Step 1: Profit, Step 2: ???

[HalcyonUmbra]

You know what. MGuys claims are so bad let me just... wait a second...

Bob The Great : I Ride into battle on my shiny new battle chariot!
GM : No. You can't. You have to stop and get off first.

I don't know why you're going through all the effort of creating a strawman to argue against when his actual argument is already bad. At no point did he say "Not only are armies worthless, you are literally incapable of using them in combat!!!" He said "Armies are so weak as to be essentially worthless." So once you have enough money to buy your own nation, owning a nation just isn't worth very much. It's still worth something, it's just a something so small that no-one cares.

[PhoneLobster]

Actually he said armies were SO far behind the curve they were nothing more than non-mechanical "background set pieces".

The REASON he said this is the REASON he has made this stupid decision. Because if they contribute ANYTHING even a SMALL thing to actual power, they ARE a contribution to power and they break the entire "Non-power based wealth resource" he has created, and then potentially the game because from some of his talk he suggests his non power based wealth resource is very open ended and potentially unlimited so if you can leverage ANY power out of one of the things you can purchase with it you can just buy more until you gain real ultimate power with that or some other thing.

Now I COULD have told a story where bob the great rode his chariot into battle... and it was mechanically identical to walking. And where his allies were all there... they just all wiffed on 100% of their attacks and actions because they are so far down on comparative levels that they are off the bottom of the RNG. That ACTUALLY is probably a little more accurate. But that story focuses on the same issues just a little less entertainingly/well.

And the primary issue here is people DON'T WANT allies, castles, vehicles, pets, etc... that literally don't matter, the story of the guy who accrues those things, goes to his ultimate battle and cannot meaningfully use them is an infinitely worse story than one where the guy accrues these things and DOES meaningfully use them in his ultimate battle.

And I don't give a shit if you say "waaah it's not literally incapable, it's rendered utterly incapable by the vast gap in the level system a gap enforced to the point of making anything you can buy be to any "meaningful" extent literally incapable of helping!". Because that is basically the same fucking thing. And it STILL generates the shit version of the story where anything Bob The Great has ever done or invested in is not permitted to matter.

[HalcyonUmbra]

And I don't give a shit if you say "waaah it's not literally incapable, it's rendered utterly incapable by the vast gap in the level system a gap enforced to the point of making anything you can buy be to any "meaningful" extent literally incapable of helping!". Because that is basically the same fucking thing. And it STILL generates the shit version of the story where anything Bob The Great has ever done or invested in is not permitted to matter.

They are the same. That's exactly what I mean. There's no reason to make straw points (and give him the excuse of "Ha! You made a fallacy! I get to ignore everything you said!), when his actual points are exactly as bad as the straw points you're making.

---

The purpose of this thread is "Why do I, the player, care about in game gold?" Obviously we're gonna use gold to buy stuff, so your two options are:

• Gold gives you in game, mechanical abilities, in which case you have a wealth by level system

or

• Gold does not give you in game, mechanical abilities, in which case you're buying stuff so you can pretend to make an imaginary person happier.[/b]

[DSMatticus]

PL, you're assuming that armies are meaningful to high-level adventurers and the adventures they are having in order to say wealth = power. That's not especially obvious, and actual D&D is fairly heavily tiered with "you must be this tall to ride" shenanigans that make armies really useless.

[PhoneLobster]

PL, you're assuming that armies are meaningful to high-level adventurers

Actually. I'm assuming that "Flunkies" (or beasts, or loyalty allies, or indeed ALLIES IN GENERAL) are EVER relevant at ANY level you hire or buy or "loyalty" them.

MGuy's "wealth for things that don't matter" system presumably spans multiple levels. You CAN have a level/tier where "flunkies" or other allies from a PRIOR tier are indeed pretty much utterly useless. But THEN at that tier that just means you are SOMEHOW getting OTHER allies you ACTUALLY care about at that tier. And meanwhile in an EARLIER tier castles and armies DO mean something and at SOME tier they SHOULD and if they NEVER do at ANY tier something is fucking horribly stupid about your game system.

This is MORE the case because MGuy's "Exotic Beasts" and "Loyalty" options extend these limitations to pets and actual allies as well as tiny army men. Effectively ALL ally types are bought with MGuys non-wealth system. And ALL of them are as such expected to be pure GM fluff with no mechanically relevant contribution.

This means presumably even at the LOWEST levels you buy your war horse, your attack hell hound, your similar level side kick's loyalty, your small group of thugs that at low levels most certainly ARE relevant... with his open ended exploitable non-wealth resource, and as an extension even then they aren't allowed matter.

At mid level when presumably armies and pets still matter, only you get MORE thugs and BIGGER pets to make them matter... they are STILL a non-wealth resource that officially isn't permitted to contribute.

Don't give me high level excuses like "we are gods now so armies are irrelevant" because before that they WERE relevant and after that even GODS should be buying fucking "Exotic Beast" pets and the "Loyalty" off god like allies and those things SHOULD matter to them. If you inherently are not permitted to buy allies until a level at which they are utterly irrelevant to you your ally acquisition mechanic is HORRENDOUS.

MGuys wealth system did NOT mention that it was a TIER based divide that was kicking in. His off hand mention of higher level people being greater than everyone else ended in a non-sequitor and he rambled off to separately give examples of PCs fighting dragons and significant NPCs, which happens at ALL levels of play, and apparently PCs don't ever care about mooks at all and significant NPCs have no mechanical motivation to bring a few along to help defeat you and visa versa, EVER at ANY level because the "PC" status is just that special.

He even told us SPECIFICALLY that this system exists so that a "rich nobody" or in other words a say level 1 PC/NPC with a lot of "non-wealth" CANNOT buy power! AT LEVEL 1 even if you are "rich" this system sells you NOTHING, even for exorbitant "rich man" prices in all it's allies and other options that grants power even a LEVEL 1 character cares about!

