How different PC motivations support sandbox and campaign play

[pming]

Hiya!

One quick note about the whole "Economic" side of the thread.

There was one game whose name eludes me...I think it started with an "A"? The main thrust of the game was that you "roleplayed" a city/town. Yes, you heard me right. One of my players at the time (a history buff...now a history teacher) picked it up. I tried to make a "character" with him. We didn't get to far. It had sooooo many formula and cross-referencing and whatnot that we kinda gave up after a couple hours. Anyway, the point, I think, was that you made a "village". In that village you had NPC's that you could develop...kinda like PC's...and as they did stuff, it improved the Village. As you played the game and 'did stuff', your settlement would get bigger and get into conflicts with neighboring settlements. The game even had a whole chapter/section on ocean/waterway control and how it affected everything.

Man. That was a LONG time ago. Probably misremembering most of it. At any rate, it was a bit of an "odd" game.

Best, most workable RPG economic system I've found is in Harn and Harnmaster. It uses real-world coins and pretty much gets it's info from actual history. There are supplements for 'managing' a chunk of land (fiefdom, town, etc) and how much land (in acres) is needed to produce X amount of Y crop, how much of X and Y a population of Z needs, etc. Knowing how much attention to detail Harn/Harnmaster puts into it's products, I'm pretty sure the prices for things and their availability are some of the most accurate in a fantasy RPG.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Ovinomancer]

By that measure, no RPG (except perhaps Phoenix Command) has a combat system. Its either fiat or left to chance with dice rolls...


Some RPGs and RPG supplements have an amount of thought/mechanical subsystems to model an economic system plausibly* enough for the type of game expected by the designers.


* as in, not getting in the way and/or presenting outcomes that lie within the expected range for the players

You're 100% right! No RPG has a real world combat system, it's all up to fiat and chance. Good catch, very excellent reinforcement of my point!

 

[Ovinomancer]

I’m not declaring it badwrongfun. If it works in your group to have no possibility of buying/selling magic, bully for you! I’m stating a strong personal feeling that that is the kind of DM fiat that makes me leave games.

A fellow ENWorlder (no, not me) once posted something to the effect that the RW lays the foundation of the game world. The more you alter the fundamentals, the more you either need to support with an internal campaign logic or handwave away.

Both tools are necessary, but the more you handwave, the more players have to buy in. And every player has a point when the won’t do that. I know guys who won’t play FRPGs because of flying dragons...and others who won’t play sci-if games because such critters are impossible.

No fantasy economy handwaves ALL economic principles, they’re still present in at least a rudimentary fashion that still makes sense at an intuitive level. Generally speaking, rarer items cost more than common ones. Highly desirable items cost more than less desirable ones. More powerful things cost more than lesser ones.

1. It's weird that you go to the extra length to remove the "Originally Posted by..." from some post but not others.

b. Really? Not being able to buy a magic item would make you walk away from a game, ceteris paribus? I mean, you do you, of course, and if that's your button that's your button, it's just pretty far away from my buttons so I have a hard time grasping it. You'd hate my current game, then, that has no magic items for sale or really even sellable -- all magic items are either minor (potions, the like, and available) or personal: you make it and it only works for you. You can 'seal' an item that will then work for anyone, but the costs of that are so personal or ugly that those items are rare and are often cursed (because of the ways most are sealed). Any other magic item just flat out doesn't work in someone else's hands and loses it's enchantment completely a week after it's creator dies (unless steps are taken, often unpleasant, but, hey, that's the stuff of bad guys).

III. I don't buy the argument that selling magic items is baseline economics for RPGs. In 6 editions, it's only been featured as given in 2, and not the most recent (although it leaves lots of room to add it in). Magic items aren't real world, so you're already stretching out, and I don't think the argument that they are special and rare enough to not have a market is breaking with the real world at all. I don't think this is anywhere near on par with 'people need to breathe and eat and drink water' and 'gravity' and other baseline assumptions that go with the real world as a modeling baseline. The 'real world' in that case it used as reference to the nature order or the world, not economics and political systems. Heck, there are real world economic systems that wouldn't have a market, because there's no markets for anything. Now, we can argue whether or not that's a valid economic system (it apparently has yet to be done correctly), but it isn't something that breaks immersion like monkeying with the natural order of things does.

