MTP, Original Content

[Username17]

Basically, PhoneLobster is unironically suggesting the 4e model where you can't rob peddlers and when you stab grizzly bears, gold pops out. This is an unavoidable conclusion of attempting to hard code wealth by level. Actions and adventures which by all rights and logic should give much more than the amount of wealth the Kremlin's actuary tables say you should have don't do so, and actions and adventures that by all rights and logic should give you nothing (or at least: less than the table) must equally have money fall on you for no reason.

It's stupid. It's insulting. And it is completely predictable as soon as you try to enforce Wealth By Level. Because WBL is unenforceable without kicking common sense and an interactive world to the floor, pulling down your pants, and leaving a steaming gift of ass pudding on their writhing bodies.

WBL is totally inconsistent with a world that makes any sense, even internally. And PhoneLobster is explicitly OK with that.

-Username17

[Fuchs]

When such social tasks come up, we usually solve it by letting dice rolls decide, picking whatever skill seems most appropriate, as well as any DC, by gut-feeling mostly. A random die roll decides, if it matters, if a guard is especially bored or sharp, or a rich guy a greedy or a generous one, for example.

So, if a con man would want to swindle a rich guy out of a small sum, he could find a good target with gather information, or simply pick one at random.

[Omegonthesane]

Basically, PhoneLobster is unironically suggesting the 4e model where you can't rob peddlers and when you stab grizzly bears, gold pops out. This is an unavoidable conclusion of attempting to hard code wealth by level. Actions and adventures which by all rights and logic should give much more than the amount of wealth the Kremlin's actuary tables say you should have don't do so, and actions and adventures that by all rights and logic should give you nothing (or at least: less than the table) must equally have money fall on you for no reason.

It's stupid. It's insulting. And it is completely predictable as soon as you try to enforce Wealth By Level. Because WBL is unenforceable without kicking common sense and an interactive world to the floor, pulling down your pants, and leaving a steaming gift of ass pudding on their writhing bodies.

WBL is totally inconsistent with a world that makes any sense, even internally. And PhoneLobster is explicitly OK with that.

-Username17

To what degree, though? PL cited your own Tome work as a system that will eventually return to WBL due to an emergent process of people who get disproportionately wealthy getting pimp-slapped and "taxed" by those high enough level to do so.

If half of what I've seen of you on this forum and elsewhere is to be believed, you'll be able to rise to the following challenges:

a) An example of an encounter which should have rewards far in excess of the threat, which nonetheless could plausibly have not been done and looted before the PCs get there, which is likely to be used in play.

and

b) An example of an encounter which should give you far less than the threat is worth, which the PCs nonetheless care to do, which is likely to be used in play.

[Username17]

a) An example of an encounter which should have rewards far in excess of the threat, which nonetheless could plausibly have not been done and looted before the PCs get there, which is likely to be used in play.

and

b) An example of an encounter which should give you far less than the threat is worth, which the PCs nonetheless care to do, which is likely to be used in play.

b) is so amazingly trivial that it defies ready analysis. Answer: you fight a roving Specter. Not only does it not have any treasure (being as it is incorporeal and thus cannot have any treasure), it doesn't even leave a body behind. It's an encounter, it happens, and if it isn't "in its lair", you get literally nothing for having killed it. Zero gp. Nada. Zilch.

a) is easy enough, because every gem gets mined at some point. And like in the real world, diamonds are not mined by powerful adventurers and dragons, they are mined by one armed children. And when that child finds their diamond, they want to trade it for food and clean water and nights that their family members don't get pimped out and stuff. They want to do this as fast as possible, because even low level adventurers can and very well might smack them around and take the diamond without giving it back.

