Wednesday, March 1, 2017

Back and Spent Again, or: How Adventurers Pay The Rent

Back and Spent Again, or: How Adventurers Pay The Rent

Open Question: Whose got ideas for character classes? These are hopefully ones that've been in or around D&D and its friends for decades

Character Classes!
I've got: wizard, paladin, fighter, thief, cleric, ranger, bard, barbarian.

That's 8! I could stand 4 more. Any ideas? If so, how is the suggested thematically different from the above? That is, what niche does it have the others do not?

ok.

It appears:
-- I am now maybe running an ongoing living RPG.
-- This is an RPG about the cycle of poverty.
-- The poverty has three fronts, the same as the PCs stats.
-- I think it is fun, despite monumentally unfair.

We had the following characters:
-- Amos the cleric, whose player said something like "I don't know why we'd choose that option, it helps only people that aren't us"
-- Radec the fighter, who aligned on zero of the privilege conditions and had a pretty bad time of it.
-- Xeno the mage, whose mentor was made of fire and named smoke.
-- Ford the thief, who hit all the privilege conditions. The rent due from Ford was almost zilch, and the player acted as such.

For next session -- and the beginning of each session -- they'll have to pay the rent. In addition, new problems will emerge in their community. They can deal with these, or not.

Last time, I did a couple of things wrong, owing to thinking in terms of one shots:
-- I didn't start them poor enough. I'll have to figure out how to resolve this. Maybe hard moves?
-- I let one of the players combat one of the sources of poverty. That means, on one of three axes, they basically don't need to pay rent. A hard move could open that front again.

Or, maybe its all OK and I should just roll with the punches.

15 comments:

  1. Sorcerer, necromancer, monk, Druid, some form of beast master, illusionist, gnomish alchemist.

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  2. Jesse Cox ok ...

    How is a sorcerer thematically different from a wizard/mage? Isn't a necromancer just a specialist type of mage? Some thing with illusionist, right?

    What's an alchemist? What do they do that's cool?

    What's cool about a monk and a druid?

    The Ranger already has a way of having an animal friend. Why is it cool for this to be a full class?

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  3. I love monks because I get to tell the DM "No" all the time.

    Examples:
    - When the characters are captured and stripped of their equipment, the monk is fully armed and armoured. "Nope, I'm not disarmed."

    - When falling is a risk, the monk can just hop down and take no damage. Also, best saves. "Nope, that doesn't affect me."

    - Poison and sickness become a thing of the past, rendering hostile environments much less risky to explore.

    The monk is the class that can step outside of a situation and tackle it sideways.

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  4. Hmm.

    Ok, let me revise. There could be a Summoner of some sort, who works with servators, which he has to pay to create and maintain and protect from a vulnerability. They might be undead, golems, nature spirits, elementals, beasts, hypnotized humans... Several d&d classes can be built like this, but it's never the only option.

    Monks are interesting for this sort of game partly because of their asceticism. They don't need armor or weapons, and vows of poverty aren't uncommon. Learning to live without sleep, food, or water has appeared in several versions of the class. So...do they fit in an economic game? I'm not sure. They also tend to have associations with divine magic or psionics.

    When I was first exposed to d&d it was 2nd ed. Gnomish illusionists, and then gnomish alchemists and tinkerers, were definitely a thing. In a game like this, I see it as sort of a way of borrowing against the future -- you can cheaply make an illusion, a potion, or a gadget that will solve this problem (probably) but result in more, possibly (probably) worse problems down the road from side effects, or when it explodes. They get to play the momentum game...as long as you can keep going forward, things are ok, but when they catch up with you it's bad bad bad.

    Not to mention that potions, gadgets, and con games can be used to help other people, so maybe a shade of cleric...but with more of a devil's bargain.

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  5. Kimberley Lam I think I can work with that.

    Give the monk ways to avoid complications from adventurers. Give them a fighting ability that can't be taken away. Plus, they imply a monkery which is interesting.

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  6. Jesse Cox ohhh, you're right a summoner could be real fun. Hard to do without money, but I'll maybe think of something.

    The alchemist is potentially really nifty. They aren't just wizards, as a wizard moves his hands around and makes a fireball. An alchemist has to make a potion or device in advance, and then use it. Hmmmm.....

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  7. William Nichols

    You could always give Summoners a private resource, with which has its own influx and expenditure -- necromancers get more when disease or death strikes, but have problems with holy stuff and fires. Beastmaster druids need healthy animal populations to pull from. Whatever.

    Have you told us what the three poverty fronts are?

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  8. Oh, right, Jesse Cox !

    There's poverty of assets: material wealth, and the lack of safety.
    There's poverty of friendship: bonds, and dealing with stress.
    There's poverty of community: community credit, and the lack of belonging.

    A bunch of problems can arise from those!

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  9. Heh.

    I am a necromancer. When facing social poverty I can change a hit to a 6- by displaying inappropriate reactions toward death and disease, and take plus one Servitors.

    I am a golem-maker or high summoner. when facing material poverty, I can use my resources to make helpers, changing a hit to 6- and take plus one Servators.

    I am an enchanter or a beast master. when facing poverty of bonds I can change a hit into 6- and take plus one servators -- I spend my time pushing dominance over man or beast rather that forming genuine human connection.

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  10. Oh man, you do love turning a hit into a 6-. And these are cool.

    I want for sure to go with the monk. The whole virtue in poverty thing is a really interesting modification on the standard system. I'm gonna have to think about how to figure it out.

    The Enchanter is pretty interesting, too. That you can have a bunch of dominated or charmed people, without having actual human connection.

    I do love necromancers, and thinking of a way to bring one in is always good.

    I also think I can do some work with a Warlock, harkoning to monsterhearts' infernal class. Give them a really powerful patron, and see what happens.

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  11. It's just the same move three times with different fluff for different, symmetrical costs.

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  12. Personally, I'm a big fan of the wizard/sorcerer divide where wizards follow recipes and sorcerers just make it work. (I also use this metaphor for people's cooking styles a lot.) These are different ways of thinking about and approaching magic, where wizards are much more formal and predictable while sorcerers are more stochastic.

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  13. Jesse Cox I know. :-) The "get one more of a type of aset that you dig on" is interesting.

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  14. Sarah Shugars Yeah, I'm thinking to add an infernal or warlock or sorcerer along those lines. The wizard studies, the sorcerer is magic, and the warlock/infernal borrows it from a powerful source.

    Hm. Maybe not borrows. Maybe steals.

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