In this episode, we look at an alternative idea for dealing with money and how crafting and lore skills can be promoted in your campaigns. Welcome to Mythras Matters Season 1 Episode 48 - Gaining Wealth and limiting crafting
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Hello and welcome to Mythras Matters, a podcast dedicated to the Mythras ruleset and all its supplements. As always, I’m your host, inwils, and welcome to August!
I was streaming my GM prep on Youtube the other day, and I suddenly got thinking about past games and what started my journey into the world of role-playing games.
Preparing my sessions online while streaming is so helpful but also quite daunting. Apart from the numerous spelling mistakes I make, it seems like I am revealing my creative process to everyone who is watching. It is as if we are taking a secret tour of my innermost imagination. As a GM, I think we are naturally devious - not in a nasty way - but plot lines and story arcs often have a twist, and we not only think of these but also implement them.
Once I had got over exposing my creative process LIVE - I have to say that it is a very positive process. It is so interesting when people in the chat add suggestions and possible encounters, and I weave them into the story. There is, of course, a proviso at the start of the stream saying that I will not include everyone's idea in the adventure. I can't include everyone's suggestions, but I do store many of them for future use.
As a GM, I think we rarely share our ideas for adventures, and I have to say it has been very beneficial for me and my creative process. It also makes me sit down and spend a productive hour creating! If you ever want to catch me, then make sure you are subscribed to my Youtube account and have notifications turned on.
I've lost my track now - oh yes, past games!
I did some live streams in the past about the games I have played, and I was interested to see whether you are of my era and remember some of the less-known games that I have played. You might have more to add to the pot, so do let me know in the comments or on Discord.
I'm going to remove all the Dungeon and dragons games. I think these are probably stable for us all. Surely everyone has played them at some point in the RPG journey!
Here are some others - do you remember them? Tunnels and Trolls? From what I can remember, the combat procedure for this was that you added up everyone's attacks, then everyone's defence, and then the one that had more won! It also had a fantastic spell called - Take that, you fiend! Epic!
Did anyone travel through time correcting mistakes in the timeline with the game TimeMaster? I played this a lot at university. I was a Greek soldier that was superb at acrobatics! Got me out of a few very difficult situations!
What about the funny Paranoia? I think you had clones in that game so you could die numerous times. Also, was there a big brother-watching theme?
I only played it once, but I did play Judge Dredd - so much fun with that game, especially the ammunition and learning the laws! I especially enjoyed administrating the do not drive under the specified speed limit one - sometimes I wish that was a law in real life!
And before we move on - we have to mention Rolemaster and Middle Earth and, of course, Runequest!
The latter was a favourite of mine, I enjoyed the combat system and the ways Runes were incorporated into the game. I'm sure in the example text in the side columns there was an example when someone fumbled and nearly broke their leg! Those were the days!
Enough reminiscing; let's get onto some of the other topics in this month's podcast. Later on, I want to talk about knowledge and crafting skills, but before that, let's talk about money and wealth!
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Do not panic, I'm not going to start talking about the cost of living or the exchange rate!
I have a real problem with money and wealth in all my campaigns! Something that I have recently been trying to work on and develop.
Before I go on, I have to say huge thanks to Alex Greene and Matt E for their ideas and publications. They have really supported and moulded my thinking about wealth in all my campaigns - so do check them out!
You might have guessed, if you watch my Gibbering GM video for this month, that I dislike micromanaging things. I just think there is better things to spend our time on within the role-playing sessions. As you can imagine, I'm never keen on tracking how many gold or silver pieces characters have and where these are located, whether in a pouch or chest or in a banking situation. Coupled with this, playing M-Space, the amount of money is increased considerably, with credits being available for anything from ammunition to the Class A star destroyer!
If you haven't bought, read or played Destined yet, do so since this has a really great system called allotments that works really well in that game. But I wanted to create something new, and so for M-space in particular - I have brought in a Wealth Skill. This will have a starting value of INT+POW
Before I go any further, please do not think the wealth skill is a direct representation of credits. 1% wealth does not represent 1000 credits. Inspired by Alex Greene, I've gone with more of an abstract approach.
First, I have said that some items you always have money for. For example, buying ammunition for your weapons, buying simple or basic weapons and equipment, board and lodgings, you get the idea.
Second, there are two wealth skills - individual character wealth and the party's wealth. The latter is created by players 'donating' their wealth points to the party's wealth!
