Core Principle: Your Fantasy Economy is Bullshit

[mean_liar]

I thought that's clear. Re-reading it I still think so. Huh.

"Fuck the economy" is the best answer unless the group wants to make the game about caravanning or whatever, in which case it should be a consensus deal and more involved than handwaving.

[hogarth]

I thought that's clear. Re-reading it I still think so. Huh.

"Fuck the economy" is the best answer unless the group wants to make the game about caravanning or whatever, in which case it should be a consensus deal and more involved than handwaving.

I guess I'm the one who's being unclear.

My point is that, in the case where the group isn't interested in playing Capitalists and Caravans, answer #2 ("you can't because of XYZ") is no better than answer #3 ("you can but it will be a lengthy process because of XYZ") -- they both amount to "we won't do it". So in what case is answer #2 distinctly superior?

[Grek]

@Frank:

Do you take issue with the idea of fiat currency that just happens to be lumps of gold backed by the Money God instead of peices of paper with a picture of the king on it?

[Sashi]

That said, I figure K still has the meta-analysis correct. #2 is the best response to all the wanking, unless you want to make the game about caravaning or whatever.

Who is "you" in that sentence? If the players "want to make the game about caravanning or whatever", then they're not going to be happy with an answer of "you can't" (i.e. #2), will they?

The #2 answer isn't "You can't set up a trade route." it's "You can't turn the profits from setting up a trade route into bonuses in the combat minigame."

If you want to play Camels & Caravels and set up an economic empire, then you can do that. And if you want to essentially ignore money and play Big Damn Heroes saving turnip farmers for free, you can do that, too. Either way dragon hordes don't break your game, and a winter wolf doesn't have to shit gold just to keep you on the WBL.

[Judging__Eagle]

Sashi, fyi

Dragon Hordes = Lots of Dragons

Dragon Hoards = Piles of stuff from Dragons.

Dragon Hordes can very probably break most games.

Winter Wolves dropping being something valuable is an interesting concept.

I've actually been working on how to "start" the very bottom of the "heroic economy" in my own setting and system, based on how a mortal economy works. Adventurers, early in their career, can seriously be "Magic Dirt Farmers". Collecting the droppings of magical creatures (and/or bodies), and then bringing back their haul for sale or trade to civilized areas. The "Magic Dirt" being an incredibly stupendous fertilizer that results in mundane crops that are always at their Zenith; or the ability to grow Heroic-level crops.

Which gives a lot of explanation as to:

1) Why people adventure anyway.

It prevents famine in the long run, and creates bountiful crops in the short run. That's sort of a big deal.

2) Why Mortal tier creatures aren't sickly and malnourished.

If you can expect ~2,000 calories a day, that's awesome, and you can totally have peasants who act like modern 21st century western morality humans. That's a Good thing, with a capital G, since stuff like "not caring about committing genocide" is something that can be the realm of Evil; not accurate representations of the morality of the European Medieval Ages.

3) Why monsters come to towns

They (edit: Peasants) have trace amounts of magical energy in their bodies due to their diet, and are easy prey for say, a Cockatrice, or a Displacer Beast. A constant diet of magically fertilized corn and grain is going to leave a creature slightly different than normal.

[Lago PARANOIA]

That's really a whole different argument. I think it should be addressed in "Core Principles: Your Alignment System is Retarded" or perhaps "Core Principles: Fantasy Social Orders are Unstable."

So, uh, are we ever going to get that Core Principles: Fantasy Social Orders are unstable thread?

Precepts of the subject have been coming up a lot lately this recently and it'd be nice to have them all in one thread.

[tzor]

So, uh, are we ever going to get that Core Principles: Fantasy Social Orders are unstable thread?

I hope not. We have enough problems discussing social orders in the real world, never mind the half broken ones in most fantasy environments.

[DSMatticus]

Core Principles: Fantasy Social Orders are unstable in a nutshell.

XP gains are too fast.
"Welcome to the Church of Smiteyness. Here's your membership badge. It'll be your turn to be high priest in a month when you're level 8, and shortly thereafter you too will be replaced by next month's recruit as you ascend to travelling the planes searching for our divine lord, Smitey himself."

