Game Concept: Paying for rare things
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@Three-Eyed-Crow When it comes to things I want to keep rare in a game my preference is to use quality control. There's no better (perhaps no other) way to do it without sacrificing their rarity since you will get players apping for things they consider 'special'.
And since you will have to limit concepts somehow and most likely you will be blamed for showing favoritism anyway you might as well get good players for them. You need Elders? Hand-pick who gets to play them. Then continue to monitor their actions for signs of inactivity or abuse anyway because no matter who you pick you'll eventually make a mistake.
But paying extra for it won't work. For example if I want to play a goddamn Jedi that's what I'll do, even if he can't swat a fly with his crappy lightsaber that won't chop through hot butter.
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@faraday said in Game Concept: Paying for rare things:
Do you have to pay extra on a war game to be a Lieutenant instead of a Ensign just because there are fewer of them, even though being a Lieutenant doesn't really come with any inherent advantages? What's the point?
I agree with your general point but wouldn't a higher rank in a military setting be an inherent advantage? After all the high ranks can order the lower ranks around, that is one of the basic tenets of military discipline.
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@ThatGuyThere said in Game Concept: Paying for rare things:
I agree with your general point but wouldn't a higher rank in a military setting be an inherent advantage? After all the high ranks can order the lower ranks around, that is one of the basic tenets of military discipline.
If we go there then Lords and Ladies games would have a hell of a wake-up call.
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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Most lords and ladies games do actually charge for title. Or, well, everywhere I've played. Usually it's in the form of an XP bonus for a commoner, though sometimes the title itself costs. Or something associated with it does.
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@Sunny said in Game Concept: Paying for rare things:
Most lords and ladies games do actually charge for title. Or, well, everywhere I've played. Usually it's in the form of an XP bonus for a commoner, though sometimes the title itself costs. Or something associated with it does.
The problem with this is that the cost is (typically) an one-off; you get a fixed amount of XP in CGen and that's it. But the benefits from playing a noble are permanent - and very difficult to quantify. How much XP is the privilege of birthright worth, for example?
Another issue with having special stuff is players try to find ways out of what could/should be severe social consequences simply because they aren't played out. For instance a popular player decides to go with a 'former Seer' but no one shuns them because of it, and staff is too busy to run plot for him (or it's the kind of plot which essentially showers them with more attention than drawbacks). Or, and this is pretty common, a PC from a restricted faction with special stuff befriends/is sleeping with a 'normal' character and shares some of those special toys with them - but as it's done in secret there is no fallout.
That's why I proposed just biting the bullet and have staff hand-pick their best players for stuff they're interested in playing or just plain having the roles wide open. Make a choice - either sacrifice rarity or accept the allegation of favoritism - and run the best game you can, or you'll spend all your time trying to quantify the unquantifiable or trying to play whack'a'mole with players cheating the system. The only way to win that game is to not play.
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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I was not commenting on anything save that lords and ladies games, as they exist, do already charge. It's not a new thing they aren't already doing.
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@Ganymede
This isn't about ridiculing a concept for 'speshul snowflakeness'. It's about finding another way to allow something that is problematic, or should be rare, in a different way than an application, a cap, or staff fiat. It gives player agency to the choices they make. Sure, everyone on the game might go OKAY I WILL BE JEDI AT 6 POINTS or somesuch, but the THEORY behind it is sound, as many of us have witnessed first-hand. It could be applied to the Jedi issue in SW to help alleviate some of the above insanity.@Arkandel
This is why the choices must be good. You must have solid choices to really make the 'Do I do X cool thing, or do I do Y rare thing' matter. Feat Traps ala D&D shouldn't be a thing, everything you spend a shiny on should be useful and add to the character in a useful way. Balance is a factor too, but solidly-built options can work with the balance and keep it marginally crazy.@Ominous
Exactly. In METVtM you get 7 shinies ever. The concept of a top limit of shinies, plus good options, is a nice idea. Again, mostly posted here because of the explosions in the other SW game thread.@faraday
You're right, rarity and advantage aren't always the same thing. From the source where I'm yanking this, it often is just by dint of the powers that are gotten by more rare things, in the case of VtM. Most of the merit aspects are advantages anyway. Jedi is an advantage. Force sensitive is an advantage. Other SW options would work as advantages too, which is the crux of it. -
@ThatGuyThere said in Game Concept: Paying for rare things:
@faraday said in Game Concept: Paying for rare things:
Do you have to pay extra on a war game to be a Lieutenant instead of a Ensign just because there are fewer of them, even though being a Lieutenant doesn't really come with any inherent advantages? What's the point?
