Dragon World, or
Markets and Mages, or
How Adventurers pay the rent, or
Learning your ABC's, or
...
I don't know what to call this game. This is a pbta game. The main characters are wanderers, with ties to communities and individuals. Like D&D-style adventurers.
The game is about paying the rent. Or, rather, it is about personal finances. But that's not even true: Its a game about the fallout from hitting stuff with swords, and rolling the bodies of sentient people for their shit. Its about how you live with yourself after you do terrible things. And the economic reality that forces you to commit actions that are less than savory.
There are three families of stats: Assets, Bonds, Credits. Together, these are your balance sheet. There's no stat for how hot or strong you are, because you are understood to be capable. What matters is your stuff, your relationships, and how you fit in.
Assets are things you have: weapons, spell components, bags of holding.
Bonds are relationships you can call on: friends, mentors, loved ones.
Credit are your standing in communities: the Enclave, the Wizard's Academy, the Paladin's Church.
Adventuring is a single move. It is how you gain Assets, Bonds, and Credits. This move is huge, and is fully a quarter of the move sheet.
You spend from your balance sheet when you Pay The Rent. You must Pay The Rent at the start of session, after an adventure, or during a lull. You need to spend an Asset, Bond, and Credit, or else bad things happen.
The result of violence is chosen rather than rolled, and you spend to affect the outcome. Other PCs can help or hinder, by marking down their balance sheet. If you refuse to pay when you commit to violence, you can instead mark jaded and lose a part of what makes you a hero.
It literally costs you wealth or your soul to commit acts of violence.
What should I call this game? Do you want to play this game? Do you want to read this game and give feedback? Would you back this game if it made it to ks?
Conversely: Do you hate the sound of this game? Does this sound terrible? Do I have a poor understanding of the world that bleeds through in this description?
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Back in Town: The RPG?
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols: Give me a brief recounting (even if it's fictional) of a perfectly typical session of this game.
ReplyDeleteExample for Capes : The Iron Brain tricked Major Victory into a mind-swap machine, following which the Major spent the session as a brain in a jar whose controls he didn't really understand, being beaten on by his former comrades, while the nefarious villain used the hero's reputation to move closer to the nuclear launch codes. Ultimately, it was ex-sidekick Gun-Bunny who put a stop to the Brain's plan, although she actually just thought she was beating the crap out of her ex-mentor when he went over the edge. She was disappointed when the truth came out.
I'm going to suggest that if you don't have an immediate image of what such a game would look like then you're not yet ready to name it.
Murderhobo Blowback
ReplyDeleteOn the second question: I love the idea of a game about all the shit normal fantasy games hand wave. It makes it extra neat that it hand wave adventuring.
I have it in my head that I can roll for adventuring, return to town after a month, missing a hand, and find my sister has married the town drunk. If the game supports this, I'm all in.
Aaron Griffin Yes, that all works.
ReplyDeleteIt'd be like this:
Start of session, the GM asks questions & makes everyone pay rent. The PCs sniff around, and either discover an adventure that needs doing, or simply go out to a dungeon to loot it. They may come back wounded, stressed out, or -- as in this case -- with an unwelcome change back home. And you've got to pay the rent again.
Then you deal with that, which eventually leads you to adventuring again. Afterall, it is how you generate wealth because otherwise you're a layabout.
My friend (Greg Park) suggested Ledgers and Loan-sharks when I showed him the post. I like that.
ReplyDeleteAnd for me, this game is like Bizzaro world. It emphasizes stuff I hand wave, and hand waves the stuff that interests me. ;) I don't hate the idea of the game, and totally think it should exist, but I think it wouldn't be a game I enjoy.
Matt Johnson the bizzaro world is what I love
ReplyDeleteBetween Dungeons
ReplyDeleteMonstrous Capitalism
Never Enough Loot
Mo' Loot, Mo' Problems
William Nichols Your example play reminds me of Classic Traveller when your group has a starship mortgage to clear.
ReplyDeleteRoll for delivery opportunities
Roll for jump drive
Refuel
Roll for jump drive
Refuel
Deliver
Pay mortgage
Goto 10
An adventurer and his loot are soon parted.
ReplyDeleteLoot is the root of all evil.
A heart of loot.
William Nichols: Is the post you made an offered response to my question about an example story the game will tell?
