Campaign Mastery helps tabletop RPG GMs knock their players' socks off through tips, how-to articles, and GMing tricks that build memorable campaigns from start to finish.

Trade In Fantasy Ch. 2: Trade Units Pt 2


This entry is part 4 in the series Trade In Fantasy
Repeated from last time:

The concept of an abstracted “Trade Unit” lies at the heart of making Trade a playable event on a recurring and large scale. Without it, you bog down in minutia; with it in place, direct comparisons become easier and decisions far more prone to “make themselves” unless overridden for story purposes. Understanding the process of how and why those decisions are automatic and obvious most of the time enables the GM to manipulate the decisions to deliver the PCs to whatever and wherever the story is.

This visual is a composite of multiple images. Left to Right, Front to Back:
The forest is from Robert Balog (Bergadder), the sawn logs image is by Thomas (Didgeman), the sawmill image was taken by Olavi Anttila (Olavi-a), the stack of cut and trimmed boards is a photo by freestocks-photos, and the last is what can be made with them, image by johansenaue, with the whole framed by an edited version (with 3D effects by Mike) of jigsaw-8938137.png by Vicki Hamilton (flutie8211), all from Pixabay.

Credit where it’s due:

The series title graphic combines three images: The Clipper Ship Image is by Brigitte Werner (ArtTower); Dragon #1 is by Parker_West; and Dragon #2 is by JL G. All three images were sourced from Pixabay.

Table Of Contents: Last Time

2. Trade Units

    2.1 Characteristics Of A Trade Unit

      2.1.1 Conceptual Basis
      2.1.2 Value Of A Trade Unit
      2.1.3 Bulk Of A Trade Unit
           2.1.3.1 “Standard”
           2.1.3.2 “Solidity %”
                Swords
                Horseshoes
                     Deferred Depth
                     Size
                     Packing Strategy
                          Two Sizing Techniques
                     Back to the Depth question
      2.1.4 Sell-by Date / Preservatives & Refrigeration
           2.1.4.1 Old-School preservation techniques
           2.1.4.2 Alchemy & Preservatives.
           2.1.4.3 Refrigeration
           2.1.4.4 Worldbuilding

    2.2 Purchasing A Trade Unit

      2.2.1 Metagaming The Purchase and Sale
      2.2.2 Price Of A Trade Unit
      2.2.3 Optioning A Trade Unit
      2.2.4 Packing A Trade Unit
           2.2.4.1 A Rational Approach
                Populating The Table
      2.2.5 Licenses
      2.2.6 Sales Tax & other Gotchas
      2.2.7 The Profit Metric

Table Of Contents: In Today’s Post:

    2.3 Bulk Of Each Trade Unit

      2.3.1 Bulk
      2.3.2 Size
      2.3.3 Weight
      2.3.4 Production

    2.4 Contents Of A Trade Unit

      2.4.1 Discussion 1: Timber
           2.4.1.1 Sidebar: Cultural Fingerprints
           2.4.1.2 Sidebar 2: National Identities
           2.4.1.3 The Distillates Trading Principle
           2.4.1.4 Evolution in Trade
      2.4.2 Discussion 2: Wheat & Flour
           2.4.2.1 Animal Farming
      2.4.3 Discussion 3: Swords, Horseshoes & Other Heavy Metals
      2.4.4 Quality from Skill
           2.4.4.1 Quality Of Product
           2.4.4.2 Reasonable Time
           2.4.4.3 Quality Of Result
           2.4.4.4 Interpretation & Environment
                Long-term Trends
                Environmental Roll Results
                EG Wheat Yield
           2.4.4.5 Exceeding Base Quality – Pet Projects
           2.4.4.6 The Impact of Low / High Stats
           2.4.4.7 Failure to Deliver
           2.4.4.8 Insurance 101
                A Little Context

    2.5 Movement & Sale of A Trade Unit

      2.5.1 Loading
      2.5.2 Movement
      2.5.3 Unloading
      2.5.4 Wholesaling
      2.5.5 Retailing
      2.5.6 Purchasing

2.6 Virtual Trade Units – The Futures Market

    2.6.1 A Commitment to buy at Price X
    2.6.2 A Commitment to sell at Price X
    2.6.3 The Impact Of Options
    2.6.4 Each-way or “Hedging” Bets
    2.6.5 Paying the Piper

2.7 Failure to deliver

    2.7.1 local
    2.7.2 regional / national
    2.7.3 remote

And, in future parts:
  1. Routine Personnel
  2. Mode Of Transport
  3. Land Transport
  4. Waterborne Transport
  5. Spoilage
  6. Key Personnel
  7. The Journey
  8. Arrival
  9. Journey’s End
  10. Adventures En Route

2. Trade Units (continued)

    2.3 Bulk Of Each Trade Unit

    Since it is the fundamental unit of Trade within this system, bulk is very important to get right. Fortunately, it really is a huge simplification when it comes to the handling of cargoes and their transportation.

    2.3.1 Weight

    The heavier a Trade Unit is, the more effort it takes to load, unload and transport it. A Trade Unit that has a high density in the traditional sense will also tend to have a high concentration of value.

    (The following were derived using 100 lbs = 45359.2 grams, because most densities are quoted in grams per cubic centimeter).

    • 100 lbs of gold @ 313.54573 g / in^3 = 45359.2g = 144.665 cubic inches = an ingot 12″ × 3″ × 4.0185″. [1]
    • 100 lbs of iron ore @ 4.4 g / cm^3 = 10308.91 cm^3 = 629.1 cubic inches = a sack 15″ × 7″ × 6″. [2]
    • 100 lbs of refined steel @ 7.85 g / cm^3 = 5778.24 cm^3 = 352.61 cubic inches = about 50 rods 3′ long, 1/2″ diameter [3].
    • 100 lbs of brick @ 1750 kg/m^3 (=1.75 g / cm^3) = 25919.5 cm^3 = 1581.7 in^3 = 11.16 standard bricks [4]
    • 100 lbs of trimmed pine @ 575 kg / m^3 (= 0.575 g / cm^3) = 78885.56 cm^3 = 4814 cubic inches =22.287 beams 6′ × 2″ × 2″ in size. [5]
    • 100 lbs of walnut timber @ 42 lb/ft^3 = 342.86 in^3 = 5.7 panels 3/4″ thick × 10″ × 8″ in size. [6]
    • 100 lbs of wool @ 728 lb / 110 fleeces = 15.1 fleeces. In volume, this is (15.1 / 110) × 43 × 28 × 41 = 6776.33 cubic inches or 3.92 cubic feet of wool.[7],[8]
    • 100 lbs of goose down @ 2.3 kg /m^3 = 19.72 m^3 = 1203388 in^3 = 348.2 sacks of 24″ × 12″ × 12″ each, or 24.38 standard wool bales.

    Notes:

      [1] Calculated with precision for the Value Of Material Things.

      [2] A very close average value. It will go up with greater rock inclusions and down with greater earth inclusions, but quality ore will be very close to this value.

      [3] While this can vary a lot with exotic alloys, it’s highly specific for generic steel.

      [4] A Standard US. Brick has measured 9 × 3.5 × 4.5 inches since about 1800. The density is an average within a fairly broad range of 1500-2000 kg/m^3. In general, more sand = less weight; more clay = more weight = greater strength.

      [5] An average of a fairly broad range (from 350-800 kg/m^3 depending on species and age.

      [6] FYI, Maple has roughly the same density.

      [7] Using Australian standard wool bales, may differ in other countries.

      [8] Note that Australian Wool is world famous for its quality; other nations’ wool are usually thinner and coarser, up to twice as many fleeces per bale in the UK for example.

    Clearly, though they may weigh the same, these are all very different standards of inconvenience.

    2.3.2 Size

    Therefore, Bulk is defined as the weight multiplied by the volume that the cargo occupies, because that sets a standard based on the difficulty of loading and transportation.

    Some commodities are naturally low weight high volume, like grains and raw threads. Others are high weight, low volume, like Gold and Iron. And there are all sorts of points in between.

    2.3.3 Bulk

    Put those two factors together and you get bulk, which I’ve never seen actually defined in this way. So far, I’ve pointed out how the basic definition can be used to determine loading and unloading time, and hinted at the use of a standard ‘unit’ to further simplify and abstract this value, but ease of handling of the number is only the start of the benefits that this approach yields. This is the cornerstone of section 4, Mode Of Transport, which looks at how many Trade Units a given transportation mode can accommodate.

    2.3.4 Production

    I’ve already described all of the above, but it was worth recapitulating in order to put this section into context and add some more specifics.

    For each commodity, it will take a producer a certain amount of time to harvest or manufacture enough of that commodity to make up a whole Trade Unit. Once the GM has a handle on the unit and the way it works, it becomes possible to give a moment’s thought and simply toss off the appropriate numbers from the top of his head, guided by the standards that have been set.

    How many horseshoes can a blacksmith produce in an hour? Ten, twenty, twenty-five? I don’t know, exactly, and I don’t have to know – the fact that iron weighs so many grams per cubit centimeter, or so many pounds per cubic foot, or whatever weight-and-volume units are most comfortable for the GM and the game system, and that horseshoes can be packed to the point of being 90%-plus solid metal, tells me from the defined standard measure of a Trade Unit how long it probably takes to produce enough horseshoes.

    No-one really cares what the exact number of horseshoes are that get made, bought, and sold – all they care about is how hard they are to transport and how much profit they have made at the end of that process.

    As a general rule of thumb, each skill that actually makes things should have a rough estimate by the GM of the production rate of a Trade Unit using that skill. This value can then be refined by considering the specific commodity and applying the specific characteristics to the general guideline.

2.4 Contents Of A Trade Unit

It’s fair to say that virtually every fact about a Trade Unit that isn’t directly connected to bulk is a quality pertaining to the contents. As much as I’d like to be able to pretend otherwise, there are differences between two Trade Units even if they have the same Bulk.

The most obvious of these is density, which is a property of the contents, and which serves to connect the standard trade unit concept to the contents of a specific cargo.

The production rate is another value that relates directly to what’s in a specific Trade Unit, and so is the cost and the sale value, which together define the profit.

That’s most of what we need – everything else can be built around those specifications as necessary, with one exception – an exception that doesn’t always apply to all commodities but is a very relevant factor to some. You can call it Quality or Craftsmanship.

Like Bulk, this is something that I’ve never seen handed in any RPG in what I would consider a definitive way.

So, after some explicit examples amplifying what we’ve discussed so far, I’ll detail a subsystem that I have devised to explicitly handle that specification for every Trade Unit.

Before diving in, though, I need to point out that 99% of the time (or more), you will be better off ignoring most of what’s below and simply using it as a guideline to pluck appropriate numbers out of the air, or better yet, using the requirements of the plot to dictate the results. What follows is (mostly) for that 1% or less of cases where it does become important, for some reason.

    2.4.1 Discussion 1: Timber

    The featured illustration that accompanies this article illustrates the timber processing chain:

    Forests are cut down to become logs.

    Logs get transported to Sawmills.

    Sawmills transform the timber from Timber into Lumber by removing the bark and squaring the sides. They may also apply other treatments to keep the wood from rotting – smoking it or drying it out.

    The Timber gets transported to a retail sale location unless it’s been bought direct from the sawmill, in which case it has to be transported to the customer for use by the tradespeople in his or her employ.

    The retailer, if there is one, sells timber to his customers, which include carpenters and the like – more tradespeople. The practical distinction between the two destinations from the Trade perspective is that the tradespeople don’t have to go to the sawmill or to the sawmill’s agent, the middleman can do that, collecting the output from several sawmills. This enables them to employ their skills more profitably at the things that they are good at (at least in theory) a greater percentage of the time, making the process more efficient for everyone involved.

    Those customers transform the raw material into wood products including housing, furniture, and homewares like bowls and jugs.

    Whether or not there are timber yards, or if negotiation has to take place directly with the sawmill, is another campaign-creation question that the GM needs to answer separately for their campaigns. Timberyards tend to imply that there will be a greater proportion of timber products and fewer competing alternatives.

      2.4.1.1 Sidebar: Cultural Fingerprints

      The reasons might be Geographic (metal deposits are remote and the timber close at hand) or Social (Elves might prefer wood products over metal, regardless) or Geological (Metal is in relatively short supply, and is reserved for products for which wood is not a reasonable substitute), or Political (the iron mines are controlled by Dwarves, with whom the Kingdom has had a falling-out), or something I haven’t thought of or haven’t mentioned, like Tradition or Religion..

      The answer to the main question will often differ from one Kingdom or Region to another, as the possible reasons imply, and may also differ from one era to another. It’s even possible that, while Metals are restricted in impact for one reason or another, Timber Products face unusual competition from Bone or Coral or some other natural resource. Such descriptions have practical impacts on society and culture and help make them distinctive.

      In a real world, everything would be in the marketplace to the fullest extent possible, but distances and supply issues would make some commodities unduly expensive or competitively inexpensive; the economic reality would then influence purchasing decisions, and that dictates, ultimately, what sources will assume dominance over what fields of commerce.

      Of course, that’s really messy, with businesses who back the wrong horse gong through economic tribulations until they are broken by them, one way or another. And, of course, most will have families that suffer right alongside them. For every success, there are a string of failures and hard times somewhere in the past, tale after tale of misery. The markets are cruel and take no prisoners.

      Fortunately, you don’t have to live through the experiment; you can rule (if that seems appropriate) that the weeding out took place a century ago (or more) if you want. You simply have to describe the outcome, creating it out of whole cloth in such a way that it resonates with the other profile decisions that you have made for this race / species / society / location.

      The same thing happens with food, for another example. And differences in ingredients lead to differences in cuisine. Some foods will be expensive treats, and will still feature in the marketplaces every now and then, rare and expensive; others will become rare and unusual, generally because no-one want them. A myriad of little detail differences like this, coupled with a national identity, and you will find that you’ve created a cultural fingerprint, rich in color, and just aching to be dropped into flavor text here and there.

      2.4.1.2 Sidebar 2: National Identities

      Since I’ve published an article in the past that focused on National Identities (The Poetry Of Meaning: 16 words to synopsize a national identity) and a series to help create unique cultures (Distilled Cultural Essence); this will be the cut-down twenty-cent version.

      A national identity is a set of one or more stereotypes that impact or define (in part) the vast majority of a population group. Individuals may adhere to it willingly or unwillingly; or may seek to distinguish themselves from it, or be part of a sub-population that subverts it, or – well, you name it. Generally in the form of a short sentence or phrase. It’s a cliche, but individuals are defined (in part) by the way it influences them.

      If I throw the adjective “Irishman” at readers, people will instantly associate it with the nationality. What specifics they connect to the culture might vary, but the impression is immediate.

      The same is true of many professions, creating a more specific population subset from the intersection region.

      Tip: this can be a great way to kick-start the imagination when creating NPCs – throw a combination together that are unlikely or impossible. For example, “Ninja Ogre” or “Elvish Cowboy”. Both of these should have generated a snap impression of such a character; all you then need do is ‘translate’ that impression into something culturally and technologically appropriate for the game world / campaign and start spitting out personality traits that fit the interpretation.

      Every nation and every culture in your game world should have its own national identity, unique to this setting. Some may have several – there’s no reason for Mountain Orcs to have the same profile as Southern Orcs or Jungle Orcs. Hint: “standard” Orcs tend to work very well on temperate plains, rolling hills, and savannas.

      2.4.1.3 The Distillates Trading Principle

      The timber process example highlights another important principle: at each step in the process, the unwanted is removed from the raw product that enters that step in the sequence, resulting in a (metaphoric) distillation of the raw material into a more concentrated, useful, and valuable form. The increase in value is more than just a share of the work that has been performed and the expense of that work; the product innately gains in value because of its increased usefulness.

      There are multiple ways to handle this sort of thing, culturally speaking. It might be the common practice for those who fell the trees to deliver them to the sawmill, or it might be normal for specialists to buy the raw timber directly from the foresters; these would either be third parties or representatives of a sawmill, with the latter being the more likely.

      The sawmill turns out beams and planks and blocks of wood, and the trimmings might get turned into firewood or kindling; nothing would be wasted.

      Whatever the approach used to the purchase of the raw timber is almost certainly going to replicated for the next stage – fulfilling tradesman’s orders or transportation to a timberyard. The major difference is when the timber gets sold to whoever is next in the process chain, because whoever owns it is responsible for transporting it, something they can either contract out to third parties, handle themselves, or (effectively) pay the sawmill to perform. Note that this last option usually means that the agreed-upon price is “delivered to destination” as part of the package.

      Ultimately, it makes little practical difference, it’s just a little additional color, but it can be revealing of the mental processes of a culture. What does it imply about the retail experience? Because that is where PCs are most likely to encounter it – do customers buy a finished product, or do they commission a tradesman to make a product for them? If the latter, how much input do they have into the design and finish, and how much is left to the craftsman’s judgment and expertise?

      2.4.1.4 Evolution in Trade

      If left to mature on its own, a particular industry will naturally evolve in a specific direction simply because it’s the most competitive approach.

      For example, let’s say that the timber mill owns the finished timber and conveys it to a marketplace in a nearby city where craftsmen bid on the finished timber in auction. This has been the practice for many years and is well-established.

      One day a new player enters the game; instead of waiting for the sawmill to bring the product of their labors to him, he goes to them and pays upfront for the timber he requires, delivered to his workshop (in the same city as the auction, or somewhere en route to it).

      The craftsmen at the auction, familiar with what to expect, are surprised that there is less on offer than usual; and what’s more, what’s missing is the best quality timber. The mill’s representatives shrug and explain what happened.

      I give it two months, maximum, before one of two things happens (if not both): First, the Craftsmen who missed out, who were undercut by the newcomers, will seek government regulatory intervention to make the market “fair” again, and to protect the traditional arrangements; and Second, the auction now takes place at the sawmill, with only the dregs and remnants showing up at the marketplace not already spoken for.

      What happens after that will be different in different cultures. Either:

      ★ the transport of timber from the sawmill becomes a service contracted to the sawmill (who will find that delivering to umpteen different destinations is a lot more work than delivering to a marketplace auction, with the potential to have to haul away anything that doesn’t sell, and who may choose to subcontract that work out), or

      ★ the authorities heed the call of the disgruntled craftsmen, and institute regulations that absolutely forbid the wholesale purchase of timber other than at the traditional auction setting. Or,

      ★ the authorities listen to a potentially valid counterargument: hauling the timber to the auction and then having their purchase transported to their workshops is less efficient than a single trip direct to the workshops, so timber products will become cheaper / more profitable, enabling them to take on more apprentices, and boosting the economy overall.

      It’s probably a 30:40:30 split between these three alternatives, simply because governments like to be proactive and words like “traditional” carry a lot of weight when there is no efficiency gain to the economy brought about by the change.

      Whatever the outcome, a principle has now been established, and the result will ripple through the rest of the process. If people are used to anything else being the normal practice, this will result in some temporary disruptions at the marketplace. Merchants will have only samples on hand, with customers ordering what they want, delivered. Or merchants will display everything they have for sale, with customers responsible for transporting it after purchase.

      What’s more, that principle would spread through other industries as well.

      Which brings me to the next subject of discussion:

    2.4.2 Discussion 2: Wheat & Flour

    There is a similar industrial sequence that takes place with grains and their grinding into flour.

    First, the wheat has to be harvested. Then it has to be threshed to remove the stalks – usually done at the farm because the stalks themselves can be useful. And that’s where ownership takes a hand.

    In a feudal system, the nobility owns, and is responsible for, the grain from this point. They also own the land, or most of it; the farmer might get a wage for growing the wheat on the noble’s behalf, or he may have some legal rights to a percentage of what he grows (giving him an incentive to be productive).

    In a more socially-advanced system, the farmer owns the land, the nobles own what the farmers produce but have to pay them a set amount for it. Or, perhaps, the noble still owns the land, and gets to deduct rent from the payment being made to the farmer.

    Still more advanced is a system in which the farmer buys the right to live and work the land from the noble, perhaps with the assistance of a financial body like a bank through a mortgage over the property, the farmer owns the produce from it, and sells it to a mill. The noble takes a percentage of every transaction along the way, some of which he may have to pay to a more senior noble. This is not far removed from the modern world.

    There are other variations possible, but those three are the models most frequently encountered in a fantasy game.

    Somewhere in the process, the farmer has to get enough grain to plant next year’s crop. While it’s unquestionably more efficient to do this before any of it leaves the farm, that doesn’t really allow for bad years, where they need more grain than they produce. Exactly when in the process and where this takes place can vary.

    There should also be some percentage diverted to stores – enough to deal with those natural disasters mentioned above!

    Anyway, getting back to the process, someone owns the grain and transports it to a mill for grinding. That someone may or may not be the mill. It’s at this point that quality unquestionably enters the process.

    The first grinding, or the first phase of grinding, produces coarse flour. That’s enough for common bread. Either grinding it for longer or for a second time with a finer millstone refines the coarse flour into various grades of fine flour, for cakes and the like. That may take place at the same mill, but it’s more likely to be done by a specialist mill.

    Which means that someone owns the coarse flour and allocates some of it for immediate sale, some for storage so that they have flour to sell later in the year, and sends some for refining.

    All of these movements of grain / flour are transport legs – either someone performs this in order to sell it, or someone does it because they have just bought it, or some third party does so as a contracted service to one of these two endpoints within the sub-process.

    The parallels to the timber process and the Timber Economy should be obvious, and any decisions made in that context regarding laws will almost certainly be applied to the wheat / flour.

    Wheat has a density of 795.3 kg/m^3. It is the grain with the highest density – rice comes in at 563 kg/M^3 for example. But those are modern values; we have far better breeds of crops and harvesting technology than were available back then. so I would reduce the densities to 66% of the values indicated – 525 and 372 kg/m^3, respectively.

    Coarse flour is 70-75% of the weight of the grain. The variation comes from grinding efficiency and the moisture content of the wheat (higher is better).

    So now we have a quality issue for the wheat as well as for the flour.

    Oh, and for the record, an acre (4046.86 m^2) produces roughly 3000 pounds (1360.777 kg) of flour a year. But, again, I would reduce this 66% to 2000 pounds (907.1847 kg), or exactly one ton.

    NB: The following information assumes that the protein % of a flour reflects the amount of that flour that derives from course flour, which has a protein count of 100%. While this seems a reasonable assumption, I can’t vouch for it being completely accurate.

    From my research, sifting is a key part of the process – the millers don’t re-grind the entirety of the flour, just selected parts of it. It’s my understanding that the unused flour remains at the previous grade, and is not discarded, but that might also be incorrect.

    So we have 525 kg of course flour from a cubic meter of grain.

    From this can be extracted the following:

    Sift & Re-grind 1:
         High-gluten flour (used in bagels, etc): 13-14%
         (Modern) bread flour 12-13%
         General-purpose flour 11-12%
    These are mutually exclusive – you don’t get general purpose flour and Bread flour.

    Re-sift General Purpose flour and re-grind 2:
         Italian 00 flower (pizza and pasta) 8-12%
         Pastry Flour 8-10%
         Cake Flour 6-8%
    These are also mutually exclusive.

    525 kg of coarse flour = 68.25 – 73.5 kg (average 70.875 kg) high-gluten flour, or 63 – 68.25 kg (average 65.625 kg) of (modern) bread flour, or 57.75 – 63 kg (average 60.375 kg) of general-purpose flour.

    Sift and re-grind 60.375 kg of general purpose flour, and you can get: 42 – 60.375 kg (average 52.5 because if your course flour yield was higher, so will your 00 flour yield) of Italian 00 flour, or 42 – 52.5 kg (average 47.25 kg) of pastry flour, or 31.5 – 42 kg (average 36.75 kg) of cake flour.

    Various sources list the typical size of medieval farms as 12-30 acres per family unit depending on soil quality – so the yield remains the same per family. That yield is 5 bushels (=160 lb = 72.575 kg) plus another 5 bushels reserved for next year’s planting.

    Thirty acres was the minimum needed to justify exclusive use of an Ox or cow as a plough animal. If you had less than that, you were granted the use of a shared plough animal owned by the community.

    You need 1lb of bread, dead minimum, per day, to feed the family. Assuming that’s the same as 365 lb of course flour, that’s the yield from 0.4 acres.

    A good farmer in a good year won’t impact the 5 bushels reserved, but can double the other 5 bushel value for each factor. A good farmer in a bad year can at least feed the family and get the 5 bushels reserved, but will yield little or nothing more. A bad farmer in a bad year can’t even do that much, and will need to buy / obtain grain to start over the next year.

      2.4.2.1 Animal Farming

      While I’m in the vicinity:

      Grazing animals need 1460% of their body weight in forage each year.

      Good forage is up to 10,000 lbs (= 4535.924 kg) per acre per year. In a good year, a good farmer might get 12-15,000 lbs of forage.

      Adult pigs were 70-80kg, sheep 20-30kg, and a cow or ox 200-250kg. Compare those to the modern weights: 100-200kg, 50-150kg, and 650kg, respectively, to get some idea of how efficient the farms were back then.

      1 acre = 4535.924 kg forage / year
           = 310.68 kg in body weight
           = 4 pigs or 12 sheep or 1.3 cattle.

    2.4.3 Discussion 3: Swords, Horseshoes & Other Heavy Metals

    I’m not going to belabor this discussion; I simply want to point out that the same processing and principles apply here.

         Iron Ore -> Refinery -> Refined Metal -> Craftsman -> Product.

    It’s that simple, really.

    It takes about 1.6 tons of ore to make 1 ton of steel, which is another way of saying there is a yield of 0.625 [units] per [unit] of ore – it doesn’t matter if it’s kg or tonnes or tons or lb.

    With Bronze, it’s the copper that tends to be the most decisive ingredient – the yield is 0.6% – 1% of the ore.

    With Gold, it depends on the grade of the ore:

    • Low Grade = 0-5 grams per tonne (1000 kg = 2204.62 lb)
    • Average Grade = 5-8 grams per tonne
    • High Grade = 8+ grams per tonne
    • ‘Bonanza’ Grade = multiple troy ounces (=31.1 grams each) per tonne

    Each process costs money and concentrates the existing value plus an increase in inherent value above cost.

    2.4.4 Quality from Skill

    The following subsystem ha been designed around D&D 3.x / Pathfinder, but it should be easily adaptable to any other system mechanics, and have the impression that later generations of the D&D have not changed this part of the system.

    The foundations are:

    • Skill Ranks + Stat Bonus = Skill Level;
       
    • Base Task Difficulty + GM Circumstantial Modifiers = Difficulty Target
       
    • Base Task Difficulty usually starts at 10 for a competent attempt at a normal task. [The system below sets it to a much lower 2, for reasons that will become obvious].
       
    • Skill Level + d20 roll is compared to the target
           If total is >= Difficulty Target, success.
           If total is < Difficulty Target, failure.  
    • Total – Difficulty Target = margin of success/failure, sometimes used as a measure of quality of result.
       
    • It’s important to distinguish between “quality of result” and “quality of product” – the first relates to how easily and competently the target is achieved, the latter is an inherent quality that the resulting object / cargo represents.
       
    • There is a presumption that clearing a threshold quality of result of some sort increases the quality of product.
       
    • Exercising a skill in this way takes a certain amount of time. Some system variants permit quality of result to be applied to a reduction in the actual time required. Generally, quality of result that is directed toward quality of object can’t also be used for this purpose.
       
    • A quality of product that exceeds a (different) threshold is termed a Masterwork. This generally opens the door to an item being enchanted and inherently confers a system mechanics advantage to the product of +1 on a 1-20 scale.
       
    • A rarely-mentioned corollary is that a quality of product that falls short of the result target by a certain threshold is inherently flawed in some way, even if the overall result still indicates a functional object.

    This subsystem is designed to integrate the latter into the skill check process described above.

    A character’s skill ranks defines the normal quality of result that they can reliably be expected to achieve in the normal time frame. Every 2 skill ranks translates to a quality grade of +1.

      2.4.4.1 Quality Of Product

      ★ Quality 0 = functional minimum, achievable by an apprentice.
      ★ Quality 1 = better quality version of the functional minimum.

      ★ Quality 2 = version of the functional minimum that is more efficient or easier to use, normally achievable by a Journeyman or Senior Apprentice (the terminology varies from one society to another). It generally takes 4-5 years professional work to gain sufficient skill to achieve this quality of result.
      ★ Quality 3 = better quality version of the Journeyman standard of product.

      ★ Quality 4 = version of the functional minimum that is satisfactory in every respect. Can be produced without supervision. Normally achievable by a Master Craftsman, but not to be confused with a Masterwork.
      ★ Quality 5 = better version of the Mastercrafter’s product, usually in the form of decoration / visual appeal.
      ★ Quality 6 = better than Quality 5, again visually.
      ★ Quality 7 = better than Quality 6, again visually.

      ★ Quality 8 = Masterwork. Confers a mechanical system bonus.
      ★ Quality 9 = a better-looking Masterwork than Quality 8.
      ★ Quality 10 = a better-looking Masterwork than Quality 9.
      ★ Quality 11 = a better-looking Masterwork than Quality 10.

      ★ Quality 12 = Legendary item, sometimes referred to as Masterwork II. Confers an increased mechanical system bonus and may (GM’s discretion) receive some other benefits eg lighter weight. No higher Quality Of Result is possible.

           Base Difficulty target = 2
           +2 per Expected Quality result

      2.4.4.2 Reasonable Time

      Quality inherently takes longer. Each quality of result adds 20% to the base production time

      Craftsman can deliberately aim for a lower Quality of product to achieve a result in a more reasonable time frame and a better chance of success.

      2.4.4.3 Quality Of Result

      Every 4 by which quality of result exceeds the minimum can improve the quality of product by 1.

      Every point of quality of result not otherwise used can reduce the time required by 10% until reasonable time drops to base production time and then 5% to a minimum of 50% normal base production time.

           eg Quality expected = 3
           3 × +20 = +60%
           Quality of roll = 1: +60-10= +50%
           Quality of roll = 2: +60-20=+40%
           Quality of roll = 3: +60-30 =+30%
           Quality of roll = 4: +60-40 = +20%
           Quality of roll = 5: +60-50 = +10%
           Quality of roll = 6: +60-60 = +0% = base production time
           Quality of roll = 7: -5% = 95% base production time
           Quality of roll = 8: -10% = 90% base production time
           Quality of roll = 9: -15% = 85% base production time
           Quality of roll = 10: -20% = 80% base production time
           Quality of roll = 11: -25% = 75% base production time
           Quality of roll = 12: -30% = 70% base production time
           Quality of roll = 13: -35% = 65% base production time
           Quality of roll = 14: -40% = 60% base production time
           Quality of roll = 15: -45% = 55% base production time
           Quality of roll = 16+: -50% = 50% base production time

      Failures may be salvageable. Reduce the quality of product one grade and add 4; if the result succeeds, then the lower quality product results. Continue until you get to quality of product 0.

      Each salvage adjustment adds +20% to the actual time taken. Time penalties for expected quality of result still apply, they are not negated just because expectations were unrealized.

      2.4.4.4 Interpretation & Environment

      Where some numeric value is indexed to quality, divide the range by 10, Quality 0 is the minimum value within the range, quality 0 is minimum plus 1/10th of the range, and so on. Obviously, you can’t get better than the best result in the range (Quality 10), so the GM should add some other advantage or benefit to Quality 11 and 12 results.

      Where environmental conditions are a factor, the GM should roll a d20-10. The result should be modified for climate – a good climate can add +1 or +2, a poor climate subtracts 1 or 2. Other environmental factors like soil quality, drainage, etc can also add +1 or +2, or subtract 1 or 2 in total.

      Long-term trends

      It’s normally not necessary to track these, but where it does become important: Good times are unlikely to last. Bad times are also unlikely to persist, but tend to linger for longer than good times.

      Roll a d6.
           If the last year was a catastrophic / bad one:
                6: conditions return to normal
                3-5: conditions improve, -1 to this years’ roll
                2: conditions remain unchanged, -2 to this year’s roll
                1: conditions worsen, -4 to this year’s roll.

           If the last year was a normal one:
                6: conditions improving, +2 to the environment roll
                5: conditions improving, +1 to the environment roll
                3-4: normal
                2: conditions worsening, -1 to the environment roll
                1: conditions severely worse, -2 to the environment roll

           If the last year was a good or great one:
                6: conditions continue, add +3 to this year’s environment roll
                5: conditions moderate, add +1 to this year’s environment roll
                2-4: conditions return to normal
                1: conditions worsen dramatically, -1 to this year’s environment roll

      Environmental roll results:

      A result of 0 is “normal year”. A result of 1 or better is a “better than average year”. A result of 5 or better is “good year”, results of 9 or better are a “great year”.

      A result of -1 or worse is a “worse than average year”. Results of -5 or worse are “a terrible year” and indicate damage due to adverse conditions.

      EG: Wheat Yield:

      Base yield was defined earlier as 795.3 kg/m^3 but this was reduced to 525 kg/m^3 (66%) to allow for inefficient farming techniques. +3.3% per +1 quality of result is therefore reasonable.

      A “Good Year” doubles the resulting yields. This is an environmental result of 5, so divide +100% by 5 to get +20% for the first 5 environmental yield modifiers. This should halve for the difference between “Good Years” and “:Great Years”, i.e. +10% yield. Environmental results better than a “Great Year” halve the increase again, to +5% per step. The absolute maximum environmental factor result is +17 (with long-term trend factored in):

      A Normal Year:
           0 = +0%
           1 = +20%
           2 = +40%
           3 = +60%
           4 = +80%

      A Good Year:
           5 = +100%
           6 = +110%
           7 = +120%
           8 = +130%

      A Great Year
           9 = +135%
           10 = +140%
           11 = +145%
           12 = +150%
           13 = +155%
           14 = +160%
           15 = +165%
           16 = +170%
           17 = +175%

      In a bad year, yields drop to a worst-case of total crop failure (negative yield equal to the amount usually reserved for seeding the next year’s crop). The base yield is 5 bushels per acre, plus another 5 for replanting, so -200% is a total loss. These should start small (-5% per increment), double in a “bad year”, and then double again in a catastrophic year. The worse possible result is -16, which should yield that -200% result.

      Poor Years:
           -1 = 95%
           -2 = 90%
           -3 = 85%
           -4 = 80%

      Bad Years:
           -5 = 70%
           -6 = 60%
           -7 = 50%
           -8 = 40%

      Catastrophic Years:
           -9 = 20%
           -10 = 0%
           -11 = -20%
           -12 = -40%
           -13 = -60%
           -14 = -80%
           -15 = -100%
           -16 = -100% and a permanent -1 to environmental rolls hereafter

      So, for a farm in a reasonable climate (+1) with reasonable advantages (+1), in a typical year:

           Long Term d6: 5
           Conditions improving, +1

           d20-10+2+1 = 11-10+3 = 4
           +80% yield
           base = 525 kg / m^3
           +80% = 945 kg / m^3
           5 bushels / acre over replanting
           +80% = 9 bushels / acre over replanting

           Farming Skill 4 ranks
           Stat Modifier +3
           Expected Quality: 2
           = +4 difficulty
           Base difficulty = 2
           Net difficulty = 6
           d20 roll: 10, so success by 4.

      Note that the power of plot completely overrides these results. If the GM needs a famine, a famine occurs.

      2.4.4.5 Exceeding Base Quality – Pet Projects

      Every craftsman has one or two pet projects, sometimes called “vanity projects”, in which they take as long as necessary (or more) to get absolutely the best result that they possibly can. For some, the joy is not in the outcome, so they will happily sell the finished work and start something else; for others, this is a personal possession of great value, something to be bequeathed to future generations.

      Every +25% to the reasonable time, cumulative, adds 1 to the quality of result, which in turn can accumulate to the point of enhancing the quality of product. These additional “quality of result” do not have the usual time-shortening benefits described above.

      The craftsman can’t spend infinitely more time on the project; each +25% step above allocates 2 of their skill ranks to the project.

      Above this limit, the 2 points begins to come off the chance of success.

      So there is a limit to how far a craftsman dares, or can, go, one that is based on their skill level.

      A roll for the results must be made at the commencement of the project By The GM and the results kept secret until the end of the scheduled project.

           EG: Skill Ranks 8,      Expected quality = 4
           +80% base production time = 1.8 × Base

           1.8 +25% = 2.25 × Base; 2 ranks
           2.25 +25% = 2.81 × Base; 4 ranks
           2.81 + 25% = 3.51 × Base; 6 ranks
           3.51 + 25% = 4.39 × Base; 8 ranks

           4.39 + 25% = 5.49 × Base; -2 success
           5.49 + 25% = 6.86 × Base; -4 success
           6.86 + 25% = 8.58 × Base; -6 success
           8.58 + 25% = 10.73 × Base; -8 success

      Going any further reduces the chance of success by too great a degree for most people. This is already probably down to 4-6 out of 20.

      For example, let’s say we’re talking about a suit of plate mail. The normal base time for such a project might be 20 days (i.e. 4 5-day weeks), but this is being squeezed into odd moments here and there, and the character is fairly highly skilled, so they are in demand; the GM sets the base time for the vanity project at 100 days.

           100 × 13.41 = 1341 days = 3.674 years = 3 years 8 months 2.66 days.
           Target quality of product = 4+7 = 12 (maximum possible)
           Difficulty = 2 + 24 = 26
           8 ranks + stat bonus 4 =12
           maximum rollable result = 12+20=32
           chance of success = 32-26 = 6 on d20 i.e. natural 14-20 needed.
           GM’s secret roll = 8+12=20. Not enough.
           Reduce product quality 1 for +4= 24. Not enough.
           Reduce product quality 2 for another +4 = 28. Not enough.
           Reduce product quality 3 for yet another +4 =32. Success!
           Final quality of product = 12-3=9. A better Masterwork quality.

      2.4.4.6 The Impact of Low / High Stats

      I once described a system like this to a player and he was dubious about basing it on a character’s skill ranks and not their net skill. His exact words were, “Why shouldn’t better stats make a difference?”

      The reality is that Stat scores do in fact make a difference. The higher the character’s stat, the more likely it is that they will succeed in achieving their target quality, and the more likely it is that they will have excess quality of result that can then be applied to quality of product – but in a measured and controlled way. Basing the subsystem on net score would only add to the role of higher stat scores, making them more important than the skill ranks, while not doing so restores the balance between the two while emphasizing the importance of the actual skill of the character.

      Moreover, the distinction reflects the reality of a character crafting an item. Natural ability (the stat bonus) can enhance the character’s use of what skill they possess, but can’t substitute for such skill.

      I thought it important to take a moment to clarify this.

      2.4.4.7 Failure to Deliver

      Time to zoom back out to consider the bigger picture. For whatever reason, a craftsman has failed to deliver as promised – the work might be below the agreed standard of quality, or the numbers might be short of what was promised, or there may have been delays for this reason or that; the specifics don’t much matter.

      This happens in real life, and there are always legal and fiscal consequences. Some of these are dictated by the terms of an individual agreement, which in turn may be restricted by the legal code, and some of them may be explicitly stated in the legal code.

      The fictional response is that the craftsman owes the customer some sort of compensation for the failure, and an industry of insurance to mitigate the impact of paying such compensation would arise to handle the situation. Fines and penalties may be incurred or imposed. Perhaps the biggest impact would be on the reputation and credibility of the craftsman – if you’ve failed to deliver once, can you ever be fully trusted to do so again in the future?

      Reality is always more complicated than fiction. The craftsman’s liability is limited – first, to what he can pay, and second, to what he is directly responsible for. Acts of God (or Gods in a fantasy context) are beyond his powers to control, and are usually excluded from such insurance policies – which leaves the customer out of pocket.

      There always has to be some regulatory framework in place to discriminate and judge cases where customer demands, or craftsman’s promises, are unreasonable – some sort of civil court structure.

      That can get more complicated in a hurry when more feudal systems of government are in place – it can become a dispute between nobles, and nobles have armies, and that’s a small war every time you turn around. What’s more, there can be a disparity of power between the two sides that complicates matters. Again, some sort of appeals court – usually direct to the next higher authority – needs to exist, just to prevent the waste of resources on petty wars.

      The other element of regulation would be insurance on the customer’s side to protect them from non-compliance by a craftsman. This idea – which seems fairly obvious to us in modern times – is actually a fairly recent development. Prior to that development, when you entered into an agreement, you were assumed to agree to share certain risks, amongst which were the risks of non-compliance for reasons beyond the control of either party.

      Insurance is such a logical device that the only reasons for it not to exist are (a) it’s contradicted by some fundamental cultural or legal value; or (b) no-one’s thought of it yet. But it sucks all the drama out of the situations in which it can be the solution, and so I don’t advocate for it if you can reasonably justify its absence.

      For the rest of the time, you’ll need a basic understanding of how Insurance works, and that’s something that is not as commonplace as might be assumed. So let’s address that question before moving on.

      2.4.4.8 Insurance 101

      Insurance works on the concept of Distributed Risk.

      Let’s say you have 1000 farmers across the country who pay 3% of their income toward an insurance scheme. That adds up to a lot of money in the pockets of the insurance provider.

      In any given year, some of those farmers will experience reverses and need to make a claim against their insurance. That’s money that comes out of the pockets of the insurance provider.

      The insurance provider will take whatever’s left and split it into three basic areas: (1) investments to grow the wealth of the insurance agency, so that they are better able to cover ‘bad years’ when there are a lot of claims; (2) recruitment drives to sign up new customers, even whole new markets; and (3) profits to be distributed amongst the owners.

      The whole process works because different farmers experience different conditions. While farmers in counties X, Y, and Z were flooded out, counties A, B, and C had great years – and G, H, and K had drought or locusts or a mouse plague or maybe a fire. Plus you have wandering beasties of a fantastic nature to provide disruptions that we don’t see in the real world!

      Again, distribution of risk means that all the payments from farmers NOT affected by these problems cover the costs of paying out those who are, plus profits etc.

      Setting the amount to charge the farmers in a good year is always a tricky operation. The amount needs to be high enough to generate enough profits to keep the owners happy, or the insurance will go away. But if it’s too high, farmers won’t be able to afford it, and the provider will be at risk of being undercut by a cheaper provider.

      To keep costs down and profits up, companies play the long game. If a farm is likely to claim on its insurance once in 25 years, they have 24 years to earn enough from that farm to make the whole operation profitable. It gets more complicated with smaller payouts along the way, but that’s the general principle.

      In recent years, Insurance companies have become notorious for terms and conditions that restrict or limit their liability. Many people who were wiped out by floods were unimpressed when their insurance policies, post-claim, started to exclude flood damage – with the bills not going down – and I don’t blame them.

      Other complicating clauses will be more familiar to American Readers because of the way they impact Health Insurance (to reduce or limit the amount that the Insurance Companies have to pay) – things like co-pays and deductibles and minimum claims, and so on.

      These are all relatively recent developments and place insurance company profits ahead of delivering the service that the company is supposed to be providing to its customers, at least in my personal opinion. I think everything – fire, flood, wandering dragon – should be covered. If there is a wide-scale event that is beyond the capacity of the insurance company, then they should be able to take out cheap government loans to cover the difference (faster payout to those affected) and should then be in a position to lobby the government for relief on part or all of that debt – with significantly more clout to bring to bear than an individual homesteader or farmer. That’s more or less the way things were when I was growing up.

      There were some nuances added by the time I actually worked in the insurance industry. The first was an agreed amount – you could elect to be insured for more or less than the actual value of the goods being protected. Less meant that you didn’t get fully covered in the event of catastrophe, but your payments were less in the meantime; More meant that you were protected against replacement prices increasing in the period of time since you bought whatever it was that you were insuring. This concept largely replaced the simpler (and less controllable ‘new-for-old’ model that predated it).

