For Whom the Toll Tolls
Poor toll dude. I’d be scared too if Cleric’s grapple check was all that was standing between me and a raging Fighter.
I mean, what kind of jerk can’t fork over a lousy 5 cp? That’s just the cost of doing business in a fantasy world. You’ve got to pay for your stay ye olde inn (and extra if you want stabling). You have to replenish your rations and your ammo. You’ve got to pay your tithe to the church, your tax to the crown, and your tolls to the toll taker. At the very least you ought to abstract it out into a monthly cost of living fee, right?
Well not necessarily. I don’t know about the rest of you guys, but I don’t go in for fantasy adventure in order to play Home Ec Simulator. Especially when you get into later levels, pillaging dragon hoards every other session and walking around with a king’s ransom worth of magic items on your back, it can feel a bit silly to sweat the small stuff. Sure these petty cash issues makes sense from a worldbuilding standpoint, but I find that they can detract narrative attention from the aforementioned pillaging of dragon hoards.
There are many reasons to play RPGs, but I think that one of the big ones lies in escaping the mundane concerns of the real world. Part of being a big damn hero is getting treated like a big damn hero. When smug royal functionaries, disinterested clerks, and rude waiters arise in-game, you get to defenestrate them properly, just like you can’t do in real life. Whether that makes your an entitled murderhobo or a proud barbarian warrior unconcerned with the petty dictates of the so-called “civilized world” is a matter of perspective.
That of course brings us to our question of the day! Do you worry about cost of living concerns in your game? Or do you handwave that mess in favor of high adventure? In other words, would you pay that toll? Would your players? Tell us all about the likely fate of that luckless toll taker in your game world down in the comments!
THIS COMIC SUCKS! IT NEEDS MORE [INSERT OPINION HERE] Is your favorite class missing from the Handbook of Heroes? Maybe you want to see more dragonborn or aarakocra? Then check out the “Quest Giver” reward level over on the The Handbook of Heroes Patreon. You’ll become part of the monthly vote to see which elements get featured in the comic next!
For my guys, in early levels I often do some small tasks to help pay for stuff, such as helping heal the sick for playing for a bar, while in late game I have so much gold and things are so relatively cheap that I just say I pay people, and assuming that it isn’t some unusually high expense, the dm doesn’t even care if I take the gold off my character sheet. As such I would pay it, but at high levels, the payment becomes merely a sign that my guy isn’t a murderhobo and doesn’t actually matter much.
The later levels are a bit like playing Oregon Trail with infinite money. At some point, you can cause the North American bison to become extinct all by your lonesome, and don’t need to worry the cost of bullets.
I think cost of living is great for showing progression and giving your players the oppertunity to roleplay. Sure your mighty barbarian doesn’t care for the comforts of the weak civilised world, but is she really sleeping in the barn still at higher levels?
The only thing I struggle with as a DM in this model is the cost of things. How much does a peasant earn? A lord? The DMG does give a list, but it never really sticks in my brain in a memorable way. How far does a gold piece go in your world? How do you keep track of this value? I have hand waved the nitty gritty of this at times, to avoid getting bogged down and justified it to my players as the locals ripping the rich adventurers off. It still irks me as I on the fly have to think how much is in a coinpurse?
Your username threw me for a second. That’s my dude’s superhero name in Mutants & Masterminds.
This mess came up in a big way in my group’s Firefly game. It’s been a while, but I believe there are two different systems of currency in play (Alliance credits vs. frontier bucks or whatever). Trying to figure out whether a chicken was worth more than a covered wagon is harder than you’d expect!
The traditional problem with cost of living is that PCs have a tendency to avoid “unnecessary” expensises like that in order to save money for equipment like magic items that give known in game benefits. All other problems with this aside, they seem to assume that a smelly hobo would be allowed inside a magic item shop, which would be the fantasy equivalent of a Porsche dealership.
