Ranking Games

 There's a lot of controversy on Board Game Geek, ignoring the bulk of it, I want to focus on one that comes up time and again. The game ranking system.

Ranking Games to avoid hyper numbers

The Main issue, in board game rankings, complained about the most, is the assignment of a value system. The 'arbitrary 1-10 vote' you assign to a game. Anyone can vote for any game, and as a result, there is a very easily abusable way social media can push a game into the top 100, when it hasn't even been played, or people voting down a game to offset this.

A system that could replace this, has to allow for people to vote, has to include some bias for new accounts vs long term accounts, but also, needs to allow for the varied ways people vote. 

If a game has just arrived at your house, and you play it, and love it, surely you're going to vote it into your top 10, but as time goes by, and you get newer games, should you need to go back and vote that game down, so you can allow for your next great loved game to take that top position?

Games that last the test of time, need to be able to rise above. Games which are a fad, games which are fun today yet boring tomorrow, who is going to go back and edit all their previous posts & scores and change to reflect this?

Sites haven't yet incentivized people to do this, and they could, but they don't feel the need for it, and it'd be a lot of work for very little gain.

But, having thought this over for many years now, this one clicks for me:

1. BGG (or alternative) Idea: When you 'vote' for a game, you vote it against another game you voted for. When you vote you are presented with one or two other games from your list, and asked. of the games shown: * If you are showing this to new players, which would you choose. * If you are playing this with friends, which would you choose * Its your birthday, you choose what ever game YOU love.

 

The game is not stored as a number, instead its stored as a list. your ranking, of your games, from least to most, in three very relevant situations.

Computers, which can crunch numbers quickly can assign a weighting to your list from 0 to 1, and use this weighting to 'list' all games in the system.

This will create a top 10, or top 100, without needing to score them as 10s. The top 10, will reflect  the games that of all games voted for, so far, these games have the most people, saying it is their best game.

There will be no need to chastise the hundreds of people saying its a '10' because they haven't, they've just said, of all the games 'they' have played, its in first place.

Anyone who votes a game down to 'tank' its ratings, are doing nothing more than voting all the games above it, as being better. In their opinion.

Participants, who have only ever voted for 10 or 20 games, wont be able to influence the system to say their no.1 is the best game ever (or in last, as the worst), because, its only the best game, for them, out of 20 games they've played. (see below for the math)

Furthermore, instead of asking "is this 'the' best game", your asking, Is this game, the better choice, based on your previous rankings, of other games you've experienced. and its asked 3 times, in three ways, that often, don't match. new players, games for your friends, or games for you.   

1. The Math: The Vote system shows you three games, one half way down your list, the other halfway up your list. when you click, the list shifts deeper into your list and again, matches half way up, or halfway down. until it finds its spot. Math shows us, this can only ever, worst case, happen 7 times with 2 values, or 5 times with 3 values. You vote for your games, and they create a list, inside the workings, the computer breaks your list into mathematical % of your whole list, and finds the middle number of that %. i.e. if you have only voted for 5 games, the % of each 'title' is 20%, and the mid point of that is 10, so the games would be weighted 0.1, 0.3, 0.5, 0.7, and 0.9 Note, with only 5 games, your 'lowest' is a 1 and your highest is a 9, you can't vote it to 0 or 10, you haven't got enough experience voting yet. This 'weight' is averaged with all the other votes, but also, with all the not yet votes. If the site requires 1000 votes to record any given game against, all those 999 others have a base score of 0.5 for all games. So, if you're the first person to vote, and you give it top marks? its the best ever game? your 9, combined with 999 5s, will give a final score of 5.004 Its going to be in the middle.
   

 

    And this is what we want, we don't want games with 1 vote, jumping into top place, an we don't want some kind of 'catch system' to say, Oh, we need to have 300 votes before we publicize the number, because, once social media finds out, they'll get 301 people to vote it a 10, and then the opponents of this, will vote 1s to cancel out the ratio, we don't even need the arbitrary 1,000 in there, just give all uses a base 0.5 middle and scale accordingly, sure the math will end up with values between 0.4 and 0.7, but that's also arbitrary, because, the users will only see the 0.7 as 'first' and the 0.4 as 'last'

And if anyone requires to see a 'value' score, then math can easily spread a 0.4 - 0.7, into a 

Combat Stances

 When I started making these rules, I watched a LOT of combat movies, Jackie Chan, and Chuck Norris, and the like. Then I went to some combat schools and asked to take notes. One thing I always thought that looked cool was stances

How Combat Stances work in DD12.