      The problems with this approach first became obvious in the auto industry – if you could insure a car for twice what it was worth, you could then torch it and get a replacement car and a windfall at the same time. If you could insure a car for less than it’s value, but bump the coverage up to full just before making a claim, you avoided paying the higher insurance rates in the meantime, effectively giving yourself more bang for your buck than you were entitled to. It became policy from on high that all cars had to be inspected and their value appraised according to strict rules and guidelines, and the term “agreed value” entered the lexicon, aimed directly at stamping out both kinds of fraud.

      None of which should matter to the GM, I have to add. Insurance, if it exists, should be brute simple – you claim, if your claim is verified, you get paid, and the company either has pockets deep enough to wear the risks and costs involved, or have tacit government backing to call upon if necessary.

      There’s one more concept that I need to get across before I can move on: Reinsurance.

      Let’s say we have five countries with five governments with five or more insurance companies in between them. In a really bad year, an entire European country can be affected by a natural disaster (basically, they are of similar sizes to a US state). Maybe two of them. That risks sending the insurance companies in those countries to the wall, which means no money for anyone – and no profits for those companies owners.

      This is a situation nobody would be happy with, and it would not be long before some bright spark came up with the logical solution, Reinsurance. That’s where an insurance company takes out insurance against payouts in excess of what they can afford. They give up some of their profits to ensure their long-term viability.

      The reason it works: distribution of risk. One or two of those five countries make a claim; the costs of the excess are distributed across every insurance holder in the countries that are not affected. The more players you have in the pool, the more secure everybody becomes. Genius!

      Except… some problems came to light with this process in recent years here in Australia. In essence, the reinsurance providers refused to cover some of the claims made by Australian insurance companies because the restrictions and limitations on the Australian insurance policies did not match up with those ultraconservative and restrictive ones applied by the reinsurance company. This, of course, was just an excuse not to pay out as promised, and it ended up in court, but that’s not the important point to be made here; the important thing was that the reinsurance companies tried to coerce their customers (the local Insurance Agencies) into modifying their terms and conditions after the fact.

      Are you getting whiffs of high politics and corruption and corporate greed? I certainly am.

      Unless such plot threads are a key part of your campaign, and maybe even then, I would avoid destabilizing the economic foundations of the campaign with any such shenanigans. Keep it simple.

      ★ Insurance protects the craftsman.

      ★ Profits and reasonable policy costs protect the Insurance company.

      ★ When that’s not enough, Reinsurance protects the Insurance companies, with governments bridging the gap.

      ★ When Reinsurance isn’t enough (national disasters), the government assumes responsibility for anything in excess of the reinsurance. if necessary, taxes and insurance costs will go up in future years.

      That’s all there needs to be.

      A Little Context
      The first insurance company was Lloyd’s of London, who once were willing to write any insurance policy against any development or event that their underwriters could calculate the odds against.

      They got started insuring merchant ships – these (with cargoes) were worth an absolute fortune and could wipe out corporate titans if one foundered in a storm or befell some other catastrophic event.

      A lot of the concepts that apply generally to insurance today, especially the legal ones, derive from these origins and the maritime law in back of them – and that can produce the occasional oddity. A small ship tying up to a larger one may be considered making landfall on an island for insurance purposes, for example if there is a fire aboard the smaller vessel that is unnoticed. Maritime law states that the larger vessel has no choice if the smaller vessel is in distress, even though this places the larger vessel at risk, too; self-protection then demands that the crew of the larger vessel do everything they can to control or extinguish the fire, even to the point of cutting the smaller vessel adrift once the crew have been rescued. You can have a lot of fun with this by introducing obscure laws that made sense in their original context but are now being applied in very strange ways to even stranger circumstances!

      All such events and circumstances should ‘proceed at the speed of plot’, and if they result in an obvious injustice being perpetrated for the purposes of the plot, part of the resolution of that plot should be moves by regulators to ‘correct’ the legal code (even if such moves fail or are inadequate).

      If this context doesn’t make a material contribution to an adventure, it should be ignored as much as possible.

      But that leaves a small gap between the two extremes, in which understanding the origins and peculiarities can provide guidance to questions of what is reasonable, and what various NPCs objectives and perspectives might be, that can be useful to the GM.

      Readers might also find this content worth their reading time in this context:

      ★ Risk Assessment For GMs

      ★ Mapping Through Logic and Flavor (specifically, the “Legacy Structures” section near the end of the article)

      ★ And, in addition to the above, I know that I’ve written up the origins of the Insurance Industry in far greater detail somewhere, but can’t locate the article (maybe it was never finished / published?). After more than an hour’s searching, I’ve given up for the moment. If I ever find it again, it’ll replace this text with the link.

2.5 Movement & Sale of A Trade Unit

A lot of this chapter has focused on moving Trade Units around because it’s a fundamental principle of Trade – buy something somewhere that it’s cheap and move it to somewhere where it’s worth more than the purchase price plus cost of transport. This is central to applying the principle of Supply and Demand.

It is therefore a theme that this article will return to, again and again, and something that every GM has to understand.

Chapters 4, 5, and 6 – all of them anticipated to be multipart – focus on different means of delivery, so I don’t want to get into that here. Even chapter 3, “Routine Personnel”, is focused on the employment of people to achieve this transport and the business of buying at one end and selling at the other, and so relates directly to his principle and its application. Instead, I thought it useful to give a broader overview at this point.

Let’s start with a rule of thumb, that will be addressed in greater detail later in the series:

    It’s only worth conveying a cargo beyond the largest market in easy reach if you can get to a larger market by traveling the same time or less.

Let’s unpick that a little.

  • “worth” = profitable.
  • “largest market” = place where the highest price will be paid within the travel time defined by “easy reach”.
  • “easy reach” = a subjective judgment.
  • “larger market” = place where a higher price will be paid.
  • “the same time or less” – doesn’t include the initial leg, obviously.

Just for the fun of it, let’s consider a map that I’ve just knocked out to illustrate the point. Our point of purchase is “a”, located near the center of the map and slightly to the southwest (assuming north is up as traditional).

  • From a, we can head overland to “b:, “c”, “e” or “f'”. We can also head downriver to “e” – upriver to “b” might me more problematic since it’s right up at the foot of the mountains.
     
  • All these markets are roughly the same size as the one we bought at.
     
  • “b” lets us access “d” or “g” but these are also about the same size, and “g” would be much slower – it’s one of only four passes through the mountains, which you would tackle if there was a vast profit in doing so – but there isn’t. Scratch “b”.
     
  • “c” lets us go downriver to “h” which IS a bigger market, and since downriver travel is likely to be much faster than travel on foot, this is a contender.
     
  • “e” is a longer overland trek, but the gentler slope might make it faster going, and it not only lets us access “h” but also the cities of M and N, which would be even larger markets than “h”. So that’s definitely a contender.
     
  • “f” also involves crossing the mountains to no great advantage. What’s more, it has so little going for it in terms of trade that it probably only exists to protect that pass.
     
  • “h” also lets us access M or N, as well as the similarly-sized “i” and “j”, both of which connect with “P” after a relatively short overland trek.
     
  • “M” and “N” are short distances from the similarly-sized port city of “O”.
     
  • Sadly, the biggest market of all – the capital “Q” – is out of reach; it’s just not economic to ship there, except perhaps by seagoing vessel from “O” or “P”.

So there are five trade routes worth contemplating for “a”:

  1. a -> c -> h -> i -> P -> Q
  2. a -> c -> h -> j -> P -> Q
  3. a -> c -> h -> M -> O -> Q
  4. a -> c -> h -> M -> N
  5. a -> e -> M/N -> O -> Q

P is closer to Q, and therefore a shorter voyage. M/N/O represent a triple chance at a good profit, with Q as a backstop. Which one will turn the greatest profit? That’s where the fun is – who knows? But there are other factors that you can take into account under this model. If a shipment of the same goods has just left for one of these destinations, the others automatically become more attractive. If the commodity is especially desired at one of the destinations, it immediately becomes more attractive. If the vendor has personal connections in one of the locations that are likely to help deliver a profit, it is obviously a better choice, all other things being equal. And, finally, what’s in demand back in “a” and which of these locations will provide it at the cheapest price?

Planning a successful trading expedition requires knowing the locations, inside and out, and that practically demands actually going there and looking around. And that’s a reasonable justification for the GM landing the party in the middle of an adventure in each!

The other factor to consider is this: what’s been described here is a two-leg expedition – one out from “a” and one back to “a”. Successful traders would think larger; can they sell in “h” and buy something to take to “P” or “M” or “O”? Can they sell there and buy something that will be in demand in “Q”? That’s a linear multistage operation. But perhaps there’s a triangular trade that would be faster and hence more profitable – a to c to h to M to e to a? Or a to e to M to h to c to a? (Actually, technically, those are hexagonal, with 6 stops, but you get the point).

There are five stages to a Trade Expedition, with one of them coming in two varieties. They are: loading, movement, unloading, wholesaling or retailing, and purchasing.

    2.5.1 Loading

    I’ve already discussed loading. It doesn’t matter what’s in a Trade Unit, it will still take the same amount of time to load one, and that time is down to the quality and numbers of manpower available. As a general rule, the GM should allocate a loading/unloading time per Trade Unit for each destination based on the factors identified and be done with it. NEVER actually specify the reasons for such a decision or even the factors that went into it unless it is a plot point!

    2.5.2 Movement

    Next, you have to convey the cargo to it’s destination. This can often be an adventure in itself – once or twice. After that, as a general rule, the same old trade route equals the same old adventures = boring.

    2.5.3 Unloading

    Unloading is generally a faster event than loading, but this principle is easily swamped by manpower considerations. Determine how long it would take to load the cargo at the destination and halve it.

    2.5.4 Wholesaling

    Wholesaling is where you sell to someone who is then going to on-sell it to local customers, perhaps after using a Craft skill to enhance or transform it. It pays less but does so far more quickly.

    2.5.5 Retailing

    Retailing means taking the cargo to a market and selling it piecemeal until either it’s all gone or you are convinced there’s no market for whats’ left. This can take quite some time, but by cutting out the “middleman”, i.e. the wholesaler, you stand to earn a higher price – in the long run. Whether that’s actually a higher profit depends on how much the personnel required are costing you – per day.

    It’s possible to run a hybrid operation – sell retail for a short time and the offload the rest to a wholesaler. But the wholesaler will pay less under those circumstances, so it can very easily be cutting off your nose to spite your face.

    2.5.6 Purchasing

    You need to always have an eye on what you can pick up for the return trip. Judging when to pull the pin on sales and set course for home is always a tricky question – buy new cargo too soon and the delays caused by selling retail can mean that it spoils before you can bring it to market. Advantage to the wholesaler model, then.

    But, on the other hand, if you know it’s going to take a week to buy a full load for the trip home, you’ll have a reasonable chance to have sold everything in that period of time, so you might as well sell retail.

    Customs and traditions definitely play a part in these decision, too. So there’s a lot to consider.

    Having the right personnel working for you can make or break the Trading, it’s clear. Ideally, you would want to do everything yourself, but no-one’s yet been able to master the trick of being in two places at the same time – not without some sort of disaster befalling them, at any rate.

2.6 Virtual Trade Units – The Futures Market

Ah, the home stretch! This section of content doesn’t really fit here, but it doesn’t really fit anywhere all that well, so it may as well be here, since so much of this chapter is about buying and selling.

Most people don’t understand the Futures Market. A few of them will (like me) have some idea from presentations in media like “Trading Places” and general knowledge. Nevertheless, it needs to be explained at some point, and this gives me license to simplify outrageously!

    2.6.1 A Commitment to buy at Price X

    The futures market takes two forms: a commitment to buy at Price X, or a commitment to sell at price X.

    A commitment to buy means that you are betting that the market price of the commodity will be higher than X when the commitment comes due – so you can buy at the agreed price and then sell immediately at the higher one, making a profit.

    But, to do that, X must also be higher than the price today – or you have to reach this agreement with someone who thinks the price will fall instead of going up, and therefore thinks that they can buy the commodity cheaper and you will have to pay them a higher price than they would otherwise get. You lose money, they make money.

    The Futures Market is, essentially, betting on whether or not the price of a commodity will go up or down, and it generally involves buying Trade Units of a commodity that don’t even exist yet. The further into the future you speculate, the bigger the potential rewards, and the bigger the risk.

    2.6.2 A Commitment to sell at Price X

    The other side of the coin is a commitment to sell at Price X on a given date. This means that you are betting that the price is going to drop.

    All sorts of things can affect the value of a commodity. Demand could go up for some reason. Or down. Supply could go up – or down. Quality could go up, or down. Farmers could demand more money for their crops, or transport costs could rise. Government regulations and trade deals can throw unexpected spanners into the works. Even bad weather delaying shipments from reaching their market for a week or so – not unheard of, especially in the days of sail – can be a Market Event, creating a short term supply shortage.

    The more information you have about a commodity, the smarter the bets that you can make. Now, add crystal balls to the mix. And sabotage. And other dirty tricks like lies and misdirection.

    The downside of an adventure based on trading Futures is that you have to explain the Futures Market – and understand it, yourself. The upside is that it reeks of skulduggery and dirty tricks, and those always make for a lively game session.

    2.6.3 The Impact Of Options

    It’s usually illegal, but being both a trader in the commodity and a trader in the futures market of that commodity can be very lucrative. In fact, you can make a killing on the market – an obscene profit – if you play your cards right.

    I know some people found the commodities trading in Raymond E Feist’s “Rise Of A Merchant Prince” to be dull. I found it fascinating.

    The merchant prince in question, named Roo (quite improbably – I think it’s short for Rupert) – learns that there is a locust plague in a distant kingdom. That kingdom is going to have to send representatives to buy wheat locally. Demand will skyrocket and supply is limited – which means that the price will also rise massively.

    So he and his cohorts invest every penny they can pinch in buying options on the local wheat crop, paying considerably more than the expected normal market price if necessary, confident that if they control it all, they can set the sale price to whatever they want when those foreign traders arrive.

    They are betting, on the basis of this uncertain insider knowledge, that the price of wheat is going to go up – by a lot. Sound familiar?

    Of course, all this has to be done in utmost secrecy – one hint that they are trying to corner the market and the whole scheme will come at least partially undone. And if the insider knowledge is wrong, the whole scheme will come catastrophically undone!

    Options are a way to spend money that you don’t have to increase the price of a commodity when the time comes. Or, if you have very deep pockets and an enemy is even more invested in the price going up than you are, you can deliberately take a loss, set the price too low, and send your enemy into ruin. It’s easy to be too clever by half.

    Options, and Futures Trading, is really a story of intelligence gathering and leveraging that intelligence to your advantage. The Trading is just the blood sport in which this all takes place.

    2.6.4 Each-way or “Hedging” Bets

    A trader gives a commitment to buy so many Trade Units of a commodity for X to one buyer and to sell the same number of Trade Units to another buyer for Y on the same date. What’s going on?

    The trader is clearly going to take a loss on one of these two transactions under most circumstances, but he’s betting that the profit that he makes on the other side is going to outweigh that loss – and if it doesn’t, he has hedged his bets. He may incur some losses, but they are less likely to be catastrophic to his bottom line.

    A lot depends on X and Y – one is clearly higher than the other. It’s even possible to make a profit both ways, but that really is a masterwork of misdirection on the scale of a Bellagio Casino Heist (refer “Oceans 11”) or a Mission Impossible.

    The risk is always that you can get it wrong and make a loss both ways.

    I’m not going to go into further details – you have everything you need to be able to figure the rest out for yourself. Hint: consider all the possible scenarios and you will be able to deduce what the Trader thinks is going to happen (based on X and Y) and what the people he’s done deals with think is going to happen (based on X and Y respectively). Then look at ways for all three parties to cheat.

    2.6.5 Paying the Piper

    At the end of the day, you have to make good on your promises, even if it ruins you. That’s the whole point of Trading Places – a pair of manipulative schemers, used to playing the market, ruin the life of one bright young up-and-comer and threaten to do the same to his unlikely replacement as a ‘social experiment’; the pair of intended victims come together with a couple of allies to turn the tables on the pair.

    If you can’t come up with the money, the market will strip you of every asset and put them up for sale. You will still owe the rest. What bankruptcy protections are there in your game world?

    In Ancient Greece, they had debt slavery – the debtor, his wife, children, and servants were all forced into slavery to the creditor until the loss was recouped by their physical labor. Some city-states imposed limits of 5 years servitude, and debt slaves often had a promise of protection of life and limb, which regular slaves did not – but these protections didn’t extend to the servants of the debtor, who were often forced into a lifetime of servitude under harsh conditions.

    Debtors Prison was invented in England 1542 which empowered various officials to imprison those who could not pay their debts and distribute their assets ‘equitably’ amongst those to whom they owed money. Before that, Church Law permitted a debtor to hand over all his worldly possessions to a creditor (sometimes with a few necessities exempted) in exchange for a fresh start.

    In 1705, Debtor’s Prison was abolished and replaced by a system whereby the debtor’s unpaid debts followed him until repaid. His possessions were forfeit and their values applied against those debts. Bankrupts were seen as frauds and criminals.

    In 1813, a debtor could be released from his debts after serving 14 days imprisonment and upon swearing an oath that their assets did not exceed £20 – but if this oath was a lie, the sentence was much harsher. The laws introduced then also permitted people to voluntarily declare themselves Bankrupt rather than waiting for someone else to lower the boom.

    It was only in the middle of the 19th century that attitudes began to soften, and bankrupts to be seen as the victims of misfortune.

    In the modern age, it is sometimes said that if you owe the bank a little, the bank owns you, but if you owed the bank a fortune, you owned the bank. That was definitely not the case back then!

2.7 Failure To Deliver

There’s one more bit of world-building that GMs have to perform before they can implement Trade as a campaign plot device, or more specifically, three pieces of related construction: Laws that describe what happens when things go awry and commitments can’t be met. I’ve touched on this earlier so let’s dive right into it.

Another article of relevance might be of interest, to start with: Lore Enforcement: The Legal System in an RPG, from a solid 15 1/2 years ago (!)

    2.7.1 Local

    There are two local law situations that will generally be covered under the same law: Buying something that can’t be delivered, and selling something that can’t be delivered. The reasons are fairly irrelevant since we’ve specified Local law, which rules out wider-scale issues.

    Does the law hold the person making the promise liable? Does it accept that promising anything always implies caveats that might prevent the transaction being completed? Who loses money? If you’ve made commitments to others based on the assumption that someone else would deliver the commodity needed to fulfill those commitments, are you liable or is the person who committed delivery to you?

    What about local conditions that are considered a government responsibility, like Bandits or (sometimes) transport infrastructure – bridges, fords, ferry landings and ferries, docks?

    Once you know who’s responsible, you know who can recruit the PCs to go investigate the problem – why weren’t the promises kept? If the PCs Trade venture was disrupted, they may have a more direct vested interest in such questions, but that’s not necessary to make this a segue into an adventure.

    Or even several – if the PCs become convinced that the local government is corrupt or incompetent, they may choose to embark on a campaign to replace them with someone more reliable. Intelligence and Politics are always good foundations for campaigns!

    2.7.2 Regional / National

    These are generally similar in scope. The first deals with some regional issue – a natural disaster of some sort being the most common. This is a really good reason not to be able to deliver on a promise and is normally dealt with under a whole separate set of laws / decrees that override any local laws dealing with such issues.

    That’s even more true of the second, which deals with the fallout / ramifications of political decisions both by the nation in question and by outsiders – like someone launching an invasion.

    Now, unless the PCs are fairly high level, they won’t be considered suitable people to solve such problems – that’s a job for the army, led by some higher-level characters. And that’s no fun for the PCs.

    Until they are of sufficient level to be lumbered with such commissions by the authorities, though, the PCs get to search out and test ways around the problem. That might mean charting a new road or trail, or opening up a new market, or attempting to run a blockade. It might mean a sub-commission to scout or spy. It might be being sent to a particular location in case the enemy go there, but they aren’t expected to head in that direction (which is why the relatively unskilled PCs are sent there) – only to discover that the enemy has their own tactical objectives that have not been understood, and so behave completely contrary to such expectations. The PCs suddenly find themselves besieged and have to attempt escape in order to bring back reinforcements before it’s too late – which can be an incredibly nervous assignment when the PCs are clearly less powerful than the enemy.

    2.7.3 Remote

    Obviously, the next distance removed and next tier of law is International.

    I’ve never studied law formally, but I have picked up a number of (usually out-of-date) second-hand references. One of the first of these was a reprint of a book published in the year of my birth, itself a revision of a book that predated the Second World War. And one of the first points that it makes is that 99% of International Law doesn’t exist, but everyone has to pretend that it does until they figure out what it should be.

    Another reference source points out that the more humans (we being the only recognized sentient species on the planet, something not true in most Fantasy campaigns) have participated in a particular activity, the better regulated by law that activity will be.

    ★ So there are pretty solid laws now for war, and war crimes, and what is and is not acceptable on the battlefield.

    ★ There are moderately well thought-out laws regarding Treaties, especially those relating to Trade, and how inequities are to be resolved, how treaties can be annulled or repudiated or enforced, and by whom.

    ★ There’s solid law concerning piracy.

    ★ Colonies are fairly well dealt with.

    ★ And there are some early glimmers of law regarding the peaceful cooperation of two or more nations for some mutually agreed purpose, and especially branches of their militaries.

    And that’s about where things end – at least in terms of the laws described in these books, except in terms of some general principles.

    One of those principles is that (with exceptions for diplomats), local laws dominate; you go somewhere else, it’s their laws that control. In a matter of criminal activity, it’s where the crime is alleged to have taken place whose law applies. Where two sets of laws apply equally, it is the law of the aggrieved party that dominates, absent any other controlling circumstance. And so on.

    All good, logical stuff – that’s absolutely full of holes, because none of those principles are enforceable by anyone unless ratified between two specific national entities by formal treaties that recognize them.

    That’s how and why the US could back the War Crimes court in the Hague and still refuse to ratify it by treaty – so that they can’t be charged with War Crimes.

    What are the major treaties between the nation where the PCs are and its neighbors? What is covered and what is not? What do they have to say about Trade? About criminal deceptions and fraud? About liabilities and assumed risks? About promises that are enforceable and those that are not?

    Remember, 99% of international law was unwritten – in 1928. How much of it was written in the 1600s? Earlier? If you are accused of a crime in another country, whose laws dominate? If someone from another country commits a crime against you, what legal recourse / protection do you have? If there’s no formal treaty dealing with those issues, what then?

    Treaties don’t happen out of thin air, either. There can be dozens of Diplomatic Missions involved – and that can be a very touchy business when diplomats from one country are not even recognized (legally) in the other. The absence of a treaty can be a powerful plot device!

    What interests do the countries have in common? What attitudes do they share? Where there are differences of opinion, how are they to be reconciled? What is to happen if a third nation attempts to cause trouble between the two of you? How are you to deal with political attempts to involve you in local political situations? And on, and on, and on.

    A single mission as (expendable) representatives of your nation to another can be a doorway through which multiple adventures can sit down in your living room and make themselves obnoxious – simply because you have no protection, and yet have sufficient power that locals will try and use your presence for their own ends. You have proximity to the seat of power in that nation, and others will also be quick to sense this, and attempt to take advantage of it.

    There are innumerable opportunities just waiting to be exploited by you as GM. Why waste them? Why ignore them?

Okay, that’s a wrap for this chapter of Trade In Fantasy. Lots of food for thought and a few bones for you to chew over. Next week, a scheduled break – I was going to write one article, but then thought of another, so I’m not sure what I’ll be writing about. Then it will be back on the horse, when the subject will be how to manage ordinary employees without personnel management issues!

Leave a Comment

Trade In Fantasy Ch. 2: Trade Units Pt 1


This entry is part 3 in the series Trade In Fantasy

The concept of an abstracted “Trade Unit” lies at the heart of making Trade a playable event on a recurring and large scale. Without it, you bog down in minutia; with it in place, direct comparisons become easier and decisions far more prone to “make themselves” unless overridden for story purposes. Understanding the process of how and why those decisions are automatic and obvious most of the time enables the GM to manipulate the decisions to deliver the PCs to whatever and wherever the story is.

It must be noted at this point that the whole concept of Trade in Fantasy has to serve three or four or five masters, simultaneously, and sometimes they get in each other’s way.

  1. It has to cope with the concept of the PCs being employed by someone else in some capacity relating to the purchase, transport, and sale of cargo.
  2. It has to facilitate the concept of the PCs engaging in trade, buying cargo, traveling with the cargo to its destination and selling it.
  3. It has to cope with the concept of the PCs operating a corporate entity that has NPCs do the buying, transportation, and selling of cargo on the PCs behalf – perhaps while they are off adventuring. That’s a more challenging set of circumstances, from the storytelling / GM’s point of view.
  4. It has to scale easily and be sufficiently abstract that it consumes a minimum of screen time.
  5. It has to operate as completely in the background as possible, only intruding on game time when it intersects with a plotline.
  6. It has to contain enough realism to simulate all the possible financial concepts that humans (a perversely inventive lot) have been able to come up with throughout history – without being intrusive about it.
  7. Inevitably, it has to manage personnel administration under all of the circumstances listed in 1-3 as adroitly and seamlessly as 4-6 handle cargo.

That’s an ambitious program. I think this system will pull it off, but it’s not what I think that ultimately matters – it’s the readers that will decide whether or not this series meets those targets.

Sometimes, though, when I’m writing it, I find myself switching gears from one perspective to another. Certainly, specific parts of the text target one of the sets of circumstances listed in 1-3 directly and have little or no relevance outside of that. Most of (1) can be taken as an implied outgrowth of (2) or (3) – so the latter two are where the series focuses its attention.

This text will form part of the introduction to the e-book, but I wanted to make sure that it was clear what the goalposts were when I got down to the nitty-gritty, so I’ve mostly held it back until this post.

Image by Oleksandr Pidvalnyi from Pixabay, hastily edited at the last possible minute remove a plastic bag that had completely escaped my attention, somehow.

Credit where it’s due:

The series title graphic combines three images: The Clipper Ship Image is by Brigitte Werner (ArtTower). Dragon #1 is by Parker_West. And, Dragon #2 is by JL G. All three images were sourced from Pixabay.

Table Of Contents: Today’s Post

2. Trade Units

    2.1 Characteristics Of A Trade Unit

      2.1.1 Conceptual Basis
      2.1.2 Value Of A Trade Unit
      2.1.3 Bulk Of A Trade Unit
           2.1.3.1 “Standard”
           2.1.3.2 “Solidity %”
                Swords
                Horseshoes
                     Deferred Depth
                     Size
                     Packing Strategy
                          Two Sizing Techniques
                     Back to the Depth question
      2.1.4 Sell-by Date / Preservatives & Refrigeration
           2.1.4.1 Old-School preservation techniques
           2.1.4.2 Alchemy & Preservatives.
           2.1.4.3 Refrigeration
           2.1.4.4 Worldbuilding

    2.2 Purchasing A Trade Unit

      2.2.1 Metagaming The Purchase and Sale
      2.2.2 Price Of A Trade Unit
      2.2.3 Optioning A Trade Unit
      2.2.4 Packing A Trade Unit
           2.2.4.1 A Rational Approach
                Populating The Table
      2.2.5 Licenses
      2.2.6 Sales Tax & other Gotchas
      2.2.7 The Profit Metric

Next week, in part 2 of this chapter:

    2.3 Bulk Of A Trade Unit
    2.4 Contents Of A Trade Unit
    2.5 Movement & Sale of A Trade Unit
    2.6 Virtual Trade Units – The Futures Market

And, in future parts:

  1. Routine Personnel
  2. Mode Of Transport
  3. Land Transport
  4. Waterborne Transport
  5. Spoilage
  6. Key Personnel
  7. The Journey
  8. Arrival
  9. Journey’s End
  10. Adventures En Route

2. Trade Units

Describing cargoes as ‘Trade Units’ strips away almost every specific detail to leave an abstracted representation of those cargoes.

2.1 Characteristics Of A Trade Unit

In fact, as a general rule and in an ideal world, you only need to know three things about a Trade Unit to fully describe it.

  • Its value less costs, i.e. the potential profit that it represents;
  • Its bulk, i.e. how difficult (and how expensive) it is to transport; and,
  • Its sell-by date, i.e. the maximum time that can be expended in getting it to market. The default assumption is that this is infinite, but in the case of many commodities (especially fresh produce), that is not the case.

Of course, each of these simple concepts gets complicated by reality. For example, the actual sale price might bear little resemblance to the theoretical sale price. But simplifying cargo down to these three facts enables those nuances to be incorporated to whatever level of detail the GM desires as facilitating whatever the actual adventure is supposed to be.

That, of course, is the whole point.

    2.1.1 Conceptual Basis

    I was walking in the shopping district of my suburb a few weeks ago when something brought the image to the right to mind and connected it with my old “Trade In Traveler” article.

    You see, cargomasters loading freighters don’t care what’s in the containers; what they care about is how much they bulk (so that the ship is not overloaded, and is balanced), and how long they have to get it to wherever it is going. The owners don’t especially care what the contents are, either – just how much they will get for selling those contents.

    The same is true when it comes to loading freight aircraft, but they also have to be careful to balance loads front-to-rear as well as side-to-side.

    This was the epiphany that led to the entire “Freight In Fantasy” series. Everything else in the series flows from this central abstraction. Every issue or question that comes up in relation to this activity, pursued in-game, has been considered through the lens of this concept.

    I think it important to explain that up-front, for two reasons:

    • First, it gives important conceptual context to everything that follows, making it that much easier to explain and understand; and
    • Second, gets readers thinking in those terms, so that if a question or issue comes up that I’ve overlooked or skimmed over too quickly, readers can devise their own solutions.
    2.1.2 Value Of A Trade Unit

    The first of the three key values in describing a Trade Unit is how much it’s worth, relative to how much it cost, in other words, how much potential profit it represents.

    In an ideal world, that’s all you need to know in terms of finances. In reality, it gets more complicated, because costs and values change with location. Moving a cargo to a different destination where it is worth more than you paid for it is a fundamental concept of trade, but moving it an extra amount to somewhere where it is worth even more than that is the difference between success and mediocrity in trade. Both costs and sale value are relative terms, and the system needs to be able to cope with that.

    So the reality is that “Value” is such an inconsistent numeric indicator that it is almost always necessary to track Potential Sale Price and Costs separately.

    Nevertheless, in terms of bottom-lining and simplifying the actual practicing of Trade in-game, the more you can work with the “Profit” value – the difference between those two sub-terms – the better.

    Even if the ‘reality’ of fiscal management is that a cost increases, it’s better to handle that as a reduction in the level of profit if you possibly can. Adjust the profit up for the change in location and then down for the change in transport costs etc, if you possibly can. Sometimes, you can’t – the ownership structure of the enterprise might demand more detail – but this is the ideal to always look towards.

    Section 2.2 will have more to say on this subject.

    Oh, and one more note: A given cargo doesn’t have to be a whole number of Trade Units. There’s nothing wrong with trading “0.7 trade units” or whatever.

    2.1.3 Bulk Of A Trade Unit

    Like Profit, Bulk is comprised of two sub-values that may need to be known in order to assess the Bulk – but the more that you can ignore those sub-values in favor of the more abstract “Bulk” score, the better.

      Bulk = Weight × Volume / Standard

                also,

      Bulk = Density × %Solidity (Volume)^2 / Standard

    Bulk dictates how much of a commodity can be carried by a given method of transportation, how long a cargo takes to load and unload, how fast the transport can move it, and so on.

    Later in this post, I’ll compare a couple of different cargoes – grain vs flour vs timber vs weapons & armour and so on. But I want readers to right now take a moment to contemplate the relative Bulk of those commodities in general, because that will showcase the usefulness of this measure.

      2.1.3.1 “Standard”
      There are a couple of other sub-values mentioned above that need clarification before I continue. The first is “standard”. This simply translates the Bulk value into an easy-to-use relative number, and should be defined by the lowest maximum a standard pack animal can carry.

      In many worlds, that may be a mule, or maybe a horse. Or it may be a cart, or a dragon, or a runnerbeast, or even a slave. It’s the normal maximum that can be carried by the normal transportation methods.

      There are many nuances and available standards to choose from – the gold standard, the iron standard, an ore standard, the wheat standard, the flour standard. Which one the GM chooses will depend on the transportation methods available in his game world. I will use a standard based on reality as much as I can, but it might not apply to your game world – and you will have to make adjustments.

      Any such adjustment will also apply to the value & cost, because you are redefining how much of a commodity is in a “standard trade unit”. So it’s a powerful and fundamentally important number to get right, if you are going to simplify Trade as an in-game activity as much as possible.

      The reason to get you thinking about the relative impact on bulk of the different types of commodities are so that you are thinking about what standard to use.

      2.1.3.2 “Solidity %”

      Images used in this section are from Clker.com, modified by Mike.

      Using the Density of some product can be a convenience. But it means that you have to take into account how solidly that product can be packed into a given volume, and that can be more complicated than you think.

      Swords

      Take swords, for example. These pack more or less flat by laying one on top of another, nose-to-tail. The thickness of the crosspiece plus the thickness of the blade tip at hilt-length from the tip defines the vertical thickness. The image above shows this. So you might think that the total volume of these swords, when packed, would be L × w × (h1 + h2). And, if they were all packed like this, you would be right. Let’s put some real numbers in: 55 cm × 8 cm × (2 cm + 0.5 cm) = 1100cm^3, or 550 cm^3 per sword. But clearly, there’s a lot of empty space – almost 3/4 of that total volume. Packed this way, the Solidity % would be around 25%.

      But you could pack four swords like this – L2 is maybe 1.5 cm, and W2 is 3 cm, so the four swords would occupy (55 + 1.5) × (8 + 3) × (2 + 0.5) = 1553.75 cm^3, or just 388.4375 cm^3 per sword. Packed in this more efficient way, the Solidity % will be about 30%.


       
       
       
       
       
       
      If we continue to lay swords in this fashion, as shown to the left, eight swords will occupy (55 + 1.5) × (8 + [3 × 3]) × (2 + 0.5) = 56.5 × 17 × 2.5 = 2401.25 cm^3, or just 300.15625 cm^3 per sword. Four sword-widths of blades and 2 × 1.5 + 3 × 1.6 for the gaps (estimated visually) gives a total of 4 / (4 + 3 + 4.8) = 4 / 11.8 = 33.9% solidity.

      The larger the plan area of the crate that can be accommodated, the more we can take advantage of overlaps this way.

      Four such layers fits 32 swords into 7910 cm^3, the same density per sword, and the same Solidity %, as shown.

      Is that as good as we can do? Heck, no!

      If we have enough stacks that we get (L1 + L2) height at 2.5 cm each stack – so 56.5 / 2.5 = 23 stacks (rounding up), we can insert more vertically to make a latticework packing arrangement. For the modest price of another L3 or less, we can get another 15 pairs of swords into the space.

      So that’s 23 × 8 + 15 × 2 = 214 swords into (55 + 1.5+ 1.5) × (8 + [3 × 3]) × (2 + 0.5) × 23 = 58 × 17 × 2.5 × 23 = 56695 cm^3, or only 264.93 cm^3 per sword.

      We had 33.9% solidity, i.e 66.1 % empty space. It looks like roughly half of that is now filled, so the empty space is now 33.05%, and the Solidity % is 66.95%.

      Even that isn’t the absolute limit; if the cross-pieces were just a little smaller, or the blades a little longer, we could fit an extra row of pairs in the middle, giving 224 swords – and the extra L2 has vanished, no longer necessary. 224 / 214 × 66.95% × 58 / 56.5 = 71.9% solidity.

      Or a longer blade again would permit another 5 pairs – 234 swords. But we’re approaching the limits at this point – of assembled weapons, at least. For the real ultimate in packing density, ship the blades, pommels, and hilts separately and assemble them at the destination.

      But if you’re already getting 72% solidity, you would have to be sure that the gains were worth the effort and the risks. That certainty would only come with a large order – a couple of thousand weapons, at least. We’re talking about equipping an army. Most people rarely have to do that – you would have to wonder why they aren’t already equipped, and the possible answers can be a little disquieting. (Hint: No-one increases the size of their army massively without good reason).

      Horseshoes

      Let’s look next at Horseshoes. With straight edges like Swords, it’s fairly easy to estimate spacing – I could see at a glance that the gap to either side of the examples above were about 1 1/2 times the width of the blade. As soon as you introduce even the simplest of curves, that changes. It’s ten times harder to be accurate, ten times easier to make a mistake, and ten times more likely that any mistake will be significant.

      Your best way out of this difficulty is with an image. It doesn’t matter if it’s a crude outline that you draw yourself or if you find an image on the internet, or even have a real life example to use as a template.

      So I picked out a fairly rough image from the internet – deliberately choosing something fairly low-resolution.

      Deferred Depth
      Fortunately, horseshoes will pack fairly flat. The flatter an object, the more you can simplify and treat it as a two-dimensional object.

      Size
      Looking at the image of the solitary horseshoe, it appears to be about 3 inches wide and maybe 4 inches long. Right away, that doesn’t sound quite right to me – I would expect something more square, 3 inches × 3 inches, based on what I’ve seen in real life.

      So I’ll come back to size in a minute.

      Packing Strategy
      I can also see right away that there are two possible packing arrangements (other than just putting a bunch of horseshoes side by side).

      The first one places the tine of one horseshoe against the middle of another one, so that most of that tine is occupying space that would otherwise be empty. But there is no room in this arrangement for more; everything would happen in pairs.

      The alternative separates the two horseshoes a little more and matches the concave of one horseshoe to the convex of another. It seems fairly obvious that the additional space makes a row of three fairly inefficient, but the larger the number of rows, the more efficient this is likely to be.

      The burning question is whether or not there is a threshold number above which the additional space required is compensated for, or is the 2-by-2 the most efficient choice?

      To answer that, we’re going to need some more precise measurements than my mark-1 eyeballs.

      Two sizing Techniques

      Fortunately, there are a couple of really simple techniques that can be used to get a more accurate measurement, no matter how complex the shape is.

      The most precise divides the object up into a grid, and you then estimate how much of each square is covered by the image, writing the result as a decimal (so 25% would be written 0.25). Add up all the totals, set a size for each cell, and multiply the two together to get a really accurate measurement.

      Here’s an example of using that technique:

      This uses a 10 × 11 grid to determine the % complete of portion of a Roman Tesserae. The bulk of it is contained within a 10×10 grid, but there’s a bit of overflow at the top. It’s roughly 1000 times more accurate than estimating by eye.

      But sometimes, we don’t need that level of precision. There’s a rough-and-ready alternative that is even simpler in some ways, though it’s a little fuzzier.

      The process starts by drawing a rectangle around the object. Use a bright, distinguishable color.

      Next, in a more neutral color like blue, I draw a square. I duplicate it and place them one beside another until the whole object is covered by a row of them. I then combine that row into a single image. In this case, having decided that the horseshoe was roughly 3 inches across, I used squares that represented 1/2 an inch, so I do six of them and scale the row to be the same width as the horseshoe.

      Then I duplicate that row, aligning them one row at a time until the whole horseshoe is covered. And, when you do that, you find that eyeball-estimates are wrong and the horseshoe is in fact, 3 inches × 3 inches.

      I repeat the same trick with a lighter color to subdivide the blue squares. If those larger squares had represented an inch, I might have used a four-by-four pattern to get 1/4 inch small squares, but with 1/2 inch larger squares, a five-by-five grid gives tenths of an inch.

      In each square that is fully covered by the image, I put a red dot, like so. In fact, 90% covered is good enough to get ‘dotted’ – errors will tend to average out.

      In the same way, I look for squares that are about 3/4 filled and put an orange dot. Then half-filled, yellow dots; and finally, 1/4 filled, a white circle.

      One small square (i.e. one 5-by-5 grid at a time), one row at a time, I count the number of dots of each color. As each grid gets done, a white stripe from one corner to the opposite corner is used to tell me that it’s been counted. I’ve done only the first two rows in the illustration so that you can see the process taking place.

      The complete count is:

           Top Row: Red 50, Orange 9, Yellow 11, White 4
           2nd Row: Red 77, Orange 14, Yellow 11, White 7
           3rd Row: Red 50, Orange 10, Yellow 4, White 1
           4th Row: Red 44, Orange 9, Yellow 6, White 3
           5th Row: Red 41, Orange 9, Yellow 6, White 7
           6th Row: Red 36, Orange 13, Yellow 5, White 6
           7th Row: Red 10, Orange 1, Yellow 1, White 8

      Add up the counts for each color and multiply by the ratio shown at the bottom of the figure.

           Red: 50 + 77 + 50 + 44 + 41 + 36 +10 = 308, × 1 = 308
           Orange: 9 + 14 + 10 + 9 + 9 + 13 + 1 = 65, × 0.75 = 48.75
           Yellow: 11 + 11 + 4 + 6 + 6 + 5 + 1 = 44, × 0.5 = 22
           White: 4 + 7 + 1 + 3 + 7 + 6 + 8 = 37, × 0.25 = 9.25

      Add up the results and you get 388 out of 30 × 32 = 1024 squares, each 1/100th of a square inch in area and 1/10th of an inch to a side. The horseshoe is 3.88 sqr inches in surface area and 388 / 1024 = 37.890625% solid.

      Okay, with that done, we can get back to answering the burning questions. Having done it once, we don’t need to get anywhere near as fancy when it comes to comparing the packing patterns. Pairs first:

      As you can see, arranging them in this way fits the pair into a space of 3+0.5+0.14 by 3+0.5+0.46 = 3.64 × 3.96 = 14.4144 sqr inches. Two horseshoes × 3.88 = 7.76 sqr inches, so that leaves 6.6544 of empty space. And 100 × 7.76 / 14.4144 = 53.835% solid.

      Take one last look at the illustration to the left, specifically at the second horseshoe, the one on the lower right. Everything that’s within the purple line is formerly wasted empty space!

      I was concerned that I wouldn’t have enough space on the right for the measurements, so I aligned everything to the right-hand-side in this image. It can be a little hard to see what’s going on, so I’ve thrown in a couple of enlargements of the bottom corners. In this image, there are three horseshoes and more can be added, interlocking like a zipper’s teeth. What we need to know is how the different dimensions of the overall figure are affected by adding a pair of additional horseshoes to the chain – once we have that, we can run the numbers. Right now, the big empty spaces on the outside keep staring back at me, vast gulfs of inefficiently wasted space.

      The short axis measures out at (3+ 0.4 + 0.08) = 3.48 inches. That’s not going to change, it’s a fixed quantity.

      The long axis is where the money is. (4 + 0.5 + 0.3 + 0.03333) = 4.833333 inches. That’s up from a straight 3 inches, so the two extra horseshoes have occupied 1.833333 inches between them, even though they are a total width of 6 inches. That’s pretty encouraging!

      3 horseshoes:
           Area used = 4.833333 × 3.48 = 16.8199884 square inches.
           Area occupied = 3 × 3.88 = 11.64 square inches.
           Solidity = 100 × 11.64 / 16.8199884 = 69.2034%.

      That’s better than I expected. It will only improve from that beginning.

      5 horseshoes:
           Area used = (4.833333 + 1.833333) × 3.48 = 6.66667 × 3.48 = 23.2 sqr inches.
           Area occupied = 5 × 3.88 = 19.4 sqr inches.
           Solidity = 100 × 19.4 / 23.2 = 83.6207%.

      7 horseshoes:
           Area used = (6.66667 + 1.833333) × 3.48 = 8.5 × 3.48 = 29.58 sqr inches.
           Area occupied = 7 × 3.88 = 27.16 sqr inches.
           Solidity = 100 × 27.16 / 29.58 = 91.82%.

