Running with the Riddle... Finally!

[Lance D. Allen]

Well, I finally got to run TRoS tonight, after a couple weeks waiting and planning. So here's a summary of how things went..

Chargen: It took in excess of 2 hours to create 2 characters. I attribute this more to unfamiliarity with the system than anything else. This wouldn't have been quite so much of a problem, except that it turns out that one of the players runs a GURPS game on Thursday nights, and.. kinda failed to make that totally clear. Due to this, the actual play session ran about an hour and a half. Long enough I suppose for the purposes of character intro.

Characters: There were 3 characters, rather than the expected 4, because one called up and said he couldn't make it, then called again and said he didn't really want to play after all.. ::growls:: Anyhow. Also, the player who had been planning on playing the sorcerer decided against it, as trying to cram in the sorcery rules (which it turns out he'd failed to read on his initial read-through) in an hour was more than he was ready to handle.. All for the best, I think. A brief introduction to the characters is in order..

Gailen McTaren, An Angharad peasant who worked for a while as an exiled lord's blacksmith, and fell in love with his daughter. For various reasons, they ended up running away together and marrying, only to be tracked down by her betrothed and her being raped and killed while he stood helpless, ending up with a Tormented flaw. Since then he has honed his skills and sought revenge on those involved, as well as trying to win freedom for Angharad from Stahlnish dominion.. slightly misguided, but hey..

...Unpronounceable name, the surname of which translates into something like Goose Shooter, from German, a disgraced Stahlnish archer turned woodsman for hire. He became drunk one night and was unable to help his unit, thus ending up with them being slaughtered. This is reflected by both a Vow (never to drink) and a Bad Reputation. He is generally your average brash and loud soldier-type, with no concept of social graces.

...Undecided name (what's with these name issues anyhow? Just PICK ONE!), a well-off young Angharad woman who travels about at whim, selling and training horses to pay her way. Her personality is mostly that of a free spirit... with little to describe as of yet. Hopefully this will change with gameplay.

The Setting: An Angharad/Stahl border town, protected by and servicing a garrison of soldiers. Gailen is coming into town on his way into Stahl, looking for the man that killed his wife. Goose-shooter (whom I will name properly when I remember to write his character's name down. :-p ) has been working out of the town as a fur-trader for a while, and the horse-trader chick (for the name, same as above) is coming into town looking for work training horses.

Events: Some taunting going on toward all characters, for various reasons, which I hoped to use as a sort of common bond to get them to come together. It.. sorta worked. A fight scene between some soldiers and Gailen (3 on 1, to be precise) which was a tension point, as it could have ended up with Goose-shooter killing Gailen. Eventual "hooking up" of the characters, with a rather.. interesting denoument.

Gailen is, at current, the story-driving character. His SAs are the most relevant to the story I've got in the works, though the others' can easily be applied to it. He is the only one with a strong purpose at the moment, so likely the other two will end up taking "side-kick" roles to begin with, though I can see at least Goose-shooter coming into his own as the story develops. I've my doubts about the horse trader's amount of protagonism, from watching the player in action on our D&D nights. Maybe, though, once he realizes that the game is very much roleplay-driven, he'll take a more active role.

Mechanics: With the possibly story-destroying elements of Gailen killing the officers, I judged that he could simply do bashing damage by turning the flat of his blade. Hence, his opponent ended up with a fractured collarbone (Bashing Cut to Zone V, DR 3 after TO and AV were subtracted) Due to a fumble on his chance to retain his weapon, I ruled that he was dropped on the ground in agony and shock, which allowed Gailen to Intimidate the other two soldiers into backing off.

Also, the above combat illustrated to me exactly how useful Evasive Attack is. I hadn't thought it to be quite so spiffy, but Gailen's use of the maneuver proved me wrong. He spent 6 dice to up the opponent's TN (from 7 to 13) and his own up 3 to a 9, then spent the entirety of the rest of his Pool (8 more dice) to make the attack itself. Needless to say, he came out the victor in that exchange, as I never even got a chance to roll the guy's attack. (Gailen also gained initiative due to use of the Evasive Attack)

Points of Interest: I gave out a total of 5 points tonight. 3 luck points (reason below) 1 Drive Point (for Goose-shooter, coming to the aid of the soldiers... sorta) and 1 Faith Point (for Gailen's assertions/convictions during a conversation with Goose-shooter). I think I was fairly liberal with the points, but will be less so once the story progresses beyond the feeling-out stage.

