[Badass City] how do you design price lists?

[Marshall Burns]

Badass City is a Step on Up RPG about a city full of badasses competing to be the most badass. Your life basically consists of competing with badasses in fights and contests of skill and guts, boasting about shit, and making your competition look like jackasses. The game's got loads of ways to do all of those, and it works pretty well.

Your badassitude, as perceived by the population of Badass City as a whole, is measured in Badass Points, which you gain by being badass in various ways: fulfilling your boasts, beating people up, winning contests -- basically, the stuff I just mentioned in the previous paragraph. You also can lose Badass Points by being un-badass: failing to back up your shit, getting beat up, losing contests, etc.

In addition to being a scoring metric, your Badass Score entitles you to certain goods and services. You don't spend them to get stuff; rather, you are granted them for free by virtue of your badassitude. It's the way things in Badass City work. If you want something that you're not entitled to by your current Badass Score, you have to take it by force or bargain for it. (Bargains work like bargains in Poison'd, except that rather than witholding dice from someone who isn't coming through on his end of a bargain, you can damage his reputation or force a confrontation with him on your own terms.)

Coming up with lists of the goods and services you might want is easy. Frex:

Lodging
Roach motel
Decent hotel
Nice hotel
Fancy hotel
Five-star hotel
Rat-hole apartment
Decent apartment
Nice apartment
Fancy apartment
Penthouse apartment
Rat-hole house
Decent house
Nice house
Fancy house
Mansion
Mansion on MTV Cribs

My problem is assigning the Badass Score requirements to this stuff. This is actually a perennial design issue for me: assigning prices to lists of stuff you might want. I'm completely flummoxed by it, and usually end up bagging it or designing around it (e.g. the money rules in The Rustbelt, which conveniently let me ignore concrete prices while simultaneously being actually kinda cool and appropriate). But I don't see a way to design around it in this particular game.

I'm really lost on this. I don't have a principle here to help me make the design decisions, unlike with everything else in the game. I mean, what's my measuring stick? How do I decide on a measuring stick?

I know that starting characters can gain/lose up to 30 points in a session, being limited to low-risk, low-gain methods like picking barfights and making boasts. After a certain point, when you've got enough to start basically gambling your points on contests, you can be gaining/losing hundreds of points in a session. It's easy to decide that the low-level (so to speak) badasses can only get roach motels, but at what point do you qualify for a mansion on MTV Cribs? More importantly, on what principle do I base that decision?

Regarding the game's design principles in general, it's all about being audacious and gutsy in terms of what you're going to try to accomplish/prove (without actually having any certainty about how hard it will actually be), then manipulating Positioning and Resources to make sure that you actually do accomplish/prove it. All of the rules are about/reflect on that. Maneuvering and setting/manipulating the terms for confrontations is a big deal, as is marshalling your resources. Your starting resources are just a few bits of swag that you brought with you to Badass City; after that, you've got to bargain, seize, or increase your score to get more resources. The resources are also all pretty unstable -- you can gain and lose stuff really quickly. Furthermore, gaining resources is the only advancement* in the game, so it's pretty important, meaning that the rate at which you gain stuff based on your score requires serious good design.

Yeah, yeah, I hear you: "Just assign something that sounds good, then test it to see if it works." Man, that doesn't really help. I need principles to make decisions on; doing stuff randomly then testing it in order to randomly come upon an operating principle is just taking shots in the dark.

What I need is for someone to turn the lights on, or at least point me toward a lightswitch. Anybody else got a game with lists of priced goods and services? How did you decide on prices? Anybody got some insights or relevant musings that might help? I'm completely stuck on this.

* You can also drop out of the scene for a while and return with a totally re-written character sheet, taking a huge cut in Badass Points in the process (since you just weren't around). But that's not an advancement; your overall innate profile is the same, just redistributed.

NOTE: the text that I've linked to is outdated, but the most up-to-date document that I have to show. I've since made several changes regarding probabilities, terminology, and the expression of Effect, but the underlying principles are all the same.

-Marshall

[Ron Edwards]

Hey Marshall,

To my way of thinking, the first game that ever got this right was Army Ants. You get equipment for your rank and unit for free. You have Clout, though. It's basically a skill. You roll it, with a difficulty based on whatever it is you want that you are not really supposed to have, or at least aren't automatically provided with. If you succeed, you get it. Clout isn't a resource. You don't use it up. It's an ability that you can increase through use.

Hero Wars did something similar by making the extremely valid point that we aren't really talking about money, but wealth. If you want something, it has a difficulty associated with it. If you can beat the difficulty with your Wealth ability, then you can afford it. Whether you spent coins or goats or whatever is strictly a matter of what your character is like and what sort of situation it is, in other words, special effects. In thinking about what your character "has," all you really need to know is the character's Wealth ability, and the specific possessions and whatever are merely special effects.

If I'm reading you right, then this is the principle you need. You're getting bollixed up only because you're thinking of Badassery as money, when you should be thinking in terms of Clout, an ability (or skill or whatever you want to call it). I am not talking about the Poison'd style bargaining, but about ordinary acquisition for the character, like Wealth in Hero Wars.