And the 'costs' for 'rare' items in an imaginary game where nothing actually exists (neither the objects or the moola) is arbitrary fiat on arbitrary fiat. That there's an attempt for the arbitrary to be based on some internal consistency isn't an argument that other assumptions should be included.

Now, I get that your preference is for the arbitrary fiat of game economics includes the buying and selling of magic items. That's absolutely cool. But I don't think that your arguments that it should be the norm are valid. You're stretching to insist that some real world things, like markets existing for items you think should be treated as commodities, are part of the 'real world' baseline that you should be careful to modify. We're already into the realm of magic, it's not like we're dealing with real world analogues. I can, easily, think of multiple ways there'd be no market for magic items -- see 1 above for one.

 

[Nagol]

You're 100% right! No RPG has a real world combat system, it's all up to fiat and chance. Good catch, very excellent reinforcement of my point!

Oh I See! You're playing one of those semantic games with words not meaning the common understanding. Cool.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Oh I See! You're playing one of those semantic games with words not meaning the common understanding. Cool.

No, I'm flat out saying that RPG combat systems are full of fiat and chance and don't actually get anywhere close to real combat. And that's a good thing, usually.

 

[Riley37]

You can 'seal' an item that will then work for anyone, but the costs of that are so personal or ugly that those items are rare and are often cursed (because of the ways most are sealed). Any other magic item just flat out doesn't work in someone else's hands

I don't know how DannyAlcatraz will answer.

Speaking for myself: if my PC acquired an uncursed sealed item, and tried to sell it; and you flat-out said "Nope, it's impossible. There is no one, anywhere in the entire world, who would pay a copper piece to get that item from you"; then that would strongly reduce my interest in staying at your table. I'm willing to suspend disbelief for "there is a world with magic, dragons, and elves". I am less willing to suspend disbelief for "There is a world with magic, dragons, add elves. In this world, there is absolutely no one who would pay a copper piece to acquire a sealed uncursed magic item, not even for novelty value."

In the former, humans can still be humans, and they can apply the motives and patterns of humanity, to the extra content such as dragons and elves. In the latter, the behavior patterns of humans have changed; I can imagine a human whose ancestry is part elf, but I just can't imagine a city inhabited by hundreds or thousands of humans, and NONE of them has ANY interest in acquiring a sealed uncursed magic item for an affordable price.

If magic items don't exist (as in baseline Boot Hill or Top Secret): fine. If there are magic items and transactions involving magic items are rare, corner-case, non-standard: fine. If there are magic items, and NO ONE in a big city will EVER pay a even single coin for ANY magic item, because of arbitrary and absolute DM fiat: count me out.

 

[Riley37]

It is true: no RPG has a functional economic system

I have played in TRPGs with the exact same economic system as the real world. The game didn't have detailed economic rules in the book, but if a PC wanted to buy 100 rounds of 9mm ammo in Chicago, or an apple in London, then the real world price of that item in that location, is the price at which the PC could buy that item.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I don't know how DannyAlcatraz will answer.

Speaking for myself: if my PC acquired an uncursed sealed item, and tried to sell it; and you flat-out said "Nope, it's impossible. There is no one, anywhere in the entire world, who would pay a copper piece to get that item from you"; then that would strongly reduce my interest in staying at your table. I'm willing to suspend disbelief for "there is a world with magic, dragons, and elves". I am less willing to suspend disbelief for "There is a world with magic, dragons, add elves. In this world, there is absolutely no one who would pay a copper piece to acquire a sealed uncursed magic item, not even for novelty value."

