Okay, so here's what I have planned for the near future or have been working on since my son was born that I plan on putting up here later.
-A random Bounty Board quest generator for my campaign setting
-A summary of my feelings on the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy (and maybe the 4th movie as well if that comes in anytime soon) and how it has partially influenced my campaign setting
-More possible alterations to the campaign setting due to me overthinking things
-Ranting about Assassins' Creed 3
-GURPS conversion of Ray Stantz of Ghostbusters for an upcoming GURPS one shot adventure
-Talk of things I liked and didn't like about some other campaigns I've been in
-More character profiles (eventually)
-Maybe I'll even actually finish a short story or two
I think I've got more topics
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
More on that Sanity system...
So I think I'm close to figuring out what I want to do for the Sanity system as a limit for casters in my world. I've worked out some things over the course of a few weeks, run some numbers and started checking against my pre-made storyline encounters (which are kind of difficult encounters, so that was important to do). I have come across a few issues with what I feel are the two best options for the Sanity casting system when applied directly to some of the encounters and with some of the things that need to be done by antagonists later in the story, so it makes both of the options require tweaking of some major battles. Which of course means more work and rebalancing.
So, for those of you who don't want to read the other entry (which you can read here) I'll summarize the best I can. Due to how I feel about the DnD magic system and what level of magic I want in my world I want to come up with some way to limit spell casting to keep it a low-magic world. I want there to be a reason why casters don't use much magic to solve the world's problems but they do need to exist in order for some of the plot points and objects/areas/etc to exist. So I needed to develop something that could explain it.
I came across the Sanity system, typically used in a Call of Cthulhu-type setting, in Unearthed Arcana and decided I was going to adapt it to spellcasting in my setting. The basics are that each caster has a sanity score based off of their Wisdom score (Wisdom x 5 = Sanity). When a caster casts a spell they take sanity damage due to the nature of the energies they're channeling through their body touching their mind/being/soul/whatever. the amount of damage is dependent upon spell level, with higher level spells taking heavier tolls. Whenever a character loses 1/2 of their wisdom score in sanity points they have to make a sanity check or be stricken with a temporary insanity. The sanity check consists of rolling d% based upon you current sanity score. If your sanity score ever reaches 0 your character goes catatonic until they've recovered a significant portion (I added this because the real system doesn't let you come back, still working on the specific number). I'm also still debating whether or not to allow the PC to take a point of Taint instead of a temporary insanity, but only because I haven't decided if Taint is going to be used in the setting.
So with that fresh in your mind I want to talk about the two systems I'm throwing back and forth and comparing to each other. I'm having trouble picking between the two because I like aspects of both but both bring their own set of issues to the table.
System #1: Low Loss
In this system the spell casters take a sanity loss of 1 point per Spell Level (1/2 Point per 2 0-level spells). When a character loses the cumulative equivalent of 1/2 of their Wisdom score in Sanity they must make a Sanity check. There is no resistance against these losses and the check is only made once per sanity loss (no matter if it's only 1 point or it was 30 points that puts you over the 1/2 wisdom total you only roll once for the loss that put you over). Recovery of sanity points is at the rate of 1D8 per Caster Level per day.
With this system I will also allow casters to be able to cast extra spells if they want to take a risk of going nuts. A spell caster can cast an extra spell from their known spells (even unprepared ones) by taking sanity loss equal to 1D6 per Spell Level followed by an immediate sanity check after the spell is cast. (This ability might get limited to a number of times per day equal to Caster Level for balancing, but then again maybe not. The drawback is pretty rough.)
The good thing with this is that it doesn't mean I need to adjust too much in the campaign world and still allows players flexibility with their class picks. I don't have to do the terrible thing as a DM with a low magic setting and have the enemies able to use more magic than the Players, which is always a big no-no. Spellcasters can still make it through the five minute workday without too much of a problem, maybe only getting hung up once or twice.
The bad thing I see with this kind of makes the magic level higher than I want it. It's still not a big enough deterrent to affect the way people do business in the world that most of the problems I want to avoid with high magic. Although it at least establishes a legitimate reason for non-casters to wary of magic.
System #2: Extreme Loss
This system uses similar mechanics as the other one. The major difference is in the amount of sanity lost. The sanity loss is 1D6 per Spell Level (1D3 per 0-level spell). At this level of loss I think each caster will be allowed an inherent resistance vs taint equal to their Wisdom Modifier and maybe more with feats, class features, and such (maybe various fractions of Caster Level, allowing will saves to reduce the amount lost, or something). The recovery rate per day would also increase to 1D8 + Wisdom Modifier per Caster Level per day.
I like this one because it puts spellcasting into the realm of rare, special, and dangerous.That's where I want magic to be. Those who master it are legends in their own right, but the journey is dangerous and prone to spectacular failure of the will of the mage. This turns everything magical into a liability on some level.
Both good and bad, this limits pure spell casters from existing as PCs because each spell cast is a major liability for the players. You potentially have people who will go crazy two rounds into the fight on a regular basis even with the resistances.
