Trying to write my own world, looking for advice

[DaltonTrigger]

Hi!

I'm currently in the process of collecting, appraising, and rewriting rules from different game systems and incorporating them into a game of my own design. I am using mostly the One Roll Engine as a basis, and bastardizing other rule sets into it. Maybe it won't be 'my own' enough to get a copyright on it, but it will still be something I've put time and heart into, to present my players with rules custom tailored for our roleplay style. :smallwink: That style being we're looking for very simplistic, flowing set of rules to complement a mostly free form game. You know, when somebody picks a fight you resolve it real quick and get back to the storytelling with minimal number crunching.

Now I'm all set on that stuff. The questions I have are very specific:

1) Help with monetary system? I really, really don't know what to do. Here's what we have established so far:

I am leaning toward a dual-coin economy, with gold Ducats and silver Bits. Copper, being incredibly common, is nearly worthless as a currency but sees other uses in alloys and everyday items. This isn't really for any reason other than flavor.

It's a low magic, gritty, realistic world. If you went into a city with thousands of citizens you'd only find a dozen or so with any magical ability at all (including all mages, clergy, magical demihumans, and nobility). Magic items in particular are rare (It's not, "hey look, another flaming sword." it's, "Wow, could it be? Flametongue, sword of King Secrum, used to slay the Ogre Lord and bring an end to the Ten Thousand Day War?")

Because of this, magic of any kind isn't even considered part of the economy like it would be in D&D 3e.

What I am looking for then is good points by which to estimate things like the average price of a suit of armor, the average income of commoners in various careers, the cost of owning land, etc. Perhaps there is a game system with a good set of rules already in place that I can 'borrow'? :smallredface:

2) Character advancement. I already have some idea of how I might do this.

Because it is supposed to be down to earth, advancement goes along a relatively limiting plane. Even if your character becomes the 'best' at whatever, he is still mortal and charging headlong into a mob of orcs is suicide no matter WHO you think you are. That being said, I also think it would be foolish for some upstart 18 year old character to be able to become a better swordsman than a 40-some year old warrior who's been defending the realm for the last 20 years, just because he went on an adventure and got some experience points.

My idea is as thus: Skills and stats can only be bought if it is (at least loosely) roleplayed out. If you want me to allow you to increase your Coordination stat, you better have been in a lot of situations where your coordination has been tested to its limit. Or, at the very least, dedicate a certain amount of time (maybe a month or two?) seeking a trainer.

Pacing out the amount of upgrades a character can get in game time prevents the issue of having somebody barely out of puberty somehow end up becoming the world's best fighter. Again, this isn't an over the top game like D&D where the PCs are one-in-a-million, cracking dragon skulls with their bare hands because using their weapons makes it too easy.

In my mind, it leads to better characterization when a character is a master at his profession from years of working at it; and now, in his advanced years, the gray hair, scars, and aching back are a testament to a lifetime of achievement. Plus, frankly, forcing PCs to seek trainers leads to EASY, but very meaty plot hooks. When a PC wants to advance his sword skill to the maximum the rules allow mortals to attain, it may be time for them to hunt down a true living legend and convince them to provide personal lessons! :smallsmile:

Still, tell me what you think?

On a related issue. An NPC teaches a PC a skill. Say the PC is about to visit Lord Buggerall's castle, and an NPC offers to teach him a little etiquette to help him get by. It saves the PC's bacon because he currently has NO skill in nobility or etiquette. I can easily justify allowing him to temporarily get by; the lessons are fresh in his short term memory or something. But at some point I think I should say "if you want your character to remember this lesson for more than a day, spend some of your points and buy a couple ranks in the skill. Otherwise you forget it." What are your thoughts on this? Knowing how to deal with nobility in this example is not a commonplace skill, so I consider noble customs to be a specialty enough to require an investment. The same question remains if you replace "noble etiquette" with "architecture" or what have you.

3) Of Mice and Player Deaths. The game IS supposed to be gritty, realistic, and lethal. Of that there's no question, and if a character is stupid enough to run straight into a horde of monsters and die a guaranteed death, then fine. But on the other hand, the system at hand makes players very, very fragile.
Your limbs each have 5 HP, while your torso has 10 HP and your head has 4 HP. A body part that is reduced to 0 HP is either stunned (if it's shock damage) or maimed (if it's lethal damage). Reducing the HP of the head or torso to 0 through lethal damage means the player is dead. Here are two ideas I have to reduce the odds of "lucky roll death syndrome" in my players:

Make players who are reduced to 0 HP be mortally wounded, but not dead. They are lying there, screaming in pain, bleeding all over the place, but much like in D&D I could allow first aid to keep him alive until proper help can be found.
Some sort of trait--"toughness" or something--that can be bought assuming the prerequisites are met and increases the max HP of every body part by 1. Not a huge boost, but it still makes a signicant difference.

