Fantasy Adventurers returning from the adventure.
The week Off
After The Campaign
Between Adventurers
I'm not sure what I'm calling this game. It is about a group of fantasy adventurers, strutting back home and dealing with social problems. They mostly live together, maybe with other people.
I had a great playtest with Sean Leventhal and Sarah Shugars at Dreamation. And then I played Adam Dray's city of Brass campaign, which hits a lot of points I've wanted.
I'd love to hear what anyone thinks, and especially those three.
Here's what I'm thinking about changing:
-- Introduce Copper / Silver / Gold / Platinum, instead of just "coin". Copper is related to assets, Silver to Bonds, Gold to Community Credit, and Platinum is a wildcard that always causes problems. You can always use a higher one in place of any number of a lower one, and never get change.
-- MC facing start of game lever on starting wealth.
-- MC facing levers on poverty -- that is, on how expensive it is to survive. Additionally, new problems arise based on poverty. This goes from -3 (Apocalypse) to -1 (Wealthy).
-- hard currency can be spent for a 10+ on a roll, or towards the rent.
-- Reward for adventures becomes a single copper / silver / gold, spread among the player characters. They can decide how to disburse it. That is, hard currency is rare.
-- Modifying the Enclave moves to relate to enclave problems.
-- Adding a "Rely on your poverty" move.
-- Adding an adventure worth zero coins. Instead, this lets you explore a problem related to the enclave. Not solve it, for that you'll need to make special arrangement. But, spend some time looking into issues. And then pay rent.
-- I am considering getting rid of the bond and credit descriptions, and consolidating this to just the classifications. That'll save space, but that may not be sufficiently differentiated.
The adventure continues to be the primary way of gaining resources. I've really increased the number of problems facing the PCs, based on how impoverished they are.
I've also added ways of delaying those problems, but there are absolutely no system ways to resolve those problems. Nor to fix issues of poverty.
Play tests: they get the job done.
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Before responding to the other things I want to say that the adventure was not the primary way to earn money, and as balanced it cannot be. The adventure produces at most a bond for all characters and three coins across the characters. So about one and a half resources. But rent paying costs three resources per character, and the main moves each cost one.
ReplyDeleteI like adding more mc levers on poverty. Maybe also including more lis of resources as a hard move would also help.
ReplyDeleteI think the distinction between multiple kind of emotional and social needs is essential. I wouldn't get rid of the descriptions unless I was choosing a new distinction. And I don't understand what the copper, silver, gold thing is supposed to convey.
Sean Leventhal Close! Ignoring the hard currency, an adventure gets you: 1 XP, 1 corruption, an Asset at 2, a bond with every PC that goes, and credit with the communities that sent you. Then you spend an Asset, a bond, and a credit. So, you wind up with an Asset at 1, other PCs - 1 bonds, and maybe some credit. So, you wind up with some building up of resources.
ReplyDeleteMaybe, at least.
Huh, that does mean that the players will be much less inclined to spend rent bond on NPCs. Is that what you want?
ReplyDeleteCopper / Silver / Gold is meant to imply this: Life sucks. It is relatively cheap to ensure safety, more expensive to have friends, and more expensive still to guarantee a place in a community. It is better to actually have such a place.
ReplyDeleteSean Leventhal I do! I want them to spend those PC bonds or rent. Yes indeed!
ReplyDeleteHuh, I stated the bonds wrong. That means I need to change it!
ReplyDeleteWhen I played I thought one of the biggest things was the emphasis on how terrible the characters were at life. They often couldn't buy the things they needed, not just they were expensive. And they hadn't developed the relationships they needed. So I guess the question is, do you want the characters to get home and satisfy their need for friendship with each other. Sound like yes, but I feel like we were playing no.
ReplyDeleteI'm still not clear on the concept for the different currency levels. My sense from our conversation is that you want players to feel more like they are "counting their coppers" but I think that can be achieved by just having things be more expensive than characters can afford. I feel like the current game play encourages the formation of bonds and credits in part because you can't afford things - you need to develop relationships and serve a community in order to be taken care of - you can't just buy everything you need. I worry that creating currency levels and allowing transferring between assets/bonds/credits would over-commoditize the system.