When you 'fight' in DD12 and you're still a low level character, you just do what you want and don't care about how you are perceived, but as time goes on, you need to be able to have an edge over your opponent to ensure you continue to win.

One way to do this, is to study their 'stance' or 'style' by spending a few round, letting your opponent attack you and focusing instead on defending, each 'round' your opponent attacks and you defend, you can take the difference as XP in a extremely specialized skill named "opponent style- <name of opponent> The maximum XP you can gain is governed by how much they fail by, divided by your 'study opponent' skill modifier (which divides by 2 for each +1 you have)

Since this follows the skill progression rules, a mere 15 XP will give you a score of 5, which denotes as a +1 against your opponent. this divide by 5 can also be improved by improving your 'study opponent' score. Yet it also reduced each +1 you gain, so a 'score' of 9 is +2, then 12 is a +3, 14 becomes a +4 and each score above this is a further +1. maxing out at 20 (when rolls are no longer needed/allowed) for a +10.

a +3 is more than enough for any character to be able to best the opponent, applied to attack or defense, armour bypass or damage, the character can specialize the skill further into attacks, defenses, damage resistances or damage blocks, allowing a quicker bonus against that opponent.

So. How does one defend against this? well, by evening the scores, studying your opponent in return, determining how their blows land, how they attack, and building up your own knowledge against it. Once your +3 counters their +3, you've gone back to matched battle. 

Then there are obfuscated Moves. Each attack you make, can take a small negative, but is done in such a way, that your opponents ability to understand your attacks will be reduced or nullified, your opponent will not only be unable to properly study your moves, they'll be lead to a false sense of what your scores are, and improperly defend against them, when you stop obfuscating. (and, they'll not know which is which)

But the ultimate defense, is to be trained in one of the many 'stances' that schools train their students.

Stances

Stances usually have a modifier, based on their position, how you hold yourself and present yourself, you might leave yourself open (-3 def), but have quick attacks(+2 att, -1 Init) with penetrative damage(+2 dam p), or vice versa, slow to the uptake (-3 Init, -2 att) but superior blocking skills (+3 def +3 block)    

But the most devastating, is when you learn two stances.. your opponent builds up an understanding of your basic stance, they build their study-opponent up, spending four to eight rounds of combat, allowing you to do the same, then when you're ready, you swap stance. the opponent doesn't understand whats going on, their expectations of your fighting style is completely false and they make moves that leave themselves wide open.

You apply all the first stances positive modifiers to your opponent as negative modifiers, and for each 'study opponent score' you apply your new stance positive modifiers again to your own.

Jackie is fighting Chuck, with Striking Fist Style. Its a simple -2 Initiative, +1 Att, +1 Dam style, -2 Def. Chuck is using his fists of fury style, +1 Att, +2 Dam, -1 Def, over the course of 3 rounds, chuck builds up a score of 12, and Jackie builds up a 9, Jackie can feel that chuck has the advantage, and chuck, thinking this too decides to really start laying some blows. He's right, Jackie takes some incredible hits, and while he gets in one of his own, its barely worth it, so he decides to switch styles. Now, he takes on Drunken Master Style. While he gains no obfuscation bonus, nor damage reduction bonus from the alcohol, he does get the stance modifiers -1 Att, -1 Dam, +4 Def and +2 Resist.

Chuck attempts to attack, and finds his opponent is now longer fighting with fists, instead slapping away his hands, being coy, silly and confusing, none of his hits land, his confidence is shattered, this guy can counter every move.

Jackie's modifiers were as follows, Chuck had a +3, so Jacking Drunken style was not the quick att+dam style, so Chucks readiness for a speedy attack were leaving him open, His Attack was reduced by 1 and damage by 1 (Striking fist reversed) then when he went to attack this quick style, he instead got a fluid drunk, flowing around him, dodging every move Jackie got chucks +3 x +4 Def = +12, and 3x +2 Resist, for +6. in effect negating chucks attack by 19 points. furthermore, Jackies own study opponent was still +2, he could focus his into attack, and or damage.