There are several ways you could do it, but the question is whether you think this is a useful avenue to consider.

Best, Ron

[Marshall Burns]

Huh. I've got Army Ants, but I've only skimmed it. I'm gonna have to look at it in more detail.

I don't have Hero Wars, so I need clarification: from your description, it sounds like the same sort of thing as Resources in The Burning Wheel (which I do have, have read in detail, and played a bit). Is that impression accurate?

For some reason, assigning difficulty modifiers to things feels a lot easier than prices. I don't know why. It's possible that this sort of thing might work. Implementation is gonna bear some thinking about. Since the Badass Score gets into the thousands, using it as an Effective value seems, well, unwieldy. A secondary value could be derived from it (like levels in D&D are derived from EXP). Perhaps it could be graduated into brackets. Like: ok, you've hit 500 points, you're now in Badass Bracket C. You can get anything from Goods Brackets A & B with no problem; you've got such-and-such chance to acquire stuff in Bracket C, and such-and-such chance for stuff in Bracket D, and everything beyond that is still out of grasp. A mansion on MTV Cribs is RIGHT OUT.

Hm. Gotta think about it some more, but that might be workable.
-Marshall

[Paul Czege]

Hmm. Alternately, maybe just record the player's current Badass Score next to whatever material good they pull. So, I pull a mansion and record my Badass Score of 372 next to it. It's awesome. But when you pull a mansion and record your Badass Score of 422, we know yours beats the pants off mine.

Paul

[Chris_Chinn]

Maybe the way to think of this is like Experience points/levels?  I mean, you're talking about Badassitude as being able to access certain things at a certain point, rather like how many games treat XP & powers/skills, or, later D&D does with magic items ("You must have at least this level before this item becomes available to you").

In which case, maybe the way to go about it is to figure out how long in terms of X # of sessions you'd guess you'd want before someone is likely to get to a certain point.  Since badassitude can be gambled, it clearly can grow or shrink exponentially, and that makes it trickier.

It's also good to note which things give mechanical benefit vs. bragging rights.  A lot of modern videogames from MMO's to "achievement" awarding games make great use of useless, yet bragging rights type items.

You may want to consider which items gain their own "fiction".  That is, a +4 sword is neat, but a "Deck of Many Things" holds it's own status for D&D players.   Creating things that are unique or special also helps add to the status of it.  (Also- maybe some items are unique and the first player to get to the level holds that item until someone else beats/surpasses them?  Sets up a nice competitive economy, there.)

Chris

[dindenver]

Marshall,
  Well, I would use a completely different approach.
  Basically, I would make the characters force the issue every time (and if it is not worth a conflict, they either have it or it doesn't matter).
  In other words, if you want the most badass mansion, then you gotta take it from the guy who has it now...

  But that is my two cents. I have seen some abstract economies work pretty well. Like Ron, if I had a better idea which way you wanted to go, I could give you a less "out of the blue" suggestion.

  Good luck with your design, it sounds badass!

[Marshall Burns]

Josh "JoyWriter" W, who is having troubles with his account, emailed me this reply which I'm posting on his behalf:

It's a good idea to start by throwing away spurious accuracy, and basically making your bands really broad, starting wherever you have a splitting point that makes sense. (ie this set of stuff comes at badass x and above) Then subdivide.

In an abstract sense, you have two scales that you are trying to calibrate, like two thermometers, you can do the same for all the later perks too.

The clever bit is that although you might start with simple levels and teirs, in the finished version you can just put the badass stuff on a list, put the amount of badass points next to it, then add a note about not being too strict, in character for the setting. In other words, if people are already looking at a list, then they can just check the points next to it. You can also influence stuff by the number of sig figs you work to; say you always get new stuff opening up on every 100 points, well just go 100, 200 300; the mapping structure from points to teirs is one we're already familiar with, the decimal system!

Also, sticking in numbers and a note not to get hung up on them (and the sort of cues they should be using) explicitly deals with a certain form of consciousness with respect to the rules, ie basically your saying to people "don't go precise and maximise numbers, sort out the positioning and the feel".

Coming back to the cues your using, how does the moment of purchase work in your game? Do people just have stuff at the start of the next session? At the end as a sort of wrap up/consequences thing?

Josh

Everyone, thanks for posting! I'll be back later tonight when I've thought about it some.
-Marshall

[Marshall Burns]

Ok. I'm gonna put implementation on hold for a sec in order to talk about how this is supposed to impact gameplay in a bit more detail.

There are three ways to gain resources:

1. Take stuff from the Goods & Services list that you're entitled to by your score (however that gets implemented). This stuff is all generic stuff. Although you get to color it up, it's all pretty much just standard things -- none of it is stuff that there's only one of. Maybe that should change, though? I like what Chris is saying about a competitive economy.

2. Take stuff by force from someone else. You'd do this when it's something unique, or if you just want to take something from people to shame them.

3. Bargain for it. This is the most compromising method, because it leaves you with obligations that can lead to problems, but it's also good because it can get you stuff that you can't otherwise get, without (immediately, anyway) putting you in danger.