I agree with your general point but wouldn't a higher rank in a military setting be an inherent advantage? After all the high ranks can order the lower ranks around, that is one of the basic tenets of military discipline.
Yes and no. A squadron leader would order people around for instance but a Lt or LtJg doesn't really have an appreciable amount of authority over other junior officers. And fachead type positions usually come with added responsibilities, so making them pay for the dubious privilege of having more work is.. dubious.
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@faraday said in Game Concept: Paying for rare things:
@ThatGuyThere said in Game Concept: Paying for rare things:
@faraday said in Game Concept: Paying for rare things:
Do you have to pay extra on a war game to be a Lieutenant instead of a Ensign just because there are fewer of them, even though being a Lieutenant doesn't really come with any inherent advantages? What's the point?
I agree with your general point but wouldn't a higher rank in a military setting be an inherent advantage? After all the high ranks can order the lower ranks around, that is one of the basic tenets of military discipline.
Yes and no. A squadron leader would order people around for instance but a Lt or LtJg doesn't really have an appreciable amount of authority over other junior officers. And fachead type positions usually come with added responsibilities, so making them pay for the dubious privilege of having more work is.. dubious.
That said, "yes and no" means that part of the answer is "yes". The Lords & Ladies example is quite telling: if it's accepted that the more common roles are given bonuses, this is a positive-reinforcement version of charging people for playing less common roles--negative reinforcement.
My take-away is that "economics of rarity" is okay as long as you're not punishing people for playing a reasonable character.
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
@lordbelh said in Game Concept: Paying for rare things:
@Auspice I liked their system. You couldn't start out your first character as super special, but eventually everybody could be one if they just stuck around for a bit. Or you could exchange the cookies for XP. So you had the choice between being special by being better, or being special by being fancy unique.
I think I ended up doing something like this on my short-lived L5R game, although it was death-based: you got some amount of transfer XP when you died (and I think there were bonuses for dying gloriously / heroic sacrifice / seppuku / etc). You could also spend some of it to unlock the rare shit that wasn't in normal CG (Imperial chars, really weird schools, non-clan monks, really snowflake-y merits, Void shugenja, etc). Overall it was meant to both gate the weird stuff and encourage people to accept character death given the lethality of the game and a setting where people are supposed to willingly kill themselves to preserve their honor.
As the game didn't last that long it didn't get a lot of trying out, but one person lost their first character fighting an Oni on the Wall (as tends to happen!) and used it to get a fancy monk and seemed happy with that.
So I'm pretty in favor of the concept. It fits in with my general (and often loudly-stated) belief that chargen should be fair and everyone should have to pay for their special stuff instead of staff just handing out awesome feature/tiers/etc to their friends and ending up with faction leader special snowflakes who are also the best swordfighter and lover in the land. I really feel you need to impose these kinds of costs somewhere, because they make people choose what's important to them. It's a concept as old as RPG character creation, really.
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@Thenomain But as I said, the places where it's "yes" are counter balanced by the added OOC responsibilities inherent in the role. So is an added IC cost really necessary or beneficial? I personally see no value in punishing people for being more experienced by giving them less points to represent said experience. But that's a choice each game has to make for themselves.
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@faraday said in Game Concept: Paying for rare things:
@Thenomain But as I said, the places where it's "yes" are counter balanced by the added OOC responsibilities inherent in the role.
I think this is something that you're adding to the discussion, not that it's a necessity. I was a little baffled about the mention of facheads and found it to be a little bit of moving-the-goalposts. We seem to have very different experience or expectations about this topic.
So is an added IC cost really necessary or beneficial?
The cost isn't IC, it's systematic. It's a sub-system no different than the use of exponential XP costs (or learning times) for linear stat gains. We generally accept those even though, using pure mechanics, it's 100% nonsense.
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@Bobotron said in Game Concept: Paying for rare things:
This isn't about ridiculing a concept for 'speshul snowflakeness'. It's about finding another way to allow something that is problematic, or should be rare, in a different way than an application, a cap, or staff fiat. It gives player agency to the choices they make. Sure, everyone on the game might go OKAY I WILL BE JEDI AT 6 POINTS or somesuch, but the THEORY behind it is sound, as many of us have witnessed first-hand. It could be applied to the Jedi issue in SW to help alleviate some of the above insanity.
This argument presumes any insanity on an SW game if people are given the freedom to choose.
This argument also presumes that a larger occurrence of purportedly rare concepts is problematic.
I understand the system and how it is calculated to work. I'm arguing that there was never a problem to begin with that needed to be addressed with system modification.