This is NOT a case of gods not caring about armies, and attempting to pretend it is is a gross misrepresentation of the limited description of this non-wealth non-system. This really is the Ballad of Bob The Great and if you need to change the number and size of the army men, the hit die of the cat bear dragon and the level of the wizardess or even turn the chariot into a flying lightning encrusted teleporting chariot of the gods, WHATEVER, but you are just shuffling deck chairs on a Titanic that is specifically not permitted to count as a mechanical benefit at any level since it is a non-wealth water vehicle a rich level 1 nobody might buy.

[MGuy]

I can understand how PL can go on long rants by taking what I said (since I didn't agree with what he said) and create another argument I didn't make to yell about. Though I do not know what else anyone finds wrong with my previous assertion.

First @Hogarth: If players spend a good deal of time playing Kingdoms and treaties I agree that is something that takes away the focus from adventuring. In games where I made wealth a non issue (that is gold could not buy magic items, stat boosts, etc) my players still did accumulate and use their wealth but more on things like fortresses, armies (one player wanted to make a zoo) and other, various, non essential things. However, that's the player's choice. Not something I want to push. It may just be an unintended consequence of taking the "power" out of what gold can buy you but it is not a consequence I'm willing to deal with.

@Halcyon: You called it right and I was just going to ignore PL's rant since he started saying things I did not. However if you disagree with my response I'd like to know what you find amiss.

So what I said last time was:

Power as in things that allow the PCs to continue being PCs. Abilities, levels, skills, the shit a given PC uses on an adventure. I don't mean power as in the PCs ability to have someone else do shit for'em. Having a fortress is like having a big, better defended house. I don't really see that as anything a PC advances the plot with. An army is nice if you've stopped playing the adventure game and started playing the kingdom game, but most people will stick to the adventuring.

I say this because the paradigm DnD sets for us is that higher level people are > everyone else. PCs fight dragons. Dragons do not care about armies of nobodies. Likewise significant NPCs fight PCs. So nothing your army of mooks can do is going to be able to match what a PC can do. Especially if you make it so that a rich nobody can't just buy their way to being better than everyone else. An army of nobodies is great for beating up and policing other nobodies but in the frame of the game most people should be playing an army is just a background set piece.

I have no idea what you're suggesting by saying there's a disparity if you have wealth cover concubines AND armies as if a well off PC has to get one OR the other. I mean you can use an army of concubines to generate enough wealth to buy a real army or use an army to get concubines. Hell you can just beat up a bunch of people and get both for FREE.

Now what I mean to say Wealth shouldn't allow you to buy your way through adventures. That's the premise of the question Virgil posted to begin with. He said if you can't buy anything other than ale and hookers and asserted that 3e's paradigm of wealth = power was bad. I responded earlier buy saying that fortresses, armies, etc were things that would keep a PC collecting gold.

In the last post I made I claimed that fortresses do not advance the plot. And they don't. A fortress is a house. Sure if you stay inside of it or keep your important shit in it those things are better protected than if you lived in a shack but none of that shit helps you when you're raiding someone else's fortress/cave/extra dimensional space. It doesn't help you when you're unraveling someone's plot or waist deep in political intrigue. Some things can happen AT your fortress or you can have never ever had a fortress or even a house (murdering hobos after all) and you wouldn't lose anything. So fortress = not a real big deal.

There is nothing I can say that would clarify the army thing more. Armies of nobodies can't do anything against dragons. PCs fight dragons so have power = to dragons. That should mean that armies of nobodies can't compete against PCs. Sure having an army is good when you're playing Kingdoms and Dragons and you want to deal with that kind of shit but most games that deal with having an army (as I've amassed one several times) tend to push them to the background. Its about as good as saying I summon an army of angels to fight the horde of demons and then you don't actually participate in the ensuing battle. Sure its cool. But its relegated to the background.

I even, after mentioning all this, went further and said that even if you WANTED to get armies and concubines anyway that them being on the same resource as your whores doesn't even matter because if you care about that kind of shit you can just arbitrarily generate more wealth or get one/both for free by virtue of being awesome/leveled. And seriously if you can just GET something for NOTHING then how is it a problem that 1 thing and another thing are part of the same resource? The only time it COULD be a problem is if the things you buy allowed you to buy your way through fighting mentioned dragon. If being rich makes you super strong, super fast, and grants you super human powers then that would be (and in 3e is) a big problem.

That's why instead you let gold just buy shit you don't really have to care about for your PCs and move the fuck on. I don't know where the fuck PL came up with his whole "MGuy doesn't want you to have shit" routine but that's an argument he can continue having with himself.

[Username17]

I'm just saying that if you buy fortresses and loyal armies, then you're playing a different game than "classic" D&D -- not necessarily better or worse, just different. So in the games you've played where players enjoyed collecting dungeon-delving wealth in order to get fortresses, armies, vehicles, etc., did you actually start pushing armies around instead of dungeon-delving?

Really? Because that sounds exactly like D&D Classic. By which I mean the first D&D and AD&D, where getting a fortress and an army of tiny men was simply an expectation of turning 9th level.

-Username17

[hogarth]

I'm just saying that if you buy fortresses and loyal armies, then you're playing a different game than "classic" D&D -- not necessarily better or worse, just different. So in the games you've played where players enjoyed collecting dungeon-delving wealth in order to get fortresses, armies, vehicles, etc., did you actually start pushing armies around instead of dungeon-delving?

Really? Because that sounds exactly like D&D Classic. By which I mean the first D&D and AD&D, where getting a fortress and an army of tiny men was simply an expectation of turning 9th level.

Getting them and actually using them for a non-negligible amount of time are two completely different things.

I've heard lots of tales of Gygax et al. dungeon-delving (with or without henchmen) and approximately zero stories of them puttering around with armies and personal fortresses.

[HalcyonUmbra]

@Halcyon: You called it right and I was just going to ignore PL's rant since he started saying things I did not. However if you disagree with my response I'd like to know what you find amiss.