Chuck was smart enough to see this was not going to work, and backed down, vowing to return.    

Thoughts on game progression, and roleplay rules

 I'm a big fan of granular rules, yet over time, they get boring. So, I think, games should progressively obfuscate the simpler forms of the game, as you level up.

Game Progression as a mechanic.

Imagine you've never trekked, never strapped a backpack on, hiking boots, and gone for a walk. Those first few hours are going to be painful, difficult, full of mistakes, hardships, and things that you just can't help avoid.

But then imagine how different it will be after a month, 6 months or several years of trekking. 

After a month, the simplest issues will be worked out. the basics of packing a bag, how to put on your boots for better comfort, making sure you don't pack weird shaped items against your back.

After 6 months, ensuring you put on dry socks, and lace the boots against the grain so water flows away, and not into your boot, packing your bags for the most long term comfort, but also quick access to certain items, and packing in under 10 minutes, instead of an hour,

After several years, you'll still be learning small tricks, maybe less often maybe barely a change, but tiny incremental changes that give you extra crucial minutes of travel each day. 

My System Ideas.,

Its one of the reasons I developed the 2d12 bell curved results system, it starts of being harder, 1st level characters, you roll 2d12 and attempt to get your number under the low numbers, and while pass or fail, you gain some experience in the skill, those first few experience will be vital. You'll learn a lot, and your score will rise quickly.

Once you've gained a basic score of 20, there is no longer the need to roll for the simple stuff, this might be dealing with the minutiae or just getting the basics right. We as adults don't think about walking, talking, turning door handles or all the simple things we mastered as children, so why should your character think about any skill they've pretty much covered. The player says they do it, its a straight forward task, so they do it. If they don't KNOW its difficult, you don't tell them, (and secretly roll for that difficulty)

You do need to roll, every single time, someone says something, and ignore 99% of those rolls, so the times when its actually a roll, your players don't know the difference. The key is, does the player THINK they might fail? 

The rulebook says, if the player has a score of 20 (or more), the GM rolls, and if there are no modifiers, ignores this dice roll, unless a 12 is rolled, and the GM has a story reason to do something.

Only if there are modifiers, does this become important. 

If the player suspects its going to be difficult, let them roll, let them apply other skills for bonuses, it shows they are thinking, being creative in solving the problem. rolls = experience. 

But if the player thinks this is going to be a walk in the park, and it might be, then you roll, openly to put players on edge.

The key here is, players will get used to your rolls, and will ignore all the 'probably passed' and like real life, get into a false sense of security, Until its a fail, and then, that world of pain will teach them a lesson.

Rolling dice is barely a second, a glance, not a 12, ok, lets proceed.. but the moment on the persons face when they are so assured they'll swing across the chasm with that worn old vine as a rope, and that vine snaps, with a cloud of dust.. and they drop.. 

and their friends cast a spell, or a prayer or a quick thinking rope & hook, and they're safe, or.. a speedy healing ward as they slam into the ground almost dying.

NOTE: casting healing ward, is 1 HP to a location and 1 HP in general, it can be cast on a person as they hit the ground, and prevent death. Provided no further insta damage occurs (like falling in acid/lava/poison/fire etc) 

But, slowly, as players progress, they'll notice, they're not doing rolls for things, they're not seeing any negatives happen for simple stuff, and consciously or subconsciously they'll feel like they're getting better. This is what you want to achieve as gamemaster, getting players to feel confidence about their character. Feel like they 'Earned' it.

Story Telling Healing

 One thing you might notice in TV shows or books, is that the ability to heal is somewhat related to how important the PC or NPC is. So why doesn't roleplay have something like it.

Healing System, for Narrative Roleplay.

One way to create amore narrative form of roleplay is to take away the direct nature of certain spells or prayers. Such as Healing.

If a Priest has a 'varied' healing system, which has a possible narrative modifier, this might allow good roleplays to use the information to drive the plot forward.

If healing was a % chance to succeed, and that % affected the die rolls, lets say for example the base rate to perform heal on someone at 1st level is 50% of d4. If the d4 roll is a 3, and the roll is under 50%, its a full 3pts, but if the roll is 75.. since its 'failed' by half, you halve the 3pt roll to 1 (rounded down). 
By making the healing varied, you can now add modifiers, such as PC +20%, important NPC +25%, lord or very important +35%.

