Cash on the barrel head

From a forum post I made earlier in response to a question about price lists in Star Wars gaming...
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I think prices in Star Wars are best handled like this:

"It costs more money than you have. You'll have to sell something big like your landspeeder to pay for it. Or do a favor for a local crimelord/politician/aristocrat/etc. that will lead to adventure (or, at the very least, some hijinks)."

or

"You'll have to pay for that." "Ok, here's some cash. Now, on with the adventure!"

Paying for something is either a plot point like paying for a high-speed, down-low ride on the Falcon or buying Anakin from Watto (in which case the actual amount doesn't really matter) or it's just a throwaway bit of color like tossing some credits on the bar and saying "Sorry for the mess" after slicing off a customer's arm or shooting a bounty hunter. The action and adventure should never grind to a halt because the PCs need to argue about who had the steak and who had the salad when they divide their lunch bill.
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I included some mention of this in Impressions. It seems that counting credits is a holdover from the early days of D&D copper counting. In most settings that inspire gaming settings (or, at least, the ones that inspire me), money doesn't really matter. It might be a key motivator for the characters, but the actual amount of cash they have never matters. The crew of Serenity needs money to keep the ship flying; Han Solo needs a big score to pay off his debt to Jabba; Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser need fat sacks of loot to pay for wine and wenches; Dr. Jones needs to sell his latest artifact finds in order to fund his next expedition; and so on. In all of these cases, it never matters how much money is involved beyond vague descriptions like "a massive debt" or "a major haul" or "enough to limp to the next planet and look for more work". What is gained by counting the pennies?

In my old college gaming days, I have only a few vague memories of adventures where counting money was important:

• In one particularly excellent impromptu AD&D2 session, the adventure began with the PCs being hired--one by one--for 5 gold pieces each to act as caravan guards for a really shady merchant. I remember this because we all thought 5 was pretty cheap but the GM (an odd fellow named Straka) explained in an aside that 5gp was a lot of money in his setting. I happened to negotiate a better deal and got promised 10gp. The actual amount didn't matter. The important thing was that we were getting a suspiciously great wage and I was getting double. (We never did get paid anyway.) 
• In the long-running D&D game (run by the inimitable Alan), penny-pinching was the order of the day. Everyone hated it but Alan demanded exact accounting so our good comrade Kevin took it upon himself to squeeze every last drop out of the treasure that we could get. I think he took it as a personal challenge to keep the party from getting cheated by any NPCs who might overcharge or rob them. My fondest memories of that game are just of hanging out with the other players and chatting while Kevin and Alan haggled over every little thing the party wanted to buy. They seemed to like it even though it frustrated them. Looking back, we probably should have just said "Hey, let's just assume that we always get a fair price unless otherwise specified. If there's a greedy merchant or thief who wants to rip us off or rob us, let us know and we'll play out that negotiation or robbery attempt. The rest of the time, let's just skip it." 
• In a short-lived AD&D2 campaign (run by Grote), we effectively "won". In the introductory adventure, Grote wanted to give us each a magic item appropriate to our class or background as our reward for completing the adventure instead of just some random treasure. I don't remember what my character (Skank Mcgonigal) got, but I think Sir Roderick Lanternjaw the paladin got some kind of shield or sword. Our friend, Sellers, was playing some kind of third-party Alchemist class that we found in a pamphlet in our gaming club's library. Sellers got a philosopher's stone for his reward and then he revealed that it was much more efficient than normal because of his class' special abilities. When we calculated how much base metal he could transmute into gold, it turned out to be a ludicrous sum beyond the wildest dreams of avarice. We went from struggling adventurers one day to wealthier than kings the next. We decided to buy titles from the king and fund an expedition to colonize a new territory for our country. We hired an army of soldiers, laborers, farmers, engineers, and even some wizards, then we set sail and started to build a town and a castle and we set about taming the wilderness. Money was no longer an issue but we still had a lot of fun and motivation and adventure. We couldn't instantly solve our problems with the money but we quickly gave up on asking if we could afford things. We all agreed that there was no point in keeping track of our money anymore. Instead of asking if we could afford things, we had to ask "how long will it take?" That was usually more interesting anyway. 

In all my gaming experiences where money came up, the exact amount never mattered. We got enough to keep going (or enough to get going for character's motivated by greed who need something to lure them into action) or we got enough to completely change our situation. It wasn't always as drastic as buying our own country, but sometimes it was just something like "for the next season, we're going to hobnob with the middle class and sleep in our own beds and eat delicious meals at the inn".

Skills are what you do.

In working on the skills this week, I've decided to make some minor cosmetic changes and a fundamental mechanical change. First, I've decided to make all skill names into verbs for consistency. Secondly, I've eliminated some skills. I made an earlier post about how I thought "Notice" was unnecessary and counterproductive as a skill. I've made the same decision in regards to "Investigation" and "Survival". Investigation should be pursued through the use of other skills that are appropriate to the situation; survival can be replaced by a setting-specific knowledge (the Know skill) or talent.

