The right buyer is a time-honored trope and does indeed require extra effort from the PCs to locate them, placing them outside the original channels.
The benefits would be:
> By locating a buyer the characters interact with the city proper, giving the DM space to flesh these out, and use them for subsequent adventure seeds, sites of interest, challenges or simply as color
> Certain buyers might not be found in rural areas at all, pushing the players to move around to offload certain treasures
I'm not sure if systematizing a mechanic for locating such a buyer does not also defeat the purpose of including such a qualification in the first place, although having a rough procedure such as yours is not bad. The idea is that, presumably, in a persistent setting, areas would be sufficiently defined to help you determine if such a buyer would be available. The ACKs market class might suffice, if not, population can be taken as a rough proxy.
>>The modules do not typically include such a buyer (and it’s often unclear who such buyers are).
Although there are counterexamples, it is not a requirement that modules also include nearby towns where such buyers could be located. The type of buyer would have to be inferred, and I agree specifying it (e.g. an Alchemist, Sage or Aristocrat) would be an improvement.
>>The modules don’t provide how much such treasures are worth to a typical buyer.
Presumably the transaction either could not take place at all, or would be at a greatly reduced tarif (10% of the value or less).
>>The systems the modules are written for (and the modules themselves) do not provide procedures for locating a buyer that answer the three main questions:
How much does it cost to locate a buyer?
How long does locating a buyer take?
Does anything go wrong?>>
Does this need to be proceduralized at all, and if so, with such standard variables? How frequent is such custom treasure? Many published adventures do not use it in the first place. You would face similar order problems with locating sages, artificers and anything except, say, levelled henchmen in AD&D 1e.
I suspect that there's a perspective mismatch. I think it's useful to try to mentally separate "D&D as a oral tradition, with rules as a reference" and "D&D as a game understandable strictly from the rules"
I entered into the hobby the second way. I learned how to play from reading the d&d 3.5e books when they came out in 2003 (and I was 13), then went on to play subsequent editions and games before looping back around to BX. I didn't have a more experienced figure teaching me the traditions, just my own interpretations of the text.
With people like me in mind, I think that if you want your game to operate in a way, you have to write that. No where have I read in the BX books, any of the adventures, etc what you're describing (though it sounds interesting).
When I try to imagine how a procedure like you're describing (the players have to find a buyer), I imagine it as a conversation between the players and the GM. If that conversation sounds tedious, it raises red flags.
For me, that's the sense I'm getting:
The GM describes some treasure that they found. The players state that they're trying to sell it. What then? Does the GM ask the players *who* they're trying to sell it to or their method of finding a buyer? We'd be in the realm of total fiat here, there isn't any guidance around exploring a town for buyers, the probability that one might be found, whether or not they'll want the item, etc. As a GM, I could just decide that someone wants it, decide that no one does, or arbitrarily decide that there's someone in a nearby town who does. This starts to feel a *lot* like illusionism unless I committed ahead of time to having such a person, and I **did not** do that.
So, for the GMs out there that are just trying to play modules, that try to spend as little time in towns as possible, that try to keep the campaign focused on adventure, I wrote this :)
Your first mistake may have been to reference the BX books when these were originally created as simplified teaching tools for youngsters. A lot of elaboration, subtlety and nuance was left in the (admittedly oblique) pages of the 1e PHB and DMG and the OD&D game that preceded it.
So while BX does not often have these answers (indeed, you noted in your review of OSE that BX has nothing to spend wealth on, which is essentially true with the exception of arguably Alchemists to duplicate potions), a lot more of these would be answered in 1e and OD&D. Alternatively, ACKs might have better guidance when it comes to determining the maximum buying price or availability of certain NPCs.
