Property Rules
Posted: Fri Jul 10, 2020 8:41 pm
The general idea of this is similar to Frank's Domain Rules thread, but on a far smaller scale. I figured that made it distinct enough to discuss as its own topic.
"What's the point of this?", I can hear you ask. Simple: As PCs grow in personal power, wealth, experience, and (most importantly) confidence about their place in the world, some of them will want to assert themselves and exert greater control over the GM's precious campaign setting. What we want (is open to discussion) is for players to be able to use their greater resources and character abilities to have measurable effects on the world without making GMs wet themselves in fear, but not on the same level as owning entire countries and becoming a miniature warlord.
Obviously I want a Pokemon skin slapped onto this, but I think that the general ideas can be applied to multiple settings as needed if you just tweak the details about what the PCs own, among other things.
Since we have a smaller scale than domain stuff, the first questions that need to be answered are:
"What's the point of this?", I can hear you ask. Simple: As PCs grow in personal power, wealth, experience, and (most importantly) confidence about their place in the world, some of them will want to assert themselves and exert greater control over the GM's precious campaign setting. What we want (is open to discussion) is for players to be able to use their greater resources and character abilities to have measurable effects on the world without making GMs wet themselves in fear, but not on the same level as owning entire countries and becoming a miniature warlord.
Obviously I want a Pokemon skin slapped onto this, but I think that the general ideas can be applied to multiple settings as needed if you just tweak the details about what the PCs own, among other things.
Since we have a smaller scale than domain stuff, the first questions that need to be answered are:
- How many properties should PCs have control over? Personally, I lean towards a smaller number with a more intimate list of customizable options for each property. Owning 5 inns doesn't feel as special as owning 1 inn, you know? However, we're still playing a cooperative RPG, so this leads into the second question...
- Are PCs allowed to individually own property? If one person wants to own an inn and the other wants to run a church, how do we make it so that they aren't all off playing with themselves? At the same time, if 2 PCs really want to own different properties that don't make sense being under the same roof, what do we do? I'm not so sure about this one, since it's not as clear-cut as having an entire country governed by a council. Sure, you could have the PCs all be on a board of directors or something, but for what's essentially supposed to be 'small business' rules, that seems excessive.
- How long is each "turn"? This will dictate how often the PCs have to check in on their property (I'm already getting sick of saying that all the time) to see how it's doing. In a setting with modern communication, this won't mean much to the characters physically, but it still takes table time regardless. Weekly? Biweekly? Monthly? I think weekly or biweekly would be best, but I'm open to discussion.
- How usable is this by NPCs? If a PC rolls up to a bank and robs it, would that have the same mechanical effect as if the PC owned their own bank and had it robbed? I'm not a fan of rules that apply differently to PCs and NPCs, but we don't really need to know all the details of every business in town, either. I think the system should be simple enough that a GM could shit out the important details of a place on the fly and do long-term models as needed, but deep enough for players to actually toy around with it.
- How does this actually interact with my fucking PC, man? Clearly we don't want all of this to be divorced from the main game, which is ostensibly about adventuring or something. At the same time, we don't want people taking their profits and translating that directly into superpowered pants that let rich characters be way better than broke ones. This tells me that it could offer some small measure of personal power, it should largely interact with robust non-combat systems to afford the PC more control over their life and environment.
- How many properties do we even want, anyway? A lot, probably. Because of that, it would be ideal to have a lot of properties with short, but measurable effects. Possibly with a robust customization system on top of that? I'm not too sure. If a PC owns a farm, how much should it matter that they're growing corn instead of tobacco? Magical reagents instead of mundane food? What if they have employees? What if they don't, and the party wants to take all their cash and settle down in a town and play there for the rest of the game?
- What does this look like at the highest levels? If my PC is a superpowered badass who can grab the tapestry of the universe with my bare fists, am I still running a fucking inn like the 2nd level jackass down the road? Can I hire succubus dancers instead of regular ones? Can I leverage my pyromancy abilities into making the best blacksmithery in all the land? Can I make a farm that's so fucking huge that it covers multiple hexes on the overworld map? I think that shit sounds cool and should probably be a part of customization.
- What if a PC doesn't want to do any of this stupid shit? Not every player cares about asserting their character, and that's fine. I don't think we want to punish anyone for deciding to hoard their personal wealth and spend it on ale and whores instead. Should they just have other fun methods of draining their cash without that resulting in a sword with a bigger number on it?