The bad things are that I have to redesign some encounters that were made based upon normal DnD rules and make sure they aren't accidentally too powerful with this setup. Some of the encounters are easy to fix, I just eliminate a spell caster or two from the mob roster. The problematic ones are at the higher levels or during special story encounters that make it difficult to judge the true difficulty of the encounter without magic in the party. Things like Hydras just got far more deadly once your players are only armed with torches and alchemist fire. (Which I'm totally okay with, I like that idea but it requires careful balancing)
I also need to be careful with how I design story elements. Some geographic features of the world and some elements of the story revolve around rituals and other such things of a magical nature that to deny magic to the player when there is magic that exists with such power that these objects or locations exists seems cruel and could take away from the players' enjoyment. There are good fluff reasons why these things could exist and why magic is so difficult and everything, but that doesn't mean a player will appreciate it, especially if they love playing a caster.
There will probably be concessions for various things when either of these things are implemented. Maybe alchemy is rather effective and "magic" weapons can still exist. They'd be specially crafted by master artisans and possibly alchemically enhanced, or with alchemical devices inside to give them effects. You know, the start of steam punk elements for the world on the verge of an industrial revolution. (I think I like that a lot... Maybe I'll look into the Alchemist class more for this as I'm converting everything to Pathfinder.)
This is in addition to Resurrection magic being rare and only possible in specially dedicated location among other minor alterations to the magic system (a couple spells removed here and other quick things). Healing potions being more plentiful, cheaper, and easier to craft (to pull healing duties away from the casters so they don't have to waste spells and sanity) along with other tweaks. All of this will eventually be put into some type of campaign guide/primer that will be given to the players.
Anyways, as always let me know what you think. I have been having fun designing this thing. Working on the campaign again so heavily has gotten my creative juices flowing and I'm altering some other aspects and challenging some of my earlier thoughts on the campaign. I'll write more about my upcoming campaign related stuff later and give those interested an idea of what I have been developing during the temporary silence.
So, for those of you who don't want to read the other entry (which you can read here) I'll summarize the best I can. Due to how I feel about the DnD magic system and what level of magic I want in my world I want to come up with some way to limit spell casting to keep it a low-magic world. I want there to be a reason why casters don't use much magic to solve the world's problems but they do need to exist in order for some of the plot points and objects/areas/etc to exist. So I needed to develop something that could explain it.
I came across the Sanity system, typically used in a Call of Cthulhu-type setting, in Unearthed Arcana and decided I was going to adapt it to spellcasting in my setting. The basics are that each caster has a sanity score based off of their Wisdom score (Wisdom x 5 = Sanity). When a caster casts a spell they take sanity damage due to the nature of the energies they're channeling through their body touching their mind/being/soul/whatever. the amount of damage is dependent upon spell level, with higher level spells taking heavier tolls. Whenever a character loses 1/2 of their wisdom score in sanity points they have to make a sanity check or be stricken with a temporary insanity. The sanity check consists of rolling d% based upon you current sanity score. If your sanity score ever reaches 0 your character goes catatonic until they've recovered a significant portion (I added this because the real system doesn't let you come back, still working on the specific number). I'm also still debating whether or not to allow the PC to take a point of Taint instead of a temporary insanity, but only because I haven't decided if Taint is going to be used in the setting.
So with that fresh in your mind I want to talk about the two systems I'm throwing back and forth and comparing to each other. I'm having trouble picking between the two because I like aspects of both but both bring their own set of issues to the table.
System #1: Low Loss
In this system the spell casters take a sanity loss of 1 point per Spell Level (1/2 Point per 2 0-level spells). When a character loses the cumulative equivalent of 1/2 of their Wisdom score in Sanity they must make a Sanity check. There is no resistance against these losses and the check is only made once per sanity loss (no matter if it's only 1 point or it was 30 points that puts you over the 1/2 wisdom total you only roll once for the loss that put you over). Recovery of sanity points is at the rate of 1D8 per Caster Level per day.
With this system I will also allow casters to be able to cast extra spells if they want to take a risk of going nuts. A spell caster can cast an extra spell from their known spells (even unprepared ones) by taking sanity loss equal to 1D6 per Spell Level followed by an immediate sanity check after the spell is cast. (This ability might get limited to a number of times per day equal to Caster Level for balancing, but then again maybe not. The drawback is pretty rough.)
The good thing with this is that it doesn't mean I need to adjust too much in the campaign world and still allows players flexibility with their class picks. I don't have to do the terrible thing as a DM with a low magic setting and have the enemies able to use more magic than the Players, which is always a big no-no. Spellcasters can still make it through the five minute workday without too much of a problem, maybe only getting hung up once or twice.
The bad thing I see with this kind of makes the magic level higher than I want it. It's still not a big enough deterrent to affect the way people do business in the world that most of the problems I want to avoid with high magic. Although it at least establishes a legitimate reason for non-casters to wary of magic.