The big change is that I've decided to cut the association between skills and attributes. I was trying to arrange the skills so that they wouldn't all be concentrated under Cunning and Finesse and I finally decided that there were too many justifications for placing a skill under one attribute or another. Is intimidation a product of projecting a strong personality to socially dominate someone? Or, is it more important to have a powerful physical presence? Could you intimidate someone by simply being clever enough to know which psychological buttons to push in order to manipulate them? Instead of choosing one "right" way to use a skill by tying it to an attribute, I've decided to just cut them all loose.

This loses the effect of some skills being easier to learn for characters that have good attributes in that area, which I liked. However, I think this will cut down on bookkeeping questions like "If I raise an attribute first, the skill will be cheaper. If I raise the skill first then the attribute, can I get the points back?" I don't really want the order to matter that much, because I don't want to encourage "character building" like that. Designing a character should be a matter of choosing what skills and attributes they have and not what order is the most efficient to learn them in. That way lies the madness of D20 arguments about whether your rogue/fighter should take rogue first for the extra skills at first level or take fighter first for the immediate use of the weapon and armor proficiencies (and never mind the fact that either combination is inferior to just playing a spellcaster).

I liked that skill discount but I don't think it would be missed in actual play, so I'm happy to cut it out to options more versatile.

Eureka moment

I've just had a eureka moment while in the shower. I was thinking about the changes I made recently to the damage and healing system. (Specifically, I altered the way damage is recorded and finally settled on how it is healed and recovered.) Then, I suddenly remembered that I still have unresolved issues with how to balance the Powers system with everything else (i.e. how much does it cost to learn a Power compared to raising an Attribute, etc.) and I realized that I could link the two together. This is just a rough idea right now, but I haven't made a post in a while, so I'm going to put my notes here before I forget this idea.

The damage system: Each character will have Facets* that determine their state of health. Characters would have a Body Facet to represent their physical health or "hit points" in most settings (obviously in a setting like Wraith: The Oblivion where everyone is a ghost, this would be replaced with another Facet). In settings like Cthulhu Mythos investigations, there would be a Sanity Facet to represent mental stability. In settings where wealth is important but counting pennies isn't, there could be a Wealth Facet to represent how much money a character can throw around without denting their wallet. Not every setting will need or use every Facet. Facets will be part of the setting rules that must be chosen for any given campaign.

(*Originally, I called these Aspects, but I decided to change it to avoid confusion with FATE's Aspects which are more like Van Gogh's Talents and Drawbacks. I'm not really that familiar with Fate. I've only really read the Tri-fold FATE pamphlet made by Michael Moceri and absorbed a lot through osmosis by reading gaming forums like rpg.net. Still, I think that there may be some overlap between FATE and Van Gogh so I want to avoid using the same terms for different things.)

So how does this tie in to the Powers? Powers could be, er, powered by "damage" to different Facets. Warriors with special combat techniques could exhaust themselves by causing light damage to their Body Facet (or Chi in a wuxia "jiang hu" setting) when they use their techniques, so they can't use too many fancy moves without taking a break to rest. In a Cthulhu Mythos setting, using magic spells would be harmful to your Sanity Facet. In a D&D style fantasy world where magic has a limited number of uses per day but no real downsides, spells would damage your Magic Facet; once your Magic is depleted, you can't cast any more spells until you sleep/study/meditate/pray but your health and well-being is otherwise completely unaffected (because in a setting like that, the Magic Facet isn't used for anything else except limiting how much magic someone can use in a limited span of time).

Powers could be altered and adjusted for each setting simply by adjusting the Facet that powers them. In a D&D style world of Vancian magic, spells would be powered by draining the Magic Facet. The only drawback to draining the Magic Facet is not being to cast spells until it recovers, but recovering it is a simple matter of resting overnight and studying your spellbook: magic has no harmful effects but its use is limited. In a Cthulhu Mythos campaign, spells drain a resource that does more than just power your spells--it keeps you sane--and recovering Sanity is a slow and difficult process involving extensive therapy with an alienist who's probably not really equipped to handle your particular issues: magic is detrimental to anyone who wants to stay sane. In a superhero setting where all the important characters have a set of powers, they might not cost anything to use (because powers are always available unless it's a special "Captain X loses his powers to Yellow Flubtonite" collector's issue) but they have to be aimed and controlled with a skill.

Powers can also be controlled by the kind of damage they do to a Facet. A power that does light damage to a Facet can be used repeatedly because that damage is equivalent to being winded and disappears between scenes when characters can catch their breath for a few minutes. Powers that do more serious damage will have to be used more sparingly because it will be more difficult to recover the damage they do.