I think what PL was getting at was that if gold can buy an army at 10th level then gold can buy an army at 1st level. The only thing stopping you is no having enough gold, and this is pretty much exactly how 3e already works. PL, of course, decided that obviously what you meant was that if gold buys a worthless army at 10th level, then gold must also buy a worthless army at 1st, and the only way to accomplish this was to rule that all armies everywhere just sat on their asses doing nothing the second a PC entered the scene.

So what I said last time was:

Power as in things that allow the PCs to continue being PCs. Abilities, levels, skills, the shit a given PC uses on an adventure. I don't mean power as in the PCs ability to have someone else do shit for'em. Having a fortress is like having a big, better defended house. I don't really see that as anything a PC advances the plot with. An army is nice if you've stopped playing the adventure game and started playing the kingdom game, but most people will stick to the adventuring.

I say this because the paradigm DnD sets for us is that higher level people are > everyone else. PCs fight dragons. Dragons do not care about armies of nobodies. Likewise significant NPCs fight PCs. So nothing your army of mooks can do is going to be able to match what a PC can do. Especially if you make it so that a rich nobody can't just buy their way to being better than everyone else. An army of nobodies is great for beating up and policing other nobodies but in the frame of the game most people should be playing an army is just a background set piece.

I have no idea what you're suggesting by saying there's a disparity if you have wealth cover concubines AND armies as if a well off PC has to get one OR the other. I mean you can use an army of concubines to generate enough wealth to buy a real army or use an army to get concubines. Hell you can just beat up a bunch of people and get both for FREE.

Now what I mean to say Wealth shouldn't allow you to buy your way through adventures. That's the premise of the question Virgil posted to begin with. He said if you can't buy anything other than ale and hookers and asserted that 3e's paradigm of wealth = power was bad. I responded earlier buy saying that fortresses, armies, etc were things that would keep a PC collecting gold.

In the last post I made I claimed that fortresses do not advance the plot. And they don't. A fortress is a house. Sure if you stay inside of it or keep your important shit in it those things are better protected than if you lived in a shack but none of that shit helps you when you're raiding someone else's fortress/cave/extra dimensional space. It doesn't help you when you're unraveling someone's plot or waist deep in political intrigue. Some things can happen AT your fortress or you can have never ever had a fortress or even a house (murdering hobos after all) and you wouldn't lose anything. So fortress = not a real big deal.

There is nothing I can say that would clarify the army thing more. Armies of nobodies can't do anything against dragons. PCs fight dragons so have power = to dragons. That should mean that armies of nobodies can't compete against PCs. Sure having an army is good when you're playing Kingdoms and Dragons and you want to deal with that kind of shit but most games that deal with having an army (as I've amassed one several times) tend to push them to the background. Its about as good as saying I summon an army of angels to fight the horde of demons and then you don't actually participate in the ensuing battle. Sure its cool. But its relegated to the background.

I even, after mentioning all this, went further and said that even if you WANTED to get armies and concubines anyway that them being on the same resource as your whores doesn't even matter because if you care about that kind of shit you can just arbitrarily generate more wealth or get one/both for free by virtue of being awesome/leveled. And seriously if you can just GET something for NOTHING then how is it a problem that 1 thing and another thing are part of the same resource? The only time it COULD be a problem is if the things you buy allowed you to buy your way through fighting mentioned dragon. If being rich makes you super strong, super fast, and grants you super human powers then that would be (and in 3e is) a big problem.

That's why instead you let gold just buy shit you don't really have to care about for your PCs and move the fuck on. I don't know where the fuck PL came up with his whole "MGuy doesn't want you to have shit" routine but that's an argument he can continue having with himself.

What I'm saying is that if you can't spend gold to affect gameplay, then who cares? That's how I interpreted what Virgil was asking. He was saying that there's no real reward in just saying "I buy all the cocaine." And that's true. If your army doesn't affect gameplay (either by providing negligible bonuses or no bonuses at all) then going from a 1,000 person army to a 100,000 person army is entirely pointless. There's no incentive to go from drinking the cheap tavern swill to drinking 200 year old elven wine. You need a reason for a player to care about having a thousand gold versus having a million gold, and while the lure of "having an imaginary castle" or "sleeping with imaginary hookers" or even "having an imaginary pile of a million gold" may be sufficient for some players, it's not sufficient for most.

[TheFlatline]

I'm just saying that if you buy fortresses and loyal armies, then you're playing a different game than "classic" D&D -- not necessarily better or worse, just different. So in the games you've played where players enjoyed collecting dungeon-delving wealth in order to get fortresses, armies, vehicles, etc., did you actually start pushing armies around instead of dungeon-delving?

Really? Because that sounds exactly like D&D Classic. By which I mean the first D&D and AD&D, where getting a fortress and an army of tiny men was simply an expectation of turning 9th level.

-Username17

Yeah that was the big power leveler for the fighter. He got 50 fighters to back him up at like 7th level.

[hogarth]

Yeah that was the big power leveler for the fighter. He got 50 fighters to back him up at like 7th level.

When you were playing AD&D, what percentage of the game would you say you spent actually ordering those 50 fighters around? Is it more than 0%?

1E AD&D had rules for fucking Boot Hill cross-over games, but that doesn't mean that every AD&D ranger had a fucking ten gallon hat and a six-shooter.

[PhoneLobster]

and create another argument I didn't make to yell about.

I dare you to point out the difference between what I am describing and what you described.

Because I notice you DIDN'T just then, you just said "wah wah strawman" and didn't mention WHAT was wrong. Because. You know, it isn't and I could quote you if I needed to.

There is nothing I can say that would clarify the army thing more. Armies of nobodies can't do anything against dragons. PCs fight dragons so have power = to dragons.