Also due to XP gains and intricate adventuring plots of D&D land, they're toppled regularly.
"Welcome to this ancient historic site. Its rich history began a few months ago, when it was the castle of the hobgoblin lord Takesyourstuff, who was overthrown by Sir Ilikeswords the coming season, who moved in and was shortly and tragically assassinated by the guild of stabbing-people-in-the-face, who used it to train orphans in their stabbing-people-in-the-face ways, when that was finally put to stop by the great and mighty wizard Blowsupstuff." (In the background of this tour, parts of the castle are on fire and an adventuring band can be seen tossing an old bearded man's corpse out of a second story window and into the moat, while unfurling a new banner reading, "Home of the new Adventurer's Guild!")

That's just my guess on some of the many problems Frank would point out. Of course, there's a lot more wrong with them. And my two paragraphs are nowhere near as fun (or thought-provoking) as a few page-long essay by Frank, but I try my best.

[tzor]

XP gains are too fast.

Counter argument: While the First Edition AD&D loved to have a "title name" next to every class level, that no longer applies and never quite fit in with the social order of the real world. In the Catholic Church, for example there were basically three "levels" of ordination; deacon, priest and bishop. All other titles were basically political ones. In the middle ages, for example, there were three types of "cardinals." Lay cardinals were those men who were not ordained at all. Priest cardinals were those who were only ordained to the priesthood and Bishop cardinals were those who were elevated to the episcopate.

One can apply this easily to the fantasy genre. Real titles wouldn't be every level, but in groups and generally the lower level groups are the ones that are important. The highest level groups wouldn't really be in a ranking of their own because of their exceptionally rare nature. They would, instead get honorary titles upon the highest real title.

This really only applies to the casting classes where you have a visible indicator in terms of the spells you can cast. Non casting classes have even fewer divisions, perhaps below name and above name rank, however "name" is defined in the system. The only place level has is the size of your guild/territory, but other than that, in terms of rank, a lord is a lord no matter how large your land, you get all the perks of lorddom.

By the way, if we go by first edition, level gains were too slow. The by the book downtime between levels is massive.

[DSMatticus]

No, no, it has nothing to do with titles. I suppose I wasn't clear enough. I'm talking about XP gains not as a way of gathering titles, but of gathering power. And powerful people take titles, but that's only tangentially related.

It's supposed to be something like 13 encounters before you level, and 4 encounters a day, and you've got 19 levels to go through... (19*13)/4 = 61.75. People are literally ascending to level 20dom in two months. If they treat it like a weekday job, three months instead.

And that's why it's a concern that our recruit is reaching level 8 in a month. Because if the high priest is a retired level 8 cleric, that recruit is now as powerful as he is, in only a month's time.

So, there are two approaches to this. 1) Have the NPC's level up with your PC's. A scaling world. The high priest is the high priest not because he's level 8, but because he's 7 levels higher than the PC's. 2) Leave the NPC's with static levels, and watch the world 'outgrow' them in a month.

The problem with '1' is that this implies NPC's gain experience at a ridiculous rate. And if it's extrapolated, it implies that the High Priest was a level 1 a month ago. The problem with '2' is that adventurers are going to completely obsolete existing power structures in months.

Either way, the problem with each is the same - it implies the existing power structure is either only months old, or will only be relevant for a few more months.

[mean_liar]

I have no problem with the idea that PCs are special snowflakes that acquire XP in a wholly different and faster fashion from NPCs.

Favored by the Fates, or Exalted, or whatever. In fact, when you say "the existing power structure... will only be relevant for a few more months" I'm totally okay with that, at least within the context of magnitude if not timeframe.

[DSMatticus]

That actually is one solution to the problem, mean_liar. The world is mundane, and the heroes are the exception to the rule, not the norm. I believe there are campaign settings based on this (Birthright, where everyone but the PC's and special NPC's have an XP ceiling or some such, I'm not entirely sure).

But that's not really D&D as written - there's nothing to suggest the PC's are special, and everything to suggest that they aren't - example, the way you're supposed split XP with cohorts and other helpers. Apparently, just being around PC's is enough to cause NPC's experience growth to go off the charts.

But even if we go with it, that just brings up another problem - how many people are like the PC's? If that number is too few, the world doesn't make sense. High level PC's need high CR threats, but things like powerful outsiders and ancient dragons didn't magically start appearing when the PC's got that powerful. How did the world deal with these things before the PC's showed up?

And if that number is high enough such that, "well, other special NPC's have been dealing with those problems," then we're back to my problem, because those special NPC's are the ones who rule the world and make social orders, not the mundane, boring people who spend years graduating from turnip farmer to militia man. No, it's the people who spend months graduating from apprentice wizard to arcane master of the planes.

So, yeah. That solution only really justifies a coherent world that is devoid of high CR threats (making high level play boring) or has my proposed problem on a smaller scale.