Just to note, in my world resurrection and creating undead are terrible sins. The Mother Goddess, (haven't named my pantheon yet), is the goddess of rest and death. She collects souls of the departed and gives them peaceful rest until such time the Father of Life feels they are ready to return to the world (reincarnation etc). As such, resurrection or creating undead is preventing the soul from achieving rest and, eventually, returning to the world as a new life. It is the highest form of blasphemy. And as a result, unless my PCs are pretty evil, they wouldn't do it. :smalltongue:

Aaaanyway, thanks a lot to anybody who takes the time to read this staggering amount of text and give me some advice. I appreciate any help I can get as I continue to work out the intricacies of my setting. I am new to being a GM at all, so this process is a double challenge to me.

[Darth Mario]

Isn't this exactly the same thread you posted earlier?

[DaltonTrigger]

Ack! something didn't go through on my end and I ended up double posting! I'll try to delete the other! So sorry :(

[Squash Monster]

Use the rules for E6.

A realistic medieval currency system is based on cows and chickens, not on some form of coinage.

If 90% of all people are farmers, nowhere near enough people are farmers.

The single biggest influence on culture is the type of grain they grow. European feudalism works because wheat is lame and being healthy enough to fight means eating meat that is either hunted or raised on wheat, which only a few people can do. Asian feudalism works because rice is even more lame than wheat, but a rice field produces more food the more people you add to it up until an insanely high density.

If you want less people to have to be farmers (and explain why we have enough spare population to have adventurers) then you probably want corn. But corn likes to die for no particular reason every few years, so you'll need an explanation for that. If the some of most important people are wizards who can make the corn not blight, that's a good explanation.

The second biggest influence on culture is trade. Trade runs along rivers first, then coasts, then roads. Two places on the same river are going to have more common than two places connected only by roads.

Religion is a big influence on people, but it spreads along trade lines.

The biggest influence on trade is geography. Try to make sure yours makes sense.

[Darth Mario]

Actually, you can't delete threads on your own, but you can PM a mod and ask for it's deletion.

[Funkyodor]

1) Monetary System:

The easiest way I've found to do coinage is to relate it to modern currency. Like, 1 gold is 20 dollars. So a rather expensive meal at a nice inn for one person might be one gold. Or 1 gold could buy a couple of days worth of bland food you prepare yourself. So you might have a Gold Ducat = 20 dollars, Half Ducat = 10 dollars, and Silver Bits = 1 dollar. Don't let the players know the relationship to modern currency and things will flow smoothly. Look up some prices at Home Depot and Ducat accordingly.

[BlackDirge]

Check out A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe (http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=2018&it=1&filters=0_0_0&manufacturers_id=69) from Expeditious Retreat press. It is, hands down, one of the best world-building resources for fantasy RPGs available.

BD

[DaltonTrigger]

Funkyodor, that is a surprisingly good tip, and I just may make a system similar to that. I'll give BlackDirge's link a look-see as well. The more viewpoints the better, so thank you both!

[kc0bbq]

A two coin currency with a 20:1 value ratio isn't really that useful, especially if it's a precious metal based currency. If gold is only valued at 20 times silver, you can't amass enough currency to run a small kingdom, because gold is not that common, or if it is it doesn't have a lot of value other than being yellow. Coinage does work, but you need small enough units where it can be traded for a subsistance diet's day worth of food, and also for financing castles and dealing with taxes. And money goes back a lot farther than medieval times, even neolithic people had coinage (see wampum and sewant, et al).

Another economy concern is trade. If you are only focusing locally, then you don't have to know, but on a larger scale, who's got salt? Metal ores? What are the relative values? Salt can be so important as to replace coinage. Spices moreso, the value of pepper at times was priced per peppercorn in our world, and the average person couldn't even afford one.

Just be careful with your world simulation. High risk vs. low rewards has to give some sort of benefit to the player. One Roll is not forgiving, and since you can die from a few points of damage to the head, and that's not particularly unlikely, you tend to have a situation where even with the best thought out plans and odds you still have to show up with a stack of characters to play. Balancing the system for any thing other than a series of one shots is really tough. Don't make it so it's a world with a story that happens despite the players, where the players can't affect anything win or lose.

I'm not saying gritty isn't the way to go, but the game itself needs to be rewarding enough to the players in some way that they can turn a blind eye to the likelyhood of losing their character. Maybe give them a reasonable stream of get out of jail free points. Not enough so that they can spend them on minor situations, but enough to ease off on the one shot, one kill aspect of the system. The problem isn't that bad tactics are instantly lethal; any combat is potentially instantly lethal.

Forcing characterization through roleplaying is fine - when you only have one player at a time to worry about. Downtime from training, especially when you want it to take a significant amount of time, removes that player from play. That's the reason that most games don't take a realistic tack. Even in D&D you really have to pause any story or plotline for device creation or no one ever makes anything or you have someone not able to contribute for an extended period. It works nicely when you can justify a lot of off-camera action, but if you continue the plot without the party or part of it there to interact, you've made the party moot. You're stuck with serial or comic-book style episodic stories.

It works in One Roll's native settings like Godlike, where it's a war, a series of battles each suitable for a single session or two, part of a campaign that's part of an entire war. There's always a break to send in reinforcements, R&R time to train, no one has to sit for too long, if the central character for that plot part dies you fall back and try something different. You need to keep your storytelling goals in line with the system's capabilities.