This tells the players, is this NPC important to the plot, act accordingly. If the Priest goes to heal a dying child from a recent attack on the village, and the DM tells the priest, you have a -15% to the roll, the priest knows, this is not a vital plot character, and act accordingly, 'attempting the heal, but ultimately, knowing the child is dying, the priest doesn't waste important magics on someone that is not vital to the plot.

The players can still heal the child, but they can understand the consequences better for the plot path, and if later, they need that power, and don't have it, they know the cost involved.

This isn't something new players will grasp or understand, power players will only 'heal' important NPCS, and let anyone else die, so if your running an open world, its not likely to work well.

Though, with player driven narrative, they could 'choose' this NPC is important, to gain the bonus, and make the child a plot point.

All interesting.  

Memory, Roleplaying and Character sheets

 In my past, with less than a handful of characters under by belt, I could rattle off the exploits of my hero without missing a beat, and like many younger, or newer players, I would at every opportunity.

Yet, modern players, maybe, I don't see them doing so often, do they already understand that rattling off your fantasy life is boring for people? have they done it too often as kids from other games such as FF7, scoffed at by peers and decided not to espouse their life story with each new audience?

As a result though, I also see this lack of memory, of what's going on. past exploits, past adventures, contacts, locations of known wares. players just don't seem to remember any of this.. Maybe they have 100s of movies and video games that did the same, over and over, and its become a blur. 

So, how do we deal with

Character Memories

As annoyingly boring, we need to record a LOT of this stuff down now. Its vital to be able to call up a contact mid mission and pull in that favour, access that weapon shop, healing potion, special mc'guffin that'll help out in this quest.

Players have enough going on in their actual lives, so when we sit down at the gaming table, how do we have a chance at remembering that town, that shop, that salesman, and the price of the potion of speed that he was selling.

Lazy GMs and lazy systems, make these goods available in ALL towns, ALL shops, so the players don't have to track their way back for it. why? because in computer games, players will get bored, quit, and play another game, instead of taking the required effort, so they drag that feeling into roleplay, and kerplunk, the RPG game suffers.

So, I have sheets I hand out to players, AFTER they meet their first important NPC, where they can jot down relevant info.. why? because then I don't have to remember it.. I have enough on my plate.

Players can record as much or as little, but with ** and * references for 'important to remember' on certain fields, its not hard for players to track the bare minimum, with those prompts.

Also, as time goes by or anytime a player takes a head trauma, a memory spell, or some other reason to forget some information, I can ask a player to roll on the handy chart, and erase memories from the sheet. This creates some great story plots, and roleplay opportunities as times goes by.

Especially with Illusion spells being so common, passing yourself off as someone else only matters if they can't remember the nitty gritty details of an NPC when they should / could.

I tell you, the look on a players face when they meet the Tavern keep, and I say "Here's Bilt, the Bartender, looking like he always does, scar down his left cheek and his clean shaven head. he's maybe grown a beard a bit longer than normal since you saw him, and players glance at their memory sheets, and say. wait on a sec, his scar was on his right cheek wasn't it? I lost that memory when we fought the mind flayer, I'll look at him further, try and nod at my friends to look at him again.. see if they can get it. 

Blind Faith will not make a kickstarter work, if its the 2nd time round

So imagine, here's me, a couple of weeks before releasing a medium to large sized kickstarter project, my "boss" is asking for the rulebook, usually the last thing that's finished in a campaign before print, so if he's asking me to finish the rulebook, then the KS pages must all be complete? right? 

Nope, So I go to interview a prominent Youtuber in the games industry, and I have to use a half assed project page to go through. I see it.. I'm shocked, I make the excuse its a work in progress, 90% of what the Youtuber says, I already said to 'my boss', some things we both missed, forest for the trees.

I tell the creator, "This was embarrassing, this was worse than 1.0 KS page" He's upset, I think he pouted, promised to do better.. and then proceeded to do worse, deleted the all-in, took out images of things that were not quite done, but didn't put them back before launch with better ones.. just didn't put them back, all the videos he promised, gone.. 

Its not wonder when we launched it was dismal, it was a shockingly dismal launch, we turned it around, but at what cost.