My personal solution to this would be to use an abstract wealth system, with “resources” and “lifestyle” tracked separately, so on one hand you could have a wandering (homeless) mercenary with the ability to lay his hands on interesting magic or an elite soldier who may live in barracks but has access to top of the line equipment, on the other you can have a noble scion who may live in luxury, but has no chance to get hold of weapons.
That sounds like a slightly more complicated version of the d10 system’s take on the “resources” stat. Is that your point of reference here?
I don’t remember where the original idea came from, possibly Marvel FASERIP or Champion’s resource levels. The separation came from thinking about various anime, specifically Ryouga Hibiki (essentially homeless, but has a tendency to obtain weird plot triggering stuff), Mermaid Forest (the central characters are homeless due to a lack of legal identification), Lina Inverse (a wandering adventurer, but who can stay in fine inns and eat large meals at good restaurants and Sana in Kodocha, who lives in a large luxurious house, and can get hold of bungie cords for a hare-brained plot.
I’ve always liked the living expenses rules in players handbook. However, when I’m a DM, I’ve never used them, worrying that the players will find it unfun. And when I’m a low-level player, I find it hard to fork over coin unless the DM asks me to. Since other DMs don’t run living expenses (possibly for the same reason as I), I’ve never used or seen a player use the living expense rules. The closest I’ve come is when players book a tavern for the night.
This more or less describes my attitude.
“Neat rule! Let’s never remember to use it.”
Since I write this blog, I’m considering reminding my players to fork out for the 1-month time skip we just did. Makes me wonder what that adds to the game, and whether it’s worth the hassle.
Depending on what kind of campaign you play, in Pendragon this is can be a very serious matter. As you play a landed knight, who is the master of a manor, with farmers and a village and stuff, you get your money from the tithes that those villagers have to give to you. No villagers, no money, and thus probably no horse, and\or armour, or even family. A famine, or a (saxon) raid, can damage your manor, kill or enslave your villagers, and abduct your family, and thus see you drop one or two wealth levels, which can, and often does, have huge conequences for both your livestyle, and you suvivability in combat, because you can now only afford less good amour, and you will have less horses that are either less healthy, or less trained.
But, as I said, this depends on your campaign. There are at least two books in the KAP line that have a system for maintaining and building up, your manor. But there are also enough campaigns in which all this is handwaived. It all depends on what your players want. And some of them are really into this real-estate building and growing, while others couldn’t care less about it.
Laurel is that player in our group. She will often draw out the floor plans of any construction projects, and calculate exact costs. I’m happy to provide resources for that, but devoting game time to it seems to be a step too far for the rest of the table.
It makes me think that a well-defined time-keeping method (read: a calendar) is the most useful tool here. That way you can systematize, “It’s the first of the month, pay up.”
Like the man said, “YOU CAN NOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN IF STRICT TIME RECORDS ARE NOT KEPT.”
–Dungeon Master’s Guide (page 37), Gary Gygax
The Pathfinder 2e adventure path “Age of Ashes” has an interesting base-building mechanic, as the party renovates the old castle they take over in the first book. The crux is a Society skill check made once a week (or once a month if you do well on it) for bookkeeping, which had the ironic effect of making my doctor Rogue devote himself to a medical doctor’s true passion – paperwork. You can then use downtime skill checks to fix up parts of the place, or pay either artisans or random laborers from the nearby town to do it for you (with social skill checks making that cheaper or more efficient). It uses a calendar system that encourages the party to put in two weeks’ worth of orders and then go adventuring (you know, that thing you are supposed to be doing) while they work. Sometimes leads to weird moments if the party really gets into it, like our party’s Barbarian taking up wood-working and remodeling a bunch of rooms.
I feel like your interior designer barbarian would get on well with my hairdresser Barbarian.
I also appreciate the nod to adventuring as a focus. That seems like an improvement over the (IMHO) overly fiddly 1e downtime rules. Might have to check it out!