System #2: Extreme Loss
This system uses similar mechanics as the other one. The major difference is in the amount of sanity lost. The sanity loss is 1D6 per Spell Level (1D3 per 0-level spell). At this level of loss I think each caster will be allowed an inherent resistance vs taint equal to their Wisdom Modifier and maybe more with feats, class features, and such (maybe various fractions of Caster Level, allowing will saves to reduce the amount lost, or something). The recovery rate per day would also increase to 1D8 + Wisdom Modifier per Caster Level per day.
I like this one because it puts spellcasting into the realm of rare, special, and dangerous.That's where I want magic to be. Those who master it are legends in their own right, but the journey is dangerous and prone to spectacular failure of the will of the mage. This turns everything magical into a liability on some level.
Both good and bad, this limits pure spell casters from existing as PCs because each spell cast is a major liability for the players. You potentially have people who will go crazy two rounds into the fight on a regular basis even with the resistances.
The bad things are that I have to redesign some encounters that were made based upon normal DnD rules and make sure they aren't accidentally too powerful with this setup. Some of the encounters are easy to fix, I just eliminate a spell caster or two from the mob roster. The problematic ones are at the higher levels or during special story encounters that make it difficult to judge the true difficulty of the encounter without magic in the party. Things like Hydras just got far more deadly once your players are only armed with torches and alchemist fire. (Which I'm totally okay with, I like that idea but it requires careful balancing)
I also need to be careful with how I design story elements. Some geographic features of the world and some elements of the story revolve around rituals and other such things of a magical nature that to deny magic to the player when there is magic that exists with such power that these objects or locations exists seems cruel and could take away from the players' enjoyment. There are good fluff reasons why these things could exist and why magic is so difficult and everything, but that doesn't mean a player will appreciate it, especially if they love playing a caster.
There will probably be concessions for various things when either of these things are implemented. Maybe alchemy is rather effective and "magic" weapons can still exist. They'd be specially crafted by master artisans and possibly alchemically enhanced, or with alchemical devices inside to give them effects. You know, the start of steam punk elements for the world on the verge of an industrial revolution. (I think I like that a lot... Maybe I'll look into the Alchemist class more for this as I'm converting everything to Pathfinder.)
This is in addition to Resurrection magic being rare and only possible in specially dedicated location among other minor alterations to the magic system (a couple spells removed here and other quick things). Healing potions being more plentiful, cheaper, and easier to craft (to pull healing duties away from the casters so they don't have to waste spells and sanity) along with other tweaks. All of this will eventually be put into some type of campaign guide/primer that will be given to the players.
Anyways, as always let me know what you think. I have been having fun designing this thing. Working on the campaign again so heavily has gotten my creative juices flowing and I'm altering some other aspects and challenging some of my earlier thoughts on the campaign. I'll write more about my upcoming campaign related stuff later and give those interested an idea of what I have been developing during the temporary silence.
Saturday, September 1, 2012
Deus Ex Human Revolution
So I finished up Deus Ex Human Revolution over the weekend and figured that I'd write a little bit about it because I haven't touched the blog for a little while. The housing issues and waiting for my son to pop out have kind of made life a little stressful for us so I haven't really had time to write or work on anything fun (which, as usual, leads to massive amounts of political talk making its way onto Facebook and me trolling comment sections on my favorite news sites. All work and no play makes Epi a dull boy and what not).
I picked up the entire collection of Deus Ex on Steam during the Summer sale because I'm poor and don't get to buy new games at release anymore (the last new game I bought was Skyrim, and before that was Duke Nukem Forever. Screw you, don't judge me. I can talk about that tragedy later.) I technically already owned everything but DEHR but the deal was too good to pass up and Steam is easier to deal with than trying to fight the old compatibility war with those older games. I'm sick of wasting my time on those types of things, which was why I got out of PC gaming in the first place. That's a different story for another day though.
The point is I'm a big fan of the original game which makes me hate the second game and made me intrigued to play the third.
(Note: I got distracted from writing this entry from this point on due to my son being born, so suck it if you find this to be a little disjointed, well, more disjointed than usual.)
DEHR takes place in the past and is basically a prequel to the orginal game. The main character, Adam Jensen, is the head of security for one of the major manufacturers of augmentations. Though you provide your best efforts, you're unable to stop a group of augmented mercs from wrecking havoc at your company's HQ.
Along the way you are mortally wounded and following the incident you spend the next 6 months in various facilities being fitted with the very best tech the company can outfit you with. Following that recovery you're on a mission to find those responsible for the attack. At this point the game becomes a stealthy 3rd person cover/FPS action game with RPG elements. As far as gameplay is concerned it is immensely enjoyable.
The action sequences are enjoyable and almost all of them can be.avoided. When you get into gun fights it can be really fun and enjoyable.
It does use the rechargeable health bar, but it isn't quite a COD super soldier serum. The FPS gameplay is accessible and effective and you also have a cover system that switches you to a 3rd person perspective that also let's you have extended fire fights. The amount of health you and your opponents have is pretty low (with the exception of boss fights which I'll get to) and lends a more realistic feel to the combat. Without upgrading Jensen's dermal armor plating a single shotgun blast in "normal" difficulty can wreck your day.