To me, finding a buyer would fall under other attempts to locate NPCs while within the city. There is no fixed procedure for many of those (trainers, sages, mercenaries etc.). I would assume that in the case of a unique buyer, you'd basically always find the buyer, but in case of rare treasure there would indeed be some caveat, or there would be an attempt to introduce a hook. If you'd have the players try to guess who might be interested, some hint as to the true answer would have to be discernable, but the end result is the same, the non-standard route either creates a hinderance, or an opportunity to share a rumor, introduce an NPC or a new quest hook etc.
I think your proposed system would in fact work, but I'm not convinced its not better handled by DM Fiat for the reasons outlined above.
> So while BX does not often have these answers (indeed, you noted in your review of OSE that BX has nothing to spend wealth on, which is essentially true with the exception of arguably Alchemists to duplicate potions), a lot more of these would be answered in 1e and OD&D.
I'm finding that's the case *a lot*. I recently finished a cover to cover read of osric and noted the sheer number of holes it patches over. I'm not convinced of everything in there but it does seem like a less-obviously-broken game. I lament that the broader community is obsessed with BX/OSE and so all of the adventures are written for it, and all of the new player onboarding (like what with happened to me) get pointed to it.
I played ACKS 2e (and look forward to receiving the books soon), as well as read your relevant reviews. I think it's very impressive; to the point where I ported over a number of mechanics (market availability and magic item pricing especially) to my own games.
> To me, finding a buyer would fall under other attempts to locate NPCs while within the city.
Totally agree. My current campaign is set in Lux's Erillion with Baklin as a home base; I love it. We've been exploring it per https://sovereign-game.xyz/running-the-game#exploring-settlements with sales and right-buyer-ness governed by the acks tables as well as GM fiat, so it's telling that I'm not using my own post here (though, it was written before I wrote sovereign)
Nice to meet you! Thanks for stopping by (and trawling the archives)
edit: reading OSRIC again, it still feels like it's full of holes
- There's stuff like whetstones and caltrops in the gear list with no explanation of what they do
- How MU's learn spells, which feels fundamental to the gameplay feel, seems left up to the GM
- There's less about wilderness travel than in BX
- It doesn't provide any information about domain management or strongholds, etc
- Combat is actually less well-defined, not more
- No real guidance around a thief's backstab
- No guidance around the limitations of a cleric's turn undead
We gain a bunch of more specific usages of the attribute scores (like dex affecting surprise rounds), weight for gear, prices for magic items, racial bonuses and mechanics, multiclassing, dual classing, a natural money sink (training costs), and martial buffs but largely it still feels like there's a bunch of holes around core gameplay procedures and class abilities that would be encountered more or less immediately in play
Your analysis of Tower of the SilverAxe is impressive, even if the module itself is not. You seem like a sharp guy. I do treasure analyses myself where I just look at the average treasure/room/character/level of character to get a feeling of the overal level of the reward, then add a Glittergold Factor which is the percentage of total treasure in the adventure that can be found in any single adventure to catch major deviations or assymmetries. Yours is much more elaborate.
>I"m finding that's the case *a lot*. I recently finished a cover to cover read of osric and noted the sheer number of holes it patches over. I'm not convinced of everything in there but it does seem like a less-obviously-broken game. I lament that the broader community is obsessed with BX/OSE and so all of the adventures are written for it, and all of the new player onboarding (like what with happened to me) get pointed to it
To me this was once a bug but that's a feature. A lot of people don't need the elaboration and hate it, and actively try to make the game less elaborate. That's fine. For people that try to play long term campaigns, these need to transition to a more advanced system. 1e or ACKs are your most serious options, followed by OD&D (or its clone Swords & Wizardry), which is more suitable if you want to do a lot of custom work. If you want to dig deeper, then these are your systems. OSE is a gateway drug and that's fine.
>I played ACKS 2e (and look forward to receiving the books soon), as well as read your relevant reviews. I think it's very impressive; to the point where I ported over a number of mechanics (market availability and magic item pricing especially) to my own games.