How not to do a kickstarter.. post mortem

If its your first kickstarter, I think some audience will forgive you your janky page, missing bits, things that don't make a lot of sense. Not everyone, they don't all look to see how many KS's you've done, how many projects you've created, they just compare to what they know.. that's human nature.

But when they see a shiny project created with a project manager, a graphic artist, a marketing agent, a copy editor and several consultants. They compare to a page done by 3 dads part time. Its not going to be the same.

But a 2nd project? C'mon, the whole point of your first campaign it to study what worked, what didn't and fix it, get better, prepared better, and be ready to go to market. 

Why? Because first impressions are lasting impressions, and most KS projects have a larger number of first to your product customers than usual. You have to have your A-Game to this, each and every project.

What we did to solve some of this 

We turned it around, we convinced the owner this was not good enough, we delayed a month, rebuilt all the graphics, added all the animated gifs, did some videos, a lot of work, sleepless nights. We put in 40 hours a week on top of our families and jobs for 4 weeks, and it was 'passable' (not according to dice tower, but who cares what they say)

In the end we hit 200% funding (my lowest funded project % to date) but it was dismal, for all that work and effort, we should have done twice as much work and got twice as much money for our time.

I understand, Kickstarter are not about profit, but I'd like at least more than $5 an hour at some point.

So here's what you MUST do for a successful kickstarter, Especially if its your second project

Build some kind of Audience, at least ten times as many people as you need to fund. If you need $40 from 500 people to raise $20,000 for a minimum production cost run. You need 5000 people to be aware of your product launch.

Facebook advertising brought in less than 0.5% of views, we spent $5,0000 on 40 different adverts, with a range of 0.3% to 1.1% and barely raised $5-10k (not profit, just raised). We could have done better, but I doubt it would have been worth it for a niche product.

Don't rely on that as a number, having them out there, only helped stop all the comments from backers asking "why don't we advertise more" placating them that we were 'doing all we could'

Due to the time frame, we did not do enough pre-launch listings.

Pre Prepare everything, months in advance and get a LOT of feedback. (don't listed to all of it, but aggregate the main ones)

This was certainly our biggest downfall, the lack of preparation. Sure, I can say I was asked to help with only the rulebook 6 months in advance, and I started play testing against myself for months and months (developing mini solo rules as I was doing it). But the Campaign? I was asked a week before we launched to help and the entire thing needed a complete overhaul.

Pre-Prepare to Succeed and also to fail. What's your backup plan if you go down the gurgler, and what's your cut off date. Mine was 100% in the first 48 hours. We didn't hit it, so I argued against going ahead. I presented the facts for both going ahead and barely struggling to fund, vs, relaunch at getting 150%.

But I also prepared for 500% ( was shot down several times to try for that, and in hindsight I hope the "boss" sees that this was a mistake as at time of writing we are at 415%) I set out profitable stretch goals, sorted out plausible stretch goal costs, so when we were panicking to put in new Stretch Goals, we had some that would not burn us later. 

This isn't a normal marketing campaign in a normal company, this is public, under scrutiny, don't try to fake anything, you'll get found out and it'll burn you.

Several campaigns came out in 2020 and 2021 done by people from other countries, not used to the western way of doing things, and they were burned to the ground under witch hunts of 'bad practices'.

Possibly this is from several years of snake oil merchants in the past, trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the consumer, and the rise of the same in the 80s, the modern consumer is armed with several 'lists' of red flags that can pull a KS down into the pits of failure.. even if its a legit product, doing everything right, if they don't prepare their campaign for the 'key points's and have transparency up front, the KS mob will come and burn them down. its scary, I've been in the middle of several campaigns, as a creator, thinking its a legit campaign, and its starts to go down, and go down fast as the trolls pile in for a witch burning..  

Post Campaign Prep is just as important, what's going to happen when, and show this list to your backers. Even if you don't show it, have it, because you need to know when each part of the list goes ahead. When you need to get artists to finish, when you need copy finished, when the printers need the files to prepare the product. If you skip any of those, your project will be late (But aren't they all?).

Backers have gotten used to the lateness, and some companies have lost confidence as a result, so now, gain confidence by beating your own timelines, deliver early and get talked about as being one of the 'better prepared' companies.