It makes for some intense fight scenes and encourages the use of stealth, ambushes, and cover to accomplish your goals.
The original game focused very heavily on the multiple ways you could complete objectives. It was perfect at the time it was released. The design team for DEHR tried their hardest it seems but they didn't quite make it to the high mark set by the original. That being said, they still made it more open-ended for completing objectives than most games these days do, even ones that supposedly give you choices. I found ways to get into every area in this game from most every conceivable direction and most of them there are multiple approaches.
The storyline is kind of predictable, but is enjoyable. The elements of what it means to be human and other themes of the first one are toned done in this and a vague exposition about at what cost is it for humanity to advance itself with technology. The answer to that question though is easily seen within the confines of the story, it is AWESOME to be augmented, why would you choose anything else?
The acting/scripting is enjoyable and doesn't distract from the gameplay. Jensen's voice seems kind of forced into a Bat-Bale style of brooding anti-hero stereotype, but it works for it. Like I said, the voice acting isn't distracting. Like all game voice acting though it can be somewhat cheesy and predictable.
The major flaw with the game though is in the boss fights. This has been mentioned in countless other articles about the game but is worth mention every time. It is a good example of why the industry should be moving away from these old tropes unless important for the gameplay/narrative. The boss fights can be very hard. The first one, where you have to fight a super soldier with a built in mini-gun in a small room takes an ass ton of tries and is frustrating as hell. It can stop your enjoyment of the game entirely right then and there. I didn't do what others had done and exploited the mechanics to my advantage, but I was sorely tempted to.
This was the only major beef I had with the game. Two of those fights were brutal slugfests that just broke up the feeling of the game. There was only one real way to defeat any of them and that was brute force. It ignored anything you had built your version of Jensen for and just stuck you in the middle of a fight you didn't want for no real reason. It was jarring to say the least.
Overall, I would say I highly enjoyed the game. It is a good hardcore experience. It is enjoyable, easily worth the investment of time and money. I want to see what this team does with the property in the future, they have shown some great potential in their design philosophy.
I picked up the entire collection of Deus Ex on Steam during the Summer sale because I'm poor and don't get to buy new games at release anymore (the last new game I bought was Skyrim, and before that was Duke Nukem Forever. Screw you, don't judge me. I can talk about that tragedy later.) I technically already owned everything but DEHR but the deal was too good to pass up and Steam is easier to deal with than trying to fight the old compatibility war with those older games. I'm sick of wasting my time on those types of things, which was why I got out of PC gaming in the first place. That's a different story for another day though.
The point is I'm a big fan of the original game which makes me hate the second game and made me intrigued to play the third.
(Note: I got distracted from writing this entry from this point on due to my son being born, so suck it if you find this to be a little disjointed, well, more disjointed than usual.)
DEHR takes place in the past and is basically a prequel to the orginal game. The main character, Adam Jensen, is the head of security for one of the major manufacturers of augmentations. Though you provide your best efforts, you're unable to stop a group of augmented mercs from wrecking havoc at your company's HQ.
Along the way you are mortally wounded and following the incident you spend the next 6 months in various facilities being fitted with the very best tech the company can outfit you with. Following that recovery you're on a mission to find those responsible for the attack. At this point the game becomes a stealthy 3rd person cover/FPS action game with RPG elements. As far as gameplay is concerned it is immensely enjoyable.
The action sequences are enjoyable and almost all of them can be.avoided. When you get into gun fights it can be really fun and enjoyable.
It does use the rechargeable health bar, but it isn't quite a COD super soldier serum. The FPS gameplay is accessible and effective and you also have a cover system that switches you to a 3rd person perspective that also let's you have extended fire fights. The amount of health you and your opponents have is pretty low (with the exception of boss fights which I'll get to) and lends a more realistic feel to the combat. Without upgrading Jensen's dermal armor plating a single shotgun blast in "normal" difficulty can wreck your day.
It makes for some intense fight scenes and encourages the use of stealth, ambushes, and cover to accomplish your goals.
The original game focused very heavily on the multiple ways you could complete objectives. It was perfect at the time it was released. The design team for DEHR tried their hardest it seems but they didn't quite make it to the high mark set by the original. That being said, they still made it more open-ended for completing objectives than most games these days do, even ones that supposedly give you choices. I found ways to get into every area in this game from most every conceivable direction and most of them there are multiple approaches.
The storyline is kind of predictable, but is enjoyable. The elements of what it means to be human and other themes of the first one are toned done in this and a vague exposition about at what cost is it for humanity to advance itself with technology. The answer to that question though is easily seen within the confines of the story, it is AWESOME to be augmented, why would you choose anything else?
The acting/scripting is enjoyable and doesn't distract from the gameplay. Jensen's voice seems kind of forced into a Bat-Bale style of brooding anti-hero stereotype, but it works for it. Like I said, the voice acting isn't distracting. Like all game voice acting though it can be somewhat cheesy and predictable.