      9 horseshoes:
           Area used = (8.5 + 1.833333) × 3.48 = 10.333333 × 3.48 = 35.96 sqr inches.
           Area occupied = 9 × 3.88 = 34.92 sqr inches.
           Solidity = 100 × 34.92 / 35.96 = 97.108%.

      11 horseshoes:
           Area used = (10.333333 + 1.833333) × 3.48 = 12.166667 × 3.48 = 42.34 sqr inches.
           Area occupied = 11 × 3.88 = 42.68 sqr inches.
           Solidity = 100 × 42.68 / 42.34 = 100.8%.

      Okay, that’s just ridiculous. Clearly, I’ve reached the limits of accuracy of this methodology, and some rounding error somewhere has become amplified to the point of gross observability.

      That doesn’t matter. We can allow for that by simply knocking off 1% Solidity. The point is that this method of structuring the cargo is a LOT more efficient than the 2-at-a-time method right from word one, and only improves in effectiveness with additional ‘teeth’ in the zipper.

      I’m also interested in the amount by which this Solidity increased each time –
           from 3 to 5 horseshoes: +14.4173%
           from 5 to 7 horseshoes: +8.1993%
           from 7 to 9 horseshoes: +5.288%
           from 9 to 11 horseshoes: +3.692%.

      Each time, a smaller increase. It’s not a straight geometric progression; the ratios also get smaller each time, from 1.758 to 1.55 to 1.4323. This is also not a geometric progression, which I thought it might be. But based on these numbers, I would expect 13 horseshoes to yield a +3.692 / 1.31 = +2.82% increase, and 15 to yield a +2.82 / 1.25 = +1.88% increase, very roughly.

      Part of the problem in the real world is that no two horseshoes would be exactly the same in size and shape – that comes with industrial process, not an artisan working with his hands. And I suspect that the resulting variability would quickly swamp all other considerations, and make it impossible for more than 5-7 horseshoes to be ‘interlocked’ this way in a row.

      Back to the Depth question
      I’ve seen horseshoes that were only 2-3 mm thick (a little over 1/10th of an inch)- but they were at the point of needing to be replaced. In general, I would expect new horseshoes to be between 1/2 and 1/4 of an inch thick, and was all set to use 1/3 of an inch as the value, but several thoughts then occurred to me.

      First, with uncertainty about where a blacksmith could be found to replace worn horseshoes, the would be changed more often when the opportunity permitted, even if there was still meat on the bone. And that would encourage thicker horseshoes in the first place, just to increase the likelihood of them lasting long enough for a replacement to be sourced.

      Second, a lot of travel would take place off tamed and manicured roads, especially if you were an old-time adventurer, i.e. a PC. And that would encourage thicker horseshoes, too.

      Third, the metals weren’t as good back then, and that would have made them softer and faster to wear. And that would encourage… you know the rest of the litany.

      And fourth, all of the above would be even more true if you’re talking a bronze-age culture and not iron.

      Put all of those together, and I would surmise that iron age / medieval horseshoes would have been 4/10 to 1/2 an inch thick, and bronze age, 1/2 an inch to 6/10 thick – when first shooed. But that’s only an opinion.

    2.1.4 Sell-by Date / Preservatives & Refrigeration

    This topic was a last-minute addition to the outline. It does a trader no good to arrive at his destination only to find that the produce he has lovingly shepherded across the miles has gone rotten on him.

    Far better to stop short of the perfect destination, price-wise, and be assured of having produce of marketable quality.

    For some cargoes, this isn’t an issue. Their lifespan would be measured in decades if not longer. Swords and rivets and nails, for example. Wooden tools, too – axe handles are less likely to go off than axe heads, which might be prone to rust spots after a while, especially near the salty waters of a coast. Slate shingles – breakages might be a problem, but going off is not.

    Leather wouldn’t be quite so durable, but it wouldn’t be far behind, either – not if properly cured. Ditto cloth. In both cases, moisture and mold are the enemy, and they will take time and poor handling to really make a mark.

    But it’s all downhill from there, because then we enter the world of foodstuffs. Without some preservation treatment, they might last a month in some cases, a fortnight in others, a week? Less?

    A factor to consider is that we are used to an entire crop being harvested at almost exactly the same time. That’s far less likely to be the case in a Fantasy setting – instead, the harvest might be distributed over s period of days or weeks, and whatever was harvested that week or half-week would be shipped out ASAP – because rotten produce earns nothing for anybody. That means smaller transports more often.

    2.1.4.1 Old-school preservation techniques
    Shifting the balance of probabilities in the favor of the producer and the consumer are the old-school preservation techniques every GM and player has become familiar with – salting and brining, pickling and drying, wax-coating and even baking / roasting – and, of course, live transport.

    In fact, it’s fair to suggest that until a perishable commodity has an associated preservation technique, it will be a rarity even locally and probably regarded as commercially unviable – which merely means that its cultivation would be a mark of privilege and wealth, something available only to the gentry and nobility.

    Such techniques can extend a product’s lifetime from days or weeks to months or years. Not everything can be preserved in this way – in particular, herbs and spices lose flavor surprisingly quickly. But they almost always do something to the flavor or consistency, which may make them less compatible with the usage options.

    This passage was set to conclude with the statement that every cargo should come with a sell-by date attached, one that ensures that at least 90% of the produce being salable. Thereafter, the rule of halves would apply – half again as long and that 90% becomes 60%, half of that again and it’s 30%, and half of that again and it’s at best 1-2%, and with the observation that this can have a profound effect on how far produce can be distributed.

    But then a thought or two intruded…

    2.1.4.2 Alchemy & Preservatives
    Modern preservatives, for all that they have acquired a bad reputation in recent times, really are miracles of chemistry, keeping produce consumable for three-to-five times as long without altering the nature and quality of the produce unduly.

    Here’s a simple diagram of nested circles. White represents one week, red two, yellow three, green four, and blue six, assuming speed of transport remains unchanged.

    And then there’s a second set over the top of those, showing how great the increase in area is for a three-fold increase in travel time, and then a third, showing a five-fold increase.

    Can you see the innermost white circle? I can barely make it out, and I Know it’s there!

    Let’s tackle this point – about the power of geometric expansion – from a different direction. Let’s call the inner white circle, one week of travel from the source, “1 market opportunity.”

         White 1 = radius 1 = area 1 (by definition) = 1 market opportunity
         Red 1 = radius 2 = area 4 = 4 market opportunities
         Yellow 1 = radius 3 = area 9 = 9 market opportunities
         Green 1 = radius 4 = area 16 = 16 market opportunities
         Blue 1 = radius 6 = area 36 = 36 market opportunities

         White 2 = radius 3 = area 9 = 9 market opportunities (same as Yellow 1)
         Red 2 = radius 6 = area 36 = 36 market opportunities (same as Blue 1)
         Yellow 2 = radius 9 = area 81 = 81 market opportunities
         Green 2 = radius 12 = area 144 = 144 market opportunities
         Blue 2 = radius 18 = area 324 = 324 market opportunities

         White 3 = radius 5 = area 25 = 14 market opportunities
         Red 2 = radius 10 = area 100 = 100 market opportunities
         Yellow 2 = radius 15 = area 225 = 225 market opportunities
         Green 2 = radius 20 = area 400 = 400 market opportunities
         Blue 2 = radius 30 = area 900 = 900 market opportunities

    So, here’s the point: Any alchemist seeking to fund his experiments in transmutation (or whatever) could do far, far worse than to develop a better method of preserving food than the old-school methods.

    If it makes three weeks seem like one, it’s a 9-fold increase in the market potential of everything grown in the Kingdom. If it makes five weeks seem like one, it’s a 25-fold increase. If it makes ten weeks seem like one, that’s a 100-fold increase in the marketplace competing for your product.

    To rephrase that last point: Your Yellow-scale produce could travel for 11 weeks and still be fresher than local produce produced three weeks ago. (radius 15-radius 3 = 12, and 11 is less than 12). Whose produce is going to be favored by the marketplace? And, for every market that a local farmer without this treatment has available, you have 25 to pick from.

    The social and medical impacts alone would make this a revolutionary breakthrough.

    2.1.4.3 Refrigeration
    Refrigeration was the real game-changer though. We aren’t talking a paltry 5-fold increase in edible lifespan, we’re talking 90-to-120-fold. 8,100-to-14,400 times the market scope.

    Sea-fish used to be available no more than a day or two’s travel from the coastline. Call it 25-50 miles. (It’s worth noting that nowhere in England is more than 75 miles from a Seacoast). Suddenly that’s 2250-3000 miles.

    Chicago, Illinois is only about 2850 miles from Anchorage in Alaska.
    San Francisco is 2983 miles to Chicago – about the same as Rome to Tajikistan or Tucson to Honolulu or Los Angeles to Haiti. It’s a HUGE distance.

    It has all kinds of secondary effects – people grow accustomed to everything they want to buy always being available. There’s less reliance on seasonal produce. Retailers have to change stock levels and even what they stock. Supply lines become a lot less critical, because if there’s a disruption, there’s plenty of time to look for an alternate source. People keep less in reserve, and supermarkets do likewise. In the 1850s, London had enough produce in the city to feed its population for about 3 weeks; the last time I looked (about 20 years ago), that was down to about three days.

    Enter your friendly neighborhood Wizard with an Ice Wand of some kind. Or a tame (employed) water elemental (some of them have the right abilities). Or a White Dragon. There are no end of the possible ways of replicating refrigeration in a Fantasy Environment, even without Gnomes and their tinkering.

    2.1.4.4 Worldbuilding
    Every game world is going to be different, but the logistics of food distribution are going to be a concern in all of them. Someone will have had ideas along these lines, and as part of their world-building, the GM has to consider (a) What they tried, (b), whether or not they succeeded, and (c) what the impacts have been since – social, political, economic, and in trade.

    It can even be argued that the stock-standard fantasy world that has none of these needs explanation if not justification, so ubiquitous would be attempts to solve these problems.

2.2 Purchasing A Trade Unit

Buying a Trade Unit is very simple – the GM tells the players how much, they deduct that from their available cash, and show up with means of transportation on the agreed-upon date so that loading can begin. There may be some roleplaying and some I’s to dot and T’s to cross, but that’s essentially all there is to it.

At least, in theory.

The practical reality can go one of two ways:

  1. The GM extends the players credit, hand-waves most or all of the encounters, and skips ahead to the next interesting development in their lives. When they get to wherever they are going to sell the Trade Unit, the GM doesn’t have to worry about the purchase price or the sale price, he can simplify everything down to the difference between the two, i.e. the Profit. This is the roleplaying ideal for a lot of players. For the price of skimping on the GMs showing off of his world and it’s verisimilitude, the players have to agree to forego the ability and right to challenge the GM’s bookkeeping shorthand. They can’t ask pointed questions about the sale price, or whether they should sell in Longshoreland instead of Shortshanksville, or anything like that. They have to agree to Trust the GM.
  2. The alternative is for the players to actually pay the costs up front, to know exactly how much ready cash they have on hand, to make all the purchasing and selling decisions, to get told at the end of it all how much the cargo sells for, and have to distribute that wealth after paying any outstanding debts. There are times where this is appropriate – for example, when there have been no ground rules established, so to speak, because this is the first time they’ve tried something like this, or because the details are how the GM is going to offer up the day’s adventure to the players. But unless there’s a specific good reason for it, and the players don’t insist, option (1) is by far the better choice for all concerned. Really clever players will recognize this (especially if the GM tells them its so), and pay closer attention anytime the GM doesn’t hand-wave the minutia.

Probably the big key is the establishment of those Ground Rules that I mentioned, and that’s a really good place to start.

    2.2.1 Metagaming The Purchase and Sale

    At the heart of bypassing as much minutia as possible is a simple agreement between the players and the GM.

    The GM promises not to screw the players over any more than he would if they had insisted on doing things the hard way. They will, for example, get a fair price for their goods at the end of the day, they will get an appropriate warning in advance if there’s any reason not to expect to make a reasonable profit, and so on.

    The Players have to accept that promise at face value, and in return promise to give up a measure of control over the minutia so that the GM can hand-wave things. This also requires that they accept three core principles:

    1. That the GM realizes that habitually screwing over the players will leave him with an empty table sooner rather than later, and neither side wants that; and,

    2. That the purpose for which you have gathered is not called “Bookkeeping & Commerce 101”, it’s adventure, or (at the very least), Roleplay, and that the minutia is irrelevant unless it facilitates one of those two purposes; and,

    3. That the name of the game for everyone is to have fun, and anything that gets in the way of that will be obliterated through mutual cooperation. It is not for the GM to show off their world-building skills or his ability to play farmers or anything else, unless those things are in service to this primary purpose.

    There are some corollaries.

    4. Thief characters don’t get to steal any of the money involved. No “I was just playing my character” nonsense applies. And that goes for NPCs, as well. If it’s part of the plot that an NPC wants to ‘appropriate’ the cargo, or might want to do so, it becomes an encounter to be roleplayed along the way – unless the whole process is being run by NPCs on the PCs behalf (see Chapter 3), in which case the news of the day is simply the outcome, and rule 1 above applies.

    5. Chaotic and Evil characters don’t get to mess with the transactions or processes. No “I was just playing my alignment” nonsense is permitted. By either side, for the same reasons as above.

    And that’s about it, really. Players will be inclined to accept the GM’s promise until proven false – and see rule (1) should the GM break that promise, or even look like it.

    There can still be nuance. There’s a similar set of rules in place in my superhero game regarding equipment and businesses and lifestyles and so on: If the character pays points for something, the GM can take it away but has to replace it or return it or give the PCs a golden ticket to the E-ride that lets them replace or return it. If the character pays cash for it, the GM is free to return none, some, or all of that cash, but whatever was purchased with it is fair game. And any player that tries to rort the game system gives the GM carte blanche to completely ruin their character’s lives, regardless of the preceding rules.

    Most fantasy games don’t have points-based purchases, and some people think this means that everything defaults to the “fair game” scenario – but rule 1 implies that the default should be the equivalent of everything being “points-buy”, unless an item is expended in achieving the purpose for which it was obtained or used, of course.

    2.2.2 Price Of A Trade Unit

    The price of Trade Unit, if it’s still relevant, is the price of harvesting / mining / gathering / assembling / making the amount of cargo described as that Trade Unit.

    Since a Trade Unit is a fixed commodity in terms of bulk, it follows that it is NOT a fixed commodity in terms of price. Apples are cheaper than swords – but you should be able to acquire and sell many apples for the price of a single good sword. I’ll go into that further in section 2.4, Contents Of A Trade Unit.

    It’s all about relative productivity. It takes the farmer so long to harvest enough apples to make up a single trade unit, and he might have (say) 2.4 of them at the end of a week’s harvest – or 1.5, or 0.7. The cost is how much his apples cost (wholesale and in bulk) and how much it costs him to prepare them to be treated as cargo – which means picking them and placing them in some sort of suitable container, like a barrel. It includes the cost of making or buying those containers, but it does not include the cost of growing those apples in the first place – that comes out of his ‘cost per apple’.

    The GM should not bog down in minutia about how many apples are in a trade unit – he should simply set what seems to be a reasonable price for enough apples to fill a Trade Unit, and then multiply that by however many Trade Units the farmer is selling.

    The GM might decide that 1 barrel of apples is one trade unit is 100 GP in price, and will sell for 140gp, on average. Or he might decide that 1 barrel of apples is one trade unit is 40 GP worth of profit. Or simply that 1 trade unit is however many apples are needed to reach the bulk set as a ‘standard trade unit’ (without deciding on how many that actually is) and that it’s worth a profit of 40.

    The price of a trade unit depends on the commodity, in other words, and the GM should maintain a list of commodities and the assigned prices. He doesn’t have to figure these out in advance, he can simply make up the numbers as he goes along – so long as he records them for future reference.

    2.2.3 Optioning A Trade Unit

    Players who have some experience in the real world, or who are too clever by half, may decide that they want to Option a Trade Unit. That means that they pay a certain amount – usually 10-20% of the expected price – to have first dibs on purchasing that Trade Unit when the commodity is available.

    When the time comes, they rock up at the supplier’s location and ask what his price is. If they like it, they pay the difference between their deposit and the producer’s demands, and get a date when the shipment will be ready for loading. Actually loading it, or hiring the personnel to do so, may be their problem, or the producer might offer a side deal. And, in general, it is up to the purchaser to obtain the necessary transportation, though (again) a side-deal may be struck. It’s the same story with teamsters / employees to actually operate the transport method.

    If the PCs decide not to take up the option, they don’t get their money back – they paid for first dibs, they got first dibs.

    I’ll deal later with the way things would unfold if the producer doesn’t actually have the cargo ready on the promised date. Suffice it to say that the risk of that happening is shared equally between the parties, i.e. the PCs would get half their money back – at least in theory. This cam get really messy really quickly, there are all sorts of ways one party can try and cheat the other. And they all make the foundations of a fair adventure.

    What’s that? Someone at the back wants a couple of examples of such adventure plots?

    Okay, try these on for size:

    1. A purchaser options a commodity and then has it stolen before the date due. Result: the producer can’t deliver, and the purchaser is reasonably entitled to half his option back. But he also has the cargo, or most of it, so he’s ended up buying it for a (relative) song. When the PCs show up to bargain for an option the next year, the wary producer refuses; the only way to get what they want is to track down the bandits (who have a year’s head start), get proof against them, and turn it over to the appropriate authorities. Do that, and they may get a multi-year option, or even a lifetime option, and it won’t just be from this producer, either. Business Empires have been founded on less.

    2. A simpler variant: Bandits steal the goods that the PCs have optioned. They can either demand half their money back (souring goodwill), write the loss off, or go after the bandits to recover the cargo – with the understanding that if they do so, the rightful owner will quote them a really good price (since he otherwise has nothing to sell, either).

    3. A producer is being blackmailed by Organized Crime into giving someone else the Option that was promised to the PCs. I certainly wouldn’t want them to get away with that if I were operating one of those PCs!

    4. A producer gives the PCs a really good option that he never intends to honor, planning to ask an outrageously high price for his goods so that they go away empty-handed. He will then sell to a second party from whom he has also accepted an Option, pocketing the extra paid by the PCs. He figures the PCs have this coming because they “is furrinerz”. While he might get away with this a time or two, it won’t be too long before the PCs figure out what’s going on (a chance encounter with the ‘Factor’ i.e. the real purchaser’s agent can spell it out for them if necessary) – and then it’s on like Donkey Kong, mate!

    When they work as they should, Options are a good deal for all concerned. It gives the producer immediate capital, which they might need in order to actually deliver, or to do even better next year, or whatever. It gives the purchaser of the option first dibs on the cargo, taking some of the uncertainty out of the business. And, at the end of the day, everyone makes a fair profit.

    There’s a deeper principle on show here, however, and it’s one to which this entire game supplement / article series is devoted: Trade is nothing more nor less than a delivery vehicle for interesting adventures. If everyone keeps that in mind, all will be well at the end of the day (even if the PCs have some uncomfortable moments in between).

    2.2.4 Packing A Trade Unit

    Defining a Trade Unit in the way that I have also brings a couple of other advantages to the whole concept of Trade – it permits the GM to establish a set of standards for the packing of a Trade Unit, that is the loading and unloading of the cargo, in time, in manpower, and in price – to some extent.

    There are a couple of factors to take into account when setting such standards.

    1. Better workers should cost more, but save time. Overall, the price will be relatively fixed.

    2. More workers should cost more, but save time. Overall, the price will be relatively fixed.

    3. If there are lots of available workers to hire, the price will go down. If there is a scarcity of labor, the price will go up. The time and manpower will be relatively fixed.

    4. The larger the nearest population base, the larger the available labor pool, all things being equal.

    5. The larger the nearest population base, the more the price of labor will go up.

    6. The greater the distance to the nearest population base, the smaller the available labor pool unless recruiting at that population base and transporting them to the job site.

    7. Workers will expect to be paid something even if they are just sitting in a wagon en route to a job. In fact, workers will expect to be paid more for each and every inconvenience.

    8. If the economy is good, especially locally, the labor market will be smaller. If the economy is bad at the place of recruitment, even if it is good elsewhere, the labor market and will go up and the price will come down.

    9. Employers with a reputation for generosity and/or fairness will find it easier to attract labor than Employers with a reputation for harsh treatment or unfair pay practices.

    10. If the work is likely to be easier than the work generally available to day laborers, it will be easier to attract workers, and vice-versa.

    11. The easier it is to attract workers, the less they will charge, and vice-versa.

    That’s a lot to take in, and some of it is hard to quantify in general terms, differing from world to world, season to season, and year-on-year.

    2.2.4.1 A Rational Approach
    In keeping with the general principles being advocated, I recommend a generalized approach that abstracts all of the above as much as possible. I’d offer a specific set of guidelines, but game worlds would differ too much to make one practical.

    The best approach, in my view, is a spreadsheet. Here’s the design I would use:

    Population: I have recommended using sizes -50, -100, -200, -500, -1000, -2k, -5k, -10k, -20k, -50k, -100k, -200k, -500k, -1m, and 2m+. But I’ve also left three blank sets of cells in the files offered so that the table can be extended if necessary.

    Good Workers: There’s a column for number available and pay.

    Bad Workers: There’s a column for number available and pay.

    3 adjust: In the ‘available’ column, write the base number you think would be for hire given the population size. This could be a range. If there are lots of workers available of the given type, add a % pay decrease. If there are few, add a % pay increase.

    4, 5 adjust: Adjust the number of available workers to the number who are going to already be employed on any given day, and adjust the pay of the rest, accordingly.

    6: There are four rows depending on how far away the nearest population base is. Adjust the number available to reflect how many of them would accept work that far away from home and add extra pay to cover travel time to and from the job. The rows are under 1 day, 1-2 days, 2-4 days, and 1 week or more. Those are for each-way travel.

    7 penalties: Add an amount here for other inconveniences, if any should arise. This would include hazards of being out in the wilderness, the risk of encountering monsters, food and lodgings if needed, etc.

    8. There are three rows – one for a good local economy, one for an average local economy, and one for a bad local economy. Adjust availability and pay scales accordingly.

    9. Looks very similar to (8), with rows for a Good Reputation, an Average Reputation, and a Bad reputation. Adjust availability and any pay demands / flexibility accordingly.

    10, 11: three rows for these variables regarding how hard the labor that’s usually available is compared to a loading / unloading job. Adjust availability and any pay demands / flexibility accordingly.

    Populating the table:
    I would deal with one variable at a time for all population levels. I would also do all values for bad workers and use those as a guide for the values for good workers. This makes it easy to set up progressive values that change predictably from one population band to the next.

    But you don’t have to use progressive gradual changes; you can divide entries up into however many bands of the same value as you like, and even have the changeover be different for each adjustment. That’s all up to you.

    When specifying an adjustment, don’t just write “+X” or “-X” or whatever; actually total these as you go. This makes the tables a little harder to set up but a lot easier to use.

    2.2.5 Licenses

    There are all sorts of licenses required before certain commodities can be bought and sold, at least in the modern world, permissions that you have to purchase (and sometimes that you have to also earn with tests). Those things generally weren’t there in the historical time periods that inspire most Fantasy, and the term sometimes is given an entirely different meaning as a result.

    Sometimes, a “License” means that you are permitted to sell certain products to the Nobility (it uses the term in the sense of an “Exclusive License”), and they are to come to you if they have any particular requests or requirements; only if you fail to provide whatever it is that they want can they go elsewhere (and often appoint a new license to provide that specific commodity, explicitly carving back your own remit). These are usually free to the seller of Licensed commodities, issued at Crown expense – but there is always scope for corruption and kickbacks and greed, so even that might not be a universal rule.

    And sometimes, a “License” permits hunting and/or fishing on Crown Lands (usually specifically named) and those, too, are sometimes called a “License” or a “Warrant” (not to be confused with the modern “Arrest Warrant”, which authorizes and requires law enforcement to apprehend you should they notice your presence). Heck, even being present on Crown Lands can require such permissions – and your paperwork had better be in order if you are found on such land if this usage applies, because otherwise it’s considered to be stealing from that nobility! There are times when this has real meaning, and times when it’s just a formality that anyone can apply for (which may, again, require the payment of a fee either once or on a regular basis).

    A variant on this grants the authorized holder permission to carry out certain specific activities that are otherwise forbidden – hence we get “Fishing Licenses” and “Cart Operating Licenses” (equivalent to our Driver’s Licenses), and so on.

    The term can even be used in more than one of these senses at the same time, requiring context and grammatical nuance to identify which is the relevant interpretation. Or different races might use the same term to refer to different things (appropriately translated into their different languages, or simply appearing in multiple languages essentially identically but having different meanings).

    The person who gets to make these decisions is you, Mr GM, Sir! This is a nuance of world-building and terminology that is often overlooked. I get to pontificate on the subject for these few paragraphs because of the first three interpretations, both of which are absolutely relevant to the buying and selling of commodities.

    Of course, if you have to pay for permission to sell or transport something, especially if it’s potentially dangerous or subject to abuse, those fees, from time to time, will have to come out of your profits.

    The other consideration that you should be clear about is the scope of the License. Does it apply everywhere, or only in selected parts of the nation?

    There have even been times when people took it upon themselves to issue “Licenses” that they didn’t actually have the authority to control.

    2.2.6 Sales Tax & other Gotchas

    History shows that people excel at finding a way to extract a pound of flesh or otherwise regulate almost anything that can be regulated. In real life, these can be phenomenally complicated, aimed at ensuring that the authorities (and nobility in particular) get paid a share of everything that happens in their domains.

    I strongly advise the simplest possible tax code, on the basis of avoiding bogging the game down in minutia. But guild fees and taxes are a reality in most fantasy games. Sometimes, they are a percentage of income; sometimes, they are a percentage of revenues; and sometimes they can be both. There can be multiple levels of taxation.

    All such fees and gotchas also have to come out of your profits or earnings. Especially greedy administrations can tax money both coming and going – the business pays taxes on their profits before those get distributed to the ownership of the business, and that distributed wealth is then subject to personal income tax on top.

    2.2.6.1 Guild Fees
    A Guild is a professional body that regulates, or is willing to regulate, a particular type of professional activity – that they get to define. They charge members a fee, usually once a year, to represent the profession at Court. One of the first things they try to negotiate is usually exclusivity, so that only Guild members may practice the profession; this makes the guild a single point-of-contact for the regulation of the industry they represent, making administration far more efficient from the Crown’s point of view. Some have even gotten away with charging the Crown a fee for that “public service”. It’s a fairly good racket – for the Guilds.

    But that’s not to say that the Guild Members get nothing from the deal; when you have the backing of the Guild in a grievance or request of the Crown, it’s not just you, it’s every member of your profession standing beside you (even if they’ve never heard of you before). That gives the Guild real leverage to exert on your behalf.

    With such authority, corruption is rarely far away. When two members are in dispute, it not only signals a need to regulate another aspect of the industry so that members can’t tread on each other’s toes, the Guild may support the member with the deeper pockets. Where Guilds are self-appointed, they may use strong-arm tactics to force others to join. Some Guilds may permit local sub-branches to charge additional fees for the right to pursue an occupation within the domain administered by that sub-branch. And members should never, ever, expect to back 100% of a Guild’s decisions on ‘their behalf’!

    Some such activities are networking, politicking, making friends and allies of the heads of related Guilds, scratching someone’s back in expectation of calling the resulting favor due at some point.

    2.2.7 The Profit Metric

    When you put everything together, it’s easy to see why – with so many calls upon a trader’s income – it becomes much easier to simply track profits and deduct all these relevant fees and expenses from them. It may not always be possible, but it’s always preferable whenever it can be handled that way, boiling everything down to a simple bottom line.

And with that, I’m right out of time – and can see that this chapter is already roughly as long as the two that preceded it, put together. There’s a lot more to come, I’m just getting started!

Comments (1)

Break Management for RPGs: 12 Simple Rules


We all need to take a break from time to time. Managing the process is an underappreciated part of the GM’s toolkit. Here are 12 rules to follow.

This illustration combines two images. The relaxing man photo is by Frauke Riether and the clock face (which was used as inspiration for the text rendering) Image was provided by OpenClipart-Vectors, both sourced from Pixabay.

Taking A Break

Today’s topic is one that I don’t think I’ve ever discussed here at Campaign Mastery.

Quite obviously, I’m taking a break from the Trade In Fantasy series, mostly so that readers who aren’t into that particular subject can have something that might interest them more.

Other Benefits Of A Break

There are other benefits from taking a break that are worth noting, too.

  • Chiefly, it avoids burnout – an important consideration when there is a large project underway. I’ve now mapped out the Trade In Fantasy series and now expect it to run to a total of 25 parts of roughly equal length – but with room in that schedule to add up to another 3 or 4 if things take longer than planned.

    Any project that runs over a total of 25 weeks is a serious undertaking, given that half a year is roughly 26 weeks, and burnout is a serious potential problem.

    Adding at least 1 alternative post in 3 extends the duration of a project like this by 8 or 9 weeks, well over the half-year mark, but makes it more likely that the whole thing will get done.

  • It gives more time to think about the major project, and that can be a godsend when there are issues that you haven’t resolved yet.

    For example, if I break a chapter / major section into two or three posts, each with their own featured ‘spot image’ here in the blog, should I break the chapters in the eventual e-book the same way, or simply use the spot images in exactly the same way?

    Should Chapter 3 of the compiled e-book be “Routine Personnel”, followed by Chapter 4, “Mode Of Transport”? Or should Chapter 3 be “Routine Personnel Part 1,” Chapter 4 be “Routine Personnel Part 2,” and “Mode Of Transport” start in Chapter 5?

    At the moment, no decision has been made, and I’m preparing both pathways. It’s entirely possible that I will employ both – while “Routine Personnel” might not be split, “Mode Of Transport” might.

  • A change of pace keeps one fresh. It’s really hard to stay focused so intently on one topic for so long; that’s why it encourages burnout. But “a change is as good as a holiday,” as the old saying goes – not completely accurate but not wildly incorrect, either.
  • And, lastly, it gives readers a break, too. For all the same reasons listed above.

    What, you didn’t realize that readers can suffer from burnout, too? Well, they can. It’s less likely to happen if you can deep-dive and read a whole thing in just a few sittings, or skim until something catches your eye; the next best solution is to pause and interrupt with something completely different. The worst solution, from my experience, is a never-end dribble of small bites.

    I’ve just finished reading an Omnibus H. G. Wells. Well, kinda. I got 2/3 of the way through ‘The Food Of The Gods’ before I simply couldn’t be bothered reading any more of it. I didn’t even get that far into ‘The Days Of The Comet’.In both cases, I simply got tired of reading the story, losing any curiosity about ‘what happens next’ – something that has never happened with “The War Of The Worlds” (which I have read ‘cover-to-cover’ at least a dozen times, or ‘The Invisible Man’. There’s an object lesson in those experiences to be considered.

The Risks and Down-sides

It must also be admitted that there are some dangers in doing so.

  • You risk lengthening a project beyond the point of sustaining interest in it.

    I don’t think I need to belabor this point, it speaks for itself.

  • Memory is fragile and sometimes fleeting. And worse still, it’s plastic. It’s altogether too easy to write yourself into a corner, forgetting how you were going to avoid that, or get yourself out of it – something you knew perfectly well at the time, but that escapes you afterwards. This is especially prone to happen after a long break.

    There are a whole bunch of series that I’ve started and not completed – the problem is that recapturing the mindset behind them would take longer than the publishing schedule permits. The first step being to re-read your notes, and the second being to re-read the entire published series to date.

    Some simply go completely off the rails when (metaphorically) pen meets page, and what seemed like a good idea at the time never actually materializes. This is frustrating for everyone – readers and writers alike – but it happens.

    And, sometimes, plans can get derailed by side issues, either in the writing or in the real life of the writer. Plans do sometimes go astray. This is often more likely to occur without audience feedback, I’ve noticed – when there’s only your own spark of inspiration to get you through rough patches.

  • You can lose the train of thought that was the central pillar around which the whole subject was oriented. Again, the end result is a series that never gets completed.
  • Readers can lose interest if a series is spun out for too long. This saps the motivation of a writer as an after-effect.

    Writers like myself don’t do this purely for recognition or acknowledgment; it’s more of an itch that needs to be scratched regularly. We write and publish for our own satisfaction as much as anything else.

    But there are always rough patches, as indicated above, and sometimes you need the motivation of readers enjoying your work to get you through them. If you aren’t getting that, if numbers are down, it’s easier and often better to simply move on to writing something else.

    You can only coast on momentum for so long.

  • Ideas unrelated to the major work in hand can be distracting. Again, sometimes there’s a specific itch that needs to be scratched, a particular idea that you need to focus on for a little while. Until you do so, it poses an ongoing distraction – and those can accumulate until you find yourself thinking of anything and everything but what you’re supposed to be working on.

    In fact, having such a compulsion is one of the surest indicators that you need to take a break from a major project that I know of.

I’m sure there are others, but those are what is coming to mind at the moment. It’s enough to be getting on with, at any rate.

Application to other RPG projects

Every GM has to tackle the occasional “big, long, project” as part of their campaign planning / prep / creation. Even if no-one is going to read what you have written, players will get to experience the fruits of your labors eventually.

Even if you aren’t writing a gaming blog (which, clearly, I am), these same effects can manifest in those projects. I’ve seen popular campaigns be abandoned by the GM because the prep started to become too involved, feeling more like work than having fun. One GM I used to know could never sustain interest in one of his own campaigns for more than 3-6 months. Those campaigns were often full of interesting ideas not explored, much to the frustration of players; it seemed like you only scratched the surface and suddenly, it was all over.

The inevitable conclusion is that the management techniques that writers like myself employ to keep a series alive and ticking despite the need for a break can also be of benefit to those who aren’t writing to a regular publishing schedule. This is the ‘original thought’ that prompted the writing of this article – while it was fresh in my mind, before it got lost in the shuffle, and while it was posing a distraction from the series.

Break Management

The “rules” that I follow, in terms of break management, are fairly simple and straightforward. They have evolved out of long experience, both as a writer and as a GM.

Some or even all of them will be obvious to readers, but they are still worth pointing out, ‘setting them in stone’ as it were. There are 12 of them – rather more than I expected when I set out to explore this topic – but none of them are all that difficult or complicated.

Let me list them, and then I’ll provide some analysis, explanation, and commentary:

  1. Allow for the need in project planning
  2. Keep them short
  3. Keep them regular
  4. Keep them different
  5. Keep them self-contained
  6. Make them enjoyable
  7. Make them distracting / compelling
  8. Every Project is Different
  9. Maintain a productive (writing?) schedule
  10. Up-end your writing schedule occasionally
  11. Touch base with the major project
  12. Know, and factor in, your habits.

All of which should seem rather obvious, but there’s nuance and interaction to consider. So let’s look at each in greater detail.

    1. Allow for the need in project planning

    25 posts in the “Trade” series, plus one for the PDF version, less 2 already published, leaves 24. Multiply by 1 1/2 for one “outside” post to every 2 regular parts, gives a total of 36. Add 2 (weeks) for Christmas / New Year. Count 38 weeks starting from next week. The result is when the ‘extended’ “Trade” series should wrap up: – June 16, 2025. And that’s making no allowances for real life getting in the way, which – over that length of time – it inevitably will. Should I allow 5% extra for that factor? 10%? 20? (I usually allow 10%, YMMV). So, mid-July.

    In my ‘writing’ mode, I don’t have a deadline for the series to wrap up; I have the privilege of being able to set my own schedule, my own timetable. When it comes to game prep, that luxury goes away.

    Instead, I do then have a deadline, and have to count backwards from that deadline to know when I have to start.

    I have another major project underway – the one that has sparked the “Valuation” series (of which there are many parts still in the works) – that has to be completed before the pulp session after next. But, with my co-GM temporarily out of circulation, that’s a soft target. Still, the worst-case scenario (the tightest deadline) is December 7, some 54 days away.

      There are 89 parts to this project, of which 50 are now done – so that leaves 39 to do. Which means that I need to turn out one every 54/39 = 1.38 days. But, 2 days a week are fully committed to Campaign Mastery – so I don’t actually have 54 days, I have 5/7 of that, or 38.57 days.

    That means that in order to be ready for deadline, I need to do one a day except for the days when I’m working on something for CM.

    Most of them – say 75% – will take 1 day or less. Most of what’s left – say 75% – will take 2. The rest will take 2-4 days.

      (0.75 × 1) × 39 + (0.25 × 2 × 0.75) × 39 + (0.25 × 0.25 × 4) × 39
      = 29.25 + 14.625 + 9.75 = 53.625 days’ work to do – in 39 days.

    In reality, then, allowing for these ‘longer parts’, I need to do 1.375 ‘days’ of work, 5 days a week, to be ready. That’s 1 3/8.

    But wait – I haven’t allowed that 10%. That bumps the total ‘days’ of effort up from 53.625 to 59, close enough, and 59/39 = a smidgen over 1.5.

      5 days at 1.5 units a day = 7.5 a week.

    This is doable, but only if I make it a much higher priority than it has been lately (I’ve been doing about 4 a week, I need to almost double that).

    That’s the reality of scheduled game prep. You have to accommodate the time available and do the best you can in that time-frame. (Note that if I have to, I can add another 60 days to that schedule, x 5/7 of course, or 42 days – but I don’t want to if I don’t have to).

    And hopefully this real-world example will resonate with readers who need to do this sort of thing for their own campaigns. (I’ve deliberately skimped on project details so that they aren’t distracting).

    2. Keep them short

    Breaks should be shorter than you would normally spend on whatever it is that you are taking a break from. I will have spent a lot less than half as long working on this post than I would normally spend on a post for Campaign Mastery, even though it’s a fairly normal length – it’s flowed fairly naturally out of the keyboard. Up to 75% of normal is fine; try not to spend more than that, if you can avoid it.

    3. Keep them regular

    Right now, I probably didn’t need a break – the “Trade” series is new, and I’m eager to press on with it. Toward the end of the project, there’s the added boost that comes from being near the finish line. It’s the 1/3 of the project that ends at about the 80% mark that I will most need to take a break from it.

    But by taking regular breaks now, I delay the onset of the difficult period, which means that it doesn’t have time to grow severe; and that means that fewer breaks are needed even at the most tedious part of the project. The finish line never moves, and neither does the sense that you are almost there, that you have it in sight.

    Taking regular breaks from the start of a project – and allowing for them in the project schedule – is the best way to ensure that they aren’t needed, and are just nice to have.

    A bonus reward is a measure of flexibility.

    4. Keep them different

    Whatever you do that constitutes a “break”, make it something as different from what you usually do in fulfillment of the project as you possibly can. If both are writing, as is the case with today’s post, there’s only so much you can do, but even there, there is lots of scope.

    Sadly-deceased author Robert Asprin was writing a very depressing book, full of things like mercenaries burying themselves alive to deny the enemy the body-count that would otherwise be inevitable. As an anodyne to the paranoia and depression, he started fiddling with a comedy novel, a deliberate satire on the normal Fantasy Tropes, while watching a parade of the Bing Crosby / [x] “Road” movies. In the process, the pair of conniving chiselers always in trouble up to their necks made their way from the screen and onto the written page, becoming the central characters of “Another Fine Myth”.

    So keep your breaks different, but no less productive.

    5. Keep them self-contained

    This is frequently a case of do as I say, not as I do. Last year, before I moved, I started a pair of series more or less at the same time, one about the Fantasy world of Aysle, and one about the Nightmare realm of Orrorsh, both elements of TORG.

    It was my hope that alternating between the two would permit them to serve in the same fashion that “Another Fine Myth” did for Asprin (see above), and it more or less worked – up to a point.

    That point came when I needed a break from one of the series – and was already weary of the other, so that it could not serve. The “need a break” factor from both of them accumulated at the same time, in other words, and hit bottom that much sooner than would normally have been the case. I will pick up both series again eventually – one at a time.

    6. Make them enjoyable

    I cannot emphaize this point strongly enough. Tedium and boredom and hard work are never a break from monotony that does you any good – sounds obvious when I put it like that, doesn’t it – so make the substitute something you will really enjoy doing.

    7. Make them distracting / compelling

    Occupy the mind as well as the hands. No matter how much satisfaction you might get from finally completing that craft side-project you’ve been wanting to get to for years, if it doesn’t occupy enough of your mind, you will find yourself thinking about the major project instead of what you are doing – so not only will it be less of a break than desired, it might not even constitute a break at all.

    8. Every Project is Different

    This is another of those kinda-obvious items, but it needs emphasis. The diagram above and these text elements all refer to a generic major project; every one in real life will differ from that generic view in at least one and usually several details.

    Some projects are harder at the beginning, others at the end; some are difficult throughout, others are not hard at all.

    The type of problem to be overcome can be different, as are the time pressures that you may experience. Are we talking about boredom, or tedium, or frustration, or some compound of all three – and in what proportions?

    The nature of what constitutes ‘a break’ can also be different from one project to the next.

    There are times when a project schedule leaves you no choice; always maximize the benefits of whatever flexibility you do have.

    9. Maintain a productive (writing?) schedule

    Some people can stop writing (or making maps or doing art or whatever) for a period of time and just pick up where they left off, days, weeks, or even months later. Others are more like me – when we haven’t written for a while, the urge to do so becomes overwhelming – but so do the problems of the blank page. And, after a while, i you haven’t yielded to that urge, it starts to go away – and it then becomes five times as hard, maybe ten times as hard, to restart.

    This applies, no matter what the major project is. If you’re a writer, write something. If you’re an artist, draw something. Never let the barnacles and rust form an impervious barrier between you and your craft(s).

    So maintain a schedule, and get to know how far you can push things away before restarting them becomes more difficult.

    10. Up-end your writing schedule occasionally

    Where would we be without contradictory advice? When the writing schedule itself is part of the problem, and writing starts to feel too much like work, then
    (and only then) does it becomes necessary to changes things up notch.

    This doesn’t change what you do, or how often you do it (so it only seems to contradict Rule 9), but it does change when you will do it – for a little while. If you normally write in the evening, take a scribble pad with you and do a little longhand writing in the subway on the way to work, or a dictaphone and do some verbal creation / storytelling in the car. If you normally write on the weekends, do one or two evening sessions during the week.

    While you’re about it, change the environment a little. Instead of the TV, throw a CD into the mix, or turn on the radio and tune it to a random station. You want the stimulus of “different” and you should attempt – as Asprin did inadvertently – to let the environment stimulate your creativity.

    Throw on a documentary that you wouldn’t normally watch, and try to integrate some of the content into something, especially if it’s not something you would normally write / draw about.

    Example: You’ve never paid much attention to Dwarven architecture. They live below ground, so it’s all caves and mine-shafts. Throw on a documentary about Middle-eastern architecture, especially of Mosques and Temples, and translate from that into the Dwarven realm. Suddenly, the ceilings are tall and dome-shaped and there is exquisite tiling everywhere, perhaps broken up by the occasional tapestry or painted fresco. Make room for this in the Dwarven culture – even more than their gods, they might venerate the heart of the mountains in which they reside, and every room becomes a place sanctified to that veneration. Before you know it, Dwarves are completely different under the surface that everyone knows, more unique, and more credible (if you’ve done your job right).

    You don’t know when you’re going to use this new vision of Dwarfdom – you might never use it! – but if you don’t use it right away, file it away for the future, when you do need a new idea. If you think that the player who runs a Dwarf might object to this non-traditional view, restrict it to a particular clan or group of Dwarves, of whom he is not a member.

    But, as a general rule, once inspiration strikes, it’s hard to hold it back – and you’ll start looking for an excuse or opportunity to at least drop in a reference to it, essentially seeding that inspiration back into your campaign. Job done!

