The Adventurer's Almanac wrote:How does this tie into not doing accounting?
Well technically accounting still exists. But if you eliminate regular income and regular expenditure you are exclusively tracking a balance and since the fantasy tax man won't audit you then you don't need to record and keep your one off expenses and windfalls.
Basically it cuts you down to player interactions like "Player 1: Hey other players can we afford to buy a garage I can keep a cool monster truck in? Lets look at one single number and see" and eliminates interactions like "GM: OK players now refer to your records and apply one strategic turn of income and expenditure resolution to all resource and currency types, don't forget to add the new monster truck garage upkeep!"
It's way less stuff to write down, it's way less stuff to dig through sheets to refer back to.
If the base game doesn't have a wealth/power dilemma, then what's the issue in your Bad Dragon factory not granting you extra sorcerer powers? Don't get me wrong, I enjoy me some power gaming, but I'm not sure if equipment is the best way to pursue that... but I haven't really done much on equipment yet, so... I dunno!
Well to start with if wealth does nothing bad dragon factories... do nothing.
But aside from that. I don't think it's much of an assumption that most RPGs of any significant complexity have some sort of wealth=power dynamic. And ones which sorta try to crimp it and half ass it usually just result in weird exploits and breakages.
Also however I think material wealth, items absolutely SHOULD matter, a lot. A fantasy RPG where items genuinely didn't matter whatsoever is... fairly esoteric. Almost any RPG where items were minimised to the point of being basically free and achieving utterly trivial effects isn't super satisfying.
While an RPG where a new rocket tank or an awesome new extendo spear DO things, things you care about, that's not just fairly normal, it's normal because it's cool, it's the thing we are basically all aiming to represent. And you might try and argue that your mithril pajamas and your sword of it's totally on fire are somehow disconnected from spare change coins... but then you aren't arguing about wealth=power, you are negotiating over which currency applies to the equation.
Basically the cool kids choice on the place of items in games is "important place" and that's wealth that is power right there.
Just do me a favor and start ranting about this. I don't really have much issue with PCs having money, but I'm not so certain that wealth should give you the same kind of character advancement as XP.
What's the difference between XP and Money?
You hit a dragon and XP and Coins fall out (or items worth coins). You then exchange XP for character advancement. And then you exchange coins for character advancement. Is there all that compelling an argument to treat them dramatically differently?
Hell the more iterations of this I try the more I wonder... is XP actually the bad one?
So each iteration one of things I struggle with is, OK there's more than one character currency, so... which options cost what?
For some context I've been running this as a points based system.
OK so your sword and your wizard dress cost money.
Your "Skills" are probably individually of equivalent mechanical value, but maybe perform different mechanical roles, they probably cost XP.
At least. In early iterations.
But even then. Bob is a lizard man. His skin is armor. What does lizard man skin armour cost?
Overwhelmingly in my experience almost every game I have seen says "oh that's part of Bob. SO IT COSTS XP". Or, mechanically massively worse "It costs Bobs 'Race' selection".
Oh wow I could go on about the never ending mess that is 'Race' selection and it's game mechanical implications. Short story it is the worst bit of "Level, Class, Race", it's functionally IMPOSSIBLE for it to balance more than an incredibly narrow band of so called options and it makes your game Racist, not in like a real world offensive way, not in a "orcs are a metaphor for Queenslanders" way, but in an actual "The game will mechanically punish a large minority of player characters" way.
Anyway. Points based systems help get around the pitfalls of 'Race' selection. But buying aspects of your character that function like items... with currency normally reserved for a set of dramatically different options like skills... hm... yeah there can be complications.
But if you price things by function then lizard man skin is an armour item, cat girl claws are a weapon item, and weapons and armour cost wealth currency, not XP. At that point you've solved a lot of problems. Everyone has the same budget for the options that fill the same functional roles.
You just need an excuse for Bob's lizardy skin to cost money and that isn't hard I mean
it has a resale value just say that dietary requirements to properly grow it probably also cost him wealth equivalent value and call it a damn day.
Also for starting characters players will conceptually accept starting wealth disparities more easily than starting XP disparities. They know that if they are a soft toothless human and everyone starts naked in a ship wreck so that Bob the Lizard technically has armour when you don't and Tina the Cat Girl technically has a weapon when you don't... It's just a matter of picking up an item or two and the disparity will be rapidly cured. There is an agency and sense of immediate availability that does not exist with XP, however ultimately false.
It also helped with race bullshit because it helped with one of the main divides you need in character background based options. If its something physical like cat girl claws its wealth based. If it is CULTURAL like elf sword skills, it's XP. And then you get the cat girl who grew up in elf town and the solution to what is an inscrutable riddle for level/class/race systems god damn writes itself.