The major flaw with the game though is in the boss fights. This has been mentioned in countless other articles about the game but is worth mention every time. It is a good example of why the industry should be moving away from these old tropes unless important for the gameplay/narrative. The boss fights can be very hard. The first one, where you have to fight a super soldier with a built in mini-gun in a small room takes an ass ton of tries and is frustrating as hell. It can stop your enjoyment of the game entirely right then and there. I didn't do what others had done and exploited the mechanics to my advantage, but I was sorely tempted to.
This was the only major beef I had with the game. Two of those fights were brutal slugfests that just broke up the feeling of the game. There was only one real way to defeat any of them and that was brute force. It ignored anything you had built your version of Jensen for and just stuck you in the middle of a fight you didn't want for no real reason. It was jarring to say the least.
Overall, I would say I highly enjoyed the game. It is a good hardcore experience. It is enjoyable, easily worth the investment of time and money. I want to see what this team does with the property in the future, they have shown some great potential in their design philosophy.
Monday, August 13, 2012
Campaigns that never happened: X-Crawl
Pro-wrestling meets DnD and professional sports. Dungeon Crawling is the national pastime of the North American Empire, formerly part of the Roman Empire, lead by Emperor Ronald I. Dungeon Judges (DJs) create the most elaborate and exciting dungeons for a team of XCrawlers to battle their way through for fortune and glory broadcast to every television in every corner of the Empire. Playing to the crowd is just as important as skill while traversing the dungeons. The more the crowd loves you, the more money you get.
The setting was created at the end of 3rd edition's cycle, just prior to 3.5 hitting, so it has some adjusting that needs to be done if you were going to play it today with a more refined rules set like 3.5 or Pathfinder. I suppose you could run it as a 4e game, but there's that whole inability to adapt 4e to non-WotC sanctioned environments so... yeah...
Anyways, the setting is entertaining to think about. Anything with a unique flair for the dramatic usually catches my interest quickly (see me obsession with Yu-Gi-Oh and pro-wrestling) and get's my head filled with entertaining ideas about the setting. This one, combining an alternate modern Earth setting with Pro-wrestling and fantasy gameplay, is right up my alley. Oh the things I wanted to design and play in it...
Being able to just jump right into a dungeon crawl without a real narrative attached is something I have trouble doing, but in a setting like this I can do it as an entire session just because. You can take classic crawls and make them special events. A pre-made dungeon? Easily incorporated. Random dungeon idea with strobe lights and fog machines? Done!
That isn't to imply that this setting is just dungeon crawls and roll-playing. There is real potential for international intrigue and hidden plots. XCrawlers are extremely skilled individuals from drastically different backgrounds. What happens when countries go to war? The Drow are still hidden in the Underdark waiting to take vengeance upon the surface world. Hitler could be resurrected under the right circumstances. There are entire criminal organizations running their own "basement" dungeon crawls. Sponsors and rival teams can interfere with you between Crawls. So much there.
I have wanted to play/run an XCrawl campaign so badly since I first picked up the book, but as always, my enthusiasm was rarely matched by those around me and when transitioning between different gaming groups over the years it was always more important to find the simple thing that everyone would play rather than the out there stuff that is difficult to get an established gaming group to try out.
I don't expect I'll ever actually get to play this game at this point, as much as I would like to. I like the setting, I like the feel, but I'm not sure I'll get a group together at this point anytime within the next 10 years and there are other systems/settings I would rather play first so once again it goes on the back burner.
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
The Campaign World Map
 |
| The World Map |
This is to give you a view of what the world looks like and when coupled with my earlier entry about the campaign setting should be able to give you more of a picture of what you're going to have in store for you. this is going to be a simple key to give a layout of the lands and what their environments are like. The map is oriented with North being directly towards the top of the page.
1. Temperate Mountains/Forest continent- This is your Britain-like land. Stone castles, royalty, and such. Primarily a human population with halfling and gnome populations scattered about.
2. Tropical Volcanic Isalnd- doesn't have a specific purpose yet, open for use for helping develop character backgrounds or gives me a place to stick in a new idea
3. N/A for now, there's an adventure there, where "there" is you won't know
4. Massive Island Chain- There are 20 Major islands in this chain along with hundreds of smaller ones spread throughout, the elves come from here.
5. N/A for now
5.a. N/A for now
6. 8 Primary Islands with a lot of smaller islands in the area- This is a well known area for pirates. The small islands lend themselves well to hidden bases and stores. Pirate hunters, privateers and military vessels patrol this area looking for bounties. Its central location to the rest of the world put's it right along the best merchant lanes and makes it easy to get to almost all of the rest of them.
7. Savannah/Plains Continent- Tribalistic societies are known to come from here
8. Rainforest/Jungle Isle- Orc home island, these orcs have a Aztec/Incan/Mayan style culture. Human sacrifice, colorful clothing/rituals, the works.
9. Rainforest/Jungle Isle- Orcs invaded this isle a long time ago and enslaved the human inhabitants. They are still kept as livestock for the Orcs
10. Volcanic Tropical Isle- Blank slate
11. Desert Continent- An Australia/Middle East like continent.
12. Temperate Continent- Another European style continent, there is rumblings of a civil war brewing here.
13. Tropical Island Chain- This chain is ravaged by the Storm Wall, the storm that has raged across the Western part of the world for thousands of years. There is a group here studying the Storm Wall and trying to discern the cause of it.