If we'd have done all this, in my opinion, we'd have hit a million easily. The product we have is far superior to most in the same genre, just needs a lot more careful preparation in how its presented to the public.

King of Average says "Make Games not Campaigns", yet I'd change one word 'not' to 'then'/ the campaign is as important, but should be a 50/50 split. You're not selling a game over years to spread out your campaign skills & budget, you're doing it all as a one shot. and it should be done right.  

  

Secrets for Augmented Gaming

 If you don't already know, I'm helping to run a Kickstarter for Limbo Miniatures.

Heres the link:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/limbominiatures/limbo-eternal-war-15-0

One of the things I added was a Secrets section, so we can unlock interesting aspects of the game, if people play this little secrets..

If you're here, you managed to figure out that this Phrase 

The Secrets Channel is open, Be careful what you say, or do, eyes and ears are everywhere. No Answers will come from on high, Do not PM the moderators, for they know not. This message is written by the Blogmaster. 

Is the first post in the Discord. Google will likely put this in its search system, and you googled it, and got here..

So whats here? Well, you could try and read every single post and see if I put any clues in.. I did, but they're repeated in other places too. 

You could look at the topics I post about, google those, and find other forums, discords, facebook groups, and see if you can find anything else I posted about Limbo Miniatures.. and that'll give you some clues too.

Is that enough?

I'm a webmaster, I know how to make webpages.. will that help you find more? consider what I can do, and how I can do it.. and you'll likely find enough clues to unlock the TEN different secret upgrades to the Limbo 1.5 launch. (any unsolved puzzles will unlock in the 1.6 campaign later, so don't quit)

All Social Media.. can be a clue. 

Upgraded Currency

 In ye olde Dragon Warriors, Coin was Copper, Silver and Gold.. but in Dungeon World we have

A Multitude of Coinage

Each kingdom tend to make their own coinage, and the exchange rate is not common knowledge, for reasons (below). Common folk, within the kingdom are barely going to understand their coinage going up or down outside their own town, let alone country, if it costs a silver florin for a barrel of wine today, it'll cost a silver for a barrel next year, and anyone trying to tell you otherwise is a cheat, and a liar, and will be run out of town.

Since almost any town will have some kind of 'barrel' of 'alcohol' which will invariably costs 1 silver, there will always be some kind of pushback on inflation. Also, because the god of inflation has been imprisoned by several very powerful heroes who want prices to stay the same.

So, Coinage never has to worry about being devalued, prices will, with fluctuations from supply and demand, always hover around the same value. and lifestyles as well.

Copper is for the poor, people who need to trade in copper are considered lower class, and the lower class love it, because they always managed to get the better end of a deal when some middle class pays for things with silver, and no change.

Silver is the trademans and merchants main coin, they will happily deal with all varied forms of coinage, and with the help of a street mage, always ensured that they don't get ripped off.

Gold is the coin of Kings.. and Nobles, and Gentry and people who want to be Nobles and or Gentry, and Heroes.. because Heroes somehow seem to be finding so much of the stuff.

But, Like many things in life, its not so easy to be carrying around all this coinage.

In The old Dragon Warriors, with a 10:1 ratio on things, and 10 coins to enough to carry let alone 100, Buying a peasants house at 10 gold, is only 1000 x the cheapest coin, so 1000 hours labour = a house? right?

Well, Then along came realism.. Dungeon World started looking at the metals in circulation and determined that Pewter, at least medieval, magical world Pewter, was slightly more expensive to make than silver (which bends and can technically be magic'd away) has magic resistant properties, To the point where a coin of pewter is worth 10 silver, and a gold is worth 10 pewter. Interestingly, Pewter contains lead, and is constantly poisoning people, but with an abundance of magical healing, its not noticed like we know of on Earth.

Then too, the common class decided that since wood is a worthy substance by itself, and people of certain class want a kind of recognition, certain woods, stained and sealed in a resin like substance, would count as a kind of thieves world coinage. Not as simple to make as just melting down some copper, but still plentiful enough, its has an almost 15:1 ration to copper.

Well of course, its a little easier to carry half a coin, than 5 other coins, and don't clink so much in the wallet, so snipped coins started to make circulation, til the powers that be decided that we can't have snipped chunks of metal where its unsure if its 45% or 55%. So the Moons started to make an appearance, and you can get gold, pewter, silver and copper moons in many states.