    11. Touch base with the major project

    I said earlier that your “break projects” or “side projects” should consume no more than about 75% of the time that you would normally invest in your major project. There’s a good reason for this.

    It leaves 25% of the time available for you to continue work on your major project while still getting all the benefits of taking a break.

    Today’s article was originally going to be something called “Goals In Conflict;” I have that article planned out and ready to write. This started life as nothing more than a side-issue “extra” for that post, but it quickly became too large for that, so the pair were spit, and “Goals in Conflict” reserved for my next break – that’s something that happens when inspiration strikes!

    But, even while planning the structure and content of “Goals In Conflict,” I’ve been working on chapter titles for the main project e-book, and tweaking the order of sections for more logical flow, and looking at which sections might need to be broken up into multiple posts, and how the whole thing is to tie together in the end.

    None of that is actually writing the next part of the “Trade” series – but I’m only approaching 50% of the usual writing time, and this article is almost finished (because I skipped ahead and wrote the end of it before I started adding specifics to each of these rules. And I might, at the end, skip back and create a list of the rules themselves – or maybe I’ll put such a list at the end of this discussion, just before the already completed work. That, and pre-publishing work like spellchecking, uploading, image searching, etc, will get me close to the 75% by the time it’s all done.

    Which means that there will be several hours on Monday that I can devote to getting an early start on the third post in the “Trade” series, the content of which has now been tickling over in the back of my mind for a week or two. Which should – at least in theory – make it that much easier for the words to flow when the time comes.

    But even if you don’t go that far, just reading back over your notes keeps the major project in mind and helps avoid some of those dangers that I listed earlier.

    12. Know, and factor in, your habits.

    My life revolves around a fairly regular schedule that is perpetually varying from the baseline for one reason or another.

    • Sunday: Outline CM article, maybe write 1/3 of it
    • Monday: Finish CM article, publish at midnight, promote through social media
    • Tuesday: Co-GM visits, work on Pulp campaign
    • Wednesday, Thursday: Projects & Prep
    • Friday: Prep for Saturday’s Game if needed, Projects otherwise
    • Saturday: Play an RPG, make notes for next session, other projects

    Examples of the variations:

    • Sunday (tomorrow): This article will be finished already. Spellcheck it and do pre-publication stuff. Work on other projects, especially the Pulp Resource I talked about earlier and the chapter titles for the e-book.
    • Monday: Make Doctor’s appointment for Tuesday, make Podiatrist appointment, write 1/3 of next “Trade” post, upload, publish, and promote this post, work on the Pulp Resource
    • Tuesday: Co-GM is still out of action, Dr’s appointment, update budget, Pulp Resource. Maybe more chapter titles work if there’s time.
    • Wednesday: Podiatrist appointment? Shopping. Pulp Resource, other projects, chapter titles.
    • Thursday: Podiatrist appointment? Pulp Resource, other projects, chapter titles.
    • Friday: Prep next Dr Who even though it’s not scheduled yet. Pay electric bill. Pulp resource, chapter titles.
    • Saturday: No game at this point. Pulp resource, 2nd 1/3 of next “Trade” post, chapter titles. End of the week.

    Compare the two lists. The actual task list for the next week is recognizable only as bearing some resemblance at some points with the ‘theoretical’ base list. Nevertheless, if you break things down to their most elemental activities – write, publish, art – the two are essentially the same, with a few extras thrown in.

And, of course, the 13th rule

Do what works for you. Nothing said in this post, or in any other article on time / project management, is holy writ.

Ignore my rules if they don’t meet your needs or don’t work for you. Replace / edit them whenever and however necessary.

But don’t expect one solution to this issue to work for you (or anyone else) 100% of the time – sometimes, you need a break from your usual patterns / constraints, too.

So, even if they aren’t what you need right now, it’s going to be worth having them around – or knowing where to find them – for when you find that you do need to do something differently, or when your usual practices don’t have the desired effect.

The above 12 rules are a set of guidelines that can be used as a tool to identify why your usual practices work for you, or don’t work on a specific occasion – and what you need to change to address the problem.

The 13th rule: Make it fun. Make everything fun, or get as close to it as you possibly can. Otherwise, there’s not a lot of point, is there?

An afterthought

Behavioral Psychologists have tested and confirmed the theory that if you smile, you are more likely to be smiled at. Similarly, if you frown, you are more likely to be accorded a less-than-gentile experience by those you encounter.

But there were a few results that took them by surprise in the course of this research.

People who smiled, even though they didn’t really feel like it, responded to the smiles being directed back toward them by feeling better about themselves and their circumstances. Smiling at others made their days better and less oppressive.

Those who frowned or remained aloof reported that they also responded to their attitude being reflected back at themselves. Their burdens became harder to bear, depression was more likely or deepened, and their daily existences seemed less fulfilling or rewarding.

Even more interesting, these effects were still pronounced even when no reflection of attitude was possible because the subject didn’t encounter anyone. It took a little longer, and it wasn’t as strong, but the same effect took place (to a lesser degree).

Forcing a smile had a direct correlation to their state of mind after the experiment even if no-one ever saw it.

So find something to smile about even if you’re on your own. And fake it in the meantime. The happiness you create might just be your own.

Leave a Comment

Trade In Fantasy Ch. 1: Ownership


This entry is part 2 in the series Trade In Fantasy

Certain fundamental questions need to be answered about any business operation that the PCs get involved with, either as employees or owners before we can get into game mechanics for the actual operation of an in-game business.

Credit where it’s due:

The series title graphic combines three images:

The Clipper Ship Image is by Brigitte Werner (ArtTower).

Dragon #1 is by Parker_West.

Dragon #2 is by JL G

All three images were sourced from Pixabay.

A contents update

Anyone comparing the contents listing below will observe that there have been a couple of changes. Specifically, what was going to be Chapter 7 has been split into two – Chapters 3 (inserted) and 8, respectively. There are two reasons: first, the structure of the whole flows more naturally this way, and second, some potential readers thought (quite rightly) that personnel management was a boring activity, especially if you did that for a 9-to-5 job.

I always intended to provide an abstracted system for personnel management that would deal with those issues, but when I started outlining it, the section count ballooned sufficiently to warrant the division.

Table Of Contents
In Today’s Post

1.Ownership

    1.1 Sponsors
    1.2 Partners
    1.3 Investors
    1.4 Entrepreneurs
    1.5 Shares / Corporations
    1.6 With Vehicles

      A few quick examples
      Example 1
      Example 2: Leg 2, the same group
      Example 3: Leg 3, the same group
      Example 4
      Example 5: Same Vessel
      Example 6: Same Vessel, a long time later

    1.7 Hired Vehicles
    1.8 Bring-Your-Own Vehicles
    1.9 Bottom-lining Ownership

And, in future parts:

  1. Trade Units
  2. Routine Personnel
  3. Mode Of Transport
  4. Land Transport
  5. Waterborne Transport
  6. Spoilage
  7. Key Personnel
  8. The Journey
  9. Arrival
  10. Journey’s End
  11. Adventures En Route

1. Ownership

When we’re young, the world seems so simple – it gets divided into those who own businesses, and those who work for thew people who own businesses. And, to be honest, that’s about as far as most people’s thinking takes them when setting up some sort of commercial entity in an RPG.

It’s simple, and this lets everybody get on with the game.

But, somewhere along the line, children learn that the real world is more complicated. Ownership can be divided between several different people in a partnership – and those shares don’t have to be equal in size. Money doesn’t just come from bank loans and profits – there are shares that can be bought by outsiders, making them part-owners of the corporation, of which there are several different kinds. And those shares come in at least two varieties, voting and non-voting.

It would be nice to be able to assume that everyone understood these terms, permitting me to launch straight into their usefulness in an RPG, but somehow, I can’t quite make that leap. To fill that void, I have to discuss the different kinds of ownership. And since this is fundamental to the issue of who makes the decisions, it more or less has to happen right off the bat.

I’ll try not to make it boring!

    1.1 Sponsors

    Sponsors come in two varieties – those who don’t expect their money back, and those who do – with interest. The first category are generally family, or a business owned by the family; the second are either individuals with wealth or commercial entities like Banks.

    Society was very different in the era of most Fantasy RPGs – banks didn’t really exist. Instead, people relied on those wealthy individuals, and that generally meant the Nobility. On extremely rare occasions, a religious body might weigh in, but this was fairly unusual (and would have been noteworthy if it weren’t usually kept secret).

    Sometimes, I run with historical accuracy in this respect, and sometimes, to make the campaign more accessible to a modern audience, I’ll throw a commercial institution like a bank into the mix.

    The difference between the two is substantial, in the modern world – Banks are corporations with shares that anyone can buy. Back then, a bank was either owned outright by a particular Noble or it was co-owned by a small group of Nobles in partnership. Any bank not owned by the Nobility would have been viewed with extreme suspicion by virtue of their independence from said Nobility. The decision as to who owns the bank is therefore a critical one, if they exist in your campaign.

    Before I move on, a brief word about the other kind of Sponsors: family and friends. This is usually a case of backing the individual, not the business entity. The problem is that it can require very deep pockets to establish a significant business operation, and most people don’t have that – unless they are members of the aristocracy.

    Into this realm of uncertainty steps a PC. He’s been conservative in his spending over many character levels / adventures, and has built up enough wealth to start something a bit more certain than more adventuring – a retirement fund, if you will.

    The amount of GP handed out in most RPGs is either obscene or totally ridiculous. By the time they hit mid-to-high levels, many PCs have a nest egg valued in the hundreds of thousands. The problem is that doing anything to relieve them of this ready cash is fairly boring to anyone else; so the problem gets ignored even as it continues to grow. Heck, just keeping track of mundane expenses is too much like work.

    I once ran some numbers to assess the contribution to Gross National Product of an entire class of Adventurers, assuming various frequencies of occurrence within society, and that they paid their taxes and tithes when they were due. The answer: about 30% of the economy was directly derived from Adventurers – if those adventurers spent what they acquired.

    What’s more, because Adventurers tend to stir up trouble – well, at least, it tends to follow them – a Society’s expenses will ramp up. The military may need to be enlarged, or better trained and equipped, or both; additional fortifications may be needed along the borders, and so on.

    In short order, one of two things will happen: either Adventuring will be recognized as a career pathway, licensed and regulated by the Government, with professional standards and training, and the economy will have become totally dependent on a steady return from Adventurers (option 1); or Adventuring will come with strict limits to how much wealth can be acquired from the activity, the rest either being either taxed or outright confiscated (option 2). Under the latter scheme, Adventuring may be officially recognized but it’s more likely to be driven underground, overtly illegal or at the very least suppressed.

    Sounds dictatorial? It is – but it must also be recognized that the biggest threat to the established aristocracy is a rebellion organized by someone competent – and that Adventurers fit the latter description admirably. Any monarch or member of the Aristocracy who is the least bit paranoid will see them as rivals or enemies, to be cut down before they grow strong enough to become a threat.

    Friends or Enemies – there’s no real in-between.

    Sponsors have no ‘official’ say in the running of the business. They are simply supplying the funding for whoever is in charge to use.

    1.2 Partners

    PC trading organizations will frequently be formed as a partnership. In theory, this requires a legal agreement between the partners that spells out anything and everything related to the the partnership.

    When I first started writing the campaign background to my original superhero campaign, I was worried about future lawsuits because there had just been several such in the US. So I wrote up a partnership agreement between the players and myself acknowledging their contribution to any published work that featured one of their characters and evaluated it as an equal share (by character count) of 1/3 of the net value of the work. If there were 5 PCs and 10 NPCs in a story, the creator of one of those PCs would be entitled to 1/3 x 1/15 x 100 = 2.222% of any profits. I later got a second set of signatures waiving those royalties unless the total owed came to $100 or more. So if I got paid $120 for an article, 2.222% of that would be $2.67 – not enough to worry about. But if I wrote a book for $20 and sold 1000 copies in a month, that would be $444.44 to the creators of each PC. (In the event of the death of the contributor, ownership of the characters returned to me rather than being inherited with the rest of their estate – something that has now happened in the case of three of the major PCs).

    Those agreements were signed and witnessed in 1983, some 41 years ago. Legally, they were (perhaps) not necessary, but everyone was happy to put any doubts about the issue to bed.

    It’s fairly common for shares to be equal and for everyone to have to put the same amount of ‘seed capital’ into the partnership. If someone doesn’t have enough funds to match the wealthiest contributors, there may be facilities for any share in the revenues to be deducted from their outstanding balance.

    Frankly, that level of detail is going too far in an RPG; keep the shares equal and assume that anyone who can’t contribute equally makes up for it in some other way. At most, reserve half the profits for reinvesting in the business and share out the rest every now and then.

    Patrons have no ‘official’ say in the running of the business. They are simply supplying the funding for whoever is in charge to use.

    1.3 Investors

    Investors aren’t the same thing as Patrons who expect to be recompensed; they inject a sum of cash into a business and are to be repaid that amount, plus an additional sum, on a certain date. If we’re talking a lot of money, there may be several repayment points and the original sum invested repaid in installments spread over those repayment points.

    At medium to high character levels, most PCs won’t need outside investors except for the biggest and most expensive ventures, like attempting to control an entire season’s grain crop (which may run into the millions).

    At lower levels, investors may be more necessary to a venture.

    No more than 2 minutes of game time, absolute maximum, should be spent worrying about the terms of the investment, which should be kept as simple as possible. Most of the in-game time should be spent with one character interacting with another – roleplaying, in other words. The GM can facilitate this by preparing a (brief) agreement in advance, but that prep also feels like a step too far to me. The advantage of doing so is that it can then get inserted into the prep folder for the future adventure in which money from the business gets distributed.

    Investor timetables are usually short term (10, 14, 20, 21, 28, or 30 days), medium term (60, 90, 100, or 120 days), or long-term (1, 2, 5, or 10 years).

    Investors usually have no say in the running of the business.

    1.4 Entrepreneurs

    This is one step closer to sharing ownership of the business or venture. An Entrepreneur puts resources into a business just like a partner would, but the amounts don’t need to be equal, and don’t get repaid directly; in return, they get a percentage of the profits.

    Agreements of this type usually specify a mechanism by which the titular head of the business can buy out the entrepreneur with part or all of his share of the profits.

    Another approach, which is simpler (i.e. ‘good’ for use in an RPG) is to specify a total sum that has to be paid to the Entrepreneur whenever the business can afford to do so; this bottom-lines the investment in a convenient way. For example, the original investment might be 100,000 gp; the repayment amount might be 110,000 gp, a 10% return, or 120,000 gp (a 20% return).

    There’s usually some facility by which the Entrepreneur can demand that the business pay up in x days – that might be 30, 60, 90, or 120 days from the date of the demand. This protects them from managers who sink everything into growing the business and never get around to having the spare cash on hand to pay out the debts.

    I would not permit anything more complicated than these arrangements in an RPG, which can be easily spelt out in two sentences. Again, most of the focus should be on personalities and interactions between characters, not on terms of investment.

    Entrepreneurs are important plot tools because PCs should be approached to be Entrepreneurs investing in other businesses.

    1.5 Shares / Corporations

    The most complicated option is to divide ownership of the business into lots of little pieces (called shares), and then sell these in some sort of market. This sort of financial solution didn’t exist until the 18th century, as I understand the history, and originally arose from the insurance industry – people paid into a corporation which invested the money to produce a fund that would be used to insulate the participants from accidents and disasters to the tune of an amount nominated in the investment.

    There are two types of shares: voting and non-voting. (Actually, there are many more, but that’s getting too complicated for an RPG). Profits, less a reserve for growing or future-funding the business, get divided by the total number of shares to determine how much the shareholder gets. The company gets the money when a share is purchased, but doesn’t lose money when that share gets sold; instead, the new owner pays the old owner whatever the agreed value is.

    Voting shares get a say in the makeup of the board of executives, who in turn decide who the manager of the business is (usually the largest shareholder or a professional employed by the board for the purpose). Non-voting shares get money but no control, and are valued at about 1/2 as much as voting shares, but the exact amount varies.

    Stock markets exist to facilitate the trading of shares – i.e. the sale and purchase of shares – and until they came into existence, shares were considered to have a fixed value. When share prices began to ‘float’, i.e. to respond to the laws of supply and demand, updates might have been daily or hourly. These days, they are instant and constantly updating. This matters because companies that are ‘traded’ or ‘publicly owned’ always have more shares available for sale, so if the price goes up, they effectively have more money.

    Most of this is far too complex for an RPG. I’d stick with the concept of a fixed share price (maybe updated once a game year), and non-voting shares (if any have been issued) are worth exactly 1/2 as much.

    But I would also simplify the number of shares by using the K (i.e. 1,000). Instead of issuing 10,000 shares or 100,000 shares, issue 10 or 100 shares, and denote the fact with a K next to the number. Multiply the share price by 1,000 as well. Keep things as simple as possible.

    Why bother? This is the only business structure in which the founder of the business can be forced out. There can be hostile takeovers, shadowy figures in the background manipulating share prices and secretly buying stock through proxies and so on – there are a number of plotlines that can’t happen any other way.

    Why would a business owner take the risk? Two reasons: first, it is to be hoped that the business will outlive them, so it’s a measure of immortality. And second, money. Corporations can issue more stock any time they want, provided there’s a market for them, i.e. someone who will buy them. They usually keep a certain number available at all times (how many is up to the manager of the corporation) and issue a new batch whenever the available shares dip below the reserve.

    It’s possible for a business to grow too fast, outstripping the business’ capacity to recruit and train new employees, set up new offices and points of sale, and so on. A corporate structure is better able to cope with huge rates of expansion. For example, a milling operation that has some technological edge over the competition might need to construct 10 or 20 new mills just to keep up with the demand for their services – at maybe 100,000 gp each, maybe more. With any other business structure, the manager has to individually negotiate with wealthy people for the money and keep doing it until they have ‘enough’; that’s a more than full-time job under these circumstances. Issuing 50K shares at 40K gp each raises the necessary money without personal involvement by the manager.

    Share ratios are another important point to discuss, but hard-and-fast facts are hard to pin down. In essence, there’s a limit to the number of non-voting shares that can be issued – some say 2 for every 1 voting share, others say 10 or 20 for every voting share, still others denounce the whole concept and simplify the whole concept to voting stock only.

    Compounding and confusing the whole are the ability of the board of directors to re-designate a block of shares from one category to the other. “I have 40K shares, you only have 30K – but you’re in charge because half of my shares are non-voting. But if X happens, the board will reissue my non-voting shares as voting shares and you’ll be history. So don’t let X happen.”

    Proxies. I absolutely hate the term because by far the greatest spam suppliers that I have to deal with – a ratio of ten-to-one – are various spammers offering proxies for shares, especially of cryptocurrencies. A proxy simply means that the owner has given someone else the authority to vote on their behalf. He who controls the most shares controls the company, effectively. Getting proxies for key voting blocs is another way of taking control of a corporation away from the current CEO.

    This can all get very complicated and chew up an inordinate amount of game time. Simplify everything as much as you can, then look for ways to simplify it even more. As a simple rule of thumb, for example, if you issue 10% more shares, the value per share should drop to 10/11ths of what it was. Reality is more complicated than that, but reality can get stuffed in this area.

    Don’t make share trading about the shares, make it about the people who own and control those shares – personalities, in other words.

    No-one ever makes a company publicly-traded without anticipating that one day they will lose control of it. No matter how much they safeguard against it, one day it will happen – even if it takes a unanimous decision by the rest of the Board Of Directors in conspiracy against you. Of course, they would have to be fairly certain that you were no longer competent to run the business before taking such a drastic step.

    1.6 With Vehicles

    At least initially, the value of any significant vehicle is going to vastly outweigh the value of the cargoes it carries, by a factor of 25-30 or more. The less-substantial the vehicle, the smaller this ratio becomes – at the absolute bottom end, a rickety old 2-wheeled cart (think Gandalf’s arrival in Hobbiton for Bilbo’s Birthday) may in fact be worth less than a 1-character’s share of the cargo.

    There’s a fairly simple technique for correctly distributing the cost of the cargo.

    1. Divide total cost by # of characters contributing.
    2. Subtract from (1) the value of the vehicle, less any previous such deductions.
    3. If the result is less than 0, the owner contributes 0 to the purchase of cargo.
    4. Otherwise, the result is the amount they have to kick in to the cargo purchase.
    5. Subtract from (1) the character’s contribution. This is the shortfall in funding.
    6. Divide (5) by (# characters contributing -1).
    7. Add (6) to (1). This is the amount the other participants have to pay.
    8. Each time the contribution of the vehicle reaches 0, it resets to 1/2 the previous initial value.

    A few quick examples
      Example 1

      Vehicle = a small cart, value 80 gp
      Total Cargo Cost = 500 gp
      # of participating characters = 5

      1. 500 / 5 = 100.
      2. 100 – 80 = 20.
      3. n/a.
      4. Character #5 pays 20 gp and contributes the use of his cart.
      5. 100 – 20 = 80.
      6. 80 / (5-1) = 80 / 4 = 20.
      7. 20 + 100 = 120. Characters 1, 2, 3, and 4 have to pay 120 gp each.
           All five contributions are considered an equal share
      8. When next the characters purchase cargo, the cart has a value / 2 = 40 gp.

      EG Leg 2, same group:

      Vehicle = a small cart, value 40 gp
      Return from sale of previous cargo = 700 gp
      Total Cargo Cost = 1200 gp
      # of participating characters = 5

      1. 1200-700=500 gp; 500 / 5 = 100.
      2. 100 – 40 = 60.
      3. n/a.
      4. Character #5 pays 60 gp and contributes the use of his cart.
      5. 100 – 60 = 40.
      6. 40 / (5-1) = 40 / 4 = 10.
      7. 10 + 100 = 110. Characters 1, 2, 3, and 4 have to pay 110 gp each.
           All five contributions are considered an equal share
      8. When next the characters purchase cargo, the cart has a value / 2 = 20 gp.

      Example #3, Same group

      Vehicle = a small cart, value 20 gp
      Return from sale of previous cargo = 1800 gp
      Total Cargo Cost = 1400 gp
      # of participating characters = 5

      1. 1400-1800=-400 gp; -400 / 5 = -80
      2. -80 – 20 = -100.
      3. Character #5 pays 0 toward the ‘cargo acquisition’, instead
           receiving 100gp profits, but contributes the use of his cart..
      4. n/a
      5. -80 – (-100) = 100 – 80 = 20.
      6. 20 / (5-1) = 20 / 4 = 5.
      7. 5 + (-100) = -95. Characters 1, 2, 3, and 4 receive 95 gp each in profits.
           All five contributions are considered an equal share
      8. When next the characters purchase cargo, the cart has a value / 2 = 10 gp. After that, it might as well be 0.

      The appearance of negative numbers (indicating that there’s a profit to be distributed) might have thrown readers for a loop, but that’s the value of these examples.

      Example #4

      Vehicle = 3-masted Trading ship and minimal crew compliment. Value = 75,000 + 500 per trip wages.
      Total Cargo Cost = 20,000 gp
      # Of participating characters = 4 PCs, 2 investors = 6

      1. 20,000 / 6 = 3333.33 gp
      2. 3333.33 – 75,500 = -72166.66 gp.
      3. Character #4 pays 0 toward the cargo but contributes the vessel & crew.
      4. n/a
      5. n/a
      6. 3333.33 / (6-1) = 666.66
      7. 666.66 + 3333.33 gp = 4000.
           Characters 1, 2, 3. and 2 investors pay 4000 gp each.
           All six are considered to have an equal share in the cargo.
      8. Next trip, the value of the ship and crew will be 72166+500= 72666.

      Example #5, Same Vessel

      Vehicle = 3-masted Trading ship and minimal crew compliment. Value = 72166 + 500 per trip wages = 72666.
      Revenue from sale of previous cargo = 32,000 gp.
      Total Cargo Cost = 18,000 gp
      # Of participating characters = 4 PCs (2 investors)

      Note that unless the investors have agreed in advance, which they usually will, their payout from the previous leg can’t be reinvested in cargo; it has to be held to be repaid to them.
           32,000 / 6 = 5333.33 each, or 10,666,66 between them.

      It’s unusual, but for the sake of this example, I’m going to assume it has happened.

      This effectively reduces the profit from the PCs perspective to 32,000 – 10,666.66 = 21333.33. This is still enough that each will receive a profit, even after the purchase of a new cargo.

      1. (21,333.33 – 18,000) / 4 = 833.33 gp payout
           (technically, should be less than zero – this matters in the next step).
      2. -833.33 – 72,166 = –72,999.33 gp.
           Next leg, the ship will contribute only 72,166 – (18000/4) = 67,666 to the venture.
      3. Character #4 pays 0 toward the cargo but contributes the vessel & crew.
           He receives a full share of the proceeds, 21333 / 4 = 5333.25 gp.
           That leaves 21,333.33 – 5333.25 = 16000.08 gp for the other 3 PCs.
           But the cargo is going to cost 18000, a shortfall of 1999.92 gp. Call it 2000.
      4. n/a
      5. n/a
      6. 2000 / (4-1) = 666.66
           Characters 1, 2, and 3. pay an additional 666.66 gp each.
           All four are considered to have an equal share in the cargo.

      Over many trips, the contribution of the ship will diminish as the owner’s share of the cargo costs gets subtracted from the contribution value of the vessel.

      Which brings me to:

      Example #6, Same Vessel, a long time later

      Vehicle = 3-masted Trading ship and minimal crew compliment. Value = 2866 + 500 per trip wages = 3366.
      Revenue from sale of previous cargo = 40,000 gp.
      Total Cargo Cost = 24,000 gp
      # Of participating characters = 4 PCs

      1. (40,000.00 – 24,000) / 4 = 16,000 gp payout
           (technically, should be less than zero – this matters in the next step).
      2. 24,000 / 4 = 6,000gp – 3366 = 2634 gp.
           The contributing value of the ship & crew are not enough to cover the owner’s share in the purchase of the next cargo.
      3. n/a
      4. Character #4 pays 2634 toward the cargo and contributes the vessel & crew.
           But he’s entitled to a full share of the 40,000, so he gets paid 7122 gp.
      5. 24,000 – 2634 = 21,366 to be paid by the other 3 characters.
      6. 21366 / (4-1) = 7122 each.
      7. But each one will also get 10,000 go from the sale of the old cargo.
           So Characters 1, 2, and 3. receive 10,000-7122 = 2878 gp each.
           All four are considered to have an equal share in the cargo.
      8. The ship’s contribution now resets to the original 75,000 + 500, divided by 2, = 37,500 + 500.

    A couple of final observations:
    • If you know what the calculations are doing and understand why, you can vary them into more convenient forms. This can solve problems that the original process fails to address, as in Examples 3, 5, and 6.
    • I deliberately set the cargo costs and revenues low in examples 5 and 6 to reflect ‘that’s all they can afford’ not ‘that’s how much the ship can carry’.
    • That results in a massively asymmetric investment contribution by the owner of the ship. In real life, characters 1, 2, and 3 would probably kick in part of their profits against future contributions to get everyone onto an equal footing as quickly as possible.
    • The ship has one captain (presumably the owner) and he employs the crew. You can’t have divided loyalties at sea or in an emergency without courting mutinies. The examples reflect this.
    • The GM should calculate payouts etc between game sessions. No barter rolls, no nonsense, no nothing. Giving out the ‘cash’ should be part of the pre-session warm-up the same as handing out xp.
    • Note that the emphasis is on profits, not on costs.
    • Finally, the whole expedition should be considered merely background, a side effect of delivering the PCs to ground zero for their next adventure. It should never, ever, be the be-all and end-all, and the GM should strenuously resist any attempts by the players to focus on it.

    That’s all fine for a partnership structure. If there’s a single owner, and the other PCs are considered employees, it’s even simpler – one character is responsible for all the costs and gets all the rewards. But this is even more asymmetric than partnership examples 4-6, can foster resentments, and is NOT recommended.

    Things have to get handled a little differently with a corporation.

    But first, let’s look at the situation where none of the PCs has a vessel to contribute, because it’s far more likely to be the case.

    1.7 Hired Vehicles

    If none of the PCs owns a ship, there are two solutions: find the financing (loans etc) to buy a ship (or a series of covered wagons, or whatever) or hire an existing vessel.

    Ships are not cheap, and until the PCs establish themselves as a safe and lucrative investment, it’s likely that no-one will lend them anywhere near enough to buy one outright. That leaves option (b), at least for the foreseeable future.

    Hiring a ship in a fantasy realm should not be overly arduous. Someone else will be the Captain (it’s their ship) and will provide the crew – and hopefully all of these NPCs will be trustworthy!

    It would be extremely unlikely for the captain to risk being a participant in the venture. At least for the first few trips, he would expect to be paid for the use of his vessel, his crew, and his services – in advance.

    In effect, the price of hiring the vessel etc for the next leg gets added to the cargo cost. As a rough guide, determine a total weekly wage bill, divide the value of the ship by 1000 to get a weekly cost, and assume that the trip will take 50% longer than it should.

    Why 1000? 1/20th x 1/50th of a year = 1/1000.

    Technically, it should by 1040, but it’s worth sacrificing the accuracy for the ease of calculation.

    The GM should divide up the labor pool into bands:

    1. Green Crew
    2. Experienced Crew
    3. Ship’s Officers
    4. Captain

    Experienced Crew will earn 2-5 gp per week. Green Crew will earn 1-3 gp per week, and probably at the lower or middle end of that. Ship’s Officers will earn 5-25 gp per week, captains will earn 10-25 gp per day.

    Each captain will generally have a reputation / profile to how much they pay in each band – generous here, less generous there. Some buy crew loyalty by reducing their own earnings somewhat to better crew pay.

      An example band might be “Green- middle, experienced middle-high, officers high, captain medium” – which would translate to 2 gp, experienced 4 gp, officers 20 gp, self 12 gp /day = 12×7= 84 gp / week.

    All the GM needs to do is decide how many of each there are on board and the calculate the total weekly wages bill.

      5 x Green Crew = 5×2 = 10 gp;
      15 x Experienced Crew = 15×4 = 60 gp;
      6 x Officers = 6×20 = 120 gp;
      1 x Captain = 1×84 = 84 gp;
      Ship = 75000/1000 = 75 gp.
      total = 349 gp / week.

    If the trip is expected to take a week, pay for 1.5 weeks:

      1.5×349 = 523.5 gp, round up to the nearest 5 for convenience: 525 gp.

    If the trip is expected to take 4 weeks, pay for 6:

      6×349 = 2094 gp, round up to the nearest 5, gives 2095 gp.

    Note that if the trip actually only takes 4 weeks, there won’t be a refund!!

    1.8 Bring-Your-Own Vehicles

    Corporations work differently. They have two options: enter into a lease agreement with the owner of a vessel for the exclusive rights to their services for a period of time or the completion of X voyages, whichever comes first; or buy their own vessel outright, issuing enough shares to cover the cost.

    Of course, if the corporation is completely dependent on a single vessel, anything could happen, and everyone would be ruined – so why buy one when you can buy three, and stagger their departure times so that none of them are ever in the same place at the same time?

    Profits per vessel might nosedive (for a while), but the reward in mitigation of losses the first time one encounters a dragon, or hurricane, or whatever, will more than make up for it.

    Clever marketing would promote the frequency of passage as a benefit; other ships might stand to in port until their holds are full, these ships will sail even if their holds are empty. Experience would also contribute to a sense of reliability that independent captains would struggle to match; what they have to offer in competition is flexibility.

    1.9 Bottom-lining Ownership

    When it comes right down to it, there are only a few things people really need to know when it comes to ownership.

    • Where is the money coming from?
    • Who owns what?
    • Who controls what?
    • Who gets paid how much, and when>?
    • Personalities are more important than technical mechanics.

    So long as those three facts are understood completely, you don’t need to pay closer attention to questions of ownership. But they don’t exist in isolation from each other; they interact and interrelate, and each has multiple options and permutations to consider.

    Get as complicated as you have to in order to be able to answer the questions – but then, boil it all down to these simple facts. Everything else will just get in the way – at least until the technical details make a difference as part of a specific adventure.

Whew! I thought this would be a short section, leaving enough time to include chapter 2, which starts to get into the heart of the system, the Trade Unit, but there was rather more to say and explain than I expected. This post is now of comparable length to the first, perhaps even a little longer, so this is where I’m going to call it.

Leave a Comment

Trade In Fantasy: Preliminaries & Introduction


This entry is part 1 in the series Trade In Fantasy

Preliminaries:

A long time ago, I wrote “Trade In Traveler”. This week (and in the weeks to come) I’m starting a companion piece, “Trade In Fantasy”. Non-Fantasy GMs – I suggest either using the Trade in Traveler rules or updating them using this series as a guide.

Depending on how long winded I get in the 305 sections and subsections (!), this could be part 1 of 6 – or part 1 of 35.

Realistically: 12 major sections, one that should be split across 2 posts and one split across 3, but with two posts with double sections, gives a projection of 13 posts, but I’m not going to compromise the content for the sake of a deadline – I’ll just stop early and pick up where I left off. It will be as long as it is, that’s all I can promise!

And, if all goes according to plan, this will also be made available as a PDF download at the end of it all!

Refer text for credits

Series Title Image Credits:

The series title graphic (and the front cover of the eventual PDF) combines three images:

The Clipper Ship Image is by Brigitte Werner (ArtTower) from Pixabay

Dragon #1 is by Parker_West from Pixabay

Dragon #2 is by JL G from Pixabay.

First, a completely unrelated announcement

I’ve finally discovered where the setting that turns off those annoying “Subscribe now” pop-ups was hiding and turned it off.

It was indiscriminate, hitting you whether you were already a subscriber or not. And that made it annoying.

Making it doubly annoying was the promise of “access to the full archive” in each pop-up, since Campaign Mastery already gives every reader full access to our full archive.

So it’s gone. I’ve moved it to a block at the bottom of each post, instead – but if it’s still banging on about “full access to the archives”, it will be vanishing from there, as well. I’ll be watching it closely!

While I was in that vicinity, I changed the newsletter announcements to ‘excerpt’ instead of ‘full post’ but I’m not committing to this as a permanent change yet – I want to see just how long an “excerpt” is, first – and changed the email protocol from “do not reply” to “replies will be posted as public comments to the post” – at least on a trial basis. These changes are intended to stimulate and track readership, but if they prove too burdensome, they will revert without notice.

Second, another completely unrelated announcement

I’ve recently become aware that something has removed some of the images and links from some older posts on the site. I’m fixing these as I find them.

My chief suspect is the upgrade to https but it’s not the only potentially guilty party. There’s also the security / anti-spam plugin that was creating the pop-up mentioned above, and also the SEO plug-in that became so annoying that I ended up having to disable it after my maintenance requests went unacknowledged. Both of these are also capable of having had a site-wide impact..

Buy Low, Sell High: Trade In Traveler

A long time ago, I was a player in a Traveler campaign being run by my Pulp Co-GM, Blair. Long story short: it didn’t work as a campaign.

He set us up as a merchant trader but had no interest in letting us trade, because he thought it was / would be boring. Instead, he expected us to take sides in an all-or-nothing political situation degenerating towards a local war without knowing anything about the respective factions, and was quite put out when we did everything we possibly could to avoid doing so.

In the real world, we would at least have known the public faces of the different factions, and what they claimed to espouse. That would have at least permitted the taking of an initial stance, leading to us being increasingly sucked into the politics of the sector, letting us see the sausage being made behind the scenes, maybe discovering that the truth had little-to-nothing to do with the public face of our patron, big climax as the dispute comes to a head and we change sides (or a longer campaign of us subverting our patron) – it would have been a satisfactory campaign, at least.

Without that knowledge, we refused to back ourselves into a corner, and the campaign imploded after 3 or 4 sessions. The GM thought we were being unreasonable, we thought his demands were unreasonable, and that was the end of that.

Except that the claim that trade would have been “boring” nagged at me, until I wrote “Trade In Traveler” specifically to debunk the proposition. It’s since been shared in multiple locations, and downloaded thousands of times (presumably not all by the one person).

Trade In Fantasy is going to be the Big Brother to this 9-page free game supplement. So I thought I would start by once again offering it up for anyone who’s interested in having a copy. Two version are contained within the zip file – one for A4 users and one with Letter-sized pages. Just click on the link provided (the icon to the right) to download it.

Table Of Contents

The mere fact that I was able to discuss “12 major sections” and “305 section” should tell readers that I have a well-developed table of contents for this series. The question is, how and when to present it?

Option 1: Present it now, even though the post in which any given section will appear is still unknown. Effectively, this makes promises; it might encourage people to read the series, but the series might fail to live up to the hype. On top of that, I’m already making changes and inserting additional content, so it would go out-of-date very quickly.

Option 2: Present it in a final post, together with the download link for the compiled PDF. This gives me a completely free hand in terms of full coverage of the subject – I can add and subtract content to my heart’s content. But it does leave readers with no indication of the context of what they are reading. I seriously contemplated this, and was about to commit to it when Option 3 offered a compromise.

Option 3: Include, at the head of each post, a partial table of contents, describing the content of that specific post. This would actually be the last content created for that post, ensuring that it was completely up-to-date at all times, but it would no more constrain that content than option 2. Copy-and-paste would permit compilation at the end of the series for the PDF.

My choice is option 3. Why am I explaining this to you?

First, because it offers insight into the mental processes that I employ, which may be useful to someone out there, sometime.

And second, because I’m using this first post to figure out the format of the series. So, let’s go:

In Today’s Post

0. Introduction

    0.1 A Meta-perspective
    0.2 Enterprise & Competition

      0.2.1 Quality Of Goods
      0.2.2 Comparison Matrix

    0.3 Resources, Investment, & Diversification

      0.3.1 Resources = Deep Pockets
      0.3.2 Investment: Gambling for Pros
      0.3.3 Diversification

    0.4 Trade Routes
    0.5 Reversals Of Fortune
    0.6 A Gateway To Adventure

      0.6.1 Directly Trade-Related: Wheeling & Dealing
      0.6.2 Directly Trade-Related: Rivals & Enemies
      0.6.3 Directly Trade-Related: New Markets
      0.6.4 Directly Trade-Related: Demand & Marketing
      0.6.5 Directly Trade-Related: Costs & Labor
      0.6.6 Indirectly Trade-related: Politics At Home (General)
      0.6.7 Indirectly Trade-related: Politics At Home (Trade)
      0.6.8 Indirectly Trade-related: Politics Abroad
      0.6.9 Indirectly Trade-related: Politics En Route
      0.6.10 Indirectly Trade-related: Crime
      0.6.11 Tangentially Trade Related: From A to B with Handicaps

And, in future parts:

  1. Sponsors / Investors vs Entrepreneurs
  2. Trade Units
  3. Mode Of Transport
  4. Land Transport
  5. Waterborne Transport
  6. Spoilage
  7. Personnel
  8. The Journey
  9. Arrival
  10. Journey’s End
  11. Adventures En Route

0. Introduction

Trade has been part of the human experience for millennia.

It carries huge verisimilitude just by existing in the campaign world.

And, just like many people’s first jobs are working at a fast-food franchise or supermarket, or delivering newspapers by bicycle, it makes total sense for a young PC’s first paid employment to be involved in mercantile activities, aka trade.

The number of PCs who have been hired on as Caravan Guards is greater, I sometimes think, than dry leaves in Autumn.

There are those who will tell you that Trade is boring. That’s true, in my opinion, only if the GM does nothing with it.

Some GMs will tell you that the success of a trading venture is irrelevant, and trade is not about profits (or not just about that), and that money is just a way of keeping score. To be sure, once PCs have enough wealth, this is a reasonable assessment – but until then, it’s only partially true, and the percentage of truth starts at zero and only slowly rises to a peak of no more than 80%.

The term “enough” is also subjective and – in the case of PCs – highly irregular. In a world of magic buffs, too much is never enough.

But beyond these limits, beyond the verisimilitude, there is (or should be) a very good reason for using trade as your foundation of a starting point in a campaign.

    0.1 A Meta-perspective

    From the GMs chair, a Metagame perspective should guide him in the way he approaches and employs trade in his games: as a delivery vehicle that takes the PCs from the place of safety that they usually inhabit to adventure and to the foundation of a campaign.

    Amongst many other benefits, this perspective permits a proper appraisal of the degree of realism needed in the supporting game mechanics, encouraging a level of sophistication and abstraction that the GM would probably not aim to achieve without such prompting.

    So long as the GM maintains this perspective, Trade in his campaign ceases to be boring, ceases to matter as an end unto itself, and becomes something both more and less: a touchstone and means of delivering the campaign world to the players..

    0.2 Enterprise & Competition

    Trade naturally connects the participants with the world around them, with the societies and politics and economics, and how everything works. But the GM doesn’t have to hit the players with all of this at once; he can phase things in, one at a time, as they then become relevant. So long as the meta-perspective is maintained, each of these presents (at the very least) an adventure in its own right.

    It doesn’t matter if it’s a session 1 or a session 0, participating in trade makes a perfect foundation for characters who are still wet behind the ears.

    For example, let’s hire a new party of adventurers to transport a shipment of silver ore to the refinery where it will be transformed into ingots, and then to the city wherein will be found the artisans who work in this precious metal, where a load of foodstuffs, household items, and mining-related commodities can be obtained, ready for the caravan to return to the mines.

    This employment is for one round-trip only. It pays 1/2 a gold a day, plus a copper for every ounce of refined silver delivered to the waiting silversmiths, plus a silver for each outright danger faced by the caravan that has been successively overcome en route. In addition, any reasonable expenses incurred along the way will be reimbursed, provided that a verifiable tally can be presented at the end of the journey, bearing the signatures of the merchants and the amounts being claimed. And, to get the expedition underway, your employers is willing to advance you five gold each – enough (when pooled with the advances to the other PCs) to hire a cart and cover your accommodations and food along the way. If the PCs do a good job, they might get hired by the silver miner permanently.

    That sounds like a pretty sweet deal, right? It’s also the sort of offer that might be posted on a public noticeboard and other suitable locations, ensuring a wide range of applicants.

    This naturally pulls a party of PCs together and welds them into a natural unit. I’d include a couple of NPCs to ensure variety – a fighter, a ranger/scout, and a cleric – but drop the cleric if a PC already covers that skillset.

    Throw in hiring a wagon and the mounts to pull it, a wilderness encounter or two, dealing with the people that would be met along the way, perhaps a natural challenge to be overcome, some bandits that can be avoided, and you have everything you need for a simple and easy little adventure that introduces the players to the game world. The pay won’t set the world on fire, but it’s a reasonable rate of pay for a very believable job – a session 0.

    From a business point of view, this is an existing enterprise (the silver mine) looking to create a low-cost limited partnership to provide it with a necessary service. One could reasonably ask why whoever they last used for the purpose can’t do it again, but this adventure plan already furnishes a ready answer – they fell foul of a party of bandits who made off with eight of the twelve ingots of silver (all they could carry) while seriously wounding the driver and killing three guards. In other words, the people who used to provide this service to the mine owner can’t do it any more – though one of them (another NPC) might form the nucleus of the new group, providing it with an experienced voice to lead them through the expedition.

      0.2.1 Quality Of Goods

      It doesn’t matter what type of goods you’re involved in, sooner or later you will have to deal with rivals. This could be because you are attempting to shove your way into their market, or because they are trying to shoulder their way into yours – that doesn’t much matter.

      Before you can evaluate how much trouble you’re in, before you can even evaluate how much they are charging, you need a comparison of perceived relative quality of goods.

      This is simply achieved: roll a d6+2 for the perceived quality of the goods being hawked by the PCs. That’s all you need.