14. The Storm Wall- The storm that has been constantly raging for thousands of years. It follows a basically straight line.
15. Snowy/Icy Land- Pretty self explanatory. North of here the is covered in a polar ice sheet.
More will come regarding each of the regions in the future. For right now I think this is enough. I don't have accurate distances yet, that's still being worked on, I've never had much love for the gooey bits of D20 travel so I've been really, really lazy with figuring out distances.
Sunday, August 5, 2012
Character Profile: Night Weaver
New character profile up on my DeviantART page.
http://epithail.deviantart.com/#/d5a05a5
This one is of Night Weaver, an Ananasi from Werewolf the Apocalypse that went far beyond his original confines.
http://epithail.deviantart.com/#/d5a05a5
This one is of Night Weaver, an Ananasi from Werewolf the Apocalypse that went far beyond his original confines.
Thursday, August 2, 2012
DnD and Economics (aka Why a Libertarian shouldn't read too far into a game system)
Those who know me know I have a sickness. I like studying politics and economics for fun. No, I don't know why I do, I just do.
But I have promised to keep that Passion off this blog unless it is something that relates directly to gaming/nerd culture in general. So this one will be about economics and DnD. (3.5 or Pathfinder, because these are what I am most familiar with)
I've never really like the economy of the system. It is too arbitrary and static. Part of it plays into the magic system's interaction with the medieval/pre-enlightenment society that the setting is based around. It's a weird spot for the game to exist at. It has tons of implications for society and how people would interact.
And I wrote a long tirade with a bunch of economic analysis and theory in it and then deleted it. Probably not the best thing to ramble about to people who want to talk about gaming. I'm just going to say that the game detracts from my enjoyment by having such an arbitrary system in place. So, anyways I designed a prototype system for trade goods and a living economy for my campaign setting. Let's take a look.
Since the characters will have their own ship and will be globetrotting they might want to make some easy money along the way. So trade is a good way to do that, and if they so decide they could also engage in a little privateering/piracy/pirate hunting which will also get them some goods they can sell off along the way.
(Okay, really don't feel like playing with HTML to get a table to work here so please excuse me choosing to do this in list form.)
I have devised a way to simulate unique economies on each island. This is only going to apply to trade goods for the purposes of this system. All of the normal equipment and such will remain at normal levels to keep things simpler.
So for this system you have 3 levels of economies; Global, Regional, and Local. Global should be obvious. It also will not likely be used all the time unless there is a specific reason for it, at least for this campaign. Regional applies to each major island, archipelago, or continent. Each region has different resources so each will have their own percentage modifiers to the prices of goods. For example, a heavily wooded continent would have a lower price for wood than a desert one. These ones are typically going to be permanent modifiers. The final one is local. These are ones you're going to be rolling on these charts for.
The random economic statuses should last in effect for 1 Economic Interval, typically 3 months which is a fiscal quarter in the real world. That can be completely up to the DM though.
Trade goods are measured in Tons. Whether or not they actually weigh an actual Ton isn't important, it is just to give you and idea of how much space they take up. A single ton of livestock for example could vary wildly in how much space it takes up. So to keep it simple I just use Tons. The prices were determined using simple extrapolation of what is already in the PHB.
The trade goods are as follows:
-Food: Dry - 40 GP/Ton, Salted fish/meat, grain, pickled, and other preserved foods
-Food: Fresh - 80 GP/Ton, Fruit, veggies, fresh fish, and such. Unless magically or mundanely preserved it loses 50% value every week, 2 weeks if preserved
-Food: Livestock - 120 GP/Ton, price includes their own supply of food. Random assortment of animals used for food purposes.
-Luxury Goods - 1,600 GP/Ton, These are fancy general purpose items. Candle sticks, silverware, art, furniture, etc.
-Goods - 400 GP/Ton, Same as Luxury Goods only cheaper, common man versions.
-Spices - 6,000 GP/Ton, It must flow... but really this is stuff like salt, cinnamon, pepper, etc. Not usually seen in more than a ton or two at a time because of how rare they are and how little space they take up.
-Lumber - 150 GP/Ton, Lumber is important to civilization, especially with this much ocean
-Metal - 200 GP/Ton, These are trade metals like iron, brass, lead, etc. Precious metals are a whole different story
-Other Raw Materials - 150 GP/Ton, Rock, sand, earth, whatever random stuff they might need somewhere else
-Booze - 800 GP/Ton, trade may be restricted based on the port
-Weapons - 2,000 GP/Ton, random assortment of mundane, normal quality weapons. trade is typically restricted
-Contraband - 1,500 GP/Ton Anything from drugs to slaves, falsified documents to knock off Gucci sunglasses. Stuff that is black market almost no matter what it is or where it goes.
-Special - If a region/local area has a very special product, like say a magically reinforced wood or a spectacular metal like Mythril, those will be handled on a case by case basis.