Another batch of icons

This is my latest batch of icons. I think I'll do a couple more and then work on making some page borders. I think page decorations and borders are important and serve a functional purpose. I've seen some badly done books that wasted a lot of space with extravagant borders, but well done books have distinctive borders that help the reader to navigate through the book (i.e. it's easy to flip to the right section when each section has its own easily distinguished look). I'm getting a lot more comfortable with Bezier curves which is the tool I really need to draw the way I want. Ideally, I'd be able to use some kind of pencil sketching action but I don't have a tablet. Bezier curves offer me the next best thing: I can make a rough outline and then poke and prod it into the shape I want.

Inkscape's growing on me

Just a quick note before sleeping. My first attempt to make an icon with Inkscape took most of a day. Then I made three icons in a few hours. Today, I cranked out several icons (about six or seven), one after another. Some of them are fairly complex below the surface but I could make them quickly. I finally figured out how to use Bezier curves. Previous attempts always resulted in tangled knots that I quickly deleted. This time I got exactly the shapes I wanted. I might have to revisit my first icon and see if I can make a better one in twenty minutes. I'll post some images later. Now it's time for sleep; long day at work tomorrow (and maybe more icons during my lunch break).

Passion Icons

I just came back from a lovely holiday to a tropical island. I relaxed on white sand beaches and swam in blue seas. I climbed up a mountain into the jungle and swam in a grotto under a waterfall. I saw a little baby monkey that grabbed my finger with his little baby monkey hands. I drank wines made of fruits I can't identify. It was nice long weekend. I had one more day before I had to go back to work, so I spent this afternoon working on more icons in the same style as the Rage Passion icon I showed earlier.

I figured out some shortcuts in Inkscape that made the process much easier this time. It's still less WYSIWYG than I would like, but I'm working around that. The program offers total freedom in where to place elements, but I don't want total freedom. I don't need to be able to draw a line anywhere; I just need to be able to draw a line from here to there (where "here" and "there" are specific points such as "tangential to this arc" or "on the point of this angle"). I often found myself zooming in very close to position points manually when I felt that the program should really have a "snap to" option. It seems to allow snapping to a grid, but I haven't discovered any functionality for snapping to other shapes.

I found some shortcuts for doing some of the things I wanted. For example, instead of trying to draw a shape by assembling it's component parts, I found that I could use the drawing tools to quickly overlap some preset shapes, use the Fill tool to outline and color the space where they overlap, and then delete them to leave the filled space. For example, in the Noble Passion icon (the spiral sun), the rays of the sun were made by drawing a star (with the star/polygon tool) with points extending around the central spiral and then a circle (with the circle tool) around the central spiral too. I filled the corners of the star then deleted the circle that formed the bottoms of the rays and the star that formed the points, which left the rays behind. It was much faster and neater than trying to draw and resize and rotate a bunch of triangles. I wasted a lot of time trying to do that before figuring out the shortcut.

In a previous post, I showed the Rage Passion icon that I made. Here are the black and white versions of the Rage icon along with the icons for the other Passions: Fear, Noble, and Focus. In game terms, the Passions represent major facets of the character's personality (what they hate most, what they fear most, what inspires them to be their best, and what do they most enjoy doing). They provide a description of the character's personality and serve as a source of free Drama Points that can be used to boost a character's abilities in a scene. If your globe-trekking archaeologist absolutely hates Nazis and is terrified of snakes, he'll never have to worry about being short of Drama Points when a Nazi with a pet cobra shows up. Any opinions on my artistic abilities?

Rage Icons

I had a lot of free time today so I worked on the icons that I tried sketching out earlier. I have some ideas for icons that I sketched in pencil in a notebook. I did a relatively clean version of one of them on a sheet of white paper and took a picture of it with my phone (Samsung Galaxy SII). After a minute, it had been automatically uploaded to Google+, Ubuntu One, and Dropbox and the latter two both downloaded it my laptop. Then I opened the photo in Inkscape. This is where things got frustrating.

I know that there has to be an easier way to do this and I'm sure I did it the hard way. The icon is made entirely out of circles and arcs. I'm sure I could have just traced the picture automatically (in fact, a tutorial on how to do that is on my to-do list) but I thought it would be easy to just draw the arcs and circles on the photo myself with the Ellipse tool. That's what I did, but I didn't like it much. I don't like the way the Ellipse tool draws circles. You click and drag across the canvas to draw the circle but it creates a circle inscribed inside the square formed by the starting and stopping points that you click and drag across. I would have really preferred to click on a point where I want one edge of the circle to be and then drag to expand the circle. Having to drag a square that contains the circle meant that the circle always ended up in the wrong place so I would have to switch to the Selector tool to move it around and get it into position. I think I eventually got the hang of it but the final product still looks kind of rough to me. This is the color and black & white versions of the Rage Passion icon I came up with.