      The results are relative to the last time this particular test was made – so it doesn’t matter if you were previously producing 8/8 goods, or barely-serviceable 3/8 goods, that’s still a 5.5 on the current measure. If you roll a 6+, your quality is perceived to have gone up, perhaps only by a little, perhaps by a lot. If you roll a 5 or less on your roll, the quality is perceived – rightly or wrongly – to have gone down.

      It’s when you compare your rivals’ offering to the same standard that things start to get interesting. They roll a d10 – so there’s room for their product to be seen as better, or worse.

      The scale of the difference is also relevant – I think of each plus-or-minus three as being a doubling or halving of relative quality. This is a compromise that permits the expression of a relatively small difference, or an extremely large one.

      Once the relative quality is known, it provides critical context for all the other factors.

      0.2.2 Comparison Matrix

      In particular, it becomes possible to place the rival’s products into a comparison matrix that assesses relative price. This shouldn’t be rolled; the GM should make an informed decision as to this value.

      At the same time, no-one wants to get bogged down in minutia, so this value should be abstracted as well, and – for convenience – on the same scale. If you define the PCs product as price 5.5, then you can decide if the rival offering is essentially the same price (5), a little cheaper (4), a lot cheaper (3), half the price (2), ore less than half the price(3) – or you have the same range of options in the other direction.

      There are essentially 3 possible evaluations on such a matrix:

      1. Price and Quality are roughly the same relative to the PC goods. Both Price and Quality are higher, or are lower, and the amounts are comparable. The newcomers will be competitive within the market.

      2. Price is higher but Quality is the same or worse. Expenses mean that the PCs will keep the majority of the trade – unless the NPCs do something underhanded. And the rivals would have known this, going in – so they will have already settled any qualms about using dirty tricks.

      3. Quality is higher but Price is the same or cheaper. The PCs are going to lose market share to the newcomers. And then they’ll lose a similar share of what’s left, And then a similar share of what’s left after that. Unless, of course, the PCs resort to dirty tricks. The GM will need to be able to justify the lower costs, no hand-waving. It’s very likely that the NPCs can take a brief profit-reduction to undercut the PCs no matter what they do.

    0.3 Resources, Investment, & Diversification

    Another critical evaluation is the cash reserves of each side. For how long can they afford to take a loss (that they will eventually recoup if they win the Trade War)?

    Reserves bring in three new concepts to be understood – resources, investments, and diversification.

      0.3.1 Resources = Deep Pockets

      Whatever cash each side have saved up, or can raise by selling assets, equals their resources. We don’t really care how much either side has on hand, in money terms – it’s the relative size of the reserves that determines how effectively they can use them as a weapon, and for how long they can keep it up.

      0.3.2 Investment: Gambling for Pros

      One side or the other may have sunk some of their resources into investments, buying shares in other businesses or trade opportunities. As with all investments, there’s no such thing as a sure thing, sometimes you’ll win and sometimes you”ll lose. In general, you write off the loses and hope that the wins are substantial enough to give you a net profit at the end of the day.

      It can therefore be assumed that any investments that are still operational are earning profits for the investors, income that tops up and replenishes the reserves on an ongoing basis.

      There is always a temptation to invest most, if not all, of your profits, because this not only spreads your investment around (reducing the overall risk) but it increases the returns on the investment. But it’s always a bad idea; it means that you don’t have the reserves to be able to cope with unexpected disasters or reverses. Over-investment is referred to as being Leveraged, because you don’t have any Leverage over the situation; the situation has Leverage over you, and you are at its mercy (of which it has zero to none).

      0.3.3 Diversification

      Diversification means that you have established or are establishing other product lines. This is usually a lot more expensive than external investment, but it comes with some pretty hefty advantages – you get to keep all the profits of the other product lines, instead of only a percentage of them, and have full control over the distribution and pricing (and profitability) of the other product line. In effect, you can use one to subsidize the other, reducing the amount that gets drained from your reserves either completely or in part.

    The combination of Resources and Matrix Outcome dictates who will win a trade war if there is no intervention to change the playing field, and how that trade war will proceed.

    One major reason for keeping it all as simple as possible is because ‘intervention’ by one side or the other, or (most commonly) both, entails such a wide range of activities that there can be no hard-and-fast rules for assessing its effectiveness. That’s going to be up to the GM to assess, on a case-by-case basis.

    0.4 Trade Routes

    Buy something, take it to somewhere where it is more valuable, sell it and use the money to (a) cover expenses, and (b) buy something else for trade. In the simplest possible model, the ‘something else’ will be of value back where you bought the first commodity, which creates a trade route with two ‘legs’ side-by-side.

    It’s more common to have three or more legs.

    Work a trade route in the right direction, make a small fortune. Work it in the wrong direction and you’ll lose your shirt.

    Additional complications are possible. Two trade routes can come together just long enough for an exchange of goods between the traders, swapping something you have for something that will be worth more where you are going, while the other party also obtains a cargo that will yield them more profits than if they had kept the original merchandise.

    Trade routes work on the premise that transportation is so low-cost that the economic model is all about the “value” of position, at least theoretically. The reality is slightly more complicated.

    The value of a cargo is the quantity of goods times the sales price. [V = Q x P(s)].

    The net profit to be realized from the sale of a cargo is the Gross Value – transport costs – Purchase price of the cargo. In other words, the process converts money into cargo and then cargo into more money than you started with, by virtue of having moved the commodity in question to it’s point of sale.

    If you put those two together, you get

                        Pnet = Q x (PrSale – [Ct / Q] – PrPurch).

    The messy bit in the middle is the transport costs divided by the quantity of goods being transported. In other words, the transport costs are spread evenly (amortized) over each piece of merchandise to be sold.

    The reason this is messy is because those transport costs are not so nice and neat to pigeonhole. Some of them will rise with the total volume of the goods, some with the total weight, some with the distance, some with the number of geographic features to be traversed, and some by number of goods being transported. Still others may be be a function of the classification of the type of goods – some (necessary) goods may be taxed at a different rate to other (luxury) goods.

    These all have to be correctly factored into the choice of merchandise at the time of (potential) purchase – if we want to be technically accurate.

    Me, i couldn’t be bothered with that level of minutia, except in terms of narrative patter. It’s far simpler to make a simple assumption (total costs will be $$$) and simply tally up the costs as they come up. Get to the end of the travel leg, add up all the costs, divide by the number of goods purchased, job done.

    In other words, all expenses should be treated as overheads, no matter how they accrue or are determined.

    The critical question is always, how many $$$ to assume in advance?

    Too many, and you will turn down a potentially lucrative contract / commodity. Too low, and you won’t just fail to turn a profit, you are likely to incur a loss. And it typically takes a trip or two before you can even start to get a reasonable estimate.

    0.5 Reversals Of Fortune

    In any endeavor, trade-related or not, there will always be setbacks and reverses of fortune. The adventure often comes from trying to overcome those setbacks as cheaply as possible.

    If you figure that there’s always going to be something that comes up, the best solution is to bake an allowance for that into your expected transport costs. Should fortune smile upon you, and your overheads be unexpectedly low, your profits will be more than expected; should things not go your way, and these costs be more than expected, it will eat into your profits – but those profits provide a cushion against actually turning a loss.

    Most traders will save a reserve to be used to cover individual loss-making trade legs for those occasions when the worst occurs. The law of averages says that the more trips you make, the more closely the vicissitudes of fortune will balance out.

    Two things that can turn a trader prematurely gray are social changes and politics.

    Social Changes cause a systematic change in the demand for a commodity. And Politics can cause government interference that amounts to the same thing. Because these are systemic changes, they won’t even out over time, they will always persist if they are present at all – and something of this sort is present more often than traders are ever happy or comfortable with.

    The canny trader immerses himself in society wherever he goes – not for any entertainment or social status value, but simply to keep his finger on the pulse of his marketplace. And he pays extremely close to the politics, everywhere he goes, even to the point of occasionally getting enmeshed within the grinding gears of the political machinery, simply to ‘grease the wheels’ and keep politics from overwhelming his business.

    0.6 A Gateway To Adventure

    Remember our Meta-perspective? It was what showed how strongly to abstract the various points of realism above, and it was never so important to the conduct in-game of a trade operation as in the preceding two paragraphs. This overview of trade “in general” is coming to a close – the messy work is all done – but I thought it worth taking the time to list all the activities and subjects that could become gateways to adventure under the general umbrella of “trade” before closing this introductory section out.

      0.6.1 Directly Trade-Related: Wheeling & Dealing

      Whenever there is a bargain to be struck, there’s the potential for one of the bargainers to throw a wooden shoe into negotiations. “I’ll do more than meet your price, I’ll pay you a small bonus, if you’ll do me one small favor…”

      0.6.2 Directly Trade-Related: Rivals & Enemies

      Any trade operation is going to attract the attention of rivals, real or potential. And, because they will usually behave predictably, they can be best friends or worst enemies or even both at the same time! Merchants’ guilds provide scope for two rivals to bury the hatchet – at least long enough to jointly tackle some problem that you have in common.

      In most such arrangements, there’s an “active partner” and a “passive partner” who does most of the thinking and arranging, the pulling of strings. Their risk is lower, and their rewards potentially greater, because they are the ones pulling the strings and making the decisions, but so long as the active partner also benefits, they have little cause for complaint.

      At least initially, the PCs won’t have the social and political connections to be a “passive partner”; they will have to be the “active partner” and have all the hair-raising adventures that result. As soon as some moderate level of competence gets displayed by them, “passive partners” should come sniffing around, offering deals and alliances. Obviously, the PCs will want to make the transition to “passive partner” as quickly as possible – and the only way to do so is to become enmeshed as deeply as possible into the social and political machinery of the campaign world. Even then, it’s not going to happen quickly or easily.

      Every such social and political connection, including entering into ‘partnerships’, comes with baggage, in the form of enemies. “The enemy of my ally will treat me as an enemy” is the mildest form of description of the natural development. The PCs may be seen as the weakest link in a long chain by other string-pullers and masterminds, to be molested because its the quickest route to an advantage. Oftentimes, they will be targeted before they even know an enemy exists, let alone who they are and what they want. Sometimes, their ‘allies’ will seek to test them before relying on them too heavily – ‘friendly fire’ burns just as hot as any other kind.

      0.6.3 Directly Trade-Related: New Markets

      It is often said that a business that is not trying to expand is a business that is stagnating, if not overtly contracting, because rivals will be seeking to expand into your territory.

      Opening new markets can be a fraught activity. It immediately earns the enmity of everyone who benefits from the status quo more than they will if the PCs succeed. Some will be openly hostile for this reason; others for loftier reasons of trying to prevent the locality from being ground zero of a trade war.

      Overcoming resistance often means greasing the wheels in the form of doing favors for influential people in the hopes that those people will at least remain neutral, if not become supportive. And any of those ‘favors’ can be an adventure unto itself.

      0.6.4 Directly Trade-Related: Demand & Marketing

      Marketing is the means by which demand for what you are selling is increased, or even created. It rarely comes without a price, and those marketing activities that don’t cost are rarely as effective as those that do. Marketing puts people (read ‘PCs’) at ground zero for getting mixed up in things that otherwise wouldn’t concern them. It therefore creates a direct connection to adventures that would otherwise have no point of connection to the campaign at all.

      0.6.5 Directly Trade-Related: Costs & Labor

      Anything that affects the costs, or the labor relationships, of doing business are of critical interest to the merchant and his suppliers. Take thirty seconds to appreciate that inter-guild relationships can be just as messy and just as political as any direct engagements with government agencies. Ripple effects are very real, and let he who thinks himself immune cast the first stone (because they will, anyway, so they may as well take the blame).

      Another source of fun can be the conflict between the modern values of the players and those of the world inhabited by their characters. For example, the Blacksmith’s Guild might lead its members out ‘on strike’ for an increase in the Guild Pay Scales sufficient that their members can retire a few years before their profession kills them from overwork. They do hot, hard labor, and that’s always prone to heart failures. Sounds utterly reasonable to a modern audience. But the society isn’t geared up to handle anything this disruptive – the issue will be deeply divisive, and allies who the PCs thought they could trust will see their attitudes as a betrayal of principle.

      0.6.6 Indirectly Trade-related: Politics At Home (General)

      I’ve already expounded on the topic of politics. The PCs will be required to take sides. The fun becomes inevitable when the people whose policies they most want to support are untrustworthy, while those they most want to oppose are at least honest and respectable.

      0.6.7 Directly Trade-related: Politics At Home (Trade)

      Of course, any politics directly affecting trade also directly affects any PCs involved in trade. And, more than perhaps any other human activity, politics always comes with baggage and fallout.

      0.6.8 Indirectly Trade-related: Politics Abroad

      It’s not just politics at home, though. If you are planning to sell in a foreign nation (for like, more profit), you are just as prone to being impacted by the politics there as anything else – but, because it’s more distant, it’s that much harder to keep your finger on the pulse. Things that might have easily been headed off, if you had known about them in time, will tend to grow beyond the scope of such intervention by the time you even know about them.

      Such political connections often interact in unexpected ways. The head of the local intelligence service (if rumors are to be believed) approaches you because he’s heard that you are going to be operating in Kingdom X. He’s all in favor of that – trade can bind nations together for mutual benefit and make wars less likely. He offers to smooth over a couple of local political problems that might get in the way (and this may be the first that the PCs know of such problems, the implication being that they will be manufactured to get in their way if they don’t accept his offer), and all they have to do in return is make room in their operation for a couple of sons of friends of his. Nothing more.

      Right away, the PCs should suspect that these will be spies, reporting directly to the intelligence agency. They can either go along with the proposal or not, but doing so is the lesser of two evils – if the spies don’t get caught. Seeing this as the big danger, they make it clear to the spymaster that if these sons of friends get caught doing anything that the PCs haven’t sanctioned, they will be cut loose immediately. He replies, “that seems prudent. Very well, we have an agreement.”

      And for a while, all goes well. All sorts of doors open unexpectedly for the PCs and the trade expedition gets off the ground surprisingly easily. Soon, they are boots on the ground in the capital of Kingdom X, and making all sorts of business connections and selling merchandise quite happily. The ‘sons of friends’ are intelligent and capable and pull their weight. It all looks like working out wonderfully.

      And then one of the PCs discovers that they aren’t spies at all – they are assassins, waiting for an opportunity to eliminate a firebrand adviser to the throne who is advocating going to war with their home Kingdom.

      Now, what do they do…?

      0.6.9 Indirectly Trade-related: Politics En Route

      To get to C, you usually have to travel through B. And that means that the politics of B can have their own profound effects on your trade with C. ‘Nuff said.

      0.6.10 Indirectly Trade-related: Crime

      Wherever you go, there will be crime. How much and of what kinds is often a function of the society that surrounds them. Those criminal elements will inevitably interact with anyone doing business in the vicinity, generally to the detriment of the business-people. Will the PCs pay the devil his (claimed) due? And, if not, how many ‘object lessons’ will they be subjected to?

      0.6.11 Tangentially Trade Related: From A to B with Handicaps

      And all that leaves out the natural challenges of getting a cargo, perhaps a fragile one, from point A to point B. These can be the most straightforward of all adventures, and a welcome anodyne to the politically-enmeshed usual adventures of a trader!

That brings the introduction to a close. In the next part, we start getting into the nitty-gritty of making trade practical in terms of the Meta-perspective, after a brief excursion into questions of business ownership.

And, for the record, I’m on track for 16-17 posts in the series…

Comments (6)

Sweet Sweet Music: Bardic Repertoires


What non-magical songs should a bard know? There’s more to it than you might think.

The Wedding DJ

At a wedding some years back, I got to talking with the DJ about song selection. It was a fascinating conversation that I’ll do my best to recreate, but it was so long ago that I don’t think I can do it verbatim.

He started with a mixtape of generic pop. The main factor was that anything to be chosen for a later purpose was excluded – this is what was left. It was intended to play at the reception while people ate and chatted.

After that, he would go to his library and start selecting music based on crowd response.

He started with some easy listening, even softer stuff than had played through the meal. Again, this was to facilitate conversation until the toasts and such were completed.

Then it became more complicated. Once the toasts were completed, he turned to his list of crowd favorites – “bangers” that never failed to pull people to the dance-floor. He had about ten of these, and would play only two or three of them at this point.

He would then switch to rock and pop classics – songs that you could dance to but that didn’t have the “X” factor that brought people to their feet every time. These gradually grew lighter over the next 45 minutes or so, and then it was time for him to take a break – just in time for the bride and groom to return after changing, and some more speeches.

When those were over, it was round two for the “bangers” – another 2 or 3 of them.

His next selection was based on the age of the bride and groom – if they were kids of the 70s, he played 70’s rock. If they were from the 80s, he played 80s, and so on.

After about 45 minutes, he made a conscious switch to the dance music favored by younger crowds.

About 45 minutes later, as older guests started to say their goodbyes, he played non-dance music from the 50s, 60s, and 70s – the sort of thing that would be inoffensive to the older audience, and he turned the volume down.

Then it was time for the last round of Bangers, including a couple that were a little on the risque side, as he announced that it was time for the party to really begin. The rest of the night was filled with a variety of music, with every fifth song being a non-dance tune to give revelers a chance to have a drink and rest.

If ever the energy began to dip, he would repeat one of his early bangers.

But that was for a standard wedding reception. He also needed a separate playlist for more religious types, and another for Jewish weddings, and a completely separate selection for a wake, and still another for a Birthday party.

All told, he said that he actively maintained about 200 specific variations on different tapes and CD-Roms.

Interpretation

All this was a reflection of applying his music supply to different purposes and different segments of an age-differentiated audience,

Sometimes the purpose was to permit conversation while providing some background filler. Sometimes it was to fill the dance-floor or keep those already there dancing. Always, because weddings are supposed to be happy, upbeat affairs, it was light and positive – no blues or sad songs or breakup songs permitted!

If he was to provide services to a wake, the song selection would be completely different. And, while the selection would not be all that different at a Birthday Party (for an adult), the purposes would be somewhat different, and the whole affair would probably be less rigidly formalized.

Bard Tales & other applications

All this is very useful to a GM because it can be applied to a Bard’s repertoire and things like a jukebox or playlist in any modern/futuristic era.

All that needs to be done is to list the different purposes that a Bard would need to cater for, then come up with 2-3 songs for each purpose.

The list of 10 major categories (and several sub-categories) that I’ve come up with is not exhaustive. Each GM can and should amend it or add to it as they see fit.

    1. Travel Songs

    Songs to make the miles at least seem to pass faster. Often martial in theme, stirring listeners to a March, but some can be more gentle and numbing to the senses. This category also includes epic ballads and such never-ending stories.

    2. Working Songs

    Like Travel Songs, this category is all about setting a rhythm for the performance of some task like chopping wood or harvesting fields.

    3. Celebration Songs

    There would be a couple of generic celebration songs, but for the most part, these will differ according to the subject of the celebration. So I need to go to subcategories.

      3a. Weddings

      Always a festive occasion, even when the bride and groom (or their parents) are at each other’s throats.

      3b. Births

      Children meant a chance of succession, of an heir. All the wee bubs have to do is survive, and sometimes that’s a tall order. Every birth is something to be celebrated in a medieval culture. And at most more modern eras, children tend only to be born when wanted and when the economic circumstances permit it (yes, I know, that’s not the sad reality). But by and large, a successful birth is still something to celebrate.

      3c. Royal Weddings

      I could have put this under several categories, but ‘Weddings” was already here and undeniably appropriately so. A King or high Nobleman becoming married raised the prospect of a royal heir, and a stronger chance of avoiding civil war. That last is worth celebrating, if nothing else.

      3d. Royal Heirs

      Which, logically, leads to the next subcategory. Children always represent hope for the future – if their parents are despotic, you hope that the children will be more enlightened, if their parents are more enlightened, you hope that the child learns from them and becomes a continuation of the same policies.

      Of course,.there’s no certainty that an heir will survive long enough to inherit, especially in more ancient / feudal societies. Heck, right up to the turn of the 19th century into the 20th, medical science was barely begun.

      In modern times, we routinely prevent, cure or treat conditions that were almost-universally fatal back in the day, and infant mortality rates have fallen dramatically as a result. But that’s no reason for complacency, as COVID clearly showed.

      So births were, are, and will continue to be, causes for celebration.

      3e. Age Milestones

      By the same logic, age milestones would or should also be celebrated. At their most general, we’re talking about Birthdays; but there can be many special ages marking the road to maturity that would also be celebrated in song.

      That being said, it’s easy to forget that until it was invented as a target demographic in the 1950s, there was no such thing as a “teenager”. Instead, you went from infant to child to youth. The differences may be subtle, but they can be profound in terms of social expectations.

      It doesn’t take much logic to extend this practice through the age of maturity to milestones later in life. Medieval Cultures had no concept of a retirement age, but they would have had an age of infirmity at which most people who lived long enough were no longer fit to fully work within their profession.

      A Slight Digression: Average Lifespan under the microscope

      It’s perhaps worth digressing for a moment to correct a false impression that many have as to the meaning of an average lifespan. Quite simply, it means as many people die at that age or older as die at that age or younger.

      That means that perceptions can get distorted massively by infant mortality.

      In medieval society, mortality was usually 8%, rocking up to 12% in times of hardship (famine, flood) and as high as 20% if there was a ghastly disease about, which happened once in maybe 10 years.

      This rate persisted until the age of 4 and then started to decline until it was down to around 5% at age 13 or so. In this time, accident and misadventure tended to replace disease as the #1 killer.

      The death rate continues to about 3% at age 17, and it stays there until the age of 25, when it begins an ever-so-slow creep upwards. By age 30, it’s back to 5%; then up 0.5% every year or so until we get to age 50. From this age, the rate of increase doubles until age 60, then doubles again to age 70, and then it levels off abruptly back at a steady 20% or so, until it gets to the oldest recorded age -5, when it leaps up to about 30% and stays there.

      What has to be remembered is that these percentages are not fractions of the total number of people born (i.e. the whole population), they are fractions of those who survived this long.

      So let’s do some simple math and get the average lifespan, and then see what the infant mortality (through to the age of 4) does to it.

      0-6 months: 8% leaves 92%
      6 months – 1 year: 8% x 92% = 7.36%; 92 – 7.36 = 84.64%
      Age 1-2: 8% x 84.64% = 6.77%; 84.64 – 6.77 = 77.87%
      Age 2-3: 8% x 77.87% = 6.23%; 77.87 – 6.23 = 71.64%
      Age 3-4: 8% x 71.64% = 5.73%; 71.84 – 5.73 = 65.91%

      So that’s an overall infant mortality of a fraction over 34%. Essentially, 1 in 3 children die before the age of 4 – under this best-case scenario. But we aren’t initially going to count those – let’s look only at the 2 in 3 that make it this far..

      Age 4-5: 7.667% x 100% = 7.667%; 100 – 7.667 = 92.33%
      Age 5-6: 7.333% x 92.33% = 6.77; 92.33 – 6.77 = 85.56%
      Age 6-7: 7% x 85.56% = 5.99%; 85.56 – 5.99 = 79.57%
      Age 7-8: 6.667% x 79.57% = 5.31%; 79.57 – 5.31 = 74.27%
      Age 8-9: 6.333% x 74.27% = 4.7%; 74.27 – 4.7 = 69.56%
      Age 9-10: 6% x 69.56% = 4.17; 69.56 – 4.17 = 65.39%
      Age 10-11: 5.667% x 65.39% = 3.71%; 65.39 – 3.71 = 61.68%
      Age 11-12: 5.333% x 61.68% = 3.29%; 61.68 – 3.29 = 58.40%
      Age 12-13: 5% x 58.40% = 2.92%; 58.4 -2.92 = 55.48%
      Age 13-14: 4.5% x 55.48% = 2.5%; 55.48 – 2.5 = 52.98%
      Age 14-15: 4% x 52.98% = 2.12%; 52.98-5.12 = 50.86%
      Age 15-16: 3.5% x 50.86% = 1.78%; 50.86% = 49.08%
      Age 16-17: 3% x 49.08% = 1.47%; 49.08 – 1.47 = 47.61%
      Age 17-18: 3% x 46.18% = 1.43%; 47.61 – 1.43 = 46.18%

      It’s easy to see why children were often married as soon as they were physically able to bear young. 55.48% – 46.18% is a difference of 9.3%, and an extra 9.3% children being born – potentially more – is a significant level of population growth.

      I’m using a spreadsheet for these calculations, so I’m just going to hit the high points:

      Age 20-21: 40.88% surviving
      Age 29-30: 30.74% surviving
      Age 32-33: 25.94% surviving
      Age 35-36: 20.86% surviving
      Age 42-43: 10.37% surviving
      Age 47-48: 5.53% surviving
      Age 53-54: 1.9% surviving
      Age 56-57: 1% surviving
      Age 59-60: 0.44% surviving
      Age 63-64: 0.11% surviving
      Age 65-66: 0.05% surviving
      Age 68-69: 0.010 3% surviving

      That doesn’t sound like a lot, but that’s still 1 for every 10,000 citizens. A million people and it’s 103 people this age. So let’s keep going:

      Age 75-76: 0.001 02% surviving – or 10 in a million
      Age 85-86: 0.000 11% surviving – or 1 in a million (909,091 if you want to get technical).
      Age 96-97: 0.000 009 4% surviving – or 1 in about 10 million
      Age 106-107: 0.000 001 01% surviving or 1 in about 100 million
      Age 116-117: 0.000 000 11% surviving, or about 1 in 1 billion
      Age 126-117: 0.000 000 008 9% surviving, or about 1 in 10 billion

      (The earth currently has a population of about 8 billion).

      I’ve set the highest recorded age to 131-132.

      To get the life expectancy, I multiply the calculated death rate (adjusting for surviving population) by the age, add up the calculated death rates (should be close to 100 but there’s lots of room for rounding errors to accumulate) and divide the first total by the second.

      With these numbers, I get 22.24 years. And that’s without counting infant mortality. Which tells me that the death rates used are too high, possibly twice what they should be, possibly more.

      If I make that adjustment, I get 33.34, which is more what I expected to see.

      I set out to look at the impact of the infant mortality rate. If I include those youngsters, I get an average age (original death rates) of 15.33, down from 22.24 – a difference of 6.91 years. If I use the lowered death rates, it’s 27.57, down from 33.34, a difference of 5.77 years.

      And if I increase the mortality rates to the plague levels? I get an average lifespan of 9.64 years – down from 15.33 – another 5.69 years.

      Infant mortality can wipe more than 11 years off life expectancy numbers.

      3f. Military Victories

      Getting back on track, songs celebrating (your country’s) military victories are always going to be as popular as the military action was in the first place – while military protest songs will be popular in proportion to the opposition to that military action.

      Songs celebrating World War 2? Popular. Songs critical of the Vietnam conflict? Popular. The difference: public perception of the conflict.

      Pro-war celebratory songs are especially popular with those who served (and survived) a campaign and those currently serving in the military. The canny bard will always look for men of military bearing amongst a crowd of patrons, especially near any kind of military base or fortification.

      3g. Tales of Heroism

      Bards weren’t just the pop music of their day, they were the TVs and cinemas, too. The choice of which type of story to tell would depend on the audience – a dockside tavern is probably not the right place for a sappy love story. Tales of heroes are fairly safe just about everywhere, though.

      3h. Downfall Of A Tyrant

      With this item, a bard heads into dangerous ground, but told at the right time in the right place, this sort of story would hold an audience rapt. If the kingdom has an enlightened ruler, and recently overthrew a tyrant to place said ruler on the throne, this is a safe and welcome choice. If one or both of those things are not true, performing this sort of material is a risky proposition.

      You might still get away with it if your story relates to a tyrannical ruler from the distant past. Any other circumstance combination could end with your head in a noose.

    4. Dance Songs

    How many dance styles are popular, or were popular in recent times, locally? The good bard would know at least two songs suited to each. I don’t know a lot about dance styles, but do know that one defining characteristic is that until the 1950s, virtually all dance styles involved physical contact with the partner. Even in the 1950s, that’s true of some of the styles, but by the 60s, all that had changed. For this reason, it’s not a good idea to simply take a style you know from now and give it a new name – better to choose something older, even if you have to do a bit of research first.

    5. Nature Songs

    Songs that educate as to the nature of things, from a practical standpoint, that educate about the natural world. Lessons set to music in this way are actually often easier to memorize, I don’t know why. It’s not just that they are easier to recall because you have the melody in your head as well as the lyrics.

    6. Politics Songs

    These are educational songs, for example a list of the aristocracy within the current kingdom or known world. Or how the government works. Or the latest court gossip.

    There’s an important social distinction to be made in decided these songs – is dissent tolerated? For a long time, it wasn’t. But it’s perfectly acceptable now to discuss the merits and foibles of current and former heads of sate or members f a political party. That’s a change that came with democracy – in order to elect people, you have to know who they are and what they stand for.

    It’s fair to say that Bards were also the internet of their day!

    I’ve also listed a couple of sub-categories that seemed obvious to me.

      6a. Current Affairs set to Music

      News of the world, my friend. What’s been happening lately?

      6b. History set to Music

      Songs that are tied to significant past events, both within this country and abroad.

    7. Humorous Songs

    This category takes us back into the realm of deliberate entertainment.

    8. Drinking Songs

    It’s also an obvious gateway to this sort of song, which is going to be extremely popular in certain places. I’m not sure that a wedding is the right setting for this category, though.

    9. Bawdy Singalong Songs

    Once a group are sufficiently lubricated by Drinking Songs, it’s time for a good old-fashioned singalong. And the most popular such would be ever so slightly risque I think, simply for the titillation factor.

    10. Children’s Songs

    My last category is one that should be obvious but that’s often overlooked. Not just nursery rhymes, these are songs that are designed to entertain and educate children. They can also be used to evoke a sense of nostalgia in an older audience who were exposed to them as children themselves.

Song Selection

If you were to populate most of these ten categories with ‘classic’ songs (invented, of course), and then let the player use those as a style guide to inventing 1-2 more, you could fill out a bardish repertoire in short order, one unique to each bard.

Not only is this a little bit of personal color to attach to the individual, it enhances the interaction between the bard and any patrons that he seeks to entertain.

You used to hear it bandied about all the time on shows like American Idol – “Song Choice”. The right song at the right time to the right audience and you’ll be a smash hit; get one of these wrong, and you might fall flat. Always remember the lesson of the Wedding DJ, choose your songs to fit the occasion and the purpose of the moment, and integrate your character more closely with the world around them.

Application to other Genres

NB: Links are to artists and songs that are less likely to be known to American / British readers of the modern day.

So let’s step out of the D&D / Fantasy world and into more modern times. Let’s start sometime in the mid-sixties, and a bar of some sort (it might even be a milk bar).

What’s going to be on the jukebox?

I remember talking to the manager of a bowling alley a long time ago – this would have been in the early-to-mid-seventies, and my cousin and I were there because they had this new candy that you couldn’t buy anywhere else, “Moon Rocks” – these days, fairly generic orange-flavored popping candy, but back then, innovative.

He told me that there were “Chick Songs” and “Guy Songs” and a fairly limited crossover between the two. The latter was small enough to be negligible. You wanted your jukebox selection to be 2-to-1 “Chick Songs” because if you had girls present, guys would follow, but if you had too many guys hanging around, it would drive girls away. “You have to get the mix just right,” he said.

It was that last statement that stuck in my memory, because “the mix” means several different things in music.

Again, we’re talking about songs with a purpose, but with a more generic and less-discriminating classification system, and maybe after that we’re into musical styles. How many romantic ballads? How many top-40 just because they’re popular? How many rock songs? How many dance tracks? How many “classics”? and how many “throwbacks”?

(What’s a “throwback”? It’s a song that would have been popular in the clientele’s parents time, but that has managed to cross over to a more youthful market. If we’re talking mid-sixties, Elvis, and “Music To Watch Girls By” (probably the Andy Williams version) and Chubby Checker’s “The Twist”, for example. I can remember one jukebox that I encountered in Sydney that had a couple of songs by Nana Mouskouri and several by Demis Roussos on the playlist!) Some people would argue that Tom Jones and Buddy Holly belong in this bucket as well.

One factor immediately leaps up and demands recognition: once again, the playlist has to reflect the clientele. While both Mouskouri and Roussos had some crossover success, they were most popular with Greek immigrants to Australia; a significant presence on a jukebox means that the owners of the business (a fish-and-chips shop) were probably Greek, and likely, a number of their customers, too.

But let’s disregard that cultural influence and go for a more generic selection.

By far the two most popular bands of the era were the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, with the Beach Boys probably in third place. Let’s devote one full column of the jukebox to those artists just because they’re popular.

Right away, there’s another question: is this before or after the “We’re bigger than god” PR gaffe? Where is this jukebox located? If it’s in the North or California in the US, or in the UK, this factor will have negligible impact, but in the south, where there were public burnings of Beatles records as a result, it could make a big difference. Again, it comes back to your clientele demographic and choosing songs that will appeal to them.

Half of the next column will be ‘oldies but classics’ (i.e. Throwbacks) that would still be popular. In Australia, songs like “Evie” by Stevie Wright, “The Real Thing” by Russell Morris, and “Eagle Rock” by Daddy Cool would fill that portion of the playlist – you could still find these on Jukeboxes in the naughtiest here (if you found a jukebox at all)! Other perennial favorites here were / are “Peppermint Twist” by The Sweet and “Venus” by Shocking Blue, sometimes swapped out for “Radar Love” by Golden Earring. I’ve already listed the artists that I think would occupy this slot in the US at the time, in defining the category.

Most jukeboxes have four columns of ten singles each, so that’s 15 out of 40 filled.

Let’s dedicate the rest of the second column to the top five non-Beatles / Stones / Beach Boys songs of the last week. That’s half the jukebox done.

2/3 of the remaining 20 have to be “Chick Songs”, i.e. songs that appeal to girls. Of these, 1/3 can be romantic ballads by male singers, 1/3 by 50s / 60s girl groups like the Chiffons, the Supremes, and so on, and the last 1/3 would be solo or lead female acts. 2/3 of 20 is 13, so that’s 4 of each and one “oddball” that doesn’t fit any classification neatly but that the owner likes.

And that leaves 7 songs that are “guy” songs – “Born To Be Wild” by Steppenwolf is an obvious choice, something by the Troggs, maybe “Hang On Sloopy” by the McCoys, a Kinks song, and 3 others.

And that’s our Jukebox

One final wrinkle

A number of singles got reissued through the years, sometimes as a ‘double-A Jukebox release” – which took one hit song and put another on the “B”-side, not necessarily by the same artist (but from the same label). These were designed to double the number of popular songs on a jukebox, because – let’s be frank – most of the “B”-side songs on the original releases were nowhere near as popular (or as good) as the “A”-sides. There were some notable exceptions, referred to in the music industry as “Double. A-sides” – perhaps the most famous of which is Strawberry Fields Forever / Eleanor Rigby.

This was not at all a common phenomenon, but it would have boosted some of the contents by a handful of popular songs.

Let’s talk Playlists

An evolution of the jukebox that I found fascinating, but that didn’t seem to catch on, was a precursor to the modern playlist.

Instead of a 45 RPM single, the jukebox held entire CDs. You selected a CD and could then pick three tracks from it, or select one and then select a second CD. So you had whole albums to select from. It was extremely popular to use “Greatest Hits” albums in such machines – instead of one, two, or three good tracks, you had 15-20 from each such CD. Also popular were compilation CDs of recent hits (“Now That’s What I Call Music” are the leading providers of such compilations these days, along with the Ministry Of Sound).

But even without such, 40 CDs with 10-12 tracks each is still a range of maybe 440 tracks. I have vague memories of a bar somewhere near the major cinema complexes here in Sydney, having some time to kill before my movie started, and playing Alice Cooper’s “No More Mister Nice Guy” from one of these jukeboxes).

These days, playlists are curated by individuals for specific purposes or moods. “Favorites”, “Workout songs”, “Driving Songs”, “Chill-out Songs” – you name it, and maybe multiple versions of each.

I know one person who curates their playlists by length – 30 minutes, 45 minutes, 60 minutes each.

Ultimately, these are an expression of individuality, and the song choices should therefore say something about the individual – or should they?

Personal musical taste is a perennial topic on Quora and the consensus is always that it’s a personal thing that doesn’t say a darn thing about the personality of the individual. People like what they like. And, furthermore, tastes evolve over time – there are songs that I didn’t think very highly of, 20 years ago, that now have musical merit to me, and some songs that I’ve grown tired of.

Me, I have just one huge playlist with over 4500 songs on it, with the tracks housed on two 8Gb USB sticks – and have run out of room to add more (I guess one of them will have to be upgraded to a 16Gb unit!) Not only does my software merge the contents of both drives, and remember what’s just been playing, it also shuffles the playlist and records that shuffle so that it can pick up exactly where it was up to, the next time I load it. Total continuous playing time is well over 4 weeks – with no repeats.

One Final Word

Let’s be honest, most people can’t sing very well. And most people can’t write songs very well, either. I can write lyrics or compose music, but I have never been good at putting the two together.

When you name a song, write a quick description – no more than a line. Don’t, for the love of heaven, write full lyrics for the song. No, no, no! Not only do you not have time to recite them in play, but the other players and GM have too much to do to try and interpret your attempted poetic leanings. It might be different if you were a successful musician in real life – but most of the time, that won’t be the case.

The other reason is that this is an attempt to steal and hold the spotlight for the length of your song – but most of the evening is going to be hand-waved. If you stick to just song titles and descriptions, you can cue the GM as to what the expected reaction is from the crowd, and together cab duet your way to a more satisfying scene for all concerned.

Let’s end with these famous lines from The Blues Brothers:

    “What kind of music do you usually get here?”
    “Oh, we got both kinds, Country and Western.”

EDIT 3 October 2024

Lots of useful information and ideas can be gleaned from this article, discovered long after the above was published: Shakespeare, Kings, and Commoners All Loved These Hit English Ballads by Indi Bains | Atlas Obscura.

Leave a Comment

Dominoes and Daisy Chains: Writing Adventures


The subject this week is adventure writing and structure. I have evolved a fairly functional process to translating ideas into ready-to-run plots over the years, and today I’m going to share it. This can be viewed as a companion piece to One word at a time: How I (usually) write a Blog Post, which has been where I refer readers who ask how I do it, at least until now.

This is a modified version of an Image by Peggy und Marco Lachmann-Anke. The original is from Pixabay.

This article has come about because I started writing the next adventure in my Dr Who campaign during the week and paid attention to the process. If he’s reading this before we play “Ogrons To The Left Of Me, Daleks To The Right,” I’d ask my player in that campaign to exit the article NOW. I’ll do my best to avoid spoilers, but there are no guarantees.

For everyone else out there, even if you don’t run a Dr Who campaign using The Sixes System, this article is still for you. While it may have been prompted by adventure prep for this specific campaign, I’ve kept the advice general so that it will apply to any campaign, any rules system, any genre. At worst, there may be an example or two from a particular genre that will need some ‘translation’ to show their relevance.

Starting Point

I always make sure that I have three things lined up before I start – no, four. These are frequently products of my campaign planning, so it usually doesn’t take a lot of work, but their absence can cause long delays and interruptions to the planning / writing process.

These are always to be avoided if possible. Once you interrupt, you have to spend time at your next writing session getting yourself back up to speed, and recapturing the flavor and tone. Pacing and Intensity also get more difficult to manage, and none of these consequences are in any way desirable.

On the plus side, at the start of a session you can be more focused and can often come up with ideas that you would never have thought of. In particular, if I reach a plot problem that I can’t immediately solve, a substantial break while it’s percolating away in the back of my mind can yield solutions.

    Time & The Mental Energy to use it

    The first thing is a 2-for-1 deal. I generally operate on the principle of three hours writing / prep = 1 hour’s play; sometimes it’s more, sometimes less, but overall, that average seems to work out about right.

    The problem is always estimating how much more you can get done in the remaining time available and what to prioritize. Complicating that issue, always, is the factor of polish – work can be completed to different standards of quality, and the perpetual issue is always, how good is good enough?

    I’ve written a past article on that very subject – in fact, several. The most useful are probably:
     

    What, perhaps, none of them emphasize adequately is that it isn’t enough just to have time – you need to have the mental energy to actually use that time productively. In general, that means being well-rested, not hungry, and (sometimes) having done some sort of mental warm-up to get yourself primed. Everyone’s a little different in this regard, so find out as quickly as you can what will work best for you – but be prepared; sometimes the right answer for any given individual will vary from one session to another for all sorts of complicated reasons, so your usual answer might not be the right answer on any given day. You need to be able to recognize when that’s the case, and quickly shift to the right model for this particular occasion if necessary.

    Working Title

    I always have a working title. Sometimes, that might be all I have, but I always have at least that much. Campaign context can sometimes flesh out that bare minimum.

    Vague Synopsis

    I always have, or start by creating, a vague synopsis of what’s going to happen in the adventure. Wherever possible, this will gloss over player agency by generalizing – in general, it won’t say anything about how something is to be achieved, for example.

    Sometimes, the most important part of an adventure (from a campaign perspective) is not the main action of the adventure. When that’s the case, it always gets relegated to a “b” plot thread and something has to get invented for the “a’ plot thread, i.e. the main action of the adventure, which is really just a vehicle for the important development in the background.

    A given adventure may conflate several such ‘b” threads – there should always be something for each character, but not all of them will have the same campaign-level significance. The key point here is to simply note that something is needed for Characters X, Y and Z to accompany these important bits for A, B, and C, and to make sure that there’s an “a’ thread which either runs alongside these secondary threads or evolves out of one or more of them.

    Reference & Research Material

    I like to have any research done ahead of time. This may include small snippets attached directly to the rough synopsis, or the synopsis may simply have pointers to external documents.

    Never fool yourself, by the way, into thinking that this is all the research that you will have to do, it’s almost always not the case. Like the plot synopsis, this is a starting point.

    Other Resources

    While it’s not necessary, it can be both useful and inspirational to have as much lined up in other resources as possible. My GMing style revolves heavily around presenting images to the players – their environment, encounters, and so on. Having those on hand helps write descriptions, sub-narratives, and so on – and can save you having to write hundreds of words because it’s all there in the image. So the more image-gathering you can do in advance, the better.

    I try to do the bulk of my image searching at the same time that I generate the synopsis. It’s hardly ever everything, but it’s a solid start.

Having made sure that I’ve got that all on-tap, I’m ready to go. I give each adventure its own folder within the campaign folder on my computer so that I have everything at hand. Numbering these is also a useful tip!

Depending on how abbreviated my initial synopsis is, I may need to expand it and flesh it out before I can move on to the first stage of actual adventure writing. There are three possible conditions in which I’ll find a particular synopsis, plus some that are in-between these primary statuses:

  1. Nothing but a working title. Obviously, more is going to be needed.
    • 1a. A working title AND implied content from the campaign synopsis / context. It’s a starting point that can provide guidance, but there’s more work needed before the adventure can be written.
  2. A one-sentence summary of the plotline. Needs expansion before the adventure can be written.
    • 2a. As above but with additional context from surrounding one-sentence summaries. Same work needed, but better guided.
    • 2b. As above but with one or more Plot thread summaries from which context or even a synopsis can be excerpted. This is the tipping point between having more work to do and being ready to go, and as such, sometimes the balance will fall one way and sometimes the other.
  3. A synopsis, possibly with campaign-level materials providing added context and detail. Excerpt anything you have, make sure that the two are actually consistent, and get ready to write.

Do whatever needs to be done to deliver a rough narrative constructed of short, generalized sentences. Wherever possible, these should either focus on PC-related developments (PCs “do whatever” – replace “Do” with an appropriate verb – ‘learn’ is a common one) or on Antagonist-related developments from a PC perspective (PCs discover / PCs react to, etc.)