Black market goods might have an increased price but you'll have to be careful trying to sell them.
When you need a new port's economic environment you roll d% on the following two tables. You roll on the economic conditions table twice. Once you determine what economic conditions exist you need to roll to determine which trade goods are affected by using the second table.
Economic Conditions:
01-40: No Change
41-50: Market Boom- +10% to value of selected goods
51-60: Market Bust- -10% to value of selected goods
61-70: Goods Shortage- +20% to value of selected goods
71-80: Goods Surplus- -20% to value of selected goods
81-90: Heavy Taxation- +10% to value for purchase, -10% to value for sale
91-99: Roll again twice
00: War/Disaster- All goods increase by 50-150% ((2D6+3)x10), some may be at risk of confiscation.
Trade Goods:
01-07: Food, Dry
08-14: Food, Fresh
15-21: Food, Livestock
22-28: Luxury Goods
29-35: Goods
36-42: Spices
43-49: Lumber
50-56: Metal
57-63: Other Raw Materials
64-70: Booze
71-77: Weapons
78-84: Contraband
85-00: Roll twice, if the same good comes up, the economic status stacks.
So how this works is pretty simple in practice. You apply these percentages directly to the base price in this order Global, Regional, Local. When you apply multiple effects, apply them in the order they were created/determined. Don't just add up the percentages, apply them individually. (Although you totally could do that, I just like doing it this way because it creates wildly different numbers and simulates the wildly varying nature of an economy better) Here's an example:
Port of Prototype:
Global Effect: None
Regional Effect: This region is known for it's vast forests and lumber industry, Lumber (-15%)
Local: Market Boom (Goods) +10%, Heavy Taxation (Lumber) +/-10%
Goods:
Base Price: 400 GP/Ton
Effects: Market Boom +10%
Value: 440 GP/Ton
Lumber:
Base Price: 150 GP/Ton
Effect 1: Regional -15% = 127.5 GP/Ton
Effect 2: Heavy Taxation
To buy: 127.5+10% = 140.25 GP/Ton
To sell: 127.5-10% = 114.75 GP/Ton
Now obviously a PC and their skills should be taken into account for the buying and selling of goods. So I've taken this into account. The most obvious skill for this is Appraise.
Each local area/port will have a base Appraise DC that the PC will roll against to determine how much they can buy/sell something for. For every two points above or below the DC of a port it changes the price by 1%. If you roll below the DC you suffer a penalty as appropriate.
Example: Using the Goods from our Port of Prototype:
Port Appraise DC: 20
Roll to Buy: 16 = +2% => 440 + 2% = 448.8 GP/Ton
Roll to Sell: 30 = +5% => 440 + 5% = 462 GP/Ton
You can make one attempt to buy or sell a particular trade good once per week or port visit, whichever is shorter. You don't have to accept the price after you roll, but that counts as your attempt for the week. There could be feats that let you get around this restriction.
As for what determines the local area/port's Appraise DC, I don't know quite yet. I'm just going to go with gut feelings for the moment until something can be figured out.
Thoughts, questions, concerns, think it sucks? Let me know on Facebook or in the comments. I want feedback!
But I have promised to keep that Passion off this blog unless it is something that relates directly to gaming/nerd culture in general. So this one will be about economics and DnD. (3.5 or Pathfinder, because these are what I am most familiar with)
I've never really like the economy of the system. It is too arbitrary and static. Part of it plays into the magic system's interaction with the medieval/pre-enlightenment society that the setting is based around. It's a weird spot for the game to exist at. It has tons of implications for society and how people would interact.
And I wrote a long tirade with a bunch of economic analysis and theory in it and then deleted it. Probably not the best thing to ramble about to people who want to talk about gaming. I'm just going to say that the game detracts from my enjoyment by having such an arbitrary system in place. So, anyways I designed a prototype system for trade goods and a living economy for my campaign setting. Let's take a look.
Since the characters will have their own ship and will be globetrotting they might want to make some easy money along the way. So trade is a good way to do that, and if they so decide they could also engage in a little privateering/piracy/pirate hunting which will also get them some goods they can sell off along the way.
(Okay, really don't feel like playing with HTML to get a table to work here so please excuse me choosing to do this in list form.)
I have devised a way to simulate unique economies on each island. This is only going to apply to trade goods for the purposes of this system. All of the normal equipment and such will remain at normal levels to keep things simpler.
So for this system you have 3 levels of economies; Global, Regional, and Local. Global should be obvious. It also will not likely be used all the time unless there is a specific reason for it, at least for this campaign. Regional applies to each major island, archipelago, or continent. Each region has different resources so each will have their own percentage modifiers to the prices of goods. For example, a heavily wooded continent would have a lower price for wood than a desert one. These ones are typically going to be permanent modifiers. The final one is local. These are ones you're going to be rolling on these charts for.
The random economic statuses should last in effect for 1 Economic Interval, typically 3 months which is a fiscal quarter in the real world. That can be completely up to the DM though.