That is flat out incorrect. PCs fight "dragons" from level 1. If fighting men are level 1, or even a bit weaker, they can in sufficient numbers, and not that many more than PCs, for the lowest level dragons fight fucking dragons they can DEFINITELY contribute to fighting fucking dragons. You have NOT EXPLAINED THE MECHANISM BY WHICH THEY APPARENTLY DO NOT CONTRIBUTE TO FIGHTING DRAGONS. And as it currently stands the basic assumptions of D&D ARE actual, yeah, fighting men contribute something to fighting dragons.

And I don't care if you change the game from its standard assumptions and say "Dragons only appear after level 15 by which time there are no armies of any form at all for some reason" because at SOME point in D&D the PCs are fighting small squads of army men AS EQUAL LEVEL CHALLENGES. At that point even 1 or 2 army men on the PC side would be MAJOR power. Later, at SOME point, PCs fight actual Armies as appropriate level challenges. Which rather makes your claim that PCs and armies shouldn't interact stupid.

Its about as good as saying I summon an army of angels to fight the horde of demons and then you don't actually participate in the ensuing battle. Sure its cool. But its relegated to the background.

Now this is a little different. You've tried the off screen excuse, you've tried the not relevant to PCs excuse, both of which are STUPID defenses of a stupid idea. But the "armies are too hard so I just fucking pull the results of battles out of my ass." is an AWESOMELY lame excuse. In a D&D game where PCs eventually fight monsters so big they make armies irrelevant at SOME point they fight actual armies as level appropriate challenges. Your game MUST be able to handle armies mechanically without breaking down screaming "Too Hardz!" and running off to Fairy Tea Party to save it.

I don't know where the fuck PL came up with his whole "MGuy doesn't want you to have shit" routine but that's an argument he can continue having with himself.

That is separate to the bit where you are outright making claims and assumptions that are frankly laughably provably incorrect (like Armies aren't a form of combat power for D&D adventurers EVER).

That's instead the bit where your resulting system is a BAD RESULT even if it did work (which it doesn't) because we actually WANT armies and allies and pets to be worth something. (I notice you DROPPED any attempt at defending your "exotic beasts" and "Loyalty" purchases, probably because trying to argue that ALL ALLIES are always useless is TOO HARD for you).

You specifically said you want people to buy a big pile of allies vehicles and houses that do nothing they care about, and you demanded they not care about them because they "can't contribute meaningfully". I merely suggest this is fucking moronic and people would rather play a game where they bought cool shit like allies and vehicles and houses and those things actually fucking contributed something they ever cared about to the fucking adventure.

[virgil]

What I'm saying is that if you can't spend gold to affect gameplay, then who cares? That's how I interpreted what Virgil was asking. He was saying that there's no real reward in just saying "I buy all the cocaine." And that's true.

This.

Greyhawking is a derided activity because the story of where the characters stripped the walls to get better armor is a bad one. 3E's wealth paradigm trains players to feel punished if they buy hookers. Gear, which is bought with gold in 3E, very directly corresponds to the part of the game the vast majority of players partake in; which is crawling through a dungeon. There's no reward in living decadently, and in fact it actively reduces your adventuring capability.

Creating the SimSiege minigame doesn't necessarily help, because players don't commonly even want to play that game. While *I* may enjoy playing Pretty Princess Dress Up with my character and his crib, the vast majority of gamers I've personally dealt with are bored to tears with it.

[Avoraciopoctules]

This is a nice thread to discover now that I'm back where I can get vaguely secure Internet access. Phonelobster, your posts were both entertaining and educational.

Gold and treasure is its own incentive in many a story. But in an RPG, if you can't do anything with it other than arbitrarily say you bought a hundred hookers and 10 gallons of ale, it's not much incentive.

What can you do with the reward of treasure that makes players want to get it beyond the basic hoarding instinct? Wealth = power in the manner of 3E is a provably bad idea, but there needs to be a carrot somewhere.

So a key assumption here is that you can't make your character directly more powerful with normal wealth past a certain degree of ridiculousness. This is a fantasy RPG. Furthermore, let's say that the PCs are fighting things that can reliably take on mobs of peasants or worse.

Indirect power boosts are still definitely a possibility. You can pay cackling alchemists to experiment with troll blood and maybe invent useful potions, and you can also pay people to act as test subjects. You can pay people to train your war hydras. These could be useful in battle.

War hydras could also be useful if you want to train up new adventurers in your Doom Fortress. Even if Mister Cavern throws a fit every time you suggest multiple people in your posse teaming up, you can decide that you send the demonslayer out when it's time to go to Demon Cave and roleplay that guy instead of your cryomancer who got cursed so he sucks at fighting underground.

That brings up the thought that having armies allows you to project power more diffusely than an adventurer typically could. Maybe there's a magic spring you want guarded so you don't have to get ready for an encounter every time you want a drink. Maybe you want to keep out or slow down other adventurers that might go into Deathtrap Dungeon while you are still busy delivering letters between warring demon states, so you station a war hydra and a few hundred goons there.

Most fantasy settings have plausible ways to turn wealth into power even if it doesn't change any numbers on your character sheet.

[MGuy]

What I'm saying is that if you can't spend gold to affect gameplay, then who cares? That's how I interpreted what Virgil was asking. He was saying that there's no real reward in just saying "I buy all the cocaine." And that's true.

This.

Greyhawking is a derided activity because the story of where the characters stripped the walls to get better armor is a bad one. 3E's wealth paradigm trains players to feel punished if they buy hookers. Gear, which is bought with gold in 3E, very directly corresponds to the part of the game the vast majority of players partake in; which is crawling through a dungeon. There's no reward in living decadently, and in fact it actively reduces your adventuring capability.

Creating the SimSiege minigame doesn't necessarily help, because players don't commonly even want to play that game. While *I* may enjoy playing Pretty Princess Dress Up with my character and his crib, the vast majority of gamers I've personally dealt with are bored to tears with it.