I believe most of the rules are in the second book of the AP, “Cult of Cinders.”
Honestly, I really enjoy the resource management aspects of TRPGs. I think it’s similar to why I enjoy survival or management video games. I like the challenge of keeping careful track of what exactly I own and trying to maximize the efficiency of my resource consumption in a setting where there are no real-world consequences if I make mistakes. I feel like paying more attention to these details gives lesser-used skills more of an opportunity to be relevant. In Pathfinder 1E, Appraise doesn’t really do a whole lot unless you’re going for mechanics like actually having to sell art objects instead of auto-converting them into coins. The parts of Survival that are actually about surviving don’t come up much unless you’re tracking rations. Sometimes I feel like fun character concepts get diminished if there’s no opportunity to show off things like an experienced woodsman singlehandedly keeping the party fed while lost in the forest or a renowned jewel thief expertly identifying the true value of seemingly mundane objects.
I kind of gave up the ghost on Appraise when I discovered the bargaining rules:
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/skills/Appraise/#Bargaining
After my brain un-cramped, I decided to just handwave it.
I hadn’t seen those rules before. I suppose the problem with having rules for everything is that you have rules for everything.
My rogue deliberately loses games of chance whenever he spends time in a tavern… being a bad gambler is an excellent way of gathering information from off-duty guards who think they’re talking with a mildly-intoxicated merchant. By the time you’ve picked up a few levels, you can afford to drop a few gp on that kind of thing… and anyway, the gambling losses are probably cheaper than offering rewards/bribes…
Does losing give you a bonus to your gather information check?
Sure, if it’s worth a roll, it’s the kind of of thing that gives advantage.
But it’s mostly just roleplaying… if I want to gather information, I go to a tavern where my marks might be found, and proceed to buy a few rounds of drinks while gambling badly. It’s a good way to to get people talking… and the monetary stakes involved are pocket change for a seasoned adventurer…
I’ve just started my own Eberron campaign (as of Friday), and I intend to do this tiered.
At tier 1 living costs are important, up to the point of “will you be able to afford dinner today?”. This is both to motivate players to take jobs and also to establish a scope for the treasures and payments they receive. They will need to track their ammo they use in combat, rations they eat during traveling, etc.
At higher tiers these will be gradually dropped and replaced with other things. At tier 3-4 I will assume that the character brings enough cheap ammo (mundane, or even +1 at that level) to replenish their quiver after a fight, as long as someone mentions they prepare enough food for a trip I won’t ask them to keep track; and as long as they accumulate treasure measured in five figure gold amount, I will assume they have enough pocket cash to pay for a 5cp toll.
…income tax, however, will be a whole different can of worms and I’ll make sure to have some interesting forms ready for them to fill…
I like this tiered approach. Is it tied to level, or do you just wait until it feels right to make the change?
In general I would tie it to the average money the party gets per “adventure”. So in a post-apocalyptic, survival campaign where resources are scarce this would come later (if ever); while a treasure heavy dungeon crawler campaign where the very first adventure pays 2-300gp per character considerably sooner.
In my Eberron game I will mostly tie it to the official 5e tiers of play (for example mundane ammo tracking will be important until level 5; after that only magical ammo needs to be tracked, etc); but that tier will also mostly define what level of treasure the adventures will bring as well.
How will you present this change to the party? Do you establish it in a player handout in session zero? Or do you announce the shift when it happens?
All my characters keep several money pouches totally ~50 gp total in copper, silver, gold and platinum specifically to pay for stuff like that. However, from there I take my cue from the GM. If they are concerned about it, then you’ll find I have all the necessary implements, exact coinage, and food to last a few days. If not, that stuff is used up as RP later and then removed slowly over time.
As for if they would pay, depends on the character. My Paladin would sense motive the guard. If he seemed a decent sort, I would then give 10 silver, saying to let the next 19 pass; 5 cp is a lot for a peasant after all. He’d also talk to the guard about the infrastructure of the area, how this affects trade, etc.
