Wealth and the Disintegration of Choice

One of the most influential writings I’ve read with regards to game design is Chris McDowall’s Information, Choice, Impact. The article is worth a read, I’d summarize it as:

• Games are about making meaningful choices.

• Meaningful choices can only be made with sufficient information.

• Choices are only meaningful if the choice leads to (at least) two noticeably different worlds.

I’d add a few more principles:

• The choice should not be tedious to make.

• There should not be dominant solutions.

• Remove choices that do not follow the above.

To elaborate on these, if we present our players with choices, we should actively work against the sort of math that requires spreadsheets to evaluate. For example, I prefer the item slot design of Knave to the tracking-weight-to-2-decimal-places-with-5-encumbrance-levels design of GURPS. Both are about forcing players to make choices about what they’re carrying, but Knave’s works way better at the table.

A dominant solution is an option that is strictly better than another option. This is usually the result of the value of both options being obscured by downstream calculations and probability. For example, say that you offer a Power Attack feat that lets players trade -3 to hit for +3 damage. By-and-large, you’ve just actually asked your players to make a spreadsheet to optimize power attack and memorize the results, which is the same way that the “game” of blackjack is played. After doing the math, regular attack vs power attack is a non-choice. [1]

Money

In this context, money is a what-to-buy choice-enabler. In order to satisfy my above guidelines we would want:

• The decision about what to buy to be informed (what happens if we don’t have a saddle? what happens if we don’t have a tent? a whetstone?).

• Two different shopping lists need to have meaningful impact.

• Two different shopping lists need to be calculated and resolved with minimal tedium.

• Stuff you present to your players to buy need to not have dominant solutions.

Here are some common problem offenders:

Short vs Long Sword

In Basic Fantasy, a Shortsword costs 6g, does 1d6 damage, and weighs 3lbs (average characters are working with 60lbs for light encumbrance or 150lbs for heavy encumbrance). A Longsword costs 10g, does 1d8 damage, and weighs 4lbs.

It takes ~2000 xp to reach level 2, and if ~3/4ths of that come from finding treasure, we’d expect characters to have 1500g by level 2. In exchange for ~0.2% of their wealth and ~1.7% of their light encumbrance or ~0.7% of their heavy encumbrance, a character can increase their damage by 29%.

There’s a dominant solution (buy a longsword if you can afford it), so get rid of one of them!

Knave 2e abstracts this problem away. 1h weapons deal 1d6 damage, cost 50c, and 1 slot. 2h weapons deal 1d8 damage, cost 100c, and use 2 slots (out of 10ish slots at Level 1).

Standard vs Iron Rations

OSE provides that 7 days of standard rations cost 5g, and iron rations cost 15g. For 10 extra gold (~0.7% of a Level 2 character’s wealth), your rations don’t go bad. How long does it take for normal rations to go bad? What happens if you eat bad rations? How difficult is it to resupply? In order to properly make this decision, the players need to know (or be able to guess at) these answers.

They’d have to do bookkeeping on their rations (even worse if some rations were bought at different times and have different expiration dates), and the stakes are very low.

This doesn’t feel like a meaningful decision; so cut it! Just have all rations cost 5g but not expire!

What To Do?

While I find the abstract wealth system that Prismatic Wasteland presents to be really interesting; I think it’s more trouble than it’s worth if you’re running pre-published modules and xp-for-treasure; converting treasure to abstract wealth is a pain. My table uses these metal coins to represent coins, so I can actually hand out coins that the players divvy up. They clink nicely.

I like the Knave 2e approach a lot. Coins (c) instead of copper, silver, and gold (my players don’t care about the distinction). Unskilled labor costs ~10c a day, common items cost 5c (rope, torches, arrows, etc), uncommon items cost 10c (lanterns, bear traps, etc), 1h weapons cost 50c and deal 1d6 damage, 2h weapons cost 100c and deal 1d8 damage, missile weapons cost 200c.

The numbers are less important than the idea of pricing categories and the value-of-labor as an anchor. More importantly, it removes useless choices. We no longer have to think about having a short sword vs a longsword vs battle axe. They’re mechanically identical; pick based on flavor!

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[1]: A conceit here is that almost all RAW combat strategy devolves to this. I haven’t seen it done yet, but I’m extremely sure that by-the-rules TTRPG combat is simple enough that it can get hit by the AlphaZero hammer to spit out optimal play. The decision space is much less complex than chess or go.