The most.. interesting thing that happened in game was what I granted the two Luck Points for. I invoked a somewhat silly rule from my old gaming group that whichever character first gained carnal knowledge through in-play actions would get exp./character points/whatever. Totally without knowledge of this "rule", the characters of Goose-shooter and the horse-trader did exactly that... I suppose that's what happens when both characters end up choosing the Lecherous flaw.

What I noticed problems with: Very little, except that the money conversion was a pain in the butt. It makes it difficult to get a feel for how much money is worth in the setting, so I don't feel comfortable giving off-the-cuff answers to the question of "how much?" I imagine that it will eventually boil down to familiarity, however, and once I've run at least a few sessions, it won't bother me anymore.

All in all, the session made little use of the system, but what was there went by fairly quickly, with moderately little search and handling time. The only things I had to search for was to see if the gambling skill covered straight dicing (it doesn't) and to determine the exact effects of the Evasive Strike maneuver.

I'm enthused by my first time actually playing, and I'm looking forward to seeing what sort of things my PCs will do in the upcoming sessions. I'm certain it won't end up being anything like our D&D games, at the least.

[Valamir]

What I noticed problems with: Very little, except that the money conversion was a pain in the butt. It makes it difficult to get a feel for how much money is worth in the setting, so I don't feel comfortable giving off-the-cuff answers to the question of "how much?" I imagine that it will eventually boil down to familiarity, however, and once I've run at least a few sessions, it won't bother me anymore.

Sounds like it was a fun session.  Don't want to lead your whole topic down a side track, but this is something I can actually offer some advice on.

Namely, don't worry about.  The concept of price is so recently modern that for most of history it was essentially meaningless.  How much something cost depended on how badly the seller needed to unload the goods, how badly the the buyer needed to obtain them, how much the seller thought he could get away with, and how good both of them were at sizeing up the other.

Tip #1:  just pick a price, if its different from the last time...no matter, if the player wants to haggle "hey, how about this..." let them.  Most merchants would start high so they had room to drop anyway, so no need to fight about it.  If the character is someone the merchant is likely to be intimidated or impressed by (or want to impress) allow them a lower price...if not, and they're not a regular customer, hit them with a higher.  Avoid skill rolls and haggle checks unless your group really loves that stuff.  Just give in as long as the players counter isn't too outrageous and they'll never ask for one.

Tip #2:  Currency exchange should be rare rare rare.  Coin type should equate almost 1:1 with social status.  Obtaining even a single Coin of a size bigger than normal was often a "holy cow, I've never seen so much money at one time" type of event.  In my D&D campaign, I pretty much threw out price lists.  Every vendor I labeled in my notes as being Copper, Silver, or Gold.  Every item offered was priced in the appropriate Coin and aimed towards that class of character.
      In other words, don't have your characters walking around with a pocket full of mixed change like we do today.  If they're poor, their entire life will be measured in pennies and the occassional shilling.  If they're upper crust, they'd never deign to carry pennies and never pay a penny even if that was the typical price.  
      Once you figure out what social class the characters are, 90% of every transaction they make can be in a single size of Coin, with the quality of the item being depended on that size.

[edited for rampant and embarassing typos...]

[Jürgen Mayer]

...Unpronounceable name, the surname of which translates into something like Goose Shooter, from German

Gänsejäger? (literally: goose hunter) Goose-Shooter would be Gänseschiesser, but that sounds awful.

Valamir: nice currency tips!

[Lance D. Allen]

I believe the literal translation was something like "one who can shoot a goose on the wing".. That second one actually sounds close, though. He mentioned that his last name had 3 instances of the letter S. It was appropriate for the character, because he had a missile pool of 15, and Major Accuracy.

Valamir - Good suggestions, and partially I did that. Gailen was charged higher prices by the Stahlnish innkeepers who didn't particularly want his business. As for more valuable types of coin.. I suppose I could do that, but it's not really what I meant. If you've not got the book, you might not be aware that Weyrth coinage comes in Heavy, Imperial Weight and Light weight coins. That was the conversion I was talking about. It's cool in that it adds color to the setting, but it's really kind of a pain.