I personally let my "want" for an army or fortress depend on my character and what I perceive his wants are. There may be some people that simply stop caring about accumulating gold once you make it not affect the effectiveness of a character in terms of how he/she performs on a given adventure. However, the alternative is the Greyhawk thing. I insist that you try out a game with gold not being the primary way you earn stat boosts. People will still use and accrue it because while it may just be "an imaginary castle" or "imaginary cocaine" that's fine if it ads to the story of their "imaginary wizard" and "imaginary thief". I'm not suggesting you create a little minigame for managing armies and what not, just that you let the players decide what they want to do with the gold. All you have to put at the end of a dungeon is a goal. Something your players DO want. I'm also not saying you shouldn't have magic items, artifacts, etc. I'm saying don't make gold the fashion in which you get them.

Mechanics influence behavior. Whatever you tie to being a better adventurer people will do in order to function in a game because you don't want to see some people out performing you for doing something like having more gold. If they get more powerful by having more gold, other people will want to get more powerful by having more gold and will then engineer ways to get more of it just for that purpose. If you don't want that to happen then simply make gold "optional". If player's don't want to do anything with the gold they get why do you want to force them to? If all you want is for players to want to go dungeon delving, stick their goal (whatever it may be) in the dungeon so that they have to. Then just tie experience into accomplishing goals and you'll have all the motivation you need without the ugliness of having it depend on wealth.

@Halcyon: The army thing is a background resource that you use to perform background tasks. You have an army of 1 thousand you can use them to do things an army that large can do. You have a million? Same thing applies. While I AM saying that the army IS background fluff, people tend to care about that fluff anyway. Having an army may not give your personal character even a +1 to attack BUT what it CAN do is allow your character to found the empire of Stabalot. While on a board that talks primarily about mechanics that may not seem like much, and to some people it will be meaningless, despite this people WILL engineer a way to turn an army into something useful. As long as your mechanics don't punish characters for amassing wealth a person will do it anyway. This has analogues in real life where people often make a shit tonne more money than they need and, instead of spending the vast majority of it, just keep it somewhere to do nothing.

As for PL saying "but you can get it at level one" I'm not sure what he'd want me to say. You can get a small army at level one or two in regular DnD if you really wanna put in the effort. Hell hirelings are cheap. I can hire a team of hirelings at first level that would supplement the party so they would do the adventure and I kill them at the end of it, keep the gold and whatever equipment they brought. So what? I could make a suggestion for what rules you can make to keep that kind of shit from happening but that's not what I'm doing in this particular thread.

[tussock]

Yeah that was the big power leveler for the fighter. He got 50 fighters to back him up at like 7th level.

When you were playing AD&D, what percentage of the game would you say you spent actually ordering those 50 fighters around? Is it more than 0%?

For me it was 0%. The games I played that went to 9th+ the DMs all disallowed that castle and army stuff. Banned for sanity. The games I ran almost never got to 9th, and when they did the players weren't interested.

The game designers used them though. I've read about the early players having little wars with each other, raiding each other's fortresses. They didn't play in regular groups though: whoever turned up got to do something appropriate if they had a character of similar level to everyone else who turned up. You had to get into the mega-dungeon and back out again in the one session, because next session could be all-new players doing new things. Everyone had henchmen from 1st or 2nd level, Charisma was huge because you got more of them, and you needed a small army in tow to travel cross-country safely.

For them a "campaign" was a world, not the story of a constant group of adventurers. Eliminating other player's power bases was a perfectly valid way to play (if they were present). Some of the players usually played solo once they had characters high enough level to manage it.


Now that we're all playing a consistent super-team, armies and personal fortresses don't fit. Need something more like the X-Men mansion/school.

[HalcyonUmbra]

I personally let my "want" for an army or fortress depend on my character and what I perceive his wants are. There may be some people that simply stop caring about accumulating gold once you make it not affect the effectiveness of a character in terms of how he/she performs on a given adventure. However, the alternative is the Greyhawk thing. I insist that you try out a game with gold not being the primary way you earn stat boosts. People will still use and accrue it because while it may just be "an imaginary castle" or "imaginary cocaine" that's fine if it ads to the story of their "imaginary wizard" and "imaginary thief". I'm not suggesting you create a little minigame for managing armies and what not, just that you let the players decide what they want to do with the gold. All you have to put at the end of a dungeon is a goal. Something your players DO want. I'm also not saying you shouldn't have magic items, artifacts, etc. I'm saying don't make gold the fashion in which you get them.

Mechanics influence behavior. Whatever you tie to being a better adventurer people will do in order to function in a game because you don't want to see some people out performing you for doing something like having more gold. If they get more powerful by having more gold, other people will want to get more powerful by having more gold and will then engineer ways to get more of it just for that purpose. If you don't want that to happen then simply make gold "optional". If player's don't want to do anything with the gold they get why do you want to force them to? If all you want is for players to want to go dungeon delving, stick their goal (whatever it may be) in the dungeon so that they have to. Then just tie experience into accomplishing goals and you'll have all the motivation you need without the ugliness of having it depend on wealth.

@Halcyon: The army thing is a background resource that you use to perform background tasks. You have an army of 1 thousand you can use them to do things an army that large can do. You have a million? Same thing applies. While I AM saying that the army IS background fluff, people tend to care about that fluff anyway. Having an army may not give your personal character even a +1 to attack BUT what it CAN do is allow your character to found the empire of Stabalot. While on a board that talks primarily about mechanics that may not seem like much, and to some people it will be meaningless, despite this people WILL engineer a way to turn an army into something useful. As long as your mechanics don't punish characters for amassing wealth a person will do it anyway. This has analogues in real life where people often make a shit tonne more money than they need and, instead of spending the vast majority of it, just keep it somewhere to do nothing.

I'm gonna focus on a few key points:

However, the alternative is the Greyhawk thing.

Except no, it isn't. Players stripping the gold leaf off of walls isn't a result of WBL, it's a result of WBL done poorly. It is entirely possible let characters spend wealth on power without turning them into miserly lunatics.

All you have to put at the end of a dungeon is a goal.

