Off-adventure time

[Christoffer Lernö]

You know when the characters (in the typical fantasy game) has been adventuring, maybe succeeded in beating the bad guy and all that and are ready to rest for a while?

How often is that dealt with in fantasy games?

Some BRP style games I've been in contact with have elaborate rules to figure out living expenses (Shadowrun does this too, but usually more simple), as well as expenses for training.

I was considering simplifying this somewhat for Ygg.

Maybe I'm just impressed with how neat it worked in Pendragon, or maybe it really is a good idea.

I was thinking of something like this (feel free to offer suggestions on improvements):

First of all, off-adventuring would be divided into some kind of "Periods of Rest"

Basically your class (here it's convenient to have them) offers you some basic profession you have when you're not adventuring. So for every PoR of you simply roll a die to see how much money you earned. If you worked you can't train.

If you train there is a simple scheme: You can train x skills during one PoR. Training a skill cost y gold depending on how high your skill already is. Since you train you have to pay for your lifestyle.

Lifestyle is done SR style. You pay x gold for 1 PoR with that lifestyle. If you're or recovering from wounds, 1 PoR of rest (no training or work) will fully heal you.

In addition one could have a table of random events for every PoR but that's not really necessary.

Is this a good idea? Basically I'm simplifying the whole off-adventuring stuff into set costs. It's not as realistic, but the GM can always modify it as he/she sees fit. It's to speed up play and let people deal with what's important rather than calculate training costs.

[Mike Holmes]

Here's a simple and realistic way to handle "down time":

These people are adventurers, right? Sure, that means that they can probably make money doing somthing that takes advantage ot their skills. But these are also people who are used to the luxuries that one can obtain through the wealth that they accumulate adventuring. IOW< they have the "adventurer's lifestyle". They won't be willing to live ascetically between adventures, saving coins for a rainy day. They'll be out having parties, and spending money at an alarming rate.

Its a matter of attitude. It doesn't matter what you earn, your spending habits decide how much you can save. The point is that the spending habits of the average adventurer will not include saving money. So they will spend a bit more than they take in.

This is really an important part of "standard fantasy". Encode it thusly. Every week that they are not adventuring, the character ends up net five percent of his riches in the hole. That is, if I ended th elast adventure with 20 GP, after a week I will have only 19. That's the net result of whatever wages I am earning, minus whatever I am spending on lifestyle.

What does this do? It makes it so that the players are motivated to get adventuring again, ASAP. Which they should be, being adventurers.

If you want an option for players to say that their character is different, and willing to save money, have the character make a will roll or something to keep their head above water. With a really good roll, allow them to make a little money (If you had sanity points, however, I'd require a roll against that subsequent, however).

Anyhow, the only way for a character to escape this cycle is to declare that he is retired from adventuring. At which point he can live til the end of his days with a standard of living based on a fraction of his current wealth.  Such characters become NPCs, and the player has to start off with a new character.

Mike

[Valamir]

Pendragon formalized this with annual maintenance payments.  The amount depended on the standard of living the character was maintaining.  This influenced the quality of clothes he had to wear (and how current his fashions were) and indirectly all of the intangible things that would be influenced by by such conspicuous consumption.

[Balbinus]

Mike is spot on here.  One of my pet hates is adventurers who are accountants in their spare time, counting and hoarding every last gp.  Sleeping in cheap inns and eating basic food.

Why do they adventure?  Why do they want all that money?

My model for adventurers is pirates.  Pirates risked their lives for gain, they earned fantastic amounts sometimes, then they lived high until it was gone and they had to go out for some more.

Sensible people wouldn't become adventurers.  Risk prone types who do become adventurers wouldn't put their money into a building society.  Live a little!

[Le Joueur]

Why do they adventure?  Why do they want all that money?

My model for adventurers is pirates.  Pirates risked their lives for gain, they earned fantastic amounts sometimes, then they lived high until it was gone and they had to go out for some more.

Sensible people wouldn't become adventurers.  Risk prone types who do become adventurers wouldn't put their money into a building society.  Live a little!

I seem to remember that modern treasure-seekers tend to take the hordes of money they get and plow it into research and equipping for their next 'adventure.'  It struck me that this was an alternative to the 'greedy pirate' model.  What do you do if your best skills are dungeon-crawling and yet you have little greed?  Turn 'pro.'

Fang Langford

[Balbinus]

I seem to remember that modern treasure-seekers tend to take the hordes of money they get and plow it into research and equipping for their next 'adventure.'  It struck me that this was an alternative to the 'greedy pirate' model.  What do you do if your best skills are dungeon-crawling and yet you have little greed?  Turn 'pro.'

Fang Langford

That works too.  What I don't buy is adventurers who risk their lives in order to amass money to buy better kit to allow them to further risk their lives, but otherwise just amass vast bank balances.

I think of it as the DnD model, although that's a bit unfair as the problem is not inherent to the game.

It stems from a more fundamental, and surprisingly often unasked, question - why adventure at all?

[Valamir]

Well, D&D didn't offer many alternatives to expenditures.