See, whatever you think the rate of wealth transfer from the weak to the powerful actually is, there's still a point in time when the wealth is in the hands of the powerless. And powerful people can go take it at that point. Even if your world building goes to ridiculous extents like having the city guards be griffin riding Fire Knights and the merchants and barons of the world all be 12th level Wizards, the fact is that there is still a point in time when each diamond is in the hand of a one armed child, and beating that kid up or even just trading him a sack of rice for it constitutes an "adventure" whose payment and challenge are wildly wildly out of sync.

-Username17

[mean_liar]

It's a shame we've devolved the thread into this. Unfortunately, I have little to add other than what I see as an encapsulation:

1. MTP is, so far as I anyone seems to be saying, shorthand for "imagination".

2. Having common expectations set by the underlying system on the limits of the exercise of that imagination is good.

3. How ubiquitous those expectations are is a personal preference.

4. Exercising your imagination for the benefit of adding verisimilitude to the game is good.


None of this should be ground-breaking, but, well... it IS the Den.

...[Wealth By Level] is unenforceable without kicking common sense and an interactive world to the floor, pulling down your pants, and leaving a steaming gift of ass pudding on their writhing bodies.

WBL is totally inconsistent with a world that makes any sense, even internally.

WBL's problem in DnD3e is almost entirely a function of the connection it creates between currency and magical items. WBL as a benchmark of expectations of individual PC magical wealth is useful, and breaking that connection between items and gold is the easiest way to maintain its utility as well as remove a large amount of hand-wringing about the effect of gold on the game.

[Omegonthesane]

pred preh

If all you're saying is that it is impossible for WBL to be the literal truth at all possible points in time, I concede 100%. Get me another barrel, this one's split.

Can someone link to the mechanics that are apparently unsalvageable because WBL can't be a strict law of reality rather than a stable (not even necessarily asymptotically stable) steady state of economic distribution?

WBL's problem in DnD3e is almost entirely a function of the connection it creates between currency and magical items. WBL as a benchmark of expectations of individual PC magical wealth is useful, and breaking that connection between items and gold is the easiest way to maintain its utility as well as remove a large amount of hand-wringing about the effect of gold on the game.

If gold is valued at all in-universe, there is likely to be an exchange rate at which magic items can be exchanged for gold, and thus vice versa.

[PoliteNewb]

WBL's problem in DnD3e is almost entirely a function of the connection it creates between currency and magical items. WBL as a benchmark of expectations of individual PC magical wealth is useful, and breaking that connection between items and gold is the easiest way to maintain its utility as well as remove a large amount of hand-wringing about the effect of gold on the game.

If gold is valued at all in-universe, there is likely to be an exchange rate at which magic items can be exchanged for gold, and thus vice versa.

Why? Certainly life is valued in the real world...what's the current exchange rate for a human life?

I think mean liar is correct about needing to decouple gold from magic items, but he does not state the full problem...this also means decoupling item creation in all ways from gold, yet still providing some limiting factor on item creation. AD&D did this by making it cost actual years of your life and/or irretrievable points of your Con, and/or by requiring you to gather ingredients like hummingbird breath and the virginity of elvish maidens...basically, by introducing large amounts of MTP into the item creation process.

In order to work, magic needs to be an intangible. If you can create magic items for nothing but an investment of time and money, a price tag will be put on them, and your game becomes btb 3E or 4E.

And even if you DO largely decouple magic items and gold, this does not mean that magic items will never be bought or sold...it just means that there will be no fixed exchange rate for them. Sometimes you can buy an item for 5000 gp, and sometimes you cannot buy one for love or money. It's entirely MTP.

[virgil]

Why? Certainly life is valued in the real world...what's the current exchange rate for a human life?

I believe they value human life at about $129k/year. I've heard of international organizations placing an entire human's value at $3 million, but I can't remember where I heard that.

[mean_liar]

I think mean liar is correct about needing to decouple gold from magic items, but he does not state the full problem...this also means decoupling item creation in all ways from gold, yet still providing some limiting factor on item creation.