The thing is, players want, nay, expect this goal to be treasure. A dungeon without gold is like a Twinkie without the cream filling. This also applies to your suggestion to...

...simply make gold "optional".

As long as your mechanics don't punish characters for amassing wealth a person will do it anyway.

This is an incredibly important point. It's true, of course. The same could be said of anything really, that players will do anything that the mechanics don't punish them for, but it's particularly true for wealth. But here's the thing, though, and the focal point of this thread:

Is it good enough to simply "not be punished" for collecting wealth?

I'm pretty sure that everyone will agree that it isn't. So you need a reward for collecting wealth. And while fluff-based backround rewards are apparently sufficient for you and your group, they aren't for most people. And that leaves mechanical rewards.

As for PL saying "but you can get it at level one" I'm not sure what he'd want me to say. You can get a small army at level one or two in regular DnD if you really wanna put in the effort. Hell hirelings are cheap. I can hire a team of hirelings at first level that would supplement the party so they would do the adventure and I kill them at the end of it, keep the gold and whatever equipment they brought. So what? I could make a suggestion for what rules you can make to keep that kind of shit from happening but that's not what I'm doing in this particular thread.

The point he's trying to make is that your argument is logically inconsistent.

If:
-an army can be purchased with gold
-an army has a mechanical effect on low level characters
-low level characters have gold

Then:
-an army can be purchased by low level characters, thus giving a mechanical effect

So your claim that you've decoupled wealth from power is a false one, because regardless of whether or not your characters ever do buy an army at low level, the fact remains that they still can. The fact that they don't have enough gold is entirely irrelevant. The fact that you, personally, only give high level characters enough gold to do so is just masking the problem.

[MGuy]

I'm going to go point by point:

1: It is not a result of WBL done poorly. If there is a way to screw over wealth by level people WILL do it. That's the whole point of Greyhawking. To get MORE gold then WBL would let you have so you can jump ahead in effectiveness. If you allow wealth to accrue power then, as I said, people will engineer ways to get more wealth.

2: If players want gold then put that at the end of the dungeon. I'm not sure how else to approach this point.

3: Have you ever played in a game where wealth didn't accrue you a mechanical advantage over fighting dragons? Whenever people talk about how much gold they managed to get in DnD it leads to talking about what magic items they bought with it. If you want people to not get gold just to get power then you need gold to do something else. As long as your gold resource is tied to your decadence, kingdom, vehicle, and power boosts all at the same time people will almost always go for the last one and just steal, kill, swindle, or expect to be given the rest. If you want people to buy the first three you take power boost out of that resource.

4: Then PL is arguing with himself because I've never made the claim that I've already decoupled wealth from anything. My claim was that armies, in the games most people play in, are background fluff instead of what most games tend to be focused on. The game fundamentally changes if the focus is turned on what army you have instead of the individual abilities of the characters. At that point you're playing a war game. And I have no qualms with that but when I read about and play in actual games very few instances came up where the game concentrated more on the army then the PC's own actions.

I've also never claimed that I only give high level characters enough gold to create an army. The problems having an army presents are not problems I've thus far intended to take on. In fact I said here:

An army is nice if you've stopped playing the adventure game and started playing the kingdom game, but most people will stick to the adventuring.

And I stand by that statement. As long as this assumption remains viable for most players as well as GMs I find armies to be a non-factor when it comes to adventuring. People simply do not play the "army" game in most cases when it comes to D&D.

[PhoneLobster]

The fact that they don't have enough gold is entirely irrelevant. The fact that you, personally, only give high level characters enough gold to do so is just masking the problem.

A) He has specifically stated some "rich nobodies" DO have enough gold, and this system solves a problem by making them unable to buy power... only this IS power but... yeah... hm...

B) He isn't masking the problem if he does that (which he said he didn't) if he does that he is in fact SOLVING it with an semi-formal stealth double secret Wealth By Level system.

Then PL is arguing with himself because I've never made the claim that I've already decoupled wealth from anything.

No you just MASSIVELY implied it in your second post about your awesome non-wealth system and your many enthusiastic Bob The Greats.

I'm saying if you decouple wealth from being the defacto route to power there are enough things to do with wealth that will make a significant amount of players care about it. I'm the kind of person who does not like the tie in between wealth and power so I'm all for making wealth a background thing.

See, now stuff like that is why I really want you to CLARIFY and give DETAILS about this spectacular wealth system and PRECISELY how you claim I am strawmanning you. Because you have said VERY little on this thread about it, but what you HAVE said includes sufficiently bat shit quotes that I can easily do the above. I like contradicting people with short memories using their own words. But I ALSO like investigating and talking about wealth systems and so far yours is made of nonsense, false assumptions, bare faced denials, a couple of gibberish motherhood statements, appeals to Magical Tea Party, and accusations of strawmanning.

IF in the face of my criticisms you think your "system" does anything remotely good, just give us more details. If the details aren't CRAZY they can only strengthen your case.

In the mean time you slip up with off hand hints of total insanity like...

if there is a way to screw over wealth by level people WILL do it.

You can get a small army at level one or two in regular DnD if you really wanna put in the effort. Hell hirelings are cheap. I can hire a team of hirelings at first level that would supplement the party so they would do the adventure and I kill them at the end of it, keep the gold and whatever equipment they brought. So what?

Hm... it's EITHER a problem big enough to throw all meaningfully character relevant castles, allies, hirelings, armies, pets, and vehicles into a bottomless pit to avoid because it's unstoppable, or fuck it whatever you don't give a shit and don't want to talk about it here and don't understand why people keep pointing it out to you in your failed system to stop it?

[HalcyonUmbra]

I'm going to go point by point:

1: It is not a result of WBL done poorly. If there is a way to screw over wealth by level people WILL do it. That's the whole point of Greyhawking. To get MORE gold then WBL would let you have so you can jump ahead in effectiveness. If you allow wealth to accrue power then, as I said, people will engineer ways to get more wealth.