Initial Expansion: Plot Points

The first stage of writing is to break the plot synopsis down into individual scenes. That’s what the bulk of this article will be about, in one way or another, but at the moment I’ll just hit the high points. I always do this electronically so that I can insert lines and move them around. It’s usually premature to number them at this point, but sometimes that’s necessary, just so that one plot point can refer to another in a shorthand way.

Rather than trying to keep any such numbering sequential, I’ll quite happily let the vary all over the place so that I’m not wasting time simply updating the sequential running and and references elsewhere throughout – only to have to do it again with the next change made, and again with the one after that, and so on.

There are a number of things that I’ll pay active attention to. These follow a logical sequence, but that means that the one that needs the most explanation winds up in the middle, so I’m going to present these out-of-sequence.

    Initial Expansion 1: Internal Logic

    Every step in the story has to follow the previous ones in a sequence that is logical if you know what’s going on. In particular, you have to be careful with assumptions about what the PCs know and what the players understand, and what they may choose to do.

    If the players need to know something, make sure that there’s a scene in which they learn it or are reminded of it.

    If the players need to understand the implications of something that they know, make sure that there’s a scene in which someone can point out the bleeding obvious – or in which a PC gets the final piece of the puzzle to figure this out on their own. The latter is generally preferable but not always plausible.

    If there is a significant possibility of players choosing to do something else, you need a branch off the main plot to deal with that and guide them toward a satisfactory resolution of the adventure, even if these are only rough notes. The last thing you ever want is for the whole adventure to fall apart because you’ve made a flawed assumption. Waiting until later in the writing process often causes trouble because you can’t always see the forest for the trees.

    Initial Expansion 2: Transitions

    If two scenes are completely unrelated, there often needs to be a bridging scene in between them. See also 6, Gaps and Intervals, below.

    Initial Expansion 4: Options and Flags

    I’m always looking for places where I can require the characters to make a choice.

    An Option is a place in the plot where there is a significant decision of some sort (in terms of plot).

    A Flag is a place in the plot where the consequences of a decision impact the plot. Often, one will follow immediately after an Option, but sometimes Options can have a delayed impact.

    I pay particular attention to making sure that there is always a path back to the main plot, even if its’ inconvenient or difficult. NEVER have an Option that paints the characters into a corner with no way out.

    These usually come about because I didn’t pay enough attention to the three red flags in Initial Expansion 1.

    Initial Expansion 5: Tone & Pacing

    Although it’s far too soon to make final decisions in this respect, I always keep an eye on the Tone and Pacing, even at this early stage. Things need to get more dramatic, more suspenseful, and more exciting as the adventure unfolds and heads toward a climax.

    For contrast and the growth of these tonal factors, you need period catch-your-breath moments.

    If you can develop a natural rhythm of pace in the course of the adventure, it can pay dividends, but try not to let it become a straitjacket.

    You only have a limited window post-climax to deal with aftermaths – anything beyond that is usually best left for a scene in the next adventure.

    For more on Pacing and Emotional Intensity, see

    You can also get a slightly divergent take on the subject from

    Tone is somewhat harder to pin down in terms of what works and what doesn’t. You can juxtapose divergent styles for contrast, but sometimes this can result in mental whiplash for you, the players, or both, so it needs to be done carefully. At the same time, tone should never stand still – you can’t be unremittingly grim and gritty all the time, you need some relief along the way.

    I find that the length of the ‘relief scenes’ is critical. A very short one can be a splash of cool water to the face to wake everyone up; a longer one gives time for mental adjustment before returning to doom and gloom (or vice-versa). Most scenes are neither, not without conscious decisions by the GM.

    But some juxtapositions don’t work as easily or effortlessly as others, and some don’t provide sufficient contrast. There isn’t a lot of difference between “Ominous Developments” and “Doom And Gloom”, for example, and “Slapstick” and “Doom And Gloom” rarely place nice with each other.

    There are no hard-and-fast rules, or even good guidelines – it’s too individualistic and too dependent on content and character personality and player personality for that. You just have to learn what works, and the logical starting point is making sure that the tonal landscape feels right to you, then making allowances.

    Initial Expansion 6: Gaps & Intervals

    When the locations in which two successive scenes take place are widely separated in space, and the same character or characters are to be involved in both, you have a Gap that needs filling with a Transition of traveling from A to B. Sometimes, even when the party are divided, you may need a Transition, but that’s covered under Initial Expansion 2, above.

    Similarly, an Interval is a separation in Time. There are occasions when this can be hand-waved, and occasions when it shouldn’t be – and these decisions can and should be impacted by Pacing considerations. There have been occasions when I’ve had to throw in a whole mini-encounter or mini-adventure because pacing demanded a certain level of energy and there was too much time to fill for hand-waving to work.

    A lot depends on GMing style and what the players are used to. The more soap-opera daily-life you generally deal with, the more unacceptable a significant hand-wave becomes; instead you almost always need something in between to fill up the time AND something after that to re-establish tone and pacing. And that can mean adding an “A+” plot thread and splitting the “A” thread over two or more adventures.

    Initial Expansion 3: Infodump Placement

    The most complicated question of all is how and when to give the players the information and analysis that they need to make informed decisions and that their characters may need to experience in-game.

    I have four preferred approaches that I list below in sequence of preference.

      Initial Expansion 3a. Piecemeal Discovery

      If I can spread an infodump out over multiple scenes, and have players learn one thing after another with time to digest things in between, so much the better.

      The actual delivery method can be the same or different, but the keyword “Discovery” is critical – these are infodumps as something that the player (and character) find out in-game.

      The key is to then cut away (and, if necessary, back in time) to something completely different, that will occupy a similar slice of time (both in-game and at-the-table) or more – before resuming.

      But there is a danger in over-fragmenting the information – prior pieces can be forgotten if the interruption lasts too long, and the target size will vary from player to player, GM to GM, and even genre to genre.

      Sometimes, there are no good answers in terms of piecemeal discovery, and more often, this provides only a partial solution to the problem of Infodump Management. Time to move on to option 3b.

      Initial Expansion 3b. Dialogue Delivery

      It’s almost always better to provide an infodump in dialogue form in a manner which lets the players stop and interrupt and back the speaker up to go over something, not understood, a second time. But this can’t be a long speech by an NPC, it needs to be more interactive.

      Avoiding that Long Speech may require the info-dump to be broken up into multiple sources and vectors – that’s the principle behind the Piecemeal Discovery, really.

      Sometimes, that’s not possible. If there’s no alternative but to deliver a long speech, consider using Option 3c. And if there’s no-one appropriate to actually put the information into dialogue form, then you need a higher-level solution – 3c or 3d.

      Initial Expansion 3c. Written Reference

      When it’s especially important for the players to be able to refer to information received at a briefing into the future, consider putting that briefing into the form of a written reference. Structure this to be as easily-assimilated and cross-referenced as possible. Give one or more players a hardcopy, and structure a scene involving someone else so that play continues while they have a chance to read the material – or even consider giving it to them in advance, or at the end of play so that they can read it between sessions.

      I want to sound one particular note of warning here: Be extremely careful of commitments to ongoing written references. These will almost always turn around and bite you at some point. Let’s say, for example, that a character has managed to get there hands on a rare book that is filling in a huge gap in their knowledge of the game world. You tell them that it’s going to take time to read it properly, and that to simulate that, you’ll provide a new chapter every few days, game time, for the player to take away and read between game sessions. The condition of the pages, dodgy handwriting and spelling, and some difficulty in translation, can be used to account for any delays in the process, for example if a chapter isn’t quite ready, the supposition can be that it took longer to read and interpret than usual.

      This is an ongoing commitment to supplying ‘translated’ material – a book, to be delivered one chapter at a time. For a while, all will be well – but eventually, you will find yourself falling behind. I speak from experience! In the future, I intend to only use this approach when I have the completed text already done for the whole book, and not just the opening chapter or two.

      The shorter the content, the better the chances of completing the project, and the less need there is to be really strict about this rule.

      I would use the following as guidelines, based on 1000 words per page:

      ♦ 0-1000 words:One document, don’t split it.
      ♦ 1000-1500 words:One or two parts.
      ♦ 1500-2500 words:Two-to-four parts.
      ♦ 2500-4000 words:Three-to-four parts.
      ♦ 4000-20,000 words:four-five parts, maximum.
      ♦ 20,000 words or more: Don’t start handing it out until the whole thing is complete.

      But, much of the time, you’ll only get 500-800 words to a page. Modern word processors seem to favor larger type and less-condensed fonts as defaults than those of past times – which, there’s no doubt, makes the text easier to read. Legibility always comes at the price of page count.

      My approach is generally to use the above as a guideline, and then format to fit the available space unless the size of the text gets TOO large as a result. My limits are about 14 point for body text and 20-point for headings, with sub-headings somewhere in between. I’ll work hard to try and fit a title onto one line, and if that doesn’t permit it to be larger than the heading size, I’ll make it the same size as the headings and do something to make the text stand out. Quite often, I’ll use a fancier font, as well – but I know what I’m doing in that respect, and a lot of people don’t. As a result, there have been some truly horrendous desktop publishing and websites over the years, especially in the early days of the web!

      Initial Expansion 3d. Substantial Infodumps

      The last resort is to have a substantial infodump delivered either as narration or as lecture from one or more NPCs in succession. No-one likes these – the players don’t like hearing them (they are there to play) and GMs don’t like delivering them because they can tell that they are boring the players – and too much of that and they will walk, or (at the very least) complain, or (at worst) not listen.

      You know your infodump is too long when players get out their mobile phones and start playing a video game, or responding to text messages. While sometimes the latter is inevitable, it should at most be a brief interruption for something important.

      So how do you do it?

      Hot Tip: Dialogue, Action, and Interaction as Punctuation

      Break the infodump up, especially if you can’t break it up.

      Sounds contradictory doesn’t it? But if you subdivide your infodump, and compress it as much as possible to the real facts that the PCs need, and intersperse these parts with dialogue and action and interaction with the PCs, you can deliver it a more-or-less continuous stream of a series of bite-sized pieces. It’s a far from perfect solution, but it works better than anything else that I’ve tried.

      In particular, try and separate analysis from information delivery. Give the raw information, then have a player roll to analyze it, or save the analysis for some other talking head down the track, or just give the bare-bones right now and leave the nuance for later.

    All of that means loading certain scenes with partial or complete infodumps, even breaking the delivery up into dedicated scenes within the plot.

    For more advice on Infodump Management, read 15 ways to Un-curse the Infodump.

You aren’t ready to begin writing, yet. Not by a long stretch. The goal is to structure the plot so strongly that if you have to, you can run the adventure from the structure alone, plus any characters needed.

Each scene should have either a name or a short, one-sentence description of its content. Once you have the basic story outlined, its’ time to add scene numbers if you haven’t already done so – starting with the first being listed as Scene 2.

Continuity I: From There to Here

That is done to create room for the next thing to do: to get from the end of the previous adventure to the start of this one. That can be a lot more complicated than it might seem, and it’s very easy to be complacent (or worse, overconfident).

In fact, there are nine different options. I choose between them largely on instinct, but deliberately try to vary the choices from one adventure to the next. A big factor is whether or not a particular choice gets the plot all the way to the start of the adventure proper, or if further scenes are needed.

I should add that everything in this section is part of “Scene 1: Introduction / Prologs” (or some other appropriate general name). Beneath that heading, there may be multiple sub-scenes.

A sub-scene is a partial or complete scene-within-a-scene. For example, you might have one sub-scene per PC just to touch on where they are and what they are doing. Or you may have the PCs in small groups, or engaging in conversations amongst themselves, or in conversations with NPCs, Or you might have everybody assembled in a group, with a single preliminary scene conveying the group to start of the adventure.

Another important element is the hook, which may be incorporated into this scene or be in scene 2. The hook is what is supposed to capture the interest of the PCs and players and propel them into the adventure. Problems arise when the players want their PCs to do something else, instead – i.e. don’t take the bait. Where you fear this may result, you can sometimes head things off that pass with a second round of scenes per PC in which they do, or start to do, something that they want to do – their choice, completely open but restricted to the choices that are available to them in whatever location they happen to be, unless they have access to a rapid-transit technology of some sort (including magical teleportation or flight). Once that’s done, if they are twiddling their thumbs and waiting, they will often be more receptive to your baited hook.

There have been occasions when it’s taken two or three rounds of “personal” sub-scenes or more to get everyone to that point of receptivity. In fact, as a general rule of thumb, it’s better to leave a sub-scene unfinished and return to it than it is to pursue it to a resolution – player gets briefed, player decides what to do, cut to the next player / character. The faster these inter-cuts, the more this will feel like a collage of simultaneous events, i.e. one multifaceted scene. It works especially well when one scene leads into another – scene 1g, character decides on a course of action, scene 1h, character knocks on another character’s door to make arrangements to implement that decision, scene 1i, second character contacts third character to fill in for first character, scene 1j, first character starts doing whatever it was they decided to do…

So, anyway, there are nine options to choose from as the starting point for this adventure.

    Choice 1: Right where you left off

    The most obvious choice is to pick up exactly where you left off. This is obviously the choice to make if you ended the previous session on a cliff-hanger of some sort.

    This choice can make for some tricky pacing, but there’s inherent drama in one problem immediately following another, or in taking the time in the introductory space to deal with any aftermath. Time is flexible here, and down-time doubly so; the premise is that you are hand-waving the time that doesn’t matter to get to the adventure that much more quickly.

    Choice 2: Logical Extrapolation

    Something similar is when your introduction extrapolates from the previous adventure. This is downtime/aftermath but more related to the headspace of the characters, and one of them reaching a conclusion about what has just happened that will lead the characters into a related adventure.

    The simplest example is when the PCs take down the apparent big bad in the previous adventure, and everything’s rosy until one of the PCs realizes that this apparent big bad didn’t have the resources to do everything attributed to him – he must have been nothing more than a lieutenant or flunky of the real big bad, who has had a free hand to recruit and reorganize while his enemies have been out there partying.

    Choice 3: Private Moments

    I’ve already described this approach as an example of Sub-scenes, above, so I won’t belabor the point. Instead, let’s focus on another issue that you have to deal with when adopting this approach: Spotlight time.

    I work very hard when taking the Private Moments approach to ensure that each PC receives a fair share of spotlight time. This isn’t quite as simple as it seems, because significance and emotional entanglement from the PCs point-of-view have to be taken into account.

    Although I never take the time to formally calculate it, what has to be equal across all PCs is

    Time x (Spotlight Intensity or Significance) x (PC Engagement – Group engagement).

    Because these scenes are normally played at the table in front of all the other players (thus facilitating the quick inter-cuts and conversations), there can be Private Moments in which the whole group becomes engaged.

    An example of that is the game show described in Deflection: A Game Show format for RPGs, (Part 1 and Part 2). While one character was the focal point, everyone got into the act because the scenes were devised to permit that, and the players got into the swing of things. You could actually picture them gathered around the (equivalent of) a TV set, shouting answers to the questions at the screen, even while at a metagame level they were helping the player in the spotlight simulate his character in the game-show situation.

    Choice 4: If Wishing Were Horses

    I’ve touched on this one, too – Each player in succession gets to state one thing they would like to do, the GM estimates how long each one would be, and then tells each player “You have X days more while you wait for Y, what else do you want to do?”

    “Y”, in this case, is whatever the slowest task is. But the GM can quite happily tell the player, “Y will take [so long] to complete, you can start it but won’t have time to finish it before the next adventure – and then select some value of less than Y for the ‘window’ available to all.

    The idea is that you want each PC to complete at least one personal project, milestone, or event of their choice in their ‘down time” or at least make significant progress toward it.

    This frequently then needs to be followed by choice 5, below.

    Choice 5: A Mini-adventure, or Getting The Band Back Together

    When PCs go their separate ways, or when they have a life beyond the group identity, it becomes necessary to then gather them up in response to the hook for new adventure, which may well have been delivered to a single PC as a natural outgrowth of that life beyond the group. This works so well for superhero, pulp, and Cthulhu genres that its almost ubiquitous, but I have also seen it successfully applied to the fantasy/D&D genre on more than one occasion.

    Used too much, it can be overdone; used semi-regularly, it can be a campaign feature; used occasionally, it can work in almost any setting.

    The concept often calls to mind Pippin in Gondor – after the initial confrontation between Gandalf and Denethor (climax of the previous adventure), Pippin is free to wander the city for a time, making friends and learning about his new surrounds. In time, though, he has to report for duty (rejoining the main plot), where he slowly becomes convinced of Denethor’s growing insanity.

    Choice 6: Action Stations!

    Especially useful when the previous session ended on a quiet or foreboding note is to start the next session in the middle of action, filling in the events leading up to “now” as a sequence of narrative flashbacks as you inform the players of the PCs current status.

    To work, you have to ensure that the choices you have made on behalf of the PCs are exactly (or at least, plausibly) the choices that the players would have made under the circumstances, so that player agency is not in dispute. You have to know the PCs very well to pull that off, but when you do, it can be a very useful and dramatic technique.

    When you aren’t so sure of that knowledge, you can backtrack just a little, to immediately after the start of action – “You were passing through a ravine when a patrol of Orcs swung down on ropes from above. Everyone except Dinor was surprised, giving the Orcs – except one who lost his grip and fell with a sickening thud! – time to get into position surrounding the party…”

    Choice 7: Teaser

    Any prolog that shows events that have not yet impacted the PCs from the perspective of someone else, in other words that is aimed at the players and not their characters, counts as a Teaser.

    Teasers can be difficult to use though – there absolutely has to be a payoff by the end of the day’s play (with one exception), or it will fall flat instead of raising expectations and anticipation.

    That exception is when you have a matching series – starting several adventures in a row with escalating variations or excerpts from the same (bigger) Teaser can compound the anticipation, building it up even higher.

    There is a limit to how much of that is permissible before it starts to fall flat, and that can be tricky to judge; and there is also a danger that the manifestation, when it finally comes, won’t live up to the hype. This technique should be applied with great forethought and planning to avoid these pitfalls – but it can be very effective when it works.

    You can get some more hints and tips on the handling of prologs from The Wandering Spotlight Part One of Two: Plot Prologues and the In The Beginning: Prologs In RPGs series, which analyzed no less than 18 types of Prolog!

    Choice 8: Unexpected Developments

    This is, effectively, choice 1, but starting with a plot twist which sends the (effectively ongoing) adventure lurching off in an entirely unexpected direction, or even the entire campaign!

    If the latter, it should be considered a signal that the campaign is rapidly headed toward a conclusion, because it will feel like that to the players.

    The December 2014 Blog Carnival, hosted right here at Campaign Mastery, was all about Twists. As part of that Carnival, I analyzed 11 types of plot twist. The Final Twist, the Carnival Roundup, has links to both that content (in two parts) and 15 other submissions relating to Plot Twists and Surprises in general.

    Choice 9: Something Weirder

    There are no rules that can’t be broken. This list is NOT exhaustive; sometimes, a ninth option will rear up and offer itself to you. I always pay close attention when that happens; occasionally, it doesn’t work out, but nine times out of ten, the idea or some variation can be made to work, breaking the mold of expectations.

    My superhero adventure, “Force 13” started with the Sun going Supernova and destroying the Earth (and the PCs), without warning. The action then shifted to a couple of days earlier, at the beginning of a series of events (Act I) that culminated in the same thing happening, again without warning. Act II, and the PCs found themselves back at the start of the same sequence of events, with no memory of having been there before. To the players, it was obvious what was happening, but the trick was that they had to think of a way for the characters to figure it out. Act III was virtually a repeat of Act II (with some variation from random chance), Act IV is when the PCs realized what was happening, and Act V is when they communicated this knowledge to themselves in time to do something about it.

    Of course, I’m sure that several readers will already know the primary source of inspiration for this adventure – The Star Trek The Next Generation episode Cause and Effect, plus a few bits from the Episode Disaster.

    Real World Example: Dr Who

    My first draft had the PCs in their vehicle (the TARDIS) deciding where to go next. Problem: the player doesn’t know everywhere that the TARDIS can take him, even though the character does. Solution: NPC reminds character of some information that he wanted to gather and suggests going somewhere where that information can be obtained (using strong generalities here). This should suggest one particular location to the player that he knows about and hey presto, we’re underway.

    While it can be fully hand-waved, there is an opportunity to provide a partial infodump through interactions at this location, rather than overloading with it and more, later in the adventure. Problem: this throws off the pacing.

    Solution: move the conversation and suggestion into the past and hand-wave the actual travel; start the adventure with the characters already at the obvious destination, with an appointment to gather the information through roleplay.

    Effect 1: the opening sequence is sped up markedly, permitting the infodump to slow it back down to a reasonable pace.

    Effect 2: instead of the focus of the introductory section being about a recap of outstanding plot points AND getting the characters to the threshold of the adventure, AND providing information that will become relevant to the adventure, it becomes about the recap and progressing the outstanding plot points. Instead of an irrelevant add-on, it becomes part of the adventure. The roleplay involved keeps player agency intact.

    Effect 3: It also alleviates the possibility that the character might exercise agency to go somewhere less obvious to try and get the information. Said information is obscure and hard to find, an alternative is likely to end in failure, creating unwanted frustration, and forcing a scramble to describe an un-prepped location. The ‘obvious’ location is one of the few places where the information can possibly be obtained. So the plot itself becomes smoother and more straightforward.

    This example shows how a good choice of opening can enhance an adventure without compromising its basic structure.

Continuity II: From Here to Here

When the next adventure is to start some distance removed from where the PCs were last active, there not only needs to be some transition (which may be multiple sub-scenes in length), but there needs to be some motivation for the journey, which will (in turn) define the urgency, which will impact on those sub-scenes and their content). This type of opening is at its best when the players themselves made the decision to travel in the course of the previous adventure; anything else messes with player agency.

The more significant the distances involved, the more essential it is that this journey is a player decision made in-game. A clever GM can contrive good reasons for the players to made that decision, but even that can be going too far, and needs to be handled with caution.

It’s the combination of this point of continuity with the choices in the previous section where things tend to get interesting. Bluntly, some of them will facilitate this sort of travel and some of them won’t, but there’s a strong element of circumstances involved in determining which is which in any given case.

Sometimes, sub-scenes from this continuity element will have to entwine with sub-scenes from the first section. That’s where the area of greatest flexibility can be found, but whatever the combination(s) you choose, it will be a challenge to your creativity.

In extreme cases, Scene 1 can be as long as the rest of the adventure put together, or more!

Selection / Creation of Plot Structure

The next step is to group the list of scenes into thematic Acts. These facilitate break-points within the adventure, as well as guiding the GM as to the content, style, and intensity of the group of scenes.

There are five major structures that get used regularly. Note that these are not quite the same as the analogous structures in literature!

    Four-Act

    A four-act plot essentially boils down to “Beginning / Middle / Struggle / Achievement-Resolution”. The beginning generally defines a goal or ambition, the middle sets the protagonists on a course to achieve it, in the struggle act characters have to overcome opposition both intentional and due to adverse circumstances, usually ending with little or no prospect of success, a situation which is first reversed and then carried through to completion / success / achievement in the final act. Sometimes, in the third act, a character can realize that they are chasing a chimera, and completely change course. This frequently cuts short the fourth act, as the opposition that was blocking the character melts away in the face of his changed desires.

    It’s often tempting to formulate this structure on the premise that the focal character is one or more of the PCs, but it can be an equally powerful structural device when the focal point is an antagonist. Consider the ultimate goal to be redemption, while the initial goal is something more venal, for example.

    Five-Act

    The five-act plot is very similar, but it separates “Beginning” into “Beginning” and “Discovery” – the latter being where the characters realize that there is an objective or plot that is directed either at them or at those under their protection, which they then have to stop or prevent. “Struggle” is frequently relegated to Act III in this structure, leaving Act IV free to be a plot twist, while the final act is more clearly defined as “Resolution”.

    Parallel

    This takes the basic principles of the “Personal Event” beginning and extends them through the entire adventure, so that there is actually a plotline for each PC, some of which entwine and come together at unexpected moments.

    Focal Spiral

    A refinement on the parallel structure is for everything to come together at the end for a group plot resolution, aspects of which have been impacting on their isolated lives for some time.

    Unconventional

    There’s always room for an unusual structure, especially in a strongly-serialized campaign. If it’s the most effective choice, why not start with the main setback, for example?

    It’s worth remembering the purpose of a plot structure – it’s to guide the writing and focus the content, especially in terms of the pacing. Anything that achieves this is acceptable. Don’t be afraid to pick something unusual if it will work – the novelty itself can be beneficial.

    As an example, take a look at the structure of If I Should Die Before I Wake: A Zenith-3 Synopsis – in a very real sense, it doesn’t have a beginning, using that absence as a jarring indicator that something unusual is taking place. Or you argue that the dream sequences are all prologs that do nothing but contextualize what follows. Neither is a complete description of the start of the adventure, which is intended to blur reality into a dream-like state so that you can’t tell where reality begins and where it ends. Was it all a dream? A Vision? Reality? How can you tell?

Sequencing Of Plot Points

Once you have a breakdown into acts, the next step is to go back over the plot points, tweaking their sequencing to operate within the parameters of pacing and intensity and logic.

In particular, I’m looking for Domino Sequences and Daisy Chains. These are so fundamental to the structure of an adventure that I literally named this entire article for them – from which you can infer that this is one of the most critical parts of adventure structuring.

Let’s start by asking what they are, and what are the differences between them. and why do they matter?

    Domino Sequences

    When the next plot point follows logically, with no gaps, intervals, options or flags in between when viewed as a linear plotline, it is a domino sequence.

    That means that if there is an option, either the next plot point is a matching flag that spells out the structure of the resulting narrative, or its something that will happen regardless of the choice made in the option (though there may be contextual differences or changes in the way the narrative is ‘spun’ incorporated into that scene.

    Think of the adventure like a choose-your-own-adventure book, with each plot point a separate numbered page or paragraph. If the book is properly written, it doesn’t matter what choices you make or when those differences have an effect on the plot, there is still a straight line from one entry to another (no matter how tangled that straight line may appear) until you get to the end of the adventure, an end that is the compounded sum of all the decisions made along the way.

    Daisy Chains

    As a general rule, if something isn’t a domino sequence, it has to be a daisy chain. A daisy chain is a coupling of plot points that needs one or more additional plot points to be inserted to make the daisy chain a domino sequence.

    If there’s a logical gap in the story, you need a plot point to fill it.

    If there’s a transition in time or space, you need a plot point to occupy and convey it, and anything that might happen before you get to the next plot point, even if the inserted plot point has nothing whatsoever to do with the main plot and is just there to “fill” time or convey travel.

    If there is an Option, there needs to be a flagged plot point that describes how that option impacts the plot, and all likely choices have to be covered. Note that they don’t have to be dealt with in the same plot point – in fact, it’s quite common for the different Options to point at different flags that are variations on the main flag for that Option.

    Daisy chains demand an answer to the question, ‘what do I have to add to this plot through-line to make it complete enough to play?’

The critical thing is that you aren’t just identifying the daisy chains, you are inserting the scenes that are needed to convert them into domino sequences.

Let’s look at another real-world example from “Ogrons To The Left Of Me, Daleks To The Right”:

    6 Dalek City
    7 The Gibbering
    8 Force-field Dome
    9 Scientist
    10 Revelation

That all sounds fairly straightforward; even if you don’t know what The Gibbering refers to, it’s obvious that it’s an encounter of some kind and that it happens en route to the Force-field Dome (which, it can be presumed, is to keep The Gibbering out), within which, you’ll find A/the Scientist, who will reveal something or be the subject or recipient of a revelation.

Certainly, that held enough fundamental logic for the above to be the first draft of this part of the outlined adventure.

But, when examined closely, and with the pacing and logic factors incorporated, it soon became apparent that these were high points or generalizations that needed further refinement and subdivision to become a playable domino sequence:

    6 Dalek City
    7 The Gibbering

      7a Glow, Inactive
      7b More
      7c Semi-aware, awakenings
      7d Psychotics

    8 Force-field Dome

      8a Choice
      8b Patrol, Conversation, Option
      (8c) 2nd Conversation (Flag 8b)

    9 Scientist

      9a Losing The Patrol (8c link)
      9b Ogron (Flag 8b Flag 8a)
      9c Reverie (Ogron Canon)
      9d Rider
      9e Dance With The Devil

    10 Revelation

If I lay this out as a flowchart-style diagram, I get:

This illustrates the dominoes and the inserted daisy chain elements (the latter with a shaded background).

  • You can see the Options of 8 and 8a, and the Flags.
  • Also depicted is the implied flag from 8a direct to 9 (because 8b and 8c are explicitly on the other flagged path).
  • I have sneakily noted the option to have the patrol encounter (8a-8c-9a) take place even if it’s not selected by the player because there is no direct connection between his choice and whether or not that encounter takes place; this gives me flexibility in pacing and padding time to fill the game session (and besides, I think that the player will find it interesting, regardless, even though it also telegraphs a plot twist (9b-9c).
  • Finally, I want to call attention to the ratio of inserts relative to the original ‘straightforward’ outline: 12-to-4, or three times as many, simply as a result of breaking down what I already had in my head into component elements.

Let’s talk for a minute about the encounter sequence 8a-8b-8c-9a. That’s there because if the player chooses the wrong path in 8, i.e. the option that doesn’t lead to the 9-sequence, I need a way to steer the adventure back on track.

That said, player agency is not violated; there are all sorts of options and flags not presented because they are unlikely to transpire – the character could attack the patrol in 8a, for example. These aren’t shown because they are unlikely to materialize; if one happens, I will have to improvise anyway because there are too many possible outcomes to predict the course of the adventure. And the Option in 8a gives the player the chance to bail on the whole encounter, if he prefers.

The final thing to discuss from this example is the whole 8a sequence – why isn’t it 8a, 8b, and 8c, and what’s currently listed as 8b shown as 8d and so on?

That’s because this reflects the reality after writing up this part of the adventure (subsequent steps in the process, described below). Originally, this was just the ‘first’ 8a, leading to 8b, and so on; but then the opportunity for the character to overhear some interesting dialogue occurred to me, and it seemed inevitable that some sort of dialogue would take place between the NPCs of 8a as result of the plot twist at 9b-9c.

Characterization mandated a conversation; the plot twist dictated the subject matter. That conversation became the second 8a, and finally, the mere existence of the encounter gave rise to an Option for the PC that wasn’t canvassed as either outcome of 8 itself.

The simple display of the indented list of scenes actually holds a surprising complexity of underlying structure – but it only takes a brief narrative notation at the head of a passage of text to signpost the path through the adventure, skipping what’s not relevant and ensuring that nothing relevant gets missed.

The Writing

Writing an RPG adventure isn’t quite like writing a novel. And yet, it shares elements of that type of creative process.

I don’t try to spell out everything. I explain what’s supposed to happen in the title / one-sentence summary as a memo to self; how I get that to happen is in my hands as GM on the day.

I write snippets of narrative and flavor text, especially those that will obviously be required. I list assets that may be relevant like images (and number these sequentially) so that – in the normal course of things – I need only show the next image and it will be the right one, most of the time.

If any dialogue between NPCs takes place of importance, I’ll tend to write that out in full. If any dialogue is to take place between an NPC and a PC, I’ll provide relevant / critical bits and pieces, but leave most of that to roleplay / improv on the day.

I want to have everything that I need to run the scene at my fingertips, and to leave out as much as possible that isn’t necessary so that what is there stands out.

Have you ever picked up a commercial module to find that it contains paragraph after paragraph of extemporization and text that you have to reinvent on the fly because the PCs don’t follow the script, or think of an option that the authors haven’t allowed for? Especially a bleedingly obvious one? I have, and it’s infuriating. Sometimes you have to scan half a page of text just to find the two or three lines that are actually relevant.

That’s something I try to avoid.

So that’s the general approach to the writing. But certain segments of the adventure have their own needs and demands, and have to be treated just a little differently.

    In The Beginning: Prolog Sequences

    The more comprehensive the synopsis, the more accurate it will be, and the better a resource for both GMs and players. This is also a perfect opportunity to patch any small plot holes that have been noticed after the fact, getting everybody onto the same page.

    But (and it’s a big ‘but’), the more material you have to wade through, the harder it is to find that one relevant detail.

    This tension makes crafting a great synopsis an especially difficult task and a skill that can pay genuine dividends to a GM – but it often flies under the radar. i work especially hard on my synopses, aided by copy-paste-and-delete of the previous adventure. The format of the adventures being described in this article helps, too.

    Still, it is not unusual for the word-count of the synopsis to be the equal of 2, 3, or even 4 expanded plot points, and for me to spend 2-3 times as much time on it, relative to its length, as I would on performing that expansion.

    That’s up to 12 times the usual amount of time that would be spent on writing adventure to the same rough word-count. Cut, Compress, Polish, then cut and compress again.

    Reducing each plot point to a single paragraph or less is the goal, while not missing anything important – and ‘important’ in this context includes PC / player contributions, decisions, thoughts and thought patterns, critical dialogue, and emotional states / reactions, none of which is a normal part of an adventure. Adding these can produce an uncut synopsis that’s twice the length of the original adventure!

    You can get technique, tips and tricks on compressing and polishing narrative (and the synopsis counts as narrative) from the series, The Secrets Of Stylish Narrative (six parts, some longish).

    And there are some great examples buried in the three-part series, A Long Road: Zenith-3 Notes for all (but some of them are extremely long, even by my standards, as I note every time I reference them here at Campaign Mastery; the total length is roughly the same as a small paperback novel).

    The Story Begins

    Four fishermen are more likely to catch something between them than any one fisherman operating alone. Similarly, its better to have multiple hooks or pathways into an adventure, if possible, tailored to appeal to both one or more PCs and one or more players.

    It’s also one of the points of lowest intensity in most adventures, which means that the players have more time to focus on what you’re saying and how you’re saying it. Any sense of repetition, of this beginning being the same as the last one, or the one before that, and you create an additional burden for your adventure to overcome.

    The more of them that you have, the harder it gets to keep beginnings fresh and distinctive.

    I work doubly hard on the beginnings of adventures because of this triple-whammy, and strongly advise others to do so as well. Too many GMs focus all the creative energies on the climax (which is important don’t get me wrong) without devoting enough attention to the opening sequences of an adventure.

    Domino or Daisy Chain?

    Do NOT be surprised if something that looked like a domino turns out to be a Daisy Chain, and possibly a quite complex one. Keep at least one eye on Scene length – I try to keep these reasonably consistent, at around 3/4 of a screen with the text editor occupying no more than half the screen horizontally. About the length of the “The Story Begins” section above, in fact.

    But if a scene runs more than 1 1/2 screens, look for a way to break it in two – and insert something in between, even if it’s a sub-scene that reads,

      “He leads you into a formal dining room with a throne like chair at the head of the table. Pulling a silken sash hanging from the ceiling produces a servant in remarkably short order, as King Ronald seats himself on the throne. ‘Burgundy and two glasses, immediately,’ the despotic monarch commands. ‘Your will, majesty,’ replies the servant, who scurries away and returns shortly after with a decanter and two exquisite wine glasses of the finest crystal. Pouring from the decanter, the servant first provides for the needs of his master and then pours you a glass of the rich red contents of the decanter. ‘Do please enjoy the Burgundy. My cellar stocks only the finest, and it would be a shame to waste it. Now, where were we?’ “

    As you might expect, this is all about pacing, but it’s an aspect of that attribute that hasn’t been paid much attention to date – because long scenes come closer to being infodumps than anything else.

    Flags & Wrinkles

    Another thing that is likely to happen is that you are likely to think of new Options that the PCs might select and new complications to insert into the plot.

    In the case of the former, take a second to assess just how likely the new option is, really. If it’s significantly less likely than the options already flagged, it isn’t worth including.

    There is one exception to that rule – if an Option is something that could potentially completely derail the adventure, no matter how improbably, it deserves some screen space devoted to it, and a plan for how to cope if the worst happens!

    In the case of the latter – very much the other side of the same coin – there’s a similar question to answer: Does this complication really improve the adventure or just confuse/extend it? Alternative #1 is clearly desirable – – I’ll even insert such things in the course of play if necessary; while #2 is less so (but might still be a valid ‘pad’ to the existing game-plan).

    My chosen plain-text editor is KATE, which I got used to while suing a laptop that was based on Ubuntu — hey, it was a gift (and became indispensable when my main system packed up on me). It’s free, open-source, faster than the Microsoft offering, and permits multiple documents to be visible at the same time, which can be incredibly useful. But it also has a HTML markup mode which does two things:

    • It color-codes HTML tags;
    • It permits text inside some HTML tags, if they are properly closed, to be ‘rolled up’ by clicking a blue arrow on the left of screen, permitting text to be hidden from view.

    Here’s a screenshot (reduced in size, unfortunately) showing an actual HTML file that I was recently working on (note that I can resize the horizontal size of the windows independantly):

    And, if I click on the little arrow to the left, it becomes:

    which enables me to see more of the main document.

    I use a surprising amount of raw html in posts here at Campaign Mastery, all of which has to be manually coded, and both of the above make it much easier. But I can also use this mode to permit me to hide text related to Options Not Chosen as I come to them, which can REALLY help in running an adventure.

    Tip: You can put anything you want into a HTML tag if you don’t intend to actually use it as HTML. So I can use HTML tags to highlight plot point summaries, for example.

    Plot Resolution(s)

    Plot Resolutions in my campaigns are generally about not only ending the current adventure in an emotionally-satisfying way, but how to use the events in the plot in the larger, campaign-level scheme of things. Both of these are critically-important, so I like to spend a little extra time ticking both these boxes.

    Afterwords and Aftermaths

    Sometimes there is one scene after the adventure proper ends to place events into context for the players, sometimes there are a couple of them – and sometimes, there are none. Each campaign seems to evolve its own distinctive style ‘fingerprint’ in this respect, and it largely depends on the way the next adventure is to begin – the presence of an afterword or Aftermath generally implies that there will be a time interval in between adventures.

    In my superhero campaign, for example, it is not uncommon for the aftermath of one adventure to overlap with the preliminary scenes of the next adventure, depicting the day-to-day lives of the characters and the (relatively mundane) life events that they experience.

    In the Pulp campaign, adventures are more episodic as a general rule, so it’s more important for adventures to be more fully self-contained. So there is less overlapping of adventures and an often-unstated time interval in between adventures, in which it can be presumed that various life-events have occurred that have been hand-waved. Beginnings are more about “where is each character and what are they doing at the moment” – which sometimes has more to do with prior adventures and less to do with the adventure just completed. Not always, and where events cast a long shadow, aftermaths can be folded into the backdrop of the next adventure.

    Doctor who is more serialized, with plot threads left dangling and picked up later. There’s far less exploration of aftermaths, though there can be some – usually related to the cross-connections to other pieces of TV Show canon that are forged as a result of the adventure. If there is an aftermath, it’s a pretty strong signal that those cross-connections will play no further part in the campaign, if all goes according to plan.

    The Warcry campaign, in it’s current evolution, hasn’t really had long enough to develop its own signature; sometimes it’s highly episodic, but at the same time there’s very strong character continuity, so the choice is generally more strongly related to whatever best serves the adventure just completed.

    The Zener Gate campaign is worth mentioning – I consciously evolved the use of aftermaths / beginnings as the campaign progressed from virtually none / strongly episodic to strongly continuity-affirming as the finale approached.

    Mechanical Cleanup

    There’s almost always some game mechanics to clean-up at the end of an adventure. Characters may be injured – make notes on how long injuries are expected to impact the character. PCs (and some NPCs) will be awarded experience. Characters may have new abilities from loot given out that seems likely to impact future adventures – that should get called out so that when writing subsequent adventures, a quick glance at the past adventure serves up a reminder.

    I have to admit that I’m not good at doing this. It’s too often an afterthought, or not done at all at the time. Part if the reason is that subjective impressions of how the actual game sessions unfolded are often the foundations of XP awards, and its easier just to issue them on the spot.

    I’m trying to improve in this area :)

    Alternate Outcomes

    The plot outline generally deals with the plot the way the GM wants it to run for best integration into the overall campaign and his future plans, but there’s no certainty that things will turn out that way – not if the GM has any support for the concept of player agency, anyway.

    I make it my business, at the end of an adventure, to at least make some notes on the other ways that things might go, and what to do about it.

Wrap-up

this and then have that happen, which gives the players the choice of doing this or that,, which will solve one of the resulting problems but make it more difficult to solve the other, which will have gathered momentum in the meantime…”

You don’t have to follow my process, you may have an alternative that works better for you or for your specific campaign. But I think every GM should at least consider a formal process of some kind, and this is a good place to start – you can always vary it or evolve it at need. What’s your adventure planning process and how does it take an adventure from blank page to ready-to-run?

Leave a Comment

Post delayed by illness


 
 
 
 
This week’s post, “Dominoes and Daisy Chains”, has been delayed by ill-health. I will upload it as soon as I’m well enough to finish it. Until then, explore the archive and make yourself comfortable :)
 
 
 
 

Leave a Comment

Time And The Everyday Adventurer


There is no standardized, consistent, approach to how long it should take to do things in an RPG. It’s time that changed.

Image by Chicken house man, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. File optimized by Mike.

A strongly-related question is how long is a skill roll good for, before a new roll is required.

I was musing about what to write for this week’s post when I saw something about changes to the “Detect Traps” spell. After a first reaction to that issue (see below), it triggered a thought process which ultimately yielded just such a standardized approach to the broad question, and that’s principally what today’s article will present.

A couple of key criteria that are worth mentioning before I get too deep into details: this is about enhancing, not supplanting, player agency. It’s about roleplaying, not roll-playing, and how the two can interface to create a result better than either on their own. And that means that it’s also about the player-PC interface, and the PC-Game World interface, with the GM as moderator. The goal is to enable the GM to be a better, more consistent adjudicator of what the PC wants to do, and how that derives from what the player wants the PC to do. In turn, because sauce for the goose is good for the gander, it also applies to NPCs – so it’s a far-reaching and influential change, even though (in the absolute scheme of things) it’s actually a fairly minor rules tweak.

If anything, it’s more about creating a framework for the consistent application of rules, though individual skill descriptions might be impacted.

I think the place to start is by clearing the decks, so let’s get underway by talking very briefly about “Detect Trap”.

Sidebar: “Detect Trap”

I have a deep dislike for this spell. I concede that it’s a logical spell to exist, and that (compared to some of the other spells and their impact on the game world) it’s even appropriate for it to be a relatively low-level spell.

But, at the same time, it takes agency and spotlight-share away from an entire character class, and that’s not right.

There’s a metagame factor to be considered, as well: the use of such a spell can obviate a whole boatload of tedium that derives from some GM interpretations of a thief’s / rogue’s ability to detect traps.

The challenge is to keep the spell useful – arguably, even, make it more useful than it is at the moment – while preserving the agency of that character class (and any related ones with similar abilities).

In particular, I think that Rangers and the like should have a commensurate ability to detect snares and pits and other traps in an outdoors setting, on a game trail for example. Under most game systems, they don’t.