Bruce Galloway's Fantasy Roleplaying (which has been mentioned here before) had a couple of dozen different social classes, each of which had a certain Price in terms of standard of living.

It wasn't enough to simply accumulate experience, if one wanted to increase one's social standing one had to spend the money to maintain the lifestyle expected.  One only has to look at the enormous amounts of money wasted on royal palaces and gardens historically, for no practical purpose other than to maintain the prestige of the rank.

It would be easy to institute in D&D maybe a dozen or so levels with a GP cost "per month".  The players would choose an amount of Gold (or copper for the lower ones) they were spending (it would disappear with no tangible gain) and for the month they could live the life appropriate to that level.  An advance version would have an intitial capital "buy in" to that level, and then a monthly "maintenance" expense.

That would preclude the need to pay for every little thing individually.  They'd have clothes suitable to their rank, they'd be eating in establishments suitable to their rank, have modifiers to NPC reaction rolls based on the rank they're maintaining...etc.

It would bleed out alot of excess gold from the campaign, and give the players a reward not in the form of a +3 sword("Joacam the Mighty is maintaining himself at the status of prince, complete with rich clothes lavish parties, and loads of women").  It would also save a ton of accounting because all of the above would be recieved for 1 monthly payment of 100 platnum (or so).

That way, if Rorgar the Dungeon Delver really wanted to save all of his gold to buy that Girdle of Giant Strength he saw in Ye Olde Magic Shoppe, the DM could inform him that due to his minimal monthly expenditures, he was now dressed in rags, smelled like a barnyard animal, was living on gruel, and basically looked like a peasant.  His chance to impress the King's Daughter is thus something like -20 no matter what "level" he is.

[Mike Holmes]

That sounds good, Ralph. In fact I got myu original idea from a Traveller rule that works just like you describe. Essentially, if you didn't spend enough money on your lifestyle, your social standing stat dropped effectively until you made payments to reinstate the effects.

Yeah, now that I think about it, this is the best way to go.

How about the "adventurous" subtax?

That is, if you do not spend ten percent over your base social level maintainece fee the player must roll Will each week. If they fail, they must go off on some sort of adventure.  They can choose what sort of adventure to go on, but they can't stay home, and certainly can't keep down a job.

Mike

[Valamir]

That is, if you do not spend ten percent over your base social level maintainece fee the player must roll Will each week. If they fail, they must go off on some sort of adventure.  They can choose what sort of adventure to go on, but they can't stay home, and certainly can't keep down a job.
Mike

That might work in overt "Adventurers as actual professions" settings.

The idea also gives alot of teeth to those "Spend Thrift" and "Frugal" disadvantages.

Spendthrift doesn't necessarily mean "wasteful"...I know a lot of very high spenders who are simultaneously great bargain hunters.   It really just means living beyond your means.  So whatever category would be "normal" for the PC to have based on social class (or perhaps a party average) the Spendthrif has to be 1 or more levels higher.

Similiarly the Frugal player isn't necessarily better at finding deals, they're just more willing to settle for the 19 inch TV instead of the 52" HDTV, so they must buy 1 level below what would normal for their level.

This kind of mechanic also makes skills like Haggling important (usually, I hate such skills because the only time they're useful is when players go on long shopping sprees and drag the whole thing out interminably with Haggling rolls).  In this type of situation its a simple reduction to the cost of each level (a small reduction...10% would be really good).  Disadvantages like "Gullible" would have a reverse effect..."of course I want a full set of those knives that cut through pipes...only $99.95, what a deal"

[Walt Freitag]

An advance version would have an intitial capital "buy in" to that level, and then a monthly "maintenance" expense.

I can report that this works very well. Spend tangible "treasure" to buy more abstract "wealth." One possibility is to make the buy-in capital very high (fantasy worlds don't usually have mortgages) at higher wealth levels. At the peniless begger level, buy in is the same as maintenance (zero). At the sharecropper level, maintenance is almost as high as buy in. At the peasant in a hovel level, buy-in is ten times maintenance. For a tradesman, buy in might be 50 times maintenance (one needs tools, shop, etc) assuming one already has the trade skill. At some "wealth" level, the monthly expenses end altogether. Higher wealth levels than that can actually return a monthly income. The rich get richer, and it's not because they loot monster lairs.

This has some advantages. It's a great reward to aspire to, and a great way to dispose of massive amounts of tangible treasure. (Players will pay more than they would have to pay in monthly expenses in a lifetime, just for the thrill of not having to pay monthly expenses.) And, it encourages players to find other reasons besides "need money" (boring!) for their characters to go adventuring. I first used Wealth Levels for an Arabian Nights LARP, because in Arabian Nights tales characters often treasure troves and using them to buy into a higher social class (and often losing that status just as precipitously.) In a LARP this had to be done without any crunchiness.

If necessary wealth levels can be liquidated for maybe one tenth the capital put in. No one wants to do that, so money put into Wealth is money the player isn't going to try to use to buy mercenary armies, bribe the magistrate, or commission magic item fabrication.