In the former, humans can still be humans, and they can apply the motives and patterns of humanity, to the extra content such as dragons and elves. In the latter, the behavior patterns of humans have changed; I can imagine a human whose ancestry is part elf, but I just can't imagine a city inhabited by hundreds or thousands of humans, and NONE of them has ANY interest in acquiring a sealed uncursed magic item for an affordable price.

If magic items don't exist (as in baseline Boot Hill or Top Secret): fine. If there are magic items and transactions involving magic items are rare, corner-case, non-standard: fine. If there are magic items, and NO ONE in a big city will EVER pay a even single coin for ANY magic item, because of arbitrary and absolute DM fiat: count me out.

Cool, I guess you know how my game works well enough to stand on high and denounce it because you can't sell the artifact level magic items on an open market.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I have played in TRPGs with the exact same economic system as the real world. The game didn't have detailed economic rules in the book, but if a PC wanted to buy 100 rounds of 9mm ammo in Chicago, or an apple in London, then the real world price of that item in that location, is the price at which the PC could buy that item.

That's not an economic system, it's an arbitrary decision to reference a snapshot of real world prices. Let me ask, how did you earn money in that game? How was the price for your services set? What's the going price for magic items?

Referencing historical prices isn't an economic system, is arbitrary price setting that folks you into thinking you have an economy. The simple fact that the game only focuses on the PCs means that you're makng arbitrary decisions about economics.

Again, this is a good thing, because no one wants to play Spreadsheets & Actuaries. It's also a good thing that you have a preference for magic item buying and selling. What's not good is trying to secure against other people's preference because economics. You don't play with real economics, either, so pretend elf games don't have to agree with your preference.

As an aside, games that allow trading between players can develop an economy. Usually you need a large player base and a accessible communication forum, but even inter-party trading can create a small micro-economy. Prices here are truly set by supply and demand. Diablo 2 and 3 while the auction house were open are good examples of emergent, non-real-eorld economies. Well, D3 also allowed you to pay real world money for items, so that was a distorted economy in game due to real world pricing disruption.

 

[Maxperson]

There are two main PC motivations in rpgs. Firstly, the pursuit of personal gain, usually money and/or magic items. Secondly the desire to defeat evil.

The first motivation, personal gain, works well with sandbox play because the game world typically contains a great many opportunities to acquire wealth and magic items - there are lots of dungeons. The second motivation, defeat evil, doesn't work so well because the amount of evil beings within easy reach of the PCs and also actively and obviously causing harm will be far fewer.

A third possible motivation is the pursuit of glory, like the heroes of the Iliad or the PCs in Pendragon, but this is unusual in rpgs. A fourth, thrillseeking, is also unusual.

Once the PCs have achieved significant wealth it's hard to justify why they would want more. Or at least, why they would expose themselves to great danger in pursuit of more. So the first motivation, personal gain, doesn't work well for long term campaign play. The second motivation, defeat evil, does as there will always be more evil.

How does one successfully combine sandbox and campaign play? The answer, it seems to me, is PCs who are motivated by personal gain but, if they ever successfully acquire fortunes, immediately lose or quickly squander them, in the manner of Conan.

Sandbox campaigns work best with multiple goals, and in games where the goals mutate over time as the PCs level. The PCs can be looking for wealth in order to buy a patent of nobility. Once that is accomplished, then can be looking to gain more political power, as well as personal power to move up in the ranks. Eventually they take over a country and perhaps look to take out some neighboring despots. Along the way they need to clear out those few pockets of evil in the countries, and so on.

I was in on campaign where I had rolled up a nobleman and two other PCs were ranking members of the country's primary church. We worked together, but also had separate goals to further our own power bases. We took out threats and made alliances. As the campaign progressed a giant army attacked our country. We thwarted it and found out that they were motivated by Kostchtchie, so we decided to go to his plane on the Abyss and kill him forever. There was a lot more that happened along the way, but the point is that our goals kept changing as we went along.

The thing that makes or breaks a sandbox game is having proactive players. The players have to have the drive to set goals for themselves and then pursue them. If you don't have proactive players, then a sandbox is probably not what you want to run.