I'll tell you though.. If it ever comes down to coin exchange rates during play, I'm not going to make any efforts to be "fair" in my exchange rates. ::grins::

[Valamir]

I'll tell you though.. If it ever comes down to coin exchange rates during play, I'm not going to make any efforts to be "fair" in my exchange rates. ::grins::

Nor should you be.  There is almost never a situation where X Coins = Y other Coins in olden tymes (tm)

Even late in the period as RoS is, centralized mints with high standards were the exception rather than the rule.  The most important component of any coin was how much actual precious metal was in it.  A small coin with 90% silver was more valuable than a large one at 40% silver no matter what denomenation was stamped on the outside.  Country A's pennies might well be worth almost as much as Country B's shillings in this way.

Governments would routinely debase their money simply by reducing the precious metal content.

Anyone who recalls the biblical story about Jesus and the Money Changers and ever wondered why money changers would be featured so prominently its because they used to be a cornerstone of international economics.  A far cry from the morons in airport kiosks we have today, money changers had to keep track of the relative metal content of different denomination and issues from dozens of different mints.  They'd frequently test new coins by melting them down to see how much was actually in there.

On top of that counterfeiting was rampant.  One of my favorite techniques was clipping.  Coins were rarely perfectly round anyway.  With a soft gold coin a sharp knife could shave a little off the edge of each coin without being immediately noticeable.  A good file could shave off edges from harder coins.  Melt it down...and voila...instant precious metal.

For these reasons, most merchants would never accept (at least not from peers or inferiors) Coins from another realm.  They wouldn't know how good the metal was or be able to judge what size it was supposed to be.  Thus, first thing you'd do on entering a new region was go get your money changed for local currency.  A practice for which the money changers would use scales to get actual weight (defeating clippers and varying coin sizes) and estimations of metal content to determine the exchange.

Of course, since they had a virtual monopoly on this knowledge, and you couldn't really buy anything without them they were also free to rip people off.

All of which is just a long way of confirming your original sentiment...feel free to do the same to your players...especially if they start getting overly affluent.  Fairness is not a requirement.  Few local authorities would care since its foreigners being ripped off and having their extra coins transferred to the local economy.  Money changers were an easy source of taxes (since they had a lot of coin all in one place) so the more they ripped people off the better off the local government was.

As an aside, one of the key reasons for Britain's ascendency to world mercantile juggernaught was that the Pound Sterling became universally recognized as being of consistant high quality and thus would often be accepted by people around the world without needing to be changed (often in preference to local currency).  This and revolutions in banking by the Bank of England sometime around the dawn of the industrial age IIRC finally started currency on the road to modern systems.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Ralph,

Dude, you are so giving me DM Guide flashbacks, c. 1979. I'm thinking of those "Economics" sections in my copy, which talk all about how the DM can whittle down the players' enthusiastically-collected 80,000 g.p. into some pathetic little poke, via money-changing, exchange of goods, etc.

All perfectly true, of course. Just a blast from the past.

Best,
Ron

[Valamir]

Heh...yeah...the days when Sim concerns were assumed to be a requirement :-)

The above, for me, stems from 2 really cool classes I took at Penn State.  1 as part of my major called Money and Banking which had a significant "history of" component and another as an elective.  For some reason it was labeled a Geography class, but what it really was a history of the evolution of cities and the urban environment (complete with several historically authentic city maps which were liberally stolen as RPG aides).  Had to write a paper for that class on any topic as long as it tied into the evolution of cities...so, killing two birds with one stone (having another paper due for the M&B class) I wrote one on the History of Banking which had a significant Currency component.  

This thread just gave me the opportunity to expound on something that at one time I'd actually studied in depth :-)

[Seth L. Blumberg]

Ralph--Care to recommend any good books on the subject, or is it all too far in the past for you to remember such details?

[Valamir]

Ralph--Care to recommend any good books on the subject, or is it all too far in the past for you to remember such details?

Oooch.  That was a good 10 years ago...if I can find the actual paper (big IF) I'll share the bibliography.  Otherwise I suspect a search on BN.com or Amazon on "Money and Banking", or "History & Currency" will probably yield some good hits.