ReplyDeleteAlso, regarding assets. Most of the time I felt like it was clear what asset I should use for which task (e.g., coin for rent, holy robes for turning liche baristas). My understanding is that you can generally use any asset for any task as long as you narratively justify it, e.g., coin doesn't have to be the asset you use to pay the rent. In principle this is fine, but if I were to pay the rent by selling my holy robes, it seems like I should take jaded or stress - not sure if you have something like that worked in on the back end. I'm also not sure if it would make sense to have a mechanism for "just having" something. I got "thread that dissolves in water" as an asset at 2...which I technically never used although I used the thread. It seems like there are some things where using it as an asset means giving it away (e.g. coin), while other things you may still have after using. (I assume I was still wearing robes after using them, they were just at 0)
ReplyDeleteAnd I really like the idea of an enclave adventure. I'm not sure of the specific mechanics, but I can imagine that both your credits and bonds can make demands of you and you risk hurting those relationships if you don't support others the way they support you.
ReplyDeleteThe way I see this working best is if the PCs come home rich beyond their wildest dreams, all of their wealth stats really high. They start funding all the projects they have in mind but that takes time so they also have to pay living expenses, and then their debts are needing paid and the community keep asking them for help with different things and before they know it they are about to run out of cash and they have to stop building and go adventuring again.
ReplyDeleteBasically, it shouldn't be about penny pinching but about vast wealth constantly slipping away.
Sean Leventhal You're absolutely right: I've got it packed at an average of two bonds gained, and then expend one on the default we played. I hadn't yet invented the others difficulties. Netting an asset / bond / maybe credit / maybe hard currency sounds about right. You're still left with only minimal stuff, but enough to have some work.
ReplyDeleteSarah Shugars Ohhhh, the over commodization is relevant. I'm working on also increasing the difficulty to the enclave, such that if you don't spend some resources on those problems they'll get worse and become bigger threats.
ReplyDeleteI should probably have made you spend the thread, but I wasn't thinking about it. My head was thinking about the relationships and trying to keep up with the truly ridiculous scheme you guys came up with. I aodred it, and the move snowball. That was one of the greatest move snowballs I'd had in this game.
Assets at zero are totally a thing. You can't apply them to a roll, but they can still exist. If I wanted to emphasize poverty, I'd change that, too.
Sarah Shugars Yes! As is, it is player facing that communities can give you more credit for doing adventures for them. One of the MC moves is "make them pay", which should totally work for forcing them to expend a credit if you refuse to go on an adventure.
ReplyDeleteWorking on that. Our game was revolutionary. It was truly a pleasure.
Brian Ashford Both!
ReplyDeleteI thiiiiink part of what's crucially terrible about poverty is that it is expensive. I read that somewhere. In a book, maybe.
Anyway, yeah. You bring back some gold and some silver and then it disapears and you have nothing to show for it. You've maybe got your relationships, or maybe you wasted those to stay alive.
Which also means it depends on the poverty level!
I said a lot of things just then! I am very glad you are all contributing. It will make for a better game!
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols Terry Pratchett explained it really well in one of the Guards books.
ReplyDeleteIf you are rich you can spend $20 on a pair of boots which will keep your feet warm and dry for two years. If you are poor though, you can't afford the $20 boots so you have to settle for the $5 boots with the cardboard soles which only last four months and can't actually keep your feet dry. Over two years the poor person spends more on boots, yet the rich person is the only one who ever actually has dry feet.
The Vimes' boot theory of socioeconomic inequality, Brian Ashford !
ReplyDeleteI know it well. That's what I want to emphasize with the poverty dials.
William Nichols I'm sure there are some serious books on the subject too, but Sir Terry gets to the heart of the matter.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols our game was pretty revolutionary!
ReplyDeleteHow so, Sarah Shugars ?
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols haha, you're the one who said it was revolutionary. I was just being enthusiastic. It was a lot of fun!
ReplyDelete