Currency in FRPGs – Favors

There are many types of currency in FRPGs and other genres of RPGs.

We are all familiar with gold and silver in coins, bars, and items, gems and jewelry, magic, trade/barter, force -such as a quest or geas, other types of items found in treasure hordes, like the awesome ewer! One powerful form of currency is the favor. I briefly mentioned this in yesterday’s post on Magic Shops.

Often a character or party will be in need of something, like a potion or scroll, to help them overcome an obstacle to one of their goals. For example, a scroll with several sleep spells to quickly and quietly make their way to a well guarded tower. Or a potion of control of the creatures guarding the tower.

When seeking such things from a local wizard, or cleric, the matter of payment comes up. Gold and jewels are nice, but what if there are other needs of the temple or wizard? Thus the favor. A form or barter, its value agreed upon by both parties.

What kind of favor is required? Small, medium, large, enormous?

The favor is often more valuable than gold and can be as valuable as magic. One agrees to a favor with a wizard in hopes of it not being too severe, or difficult to fulfill. There are small favors, like information: Where is the lair of the marauding orcs? Mid-sized favors, like: Rescue the villagers from the band of ogres and slay the ogres. And large favors, like: go slay this creature, or retrieve this item from far away.

One avoids honoring a favor at the risk of the wrath of a wizard and his associates, or the patron diety of the temple. Not honoring a favor will make it difficult to gain another favor from anyone else in the general area. Among wizards and temples, perhaps no wizard or temple of that diety will ever help that party or character again. Perhaps other temples and merchants and other NPCs with useful skills will not enter into a favor agreement.

Backing out on fulfilling a favor would be perfect fodder for a quest or geas to compel fulfillment.

One might argue that a chaotically aligned person would avoid agreeing to a favor as payment. That may be for the personality of the character in question, but if one views a favor as one of the forms of currency, a greedy character would seek to acquire favors owed them, in addition to coin, gems, magic, and other goods and services. While it might not be in the nature of a given character to enter into a favor agreement, how is that different than any other character agreeing to a sum of gold delivered by a certain date as payment?

Favors are currency in our world, but tend to be limited in scope to family and close friends. How many of us have done a requested favor for our parents or spouse? They will come out and ask for a favor. In this context, it is usually a one-sided transaction, but a home cooked meal from Mom is often worth it, and one’s spouse might have a more personal reward in mind. When one asks for a favor, how often is the reply, “OK, but you’ll owe me?”

In farming communities, one farmer will make an arrangement for another to plow or harvest a field that is closer to the neighbor, in exchange for the same in return. Of if one farmer is called away for a family emergency, such things occur.

Why not extrapolate that into the game world of whatever genre? How common is the movie or TV plot that someone owes the mob a lot of money, but they’ll forgive it for a special favor?

I play this in my campaign and have experienced it in other campaigns that the specifics of the favor is not discussed until it is time to fulfill it. Some favors took years of game time to be resolved.

Magic Shops

Tenkar has a post asking about Magic Shops. My reply grew as I thought of things to add, so I had to write a post, as I needed one for today anyway.

Game balance and maintaining a challenge for players is the key here.

Magic shops are only places where one can acquire inks (from a magical or fantastic creature, like a giant squid’s ink, or the blood of a troll), quills (from a magic creature), paper/vellum/papyrus for scrolls, and some standard items/ingredients for spells. Any special/unique/plot hook worthy ingredients are not to be found.

There would be a market for wizards and others for body parts of various creatures for potions of control, strength, etc. How common is it for busy wizards to trade scrolls, potions, knowledge, etc. for a “favor“, choice of found magic items, body parts, and a lot of gold or gems/jewelry?

Any place with a lot of magic items/ingredients is either a wizard’s tower, occupied, or long “abandoned”, a temple or shrine, or a tomb or dungeon.

All the really good stuff, the players have to find, or find someone who has something they want/need and is willing to trade; or live long enough to have the party wizard make it.