It is, though. People will only screw over wealth by level if it's worth it. It really isn't that difficult to construct a system where gathering up every single dropped enemy sword and carting them all back to market simply isn't worth the time and effort invested.

2: If players want gold then put that at the end of the dungeon. I'm not sure how else to approach this point.

My point was, you can't just say "You can put any goal you want at the end of a dungeon" because the vast majority of the time the players expect there to be gold.

3: Have you ever played in a game where wealth didn't accrue you a mechanical advantage over fighting dragons? Whenever people talk about how much gold they managed to get in DnD it leads to talking about what magic items they bought with it. If you want people to not get gold just to get power then you need gold to do something else. As long as your gold resource is tied to your decadence, kingdom, vehicle, and power boosts all at the same time people will almost always go for the last one and just steal, kill, swindle, or expect to be given the rest. If you want people to buy the first three you take power boost out of that resource.

Or, you can let your decadence, kingdom, and vehicle also provide power boosts. As long as these things are balanced, of course, then people will choose between the Flaming Sword and the Golden Chariot. Again, your problem isn't with Wealth = Power. It's with 3e's bad implementation of Wealth = Power.

4: Then PL is arguing with himself because I've never made the claim that I've already decoupled wealth from anything. My claim was that armies, in the games most people play in, are background fluff instead of what most games tend to be focused on. The game fundamentally changes if the focus is turned on what army you have instead of the individual abilities of the characters. At that point you're playing a war game. And I have no qualms with that but when I read about and play in actual games very few instances came up where the game concentrated more on the army then the PC's own actions.

I've also never claimed that I only give high level characters enough gold to create an army. The problems having an army presents are not problems I've thus far intended to take on. In fact I said here:

An army is nice if you've stopped playing the adventure game and started playing the kingdom game, but most people will stick to the adventuring.

And I stand by that statement. As long as this assumption remains viable for most players as well as GMs I find armies to be a non-factor when it comes to adventuring. People simply do not play the "army" game in most cases when it comes to D&D.

As PL says in his post, you may not have explicitly stated it, but you implied it incredibly heavily. And those are basically the same thing in a debate. Clarity of intent is incredibly important.

And I was under the impression that we were using 'army' as a catchall term for 'backround fluff people buy with gold,' which would apply also to castles and courtesans and loyal pets and all that other stuff. The point still stands. If 'X' can ever have a mechanical effect on gameplay, and you ever allow your characters to buy 'X', then you have a WBL system.

[MGuy]

1: How do you keep people from accruing more gold in any system where gold can be accrued in a reasonably easy fashion. Stealing gold tiles may, in character, be a pain in the ass but all of the "time and effort" you put into it are all glossed over. The only way I could see that you making it so that taking extra time to make gold not worth it is to either make the adventure such that the characters are on a time limit, or make some kind of arbitrary cap on the amount of gold a character can spend/make. If there is another fashion to make getting more gold to get extra unplanned power not worth it then I am all ears.

2: And as I said. If your players "want" gold at the end of the dungeon then put it there. There's nothing in any of my posts that says that you shouldn't or can't put gold at any point of any dungeon/adventure you have them running around in.

3: So your point is you want to push players to buy X thing instead of Y thing? I said in a previous post

Mechanics influence behavior. Whatever you tie to being a better adventurer people will do in order to function in a game because you don't want to see some people out performing you for doing something like having more gold. If they get more powerful by having more gold, other people will want to get more powerful by having more gold and will then engineer ways to get more of it just for that purpose. If you don't want that to happen then simply make gold "optional". If player's don't want to do anything with the gold they get why do you want to force them to?

If the thing you want is to stop players from being gold mongering, greedy, misers then you make gold optional. If you want to force players to buy a fortress instead of a shiny new sword that's just moving the thing players buy around instead of fixing the issue of them needing gold in order to be relevant.

4: Please quote me where I implied that "I already have a system in place where I've successfully decoupled wealth from power". Because I just reread my first three posts under this thread and I can not find it.

You are right with your assumption though. I DO mean it as a catch all term for background fluff people buy with gold though I believe I specifically mentioned castles and whores. Now, again, what do you want me to say about low level armies dealing with low level threats I haven't already said? All I can say is "So what?"There'd be no way; short of straight up preventing players from ever controlling an army or ANY other NPCs for that matter until they get to a certain level; to prevent low level characters from hiring other people to adventure for them. You seriously can do it ALREADY in 3.5. So if PL or you for that matter want to sputter "But I can hire people to adventure FOR my character" I CAN say "Well just make a rule that says you can't" but otherwise I don't know what to tell you.

Example: A first level character typically needs a weapon of some sort. In the Core Pathfinder book a hireling (mercenary) costs 3sp a day. So I CAN get my character completely blinged out OR I can just get "enough" mercenaries to make a dungeon run (fully equipped ones mind you) and after they are done I murder them, take their stuff AND the shit in the dungeon. And this doesn't even really cost me anything because I just need to show the mercenaries I have the gold then take it BACK after I stab them in the back.

That is an issue I HAVE AT NO POINT attempted to contest. Its definitely an issue but it is an issue I'm sidestepping because it doesn't happen most of the time. No reasonable group/GM is gonna let that kind of fucking around slide. I even mentioned I specifically am referring to power in this fashion.

Power as in things that allow the PCs to continue being PCs. Abilities, levels, skills, the shit a given PC uses on an adventure. I don't mean power as in the PCs ability to have someone else do shit for'em.

If PCs are going around having OTHER people adventure FOR them then you have a different issue. One that I have explicitly stated I am not covering.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Idea (probably bad, but functional) on how to make sure people can't get too much or too little wealth for a wealth-by-level system: make level change to fit the new state of affairs.

[Avoraciopoctules]

Idea (probably bad, but functional) on how to make sure people can't get too much or too little wealth for a wealth-by-level system: make level change to fit the new state of affairs.