Initially, I think that the wealth skill will only increase unless a fumble happens.
In our M-Space campaign, the party is paid for doing jobs. Therefore when discussing payment, a successful opposed negotiation roll with increase the wealth skill by 1d4+1% - similar to experience rolls. This can be to the party's wealth or split between the characters. If the player fumbles this roll then the wealth skill will be decreased and if the negotiation roll is a critical success, then the amount will be doubled!
The question you are probably thinking about is, if you can pay for items without money, where does the wealth skill come in?
Well, the wealth skill can be used to augment other rolls. These rolls are generally related to when the skill is related to buying things which fall outside the 'usual' free-to-purchase items. For example, if the party want to buy something on the black market or when trying to buy items above the tech level of the current world. It could also be used to augment the bribery skill or the forgery skill. My plan is to allow it to augment if the players present a reasonable case for it being used. This could be helpful for the character if the difficulty grade has been increased for any reason.
I am hoping that this skill will eliminate some of what I call the daily drudge of credits or money in general without removing the importance of cash in the game.
What do you think? And if Alex or Matt are listening in, we could organised a round table chat to thrash out some of the complexities of present flaws and refinements to the general idea of wealth.
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Remember, if you would like to contribute the podcast then why not just drop me an email or message and let me know what you would like to cover. I am always looking for reviews or interviews with people. So if you are interested, you can email me on inwils@gmail.com or send me a message on the various forums I frequent.
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Two skills in all the campaigns I like are the craft skill and knowledge or lore skills. I feel these have the potential to add so much to campaigns and allow players to create their own items, including the possibility of higher quality weapons and armour.
However, I am very bad at allowing players to use 'doing' skills to cover possible knowledge skills. For example, someone with sensor skill I would allow to roll that if they were enquiring about the different types of sensor equipment that they encounter, or someone with an invocation skill to roll that for information about the other orders of sorcerers. Initially, I was going to increase the difficulty level of the knowledge roll, but with their skill level so high, this doesn't really seem to have an impact.
I am currently considering that in these instances, the character would naturally have a knowledge skill at an initial lower level - so if a character has devotion at 50% they would automatically start with a Lore of religions at 25%. After this point, the two would have to be increased separately. This would mean that the players did not need additional experience rolls to gain the skill, but could increase them after this point.
The same could be said for some skills and a similar crafting skills. For example - would a character with an archery style combat skill have some knowledge and understanding of crafting arrows and simple bows? In this way, a similar approach to the specialisation skills in Shadowrun would be implemented. So the archer would have their combat skill, then half of that would be their knowledge of bows and arrows and then half of that would be their crafting skill for bows and arrows.
This hierarchy of skills would not always be possible, but it would encourage the knowledge and crafting skills to be used in the game. It would also provide a suitable alternative for when people are tired of buying items they need on the black market or want to exercise their creative flare and start to create their unique items.
And this brings me to another idea that I have, which involves some limitations on the crafting skill. While players might be ploughing experience rolls into improving their crafting skills, I feel that there needs to be a limiter. Initially, this would be the cost and availability of items, but I think that the knowledge or lore skill roll is important here as well.
In order to craft items you need to know some understanding of the theories and crafting techniques. Because of this, I was thinking about saying that the character's knowledge skill limits the crafting skill. I suddenly thought this might already be in the rules, and I have missed it - so if it is then let me know.
With both the crafting and fore skill the players can add another dimension to their characters. It also allows them to be valid and productive use of the down times in campaigns. As a player, if I ever play, I would like the idea that while we were playing in other campaign settings my previous character was researching and creating something new that would be brought into the game when we returned to the campaign.
Lore and crafting skill also provide a wealth of adventure ideas from finding and harvesting raw resources to actually creating specific items. They also provide the opportunity for characters to continue on in the campaign when every one fancies a restart and new characters are created.
If you have your own crafting and knowledge system in your campaigns, then please do get in touch, it would be great to have a few people together to chat about possible ways to integrate both these skills into a campaign.
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And that’s it, another episode of Mythras Matters completed.
Don't forget you can check out all my content by following my YouTube channel and the campaign areas on World Anvil. I really appreciate your support and do check out the TapaTalk forums, there are some great people there sharing their ideas within the discussions.
So, until next time have a great month of gaming and I will chat again to you all in Septmeber
Until then I hope that all our opposed rolls succeed and provide you with a well-deserved special.
Thanks for listening cya - Bye!