The Gaming Den

I think social resources /can/ be tangible, as they might be minions that can't create cash. But you can spend them to take someone somewhere or do something and they might be killed, but that shouldn't be a big issue.

-Crissa

I agree with Manxome. Third group should be items which provide tangible benefits, but can be lost during play.

Manxome wrote:"Magic Resources" strikes me as an orthogonal category. It seems like a pile of gemstones and a pile of valuable minerals that can only be mined in the Wilds are both financial resources, while a powerful politician that owes you a favor and a powerful vampire that owes you a favor are both social resources, despite the fact that in each case one is mundane and the other would result in a masquerade break if you told anyone about it.

The third category should maybe be Instrumental Resources that are harder to liquidate but can actually be used to do something, like machines, libraries, and tanks (or magical artifacts).

This is a very good point. Instrumental Resources can be things like piles of guns, ships, and even castles. May not be directly transferable to barrels of oil or nights with sexy prostitutes, but it's independently awesome to have.

The question about magical and non-magical versions of things is an excellent one. Allies that you can talk to about problems you're having with The Order Tremere while they are trying to locate and awaken one of The Reborn who used to be some badass philosopher king or another are very different from ones that you have to give the runaround to. Currency you can't spend in mortal realms is very different from piles of yen. I can see a very good argument that resources on either side of the masquerade are different enough that they should be tracked separately.

-Username17

Compulsive editing:

The Gloom
“Some people believe that when you die there is a wonderful light. As bright as the sun but it doesn't hurt to look into it. All the answers to all the questions you want to know are inside that light. Truth is... there is no light. Only darkness.”

Missing "Mictlan:" in the heading.

the Soulless are individually much more terrifying individually.

redundant and jarring repetition of "individually"

FrankTrollman wrote: I can see a very good argument that resources on either side of the masquerade are different enough that they should be tracked separately.

I suppose it would depend on how specific you want to get. If you're dealing with things like 'wealth score' and 'reputation score', then you might want to keep them separate. If you're dealing with "Camarilla Prince", "Tremere Neonate", and "Biotech CEO", however, there's no reason to specify that your Camarilla reputation is "mystical" and your corporate reputation is "mundane".

Similarly, physical wealth can be valuable or useless to others regardless of its mysticality. Some antiquarian collectors might want Cultes des Goules for its rarity, while the Giovanni want it for its lore. To you the seller, it really makes no difference. Just because kittens happen to be the currency of the Gloom does not mean that they can't be traded to normal people.

CatharzGodfoot wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote: I can see a very good argument that resources on either side of the masquerade are different enough that they should be tracked separately.

I suppose it would depend on how specific you want to get. If you're dealing with things like 'wealth score' and 'reputation score', then you might want to keep them separate. If you're dealing with "Camarilla Prince", "Tremere Neonate", and "Biotech CEO", however, there's no reason to specify that your Camarilla reputation is "mystical" and your corporate reputation is "mundane".

Similarly, physical wealth can be valuable or useless to others regardless of its mysticality. Some antiquarian collectors might want Cultes des Goules for its rarity, while the Giovanni want it for its lore. To you the seller, it really makes no difference.

I do agree that the magicalness of your resources should just be noted, not tracked separately. Hell, a magic gem could be valuable amongst mundanes for the same reason a mundane gemstone is, it's rare and pretty. There's also nothing saying that a person cannot hold both mundane and magical influence. Maybe the Children of Aether hold a great deal of respect for Bill F. Gates, and will do anything he tells them to without really bothering to tell him why, and Count Dracula's got hordes of lawyers, vast tracts of real estate, and ridiculous amounts of wealth.

Just because kittens happen to be the currency of the Gloom does not mean that they can't be traded to normal people.

(obligatory lolcat)

I would think there might be all sorts of mundane wealth which you can't spend outside of the masq as well - stolen items, gems you'd have to explain the origin of, etc. Specifically being magical or from a magical source are irrelevant to whether they may be used outside the masq.

No vampire is going to care the origin of the mundane diamonds, just as long as they don't come with another supernatural hunting them. While a mundane fence will want a cut to legitimize them and a storefront dealer is going to need papers of origin.

-Crissa

For currency, it doesn't really matter what that currency is made out of, as long it is exchangable for goods or other forms currency. It really shouldn't mater if you write "5000$ in a suitcase full of money" vs. "5000$ in diamonds" on your character sheet. That's just flavor. Only three things mater:

Value:How much your currency is worth in some standard metric. I suggest dollar bills as you can spend that in most stores.
Legitimacy:Where can this currency be exchanged for goods or other currency. There should be three ranks, mystical(requiring a supernatural buyer), illegal(requiring a fence), legitimate(any business).
Transportablity: It is more difficult to move barrels of oils around than cash or stock and it is extremely difficult to sneak a kilo of cocaine onto an airplane. Property is mobile; you just sign some papers and hand over a deed.

