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Thread: Equipment without an economy
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2013-08-21, 06:36 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2013
Equipment without an economy
Do you guys know about any system that deals well with equipment without using a stablished economy? Basically, a non-simulationist approach to equipment that works?
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2013-08-21, 06:53 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2008
Re: Equipment without an economy
Mutants & Masterminds does not have an economy, but does have equipment.
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2013-08-21, 07:05 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2012
Re: Equipment without an economy
Like d20 Modern's abstracted wealth? Or absolutely no consideration for economics whatsoever?
Last edited by Grinner; 2013-08-21 at 07:05 PM.
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2013-08-21, 07:10 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2013
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2013-08-21, 07:32 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2012
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- Alaska
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Re: Equipment without an economy
Figure out a few commodities. These commodities are all annoying as heck to haul around - rice, chickens, bolts of cloth and such - all having various headaches involved in their transport. Each community has multipliers to the cost of each of these - the whole list averages 1, but each thing on the list is a little bit up or down.
It takes about a day and a Find Information check (DC 15) to exchange commodities on the list for different commodities, or for services. To keep from going completely off your rocker, all of your sales and purchases are assumed to be done simultaneously. When you are dealing in the amounts of cash adventurers deal with, you are dealing with entire warehouses of these commodities, and you can only offload so much at one time in one place. Traveling with your cash becomes a major logistical nightmare.
There are a few very portable, high value commodities, such as saffron, art, or gems, but the values of those can swing wildly - and if the value would be low, it isn't available at all. So put them on the list, and if the area doesn't have them at a value of x2 or higher, then you can't buy or sell that good in that town this month.
Military grade equipment, such as any magic item worth 50gp or more, will be more of a headache, and will not be a matter of "going down to the corner store". After all, most people can't wander down the street for a pack of gum and a case of Stinger anti-aircraft missiles.
The local powers that be might trade pieces, if you are on good terms with them. They might not have much selection. Buying or selling the pieces you want can be done, but you'll need a good Find Information check to find out who in the world has what you want or wants what you have. Then you are going to have to either go to them to make the exchange, or for unloading your junk, find someone willing to buy it and make the trip for you at a MAJOR discount - 50% , if they can verify the authenticity, is a completely reasonable fee. after all, to get his money back, the poor guy needs to haul that +1 Merciful Shortspear or whatever halfway across the country to find some adventurer who will try to pay them with an equally odd item.Last edited by JusticeZero; 2013-08-21 at 07:37 PM.
"We were once so close to heaven, Peter came out and gave us medals declaring us 'The nicest of the damned'.."
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2013-08-21, 07:34 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2008
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- Midwest, not Middle East
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Re: Equipment without an economy
What I did was separate gold from WBL. Specifically, magical creatures bled liquid magic, coincidentally in amounts very similar to what they would give as treasure for an encounter. PCs then used a simple ritual they all knew to turn this liquid magic into magic items. Then, throw in some societal norms about how liquid magic is too rare/difficult/expensive to trade for mere gold. It worked well enough for a short campaign, and it is not a new idea.
It has the advantage of maintaining the 'balance' that is offered from Wealth By Level without the head-scratching of swords being worth as much as kingdoms.
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2013-08-21, 07:43 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2012
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- Alaska
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Re: Equipment without an economy
"We were once so close to heaven, Peter came out and gave us medals declaring us 'The nicest of the damned'.."
- They Might Be Giants, "Road Movie To Berlin"
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2013-08-21, 07:50 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2008
Re: Equipment without an economy
I don't know much about the whole N/S/G (is it G?) design philosophy, but I do know this...there are games that assume you have access to all the standard stuff you need unless you specifically take a flaw (like "Poor"). Similarly, you can not get non-standard items without a power/merit/ability (like "Resources") or an in-story reason to have it.
Marvel Superheros kind of did this back in the day...effectively you made a check against the item procurement difficulty, and if you made it, hooray. If you didn't, tough luck.
Does that help?
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2013-08-22, 04:48 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2006
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- England
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Re: Equipment without an economy
Burning Wheel uses a resources stat. It's an amalgamation of your money and confidence that you and everyone else has in your ability to make good your debts.
It's similar to how Antonio in the Merchant of Venice is cash poor but everyone has the confidence in ability to fulfil his debts that he's able to help out Bassanio by dealing with Shylock.
Old economies were perhaps more like the chaotic state than the organised coins for equipment model we see in most adventure focussed games.Mannerism RPG An RPG in which your descriptions resolve your actions and sculpts your growth.
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2013-08-22, 12:17 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2009
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- Marburg, Germany
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Re: Equipment without an economy
GURPS has some optional rules for military campaigns to that effect (In 3e it was in the BlackOps book; I don't know where it went in 4e). You'll pretty much never buy stuff for money, and if you want some stuff you didn't get issued, you can use your Scrounging skill to "borrow" or acquire it by other means.
Want a generic roleplaying system but find GURPS too complicated? Try GMS.
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2013-08-22, 12:25 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2009
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- São Paulo, Brazil
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Re: Equipment without an economy
In FATE Core characters are supposed to have all equipment they need to use their skills. Whenever something more exotic comes into play, they must use the Resources skill to check if they have the money to spend. Special equipment (such as magical weapons) is either ignored (the fact that you have Fight at +4 may be due to your exceptional skill or a magical sword, it doesn't matter) or give some kind of edge (a skill bonus, a stunt or whatever) for as long as the character holds it.
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2013-08-22, 12:26 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2008
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- Poland
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Re: Equipment without an economy
Spirit of the Century, and FATE in general, has a resources stat like Burning Wheel.