Then later, magical fused coinage, Gelds were discovered in magic councils, considered as worth much more to a mage than anyone else, they are often stamped differently by the magi, but not required. A geld might be accidentally traded by non magi for their metal worth, and the lucky mage will pick one up at the metal price, but its usually considered to be 20x the worth of the coin to a magi, and as such as become a worthy coin for the wealthy.

Note: Copper and Silver Gelds can cope with only 1 magic point, as they tend to melt with more infused, and as such are closer to 10x worth for a mage, but while Gold can normally cope with 3 magic points, Gold has been known when fused with some metals to cope with as much as 7 magic points. 

Rarer is the Octiron Coin, rumoured to be created when 8 magic points are infused into a gold coin using a crystal rod, The Octiron coin is somewhere in the range of 1000x gold crowns. 

We have not touched on the chunkier and heavier Dwarven varieties, which are typically twice the size and three times the worth, as they resist any tampering, and the artistic elven varieties which are only worth more for their beauty, as a coinage, they lose worth as soon as human hands mar and tarnish their faces, and return to bland versions within a few days of common usage. though, still worth 1.5 times normal worth to a clever eye.

Many 'lesser' races still trade goods, but use human coinage if its available, yet, pewter and silver tend to be pooled together.

In the Demon realms, trapped souls exist in a crystal like structure when touched, but in a softer form when not, are both used as a currency and a consumable, and when brought to the surface are traded in back alleys and black markets. 

Pretty much, once anything is common enough, it becomes a kind of currency, as such the apothecary world trades internally with empty vials as they can cost somewhere between a pewter and a gold to manufacture, and are only really used by apothecaries and heroes. 

So what of these exchanges? well, the kings of the world, have for the most part discovered one thing to keep their countries in flow. exchanging currency between traders and Adventurers can be, in itself, profitable enough to maintain the border guards, passes, diplomats and trade relations, instead of war. War is costly, the benefit is limited, but currency exchange?

So when players get to the edge of the country, there might be a border guard who can 'change' their money.. its ALWAYS a rip off.. 10 Zonti for 9 Jebas? but on return, 10 Jebas for 9 Zonti? hang on?

but in town, no-one is going to.. legally.. exchange other coins.. except of course, for a fee. 

Choose your Own adventure paths, Quick plots for time poor GMs

 About 30 years ago, the Fighting Fantasy Novels were published for us teenagers that were just starting down the path of fantasy roleplay. They're simplistic, but written well enough to use for your own games, and if your audience is under 30, they're unlikely to have read them to interfere with the game.

Reusing published works for time poor GMs

One thing that comes up, commonly enough, is the Gamesmaster needing to prepare a lot for play. Its true to say that to run your own game, in your own world, you will need months, if not years of preparation.

I've discussed several ways to speed up those processes, to get your world built faster, with enough depth to springboard into play, but what if you just want a single adventure, just a few sessions long, and you want 'enough' depth to make it interesting , but you need it THIS weekend?

p.s. I consider even published works, to be more work to prepare, as you typically need to pre-read all the entries, the NPC dialogs, and get a real solid feel for what's going on.

One thing I did as an experiment was to grab an old Fighting Fantasy, Choose your own adventure. Forest of Doom. I had a photocopied version, but I understand copies are readily available online.

My players were introduced to the plot, via the intro text, sure I just read it from my photo copies, but my players were as likely aware that I may have written it myself, the only real thing I needed to do was clarify the paths and choices as I went, and rejig the creatures & combat, based on my group size.

I had a group of  four level 3 characters, so I just grabbed the Monster Lore for the creature in the text, and made between three and five of them, based on how my group looked after previous battles.

In my opinion, it was successful, the players got to play out a decent plot, got some interesting puzzles, some interaction with NPCs and Monsters, resolved the quest and it took 3 sessions. because of the plot of Forest of Doom it also left a cliff hanger to go on to the other adventures, Temple or Terror and City of Thieves, We could have scheduled more sessions and played it out, but Covid lockdowns and such.

p.s. Temple of Terror would require you as GM to pre-read the book, and in some books you might want to map out some places, but again, these are pretty commonly found online, so most of the work is already done. 

[Game Rules] Potion making vs playing the game

 Once again , as I breathe in all the internet wafts in my direction, I took this scent..