Just to finish the thought, when I run DnD3 I utilize the Rokugan d20 system of WBL, which is that the spirits within your personal accoutrement gain some sentience as you do great deeds (ie., gain XP): your WBL is the value of your personal magical items. Go up in level, more items spontaneously awaken/upgrade to grant you your expected WBL amount. The only creatable magic items are scrolls.

Rokugan d20 goes on to say that the items are tied to your deeds and legend and that you can't sell them and expect them to retain their power - they exist only so long as they're yours - and that doing so is dishonorable anyway. While the latter point is irrelevant and I never use it, the former is very much apropos. I put some wiggle room in there to allow short-term swapping around of gear, but kept the basic premise.

You can sell your services, but you can't really buy and sell magic items... nor craft them.

[K]

1. MTP is, so far as I anyone seems to be saying, shorthand for "imagination".

MTP is just arbitrary resolution of actions and effects.

It's stands in direct opposition to player agency. When you don't know how illusions work because each DM individually decides how the effects are resolved, that's MTP. When you can't make any informed combat decisions about fighting an unknown monster because there are no real design guidelines, it's because that monster was created with MTP. When raising an army is something that you can or can't do at the whims of the DM, it's because that function was left to MTP.

There is plenty of room for imagination in RP. Choosing red hair for your character because your character is a literal red-headed stepchild who was cast out of his tribe is you using your imagination and RPing your choices.

But yes, there are limits. Even improv acting exercises place hard limits on the imagination because you can't have a narrative where one person is playing that you are a couple having a fight in a coffee shop and the other guy is pretending to you are both space cops on a barren alien moon with no coffee shops. That's the price of being coherent.

The price you pay for having a game is even higher. You agree that while playing a game with other people, you will let the narrative be guided by the results of other people's actions, or dice, and of the results of your own actions being filtered through an objective rules system.

The worst RPG moments are always the MTP ones. When the Archmage shows up and beats the dragon for you, that's bad MTP. When the DM shuts down to your plan to convince the Duke to send food aid to the starving peasants because the social mini-game is MTP and he won't let you even try, then that's bad MTP. When you finish an adventure and are wounded and expended, but the DM tosses some more monsters at you unrelated to the plot because he doesn't feel like you earned the victory, that's where MTP bones the shit out you because it wastes time and is divorced from a narrative.

There are places where MTP is fine, such as rare events or things that don't need a rule. When the PCs destroy a dam, it's perfectly fine for the DM to MTP that it takes an hour for the cave complex to fill up with water. That's a once-in-a-DM's-career kind of decision and having rules for that would be dumb.

[PhoneLobster]

Whether you feel the PCs should logically give a shit or not is not relevant - if a result cannot be generated by the system, then the PCs cannot induce it without first orally pleasuring the MC.

Actually, no, that isn't how it works. The arbitrary set of social actions/encounters not managed by my mechanics is not actually determined by me, but is determined by conflict between players. Everyone can MTP their ass off with the actions of the characters they control as a Player or GM, and if they want to then they can be Scrooge before the Xmas family special OR Scrooge AFTER the Xmas family special.

The system kicks in when another player says "screw it I want a say in the motivations and actions of YOUR character". It's really a very elegant, very clean cut and in practice highly successful cut off point for dividing the MTP section from the productive and useful game mechanical section.

It is also a cut of Frank has repeatedly outright refused to even admit is a key component of how my system even works.

[Kaelik]

Whether you feel the PCs should logically give a shit or not is not relevant - if a result cannot be generated by the system, then the PCs cannot induce it without first orally pleasuring the MC.

Actually, no, that isn't how it works. The arbitrary set of social actions/encounters not managed by my mechanics is not actually determined by me, but is determined by conflict between players. Everyone can MTP their ass off with the actions of the characters they control as a Player or GM, and if they want to then they can be Scrooge before the Xmas family special OR Scrooge AFTER the Xmas family special.