In AD&D 7th level is awesome because scrolls can be made, with the proper materials. Also, potions can be made by wizards and illusionists with the help of an Alchemist. This makes potions, other than healing, hard to come by.

Even holy water in AD&D has rules for how much can be made and the minimum 5th level cleric needed for all the requisite spells. Holy water can be hard to come by if the cleric at the local village shrine is not high enough level or does not possess the appropriate font.

While magic was once common in the ancient world, and many of its marvels still exist and function. Knowledge of all its features and functions are lost to time, or rare manuscripts, or word of mouth teaching from one wizard to the next.

Thus adventurers have to go where they hope there are unexplored ancient ruins, in hopes of finding the things they need to reach a level where they can make their own items or easily make deals to get the good stuff from NPCs.

I have played in games where one could buy anything they wanted, and it overpowered the game and the DM ended up scrapping the campaign and launching a new one that was low magic.

I find it much more interesting to have to figure out how to survive in a low magic campaign where wizards are reluctant to share fireball and lightning bolt with up and coming wizards. What kind of favor is needed to get access to these items?

While magic wands,rods, and staves are fairly common in my brother’s game, finding one that is permanent is rare. If one makes a wand of fireballs, if the wand is not re-charged with at least one fireball within 24 hours, it ceases to be a magic wand. I have a character with a wand of ice that can only do wall of ice, because of this. It still has its uses, but is not the awesome instrument of icy death it once was. This forces much more judicious use of these items. One can blast the enemy into submission, but at what cost?

In my brother’s game, another player finally reached archmage, 18th level, via an ioun stone, and made a very complex staff, that my brother declared is an artifact, due to permanency and very good rolls by the player for the success of most of the spells. It took a lot of time in game, a lot of gold, and a lot of other ingredients and preparations. The accomplishments of this player are much more impressive than a magic rich environment where powerful things are easily required. Back in the early days, I knew players that had archmages, high priests, lords, etc. after a few sessions. Monty Haul syndrome isn’t prevalent among experienced DMs, but can suck a lot of fun out of it.

Even an alchemist making certain kinds of potions should be regulated so that players can’t just buy their way into everything. Even if there were such things, how long until the alchemist is out of ingredients to make more healing potions, or they become scarce and the price goes up?

Or as Gygax advises in the DMG, a huge influx of coin from the dungeons eventually inflates the cost of goods and services?

I am sure one can have a high magic campaign where there is balance, but for me, that would take a lot of thought and effort to plan and keep up with it all and assure a balance.

I do like a Dragon Magazine article that discussed a high level fighter going out to fight a dragon and limping back victorious, but his magic weapon and shield failed their saves, and are no more. I don’t recall which one it was as that was probably 30+ years ago that I read it, but the imagery stuck. That would bring balance with either a high or low magic campaign. One big, bad, nasty dragon gone, two or more permanent magic items destroyed in the fight, along with healing potions, henchmen and hirelings.

If magic is easily acquired, it should be easily lost. Even magic items that are acquired with great difficulty can be easily lost.

A halfling fighter/thief with a girdle of storm giant strength, gauntlets of ogre power, a ring of regeneration, and a +2 sword is nearly invincible in melee. The back stab from such a character is a death blow to the majority of creatures on the receiving end. Who needs to pick locks on doors when you can just run through them? It takes some of the challenge and fun out of it, unless the DM can present challenges, like an invasion of a lot of giants, or massive hordes of orc, or trolls, etc. The DM must give a challenge equal to the power available to the players, or it can become the same old boring slog. A magic shop where one can buy any item in the book, makes that challenge harder to maintain over time in my experience.

NaNoWriMo 2014 Update

I tried NaNoWriMo in 2010 and didn’t get past the second day, I did 3,133 word. Things came up that soon derailed my efforts.

My novel idea is one I have had since college, just a few years ago (ahem!), and ideas and things keep coming to mind. I would see articles online, and email them to myself to add to my Novel label in Gmail.

I did figure out how to make the story “work” in 2010 with a central theme it all hangs on. This year, I am picking up the torch and trying to finish this thing. It’s a fantasy/science fiction story.