As these stats go up, the point cost goes up.

If resources cost xp at character creation, and afterwards cost no xp as they are picked up during normal play, that encourages PCs to start penniless and spend their time killing people and taking their stuff, and it discourages PCs from spending resources to achieve roleplaying goals. Furthermore, if a player spends starting xp on friends, a house, and a healthy bank balance, and the PC gets caught on film having sex with a dead body, that player is going to be pissed off.

Resources of any kind should be picked up and lost in play. If resources are picked up, that should cost xp. If resources are lost, that should provide xp. That way a riches-to-rags protagonist is not at an disadvantage to a rags-to-riches protagonist, which means we can tell more stories.

MartinHarper wrote: Resources of any kind should be picked up and lost in play. If resources are picked up, that should cost xp. If resources are lost, that should provide xp. That way a riches-to-rags protagonist is not at an disadvantage to a rags-to-riches protagonist, which means we can tell more stories.

Definitely not. Players should never be put into the situation where they don't want to be owed favors so that they can advance Celerity or something. Dipping your nuts into the punch at party so that people will be offended so you won't gain social resources so that you won't lose XP is probably the worst thing that could happen.

Now I'm genuinely unsure what the rubric for starting resources should be. Possibly players should have resource points or be able to trade them for background knowledges or something. But I'm damn certain that picking up gold bars is not something that should happen instead of gaining magic powers during play.

-Username17

Probabily best to assign the players starting resources based on stats and background. Say you take the "Manual Laborer" background, you get a few low level contacts, an appartment in the city you work, and a little bit of legitimate money per point of strength.

Well, if you don't gain the social status you're not going to get the xp bonus from the encounter, right?

I dunno; starting resources should cost something, but certainly should be cheap enough... And needing the diamond of Koresh to level Celerity would be cool, but not sure most DMs would know how to handle that.

-Crissa

I think the best way to handle starting resources is to let the player have however much or little the GM is willing to let them have for the game, and you 'pay' for it with enemies. Wealthy people have to fend off thieves and swindlers, and people with influence have political opposition, and maybe people they stepped on to get where they are. Conversely, the poor and isolated don't have to deal with any of the hassles.

Maybe you can score social resources or cash or magic items and then 'trade' those in-game resources for 'xp' that you can then spend on either other resources or your character.

Of course, you'd want a rough limitation on what sort of resources can buy advancement at whatever level. Maybe illegitimate favors or cash gets you up to so high; legitimate to another limit; and you can only spend so much magical or mundane capital (each with its own limit) on your character in toto?

-Crissa

afap wrote:I think the best way to handle starting resources is to let the player have however much or little the GM is willing to let them have for the game, and you 'pay' for it with enemies. Wealthy people have to fend off thieves and swindlers, and people with influence have political opposition, and maybe people they stepped on to get where they are. Conversely, the poor and isolated don't have to deal with any of the hassles.

I like this, it's simple. You get a few resource points, and you can start with more by giving yourself hooks: enemies, debts, favors you owe other people, reputations, a job, etc.

-Username17

angelfromanotherpin wrote:I think the best way to handle starting resources is to let the player have however much or little the GM is willing to let them have for the game, and you 'pay' for it with enemies. Wealthy people have to fend off thieves and swindlers, and people with influence have political opposition, and maybe people they stepped on to get where they are. Conversely, the poor and isolated don't have to deal with any of the hassles.

Of course, given that enemies will bother you regardless, getting more enemies really isn't a penalty. Especially when defeating enemies most likely makes you better in some way. Though I don't know how WoD works in that regard. So you get a better character and the plot involves your character more often.

Why wouldn't you just take the maximum possible every time?

Edit: Lol, 1337.

Roy wrote:Of course, given that enemies will bother you regardless, getting more enemies really isn't a penalty.

Of course it is. Having to deal with two enemies is worse than having to deal with only one. These guys don't wait to show up until after the enemy of the week is gone and then start bothering you. They will take advantage of your divided attentions to be more effective.

So you get a better character and the plot involves your character more often. Why wouldn't you just take the maximum possible every time?

Well, resource-related enemies might not be the kind of enemies that grant significant screentime. They might just be: 'X% of your character's day is spent not losing resources; the player makes a few simple rolls each session to resolve this.'

On the other hand, it totally depends on what you consider to be a 'better' character. Some people's goals are actually hurt more by the high profile and hassles that high resources involve than those resources help them.