So, Dave, the reason why I don't want the characters to have to force the issue every time is this: while badasses are very hard to kill, stuff is not hard to destroy. Every conflict that goes by sees trains derailing, houses burned down, bars blown up, guns getting eaten (yes it happened), and the badass plumber's plunger getting bitten in half by a badass sewer rat.

In other words, conflicts mean losing stuff. If you have to get into conflicts in order to get stuff in the first place, then what you get is something like kill puppies for satan: spend evil to get out of trouble; kill puppies to get more evil; spend evil to get out of the trouble that killing puppies caused. Which is awesome for kpfs, but not so awesome for what I'm trying to do here.

Josh,
regarding how the moment of purchase works -- with stuff that you get from the lists (when you're entitled to it), the acquiring happens off-screen. You just pick it and now your badass has it. You can only get one thing per in-game day though.

There need to be some other limits, too. 'Cause infinitely stockpiling things is lame. At first I was thinking that you can only own one of each thing at a time, but then I realized that being able to say, "Hm, which one of my mansions should I sleep in tonight?" is totally badass. Maybe each item could have a "load," and you can only support so much total load depending on your Badassitude.

Chris,
One of the neat things about this game is that bragging rights are a mechanical benefit. They give you stuff that you can boast about, with a mostly-guarantee that you'll be able to back it up, which is an easy way to bag some points. That's only "mostly" because you might be boasting about your badass mansion, then somebody's like, "Oh yeah? Then let's see it," so you invite them to a party. Then a rival hears about it, waits 'til you're out of sight, knocks out all the windows, turns your paintings upside down, and takes a dump on your couch. When the partygoers show up, they're not so impressed.

[Chris_Chinn]

Hi Marshall,

One of the neat things about this game is that bragging rights are a mechanical benefit.

I get that concept, though what I'm pointing to, is the many, many games which offer achievements/badges with no mechanical benefit, which are almost always aimed at high-end players - videogames use these a LOT these days.

You don't necessarily need any non-mechanical trophies, but there is a lot of games that do it and clearly it has some draw - maybe something to at least look at and consider what it is and if it has any place in your game.

Chris

[JackTheOwner]

There is a potential problem with fixed prices - object with high price may don't have the same value in player eyes.
For example someone may like fancy apartment more than decent house.
This problem is only issue, if you want these things as some kinds awards for players.

In other way you can just throw some big number for the most valued place to live, like 1 000 000 for Mansion on MTV Cribs. If someone live here, than I know that he is some big badass.

[dindenver]

Marshall,
  I just had a thought, what if the cost was directly tied tot eh mechanical benefit provided. So, if it gives you a +2 (or two dice, or however your system works) it costs 20 BAPs...
  Just a thought. But it might take some of the arbitrariness out of the pricing...

[Marshall Burns]

Dave,
It's not a bad concept, but it's unfortunately inappropriate to this particular game. The way items work, they're statted out with "tags." For an example, a sledgehammer is (hard sturdy heavy), a knife is (sharp small), a machine gun is (ranged heavy fast), and a fire extinguisher is (cold hard pressurized). The way this works is, if you can work one or more of an item's tags into a task (in a manner that doesn't prompt another player to call bullshit), you get +1 (per item, not per tag). So an item is an item in terms of raw Effectiveness; the difference is how it can be used, which is something influenced by innumerable variables that crop up (and working those variables to your advantage is a large part of the strategy). Furthermore, damage is damage, no matter where it comes from -- getting punched, shot, stabbed, blown up with dynamite, hit by a train -- it's all the same. (Just imagine it as drawn by Frank Miller; see, now it makes sense, right?) So there's not even any quantitative difference between weapons.

Chris,
Given the boasting system, and the way that items are handled, I don't actually think it'll be possible to have non-mechanically significant items. I do, however, want to present different quality levels of different things, even though they're mechanically equivalent, because it gives players status that they can lord over each other (it's a very trash-talky, punch-each-other-in-the-face-then-laugh kind of game). The fact that it's also boast-fodder is a bonus, really...

...so, Jack, yeah, I do want these to be awards for the players.

-Marshall

[dindenver]

So...
  It looks like the cost should be linked to the number of tags...

[JackTheOwner]

So you have two types of items on your list: Useful objects with bonuses, and things like houses etc.
As dindenver said, first items could be priced based on their tags, but the real problem is with others. But maybe not - do houses also have tags?

[Marshall Burns]

Thing is, sheer number of tags doesn't necessarily indicate general amount of usefulness. It's all contingent on so many volatile factors of environment and positioning, it's hard to say what's more useful than what. Aside from that, we'd end up with some rather -- ah, what's the word here; I keep thinking "asymmetrical" but that's not what I'm trynig to say -- values if we value by number of tags. The way it works is, there's a list of tags (all adjectives) in the rules, and if you can use one of them to describe an item (without prompting someone to call bullshit), then it goes on the item.

So, yeah, houses and things have tags too. A mansion, frex, is at the very least "(fancy big sturdy)."