That makes sense since ACKS began as B/X with a bit of RC, but elaborated upon and refined until it was its own comprehensive system.
I will also pat myself on the back for providing both the actual price and the specific buyer whenever I use such treasures in my published works. Its like you get to earn a bit extra if you pay attention I suppose. You'd probably want to include some sort of boundary if your players keep trying to sell everything to a unique buyer.
>>- There's stuff like whetstones and caltrops in the gear list with no explanation of what they do
That's fair. A lot of this stuff was meant to be used diegetically, with the DM adjudicating their use. For a whetstone, that's fine. The Caltrops, which do require rules, you can find in Unearthed Arcana under Equipment.
- How MU's learn spells, which feels fundamental to the gameplay feel, seems left up to the GM
I haven't checked out OSRIC since I am doing the even more masochistic (but ultimately more solid) route of playing actual 1e. I am in the CAG (classic adventure gaming) discord and we do discuss a lot of rules interpretation questions there. There's also this forum: https://knights-n-knaves.com/phpbb3/index.php
You presumably copy spells from scrolls and other wizard spellbooks, spending an amount of gp on magical ink (100 gp/level or something if memory serves). You also get a spell every time you level up I think.
- There's less about wilderness travel than in BX
This might be OSRIC's problem. I thought the tables proper in 1e were insanely more refined, and there's decent rules for terrain types (movement), getting lost, encounters and forced marches. The one thing I think they could do much better is explore how hexes are actually searched, a critical component often omitted. I'm sure Judges Guild tackled it somewhere, or some Dragon Magazine article, but in the corebook, nada.
- It doesn't provide any information about domain management or strongholds, etc
True. You will need ACKs. I think the original expectation would be that everyone was so familiar with Chainmail and other wargames that you'd use those instead, or come up with something.
- Combat is actually less well-defined, not more
1e combat is both far more advanced in the truest sense but also more vague. Some have mentioned Chainmail is a useful rosetta stone for understanding some of the concepts.
- No real guidance around a thief's backstab
Yes that is a legitimate complaint. How and when the thief may properly backstab is very subjective, and some people make it much too hard. Generally, in a combat where the thief is able to maneuver behind a group of enemies, he should be able to get off a Backstab.
- No guidance around the limitations of a cleric's turn undead
I do hope they got that right. That one seemed fairly clear. Use at will, if it fails during combat no more turning, then rules for heavy undead shielding the light ones, then target number, then number of undead affected, with, possibly, a caveat for some places making it harder to turn.
Just wait until you get into illusions ;)
If you'd like, I can get you an invite to the CAG server, we have a lot of ADnD players there. Otherwise, I'm on the Mythmere discord, the answers are generally pretty good. I can't vouch for reddit, I think the signal to noise ratio is low and anyone asking the right way to do anything is going to trigger apoplectic fits from people doing it their own way, but since I'm banned there, I'm not an objective source ;).
Thanks a bunch for the thorough response, I'll go straight to the AD&D source then :D. Also sounds like i'd benefit from reading the unearthed arcana and dungeon magazines
Also, thanks for the discord reference - yeah I'd appreciate an invitation. I think you're the second person that's mentioned it, and I think "adventure site" (and the adventure site contest) are both related to the CAG server, yeah? Seems like a good place
> I can't vouch for reddit, I think the signal to noise ratio is low and anyone asking the right way to do anything is going to trigger apoplectic fits from people doing it their own way
I've run into this a lot. About 95% of the info on there is bad and low-effort, but it's persistent and google-indexed which are both great properties
I've effort posted on your reddit thread, with page numbers for reference. Send me an email at princeofnothingblogs@yahoo.com and I'll send you an invite link.
The right buyer is a time-honored trope and does indeed require extra effort from the PCs to locate them, placing them outside the original channels.