Trade goods are measured in Tons. Whether or not they actually weigh an actual Ton isn't important, it is just to give you and idea of how much space they take up. A single ton of livestock for example could vary wildly in how much space it takes up. So to keep it simple I just use Tons. The prices were determined using simple extrapolation of what is already in the PHB.
The trade goods are as follows:
-Food: Dry - 40 GP/Ton, Salted fish/meat, grain, pickled, and other preserved foods
-Food: Fresh - 80 GP/Ton, Fruit, veggies, fresh fish, and such. Unless magically or mundanely preserved it loses 50% value every week, 2 weeks if preserved
-Food: Livestock - 120 GP/Ton, price includes their own supply of food. Random assortment of animals used for food purposes.
-Luxury Goods - 1,600 GP/Ton, These are fancy general purpose items. Candle sticks, silverware, art, furniture, etc.
-Goods - 400 GP/Ton, Same as Luxury Goods only cheaper, common man versions.
-Spices - 6,000 GP/Ton, It must flow... but really this is stuff like salt, cinnamon, pepper, etc. Not usually seen in more than a ton or two at a time because of how rare they are and how little space they take up.
-Lumber - 150 GP/Ton, Lumber is important to civilization, especially with this much ocean
-Metal - 200 GP/Ton, These are trade metals like iron, brass, lead, etc. Precious metals are a whole different story
-Other Raw Materials - 150 GP/Ton, Rock, sand, earth, whatever random stuff they might need somewhere else
-Booze - 800 GP/Ton, trade may be restricted based on the port
-Weapons - 2,000 GP/Ton, random assortment of mundane, normal quality weapons. trade is typically restricted
-Contraband - 1,500 GP/Ton Anything from drugs to slaves, falsified documents to knock off Gucci sunglasses. Stuff that is black market almost no matter what it is or where it goes.
-Special - If a region/local area has a very special product, like say a magically reinforced wood or a spectacular metal like Mythril, those will be handled on a case by case basis.
Black market goods might have an increased price but you'll have to be careful trying to sell them.
When you need a new port's economic environment you roll d% on the following two tables. You roll on the economic conditions table twice. Once you determine what economic conditions exist you need to roll to determine which trade goods are affected by using the second table.
Economic Conditions:
01-40: No Change
41-50: Market Boom- +10% to value of selected goods
51-60: Market Bust- -10% to value of selected goods
61-70: Goods Shortage- +20% to value of selected goods
71-80: Goods Surplus- -20% to value of selected goods
81-90: Heavy Taxation- +10% to value for purchase, -10% to value for sale
91-99: Roll again twice
00: War/Disaster- All goods increase by 50-150% ((2D6+3)x10), some may be at risk of confiscation.
Trade Goods:
01-07: Food, Dry
08-14: Food, Fresh
15-21: Food, Livestock
22-28: Luxury Goods
29-35: Goods
36-42: Spices
43-49: Lumber
50-56: Metal
57-63: Other Raw Materials
64-70: Booze
71-77: Weapons
78-84: Contraband
85-00: Roll twice, if the same good comes up, the economic status stacks.
So how this works is pretty simple in practice. You apply these percentages directly to the base price in this order Global, Regional, Local. When you apply multiple effects, apply them in the order they were created/determined. Don't just add up the percentages, apply them individually. (Although you totally could do that, I just like doing it this way because it creates wildly different numbers and simulates the wildly varying nature of an economy better) Here's an example:
Port of Prototype:
Global Effect: None
Regional Effect: This region is known for it's vast forests and lumber industry, Lumber (-15%)
Local: Market Boom (Goods) +10%, Heavy Taxation (Lumber) +/-10%
Goods:
Base Price: 400 GP/Ton
Effects: Market Boom +10%
Value: 440 GP/Ton
Lumber:
Base Price: 150 GP/Ton
Effect 1: Regional -15% = 127.5 GP/Ton
Effect 2: Heavy Taxation
To buy: 127.5+10% = 140.25 GP/Ton
To sell: 127.5-10% = 114.75 GP/Ton
Now obviously a PC and their skills should be taken into account for the buying and selling of goods. So I've taken this into account. The most obvious skill for this is Appraise.
Each local area/port will have a base Appraise DC that the PC will roll against to determine how much they can buy/sell something for. For every two points above or below the DC of a port it changes the price by 1%. If you roll below the DC you suffer a penalty as appropriate.
Example: Using the Goods from our Port of Prototype:
Port Appraise DC: 20
Roll to Buy: 16 = +2% => 440 + 2% = 448.8 GP/Ton
Roll to Sell: 30 = +5% => 440 + 5% = 462 GP/Ton
You can make one attempt to buy or sell a particular trade good once per week or port visit, whichever is shorter. You don't have to accept the price after you roll, but that counts as your attempt for the week. There could be feats that let you get around this restriction.
As for what determines the local area/port's Appraise DC, I don't know quite yet. I'm just going to go with gut feelings for the moment until something can be figured out.
Thoughts, questions, concerns, think it sucks? Let me know on Facebook or in the comments. I want feedback!
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