I am ahead and can’t believe I’ve passed 22,000 words of new stuff, and I didn’t write for a couple days. I have another commitment on Wednesdays – the weekly G+/Roll20 game I play in, so I have at least one day off from writing each week. I write a chapter at a time. I just figure out what the goal/idea is for the chapter and start writing, but picking up where the last chapter left off. I am amazed at the way the ideas are coming together. Most of it is like a detailed outline with more action and little dialogue. I am disciplining myself and not correcting every little error as I type. I only correct words that I need to be right to make sense when I come back to it. I make a tentative chapter title to describe the goal/theme to write for the next chapter. I just start writing and it comes out. It may not be any good, but it mostly makes sense. It is definitely better than the junk I tried to write in the dark ages back in high school.

I plan to write until I finish the last chapter. I figure there are 4 or 5 chapters for the end/resolution/conclusion, but I have a lot of middle to do. I didn’t do a formal outline, I just know where I want to go with it and how it ends. December and January are my busiest time of year at work, so I will let it sit and work on the second draft sometime after January. Famous last words.

What’s funny is that I haven’t picked the name of the hero, so I just write Hero. I figure I can do a search and replace when I settle on a name.

I think that it has helped that I have more than one blog and for this one I have an article almost every day, often writing multiple articles in a single sitting and then scheduling their publication into the future. I did the April 2014 A to Z challenge for two blogs, one for genealogy and this one. I figured out my topic for each day and had most of them done before the end of the first week. Normally, I have a terrible time coming up with topics. But as I get into this blogging thing and striving for an article a day, it seems that all writing is easier.

I use the programmable text editor NoteTab. I set up an outline document with my notes and miscellaneous ideas and one topic per day. If I write more than one chapter, and keep going, I make a new topic for the same day, but do A,B, etc. I then copy and paste each day’s writing into a single document and use the built-in word count feature.

[EDIT 11/10/2014] I wrote this post a few days ago and scheduled it to post today. I am now over 30,000 words. It is pretty clear that I will exceed 50,000 words in writing this book, at least for a first draft. Amazing!

Castles and More Castles!

I joined the Amazing Castles community on G+ a couple weeks ago. Every day I get multiple pictures of new castles. Many of them are castles I have heard of, but never seen a photograph of them. There are also several that have angles that I have never seen of them before.

I like castles and wish I could afford to go to Europe and see them all.

Someday, when I grow up, maybe I can own one….

I plan to view them on my tablet and use some tracing paper, to see if I can make my own castles from the bits and pieces. Perhaps figure out how to map them on graph paper too.

Software Changes – RANT!

<rant>

I hadn’t created new filters in Gmail for awhile, a couple years at least. I don’t know when it changed, but it took me a minute to figure out that when you test it it puts it in the Gmail search box and you have to click the drop-down there to bring back the screen so that you can finish the filter and apply the conditions of the filter. Not difficult but frustrating when my filter showed me what I wanted to filter and the filter building screens disappeared.

I work in the software industry on the support side of things and am constantly amazed at how Microsoft and others, and sometimes the company I work for move and hide things that should be easy to find.
I don’t mind change, but when they change the way things look/work to the point it isn’t as obvious what to do to get the desired result is not good. The call tracking program we use is one that our IT department can add custom fields. At one time they were adding and moving fields and were not telling us. When you use a screen that is nothing but a form and you know how many times to hit TAB to get to the fields you need, suddenly adding or moving fields messes up your day. Not knowing about the new fields, it takes a few minutes to figure out why the form isn’t working. How hard is it to take five minutes to send out one email to all the users of our main tool? I know that they spent more than five minutes dealing with my complaint. I am sure others complained too.

Windows 8 is a major example, it is not suitable to a business environment because the majority of businesses do not have a touchscreen. I downloaded the trial version of Win8 when it came out and ran it in a virtual environment. I had to Google how to shut it down.