The benefits would be:
> By locating a buyer the characters interact with the city proper, giving the DM space to flesh these out, and use them for subsequent adventure seeds, sites of interest, challenges or simply as color
> Certain buyers might not be found in rural areas at all, pushing the players to move around to offload certain treasures
I'm not sure if systematizing a mechanic for locating such a buyer does not also defeat the purpose of including such a qualification in the first place, although having a rough procedure such as yours is not bad. The idea is that, presumably, in a persistent setting, areas would be sufficiently defined to help you determine if such a buyer would be available. The ACKs market class might suffice, if not, population can be taken as a rough proxy.
>>The modules do not typically include such a buyer (and it’s often unclear who such buyers are).
Although there are counterexamples, it is not a requirement that modules also include nearby towns where such buyers could be located. The type of buyer would have to be inferred, and I agree specifying it (e.g. an Alchemist, Sage or Aristocrat) would be an improvement.
>>The modules don’t provide how much such treasures are worth to a typical buyer.
Presumably the transaction either could not take place at all, or would be at a greatly reduced tarif (10% of the value or less).
>>The systems the modules are written for (and the modules themselves) do not provide procedures for locating a buyer that answer the three main questions:
How much does it cost to locate a buyer?
How long does locating a buyer take?
Does anything go wrong?>>
Does this need to be proceduralized at all, and if so, with such standard variables? How frequent is such custom treasure? Many published adventures do not use it in the first place. You would face similar order problems with locating sages, artificers and anything except, say, levelled henchmen in AD&D 1e.
Hey Einherjar, thanks for stopping by!
I suspect that there's a perspective mismatch. I think it's useful to try to mentally separate "D&D as a oral tradition, with rules as a reference" and "D&D as a game understandable strictly from the rules"
I entered into the hobby the second way. I learned how to play from reading the d&d 3.5e books when they came out in 2003 (and I was 13), then went on to play subsequent editions and games before looping back around to BX. I didn't have a more experienced figure teaching me the traditions, just my own interpretations of the text.
With people like me in mind, I think that if you want your game to operate in a way, you have to write that. No where have I read in the BX books, any of the adventures, etc what you're describing (though it sounds interesting).
When I try to imagine how a procedure like you're describing (the players have to find a buyer), I imagine it as a conversation between the players and the GM. If that conversation sounds tedious, it raises red flags.
For me, that's the sense I'm getting:
The GM describes some treasure that they found. The players state that they're trying to sell it. What then? Does the GM ask the players *who* they're trying to sell it to or their method of finding a buyer? We'd be in the realm of total fiat here, there isn't any guidance around exploring a town for buyers, the probability that one might be found, whether or not they'll want the item, etc. As a GM, I could just decide that someone wants it, decide that no one does, or arbitrarily decide that there's someone in a nearby town who does. This starts to feel a *lot* like illusionism unless I committed ahead of time to having such a person, and I **did not** do that.
So, for the GMs out there that are just trying to play modules, that try to spend as little time in towns as possible, that try to keep the campaign focused on adventure, I wrote this :)
Well met, I'm the No Artpunk adventures man :)
Your first mistake may have been to reference the BX books when these were originally created as simplified teaching tools for youngsters. A lot of elaboration, subtlety and nuance was left in the (admittedly oblique) pages of the 1e PHB and DMG and the OD&D game that preceded it.
So while BX does not often have these answers (indeed, you noted in your review of OSE that BX has nothing to spend wealth on, which is essentially true with the exception of arguably Alchemists to duplicate potions), a lot more of these would be answered in 1e and OD&D. Alternatively, ACKs might have better guidance when it comes to determining the maximum buying price or availability of certain NPCs.
To me, finding a buyer would fall under other attempts to locate NPCs while within the city. There is no fixed procedure for many of those (trainers, sages, mercenaries etc.). I would assume that in the case of a unique buyer, you'd basically always find the buyer, but in case of rare treasure there would indeed be some caveat, or there would be an attempt to introduce a hook. If you'd have the players try to guess who might be interested, some hint as to the true answer would have to be discernable, but the end result is the same, the non-standard route either creates a hinderance, or an opportunity to share a rumor, introduce an NPC or a new quest hook etc.