    Rule Change #1: Traps In Natural Environments
    • Rangers and any related character classes have the ability to detect traps, pits, and snares in a natural environment. Simply look up the abilities for a Rogue of the same level and read off their base “Detect Trap” level.
    • For the purposes of this ability, a ‘natural environment’ will be one in which the character has an appropriate survival skill.
    • If the environment is some variation on the natural, eg an alternate plane of existence that resembles a natural environment, the base chance of success is halved.
    • Detecting a trap does not imply awareness of how the trap is triggered, how it functions, or how to disarm it. It simply conveys awareness that the trap exists, enabling the character to look for ways of bypassing it.
    • If there is no more specific game mechanism provided, additional ‘Detect’ rolls may provide those additional details, at the GM’s discretion. If the function is magical in some way, there is either no such opportunity or the chance is halved (at the GM’s discretion).
    Rule Change #2: “Detect Trap” spells
    • Casting a “Detect Trap” is the equivalent of successfully rolling a “Detect Trap” check. If there is anything present that could be construed as a trap, it will glow in some color that contrasts with the natural lighting of the environment.
    • This glow is visible to anyone with an optical sense, not just to the mage.
    • It is blocked or obscured by any material objects or barriers.
    • The glow is undifferentiated and uniform. For example, a trap that fires darts from the walls when certain tiles are trodden upon would lead to both walls and floor glowing.
    • Detecting a trap does not imply awareness of how the trap is triggered, how it functions, or how to disarm it. It simply conveys awareness that the trap exists, enabling the character to look for ways of bypassing it.
    • Characters are free to impute logical triggering mechanisms and behave accordingly. These assumptions / deductions may or may not be correct, and hence those behaviors may or may not actually prevent activation of the trap.
    • Traps detected with the spell do include passive effects like poisoned coatings on a book’s bindings.
    • Disarming trapped mechanisms requires (1) access to the mechanism in some form, and in particular to the trigger; and (2) a Rogue or other mechanically-inclined class to intervene in preventing that mechanism or sub-mechanism from being triggered. This may involve making considerable noise, eg hammering pitons / wedges in between tiles.
    • If there are multiple traps present within range of the spell, it will only detect the trap that is either most obvious (in the GM’s opinion) or closest – GM’s choice, but be consistent.

    So, the Spell detects a trap in/on a chest. Taking reasonable care, a character can lever up one edge and look beneath it to ensure that it is not connected to some external mechanism, i.e. that it’s “relatively” safe to pick it up and stow it in some convenient storage location – but actually disarming it needs to be done by a professional, and any ‘mercury switch’ traps could still be activated by this process.

    This yields a spell that is inarguably useful, especially at lower character levels, that does in fact actually detect traps, but that does not undercut the specialist character class that deals with such. It does permit (most of the time) small-sized parties to retrieve trapped items to take to an outside specialist (NPC) (for a fee of course).

Okay, with that out of the way, let’s now refocus attention onto the main subject for today.

A Common Misconception

Some players and GMs have the impression that every skill roll operates for one “turn”. It doesn’t take much thought to realize that this is a ridiculous assumption:

    “I run across to the tree-line and take cover..”

    “Okay, it’s 140′ away, standard movement is 50′, so that will take three turns plus one to take cover, make three ‘Running’ rolls and a Concealment roll.”

    “Are you kidding me?”

Or,

    “I add up the takings for the year –”

    “Okay, that’s 365 numbers, so 364 additions, so make 364 arithmetic rolls…”

    “You ARE kidding me!”

Some tasks are bigger than others, and will take longer, no-one can dispute that. The answer isn’t to break those tasks down into sub-tasks of 1 round’s duration, it’s to stretch a single die roll to cover the entirety or a task (or a primary sub-task if the sub-tasks are qualitatively different.)

Basic Definitions

Thinking about that for a bit permits some basic definitions of the way the processes should work.

  • A Die Roll applies to the entirety of a task
  • Duration of task is defined as a certain number of fixed time intervals called a ‘standard unit’.
  • The ‘standard unit’ is skill-specific, but there should be restricted options to select from.

Standard Units

The options that I see as being relevant are:

  1. 10 years
  2. 5 years
  3. 1 year
  4. 6 months
  5. 3 months
  6. 1 month
  7. 2 weeks
  8. 1 week
  9. 3 days
  10. 1 day
  11. 6 hours
  12. 4 hours
  13. 2 hours
  14. 1 hour
  15. 30 minutes
  16. 15 minutes
  17. 5 minutes
  18. 1 minute
  19. 30 seconds
  20. 10 seconds
  21. 1 second

Sizes of Standard Units

In most cases, the GM can simply apply common sense to choose the appropriate standard unit for any application of a particular skill. But, if you need some guidance, try the following:

  1. Estimate the Typical Total Time for such a task by someone qualified to undertake it.
  2. Double the estimate.
  3. Divide by the Basic Skill level that the GM thinks is reasonable to consider someone qualified to undertake it, i,e. the skill that will yield success at least half the time, and more likely 90% of the time.
  4. Select the entry on the table above that comes closest to the result. If about mid-way between two, choose the lower of the two.

Let’s see how that works for a couple of example values:

  1. An entire working day = 10 hours.
  2. Doubled, = 20 hours.
  3. 15 threshold = 20/15 = one-point-something hours.
  4. Standard Unit = 1 hour.

 

  1. An entire working day = 10 hours.
  2. Doubled, = 20 hours.
  3. 8 threshold = 20/8 = two-point-five hours.
  4. Standard Unit = 2 hours.

 

  1. An entire working day = 10 hours.
  2. Doubled, = 20 hours.
  3. 6 threshold = 20/6 = three-point-something hours.
  4. Standard Unit = 4 hours.

 

  1. Two hours.
  2. Doubled = 4 hours
  3. 10 threshold = 4/10 = 0.4 = 24 minutes.
  4. This is roughly midway between 30 minutes and 15 minutes (it’s slightly closer to the former but not by very much).
  5. Standard Unit = 15 minutes.

 

  1. 20 minutes.
  2. Doubled = 40 minutes.
  3. 8 Threshold = 40/8 = 5 minutes.
  4. Standard Unit = 5 minutes.

 

  1. 5 minutes.
  2. Doubled = 10 minutes.
  3. 12 threshold = 10/12 minutes = 50 seconds.
  4. The official answer is 30 seconds, but this is close enough that the GM should probably consider the 1 minute unit. Which he chooses is up to him – but there are consequences, as will be seen later.

Ideally, you want to end up with a number between 5 and 10 standard units = the Typical Total task time required.

Number Of Standard Units from Task Complexity & Scale

Note that these estimates take no account of unusually complicated forms of the task, or unusually large ones. This is the estimate for the most basic form of the task.

So the next step has to be adjusting the number of standard units required for this specific task, under these specific conditions.

It’s usually better to evaluate each of these factors separately, but that isn’t necessary. The key thing to remember is that they will compound if they are applicable.

I have to also point out that some tasks will be simpler or more straightforward than the ‘Typical Standard’ that you are using, for whatever reason.

Your ultimate number should be somewhere between x 1/2 and double the standard number.

Circumstantial Modifiers

Since you’re already thinking about the difficulties, now is a good time to set any modifiers to the skill roll that reflect these complications.

Now comes the fun part: you tell the player of the PC how long it will normally take and what their chances of success are. They can then decide whether or not that’s unacceptably slow, or if they have more time to spend on the task.

Cutting Corners for a faster result

Let’s deal with doing a faster job, first.

For every standard unit they reduce the time spent, they get a -2 modifier to succeed, until they get down to less than two standard units of the indicated size.

The scale of the modifier – and the scale of the standard unit – should be adjusted if your game system uses anything other than 3d6 or d20 (those are close enough in scale that the -2 works).

  • For d% systems, use -10%, for example.
  • For 2d6 systems like Traveler, use -2, -1, -1 in sequence, or use -1 1/3 and round off (I know which of those I would prefer).
  • d30 systems should use -3.

When they get that far, reduce the size of the standard unit to the next lowest value and increase the number of those units to equal the time. This permits the character to continue to speed up and worsen his chances of success if he chooses to.

Repeat until the player is satisfied with his chances.

Significance: I want to highlight the significance of this process – there is an inherent limit to how much faster the character can be than normal. If the standard units are too big, this will automatically correct for that. The smaller the standard unit, the harder it is to reduce the time required by a significant amount.

Read that last line again.

While the system offers some protection against incorrect standard units, that’s just a lucky accident; don’t rely on it. Getting the standard unit right defines how many of them are needed for the task at hand, and that determines how much capacity the character has for cutting corners in a pinch.

    Failed Checks

    If the character fails his check as a result of these modifiers, the GM MAY permit the character to make a second roll at the same chance in order to complete the task in the normal estimated time, indicating that whatever went wrong resulted in a salvageable situation.

    This option is purely at the GM’s discretion and will be dependent on the actual skill concerned and the task to which it is being applied. If you’re making a horseshoe and mess it up, it’s usually a salvageable situation; if you’re cooking a fancy meal and make a meal of it, the only answer is usually to throw the failed disk away and start again.

    There can also be positions in between, for example painting a fence or a wall – exercising too much haste produces spotty coverage, but you might be lucky and there are only a couple of spots that need retouching.

    To determine this, progressively add back the reductions in time until the roll actually succeeds; the result is how long the task takes this character under these circumstances including his attempt at breakneck speed.

Image by Tomruen, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. File optimized by Mike.

Taking Extra Time to get it right

When they have the luxury, a lot of characters will invest extra time to increase their certainty of success.

  • Increasing the chance of success by 1 adds 1 standard unit.
  • Increasing the chance of success by 2 adds 1+2 standard units of time.
  • Increasing the chance of success by 3 adds 1+2+3 standard units of time.
  • …and so on.

    Maximum Time

    Characters cannot spend longer on a task than would prevent them from failure. So there is a cap on how much extra time can be invested.

    Beyond that cap, the time required doubles for each +1 to the chance of success because this is actually applying the principle of “do it over until the results agree”, or “testing the result for validity”. This sort of practice happens all the time in accounting, and is the reason why double-entry bookkeeping is considered the only way to go, even though it takes at least twice as long.

    It’s even more critical in IT / software development. No computer program more complicated than “See Spot Run” is sure to be without bugs, and (if anything) the certainty runs in the other direction. Only in the most dire of circumstances would any competent analyst / programmer / developer release an update without testing it – and, in such circumstances, they would be even more hesitant to do so because there would be less scope for recovery from an error. At least, this used to be the case; sadly, some corporations no longer want to spend the development time to do more than weed out the most critical of errors (everything else can wait until the next release / patch – effectively doing their testing in public on real people and real data).

    (Fighting to not get sidetracked here).

    The additional time does not improve the chances of first-time success – they have already reached maximum. Instead, it buys insurance against failure.

    Insurance Against Failure

    Let’s say that, despite taking the maximum permitted time, the character fails his skill check. If he has invested in Insurance Against Failure, it’s not yet the end of the world.

    The character can make a second attempt, using the original chance of success, plus two for each level of Insurance. if this second roll succeeds, then the extra time has been well-spent, detecting, identifying, locating, and correcting the flaw.

    What form this takes at the game table in terms of what the character is doing will vary from one skill to another. It might be making a second pot of stew, or casting extra pieces of pottery so that one is more likely to survive the firing process, or verifying totals with double-entry bookkeeping, or testing software, or any number of other things.

    Insurance Against Failure is totally at the discretion of the GM, and is dependent upon his having some appropriate description of the activity (as per the previous paragraph).

Some tasks are more variable

For the most part, most skills are relatively straightforward in assessment. But there are a few in which there are important sub-options of style. making the task more variable than is usually the case.

A great example is painting a portrait. You have the classical styles, in which great time and care is required; you have styles like Impressionism, in which speed is emphasized by the style; it might turn out three or four paintings in the normal span of time, from which the artist then selects the best one. The same is true to some extent of things like architecture and music and, well, anything creative. Including cooking, I should add!

The problem is that most skill systems don’t drill down to this level of detail. You take a skill in “cooking”, not a skill in “French Cooking” or “German Cooking” or “International Cuisine”.

If your game mechanics don’t afford you this level of detail, then a few assumptions are necessary whenever a particular style or school of creation becomes important.

  1. There is a basic commonality that the skill represents, eg “Home Cooking”.
  2. The GM should evaluate specialist subtypes with reference to how difficult they are relative to this basic style, and how much longer they take.
  3. The difficulty applies as a modifier until the character has successfully executed examples in the required style equal to the skill level (excluding any stat contribution). So if a character has +3 in painting, they incur the penalty until they have three successes in that particular style under their belt.
  4. It is recommended that the most difficult styles get a -6 modifier (d20/3d6 scale), while the most common modifiers would be -2 or -3.
    It Only Looks Unfair

    At first glance, it may appear that this discriminates against characters with higher skill levels, but that’s not actually the case, because these are works in the nominated style that are successfully executed to the skill level of the individual.

    Characters can always choose to spend the extra time to compensate for the penalty – which means that, with a higher skill level, the odds are that they will “master” that style before a character with less skill, even though they have a higher standard of achievement.

    Or they can lower their standards – that’s the underpinning foundation of the “cutting corners” subsystem – getting a successful result of a lower standard – which is why it won’t count against their target.

Dealing with Interruptions, Delays, etc

One of the examples that I’m going to present a little later is “Riding from A to B”. At the start of the trip, the character rolls his Riding Mount skill (or whatever its equivalent is). Ignoring for the moment all other considerations, what happens if, half-way through the trip, there’s an encounter with a Wandering Monster (or a Wandering Mendicant, for that matter?)

Once the encounter is resolved, the question arises: A new riding roll, or not?

Or, how about the situation in which the character is building a birdhouse and runs out of nails. No problem, he just nips off to the nearest blacksmith and orders a gross of them. “Fine,” says the Blacksmith after demanding (and accepting) payment, “Come back Wednesday.” So, days later, the craftsman collects the nails, but other things have happened in the meantime that are demanding his attention, so it turns out to be another two weeks before he can get back to working on his birdhouse. A new roll? Even though he succeeded on the first?

A lot of people would say, “The circumstances have changed. That demands a new roll.” The character may have been wounded in the wandering monster encounter, for example, or the mount. Or maybe it’s just been spooked.

Demanding a new role is punishing the PC for the GM’s introducing story to the task. They rolled once, they succeeded, the GM is fully entitled to tell the story of the task including any setbacks along the way, but because the character succeeded the first time, they should be reasonably able to expect to succeed despite such setbacks; requiring a new roll provides an additional risk of failure.

None of these interruptions were the player’s fault (unless the GM requires micromanagement to the point of keeping track of how many nails the character has left, which seems ridiculous). Nor was the player responsible for the “other things coming up” – that’s the GM’s doing again, he is responsible for plot and story.

Therefore, the same roll should resume as if there were no interruption or delay, though if the circumstances have changed, the GM is entitled to say that it takes longer because of the change. In essence, he determines a modifier to the original roll that accounts for the change in circumstances and then compensates for that modifier using the ‘extra time’ subsystem above.

Where I would draw the line is if the player decides to interrupt the journey without prompting from the GM – and even then, the scale of the interruption relative to the journey should be taken into account.

When I’m writing an article, pausing long enough to make a cup of coffee doesn’t invalidate the progress made or the expectations of continued success at the task of completing that article. Nor does interrupting long enough to go shopping, or do laundry, or cook a meal, or even play a few minutes of a video game.

If the interruption extends too far, however, I make completing the article more difficult; I risk losing contact with the thread of the narrative, forgetting things that I meant to say, and so on. That’s when a second die roll may be required. (\Note that it can also go the other way – if I return to an article refreshed and alert, and have left myself a ‘road map’ to the content, then the outcome may be better than that originally indicated).

Phased Outcomes

    “I search the room.”

    “Are you looking for anything in particular?”

    “I don’t know WHAT I’m looking for, so just anything that doesn’t quite fit.”

    “Okay, make your roll….”

I run search rolls as follows:

  • Get the chance of this character closing his or her eyes and groping at random to find the subject of the search. That’s basically the relevant skill plus an absolutely huge negative modifier.
  • The controller of the character searching makes their roll. Because of the negative modifier, they can be and should expect to fail.
  • Every time the PC or NPC are able to refine the parameters of the search, they get +2 to their chance of success.
    • “I’m looking for documents that have been altered.” — plus 2.
    • “I’m focusing on the desk and the filing cabinet.” — plus 2 more.
    • “Checking for false backs, false floors, and other hidden compartments. — plus 2 more, even if there aren’t any.
    • “Checking under blotters and the like.” — plus another 2, even if there’s nothing of note hidden there.
    • “Some of the files will be larger and older than others. I’m going to look for ones that have newer papers mixed in with those that are a little yellowed with age.” — plus another 2 for more precise targeting of the search, and 2 more again for a plausible method of recognizing something suspicious. So far, that’s +12 to the chances of success.
  • That sort of adjustment will only take you so far. The rest gets handled as “extra time spent” – further increasing the time spent searching until the character either gives up, or achieves success. The amount of extra time is a function of their skill and the size of the negative modifier that represents how well hidden the subject of the search is.

This is an example of a phased outcome, in which the results of the skill check are dynamically varied by in-game interaction between the character and the environment / process. The approach can be applied to everything from Search rolls to Deduction rolls to scientific analysis rolls – or Detect Trap rolls, for that matter.

Layered Outcomes

A Layered Outcome is something similar, but that doesn’t have an absolute success or failure. A good example that’s already been mentioned is executing a painting. There are so many ways in which it can be made better or worse – color, lighting, positioning, ‘cosmetic flattery’, symbolism, background. action, dynamism, appropriateness of style, recognizability of the subject(s) – that a successful artwork doesn’t even need to get all of them right. The more you get right, the higher the quality of the resulting artwork; the more regularly and routinely you get such things right, the more reputation you can accrue in terms of mastery of the art form.

You can apply this principle to almost any skill check not dealt with as a Phased Outcome.

Consider a day’s Ride from A to B, for example. Some terrain will be easier, some more challenging. It’s normal to slow down somewhat on the latter ground, and make up the time by riding harder on the easier ground. At some point in proceedings, rider or mount may be wounded (as discussed earlier), making all terrain that little bit more challenging. Fording a broad lowlands river and fording a small but fast-moving stream can be quite different challenges. Put all these together, rank them from easiest to hardest, apply -2 for each, and the principles of the phased approach tell you exactly when the character’s skill is no longer enough without slowing down, i.e. taking extra time.

    GM: “You lose more time fording Hollandaize Stream than you expected because it is deeper and the terrain more rocky than you thought it would be. You were able to make up some of the lost time on the downhill slopes that afternoon, but you are still (1 or 2 standard time units) behind expectations when the sub begins to dip below the treeline. You can either make camp early or press on in gathering twilight.”

Two sentences and a decision to be made bring the entire day’s travel to life, assuming that maps are consulted regarding terrain before setting out each morning (so there’s no need to describe it en route).

Many Hands

How much help will an assistant be? How about a team of them? At what point does an action stop being about how much relevant skill you have and how well you are able to direct and manage others who are doing the work for you? When do you stop being an expert and become (shudder) an Administrator?

I’ve seen many attempts at describing the application of “many hands” to a problem. I’ve even written a few, myself! None of them have been able to provide satisfactory answers to all the questions posed above. In particular, when it comes to research teams and work gangs, things tend to get very complicated, very quickly.

I guess it’s time to take another swing at it. What I propose below is going to be some resemblance to the techniques given above, and to approaches employed to solving this problem that I’ve offered in the past – I’m going to be building from both foundations and employing stepwise refinement to the old answers in hopes of getting better, simpler, and more comprehensive answers.

    One assistant

    This is the simplest possible example.

    • If the assistant’s skill level is within 4 of the team leader’s skill level, allowing for stat contributions, they reduce the number of standard units to 1/2, +1, and they effectively add +2 to the chances of success.
    • If the assistant’s skill level is less than this, they reduce the number of standard time units by 1 and they effectively add +1 to the overall chance of success.
    • The project leader makes the (adjusted) roll to determine the overall success or failure of the project.
    • If they fail, the assistant then rolls with the same modifiers to chance of success to determine whether or not they made the mistake that doomed the project.
    • Only then can extra time be applied to turn failure into success – GM permitting.

    Even an inept assistant or apprentice can take some of the ‘heavy lifting’ out of a project or task. But supervising them takes some time and attention from the overall execution of the task. This is the simplest approach to simulating both phenomena that I can come up with.

    It could be refined – the “within 4” is a very blunt, black-and-white all-or-nothing measurement – but every variation that’s more specific that I have been able to come up with adds massively to the complexity and I don’t think it’s worth the added complication.

    Two assistants

    The impact of multiple assistants is determined from lowest skill level to highest (you’ll see why, in a moment).

    • If the weakest skilled character is within 2 skill levels, allowing for stat contributions, of the next weakest-skilled character, they add 3 to the effective skill level of that next-weakest-skilled character.
    • If the weakest skilled character is within 4 skill levels, they add 2 to the effective skill level of that next-weakest-skilled character.
    • In both the above cases, the presence of a second assistant ‘reduces’ the time requirement to 2/3, +2. Note that if the number of standard units involved is low, this can end up higher than if the second assistant wasn’t involved.
    • If the weakest skilled character is more than 4 skill levels removed, they add 1 to the effective skill level of that next-weakest-skilled character, and they add 1 to the time units required to complete the task.

    This folds the most inept assistant’s contribution into the effective contribution of the less-inept assistant. At which point, the problem can be treated as a “single-assistant” problem.

    Importantly, this shows that even completely unskilled characters can make a contribution to a project, even if it’s only supplying manual labor.

    • If the project fails, the most inept assistant makes a skill check with all the applicable modifiers to see whether or not they are the ones who messed it up. If they succeed, the next most inept assistant checks, and so on.
    A team of assistants

    The approach outlined above becomes unwieldy when there are more than two assistants; it needs to get simplified and slimmed down. The solution is to group assistants into “buckets” of like skill level. The contributions of those in the lowest tier all accumulate and feed into the best-skilled character of the next tier up (which may elevate that character entirely out of the ‘bucket’ to which they were initially consigned. If that happens, then the remaining members of that tier have their contributions accumulate and feed to the overall team leader (the character with the highest skill), and so on, until you end up with a single character focal point and one or two assistants whose contributions are supported and enhanced by everyone else participating.

    The above sounds good, but it’s easy to miss something or misunderstand something, so let’s illustrate with an example:

    • Let’s say that there’s a group of eight characters working on a project. They have skills of 15, 13, 11, 5, 2, 1, 0, and 0, respectively. The project is based on 8 units of 15 minutes each, or a base time-span of 2 hours.
    • Start at the top to define the ‘buckets’: 15-4=11. Two characters fit into this top ‘bucket’ – one will be the leading assistant and the other will be the second assistant.
    • 11-4=7. There’s no-one who’s just one band below. 7-4=3. There’s one character in this tier.
    • The remaining 4 characters occupy the bottom tier, with skills of 2, 1, 0, and 0 respectively. That gives a work party configuration as shown to the right.
    • We start by assessing the group of relatively-unskilled workers relative to the 3rd assistant. If there were two individuals in that tier, it would be relative to the one with the highest total skill).
      • 2 is 3 less than 5. That’s more than 2 but less than 4, so that adds +2 to the 3rd assistant, taking his skill to 7.
      • 1 is 4 less than 5, so same deal, taking the 3rd assistant to skill 9.
      • The two characters with skill 0 each add +1 to the 3rd assistant, taking him to effective skill 11.
      • The two characters with skill 0 add 1 time unit each to the total, which becomes 10 units of 15 minutes.
      • The other two characters reduce the time requires to 2/3 and add 2, so: 10×2/3=6.666=7; +2 = 9. 9×2/3=6, +2=8.
    • The third assistant is effectively equal to the 2nd assistant thanks to the unskilled workforce. That’s “within 2 skill levels” so the adds 3 to the second assistant’s value, raising it to 14. His contributions also change the time requirements: 8×2/3=5.333=6,+2=8.
    • Because these sundry contributions have elevated the 2nd assistant to a higher total than the first assistant, we evaluate the latter next. 13 is within 4 of the 2nd assistant’s adjusted score, so we add +2 to that total to get 16, and adjust the time factor 8×2/3=5.333=6, +2=8.
    • That leaves us with a project leader of skill 15 and a collective effort of skill 16. Which means the project leader contributes to the collective effort and not the other way around. Since this is the top two tiers, we’re into “one assistant” territory. 15 is well within 4 of 16, so this gives +2 to the total chance of success (16+2=18), and reduce the time requirement: 8×1/2=4, +1=5.
    • So the grand total is effective skill 18 for 5 units of 15 minutes each, to do the work of skill 15 for 8 units of 15 minutes each. 45 minutes faster and +3 to the likelihood of success (or -3 to the chances of failure, if you prefer.
    • The project leader might decide to invest extra time – an extra 15 minutes (1 time unit) still brings the project in a half-hour ahead of schedule, and takes the effective skill level from 18-20.
    • Still more certainty of success is possible. An additional 2 time units takes the project back to the expected completion time of 4 hours and raises the effective skill level to 20.
    • Alternately, if time is a factor, the project leader might decide to cut corners. -1 time unit (=4 total) for -2 effective skill results in skill 16 (still one better than him on his own) and completion a full hour ahead of schedule.
    • He could press further ahead. – another time unit completes the effort in 45 minutes and brings the effective skill to 14. a third time unit completes the work in just 30 minutes (2 time units) and takes the effective skill to 12. To further shorten the time, he has to change time units – instead of 2 at 15, he has to use 6 at 5. Which means that shortening the time proceeds in 5-minute jumps from this point, each of which earns another -2. This may or may not be worth it, it depends on just how tight time is actually perceived to be.
    Project Management

    Using the above principles, you could have a workforce of thousands building a Great Pyramid over a period of several years, at least in theory. Which means that there needs to be a further refinement in the form of rules for large-scale project management.

    There is a maximum size of each tier, equal to one more than the project leader’s management skill (or equivalent) divided by 4.

    There is also a maximum number of tiers, equal to one less than the project leaders management skill (or equivalent) divided by 4.

    In the case of our 8-person project, if the project leader only had management 12:

    • Maximum Tier Size = 12/4=3, +1=4. No problem.
    • Maximum number of Tiers = 12/4=3, -1, =2. Oops.

    Subordinates can contribute to management skill in the same way that they contribute to a projects chances of success, or they can contribute to the project’s chances of success, but they can’t do both.

    The only person with a foot in both camps is the project leader.

    Furthermore, the GM can require the project leadership to be determined by effective management skill and not technical ability.

    Total Subordinates

    Ignoring for the moment any contributions to management by subordinates, it’s easy to calculate the total number of subordinates permitted: (X+1) x (X-1) = X^2-1, round up, where X is Management / 3.

    Management Skill vs Subordinates:

    1: 0
    2: 0
    3: 0

    4: 1
    5: 2
    6: 3

    7: 5
    8: 7
    9: 8

    10: 11
    11: 13
    12: 15

    13: 18
    14: 21
    15: 24

    16: 28
    17: 32
    18: 35

    19: 40
    20: 44
    21: 48

    22: 53
    23: 58
    24: 63

    25: 69
    26: 75
    27: 80

    28: 87
    29: 93
    30: 99

    31: 106
    32: 113
    33: 120

    34: 128
    35: 136
    36: 143

    37: 152
    38: 160
    39: 168

    40: 177
    41: 186
    42: 195

    43: 205
    44: 215
    45: 224

    46: 235
    47: 245
    48: 255

    49: 266
    50: 277
    51: 288

    52: 300
    53: 312
    54: 323

    55: 336
    56: 348
    57: 360

    58: 373
    59: 386
    60: 399

    61: 413
    62: 427
    63: 440

    64: 455
    65: 469
    66: 483

    67: 498
    68: 513
    69: 528

    70: 544
    71: 560
    72: 575

    73: 592
    74: 608
    75: 624

    76: 641
    77: 658
    78: 675

    79: 693
    80: 711
    81: 728

    82: 747
    83: 765
    84: 783

    85: 802
    86: 821
    87: 840

    88: 860
    89: 880
    90: 899

    Of course, the only way you are going to get to an effective management skill of 90 (or scores a lot lower than that) is by having an army of assistants boosting it.

    But there’s a limit to how many you can have. If your skill is 12, you can have a maximum of 15 assistants pushing your management skill, at no more than +3 each. 15×3=45,+12 skill=57; less the 15 management assistants = 42. So the 12 management assistants permit you to have 42 workers contributing to the project. If your skill is improved to 13, you can have 18 assistants; 18×3=54;+12=66; less 18=46. So that gets you another 4 workers.

    The one exception to all of the above restriction is in the “relatively unskilled” category at the bottom, which can have one member for each point of relevant skill in their supervisor, with stat bonuses, to a maximum of 10 per person in the next tier up.

    Bureaucrats and laborers make a massive difference. Even if they are only contributing +1 each, and with a cap of 10 for each person in the second-lowest tier, that can easily run to +50 on its own. Pf course, they will expect to get paid….

    With that exception taken into account, our Project Leader with a management skill of 12 is still in trouble – he needs one more tier, which he can only get at skill level 15. In order to properly handle the crew of 8, he needs a pair of subordinates assisting him to supervise. Or he could detail the first assistant to that role (so that he is no longer contributing directly to the success of the project), but reducing the tiers to be managed by 1. At which point, he no longer needs that support, but that’s the way of management, isn’t it? Someone always seems to be superfluous and contributing nothing!

    Or is that being too cynical?

    One final note

    Don’t look at this subsystem too hard when it comes to military units. While the general principles would still apply, the numbers could be and would be vastly different, depending on the way the military think and are structured in the era in question. Do NOT presume that what we consider best practice today is in any way applicable to other time periods; the number of supporting non-combatants varies enormously with communications and information technology.

Image by Eadweard Muybridge, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. File optimized by Mike.

Ten Examples

I’m going to close out this article with 10 examples. These will be very brief, concentrating on the size and number of standard time units that makes the most sense, but highlighting how those units play into questions of extra time, shortcuts, and so on. They are not intended to be comprehensive.

    Example #1: Constructing a Castle

    The construction of a full-blown castle, including interiors, furniture, etc, can easily run into man-centuries – but a large labor force is used to knock that back into a more reasonable number.

    Depending on scale and location, the right choice could be 3-4 units @ 10 years, or more, but it’s more likely to be 6-8 units @ 5 years each.

    Natural advantages or a large workforce could reduce this to 5-10 units @ 1 year each, but this is about as unlikely as the ten-year interval. Recruiting an army of mages with Levitate wands would definitely put you into the shorter time-frame, however!

    Example #2: Constructing a Fortification

    Fortifications tend to come in two distinct varieties: “Permanent” structures like Forts, Towers, Strongholds, Great Walls, etc, and “temporary” Field Fortifications that will be abandoned or taken down the next morning (no-one bothers removing Earthworks, though)

    Permanent fixtures are simpler than castles, but otherwise employ the same basic engineering and management approaches. That “simpler than” reduces the size of time units by one step, as a general rule of thumb – so instead of units of 5 years, you’re talking basic units of a year, and throwing lots of manpower at the problem might just get you down to 6-monthly or even 3-monthly intervals. 10 x 6-monthly units is still 5 full calendar years, remember.

    Field fortifications also tend to use numbers to speed the process, but those numbers tend to be ‘whoever’s at hand’. Sometimes, a force will be split – one third defend the workers while the other 2/3 create the fortification.

    Most field fortifications are constructed in less than a calendar day, a few might be a full week of ‘real time’. But numbers are used to compress those a full time unit – so 4-hour units, and occasionally 1-day units are the general answer, respectively.

    Example #3: Riding from A to B

    Depending on the GM’s tastes, this either encompasses a full day’s travel, a half-day’s travel, or maybe a full week’s travel.

    But a ‘day’ in this sense (absent modern technology) means daylight hours – 8-10 hours.

    So that gives a range of possible correct answers:

    • 1 week of 24-hour days: 7 @ 1 day.
    • 24-hr days: 6 @ 4 hours.
    • 12-hr half-days: 6 @ 2 hours.
    • 1 week of Daylight travel: 7 @ 1 day, reduce distance covered.
    • 1 day of Daylight: 6-8 @ 1 hour.
    • 1/2 day of Daylight: 6-8 @ 30 minutes.
    • 1/4 day of Daylight: 6-8 @ 15 minutes.
    Example #4; Building a temporary bridge

    Unless you’re talking about two rope-lines spanning a river or a ravine, you’re generally speaking of 24 man-weeks. You can go longer to represent something more permanent, or shorter to represent something more transitory – but strong enough for armies and/or vehicles to cross.

    These are very sensitive to the number of workers pressed into duty.

    • Much more permanent: 24×4=96 man-weeks, generally /10 people so 10 weeks, so 1-5 @ 2 weeks or 1-10 @ 1 week.
    • More permanent: 24×2=48 man-weeks, generally /8-to-10, so 4-6 @ 1 week.
    • More permanent II: Still 48 man-weeks, but /20-to-40 workers: 8-16 @ 3 days.
    • Basic standard: 24 man-weeks, 8-16 workers = 3-7 @ 3 days.
    • Basic standard: 24 man-weeks, 24-32 workers = 5-7 @ 1 day
    • Temporary structure: 12 man-weeks, 5-10 workers = 3-6 @ 3 days
    • Temporary structure: 12 man-weeks, 10-20 workers = 4-8 @ 1 day
    • Temporary structure: 12 man-weeks, 20-40 workers = 4-8 @ 6 hours, halved for 24-hour construction
    • Extremely flimsy structure: 6 man-weeks, 2-3 workers = 4-9 @ 3 days
    • Extremely flimsy structure: 6 man-weeks, 4-6 workers = 2-4 @ 3 days or 3-7 @ 2 days (yes, I know that’s not on the chart)
    • Extremely flimsy structure: 6 man-weeks, 6-12 workers = 3-7 @ 1 day
    • Extremely flimsy structure: 6 man-weeks, 12-36 workers = 2 – 7 @ 6 hours, halved for 24-hour construction

    Note that technology can also be a time divisor. It’s possible to accomplish in minutes or seconds what would have taken a week in more primitive times.

    Example #5: Painting a Portrait

    Traditional styles can take a man-month to execute, but will more commonly take 1/2 that. So the correct unit is 3-day intervals.

    Plainer, simpler styles can take half that much, so 2-day or 1-day intervals.

    Speedy styles can take 1/4 that, so 6- or 2-hour intervals.

    Preliminary / design sketches can take 1/16 of that, or less,so 1-5 minute intervals.

    Example #6: Breaking a Bronco

    The total time, from what I’ve read / heard, is 20 minutes to an hour. So 2-6 ten minute intervals or 4-12 5-minute intervals.

    Example #7: Writing a Computer Program

    It can take more than 1,000 hours to write a good program, tested and debugged. More sophisticated programs like web browsers can be 10-100 times this much, but they have programming teams focusing on different aspects of the development.

    When I wrote a relational-database app for the commodore-128, it took me around 900 hours, and I knew exactly what I was doing – creating something with a similar look-and-feel (but restricted functions) to something that I had used professionally..

    As a typical rule of thumb, 1/2 to 2/3 of the time is spend finding and fixing bugs.

    At the other end of the scale, 10 minutes is enough time to do something of extremely limited application – what I call “See Spot Run” programming. Most useful apps, at the smallest end, are 120 minutes of work, minimum.

    This sets up a table of exponential factors:

    Difficulty
    Modifier

    Complexity

    Time

    Time Units

    +8
    +6
    +4

    1 see-spot run
    2 see-spot run
    4 see-spot run

    = 10 mins
    = 20 mins
    = 40 mins

    1 minute
    2 minutes
    5 minutes

    +2
    +0

    -1

    8 see-spot run
    12 see-spot run
       = 1 useful app
    2 x complexity

    = 80 mins
    = 120 mins = 2 hrs

    = 4 hrs

    10 minutes
    15 minutes

    30 minutes

    -2
    -3
    -4

    4 x complexity
    16 x complexity
    32 x complexity

    = 8 hrs
    = 16 hrs
    = 32 hrs = 3 days

    1 hour
    2 hours
    4 hours

    -6
    -8
    -10

    64 x complexity
    128 x complexity
    256 x complexity

    = 64 hrs = 6 days
    = 128 hrs = 12 days = 2 weeks
    = 256 hrs = 4 weeks (1)

    1 day
    2 days
    3 days

    -12
    -14

    -16

    512 x complexity
    1024 x complexity
       = 1 major app
    2 x complexity

    = 512 hrs = 8 weeks
    = 1024 hrs = 16 weeks
       = 3 man-months
    = 2048 hrs = 32 weeks
       = 7 man-months

    1 week

    2 weeks

    1 month

    -19

    -22

    -25

    4 x complexity

    8 x complexity
       = 1 major app
    16 x complexity

    = 64 weeks
       = 14 man-months (2)
    = 128 weeks
       = 30 man-months
    = 256 weeks
       = 60 months = man-5 years

     
    2 months

    3 months

    6 months

    -30
    -37

    -45

    32 x complexity
    64 x complexity
       = 1 colossal project (3)
    128 x complexity

    = 10 man-years
    = 20 man-years

    = 40 man-years

    1 year
    2 years

    5 years

    Notes:
       (1) This is about the maximum for one programmer on his or her own.
       (2) This is about the maximum for a computer game of serious sophistication.
       (3) Google itself is an apt comparison. Or Windows.

    Example #8: Checking For Traps

    Total time is generally going to be 10, 5, or 1 minute, depending on the GM’s inclinations.

    I would actually take those inclinations out of the picture and instead base it on the difficulty of accessing a tell-tale – any telltale.

    If the mechanism is hidden within a thick stone statue – one that takes a combined strength of 20-something to shift and 30-odd to lift, for example, it’s incredibly hard to examine the mechanism, or even to know that it’s there, to say nothing of disarming it. So that’s a 10-minute total and a 1-minute interval.

    On the other hand, if there’s an obvious tell – gears on display (intimidating) but behind glass, with some sort of yellowish gas wafting around within the enclosure, things are fairly obvious, wouldn’t you say? So that’s a 1-minute total and a 10-second interval.

    And, in between, we have the standard – at 5 minutes total time, and a 30 second interval.

    Example #9: Picking a Lock

    Picking a lock is in line with the “obvious trap” example above. But trained escapologists can do it in 1-tenth the time (seriously) – so that would be 1-second intervals.

    Example #10: Surveying a scene

    The final example to throw you way is simply looking out at the horizon, or the walls, from left to right, and making whatever sense you can of what you see there.

    This is primed for the Phased approach, in which things are presented (or not) in order of obviousness, from most to least, until the perception roll made on behalf of the entire party runs out.

It has virtually nothing to do with the subject at hand (I was actually looking for an animated clock that I liked) but, as a lover of sunsets,
I couldn’t resist this final animation; it has a tranquil, timeless quality
to it that punctuates the article perfectly.
GIF Image by Marijana Jakelich from Pixabay. File optimized by Mike.

Broader Application: Skill-like abilities

I want to wrap this article up by pointing out that some game systems give selected characters specific abilities that can be considered “skill-like” – though this often varies by edition.

Everything from a Ranger’s tracking abilities to a rogue’s Pick-pocketing capacity can be seen in this way – and that permits them to be subjected to this set of rules.

There are lots of benefits to doing so, but especially the interplay between difficulty, ability, taking extra time or cutting corners, and phased or layered outcomes.

These abilities are transformed from “all or nothing” to nuanced, and responsive to the controlling players’ will and intentions.

That can only be a good thing.

Looking for more tips on skills?

The Blogdex is the place to go. Start with the page devoted to Rules & Mechanics.

After that, RPG Theory and House Rules Theory and Game Physics are all covered on the Metagame page.

Puzzles & Mysteries are dealt with on the Adventures page.

And, of course, huge amounts of the Characters page is likely to be relevant.

Have fun!

Leave a Comment

Systematic NPCs: Design With Purpose


I employ a structured and systematic approach to NPC design. Today, I’m going to give readers the low-down – everything they need to use it for themselves.

A system is a means of organizing data or steps in a process into a structured form to facilitate analysis or use, and that’s what today’s article is all about. This illustration represents a character emerging from the data that has been generated by the system. It’s another great image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

The system revolves around a text document or sheet of notepaper, and an 8×4 grid on another sheet of notepaper – and something to write with.

As ideas come to me or are generated, they get listed in the text document / notepaper and numbered, and then allocated to one or more specific positions in the matrix. That’s the ‘structured’ part of the approach.

Those ideas are frequently generated based on the spaces to be filled – that’s where the ‘systematic’ part of the approach comes in.

The columns of the matrix deal with the usage / relevance within the campaign of the content indexed; the rows categorize the content by type.

I deal fully with the first column (with the occasional side-trip into the second column) to start with – and for many NPCs, that’s as far as I need to go.

The Columns

    Column 1: Immediate Needs

    The first column deals with the attributes that the NPC needs to have to satisfy his or her purpose or role in the immediate adventure, i..e. the first one in which they are to appear.

    Every NPC is created for a purpose, even if that purpose is nothing more than “there would logically be someone.” This column exists to make sure that the NPC is fit for that purpose.

    Column 2: Interesting & Unique

    I like to make most of my NPCs at least a little distinctive. If their role in the intended adventure is minor, there doesn’t need to be too much in this column, but if the NPC is too have a more substantial role in the adventure, it might need to be more substantial, and if the NPC is to be a focal point, they definitely need significant entries in this column.

    Column 3: Long-Term Usefulness

    If the NPC is intended to be a recurring character, this column contains material related to any anticipated future appearances, even if those plans are vague at the time of creation.

    However, just because there are entries in this column, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s certain that they will appear in future adventures; this simply prepares for the possibility, and ensures consistency over those potential repeat appearances by listing attributes that might make them useful in a future appearance.

    In particular, I like every NPC to have an ongoing storyline of their own, a personal life character arc that the PCs are going to intersect at one or more points. This is where ideas for the NPCs future get listed.

    Column 4: Long-term Potential

    Even more vague and nebulous, and less-likely to ever actually materialize in game, this column deals with in-adventure roles that the character might occupy, depending on all sorts of X-factors – the course of the campaign, prior interaction with PCs, possible future adventures, and so on.

    Or, sometimes, the lack of same. One NPC that I created was a businessman’s secretary, and in this column I noted that every time the PCs interacted with that businessman, he would have a different secretary. Nothing about why, just an ongoing minor plot point about the businessman burning through Secretaries at a relatively extreme rate.

    As it happens, the businessman never became a recurring character, so this trait of the ‘secretary revolving door’ was never triggered or explained; the idea is still out there, ready to be grafted onto another character should it fit.

The Rows

    Row 1: Concept / Archetype

    The first row deals with broad ideas that define the NPC. These then act as guidelines to the development of content in the other Rows.

    Row 2: Stats & Abilities

    This deals with things that I need the NPC to actually be able to do. Sometimes there’s a lot of content in this Row, sometimes there’s not.

    Row 3: Equipment & Possessions

    This row frequently has only one or two entries; the contents are not considered an exhaustive listing, these are just the items that are potentially significant.

    Row 4: Personality

    Depending on the NPC in question, there might be a lot of little details here, or there might by only one or two, which might be described more expansively. There can even be a single brief referent which signposts greater depth – “Max Klinger from MASH”, for example.

    Row 5: History & Motivations

    It’s natural to segue from a character’s mental and emotional state to questions of why they are doing whatever they are supposed to do within the adventure. There’s nowhere near enough space to be comprehensive. This area of the matrix only contains the most important, key, points.

    Row 6: Ambitions & Plans

    From the reasons they are doing whatever they are doing to what they actually hope to accomplish. It’s worth noting that this might have absolutely nothing to do with the role that they are take within the immediate adventure beyond leading to a circumstance of “wrong place, wrong time” – but it would mean that they weren’t in that place at that time for no reason at all.

    Every character should always have a reason to be wherever they are when encountered, even if that reason is “habit” or “routine”.

    Row 7: Relationships

    Entries to this area of the matrix get an additional notation – a single asterisk if the relationship is to a PC, a double if it’s to a significant NPC.

    Row 8: Visuals

    Entries in this row are often single-word elements that can provide the foundations for a narrative text-block description.