- Walt

[ADGBoss]

Many of the ideas on here are very good ones but it brings up some important questions and widely held beliefs. "Why Adventure at all?" Is a good one and has been mentioned already. Alot of this has to do with the game world of course but Adventurers do not necassarily have the best reputations.  Essentially there is alot of Hero of the Day that goes one but once the moment is past they are just rubbish causing trouble again.

I think there is a tendancy (partially due to the D&D model) that as one progresses in character power, they ALSO progress in material wealth. The flaw of course is that one can be powerful and poor (in most games) or rich and weak (er go all the nobles hiring the adventurers to get dirty).
This is partially reinforced by the magic item buying which goes on, which I both love (for low power items) and hate (for the mid to high level stuff).

As it is Adventurers will be more like pro wrestlers or athletes as far as celbrity goes.  They may become popular and amass great wealth and STILL go adventuring because well its what they do.  The best are not always the best paid and fortunes can swing back and forth.

I think "realistic-abstraction" is the best middle ground. A system that allows financial freedom and financial ingenuity but does not interfere with the flow and flavor of the game.

SMH
ADGBoss

[Jeremy Cole]

From an economic history lecture I took more than five years ago, and didn't pay too much attention too (so this info does not come with much of a guarantee), in pre-industrial times prestige was defined more by the size of the house you ran, in terms of people employed, than the value of furniture and such like.  I think this could work in a game, wealthy characters gaining civilian and combatant followers.

Successful adventurers would accrue little possies that help them out, maybe not in a dungeon, but they could do all sorts of other useful things.  Weapon maint., errand running, spying, and all the miscellaneous things that a character is no good at or is too boring for the GM to worry about.

I suppose this could use some of the wealth mechanics given, but with the twist that employed people are a lot more helpful than a well decked out manor house.  Perhaps when you acquire given wealth levels or whatever you get 1, then 2, then 4 etc extras that can perform tasks for you.

I love extras mind you, bless them.  They try so hard an suck so bad.  Any thoughts, a system that attaches extras to wealth?

Jeremy

[contracycle]

.

I love extras mind you, bless them.  They try so hard an suck so bad.  Any thoughts, a system that attaches extras to wealth?

In connection with "connectedness as advancement", it might be implicit that wealt is spent on retainers and hence reaching levels of wealth obliges taking on extra NPC's, as an increase of effectiveness.  A thigh levels, you get extras for free - sycophants abd the seekers of generosity.

[Valamir]

Property and retainers (or Clients as the Romans called them) go hand in hand through most of history.  This no doubt has a lot to do with the assumption that some people are privileged and some people are property (regardless of their legal status).  

Even in the Three Musketeerss, no matter how poor D'Artagnon was when he got to Paris, the first thing he was told to acquire was a body servant.

In medieval times a manor wasn't a house.  It was an agricultural unit complete with 2-4 villages and a few hundred peasants and serfs.  In later periods household staff included butlers, stewards, chamberlains, etc.

So, absolutely Nip.  If your setting calls for it, assumeing that servants, slaves, serfs, perhaps even a few men-at-arms comes with the "wealth level" is entirely appropriate.

[damion]

I think alot of the problem comes from the fact that money has two meanings in most fantasy games. It serves as in-game currency, but if the possibility to buy magic items or retainers is there, it serves as meta-game currency also.

Thus characthers hoard it for meta-reasons, to increase their effectivness.  I think seperating these two functions would go a long way to solving the problem. Perhaps as they get more powerful, the naturally get better equipment.
Say you have a 'wealth' stat. Money you accumulate goes into increasing this stat. Coinsidering what most adventurese spend money on, this stat doesn''t really decrease unless they make a major purchase, say a ship or something. As they get wealthier the parties get better, their armor is shinier, better tarverns, that sorta thing.  In game you'd have some sort of table-when you aquire X wealth you go up the next wealth level.  Perhaps you could have 'wealth' levels for equipment. Until you get to that level, you can't afford to by Y, however you can FIND it :).  Perhaps you make rolls against this stat as apropriate, say to bribe someone, although most adventurese should be able to bribe most low-level guards, at least from a money point of view.  

The other thing is the increasing social class. In most books, movies, ect. Characthers adventure for a while, save the world and then retire to a good life.  They don't usually go on adventure after adventure. If they do, this gets a bit tiring.   My point is that as characthers increase in social class they SHOULD spend less time adventuring. The problem is this is boring for the players, unless you want to do a court intigue champaign(Which can be fun, but it doesn't seem to be where this is going.). I suppose you could just say that as characthers increase in social class the amount of time between adventures goes up, although you could  
have something abstract like 'FREETIME' that can be used for meta-functions, such as training, that stays constant. A new charachter may be able to come into town train for a few weeks, and then go off to the next adventure, while a minor noble may go a year before something important enough to attract their attention comes along. However both characters may train 1 level in this time.(frex)

Opp view:I suppose you could say the tension between 'spending to increase your social class' and 'spending to increase effectiveness' is interesting, but you'd probably get all one or all the other, based on the campaign. Basicly, everyone will tend to have the same ratio based on the campaign.