I think your proposed system would in fact work, but I'm not convinced its not better handled by DM Fiat for the reasons outlined above.
Oh! Howdy Prince!
> So while BX does not often have these answers (indeed, you noted in your review of OSE that BX has nothing to spend wealth on, which is essentially true with the exception of arguably Alchemists to duplicate potions), a lot more of these would be answered in 1e and OD&D.
I'm finding that's the case *a lot*. I recently finished a cover to cover read of osric and noted the sheer number of holes it patches over. I'm not convinced of everything in there but it does seem like a less-obviously-broken game. I lament that the broader community is obsessed with BX/OSE and so all of the adventures are written for it, and all of the new player onboarding (like what with happened to me) get pointed to it.
I played ACKS 2e (and look forward to receiving the books soon), as well as read your relevant reviews. I think it's very impressive; to the point where I ported over a number of mechanics (market availability and magic item pricing especially) to my own games.
> To me, finding a buyer would fall under other attempts to locate NPCs while within the city.
Totally agree. My current campaign is set in Lux's Erillion with Baklin as a home base; I love it. We've been exploring it per https://sovereign-game.xyz/running-the-game#exploring-settlements with sales and right-buyer-ness governed by the acks tables as well as GM fiat, so it's telling that I'm not using my own post here (though, it was written before I wrote sovereign)
Nice to meet you! Thanks for stopping by (and trawling the archives)
edit: reading OSRIC again, it still feels like it's full of holes
https://www.reddit.com/r/adnd/comments/1ge64st/assorted_questions/
- There's stuff like whetstones and caltrops in the gear list with no explanation of what they do
- How MU's learn spells, which feels fundamental to the gameplay feel, seems left up to the GM
- There's less about wilderness travel than in BX
- It doesn't provide any information about domain management or strongholds, etc
- Combat is actually less well-defined, not more
- No real guidance around a thief's backstab
- No guidance around the limitations of a cleric's turn undead
We gain a bunch of more specific usages of the attribute scores (like dex affecting surprise rounds), weight for gear, prices for magic items, racial bonuses and mechanics, multiclassing, dual classing, a natural money sink (training costs), and martial buffs but largely it still feels like there's a bunch of holes around core gameplay procedures and class abilities that would be encountered more or less immediately in play
spun up a reddit Q&A thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/adnd/comments/1ge64st/assorted_questions/
Your analysis of Tower of the SilverAxe is impressive, even if the module itself is not. You seem like a sharp guy. I do treasure analyses myself where I just look at the average treasure/room/character/level of character to get a feeling of the overal level of the reward, then add a Glittergold Factor which is the percentage of total treasure in the adventure that can be found in any single adventure to catch major deviations or assymmetries. Yours is much more elaborate.
>I"m finding that's the case *a lot*. I recently finished a cover to cover read of osric and noted the sheer number of holes it patches over. I'm not convinced of everything in there but it does seem like a less-obviously-broken game. I lament that the broader community is obsessed with BX/OSE and so all of the adventures are written for it, and all of the new player onboarding (like what with happened to me) get pointed to it
To me this was once a bug but that's a feature. A lot of people don't need the elaboration and hate it, and actively try to make the game less elaborate. That's fine. For people that try to play long term campaigns, these need to transition to a more advanced system. 1e or ACKs are your most serious options, followed by OD&D (or its clone Swords & Wizardry), which is more suitable if you want to do a lot of custom work. If you want to dig deeper, then these are your systems. OSE is a gateway drug and that's fine.
>I played ACKS 2e (and look forward to receiving the books soon), as well as read your relevant reviews. I think it's very impressive; to the point where I ported over a number of mechanics (market availability and magic item pricing especially) to my own games.