Mendax is CG but paranoid. He’d want to know why the tax is being collected, in case it’s being used to get reports on people’s movements. He’d probably put on a disguise and then slip stolen coins from other party members as payment, then pay them back after. No using my coins to scry on me!
My Elf fighter would probably be all huffy about paying a Human Lord and would seek to go around the bridge, probably siting that bridges like this only need maintenance due to using dead wood.
Finally, my spell thief mage would pay it and barely even notice. Money means nothing to him since magic is everything.
Emphasis on “spell” rather than “thief” I guess. 🙂
I dig the idea with the pouches. It’s often irritating to need tip money only to realize, “Hey guys? Can anyone break a 5k diamond?”
The idea is an android mage with a bunch of counterspell stuff. The equivalent of Dispel magic, spells to steal spell points, etc. He doesn’t run on electricity, he runs on mana, obviously. I found a few talents that would allow him to quite literally cancel a mages ability to use a spell and then I get it, so he makes cheap wands with their talents to replicate it long term.
But the idea that magic is life means that he tries to gobble up magic wherever and whenever he can. Once he realizes money might allow him to buy magic, things will change. Right now its more “money is good for getting the materials I need for my wands” and not much beyond that. Trying for a magical savant like character with little social understand, as befitting the Android traits.
As a general rule, I do not, for the same reasons you listed above. However, I find it appropriate in some cases. I generally make players pay for mundane things when they have a big impact on the narrative. So while they don’t need to pay for the general stuff, if they’ve got to go meet a king for the first time, it’s off they go to find a tailor who can dress them up pretty, or if they’ve been stripped of their gear and are trying to survive in a new city, they’d better have some way of paying for their lodging, or they’re sleeping in an alley.
In my Crimson Throne game, my players’ first major purchase after their first big score was fancy clothes. They had to meet the queen after all!
I believe this scene came up in conversation: https://media0.giphy.com/media/G2SBFPTD3vf0I/source.gif
A game I’m currently playing in has a very curious mix of having to worry about the small stuff, and not having to. We’re trapped in an interdimensional fighting arena, and there are very limited options for gear. Your character starts with a set of clothes and any gear listed by your class (wizards get a spellbook) and nothing else. If you survive your first match, you can spend pit tokens on some gear, or loot it from enemies, but the selection is still pretty limited. This means casters either need to take the eschew materials feat or spend some time in some of the wilderness biomes foraging for spell components. It’s a very interesting experience. There’s also a community loot pile where people drop off anything they don’t need anymore, and anyone can request loot from.
Oh, also the game is super high lethality, so you learn to not get too attached to your characters.
Oh right, and the reason you don’t have to worry about the small stuff is that food and lodging are all essentially free for all gladiators.
Forgot to include it in my original post cast I’m scatterbrained. RIP
Tracking expenses seems to be the whole point of hex map crawling (at least in 5e Tomb of Annihilation).
Do the PCs have enough clean water and hardtack to survive the day without suffering exhaustion? Did they buy or craft a raincatcher? Did they check that chwinga they ate for venom or disease? Is their hemp rope moldy or too short? Does the wizard’s constant use of prestidigitation to make himself smell of cinnamon attract a werecapybara, that will attack the party for not preparing cinnamon rolls?
This resource tracking at the start of a campaign provides a nice contrast to the PCs at the end of one. When they’re swimming in riches, build palaces of platinum and reminiscence about that time long ago when they all had to share a badly crafted werecapybara-leather tent.
I would allow the PCs to handle this toll situation as they see fit: sneak under the bridge, paying by check (which will bounce), murder the attendant etc.. And then I’ll pull a remix of this: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/the-troll-toll
The hex crawl is a great counterpoint. That campaign style is predicated on tracking resources, systematically discovering new areas, and simulating overland travel. I think that’s exactly the kind of game where careful resource management shines.