Windows 7 is a problem because they moved and re-named things that you need to use if you are an advanced user.

MS Office did that stupid ribbon thing. There are certain functions I can’t ever remember where they are. Thankfully I know the keyboard shortcuts I need. MS Word had menus back in the days of DOS. Certain ways of working with software should not be changed lightly.

Even Android does this. I got a new phone and a few features changed, and I had to google how to use them.
Many apps on Android keep changing and going to similar interfaces, but they all take away something the older versions did more obviously.
Thankfully with Android, most apps are not so complex and feature filled that you can’t figure it out by playing around with it, or googling to understand how to do something now.
For example, I use Evernote all the time to make notes, reminders, grocery lists and they changed how they do checkboxes. It took me awhile to figure out where they put them. Once I figured it out, it was easy to remember, but for features that I don’t use all the time, I would be hard pressed to remember the new way to do it.

I’m getting old and cranky, I guess.

I remember back in the days of DOS, to use a word processor, like WordStar, you used a boot disk (AKA floppy) with the minimum pieces of DOS to boot the computer with a autorunning batch file to start WordStar. You then waited for the light to go out, and popped out the disk and put in another disk with your document(s) on it and opened up your document and typed away and edited it. Sometimes you had to switch back to the WordStar disk so it could do something to your document in memory. As soon as that was done, you had to switch back to your document. Auto save was not a feature. WordStar worked a lot like HTML in the you wrapped words with commands for italics, bold, and underline. Back then programs were simple and elegant and once you got the hang of it, easy to use.

As the hardware got cheaper and Windows came out, programmers seemed to forget elegance and tight code and left it to the user to solve the issue with bigger hardware. Thus the old saw that when you buy a computer that uses M$ Windows, you have to get one with twice the CPU, RAM, and Disk Space as the minimum recommendations to have a reasonable experience with it. Now that hardware has gotten cheap enough that it not as big of a problem. I find it funny that the free OS, Gnu/Linux, can run faster and more efficiently on the identical hardware of Windows. I have had dual boot configurations and the Linux partition always boots up many times faster than Windows, and browsing the web never hangs, unless the internet connection itself is having issues.

I won’t make the world of software better by this, but I had to get that out of my system so I could get back to my novel for NaNoWriMo.

</rant>

Biographical Outline

One of my many interests is genealogy. I find it interesting to see when and where my ancestors were in relation to history, another interest – I have a BA in History.

There are many free genealogy programs that make it easy to generate a family tree for printing. If you are interested in a family tree for the rulers of a kingdom, or how a tight-nit extended family in a village tie together, or a major NPCs family, or even for players to chart their characters and how they might be related.

One thing I just saw posted on FB was about a Biographical Outline. There is both a PDF for printing, and a Doc file for editing.

It may not be something you use as a GM for more than a few NPCs, but as a player, it might be helpful to chart the events and places your character was involved in.

Such tools can also be helpful if you want to write a novel with a lot of characters that are related, or a historical novel, or a nonfiction biography.

 

Dice Drop Generators

Dice Drop Generators differ from All The Dice Tables/Generators in that instead of being a collection of tables to consult, the placement of the dice as they land on a blank or pre-printed sheet determine the results.

Random Dungeons from Buckets O’ Dice is a method of generating random dungeons. Dump all the dice you own on a sheet of graph paper, those that miss the paper take away. Those that roll their max, keep in place and remove the rest. The value on each of the remaining dice indicates room size. d4 = room size 4, d6 =  room zize 6, etc. Read the rest at the link for details.

A variant on Dungeons from Buckets O’Dice is Five-Die Dungeon Generation. Similar to the above, but 5d6 are used, ignoring those that miss the paper.

I haven’t turned up other Dice Drop Generators with a Google Search.

[Update] Google+ has a community called Die-Drop Table Heaven.

If you know of a Dice Drop Generator, please share.

