs, and perform magical experiments on kangaroos and turtles, there are also people who don't even think about their character eating or sleeping unless you mention it to them.

[Segev]

Also note that not everyone has the same breadth of RPG experience that some of the people here have. If someone has only played the recent WotC D&Ds and/or only done the organized play they may never have had exposure to anything but murderhoboing. I've especially seen it in the players who have come to the hobby through CRPGs and MMOs, they often just don't get the whole "character" thing at first.

So while some of us may have characters who own houses, pay taxes, buy drugs, and perform magical experiments on kangaroos and turtles, there are also people who don't even think about their character eating or sleeping unless you mention it to them.

And when it turns out that the players whose characters don't own houses, pay taxes, buy drugs, or perform magical experiments on kangaroos and turtles have a mechanical advantage in the game, they are not wrong to conclude that they're playing the game "correctly" and that efforts to encourage them to change are trying to trick them, or are accusing them of doing something wrong by playing the game in a way the game rewards.

[Cluedrew]

I've noticed a pattern in game design -- original or modification -- where a player (GM or otherwise) runs into a problem in their own experience, and sets out to solve it, never considering that maybe other players or groups or systems don't run into that same issue, or have already addressed it in an entirely different way that works for them. This isn't just about these threads, it's a much bigger pattern.What? I'm not allowed to develop a solution for the fun of it? Or find that those solutions I can find asking around don't work for me and my group? I agree that reaching out to the larger community is a good step, but it is hardly a cure-all.


I don't think that "murder-hobos" are created by the system encouraging players to play their characters that way. "Murder-hobos" exist because some players just want to kick down doors, kill the beings who live there, take their stuff, and sometimes trade that stuff for other stuff that makes them better at kicking, killing, and taking.Not entirely. You see I am very interested in characterisation and exploring the setting (depending on the setting), but I can still end up with characters who have no connections with the rest of the world. Why? The system and adventure structure don't facilitate it. I would have to go far out of my way to do it. So system is a factor, but not the whole story, I can feel a difference from system to system and game to game. Now I don't think I have ever gone full "murder-hobo" but I have had characters with definite symptoms.

[Max_Killjoy]

What? I'm not allowed to develop a solution for the fun of it? Or find that those solutions I can find asking around don't work for me and my group? I agree that reaching out to the larger community is a good step, but it is hardly a cure-all.


No, no, I'm speaking of:
* The potential mistaken perception that a problem is universal, rather than situational.
* The potential to over-blame system instead of other factors.

I'm suggesting that one should understand why a problem actually occurs and how widespread it is, before setting out to fix it.


At the extreme, we've seen certain famous RPG theorists assume that their personal experiences are universal to all gaming, fundamentally misunderstand the causes of those problems, and attempt to "save" or "revolutionize" gaming by encoding their personal solutions and preferences into the very fabric of how RPGs are discussed and designed.

When really... said theorist's entire body of work reads like an overwrought backlash against bad GMing habits and practices, and against some haughty advice by wanks at a certain hipster-Goth publisher... that system changes can't really solve.


E: so what I'm getting at, is this -- understand what the problem actually is, understand what the root causes are, and understand the scope of the problem, before setting out to fix it.

[Segev]

E: so what I'm getting at, is this -- understand what the problem actually is, understand what the root causes are, and understand the scope of the problem, before setting out to fix it.

This, I do agree strongly with.

[Talakeal]

See, this isn't "randomly killing the guy who hired them." In fact, from the narrative, I hadn't gotten the impression that they were even in the same town that had initially hired them when they got into the fight with the sheriff.

I still think your players acted foolishly. For whatever reason, they felt more responsibility to the beast men who'd all but surrendered to them than to their employers. ...perhaps that's it, actually: it's easy to see the situation as "we gave our word they'd be safe, so they were under our protection." That may not be how you saw it. That certainly isn't how the townsfolk saw it. I have no idea if it's how your players saw it. But I can see how it might be seen that way. Their actions make sense (albeit still aren't very clever), taken in that light.

This has nothing, insofar as I can see, to do with how they approach the economic/loot aspect of the game, so...probably isn't a good example to bring in to a discussion about an abstracted system meant to solve some sort of problem in the game.

No one had hired the PCs yet. The plan was for the townspeople to hire the PCs to investigate the source of the mysterious fires, but after what happened that obviously didn't pan out.

Nothing to do with the thread. Someone asked me how play testing went and I mentioned that the players were currently destitute and on the run without having any chance to spend money.

[Newtonsolo313]

No one had hired the PCs yet. The plan was for the townspeople to hire the PCs to investigate the source of the mysterious fires, but after what happened that obviously didn't pan out.