Yep, hex-crawling and megadungeon exploration are about the only game types where I can roleplay my favourite part (deep-seated fetish) of resource tracking: rations/MREs.
After reading about iron rations on the Arcana Wiki (http://arcana.wikidot.com/iron-rations), salivating at the glory of racial rations as pictured here (https://m.imgur.com/gallery/BWnHF) or reading the terrific Dungeon Meshi (adventuring party survives in a dungeon by preparing delicious dishes out of random encounters), I was super stoked for resource management.
Few seem to share my enthusiasm in the comments, but describing what kind of food and drink the different races consume (lizardfolk like fingers: tasty and potable, mushroom wines for the drow etc.) really adds to the setting, instead of feeling like unnecessary realism.
On the off chance you haven’t seen these before: https://imgur.com/gallery/fApFW
I only bother with cost of living for large stretches of downtime. Of course my players having recently plundered over 100,000 GP from a Dragon’s hoard (The random loot tables get reaaaaaaly inflated at the high-end. Was I just been short-changing my players before that point?) went on a spending spree. They had three months of downtime in which they did things like buy magic items, build their base, (The base-building rules I found were a huge money-sink) do research, and buy really fancy pies.
When it came time for actual living expenses though… “I stay at the local temple for free because of my Acolyte background and live off of Create Food and Drink.” The idea that they’d spend money on that was anathema to this spend-crazy party.
That’s why I think this mess ties back to the power fantasy. Buying a castle is fun. Paying for food and board is not.
Most recently, I was playing a bandit leader (he was a Fighter/Kineticist) who had fallen in with the adventurers after getting arrested with them during a bar fight (“Anyone spendin’ a night in the clink for a bar fight is alright with me!”) was actually put in charge of party treasury. The irony being that as a bandit leader, he actually was the best with matters of coin in the party.
Later on, after a particularly solid haul, I looked up how much accommodations were. I noticed there was an option to rent entire mansions with full staffs of servants-literal ‘live like a king’ stuff.
Out of his own money, thankful for the best bunch of mugs he’d ever had to get into “hijinks” with, he bought the party ‘Live Like a King for a Year’ accommodations.
Say whatever you want to about it, but in spite of being a tough talking bandit who’d gladly start fist fights with the local constabulary JUST BECAUSE, he sorta’ became the party hero.
I hope you concluded your “I bought you guys a gift” speech with the phrase, “It’s what my character would do.” All you other steal-from-the-party rogues out there can stick that in your pipe and smoke it.
My players have, if anything, swung in the opposite direction as they’ve leveled. After slaying an evil god-emperor and looting a ludicrous sum of gold from his vault, they’ve started practically throwing money away, giving away tips of tens or hundreds of gold pieces to random NPCs just for favours or information. (Information which they were more than happy to give away for free.)
I feel like this also plays into a sort of power fantasy, leaning heavily Chaotic Good, a sort of “If I were incredibly rich, I would use my power to help people.” I play with good eggs.
I’m not so sure that the opposite. Spending lavishly is fun.
Try telling them that they’re required to pay a niggling fee though. See how they take it.
Presently in my roommates campaign I’m a hunter (see druid ranger hybrid) and all their spells are utility for survival so while my party members are crashing at their temple or spending a large chunk of gold at their fav in inn I’m camping in the woods next to the witches hut or working/resting at the animal shelter I help around at.
Is your GM actually enforcing a “large chunk of income” to stay at ye olde inn? Or is this more of a flavor choice?