[CCarter]

I suppose if everyone is levelling at the maximum rate, a reasonable extrapolation of what this looks like is on the servers of MMOs. The one Neverwinter Nights server I saw seen seemed to be packed with level 40 PCs, while D&D Online explicitly slowed down level progression by about a factor of 5 to prevent levels going as silly.

[tzor]

This leveling rate argument is one of the reasons why I really really miss the old 1E AD&D days. The rate of advancement (in game as opposed to in terms of playing time) was significantly reduced by two major factors, the first is travel time between adventures and the second was the long periods it took for training between levels.

[Red_Rob]

I'm sure you are all familiar with Frank's "Lava lamp of crazy" analogy in the Tomes, detailing why the advancement rules in the DMG lead to a cavalcade of high level characters popping out of the woodwork and creating a whirlwind society that is impossible to parse in any real sense. Well, surprise surprise, that's not how D&D society actually works. Why not? Well, let's take a look...

Our PC's are special
Firstly, not everyone has the capacity to become powerful. According to the DMG only 6% of able bodied adults have a real character class, the rest of the population having to make do with Commoner or one of the NPC classes. Now, whether this is something remarked about in-game (Divine spark or somesuch) or whether its simply a narrative distinction, the fact remains if you don't have a high enough midiclorian count you aren't going to become a mover or a shaker. The DMG is silent on whether wishing really hard is enough to make you a real boy, or whether the heady heights of the level 1 fighter are forever beyond the ranks of the common man, but the fact remains that out of every 20 people only 1 even has the capacity to become a world shattering juggernaut.

3 square meals a day
The advancement system presented in the DMG suggests that, to properly challenge the players, 4 encounters should comprise a standard adventuring day. Note this is an adventuring day, not an average day at the gym. Days like this may happen once a year, with long periods of boring normal life interspersed. In fact, without the comforting presence of the MC providing a reasonable challenge at a measured rate, non PC's are at the whim of fate when it comes to encounter frequency. Many (most?) of those 1 in 20 will never meet enough challenges to really stretch themselves and break past level 2 or 3.

The sorting algorithm of evil
Everyone knows that heroes encounter challenges in such a fashion that they are always tested but never bested as their abilities increase. The kobold menace leads to the orc horde, who are led by the demon council. Well, whilst that may be the case when the MC is carefully structuring the story it is no suprise that out in the big bad world there is no such assurance of reasonable challenge. Level 1 characters encounter Mind Flayer raiding parties, Frost Giants attack villages defended by plucky level 3 rangers, and lowly monks follow treasure maps to the horde of Ancient Red Dragons. So, despite the majority of potential bad-asses never finding enough of a challenge to grow in power, a sizeable percentage have exactly the opposite problem, which ends their adventuring career in a far more final manner. So, given all these obstacles it is no wonder that only the few, rare individuals reach levels high enough to become a threat to the established social order.

High adventure!
So, given all these potential pitfalls, where do all the high level characters come from? Well, my first response is what high level characters? There is no rule that states that there have to be huge numbers of high level characters in your campaign world, and in fact in many ways D&D works better when there aren't hordes of demigods walking the earth. By limiting the number of high level threats you make each one more memorable and special, lending high level adventures a mythic air that comes from interacting with beings you've heard legends of since your lowly first level adventures. But wait! If there aren't many high level threats how are you going to consistently challenge your players once they are all defeated? Well, I'll let you in on a little secret. You are probably only going to play one high level campaign in this world. With the vast array of new campaign settings coming out every month very few people stick with a single world for more than one lengthy campaign, so if you only have enough high level enemies for one series of adventures that should be more than enough.

So there we are, character advancement in D&D shouldn't be something that strains your disbelief, and there is no divine mandate stating you must have Atropals in your world just because they appear in a Monster Manual.

[Blasted]

This leveling rate argument is one of the reasons why I really really miss the old 1E AD&D days. The rate of advancement (in game as opposed to in terms of playing time) was significantly reduced by two major factors, the first is travel time between adventures and the second was the long periods it took for training between levels.

1E still had a nasty rate of advancement argument.
Because characters advanced at such divergent speeds, the large downtime between levels would lead to the party being out of commission for months at a time. You don't want to go into a dungeon without a thief, but because the thief levels twice as fast as the mage, the mage spends months twiddling his thumbs.