Legend of the Wulin doesn't have a money system - if you want some special item, like heavy armor, special weapon or a quality tool, you buy it with points like everything else about your character.
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2013-08-22, 01:28 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2011
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Re: Equipment without an economy
So, Dark Heresy's requisition mechanic uses your Influence stat to figure out how powerful of equipment you can get from an armory. It's pretty simple, and very effective.
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2013-09-01, 05:22 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2009
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- New Jersey
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Re: Equipment without an economy
Rogue Trader(A game that routinely deals with acquiring/exploiting/destroying whole solar systems.) uses Profit Factor. It's a shared stat that the entire party uses for all economics. RT relies on this amounts of money involved are so staggering that Profit Factor is an abstraction to prevent having dozens of zeros after every monetary number in the game. It's assumed, though, that the characters never want for anything. In fact for advanced characters, it's usually harder to find the rare goods the PC is after than to pay for it. Thus, when any of the PCs purchase things, it's done a roll using the Profit Factor stat. Needless to say, Profit Factor is pretty precious and most of the game revolves around growing it.
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2013-09-01, 09:45 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2013
Re: Equipment without an economy
HeroQuest. The first edition, Hero Wars, had a Wealth ability, but I think the later editions deprecated that entirely. Items generally aren't important; if an item is important, you buy it with character points like any other ability, and it gets a score like any other ability, and generally works the same way. (You can lose it just the same as any other ability; in HeroQuest, wagering abilities in magical contests is pretty standard anyway.)
The One Ring: Adventures Beyond the Edge of the Wild has a very vague wealth rank, and you generally don't buy items; items that matter are gained as gifts or found as treasure.
I'm surprised World of Darkness doesn't seem to have been mentioned. IIRC, WoD uses a Resources ability that's simply ranked from 1 to 5 dots (if you have it at all), and acquisition is abstracted.D&D retroclones:
SpoilerAdventurer Conqueror King
Basic Fantasy (free)
Dark Dungeons (free)
Dungeon Crawl Classics
Labyrinth Lord (free)
Lamentations of the Flame Princess (free)
Mazes & Minotaurs (free)
Myth & Magic (free)
OSRIC (free)
Swords & Wizardry (free)
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2013-09-01, 12:18 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2013
Re: Equipment without an economy
Can't believe I forgot World of Darkness. I think I will try to mix and match this stuff - permament items are bought with points, but you can get temporary items from a skill or something similar.
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2013-09-02, 09:39 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2013
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- Sweden
Re: Equipment without an economy
Technically most things mentioned do have an economy - that is, the setting has an established economic system that works (more or less). To be honest, D&D probably has one of the worst economies considering the priceranges of magic items and it never seem to explain how access to these could change society.
I know of very few settings that doesn't actually have an economy, even post-apocalyptic settings do. The only way to get equipment without an economy is if you extrapolate say Eclipse Phase some 100 years into the future (and get rid of the existential threats) when everything possibly could have turned into a completely post-scarcity setting where any equipment is readily availible to anyone.
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2013-09-02, 10:03 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2013
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2013-09-02, 11:58 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2012
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- Alaska
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Re: Equipment without an economy
"We were once so close to heaven, Peter came out and gave us medals declaring us 'The nicest of the damned'.."
- They Might Be Giants, "Road Movie To Berlin"
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2013-09-02, 01:52 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2010
Re: Equipment without an economy
I can't believe no one has mentioned L5R or 7th Sea yet. In both while there is an economy in the setting, it has little to do with items that adventurers/samurai would actually find worthwhile.
In 7th Sea, you have 'Syrneth Artifacts'. You can get them for character creation points or acquire them during play, but they're basically religious contraband in the setting - illegal to have or transport across borders in most countries. They're also snapped up like candy by a few of the secret societies. Other non-Syrneth but still useful items like puzzle blades/etc are also not simply on sale - basically you can buy the standard stuff, but anything special requires some sort of extra effort.
In L5R its much the same. Actual magic items (nemurenai) are basically things that have enough history of use in important times and places that they have awakened. That means pretty much all of them are clan treasures, stuff handed out to important people in the clan, handed down through family lines, captured in battle, etc. You can spend some character creation points to inherit such an item, but even if you have a lot of koku its hard to just go and buy one. You can however buy items of extreme craftsmanship (or create them yourself) and those can still be quite potent.
So these are both cases where for in-setting reasons, the magic items have a value that doesn't translate well to the system of economics that exists in the setting, either due to social stigmas, the absence of skills in the setting to consistently create new items, or the unique circumstances required for their creation.
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2013-09-02, 05:26 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2013
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- Sweden
Re: Equipment without an economy
Yes I know, although I could argue that systems don't have economy. They can simulate how the economic system within the setting work. As for being simulationist or not, I could argue that systems with a resource stat is actually in a way more simulationist than systems that let you track individual units of money. Whatever approach, it is quite easy to lift out the economic part of any system. You can simply say "yes you can have/get/buy this item" or "no, this is out of your reach" whenever players ask. Unless you get XP for gold there is really no other mechanical effect of the resource part of a system, so ignoring it doesn't really affect the rest.
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2013-09-03, 12:17 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Apr 2006
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- Virginia
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Re: Equipment without an economy
I am pretty sure you can extrapolate what the economy outlook of a setting is by examining it's equipment list and prices, and some of the implicit assumption.
But in general, going down the granular detail on currency prices and all that tends to create some odd results. i.e. in D&D, people get paid based on their skill roll, a totally merit based way of making a living, but utterly divorced from reality as well. A useful way of short handing the amount of money someone makes, but completely falls apart when you apply at a macroeconomic scale.