The system kicks in when another player says "screw it I want a say in the motivations and actions of YOUR character". It's really a very elegant, very clean cut and in practice highly successful cut off point for dividing the MTP section from the productive and useful game mechanical section.

It is also a cut of Frank has repeatedly outright refused to even admit is a key component of how my system even works.

Probably because that doesn't do what you said it does. You told us your system doesn't activate on amounts of money less than a level appropriate amount, but nothing about only activating in player/player even slightly does that.

Further, that is obviously a total bullshit lie, because asking the King for his Kingdom at level 1 clearly doesn't involve any player conflict, so you are literally saying that you MTP everything ever expect interparty conflict.

[Saxony]

Phonelobster, perhaps Frank's arguments for his recurring conclusion that "Phonelobster's game sucks" boils down to "I'm an ass hole and I need to shit in someone's cheerios".

Maybe your game sucks, too, I don't know. But I'm getting the shit-in-cheerios vibe.

[Mask_De_H]

Saxony, if we're getting that reductionist then every argument on the Den boils down to "I'm an asshole and I need to shit in somebody's Cheerios."

[Mistborn]

I think mean liar is correct about needing to decouple gold from magic items, but he does not state the full problem...this also means decoupling item creation in all ways from gold, yet still providing some limiting factor on item creation.

I've been thinking about this since the crafting thread.

Now having monsters drop regents that are worth Xgp towards the cost of your +5 bigsword of compensating is possibly worth considering. It's a marginal step up from magemarts or crafting just going piles of gold -> ???? -> cool stuff.

I floated this idea but no one realy responed because it was samwiched in between high handed dismissals of everyone elses points. But I've been still mulling that concept over. What you need is to have the crafting minigame for magic items work on a limited set of regenets that arn't exchangeable with gold (or in Tome terms are part of the wish economy). These regents can the be assigned varrious places they are foud or monsters corpses the drop from. So to craft the Sword of Fire and Ice you need 10 drops of Liquid Mana, 5 motes of Essence of the Pure Flame, one Heart of Winter and one Astral Diamond. None of those thing can be bought or sold for GP with any reliability but you can find them in special locations get them of monsters or get them as quest rewards.

[Grek]

Nobody commented on it because it is retarded and video-gamey.

[PhoneLobster]

Probably because that doesn't do what you said it does.

Players can volunteer to give up meaningful wealth if they want to of their own choice. I cannot and will not stop that. And my system actually accounts for that by means of definitively not interfering in any voluntary actions by characters.

However if you want to TAKE meaningful wealth, well, weak characters have weak wealth and all the strong wealth is on strong characters. That DOES definitively do what I said, it's just you can't tell your ass from your face and mistook the "system kicks in on conflict" as the means by which that happens, rather than the "character wealth is level appropriate, character social defence is level appropriate". Well I say that, it's a points based system, in theory some sucker could build a high level character with pretty bad social defenses, but they're going out of their way to do so and it would make them a weakling in MANY respects within the system if they did so.

Further, that is obviously a total bullshit lie, because asking the King for his Kingdom at level 1 clearly doesn't involve any player conflict, so you are literally saying that you MTP everything ever expect interparty conflict.

The GM is a player. I even included mention of the GM. Really. Pull your head out your ass.

[Saxony]

Saxony, if we're getting that reductionist then every argument on the Den boils down to "I'm an asshole and I need to shit in somebody's Cheerios."

This is more than usual.

[codeGlaze]

I honestly think that social power should be largely divorced from personal power. Obviously there are some amounts of overlap or synergy, but I think thats more of an accountable exception. I mean think of Lex Luthor, super rich and technically a challenge to superman.... but no where near Supermam's power level in actuality.

[Aryxbez]

So to craft the Sword of Fire and Ice you need 10 drops of Liquid Mana, 5 motes of Essence of the Pure Flame, one Heart of Winter and one Astral Diamond. None of those thing can be bought or sold for GP with any reliability but you can find them in special locations get them of monsters or get them as quest rewards.