[Ice9]

3 square meals a day
The advancement system presented in the DMG suggests that, to properly challenge the players, 4 encounters should comprise a standard adventuring day. Note this is an adventuring day, not an average day at the gym. Days like this may happen once a year, with long periods of boring normal life interspersed. In fact, without the comforting presence of the MC providing a reasonable challenge at a measured rate, non PC's are at the whim of fate when it comes to encounter frequency. Many (most?) of those 1 in 20 will never meet enough challenges to really stretch themselves and break past level 2 or 3.

This. People always seem to "forget" this when they go on about "Herp derp, everyone becomes 20th level in a few weeks", but even PCs don't spend every in-game day having encounters.

[DSMatticus]

Red_Rob, yes. That's a logical explanation for why there might be few high level characters in a campaign setting even with incredibly high advancement rates. But I pointed out why this simply brings us to another problem.

High level characters need high CR threats. If high CR theats existed in the world before the players reached that level (and it makes absolutely no sense that ancient evil dragons started existing the second the players reached the appropriate level), how did the world handle those threats before? If very few people ever reach high levels, and the PC's are regularly tearing down creatures that are high CR (as they have to be, to be appropriately challenged), then why don't these high CR threats already rule the world? They obviously have a numerical advantage.

You need high level NPC/PC's to keep high CR threats from destroying/conquering the world. You need high CR threats to appropriately challenge high-level PC's. You can either 'scaling world' it, like Oblivion or Fallout or other similar RPG's, where the world grows in power with the PC's; or you can 'zone' it, like an MMORPG where high-level adventurers move on to new planes and the newer bigger badies are confined there. But those are silly solutions. This is a tabletop RPG, we can do better.

But this is a common problem in all narratives with superheroes and regular shmucks coexisting. Comics are a horrible representation of what that world with superman and co is actually like - what that world is actually like is the people with superpowers rule it. D&D is such a world - and the question is just a matter of balance. Does team NPC or team monster have more/better superheroes? If your PC's are uniquely or nearly uniquely high level, yet fighting things their CR, it suggests team monster has the better superheroes, and it's hard to explain why team monster didn't rule the world before they came along (note: rule may mean eat for certain members of team monster).

[Sashi]

The Selective Memory of Legends
EMT's remember the first person they saved but not the five hundredth. 7th level characters are constantly running across CR1 threats and they just don't care for the same reason they don't tally the number of times they cast a spell. It doesn't matter if that bandit camp you razed would have been a campaign for 1st-3rd level characters, you're 7th level and have done much better things for the bards to write songs about.

[tzor]

Actually the "zone" model does work well. At the low to middle end adventures work from the middle of nowhere to the great metropolis. Just like the old joke about why robbers rob banks (because that is where the money is found) Some areas will naturally be higher level than others. At high level you literally do start to get adventures in the outer planes.

One fundamental bad assumption is that monsters are like adventurers. Generally, you should do the exact opposite. Most monsters worth their salt are pain old lazy. I mean if a dragon really was like an adventurer he wouldn't be sitting on a pile of gold; he would have it invested in a half dozen guilds of a half dozen different races. He would have a elite army of trained fighters who somehow think working for a dragon is the greatest thing they could do and proof why they rock and you don't. He would have a plethora of thieves running a "protection" racket. Instead he sits on his horde, belches and kills any idiot who tinks he can kick his tail.

[Wrathzog]

Some Dragons are exactly like that, though; they're the extremely dangerous ones.

[Lago PARANOIA]

The advancement system presented in the DMG suggests that, to properly challenge the players, 4 encounters should comprise a standard adventuring day. Note this is an adventuring day, not an average day at the gym. Days like this may happen once a year, with long periods of boring normal life interspersed. In fact, without the comforting presence of the MC providing a reasonable challenge at a measured rate, non PC's are at the whim of fate when it comes to encounter frequency. Many (most?) of those 1 in 20 will never meet enough challenges to really stretch themselves and break past level 2 or 3.

This seems like a really arbitrary standard if you ask me. Most stories, especially those which have the protagonists having a lot of battles, don't do the 'months/years between adventures' model. What actually happens is that the characters advance really quickly in level until they get to around the power level the authors want, then the story is typically over in a year's time, at the most. And considering that a lot of stories demand that their protagonists start or end at a high power level, the time scale is very compressed. I mean, Iron Man didn't have 5 intermediate upgrades of his suit until he settled at his current model spaced out over several months; he got the definitive model done in like weeks.

Instead he sits on his horde, belches and kills any idiot who tinks he can kick his tail.