Its completely a flavor choice on the players part but it did lead to a whole thing where the player could invest money into the inn to help it grow
Now see, that’s fascinating to me. The inn doesn’t have a mechanical function, but the players want to pay up anyway. There’s a sure sign that they’ve bought into the fiction. 🙂
My DM has waves this with what is basically fantasy Border Passes: pay 50 GP now and all tolls, gate fees, and certain inn and stables are free to use as long as you have a certified pass that isn’t marked for criminal. Naturally of course this only works in the kingdoms with a very compete administration keeping checks, so basically just the magic kingdom and the merchant kingdom. Still it also works for lesser locations, it’s just counterfeiting also works easier there too, so the guards tend to be a bit more of a hardass when it comes to making sure the papers is right, but that mostly depends if the DM feels the need to do so (this is usually a plot hook to tell the players that there’s stuff going on that is putting people on edge).
Plus it gives us the opportunity to bitch and moan about bureaucracy and waiting in line, and helps set certain tones of places. A village attorney has fairly slow but important business so they’re usually friendly if a bit condescending since they’re one of the few people with an education and positive intelligence bonus. But guys in the city are three death saves short of being undead due to all of the constant work they need to do and will never finish.
I dig the idea of tying this question to setting. It makes the players go through the same experience as the PC: worrying about being nickle and dimed by bureaucracy. And getting inside your character’s headspace is always a neat effect.
Colin, still without playing Cultist Simulator? Oh, well 🙁
In any case lets speak Cultist Simulator. You are a powerful cult leader, you know and command eldritch rituals and creatures, you are an explorer of the Mansus, you are accounted among the Know and you are on the verge of ascension into an otherworldly higher being. What else would you need? Money to pay the rent, obviously. As one of the characters points out: “The Mansus is all well and good, but we need to sell tickets!”. You may say: “I don’t go in for fantasy adventure in order to play Home Ec Simulator” but here is the thing it may not be a good thing in all the games but in some it can be good. In CS, the need for money and a job creates a tension between the high, eldritch and otherworldly pat of the game and the mundanely of the live the pc has. You may be a cult leader hellbent on occultism and ascension but you still need to get a job. As painter, as cage moving burly, doctor, detective or accountant. Fake medium, dancer in gaiety or cabaret and Priest on the DLC. All normal jobs, all needed for the expanses. Is fun to say “Screw the rules i have supernatural powers” but the tension between mundane and extraordinary has it’s own appeal. As i said, is not for every game, but in some it may add to the game that you would think 🙂
Also i, as a player would make my pc pay the toll, what example would be if later when my character becomes GOD-EMPEROR OF THE UNIVERSE if people uncovered that during his mortal days he didn’t pay the toll. As GOD-EMPEROR OF THE UNIVERSE my pc want for people to pay tolls. It’s His Will, Deus Vult, ad stipendium tributa 😛
I agree that some games are well served be this level of detail. I think it’s telling that you chose a video game though. On the TRPG side, hex crawls are the kind of true game that foreground resource management. That’s a good thing because it’s a major part of the narrative focus: marshalling your resources to survive a hostile environment. Less so perhaps in a courtly drama.
Perhaps in a courtly drama your resources are different. Instead of managing things like coin, rope and water you have bribes, rumors and loyalty. Have you played Legacy – Life among the ruins? Is a game powered by the apocalypse, each player plays as a family, group of survivors and a character inside that family. And each family has their own resources and for each one that family can have a need, a surplus or have enough. That is how you track your resources, except for some moves that let you have more of that resource. Like “The Horde” move of The Ascendant Afflicted that lets you have multiple surplus: Recruits, and do many other things with them. Back to Cultist Simulator the money you get serves to create tension, you may have more than enough but you also can run on financial problems, no having money is one of the many sure ways to die. In the EXILE DLC that gets released soon, that gets changed, so far as i know that you have more money that you will need is one of the complications of that DLC 🙂
Oh, and speaking of resources, that remind me of the tale of Jimmy the 4-Die Extra from Chorus of the Neverborn. What a nice story 😀
Reminds me of The Quiet Year.