When Designing games, do players want to actually DO stuff, like making potions? If they don't why do they expect unique outcomes?

I think its pretty straight forward, If you give players 3 ingredients (and order is important), and 3 variant instructions, resulting in 120 variances, and only 1 will result in a healing potion, 80% of them will quit and say its too hard, and look online for the other 20%s answers.

The desired outcome here, is that players can enjoy searching for potion ingredients. the relevant character brews them up into the desired potion, or if the rolls fail, into a random sludge or possible poison.

As my goal for this game, players with no previous experience should take some time figuring out the possible combinations, we should not take away the players experimentation, just to speed along the story. But, once players have discovered enough, or have no interest in this, the rules should obfuscate away the complexity, in favour of narrative flow.

One consideration is varied side effects, and possible 'less than ideal' results.

Lets consider the following. There are 8 possible 'good enough' solutions to the healing potion, 3 of which have lesser effects, crossed over with 4 being cheaper and 2 being expensive, based on dosage of certain herbs, 5 have a mild poisonous effect, 2 have a major poisonous effect. 

If the GM counts all 8 of these as failures, as per a die roll, the players never get to experience unknown flawed play. In which characters go through their world with less than ideal potions, and deal withy it as best as they can.

The Scenario: Our group has experimented with the 3 ingredients, in varied amounts, and finally a potion is tested on a goblin victim, who not only survives, but appears to heal quickly from wounds. The group test it on themselves.

The potion costs 3 gold worth of ingredients, much better than the shops assumed 50 gold price tag (they have yet to buy one to try out), though yes, it did cost 500 gold to set up, and test ingredients, but after 11 potions, they'll break even.

Next, the potion heals 4 HP over 2 rounds and has a +10% healing rate for the next 2 days, but has a side effect, the character is also slowed, sluggish and has a -1 to their reflexes & initiative for those 2 days.. its not such a major effect, so the group feels like its a cost they can bear.

The spend the next 3 years of their adventuring life, adding a side quest to pick up the ingredients needed, to each mission, in order to save on those expensive healing potions.

Interestingly, the GM has not told them, that the potions second side effect is to make them smell as delicious for the rock sharks, which has resulted in a +10% wandering monster as a rock shark for all hilly and mountain regions.. the players just thought this area of the world has a lot of rock sharks, and have taken precautions over the years.

This one little aspect, this one failure to produce the 'correct' results on their potionsmith roll, but instead from player exploration, has led to a backstory to this group, that makes it so much more interesting.

Moreso, when they, as players, meet other players, in the same game region, with a different potion recipe, swapping stories.. the second group having never encountered a rock shark, begins to ask questions about them, making the first group suspicious..  then in a group encounter, the 2nd group, doesn't want to spend their expensive healing potions, is aghast that the first just quaffs them down, so easily, asks: How do you guys afford so many Healing Potions? 

"We make them ourselves, not so expensive that way"
" But, we also make them ourselves, the ingrediant cost alone is in the hundreds, and none of us are good enough to be raiding phoenix nests for feathers, yes its 47gold vs the shops 50, but having 6 days of improved healing is worth it, vs the shops 5 days.."
" 6 days? we only get two.. but pheonix feathers? - Harold, we don't use pheonix feathers, whats going on?"

turns out, the 2nd group has also failed their rolls & gone ahead with the overly expensive, but slightly more powerful variety.. between the two of them.. they may yet discover that even the shops version is not the most efficient.

This way also, GMs can have a variety of cheaper vs expensive items in shops, lower quality, vs higher quality..

p.s. Bunglmans Burp Potion, has instant heal of 7, +25% per day, cumulative, for 3 days, costs 180 GP of ingrediants, but.. you will burp, from both ends, halving your base stealth, and -6 from ongoing stench, you'll be practically unable to perform any delicate skill, the character sheet has a -7 from day 1, reducing(improving) by 1 per day over 7 days. Its a rare potion, most people who 'discover' it, don't think its worth making, ever, but, as healing potions go, its so powerful, any adventuring party should own at least 1 bottle of the stuff. the nearest equivalent potion, Harthwarks Healer at +6, +20% for 4 days, with a 10% poisonous effect for 1 pt, at a whopping 800 GP, is the cloests equivalent for high powered healing.