I don't think that this is a very satisfying solution, because there are critters out there that boil down to 'eats three humans a day and can get away with it' or 'want to destroy every living thing' or 'wants to flood the world with its spawn'. A lot of 'em, too. I don't even think that your example applies to dragons; where the hell are they getting their pimp-ass treasure if they just sit in the cavern all day long? How is something the size of a house feeding themselves?

[Red_Rob]

This seems like a really arbitrary standard if you ask me. Most stories, especially those which have the protagonists having a lot of battles, don't do the 'months/years between adventures' model. What actually happens is that the characters advance really quickly in level until they get to around the power level the authors want, then the story is typically over in a year's time, at the most.

Yes, but my point is that not everyone is a protagonist in a story. Most fictional universes have only a single character / group going on such an epic adventure that they need to advance in power that much. Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Avatar TLA, all these have in common that there is only a single world shattering event / plotline going on.

I think that because D&D is played by so many people that there becomes this kind of idea that these world shattering quests are happening all the time, however in any individual campaign setting actual world shattering events must by their very nature be infrequent. If dark lords attempted to destroy or enslave the world even once per generation then by the law of averages the world would be a post apocalyptic hellhole. Whilst that would be a fun game, I don't think its the default worldview D&D seems to assume.

High level characters need high CR threats. If high CR theats existed in the world before the players reached that level (and it makes absolutely no sense that ancient evil dragons started existing the second the players reached the appropriate level), how did the world handle those threats before? If very few people ever reach high levels, and the PC's are regularly tearing down creatures that are high CR (as they have to be, to be appropriately challenged), then why don't these high CR threats already rule the world? They obviously have a numerical advantage.

Firstly, as I said before you only need enough high CR threats to challenge the PC group until the campaign ends. Now, in an individual campaign it is perfectly reasonable when the players reach level 12 for the BBEG to commence his master plan and sell his soul to Demogorgon in return for a bunch of summoned badasses from the Nth dimension. Voila! High CR threats aplenty with no need to justify their existence prior.

Now, I'm not advocating this kind of tactic for every game, but it is clearly a reasonable way to introduce high level threats. Alternatively, you just have the high CR creatures rule the world. The world (or at least part of it) being ruled by an Evil Empire led by an uber-powerful Dark Lord is the setup for almost every fantasy story out there. If, at the start of the campaign the players are aware that an entire country is ruled by the King in the West who enforces his rule through his 14 Evils, that gives them an entire campaign of confronting his dastardly plans, leading up to confrontations with the (high CR) Evils and eventually the King himself. Hero's journey anyone?

[Swordslinger]

This seems like a really arbitrary standard if you ask me. Most stories, especially those which have the protagonists having a lot of battles, don't do the 'months/years between adventures' model. What actually happens is that the characters advance really quickly in level until they get to around the power level the authors want, then the story is typically over in a year's time, at the most. And considering that a lot of stories demand that their protagonists start or end at a high power level, the time scale is very compressed. I mean, Iron Man didn't have 5 intermediate upgrades of his suit until he settled at his current model spaced out over several months; he got the definitive model done in like weeks.

That's true of comic book genres, but not particularly true of D&D. Comic characters generally don't improve. Iron Man or Spiderman all have their powers and those powers generally don't change or get better. What comic books do use is inconsistent power levels, where the characters' competence varies from story to story. So Wolverine finds a way to beat Iron Man in his own comic, but not in Iron Man's. And because of this, a villain like the green goblin can either be a menacing foe or a nuisance depending on if the situation calls for it.

D&D on the other hand focuses on constant character advancement over a series of adventures in which the opposition constantly ramps up. It's a totally different concept and needs to be approached differently.

[tzor]

Your example is marred by the fact that Wolverine is a hero only in his own comic, he's sort of an NPC in anyone else's comic. (The point of the comic is to pimp the hero.) It's sort of the old dilemma with the old famous movie King Kong vs Godzilla (which in turn is so much like the comic book dilemma). In Japan it was a no brainer, Godzilla for the win (not as bad as Godzilla vs Bambi, but that was a joke movie on purpose). But the US edition was basically King Kong's "comic" since he's the home monster for team USA. So they had to fake it on the part of King Kong, so that it came out a tie.

There are some comics where the characters did evolve over time (I just can't think of them right at the moment). Sidekick evolution was common and Batman was practically using factory methods to build, promote, and retire the latest Robin the "Boy" Wonder. (It's hard to tell the difference between a 30 year old and a 40 year old, but a teenager and a 20 something? Much harder, so you couldn't pull the same time warp on them.)