But better 😛
The game is fun, you can make some interesting combinations family/characters. Some are very imaginative and fun to play. And the art is great. I like it ¯_(ツ)_/¯
My groups generally ignore cost-of-living above extremely low levels (~3rd) because the inn fees and bridge tolls at that point aren’t a strain on an adventurer of that level’s finances, and because roleplaying that stuff is kinda boring.
I will say that Fighter’s (over)reaction to a 5¢ toll may not be as exaggerated as you think, even in real life. I work at a convenience store, and due to recent changes in local legislation, we’ve had to start charging 10¢ apiece for plastic bags. You probably would not believe how many people get absolutely furious and start throwing temper tantrums over 10¢, when they’re happily spending $20-$50 in the store.
I’ll do you one better. I think that Fighter’s reaction is exactly the same as those bag-haters. It’s just that he can express his ire without fear of IRL consequences.
My group never rp’s cost of living. Although in the last campaign we stayed in our fighter’s house a lot. It’s kind of funny that we never mentioned paying for housing and such when you consider how much cash I ended up with towards the end.
It’s the kind of detail that you could track, but you have to ask yourself if it adds anything to your game. Sounds like you got on just fine without it.
I generally don’t worry about lifestyle costs unless they have a reason to come up. You’ll want to buy food rations before going into a desolate desert, but in other places I’ll assume rangers and other Survival-trained characters can forage enough to keep people fed. You’ll be charged for a night at the inn, but you can always camp outside if you’d prefer. You do have to keep track of ammo in long battles, but you can always pick up stray arrows or loot your enemies’ quivers. You will only encounter toll booths when they’re plot-relevant. Basically, I don’t bother with tedious bookkeeping unless there’s a strong reason to do so.
More or less my stance.
It was a fun counterpoint, however, to foreground this stuff in Out of the Abyss. Breaking out of prison in the Underdark sans gear was a proper challenge. But as you say, that was plot relevant.
Yeah, excellent example. That’s a situation where keeping track of such things is meaningful, both story-wise and gameplay-wise (players do some amazing things when forced to improvise). Quite different from just taking away a few gold pieces after some arbitrary amount of in-game time.
Typically I think you do about certain things. Because in my experience people really like their fantasy food orders and such things. And you don’t have any place for things if you’ve already decided “real life concerns” as a rule generally don’t exist.
Now of course you might want to limit them to things that are going to be some kind of fun for somebody (even if that somebody is you the GM) or you’ll bog the game down.
Things like ammo and “do I really need the keep track in my inventory all the different GP cost spell components I have?’ and such, that seems to differ from one game to the next. Sometimes with good reason.
That said I’ve only had “daily living cost” come up in a game a single time. And that was still just the GM deciding the inn stay price didn’t include food price. (Which caused some confusion as at first half of us thought we were being overcharged for the rooms.)
And at the end of the day, is splitting that check really something you want to spend your gaming time on?
Reagents are an interesting example since that is such an individual choice. See Wizard vs Sorcerer: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/material-components-2
One player’s character once ascended to becoming a minor deity. She was goddess of inconvenience, anger (causing anger, to be specific), and “for some reason, pirates”. It was a comedy thing, mostly.
Six full campaigns later, she showed up running a toll booth. She wanted two coppers to pass. She insisted on exact change only. We had to go back to town because a minor deity had decided to set up her toll booth in the middle of a dungeon and none of us were carrying coppers (because what self-respecting adventurer carries coppers when there’s gold to be had?)
I think she’d get on well with Anoia: https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Anoia
I have mentioned this before, but the Hell’s Rebels adventure path uses this psychological urge to great effect in building up their villain, the dictator of the city of Kintargo. In the first book (levels 1-3) it is 3 cp to cross the bridge from one side of the city to the other. Inconvenient, but not bank-breaking. The second book (levels 4-6) raises the toll to 5 sp. Also inconsequential to the PCs, but annoying. The third book (levels 7-9) raises it to 2 gp a trip or 10 gp for a day pass. By the fourth book (level 10) the city is open and violent revolt over this B.S. and the PCs take the bridge by force.