And isn't it great when everything is neat and tidy and fits into clean categories and
OH NO!
What about Gary the fire breathing salamander man? I mean. He has a breath weapon. WTF is a breath weapon? What does a breath cost I mean yeah OK it could be an attack so maybe it's a item like cat girl claws or a long bow. But. Maybe it's conceptually and practically more like a fire ball Spell and Spells are basically Skills and cost XP right?
[A few iterations pass floundering around this...]
So then that leads to wait... what are Spells? What should Spells cost?
I mean. The whole D&D wizard thing with the buying and finding scrolls. That... that works. That REALLY damned works. It could actually work a great deal better with some changes. But the basic concept of "the fighter finds and buys swords and armour for attacks and defenses" and "the wizard finds and buys spells for attacks and defenses" and "the fighter/wizard just picks and chooses"... that could really work.
And if spells were functionally items, and I mean allot of them fill the same roles... they cost wealth right? And that really helps solving the problem of what Gary the salamanders breath weapon should cost right?
So here you are like 4 rule set iterations or so in and more and more things are costing money and less and less things are costing XP.
And now you ask the question... what do skills really cost? how do you want to manage their availability? I mean. Wouldn't it be cool to find a Skill in a lost Skill Tome. Like a martial arts manual from one of those movies or comics. Or you know...
... like a Spell.
No no, I mean. You can just learn skills from I don't know teachers they don't have to write it down... but then... maybe that's also like Spells.
Damnit, Ok, so wait what if skills are still special, I mean you can just teach youself your own skill maybe? But... I mean the Wizard can maybe teach himself his own Spell... the Cat Girl grew her own weapons herself... and even the Warrior can make his own sword.
But skills take TIME to learn. Maybe. Oh nuts. Spells take time to learn. Cat Girl claws take time to grow. Swords take time to make.
Well fine then. You can just FIND a sword, or a Spell. You could even I don't know find a potion of cat girl claw growing (now extra conveniently priced at the exact same cost as cat girl claws). But you can't find a skill... unless you find a teacher, inspiration, or a skill book...
Oh nuts. Do Skills cost money now?
Is XP redundant?
OK well how have I been handling XP during these iterations?
Oh dear. Well you see. XP charts and fixed formal XP rewards are a) hard and b) kinda bullshit. So I did the very clearly sensible thing and just decided XP is an abstract currency you sometimes just reward players with.
"Well that was a big fight have an XP each, go buy a... probably shrinking pool of options..."
And yeah "oops" looks like XP is already just... more relatively arbitrary GM awarded loot.
And sure having different types of loot and currency, even if they function very much the same can be used to break up your options thematically or mechanically. I COULD still keep a separation.
But what is actually happening with my recent iterations... XP is is DYING man. It's on god damn life support. It might already be gone and it's just a lingering ghost. My current work in progress... XP isn't a currency the closest thing is maybe just some tags relating to how/where certain options are obtained and honestly that's pretty much just a rough draft of something I might abandon any second.
I've gone on a long journey that is increasingly looking like a trip to a unified character advancement currency and that currency is looking a lot more like money and a lot less like XP.
When you think about it. Is it a surprise that a game centered largely around a fight/loot/advance loop would end up there?
but don't you worry about having too many minigames to juggle around, or do I just lack faith in my players?
I worry about players juggling a single main game. My "minigame" solution is fairly straightforward for everything. Everything gets integrated to the main game as much as humanly possible. Everything in every game component attempts to eliminate all complexity that isn't immediately and highly rewarding.
And the lengths I've gone to accross the entire system to prune complexity are extreme. They've been wildly rewarding in and of themselves much less for the complexity they free up for more rewarding mechanics but with TTRPG design being an environment where people actively don't believe a 1d20+x vs y isn't objectively superior to every variation of a handful of five different kinds of dice in a variable target dice pool with poker rules for pairs and straights, 4s on d20s are wild and exploding d6s... Lets just say "what if we kept HP/Damage numbers under 10" is not a popular position to take.
My game has a main combat game. And a constantly evolving character advancement system that usually involves cool houses which are also where a lot of fights happen.
Does it do stealth? Social stuff? You know the usual "minigames"? I rolled those bastards into the combat game to as near 100% as I could. Who the hell thought stealth even COULD function as some sort of separated minigame to achieve what it needs to? Same goes for social stuff even if it's less obvious and involves more heated internet arguments.
If it doesn't happen IN combat time then it has to be about preparing for it by being about building characters and maps FOR combat time. The end final destination. The rest is and should be the domain of fairy tea party and rolls you pull out of your ass. You can call some segment of combat related rules a minigame but I feel the more you make a system where the word "minigame" is an inaccurate representation, the better.
Maybe it would be best to not think of it as a minigame and instead aim for "downtime" or "between combat" rules.