Earlier versions of D&D had XP linearly connected to GP. So you were encouraged to avoid fights and pick up shiny gold if you wanted to advance.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

If you have a problem with PCs stealing floor tiles or taking time off to wait tables, then you should make it clear to them that they are neglecting opportunities that could be much more lucrative. Then have a few adventuring sites that someone else got to first.

Perhaps establish one or more rival groups that will snatch at opportunities the PCs don't take soon enough.

[HalcyonUmbra]

1: How do you keep people from accruing more gold in any system where gold can be accrued in a reasonably easy fashion. Stealing gold tiles may, in character, be a pain in the ass but all of the "time and effort" you put into it are all glossed over. The only way I could see that you making it so that taking extra time to make gold not worth it is to either make the adventure such that the characters are on a time limit, or make some kind of arbitrary cap on the amount of gold a character can spend/make. If there is another fashion to make getting more gold to get extra unplanned power not worth it then I am all ears.

I'm not sure what game you're playing where the time and effort of hauling two hundred swords or a four ton golden statue are glossed over. Even with less ridiculous loots, you just need to limit the player's access to extra-dimensional storage. If the players buy a donkey and a cart, make them deal with that. Do they leave it outside the dungeon and risk it being stolen? Do they try to take it into the dungeon with them? Greyhawking is only "easy" if for some reason you let it be

2: And as I said. If your players "want" gold at the end of the dungeon then put it there. There's nothing in any of my posts that says that you shouldn't or can't put gold at any point of any dungeon/adventure you have them running around in.

So....I guess we agree, then? I'm actually not sure why we're debating this point. Players want gold.

3: So your point is you want to push players to buy X thing instead of Y thing? I said in a previous post

Mechanics influence behavior. Whatever you tie to being a better adventurer people will do in order to function in a game because you don't want to see some people out performing you for doing something like having more gold. If they get more powerful by having more gold, other people will want to get more powerful by having more gold and will then engineer ways to get more of it just for that purpose. If you don't want that to happen then simply make gold "optional". If player's don't want to do anything with the gold they get why do you want to force them to?

If the thing you want is to stop players from being gold mongering, greedy, misers then you make gold optional. If you want to force players to buy a fortress instead of a shiny new sword that's just moving the thing players buy around instead of fixing the issue of them needing gold in order to be relevant.

We both agree that if players have to choose between spending gold on a mechanical ability and spending gold on a fluff ability, they'll pick the mechanical ability every single time. There are two ways to solve this. Either make gold only buy fluff stuff, or make gold only buy mechanical stuff. You're opposed to the second option because you think that WBL is inherently unworkable. But if, for the sake of argument, WBL was workable, which option would you rather have? A mechanical ability can also have fluff attached, whereas a fluff ability cannot have mechanical stuff.

And I don't know where you're getting "If player's don't want to do anything with the gold they get." That's exactly what this thread is about! Players do want to do stuff with the gold the get. We're discussing how to make that "stuff" as rewarding as possible.

And now I remember why we were arguing about point 2.

If you don't want that to happen then simply make gold "optional".

You can't make gold optional. Players want gold!

4: Please quote me where I implied that "I already have a system in place where I've successfully decoupled wealth from power". Because I just reread my first three posts under this thread and I can not find it.

Which is why I said he was strawmanning. He's attempting to disprove that you have successfully decoupled wealth from power. I'm saying that even wanting to do so is a bad idea.

---

Idea (probably bad, but functional) on how to make sure people can't get too much or too little wealth for a wealth-by-level system: make level change to fit the new state of affairs.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Do you mean make a new leveling system built around 3e's broken WBL?

And regardless, I think the concept of "too much or too little wealth" is an bad one. Any WBL system that only works if the players have a precise amount of money is going to break. You need to build a system that assumes the players might have way too much or way too little gold than is "appropriate." The system I suggested before (probably?) works like this. Avoraciopoctules statement of "you can't make your character directly more powerful with normal wealth past a certain degree of ridiculousness" is a good one, too. If there's a hard limit on how powerful gold can make you, then you can mitigate the damage of going off WBL. Then you can let characters go past this limit by introducing a higher tier economy.

[MGuy]

1: It is glossed over the same way the three day trek to the tower or the month of sea travel is glossed over. You don't sit at the table having to declare each and every gold tablet you crowbar off the wall. You definitely don't go over each and every trip back and forth behind the half buried dungeon and the place where you unload your items. You don't cover the 100 years an elf player takes off to generate wealth with their profession skill. There are periods of time you gloss over because to cover it would not only be boring but insanely so.

Now if you're specifically limiting how much access to extra dimensional spaces a player has access to then that is a start at limiting the amount of "extra" wealth a character can accrue. Now how do you keep a player from "stealing", "charming", and stabbing (lower level rich folk) their way to a fortune? What happens to players who want to play the vow of poverty type? What about the ones who want to play the generous giver type?

2: You're the one who brought up this point. I'm just as confused, and still am confused, as to why you think this is an issue.

3: The OP suggests that if all you can do is buy hookers and ale with it players won't care about having gold. I'm saying they will and the shit they do with it won't even be a problem. If they otherwise get it but STILL don't care about it why is that an issue? Why do I care if someone doesn't want gold? Why do I want to force them to want it? If you need a character to be motivated to do something, you don't want them to concentrate on buying another +2 with the gold, then reduce golds ability to acquire that +2 and find another appropriate carrot and place it in front of their face and they'll follow it.

Meanwhile you're going on some logic circle I can't follow. You're saying people "expect gold" I say, ok give it to them. Then you spout that if the gold isn't buying them a+2 they won't want it. I respond with "OK give them something they DO want. Then you say "People WANT gold to get a +2". I say "just put the +2 at the end of the dungeon." You then go back to the start and say "People WANT gold".

I'm telling you that you can give them both. For some reason this is not an acceptable answer for you and I'm not sure what other answer you want.

4: Right. Which I said he was doing. And I said if he wants to argue with a point he invented I will let him. Why is this being contested?