High Rollers (characters, not dice)

[Rex Blunder]

A staple of swords and sorcery is that the characters may get rich from an adventure, but they soon waste, gamble, or carouse all their money away - and then their desire for high livin' spurs them on to new adventures.

I think it might be fun to run a low-fantasy campaign like this, where one of the driving forces behind adventures is earning money so the characters can spend freely on luxury and pleasure when they hit a big city. Kind of a Conan, Cugel, Gord the Rogue, or Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser campaign. Basically one of the things I like about low-level play is that sometimes you're actually poor and have to scheme to find a place to stay, or take the first job that pays. I'd like to extend that feast-or-famine to higher levels.

It's pretty much impossible in 3e. With Wealth By Level, you need to invest wisely in magical items. But let's imagine it's 4e, and reliance on buying magic items is diminished.

What kind of mechanic could I implement to encourage this? I'd like to set up a system that allowed players to model s&s hero behaviour without penalizing their characters. I'm not interested in actually roleplaying out all the debauchery - just having people say "We're going to set up camp in the best inn and live high on the hog till the money runs out."

The Pirates of the Spanish Main game (a Savage Worlds game) has an interesting mechanic, where every two weeks or so, the pirates and their crew must spend a bunch of their money on carousing, otherwise they face some sort of exhaustion penalties. But I actually favor a carrot system, where you get a reward for blowing a bunch of money, not a stick system, where you have a DM-imposed "rent" you have to pay.

I thought of just taking a cue from 1e D&D and saying that you get experience from gold pieces spent in carousing, on a 1-for-1 basis. It's a possibility, but it seems like it might tip the players too far towards faster leveling.

I also thought of providing some kind of benefit for local notoriety, which is earned by spending money. It would have to give you some benefits within the city - but I haven't thought of any justifiable rewards that would make players want to throw away their hardearned cash.

Any ideas?

[Ralfarius]

I actually kind of like the idea of a gold piece to experience conversion idea. It doesn't necessarily have to involve carousing or living the high life, but rather a sort of cost-of-living for someone who is interested in improving themselves in some manner. It would help lessen the idea that to get more ranks in Knowledge(religion), a cleric has to go out and crush orc skulls for a week or two. Rather, he can take the gold he's earned from a previous endeavour to finance a month of pious scripture interpretation, paying to help collect more rare writings.

It doesn't seem wholly unreasonable that any sort of character couldn't improve their abilities through means other than dangerous adventuring. To preemptively cut-down on players simply buying their way up, the ratio could be more than 1:1.

As for the notoriety idea, it could be as simple as bonuses to social rolls, perhaps scaling discounts in their favourite shops, and the like. I don't think I'm quite qualified to give a more concrete answer without making myself look the fool.

[Townopolis]

Perhaps you could make it so that for every X amount of gold they spend partying, they get a floating pool of bonus points they can spend to make rerolls. That's the simplest version, you could also do something much more complicated, with charts and graphs and all that Jazz.

Ex. Phil, the bard, fails a gather information check to find something. He decides to use one of the rerolls he earned by carousing. On the reroll, Phil succeeds. Turns out Phil met a lovely young... lady, while partying, and discovered that she, well, overheard a lot. He finds her and she's kind enough to give him the information he wants. Maybe Phil was a big tipper that night.

Bob the barbarian fails a will save. He decides to use a reroll, and succeeds. Memories of the roaring good times he had push Bob to overcome the odds in the hope of getting a lot of loot and having even more roaring good times.

[Sucrose]

Might I suggest something along the lines of temporary (but reasonably long-lasting, maybe enough to balance for lost WBL?) boosts to saves, attack rolls, and HP from the morale boost? Perhaps one proportional to the amount of gold that they spend, in search of ever more exotic sources of pleasure. Start with increasing saves, then HP, then even attack rolls and/or damage rolls.

Also, the total amount that they spend frivolously in such a fashion could be used as a bonus to their social skills when dealing with merchants and commoners, as suggested by Ralfarius, like
1/100 gp for the next day
1/1000 gp for the next week
1/10,000 gp permanently

In essence, they are developing word of mouth that they're big spenders, and large purchases to begin with make merchants anxious to deal with them in hopes of getting in on the gravy train, while the commoners just find them to be a lot of fun.


Please note that I am a novice DM, and these are just ideas that occurred to me; modify or ignore as you see fit.

[Machete]

Make skills purchaseable at differing prices and fluctuating availability. Wiser characters can learn cheaper and more intelligent characters can learn more of these bonus skills per level.

Simulate the "college life" or learning at a martial dojo or under an artist or even carousing or whatever.


Carousing.. now what benefits could come from that? Resting up, having fun, socializing. Sounds like a bonus to Knowledge: Local. Maybe over time earning bonuses to Saves from all that drinking, dancing, and relaxing between adventures after spending so much money but not enough to be game breaking.

What else? Bonuses to natural healing, resisting starvation because of built up fat, becoming versed in exotic foods, drink, culture(from tavern talk), and such sounds like Bardic Knowledge.

No bonus feats, too game breaking.


Oh, building the local economy. Bringing in new businesses amd dealers of stuff for you to buy or people looking to pawn off minor magic items on you, loan money from/to you, or looking to kill you for fame. Local government giving you some favor, spying on you, and maybe inviting you to important meetings or town meetings. New laws being passed to do something about your behavoir (no drunk spellcasting or whatever).

[Starsinger]

Perhaps don't give them physical money, but give them reward points that they can spend OOC for magic items that you give to them IC one way or another?

[CthulhuM]

Honestly, why bother with a strictly mechanical award system at all? If reliance on magic items really is diminished, you can simply create a world where +1 swords are the like just aren't available for purchase. This will make for a much more logical game anyway - after all, the idea of adventuring to get loot to spend on better gear to allow you to go adventuring more is really kinda... circular.

When you give the party lots of money, let them spend it on things that the suddenly rich actually spend money on in real life - if your players are no longer required to spend their money on adventuring gear, they'll almost certainly think of interesting uses for it all by themselves. Give them a bit of freedom, and pretty soon they'll be buying themselves houses (or building themselves keeps and temples and wizard's towers), or setting themselves up as important local businessmen, or buying their way into politics. Let them live the high life, and maybe send them on adventures related to protecting or expanding their hard-won assets (perhaps the local thieves' guild is giving them trouble, so they have to find some way to shut it down or take it over).

Really, from what I've read of it, this sort of thing was common in 2E. Players were expected to get themselves strongholds, or marry into royal families, or start taking the steps towards ruling their local city, or, indeed, just enjoy the fruits of their labors in the form of ridiculous excess. Give them a chance and they'll probably jump at it.

[Kaelik]

I am a big proponent of the DM/Player partnership route. So I just say, tell them they want to carouse and that you will make sure that they will be fine without WBL. Let them take care of the rest.