Nothing to do with the thread. Someone asked me how play testing went and I mentioned that the players were currently destitute and on the run without having any chance to spend money.
Do you plan on getting them off the run?
Also it is relevant because your designing it for them

[Talakeal]

Do you plan on getting them off the run?
Also it is relevant because your designing it for them

Actually this is going to be a blessing in disguise. I was planning on running a civil war scenario which I was wondering how to tie the PCs into, now I can just have everyone assume they were working with the rebels and everything works itself out.

But it is no more relevant than any other gaming story of mine; which is to say indirectly at best.

[Talakeal]

No, no, I'm speaking of:
* The potential mistaken perception that a problem is universal, rather than situational.
* The potential to over-blame system instead of other factors.

I'm suggesting that one should understand why a problem actually occurs and how widespread it is, before setting out to fix it.


At the extreme, we've seen certain famous RPG theorists assume that their personal experiences are universal to all gaming, fundamentally misunderstand the causes of those problems, and attempt to "save" or "revolutionize" gaming by encoding their personal solutions and preferences into the very fabric of how RPGs are discussed and designed.

When really... said theorist's entire body of work reads like an overwrought backlash against bad GMing habits and practices, and against some haughty advice by wanks at a certain hipster-Goth publisher... that system changes can't really solve.


E: so what I'm getting at, is this -- understand what the problem actually is, understand what the root causes are, and understand the scope of the problem, before setting out to fix it.

While there is a major element of truth here, I dont know how you would do it any other way.

Innovation in RPGs has always started in the home, with house rules leading to fantasy hearbreakers, articles in Dragon, and eventually freelance work or starting ones own gaming company.

Thr gaming industry simply isnt large enough or lucrative enough to warrant serious academic study or coorporate manufacturing techniques.

[Satinavian]

Again, I think there is a risk here of taking the experiences of some players, in some campaigns, at some tables, and/or with some systems... and treating them as universal -- whether we're talking about how players spend their characters' money, or how they connect with their characters' inner experience. True. But actually not that common. Most people designing houserules are well aware that they are solving a problem at their specific table which most other groups enjoying the same rule system don't have.

I guess I fundamentally disagree with The Forge's underlying assumption that all/most problems in gaming arise from the system not fostering the desired outcome.While i share your opinion about narrative games, i don't think The Forge was wrong in this particular point. I have seen people using systems for games that really don't fit the scope or intended topics way to often to say that system does not matter. System does matter a lot. Use the right tool for the right job and when nothing proper is at hand, use houserules.


I don't think that "murder-hobos" are created by the system encouraging players to play their characters that way. "Murder-hobos" exist because some players just want to kick down doors, kill the beings who live there, take their stuff, and sometimes trade that stuff for other stuff that makes them better at kicking, killing, and taking. Systems that get in the way of that aren't seen by those players as "encouraging in-character thinking", they're seen as just no fun, and getting in the way of their kick-kill-take-advance progression cycle.I have never actually seen murder hobos in any game. So playing D&D without murder hobos works fine. OTOH in the country i am from D&D was never the biggest RPG and doesn't really influence expectations. In the other systems when played as intended, you basically die when murder hoboing. It is simply not a valid strategy. And people coming from those systems to D&D tend to not start this behavior only because they suddenly could get away with it. So maybe D&D does indeed create murder hobo players when it provides the first RPG experience or in countries where it influences heavily how RPGs are understood but other systems would create other kinds of players. Of course i can't say if the system really changes player behavior that way or if it just brings players of a certain kind into RPGs.

[Cluedrew]

E: so what I'm getting at, is this -- understand what the problem actually is, understand what the root causes are, and understand the scope of the problem, before setting out to fix it.Why scope? Satinavian said something of it and I was hinting at it last time, but why does the scope matter? (Scope does means number of tables it occurs at?)

[NichG]

Why scope? Satinavian said something of it and I was hinting at it last time, but why does the scope matter? (Scope does means number of tables it occurs at?)

Scope in this context usually means something like 'the range over which the design consideration is intended to work'. For example, 'telling stories like The Great Gatsby is outside of the scope of D&D's design'.

[Max_Killjoy]

Why scope? Satinavian said something of it and I was hinting at it last time, but why does the scope matter? (Scope does means number of tables it occurs at?)


In this case, I meant the size and scale and range and frequency of the problem.

If a problem is only going to come up at a few tables, do the designers need to put large amounts of effort, time, and eventually print space into addressing it?

If a problem that a particular table had came up once, how likely is it really to come up again? Is the group misdirecting their efforts in creating rigorous house rules if it's likely going to be another two years or more before it occurs again?

Is someone setting out to change how RPGs are discussed and the way games are designed, mistaking their very personal negative experience, for something that a large number of gamers have been through?