ReplyDeleteTony Lower-Basch Not yet, I'd been thinking of a response. The concern really when I think through such descriptions, they sound a lot like Apocalypse World.
ReplyDeleteWe wandered around the Enclave, looking for problems. Once we got bored, we wandered out looking for trouble. We came back, with a few cuts and bruises -- though, Aiden was missing a finger --, a lot of wealth, love for each other, and having solved the problem.
Its something like that, but this is pre-coffee brain.
William Nichols: I note a very real lack of "The community's needs and expectations pressed upon us, and we had to respond or else lose our place and our identity" within that. Do you have a handy mental toolkit of tried-and-true, cliched story threads about how that bit happens?
ReplyDeleteIn short: What's a vivid and specific example of the rent coming due?
Aaron Griffin Which is exactly why I think the game should exist.
ReplyDeleteI realized why Tony Lower-Basch 's question was so difficult: it is unreasonably obvious to me.
ReplyDeleteI realized this when I reflected on a dumb response I got when asking someone about their game; that game designer was too close to understand my question, and I have been to close to really answer Tony's.
The first session of Ledgers and Loansharks (or whatever this game is called) looks like this: We learn about an unstable setup of people and communities, and economic pressure is applied to the main characters. How they react to this tells is revealing to their nature, as is what happens while they are away from their loved ones and communities.
So, something like this:
Adelle the Fighter, Barbara the Cleric, and Cynthia the Wizard live in the Enclave, which is part of a massive city-state of Roma. The Enclave is a sex and books paradise. Adelle works at the local garrison, keeping Roma safe. Barbara prays at the local temple, and Cynthia teaches at the local university.
They each keep these communities happy in their own ways; Adelle mostly with time and looking tough, Barbara by listening to parishoners, and Cynthia by listening to undergrads.
Cynthia hears that the dead have been missing from crypts, and Barbara divines that a lich is on the loose.
The three together go on an adventure to solve the problem; Adelle is wounded, Barbara suffers a nervous break, and Cynthia finds a secret unknown to anyone else. They also gain neat equipment, love each other more, and gain some cred in their community.
Back at home, Cynthia tends to Adelle's wounds, and Barbara talks to her bishop about her harrowing experiences.
That's more it.
Can you share the "go adventuring" move? That seems like a lot of interesting resolution packed into one move
ReplyDeleteAaron Griffin Sure!
ReplyDeleteThe moves are on a single page, double sided. So, there's a column of basic moves, a column with violence and hardship moves. There's a column with "session" moves and enclave moves like pay the rent and making the enclave a better place.
Then there's adventuring. It has its own column.
Adventuring
When you are low on coin, go adventure! Everyone who goes on the adventure marks xp. Whoever leads the team rolls, adding to the dice the number of player characters involved.
On a 10+, you accomplish the adventure with only a few problems -- choose a complication. On a 7-9, you accomplish the adventure and choose as many complications as the mission rewards in coin. On a 6-, you do not complete the mission, and the GM will choose as many complications as the mission rewards in coin.
Gaining Assets: If you loot corpses, defile sanctuaries, strong-arm, pillage or burgle, tell the MC. She may have one or more questions; answer honestly. Mark Jaded and gain a new Asset at 2 after the Adventure.
Gaining Bonds: If you describe a meaningful moment you shared with another player during the mission, you each gain a bond with each other.
Gaining Credit: If you are on an adventure for someone else, increase your credit in their community. If you have a bond with them, gain an additional credit in their community.
The GM will start narration of an Adventure towards the end; either at the moment of victory, or when everything goes to hell. Additional moves may follow.
Some options worth one coin divided between you, or others as you negotiate them:
Bodyguarding / Caravan Guarding / Enforcement
Some worth two coin divided between you, or others as you negotiate them:
Serving a warlord as an elite team / Courier a message
Some worth three coin divided between you, or others as you negotiate them:
Fort Defense / Dungeon Looting / Collecting Taxes from the peasantry
For better adventures, you should expect to make very particular arrangements, very much subject to availability. You can’t just wander around the commons of an Enclave with Assets ajangle and expect to find dragons to slay, or eldritch tombs to raid.
Complications
After all the moves have been made, anyone instructed to Choose Complications picks from below:
_______ runs into someone they’d rather avoid, and is in a bad spot
Debts _______ owes come due
_______ is humiliated by a rival
When we come back, _______ discovers an unwelcome change in a community.