Crissa wrote:I think social resources /can/ be tangible, as they might be minions that can't create cash. But you can spend them to take someone somewhere or do something and they might be killed, but that shouldn't be a big issue.

-Crissa

When looked at from the standpoint of Resources vs. Debts the social connections that might fight on your behalf really do look differently from the social connections that provide other kinds of services. So the ones like Retainer or Backup probably do want to go into a different category from the ones like Contacts or Influence. Because the negative version is totally different. The negative version of the former is Enemies (guys who come after you) and the negative version of the latter is Obligations (guys who you have to do shit for).

So that seems like 4 kinds of Resources and 4 kinds of Debts.

• Financial: You either have things that you can spend like a suitcase full of ecstasy or you have something that requires you to go acquire wealth (like a mortgage or a sister who needs an organ transplant).
• Social: You either have contacts and influence or you owe favors to someone else.
• Capital: You either have factories or weaponry or you have some sort of job that eats up your time.
• Physical: You can call upon real people for direct assistance or you have real enemies who want to fuck with you.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:I'm damn certain that picking up gold bars is not something that should happen instead of gaining magic powers during play.

If you want to be realistic about it, then you should gain material resources by picking up gold bars, and you should gain magic powers by training with wizards or being cursed by pixies. Trading xp for magic powers is no better or worse than trading xp for gold bars. Retraining Ice Bolt for Fire Bolt is no more or less realistic than retraining gold bars for friends, or retraining social obligations for enemies.

Design objectives/assumptions:
1. A party of equally effective characters
2. Resources increase a character's effectiveness.
3. Characters can have different amounts of resources.

Conclusion: characters with fewer resources need to be more effective in other areas. That means that if someone has no money and no friends and no possessions, then they need to get given laser eye beams to compensate.

Alternatively, angel's plan avoids that conclusion by removing assumption #2. The extra effectiveness of being the president is balanced out by the increased risk of having shoes thrown at your head. Or something.

Some resources, like magic gems and books of secret magical info, should be exchangable for magic powers. Pretty much anything that requires extensive politicking or murdering of supernaturals falls into this catagorghy.

Piles of cash, diamonds, blocks of cocaine, automatic weaponry and anything else that can be acquired by flying to south americia and eating a drug lord should -not- be exchangable for magic powers because if you want that stuff you totally can just go kill some drug lord and take over his house because you have laser eyebeams and nobody is going to come and investagate.

Grek wrote:Value:How much your currency is worth in some standard metric. I suggest dollar bills as you can spend that in most stores.
Legitimacy:Where can this currency be exchanged for goods or other currency. There should be three ranks, mystical(requiring a supernatural buyer), illegal(requiring a fence), legitimate(any business).
Transportablity: It is more difficult to move barrels of oils around than cash or stock and it is extremely difficult to sneak a kilo of cocaine onto an airplane. Property is mobile; you just sign some papers and hand over a deed.

Sounds like some decent metrics. Although there be a rank for stolen mystical shit. Finding someone willing to buy a book of lore you got by stabbing some vampire in the face is more difficult.

Stolen magical stuff is not something that should be purchasable at character creation.

Draco_Argentum wrote:

Grek wrote:Value:How much your currency is worth in some standard metric. I suggest dollar bills as you can spend that in most stores.
Legitimacy:Where can this currency be exchanged for goods or other currency. There should be three ranks, mystical(requiring a supernatural buyer), illegal(requiring a fence), legitimate(any business).
Transportablity: It is more difficult to move barrels of oils around than cash or stock and it is extremely difficult to sneak a kilo of cocaine onto an airplane. Property is mobile; you just sign some papers and hand over a deed.

Sounds like some decent metrics. Although there be a rank for stolen mystical shit. Finding someone willing to buy a book of lore you got by stabbing some vampire in the face is more difficult.

unless they don't know that that's how you got it. Some magicals will care enough about worldly wealth to give you magic-world stuff for cash, diamonds, whatever, and some mundanes will care enough about magical world stuff that they'll do the reverse.

Players should never be put into the situation where they don't want to be owed favors so that they can advance Celerity or something. Dipping your nuts into the punch at party so that people will be offended so you won't gain social resources so that you won't lose XP is probably the worst thing that could happen.

I don't know about thiss, the hero driving away friends and severing ties to others with the vague intention of becoming more effective is a fairly common trope.

Heck, the character going on sabbatical, cutting off all ties with the "normal" world (comunication, normal food, normal living conditions etc) in order to prepare for more demanding situations is certainly something that happens in stories, and you know, the real world too.