Beyond making the villain hateable, this toll serves the plot function of drawing the players’ attention to the bridge, a key part of the city where they fight quite possibly 4 epic battles over the course of the AP (against a small army of guards, a dragon, the nearly-unkillable dictator himself if certain things happen and a suicide-causing ghost head).
That is such good design. Directing player attention is an art!
In regard to “escaping the mundane concerns of the real world”, one thing that ticks me off about a lot of CRPGs is inventory management. I think I spend more time hauling things back and forth in Diablo and Fallout and Elder Scrolls and CRPG Temple of Elemental Evil than I do on the actual games. And in certain games like Dungeons of Dredmor, managing the inventory takes several times longer than everything else in the game combined. It’s ridiculous; If I wanted to organize items and decide which ones to keep, I’d go clean my attic.
Well said! Speaking of which, I really ought to go clean my attic. I’ve got like 900 Phoenix downs up there, and some of them must be past the expiration date.
Not really. In my games, living costs don’t come into play much because the mechanics aren’t hard-coded like that. In L5R, for example, the players play samurai: noblemen whose interest lies in warfare, political intrigue,warfare, spiritual endeavors, arcane research and practise as well as more warfare.
What concerns money is usually pretty streamlined so it doesn’t end up econ-simulator. The very setting itself says that commerce is a thing better left to the lower class, the merchants, whom the samurai scoff at (although it is often said that many know how much economy is important for their everyday lives)
As much as Laurel and I did Exalted you’d think we would give L5R a shot. Haven’t given it a yet though.
Some time ago I played in a Forgotten Realms game featuring a party consisting entirely of rogues (at the GM’s request) operating in Waterdeep. Because the currency of note was magic, it turned out to be incredibly difficult and increasingly pointless to try and gather any other sort of wealth through standard thief-style methods. The city’s magical council and their hooded justice police lackeys could easily discover and thwart any non-magical efforts, and were powerful enough (read higher level) to do the same to magically disruptive activities as well. The rogues ended up as adventurers rather than thieves. The idea that rogues could operate on any level other than occasionally picking pockets, let alone develop a Thieve’s Guild was absurd. The “economy” was not one in which the players could participate in any meaningful way.
RPG games have always had this weakness. They mix disparate types of economic and political systems, inadequately address their interactions and operations, and hand the whole mess off to players who have imperfect understanding in any case.
You ever hear of the Tippyverse? Extrapolating the economy to its “logical” endpoint is going to result in a very different-feeling game world:
https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?222007-The-Definitive-Guide-to-the-Tippyverse-By-Emperor-Tippy
I’m not sure if that’s a weakness though. RPGs do a poor job of simulating a specific socio-economic condition, but they do offer enough space to play. In your case, it sounds like the ability to “play” with these forces was reserved for the guy behind the screen. I can understand why though. If I was running an all-rogues game, I’d be tempted to make the only viable career path “adventurer” so that we could get on with the business of dungeon delving that I’d prepared. But if the crew wanted to do the thiefly thing, I like to think that I’d find a way to make that an interesting challenge. After all, breaking into m’lords coffers ought to be at least as challenging as breaking into his coffin!
In any case, thieving in Waterdeep seems like it’s company-approved these days: https://dnd.wizards.com/products/tabletop-games/rpg-products/dragonheist
Our group ended up surprising the tax man greatly when we showed up to pay our taxes in advance. But we were not willing to risk our headquarters getting repoes while we were in a dungeon.
I hope you paid it all in copper pieces and forced him to count.
Honestly, the last time I had an npc charge the party a toll, it was actually a thief. I at least half expected them to see through the attempt, but they paid up with a minimal amount of fuss.
Sometimes players just want to be law abiding citizens without the fuss. My advice is to murder those characters until such time as your players roll up properly predictable murderhobos. 😛