That makes sense since ACKS began as B/X with a bit of RC, but elaborated upon and refined until it was its own comprehensive system.
I will also pat myself on the back for providing both the actual price and the specific buyer whenever I use such treasures in my published works. Its like you get to earn a bit extra if you pay attention I suppose. You'd probably want to include some sort of boundary if your players keep trying to sell everything to a unique buyer.
>>- There's stuff like whetstones and caltrops in the gear list with no explanation of what they do
That's fair. A lot of this stuff was meant to be used diegetically, with the DM adjudicating their use. For a whetstone, that's fine. The Caltrops, which do require rules, you can find in Unearthed Arcana under Equipment.
- How MU's learn spells, which feels fundamental to the gameplay feel, seems left up to the GM
I haven't checked out OSRIC since I am doing the even more masochistic (but ultimately more solid) route of playing actual 1e. I am in the CAG (classic adventure gaming) discord and we do discuss a lot of rules interpretation questions there. There's also this forum: https://knights-n-knaves.com/phpbb3/index.php
You presumably copy spells from scrolls and other wizard spellbooks, spending an amount of gp on magical ink (100 gp/level or something if memory serves). You also get a spell every time you level up I think.
- There's less about wilderness travel than in BX
This might be OSRIC's problem. I thought the tables proper in 1e were insanely more refined, and there's decent rules for terrain types (movement), getting lost, encounters and forced marches. The one thing I think they could do much better is explore how hexes are actually searched, a critical component often omitted. I'm sure Judges Guild tackled it somewhere, or some Dragon Magazine article, but in the corebook, nada.
- It doesn't provide any information about domain management or strongholds, etc
True. You will need ACKs. I think the original expectation would be that everyone was so familiar with Chainmail and other wargames that you'd use those instead, or come up with something.
- Combat is actually less well-defined, not more
1e combat is both far more advanced in the truest sense but also more vague. Some have mentioned Chainmail is a useful rosetta stone for understanding some of the concepts.
- No real guidance around a thief's backstab
Yes that is a legitimate complaint. How and when the thief may properly backstab is very subjective, and some people make it much too hard. Generally, in a combat where the thief is able to maneuver behind a group of enemies, he should be able to get off a Backstab.
- No guidance around the limitations of a cleric's turn undead
I do hope they got that right. That one seemed fairly clear. Use at will, if it fails during combat no more turning, then rules for heavy undead shielding the light ones, then target number, then number of undead affected, with, possibly, a caveat for some places making it harder to turn.
Just wait until you get into illusions ;)
If you'd like, I can get you an invite to the CAG server, we have a lot of ADnD players there. Otherwise, I'm on the Mythmere discord, the answers are generally pretty good. I can't vouch for reddit, I think the signal to noise ratio is low and anyone asking the right way to do anything is going to trigger apoplectic fits from people doing it their own way, but since I'm banned there, I'm not an objective source ;).
Thanks a bunch for the thorough response, I'll go straight to the AD&D source then :D. Also sounds like i'd benefit from reading the unearthed arcana and dungeon magazines
Also, thanks for the discord reference - yeah I'd appreciate an invitation. I think you're the second person that's mentioned it, and I think "adventure site" (and the adventure site contest) are both related to the CAG server, yeah? Seems like a good place
> I can't vouch for reddit, I think the signal to noise ratio is low and anyone asking the right way to do anything is going to trigger apoplectic fits from people doing it their own way
I've run into this a lot. About 95% of the info on there is bad and low-effort, but it's persistent and google-indexed which are both great properties
Again, thanks for reaching out!
I've effort posted on your reddit thread, with page numbers for reference. Send me an email at princeofnothingblogs@yahoo.com and I'll send you an invite link.
The output link at the article end is broken.
Thanks! I regenerated the link and edited the article. Here it is: https://chat.openai.com/share/5afb0834-900d-4910-b10b-7e79af86786b