While conceptually, it is cool to murder monsters, and use Medusa's head to stone people for maybe an adventure/few encounters, or Blue Mage a Mind Blast from a Flayer. The idea of collecting X ingredients for things, would get tedious fast, and is one thing people can dislike from MMO's. Given in an RPG, eventually just be having people "farming" these needed Reagents, and 3.5 has this kind of Diablo-ism that Frank's and K's TOME series pointed out, and it's definitely not a good thing for the game (strongly in part why XP costs for spells/items got removed).

As for Grek calling something "video-gamey", I find that an irrelevant and weak reason to condemn an idea. HP is an abstract concept used in video games, and arguably is "video-gamey" should HP all of a sudden not be used? (Rhetorical)

[Hicks]

Bad example: table top RPGs and war games were doing HP before video games existed. Video games were and continue to be heavily influenced by past RPGs and war games.

Your question is like saying that diagonal bishop movement in computer chess is too "video gamey", should bishops no longer move diagonally on a physical chess set?

[Kaelik]

The GM is a player. I even included mention of the GM. Really. Pull your head out your ass.

So your rules apply every single time the players ever try to get anything from anyone, and you are still full of shit.

When players ask the one armed child for a his single copper piece, and then do the same for every other one armed child they find, one of two things happen:

1) They get wealth in excess of the challenge, and you are full of shit. Because you the GM don't activate your MTP decision to force social combat.

2) Your decide with MTP that your stupid rules kick in on amounts of money less that players care about, and you are full of shit.

So in conclusion, you defense that it totally isn't MTP when the rules apply is full of shit, because you use MTP to decide whether the PCs have to engage in random social combat.

[nockermensch]

I think mean liar is correct about needing to decouple gold from magic items, but he does not state the full problem...this also means decoupling item creation in all ways from gold, yet still providing some limiting factor on item creation.

I've been thinking about this since the crafting thread.

Now having monsters drop regents that are worth Xgp towards the cost of your +5 bigsword of compensating is possibly worth considering. It's a marginal step up from magemarts or crafting just going piles of gold -> ???? -> cool stuff.

I floated this idea but no one realy responed because it was samwiched in between high handed dismissals of everyone elses points. But I've been still mulling that concept over. What you need is to have the crafting minigame for magic items work on a limited set of regenets that arn't exchangeable with gold (or in Tome terms are part of the wish economy). These regents can the be assigned varrious places they are foud or monsters corpses the drop from. So to craft the Sword of Fire and Ice you need 10 drops of Liquid Mana, 5 motes of Essence of the Pure Flame, one Heart of Winter and one Astral Diamond. None of those thing can be bought or sold for GP with any reliability but you can find them in special locations get them of monsters or get them as quest rewards.

Just make sure this comes after the party gets the Horadric Cube, because it's a bitch to do inventory juggle between potions, spare weapons, gems AND components.

The way this discussion has been going makes me think instead on some kind of adventure generator: If you want to craft a bullshit +5 item, the rule could be that you have to do a bullshit +5 sidequest. Then it follows a way to madlibprocedurally generate a sidequest (which is different from a "quest" because takes less time and gives less rewards), flavoring it with the current campaign circumstances.

It's still videogamey, but since the alternatives have been decried as damn dirty MTP in this thread, maybe this one is more acceptable.

[OgreBattle]

how do pointbuy systems where wealth is something that's part of character creation deal with "We convince the king to give us lots of money"

[Username17]

how do pointbuy systems where wealth is something that's part of character creation deal with "We convince the king to give us lots of money"

Several ways. In Shadowrun, you get a lot of money and then you have a lot of build points worth of money. In Champions, the next issue you don't have any extra money anymore and you either explain that or don't because it's comic book logic. In Fantasy Craft, you lose your magic shield for no reason because the game is equal parts gamist and fucktarded.

-Username17