All The Dice Tables/Generators

All the dice tables/generators are tables that require using one of each type of dice, i.e. d4, d6, d8, d12, d20, etc, and then referring to the table/sub-table for that die. Most I have seen only do d4 through d20. The idea is to have a single roll of these dice generate one item, NPC, situation, etc. It is a neat idea. Just trying to come up with ideas for your own such generators can help you get the creative juices flowing as part of session or sandbox prep.

I like the idea for rapid session prep when you need some quick ideas. I think this is a neat idea for quick generation of NPCs, Maps, Treasure, Different kinds of objects, dungeons, magical effects, etc.

The Swords and Wizardry SRD has two tables in PDF format that use all the dice to generate multiple characteristics quickly. The GrimRandomNPCGenerator.pdf and Grim’s Random Tavern Patron Generator.pdf, which is actually at the Mythmere Games Website, AKA Swords And Wizardry. A third Grim’s table is a Treasure Map Generator.

Grim also has a lineage generator: Grim’s Roll All the Dice Lineage Generator. Grim posted his NPC generator over on Dragonsfoot Forums.

I did some Google searching and uncovered a few more tables that use all the dice.

I plan to collect a list of All The Dice Tables/Generators.

Telecanter’s Receding Rules has a post of OSR Table Types:

Telecanter’s Receding Rules: Roll all the Dice

TelecantersEncounterSpur                       EncounterSpur.pdf

TelecantersHirelingSpur                          TelecantersHirelingSpur.pdf

TelecantersMagicItemSpur                      TelecantersMagicItemSpur.pdf

Ronin has a generator for Random Pits & Occupants.

Applied Phantastically has an all the dice generator for Random Tables. And related articles on generating tables.

Similar to All The Dice Tables, are multiple dice tables, or multiple result from a single roll tables. A good example of tables are the d30 tables from New Big Dragon/Richard LeBlanc and his d30 DM Companion and d30 Sandbox Companion supplements.

What tables have I missed?

Related to this are Dice Drop Generators, which is a similar idea, but is not a formal table. I will be collecting those as well. Often dice drop generators are for quick random maps.

The RPG Scene In E.T.

The one line I remember from E.T, besides “ouch”, “E li ott” and “I’ll be right here.”, is “Negative Charisma!” My friends and I all laughed at that, as Dieties and Demigods had already come out and we all knew about negative charisma.

Thanks to OSR Today, I was directed to an article about the game scene at Dungeons & Digressions, and a second article at Geeky Rant about the role of D&D in the making of the movie.

Child’s Play Charity

I learned about Child’s Play when I stumbled on the mention of the BrigadeCon for the weekend of November 15 & 16, 2014.

BrigadeCon is billed as a Benefit. I found that the Benefit is Child’s play, but the link [now broken: http://www.brigadecon.org/booster/] to an explanation of what Child’s Play is was not obvious to find. For something billed as a charity event, it should be more obvious on the BrigadeCon website that it is a charity event, what the event is, and a simple donate button. From checking out the link to the explanation and donate button, it looks like only two people have donated. The donate button did list the website of Child’s Play. From the About page on the Child’s Play website: “Since 2003, we’ve set up and organized Child’s Play, a game industry charity dedicated to improving the lives of children with toys and games in our network of over 70 hospitals worldwide.”

There is a link to the official Child’s Play events, and that link does a better job of explaining things: “BrigadeCon 2014 is an online tabletop gaming convention hosted by the RPG Brigade, a collective of tabletop roleplaying enthusiasts. Events include live games of D&D and other RPGs, and live panels on game-mastering, world-building, and adventure creation. Donations will be accepted for Child’s Play during the entirety of the convention.” The homepage of BrigadeCon leaves out the last sentence about donations for Child’s Play. The link for Child’s Play at the top of the page is misleading, it that a link for kid’s games?

I think it should be more obvious that not only is this a fund raiser, but what the cause is. No one likes to go to an event and not know that the collection plate will be passed, or that there is an expectation of a donation.

I am all in favor of having an event that is fun, to raise funds for those in need. More clarity is needed.

I may not be able to participate in the games at this online con, but I can give a few dollars to help out.