_______ finds a red herring towards a mystery they care deeply about
_______ didn’t make it back alive (NPC’s only)
_______ was separated from us and is lost or captured
_______ took Harm twice
We lost ______ to the Blight (NPC’s only)
We all took Harm during the adventure
Something followed us back home
We screwed up big time (We all mark Stress)
I panicked at a crucial moment (I mark Jaded twice)
The Blight took hold of me for a time (I mark Jaded and the MC will say what I did)
I suffered a deeply personal loss (I must Give In to Stress after the mission)
William Nichols: So ... the game's focus is on the adventure about the dead rising, and the Lich? Because that's certainly where the narrative focus is in your story.
ReplyDeleteCan Cynthia, Barbara and Adelle take their act on the road, leaving Roma behind and becoming itinerant adventurers who just travel from one crisis-point to the next?
Tony Lower-Basch well, about hearing about it and the fallout. The Adventure is the thing that game centers around but doesn't bother talking about. Its not the interesting bit, which, instead, is what happens before and after.
ReplyDeleteThey could go on the road, but I don't have rules for it yet. Leaving communities like that isn't the main intent, so i dunno.
I'm going to stop trying to do this Socratically. Here is an example of the rent coming due, as I see it:
ReplyDeleteSo Barbara's bishop comes knocking on the door of her bare little cell. "Now you know I believe in your faith," he says, "but there are a bunch of people in the hierarchy who are questioning, given the company you keep, whether you're really a role-model we want to get behind. Is there some way you could, maybe, make Adelle and Cynthia seem more like holy fellow travellers, and less like a barely reformed bandit and a foul sorceress consorting with demons? It's just ... I've been getting a lot of hassle."
Barbara decides to sell Adelle and Cynthia on the idea of loot to be gained raiding (some unholy bad-guy), rather than explain to them how she's supposed to reform their reputations. But maybe, y'know, a prayer session when they get back, rather than another drunken debauch?
Can you tell me another archetypal story of the rent coming due?
Oh Sure!
ReplyDeleteAdelle comes back from lich hunting with Barbara and Cynthia. For form's sake, let's say she gains a coin, a new bag of holding worth 2 assets, shared an intimate moment with Barbara and gained a bond, and went lich hunting oh behalf of the good people of the Enclave.
When she gets back, she'll need to pay rent; to secure her rooms, to keep herself happy by talking with friends, and spending time within the Enclave. That's really what it is to pay the rent -- to keep yourself alive, happy, and getting out.
The first she pays with coin, choosing to use coin rather than to weaken the magic of the bag. She spends times with her friend Barbara in a relaxing setting, perhaps reading at the coffee club. Finally, she spends simply enjoying the simple pleasures the Enclave has to offer.
That's how I see paying the rent; part of it is external (assets), but paying bonds and credit is really relying upon your social capital with other people to keep ennui at bay.
Or at least, that's one interpretation that I like. I am particularly out of it this morning, having chosen to invest an abundance of time in a social group last night rather than getting enough sleep.
William Nichols: I'm really glad you've thought carefully about the rules of your game. I'm asking about a different thing, though.
ReplyDeleteWhat is a STORY of the rent coming due?Ignore the rules mechanics, and sketch out a fiction that is compelling.
If it helps, you can think of it as a pre-emptive response to the inevitable question: "Wait, we just saved this entire town from being eaten by a dragon, and they're complaining that we're a few coins behind on rent? What the hell kind of stupid nut-cases live here? And why would I risk my life for them? I'm sorry, but I can't keep playing this character. None of this makes any sense ... it's too allegorical, with too little real human story."
For some reason, this didn't hit my inbox.
ReplyDeleteAdelle comes back. The Community likes her. Hooray.
She goes to her rooms, and her landlord, Bruce, is there. He looks downcast and unhappy about it, bu reminds Adelle that he needs to pay the bank, which he can't do if she doesn't pay the rent. Its not that he'll kick her out if she doesn't pay -- not this week -- but that the bankers may foreclose properties. Probably not this one -- no banker is that dumb -- but his other properties.
Adelle rumages through her new bag of holding and pulls out a few coins, and gives them over to Bruce. He's able to pay down his mortgage, and keep the bankers happy.
Adelle sets her sight on the obvious evil: the banking system itself. She's not sure how to resolve it, but has realized that personal property inherently rests on violence.