Abstract Example

I put hours of effort into creating a visual example to present only to realize the morning after (as I write this) that what was supposed to be dragon-scales looked like baked beans in tomato sauce. One hasty edit later yielded the image below – one that I’m not totally happy with, but which will at least do the job.

Trying to fit a substantial amount of text into the label space was another challenge, and again, I’m not totally satisfied, but the results are good enough.

Idea / Content Generation

There are six sources that I rely on for ideas. The first three only generate content, the last three both generate content and filter other ideas to exclude unwanted ideas.

  1. Idea Generators posted at Campaign Mastery, especially those covered in The Characterization Puzzle series, and
  2. those described / listed in the Breaking Through Writer’s Block series (yes, there is some overlap).
  3. Stereotypes & Variations Thereof
  4. Playing against type (the opposite or inversion of a stereotype)
  5. Free Association based on the intended adventure role
  6. Free Association based on being different to recently-appearing characters
  7. Free Association based on being different to characters that have occupied a similar role in the past.
  8. Intended Role as a Filter

    The number 1 filter is to reject ideas that don’t contribute towards the character serving their intended campaign purpose (or worse yet, actively oppose that purpose), at least for the first column. There’s greater flexibility in the other three.

    Recent Characters as a Filter

    This is less important in the first column but significant in the third and fourth and absolutely critical in the second. At the same time, though, you have to be careful not to go too far – the character must at least be plausible within their role, and you can only justify deviating from that plausibility so far before you enter “fish out of water” territory. Sometimes, that’s acceptable or even desirable, but most of the time, it does nothing but erode verisimilitude without gain.

    Similar Characters as a Filter

    This filter follows the same pattern as the previous one, but instead of looking at the characters that have recently appeared in the campaign, it seeks comparison with others placed in similar roles within past adventures.

    How similar is ‘similar’? Every GM is different. Is a Personal Assistant the same thing as a Secretary? Is a Gopher too much like a Personal Assistant to tolerate similarities in character traits?

    It’s often a good idea to view the character holistically when making these judgments, because its easy to confuse function with personality. Two characters who excel in similar roles for entirely different and distinct reasons are probably distinctive enough to be going on with. But, again, your tolerance levels for such things, and those of your players, might be different to mine / my players’.

Regardless of where they come from, you need a source of ideas. Once you have one, you’re ready to move on.

The Process

I like to start with the biggest ideas, the broadest strokes. Sometimes those will belong in column 1, sometimes column 2, and on rare occasions, columns 3 or 4.

Ideas should be expressed as a single, short, declarative sentence, one to a line. Number each and place a number in the matrix in the appropriate cell.

It’s worth observing that for reasons of clarity, I made the example above a lot neater and more legible than the real thing would probably be. In particular, division of each row into sub-rows probably wouldn’t happen unless you were using pre-ruled notepaper.

Everything that you’ve already listed becomes context and inspiration for everything else – inconsistencies have to be avoided or explained Immediately, and everything else that even gets considered has to be judged in light of the context provided by the existing content.

At the same time, though, some ideas can explicitly nuance, refine, color, or shade that context. Even at the end of this process, nothing is set in immovable blocks of stone.

I also want to remind readers to follow the principles outlined in Creating Partial NPCs To Speed Game Prep and Holistic NPCs: Creating Special Characters!

    The first column – Immediate Needs

    Only list those items that are absolutely essential to an internally-consistent character on this pass. I can’t emphasize that enough.

      1. Ramifications & Expressions Of Core Concepts

      The first items that I look for or try to generate are any logical consequences or ramifications of the core concept. Is there anything that the character logically has to have about them to make the core concept work?

      Secondly (but usually at the same time), how can that core concept manifest itself so that the players & PCs can observe it – or how can it be concealed, if I don’t want them to be able to observe it?

      2. Additional concepts

      One primary idea is rarely enough for a realistic characterization. So the next step is to bolster the main concept with something supplemental or secondary. While this will often go into cell 1, column 1, there will be be times when it’s a better fit in column 2 because it makes this character more unique.

      3. Further Ramifications & Expressions

      The obvious third step is to further list ramifications and methods of expressing the additional concepts, and to note any variation on the existing information that result from an interaction of the concepts.

      4. Stats & Abilities – Implied and Explicit thoughts

      There may be one or more entries in this cell as a result of steps 1-3 above, already, so there may be no further work needed. So the focus has to be on the role within the adventure and any stat levels or abilities that will be needed to fulfill that role. These are generally expressed in general / relative terms, and sometimes relative to a particular PC.

      5. Equipment & Possessions

      This category might well be empty if there’s nothing noteworthy. On this pass, specifically exclude anything that comes with the archetype / character level as a default assumption – for example, if you are generating a medium-high level D&D / Pathfinder Fighter, it can be taken as read that they have a magic weapon, enchanted armor, and possibly a magical shield as well.

      If the character were a Lich with multiple levels in Fighter (a “Martial Lich” being the core concept) then they might have Necromantic Weaponry and Armor – and that would definitely count as something noteworthy.

      6. Personality & Focus on Distinctiveness

      A general personality type can often be summed up in just one or two words – such overarching summaries are what generally get listed in this pass in column 1.

      But you rarely think of these ideas in isolation, they usually come with thoughts regarding distinctiveness or uniqueness – so, at the same time, skip ahead to enter those details into column 2.

      7. History & Motivations

      There’s certainly (and intentionally) not enough room for a detailed biography or psychological assessment. Instead, one or two critical moments / concepts, which can be built upon later, will do. It will often be the case that there’s nothing critical to the intended role in the next adventure that needs to be listed in this space, though if there are to be any particular motivations to assist or resist cooperating with the PCs, they should be spelled out at this point.

      8. Ambitions & Plans

      For the first time, this looks beyond the immediate needs, because nothing makes a character seem more integrated into the campaign world than having some ambition or plan, especially if it goes beyond the immediate. That said, it needs some concrete manifestation within the immediate encounter, which is why it gets listed at this point.

      For example, a functionary might have a poster or painting of a beach, or snow-capped mountains, and something to indicate that they are saving for a trip. It doesn’t matter how near or far this ambition is – its in-progress, is all you need to know.

      9. Relationships

      At their simplest, inter-character relationships are a series of nested bubbles, with other characters occupying a position within a bubble.

      The number and definitions of such bubbles are matters for the GM to decide; often, genre will make a difference.

      An example hierarchy of bubbles might be:

         a. Complete Strangers
            b. Reputation of one known to the other
               c. Each known to the other by Reputation
                  d. Mutual Acquaintance
                     e. One’s Friend is an acquaintance of the other
                        f. Mutual Friend
                           g. One is directly connected to an important NPC of the other
                              h. Directly connected to a PC

      In the diagram example above, this has been simplified to a three-tier system:
         a. No direct connections to anyone noteworthy
            b. Direct connection to an important NPC;
               c. Direct connection to a PC.

      Decide on your strata of relatedness and indicate if the NPC being generated has such a connection, and if so, to whom and at what level it is.

      10. Visuals

      There will often be nothing in this category at the end of this pass. But sometimes there will be a significant marker to be placed here.

      I once generated a character whose core concept was “Dumb Blonde” (a cliche, and recognized as such). In this category, I listed “brunette, dies hair b/c she feels more comfortable as a blonde”. And, notably, in the stats section, “Not as dumb as she likes to pretend” and “Shy, lowers expectations.” — The cliche in this case is just a gateway to a far richer and more plausible characterization.

    The Second Column – Distinctiveness

    The second pass fills in enough items in Column 2 to make the character distinctive, i.e. to pass the ‘filtering’ idea-generation tests.

    You go through the same steps as above, but this time with a different focus. You shouldn’t list anything that doesn’t directly contribute toward making the character unique / distinctive, but you also should not skip any space, even if the decision is ‘nothing to enter here, move on’.

    Beware of making the character too complicated to roleplay while you are doing three or four other things at the same time, for obvious reasons of practicality. And if voices / accents aren’t amongst your core skills as a GM (they certainly aren’t in mine), you may need to note a way of working around that limitation – or you may need to deliberately exclude them from your creation.

    If you list only the essentials in this pass, you generally don’t go too far wrong.

      Column-spanning entries

      If you look closely at the example matrix above, you’ll note that some entries appear to span two adjacent columns – I actually did my best to make this fairly obvious, but haven’t explained it until now.

      An example is entry #1 on that example matrix. By now, you know that this refers to the core concept of the character – by having it span both columns 1 (Immediate Needs) and 2 (Distinctiveness), it is a note to yourself that you think this core concept is itself a point of uniqueness or distinctiveness about this NPC. Obviously, that won’t always be the case.

      A column-spanning entry, also occasionally thought of as a ‘bridging’ entry because it bridges the gap between two different sets of considerations for the character design, simply means that you think that entry is relevant to both.

      It’s not impossible to have a single entry bridge all four columns, but that would be comparatively rare.

    The First Column – Clarity & Nuance

    The same ten steps again – but this time, you want the uniqueness / distinctiveness to manifest in the immediate at-hand appearance / behavior of the character, so you are looking for ways to do that. Again, you want this to be something the players, and of course the PCs, to notice.

    Assessment #1: Fit For Purpose

    By this point you have the first two columns pretty much fitted out with everything you need for immediate play – at least in theory. Time, then, to take stock: Is the character that you have created sufficiently fit for the intended purpose within the forthcoming adventure?

    The inclusion of the term “sufficiently” is an important one. It’s entirely possible to have a character that is only just adequate to the immediate intended purpose because you can already see glimmers of a character arc or longer-term functionality for the character – purposes for which they are sufficiently well-suited to compensate for the immediate shortcomings.

    So this can be a quite nuanced decision.

      Decision #1: Start Over or Accept

      If the answer is “no”, then file this character away for the next time you need to create an NPC – either this one will or won’t be a fit for that purpose, but it’s not a fit for this one – and go back to square one.

      If the answer is “yes”, then you can proceed to Assessment #2.

    Assessment #2: Recurring or One-Off?

    No-one can see all ends, but it’s often possible to see glimmers of potential. Sometimes players relate particularly strongly to an NPC, encouraging the GM to give than NPC a recurring role; you can’t be certain of that in advance.

    A useful metaphor can be the campaign as the painting of a scene, and the NPCs, the tones and shades of paint. Sometimes, having used a particular color, you’re done with it; sometimes, you can use it again for something else, especially if you mix it with a different color to create a tonal variation.

      Suggestion: One Toe In The Water

      It can often be a good idea unless this NPC is deliberately to make a one-time appearance, to dip one toe into the water. That means that instead of a full pass through columns 3 and 4, you simply list one or two entries of ways that you might reuse the NPC if the campaigns’ long-term plotline develops in a particular direction – that’s usually more the result of the tension between the players and GM pulling the campaign in the direction they want it to go, and isn’t particularly subject to accurate prediction in advance.

      Or it might be that you can see a definite future role for this character in one or more adventures, in which case, the choice will be “recurring” and it should be given the full treatment.

    Assessment #3: Potential Roles in Future Adventures

    That leads into Assessment #3, spelled out in the section title above. Remember that a lot of water can flow under the bridge in between – sometimes life for an NPC can be fairly crappy. So you’re looking mostly at ways that the unmodified character can or logically would make a return appearance, AND ways that the character can evolve to achieve suitability for a different role in a future adventure.

    Sometimes, that evolution can be positive – someone gets a degree, or gets promoted, or gets lucky in some other way; sometimes it’s not, and oftentimes you have a blend of good and bad.

    Make note of any contradictions in assumptions – if a character is evolving, they may no longer fit into a picture for which the character is currently suited. But otherwise, don’t sweat them.

    “If the character evolves toward Role X, they can be used as a flunky in Adventure Y.

    “If not, they could be used as the Victim in Adventure Z.”

      Decision #2: Commit or Further Develop

      Time to fish or cut bait. You already know that the character fills your immediate adventure needs; the question is whether or not you have good reason to invest additional time, attention, and creative juices into them, or if you should commit to the character as they stand.

      If the character is likely to have a recurring role, or if there’s some potential for a repeat appearance somewhere down the track, then the answer should be “Further Develop”; if not, then “Commit” and be done with it.

      If you choose to “Commit”, skip the next couple of steps (labeled “Further Development,” logically enough, and head straight down to the “Commit” stages of the process. Otherwise, move on to the steps listed below.

    Further Development: Column 3

    Before you start on Column 3, you need to make absolutely sure that you understand the differences between columns 3 and 4.

    Column 3, “Long-term usefulness” is about adventures that you already have at least vague plans for, and is about what makes this character potentially useful within those specific adventures.

    Column 4 is more speculative. It’s investing in the potential of the character to be useful in the long-term; that potential might never be tapped, that depends on all sorts of factors beyond your control at this time.

    Each of these columns has one additional nuance – “Character as is” or “Character evolution”, as suggested above. But “Character as is” holds a particular trap.

    As shown in Lessons From The West Wing III: Time Happens In The Background, “Character As Is” doesn’t meant that the character will not or should not evolve following their immediate appearance – on the contrary, they definitely should! It means that the evolution of the character does not relate to making them fit for a future role, it’s just the passage of time manifesting itself.

    If you can make that evolution some consequence of their appearance in the immediate adventure, i.e. interaction with the PCs, so much the better, for what should be fairly obvious reasons..

    So, having clarified all that, go down column 3 and think about your plans for the future of the campaign, and how this character can fit into them. Make notes on any required character development that would be needed, and don’t be afraid to say to yourself “this character could potentially fill role X, but there are others better suited to that”.

    Further Development: Column 4

    Once you’ve gone through the eight rows looking for connections to existing plans, it’s time to go through them looking for future potentials. Be as speculative as you want, but bear in mind the probability of those speculations being relevant – if development effort never gets used, it’s essentially wasted time.

    I love characters who can be transformed by a plot twist in their personal or professional lives into something completely different. A key theme of my superhero campaign at the moment is “Allies becoming enemies, and enemies becoming Allies”, and there have been several examples of that happening within the campaign already. I’ll mention a few by name without going into specifics (there isn’t enough time for that here, and many of these developments have been described in other posts already):

    • Voodoo Willy.
    • Thanos (see: Pieces of Creation: Mortus)
    • Behemoth, founding member of the team.
    • House Ares of Demon (limited)
    • E-III
    • Dr Heinreich Vossen, the Monster Maker
    • Skygge
    • UNIT
    • Holo (ongoing)
    • Dr Muerte (limited)
    • Maynor Estuado Morales
    • The Rheezok (ongoing)
    • The Zhehu (ongoing)
    • Three Hazelwiches (ongoing)

    Those are, I think, enough to show an ongoing pattern. Some of the Reformations came easily, and some of them required significant effort to achieve. Some seemed almost inevitable, others seemed highly improbable before they happened. In some cases, the current relationship is more a netter of Neutrality than full alliance. And there’s still lots of scope for relations to sour.

    But it’s enough to demonstrate the concept.

      Further Development: Back to Assessment #1

      Once you’ve finished going through column 4, it’s time to go back to assessment #1. Columns 3 and 4 can amount to significant revision of the character design, or more specifically, making room for the possibilities can create that sort of revision. So the assessment process needs to be redone, just to make sure you haven’t made a mess of the immediate plans.

      Continue through the assessment process until you reach decision #2, which should now flow automatically to the “Commit” process below, because you’ve already done the “Further Development” that you can anticipate as being useful.

    Commit: Concept, Description, Personality, Manifestations, Other notes

    It’s time to turn the compiled notes into narrative text, ready to refer to. This is the first stage of turning concept into executed reality. After this is done, you can attach whatever hard numbers you consider necessary and have an NPC ready to run.

    As you can tell from the above, I’ve subdivided the Commit process into 5 semi-stages, each of which is contained within its own narrative block.

      Commit: Concept & Role in Adventure

      These are notes from you to you. It’s probably never going to be necessary for a player to read them. As such, be as succinct and to-the-point as you can be – you will have a lot on your plate when the time comes to reference them, remember.

      Commit: Description

      This is the first narrative block that is likely to be read, in whole or in part, to the players. I tend toward brief semi-paragraphs that can be inserted into the adventure as seems reasonable; there are lots of occasions when the full details won’t become apparent until after some level of interaction between NPC and PCs. I’ve lots of advice for making these more compact and more useful, presented following the rest of the Commit process.

      Commit: Personality

      Ideally, you never want to quote from this section; instead, the manifestation of personality in play should be such that the players could recreate this section.

      The real world is rarely so generous. Accordingly, I divide this information block in two, which I have listed separately. This part is one big paragraph that outlines the personality, and any psychological quirks and their (apparent) sources.

      Commit: Manifestations

      The second part of describing the Personality is a series of small memos-to-self on how to convey the personality to the players – how it will manifest in appearance, speech, mindset, etc.

      But I also throw in any manifestations of other parts of the character design that should be noted – think back to the “dumb blonde” example.

      Commit: Other Notes

      Finally, I synopsize related notes from columns 3 and 4 into a coherent passage of text, again essentially a memo-to-self. It’s important to spend time on this; while you should remember everything clearly, having just compiled it, once the immediate appearance of the character is complete, you might not even look at these notes for months or years. Your thinking now needs to be completely clear to the you that will be reading the notes then, and that can be more easily said than done.

      I have seen others suggest waiting a day or two and then returning to these notes just to make sure that they are clear. The problem is that this is long enough that important details may be lost to memory, and not long enough that all the important details will be forgotten – so it neither fully tests the notes you’ve made nor fully protects you from any inadequacy.

      Unfortunately, the only alternative is to either wait longer (even more dangerous) or spend what feels like an unnecessary amount of time getting it all on paper here and now. Which isn’t much of a choice at all, really.

    Tips, Tools, Techniques, and Further Reading

    There’s lots of content here on Campaign Mastery that can help you polish your creations and the narrative used to describe them. I thought it worth the effort to list some of the most useful:

    There are also a number of race / species oriented articles that will apply in some cases:

So that’s the more systematic method of designing NPCs. This is a process that I use regularly (though I haven’t previously formalized it) and can vouch for. The intention is to invest prep time in the parts of the NPC that will matter, while not ignoring the longer-term potential of the character being created.

Sure, you can just whip out a set of dice and start rolling stats, then try and hammer and file the resulting character into shape – changing the adventure as necessary. It can be a lot of fun reducing Chaos to Order, and if your improv skills are up to it, you can save a lot of prep time – time that you might not have (we all lead busy lives these days).

And every now and then, it will all go pear-shaped on you. While there’s lots of advice here at Campaign Mastery and elsewhere on how to recover from these disasters, its usually better to avoid them in the first place.

That’s where this article fits in. Hopefully, readers will find it useful!

Comments (2)

The Local Ambrosia: Food In RPGs


Cuisine is one of the ultimate distillations of culture. This is how RPGs can harness this fact.

Introduction

I watch a lot of travel documentaries and short videos, especially those that compare cultures. Not only are they inherently interesting to me, they give me vital cultural reference for games that take place in those nations, or that feature NPCs from that part of the world. On top of that, they can provide foundational building blocks when creating cultures that don’t exist in the real world, be they alien or Elven or whatever.

A recurring theme is that, to truly assimilate the local culture, you need to eat what the locals eat, and try to understand how that is reflective of the populace and their history.

Seems obvious, right? But apparently a lot of tourists don’t feel that way – for whatever reason, they seek out the food that is most like what they eat at home. They have that luxury because the modern world ensures a diffusion of major world cultures into any and every regional destination anywhere in the world.

If an American comes to Australia, lots of the foods will be exotic to them, but they will have no trouble finding something that will be palatable. If a Canadian visits Poland, they might be a little more challenged, but there will still be something they can access that will be at least vaguely similar to what they might eat at home, and so on.

The In-game Culinary Experience

In a Fantasy campaign, there will be little choice – you will eat like a local, whether you like it or not, unless moving in the most rarefied strata of society, and possibly even then. And the same is true when visiting an alien world in a Sci-Fi or Superhero game; the absence of engagement between the two cultures makes diffusion of one into the other problematic if not impossible. You either bring food with you, or you eat like a local.

Even in a Pulp campaign, there would be insufficient contact for there to be much diffusion. Again, in general, you have to eat like a local or go hungry.

That makes the food a cultural touchstone that – with a little research and imagination – can be evergreen within a campaign. Yet, looking back, I could count on one hand the number of campaigns that had even touched on this, let alone made active use of it – with fingers to spare.

Specifics

In my Zenith-3 / superhero campaign, one of the PCs has decided to be a foodie, inspired by an ongoing in-joke in which a semi-divine being cooks up exotic muffins and sympathetic refreshments which appear each morning on the pillow next to the team leader – no matter where she is. If she relocates somewhere exotic, it might take a while before they start turning up, but they will catch up with her eventually. Because this divinity was supposed to be one the greatest chefs in existence, I searched out a whole mess of exotic 5-star culinary creations (with pictures). This became a social ritual and bonding experience between the PCs within the campaign.

It occasionally gets brought up in the Pulp campaign that I co-GM.

And, most recently, it got a mention in my Dr Who campaign because he was visiting a culture that was home to a really exotic life-form, and their concept of nourishment helped cement verisimilitude for the species.

I have a vague memory that the subject got mentioned once or twice in a Traveler campaign a long time ago – but I’m not sure of that, so I’m not counting it.

And that’s it.

I already had, in the back of my mind, an article exploring these matters, when my inbox served up an article by Atlas Obscura about Fan-culture fictional food (link later) as a bonding agent within a given sub-community that crystallized the notion. The latter part of this article owes its existence to the above article. The first section covers the content that I already had in mind.

Research

To be fair, until modern times and the wonders of the internet, it was hard to properly research the subject. Unless you bought a cookbook focusing on a specific cuisine, all you had to work with was whatever you knew locally.

But Google Search is a perpetual exercise in the old programming maxim of GIGO – “Garbage In, Garbage Out.” Unless your search term is highly specific, highly directed and purposeful, it’s blind luck whether or not you find something useful.

The last time I visited my father, he got me to help him figure out why he was having so much trouble searching out recipes on Pinterest (conclusion, after considerable testing and experimentation: parts of the Pinterest infrastructure don’t play nice with the Firefox browser). But he made the point, in making the request, that there were thousands of recipes and variations posted there. I forget the exact recipe he was looking for – Asian Chicken with Plum Sauce maybe? – but the point wasn’t lost on me, because a number of the exotic muffins (see the text insert above) were also Pinterest-derived.

The process that I use these days starts with deciding what the direction should be, entering that into a Google Image search, and selecting the item that looks most interesting. Once you have a target, “Open Link In New Tab” (or the non-Chrome equivalent) brings up the page on which the image is featured. Much of the time, there are little or no specifics included – to get those, you often have to add ‘recipe’ to the search term – but I prefer to start with the more general search because it helps refine the ideas and provide additional inspiration. If I need to, I can then refine the search term and add ‘recipe’.

I’ll go into where the process can go from there, a little later in the article.

First though, I want to focus on getting that Direction.

Article Road-map

There are nine types of connection between a culture and its cuisine:

  • National Character I: Reflections
  • National Character II: Nationalism Amplification
  • Echos Of History I: Tribulations Of Yesteryear
  • Echos Of History II: Past Glories
  • Sublimations Of The Forbidden
  • Osmotic Pastimes
  • Celebratory Specifics
  • Religious Expressions
  • Yesterday’s Favorites

Each of these needs specific examination. I particularly want to call attention to the last item on the list, because it speaks to generational change and nostalgia and the role that they play.

After that, there are a couple of broader topics that need scrutiny:

  • Environment & Local Ingredient Restrictions
  • Stories Of Sun and Rain
  • You Need A National Character
  • You Need National Pastimes
  • Specific-Occasion Cuisine
  • One or Many? The Ubiquitous vs Multiple Expressions
  • Abstract / Narrative References

And then, we get into the parts inspired by the Atlas Obscura article:

  • Blind Culinary Creation
  • Directed Culinary Experimentation
  • A Foundation
  • Substitutions & Variations
  • Exotic Flavors
  • Delivery Vehicles
  • Recipe Creation
  • Sample Size
  • Accompaniment
  • Socializing The Society

Lots to get through, so without further ado:

Cultural Connections

There are nine ways in which elements of a cuisine reflect or connect to the culture. Most specific dishes will only connect in one or two of these ways. Direction therefore comes from choosing one that is appropriate to the contemporary moment in which the cuisine is being experienced and then developing the cuisine to match. Over time, the basic cuisine will be supplemented by a sprinkling of the others, sometimes frequently or regularly, sometimes only on specific occasions.

    National Character I: Reflections

    A National Character is a generalized set of philosophies and cultural traits that, in combination, create a generic persona. Individuals usually diverge from this generic persona, but share in some or all of the traits to some extent. It is easy to drop a reference to the generic archetype to convey a perceived foundation for a personality. Some examples, each of which should instantly conjure an impression of the archetype to the reader: A typical Frenchman, a typical Scot, a typical Texan, a typical New Yorker, a typical American, a typical Australian.

    Particular foods can be reflective of this specific character, or are considered so by the locals. Australians are generally considered to be outdoors types, big on sports and social activities, and so the Barbecue would be considered reflective of that character. Barbecues are also cultural touchstones in the Texan sub-culture, but there is a substantial difference in terms of what foods get placed on the grill, and how they are spiced (or not) – Australians will barbecue steaks, meat patties (rissoles), sausages, seafood (occasionally), ham, pineapple slices, eggs, and chopped onions. We may lightly toast buns. Selected salad items may be added to the hot meat, most chilled or at room temperature.

    Texans will frequently have spiced or marinated the meat first, this is far less common in Australia, and they might roast bell peppers (called capsicum, here in Australia). The meat is usually beef, chicken, but can sometimes be lamb, kangaroo, or even more exotic types. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of a Texan barbecuing any meats other than beef and maybe shrimp. So while there is a certain degree of overlap, the overall cuisines are quite distinct.

    National Character II: Nationalism Amplification

    There are certain foods that are considered especially evocative of what it means to be Australian. This goes beyond simply reflecting the national character, there is a more tribal social element.

    America views itself as a melting pot, but its many imported cultures tend to agglomerate into small regional clusters of people of like ancestry – Chinatowns and Italian Quarters and so on. Australia doesn’t actually characterize itself this way, but there’s more actual “melting” here – we’re totally fine with blending different cuisines together to create a hybrid that is quite distinct from its roots. I’ve had a Beef-and-black-bean Pizza. I’ve had Turkish Kebab meat with Greek Salad in a wrap. I’ve had Mexican Tacos in which the meat was seasoned (in part) with Chinese 5-spice.

    99% or more of these fusions don’t catch on. But occasionally, there will be something that does – and that then feeds back into the traditional preparation of the base food. Australian Chinese food tends to be a blending of several different Chinese cuisines – sometimes represented by different menu items, sometimes with one influencing the other.

    But even more than that, we tend to take something we like and make it Australian. Turkish kebabs, certain Greek foods, Italian pasta and Pizza, Southern-style fried chicken, and so on. Spicy Portuguese Chicken is the most recent of these assimilations. We take the American burger and add cheese, beetroot, a fried egg, and pineapple – and feel shortchanged if any Burger with “the lot” doesn’t include these items.

    And that’s all a reflection on the egalitarian nature of Australian Society. America is all about ‘equal but separate’ – Australia is more ‘equal and inclusive’. Their approach keeps the cuisine more pure and representative, ours creates more cross-pollination and makes the members of those sub-cultures more “Australian’ in the process. In the US, you hear regular references to “Irish Americans” and “Italian Americans” and so on – there is no such nomenclature here, they are either “Irish” or they are “Australian,” and the functional definition of “Australian” expands to include the new cultural referents. Nothing wrong with either approach (though both have their pluses and minuses), they are just different.

    Because there is so much unique wildlife here in Australia, it’s possible that we are more aware of this than other places.

    Echos Of History I: Tribulations Of Yesteryear

    Some foods are reflective of some past period of privation or trouble. April 25th is ANZAC day in Australia (and New Zealand), when the soldiers of past conflicts are commemorated and remembered, somewhat like Veteran’s Day in the US. While they are available all year round, each year at this time there is a peak in the availability of Anzac Biscuits.

    Interestingly, there is no one accepted recipe for these, despite the impression created by the Wikipedia page to which I’ve linked, but recipes tend to fall into two different families – the hard, dry, version (probably closer to the original), and a softer, chewier version (my personal preference). Some versions achieve this by including molasses with the golden syrup. Does the US even have Golden Syrup?? Okay, you have something almost the same, called “King brand syrup”. So, a least some of you will know what it tastes like.

    Such foods tend to be plainer and simpler fare than normal. They reflect the restrictions and limited diet that was forced upon the populace during the hard times, and serve as a reminder of those times and commemoration of those whose lives were lost or ruined in the events.

    It is possible for the date to be shifted forward or back, where a particular date is already taken by an event with strong cultural connections, or for the existing celebrations to be modified to incorporate the influence of the more recent events.

    An example would be the long-term impact on the Australian city of Darwin of the devastation wrought by Cyclone Tracy.

      Darwin and Cyclone Tracy

      I can’t personally vouch for the authenticity of the following beyond the bare facts – it might be just urban legend.

      Cyclone Tracy was a tropical cyclone that all but destroyed the city of Darwin, the night of December 24, 1974.

      A cyclone is called a Hurricane, Tropical Storm, Typhoon, or Tropical Depression in other parts of the world. “Tracy” was expected to pass clear of the city, but it changed course without warning. After 10PM (local time) wind gusts began reaching 217 km/h (117 knots, 135 mph) before becoming so severe that the instrumentation failed. Residents were celebrating Christmas and left without warning, partly because an earlier Cyclone, Selma, had passed the city by without harm, partly because news outlets only had skeleton crews on-hand due to the holiday, and partly because of overconfidence.

      70% of the city was leveled, including 80% of housing. 94% of dwellings were uninhabitable. 66 people were killed, and more than 25,000 of the 47,000 inhabitants were left homeless. Over 30,000 had to be subsequently evacuated, and many never returned.

      This was not the first tropical cyclone to strike the city; others had occurred in January 1897 and March 1937. Nevertheless, in the years after WW2, and in particular in the 20 years from 1954, the city had undergone rapid expansion. The building codes of the time were required to give attention to the possibility of cyclones, enforcement was slack and standards inadequate to cope with a direct strike. Complacency had set in long before.

      Selma, which had been forecast to strike the city just ten days earlier but which had turned aside, added to the local complacency; there was an element of “the boy who cried wolf”. Not enough took the real message of Selma – that such storms could change course unpredictably – out of the event. As a result, life went on as normal even while the storm was gathering, with residents attending parties and wrapping Christmas presents.

      The intensity and track of the cyclone destroyed virtually all telecommunication and radio equipment in the city, so it took a while for news of the event to reach the rest of the country. By mid-morning, though, contact with emergency services had been made; because of the skeleton-staff situation nationwide, it wasn’t until mid-afternoon that most of the country learned of the disaster.

      Of course, there were consequent crisis points in the aftermath, but there was also an up-swell in public support extended to the population. Many charity drives were held in the immediate aftermath nationwide, most of them completely unofficial, as the rest of the country rallied around the devastated city. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were raised either in cash or donated goods within a 24-hour period. Most evacuees had lost everything on that Christmas eve; it was not uncommon for them to arrive and disembark from the air transport that ferried the majority to be informed that free accommodation had been arranged for them at such-and-such an address, here’s some cash for immediate living expenses, here’s a week’s groceries, and a small gift pack for the children. In less than a month, the #1 single on the charts was a charity single, “Santa Never Made It Into Darwin” – it felt at the time like it was only a week later, but memory of time at that age is spotty at best.

      I was 10 years old at the time, and remember the reactions of the children most particularly. The youngest seemed to cope better with the disruption, and the older teenagers; it was the kids aged around 8 to 14 that were old enough to have some appreciation for what had happened but not mature enough to cope with it. Since I was right in the middle of this age bracket, I sympathized.

      Over the next 4 years, the city was completely rebuilt, all to new building standards. Enough reconstruction had taken place that the city was able to accommodate fully a population of the size that had been resident before Tracy. Nevertheless, some 60% of those evacuated never returned to the city; their places were taken by others. In the 2021 census, there were 139,902 residents, almost triple the pre-cyclone population.

      You can glean all of the above from the Wikipedia articles to which I linked earlier in this section. What isn’t adequately covered are the recovery and long-term impact that the event had, according to some reports.

      They state that affected residents tend towards simpler foods in the week prior to Christmas, in memory of the privations that occurred after the events of Christmas 1974, with emphasis on charitable donations of goods and services. The money saved is then expended on a bigger and more lavish celebration on Christmas Day. However, there is limited take-up of this tradition by the newer arrivals, and memories of the event are fading as the population ages. Within a generation of this writing, it will either be cemented as part of the cultural landscape, or have died out almost completely.

      I could find no canonical references to certify the above. For all I know, it was someone’s speculation on what they thought would happen; it’s certainly plausible enough to be believable, but with no evidence to back it up, it remains just a (possibly apocryphal) story. There is no mention of it on the “Darwin After” page of www.cyclonetracy.au, for example.

      I did find reports that many survivors actively avoid engaging in normal Christmas activities due to PTSD arising from the disaster. Certain Christmas Carols and loud noises can be triggering, according to reports, especially to parents who lost children and those who were too young at the time to understand what was happening, according to this report from 2019, the 45th anniversary of the disaster.

      I can certainly see such people avoiding any reminders of the events. At the same time, those who returned have been lauded for their resilience, and it remains plausible that some have found this to be a stress-relief mechanism. So I just don’t know.

      It’s certainly not without antecedent. Similar patterns of privation-and-blowout have occurred elsewhere, such as following WW2. So it’s plausible, but unconfirmed.

    Echos Of History II: Past Glories

    This logically leads on from the preceding social connection – feasts to celebrate past achievements and, in some cases, simple survival of harrowing events are hardly uncommon, and even part of the normalization of response to tragedy.

    Sublimations Of The Forbidden

    People can sometimes express things normally forbidden within the culture through food. They don’t break the taboo in question, but they sublimate the restriction into a culturally-acceptable form – a normally ascetic population who permit one night each year of extravagance, for example.

    Osmotic Pastimes

    Another aspect of American culture exemplifies this behavior, but variations are common in cultures all over the world. Food deemed suitable for sporting events, and especially social practices surrounding grand finals and events like the Superbowl – easy to prepare in advance, easy to eat informally tend to predominate and be part of the ritual celebration of such events.

    It’s the weekly routine leading up to those events that has generally has the greatest impact on a cuisine, though its the social practices surrounding the big event that have the greatest cultural impact. For that reason, it’s often easy to dissociate the two.

    In Australia, the Australian Meat Pie, Sausage Roll, and even (to some extent) the Sausage Sandwich, are all foods that are easily prepared and consumed while enjoying the game, either directly at the sporting venue or indirectly by gatherings around the television set.

    The US cultural equivalent is probably the Hot Dog.

    This cultural connection generalizes this behavior into a cycle: Sporting event influences culture, culture produces appropriate cuisine, cultural events surrounding the sporting event popularize and focus around the cuisine, which becomes part of the traditions surrounding the sporting event, which further influences the culture.

    It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that something similar took place in Ancient Rome surrounding the Gladiatorial combats.

      A snapshot: Game-day food in Australia

      Often, the cuisine spreads beyond the association with the sporting event which caused its development, normalizing it as a regular part of the culture. It’s quite common for workmen to have a meat pie or two for lunch, for example – the virtues that make them acceptable fare for the sporting event translate into advantages at other times.

      A 2003 survey found that the average Australian consumes more than 12 meat pies per year. The resulting once-a-month average seems rather low to me; I would put the figure at 2-3 times that. From which I can only conclude that there are parts of Australia that consume vastly lower quantities than those sold in all the areas that I’ve lived in.

      But let’s accept that official average; the current population of Australia is about 26 million. So that’s 312 million meat pies per year, or about six million a week. Throw in Chiko Rolls (a fried snack made from cabbage, barley, carrot, green beans, beef, beef tallow, wheat cereal and onion, all enclosed in a thick egg-and-flour pastry tube, designed to survive enthusiastic handling at football matches) at 17 million a year, and an unknown number of sausage rolls (my estimate: about 70% as many as meat pies) and you get a strong picture of the local everyday takeaway diet.

      But then there’s the fish-and-chips, (350,000 tonnes of seafood a year, or about 13.5 kg per person each year, or 260 g a week per person – so that’s 2.6 average servings according to the official dietary recommendations, but I would expect it to be 2 larger servings than standard!), and 289 million hamburgers added to the total – and none of those are the most popular take-away food here.

      That honor is reserved for the Chicken, with the average consumption per person being 47.46 kg per year – that’s around 2.7 billion servings a year of slightly less than 0.5kg each.

      I almost overlooked Pizzas! Australians eat 264 million of those a year, all told.

      The average Australian has takeaway food (‘fast food’ in America-speak) 60 times a year – delivered, 28 times, and pick-up in person 32 times. That’s 5 times a month, or a little over once a week – at least, that was the case before the current cost-of-living crisis. According to new research, home penny-pinching has led to a massive increase in takeaway in our diets – to the point that per capita, we are eating it more often than the US does.

      And none of that counts game-day food cooked at home. Anyone who doesn’t think this is reflective of the cultural landscape must be blind.

    Celebratory Specifics

    Certain times of the year have their own special dietary traditions. I’m excluding from this category non-secular events, I’ll get to those in a minute.

    Two examples come to mind more readily than any others – Christmas (different in every country), and Thanksgiving (US only).

    Religious Expressions

    I listed Christmas amongst the traditional secular cultural connections because I’m unaware of any especially strong religious influence over the cuisine on offer. Other expressions of religion are more strongly influential (I’m not going to go into as much detail here, purely to try and avoid offending anyone).

      Lent

      Lent is a christian religious period of the year. It is a 40-day period that starts on Ash Wednesday and culminates in my second example, Easter.

      Lent | Wikipedia

      During Lent, On Ash Wednesday and Good Friday: Everyone of age 18 to 59 must fast, unless exempt due to usually a medical reason, and on all other Fridays, everyone of age 14 and up must abstain from consuming meat.

      Fish, on the other hand, are perfectly acceptable, presumably because they were not considered “meat” back when the rules of the festival were laid down.

      Some religious subgroups go a lot further. I know some people who refuse to eat red meat or chicken at all during the 40 days, some who have updated their practices to go full vegan for the 40 days, and some who also ban sweets and confectionery (other than fresh fruit). Abstinence from Alcohol is also not uncommon.

      In terms of the impact on cuisine, it will obviously depend on how restrictive individual practices are, but a healthy and nutritious diet is still required, most sources describe the onset of malnutrition as taking only a week or two, though overt symptoms might not lead to diagnosis for some time (Search for ‘dangers of fad diets’ for more information).

      There are two schools of thought: the traditional, in which only approved or approvable meals are acceptable, and the modern, in which nutrition is taken into consideration within the confines of the restrictions being required.

      The stronger the restrictions, the more dependent on a restricted diet people become, and the greater the incentive to provide culinary variations of flavor to maximize the variety within those restrictions. There are innumerable fish recipes, for example.

      Easter

      Easter foods traditionally involve a feast to end the period of privation of Lent. There aren’t many specific foods that are associated with the holiday, and they are quite secular these days; here in Australia, they are Hot Cross Buns and Easter Eggs.

      The latter are just a particular way of presenting chocolate, though there are frequently more decadent examples on offer than at other times of the year.

      Hot Cross Buns originate in England. A hot cross bun is a spiced bun, usually containing small pieces of fruit and marked with a cross on the top, which has been traditionally eaten on Good Friday in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, India, Pakistan, Malta, United States and the Commonwealth Caribbean.Hot Cross Bun | Wikipedia

      In my Australian experience, Hot Cross Buns become available up to 2 months prior to Easter (from the start of March) and are consumed far more frequently than just Good Friday. It’s also quite common for them to be consumed cold, but accompanied by a hot drink, though some people do heat them up in the microwave and serve them buttered. It’s quite uncommon to add any sort of topping, however, perhaps because the flavor profile of the spice doesn’t go with many jams and spreads.

      A couple of singular experiences need to be mentioned in this context: Last year, some stores began stocking hot cross buns in the week following Christmas (notably much earlier than usual), and this year, supermarkets began stocking unusual varieties – a caramel hot cross bun (not very nice), a coffee-flavored hot cross bun (sold out before I could try them) and a banana-flavored hot cross bun (ditto). I have had a variety with diced and baked apple in the past, and that was quite nice. And I have once heard of a ginger flavored variety that might be quite nice, but I’ve never seen it offered for sale.

      It’s my suspicion that these are secular ‘refinements’ to the traditional hot cross bun, the result of viewing them as a ‘seasonal commodity’ more than anything else.

      There are, nevertheless, a number of different recipes out there – largely because a lot of hot cross buns are very dry and somewhat tough and dense compared to normal buns. It can actually be quite hard to eat two of them, if they are particularly bad in this respect – you really do need to accompany them with something liquid!

    Beyond these, there are obviously the Jewish festivals as examples. I don’t really know enough about these to be able to unpick them without giving offense to someone. For example, I know nothing about any connections between diet and Yom Kippur. The Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, has an obvious culinary connection in the form of a celebratory feast, though I don’t know what dishes would traditionally accompany that date. There are many more, but I don’t know the culinary traditions associated with them – I just know that there are some.

    Yesterday’s Favorites

    Each generation generalizes the food they grew up with into the foundations of cuisine, then build on that foundation. It can take multiple generations for a given food to work its way out of popularity, or to become a fixture within a national cuisine.

    Or it can happen very quickly if there is a connection with a traumatic event of some kind.

    A tradition begins with a set of circumstances shared by a large segment of the population, which catches on as a solution to whatever the restrictions imposed by those circumstances might be.

    These imposed solutions are normalized in the experiences of children growing up in that time – not in all cases, but in some. The reasons can vary – it might be a connection to their childhood, or a structural element to their lives, or simply because they enjoyed the food.

    One generation later, and if there is any sort of structure to the practice, it becomes institutional and a tradition.

    And a generation after that, its origins are largely forgotten.

    Most of these generational ‘landmarks’ are accompanied by some refinement or variation, often being made over by advances in technology, culinary practices, or accessibility of ingredients.

    I have two examples to offer that shed more light on the rise of new ‘traditional foods’.

      The Great Potato Famine

      In the second half of 1845, Potato Blight caused a partial failure of the potato crop on which the Irish depended. A year later, the blight returned and had an even more severe effect on the potato crop, driving the country into a nightmare of hunger and disease. On the eve of the famine, the population stood at 8.5 million; one million died as a result over the next 6 years, and another million emigrated. The most severe impacts were in the west, where some counties lost more than 50% of their population.

      The death toll alone was enough to be nationally significant – almost 12% of the population. But the migration, which became normalized practice, which saw as many emigrate in 11 years as had done so in the preceding two-and-a-half centuries, was at least as devastating to the country; between 1841 and 1900, some 6 million would leave the country, and in 1901 the population stood at just 4.4 million, despite decades of recovery.

      — Source: Blog by Ambassador Mulhall, 3 December 2018, on Black ’47: Ireland’s Great Famine and its after-effects.

      After the famine, many Irish women migrated to America to escape poverty, and were exposed to new ingredients and foods not common in Ireland, such as a greater variety of meats and produce. Entering domestic service in America, they had to adapt their cooking to please the upper-class in America.

      This was problematic at first due to Irish women clinging to foods and ingredients common in Ireland. This caused much prejudice towards Irish women and many would mock the Irish’s lack of cooking skills without considering the famine and poverty Irish women grew up with.

      Newspapers, including the Women’s Journal, published articles which contained prejudice towards Irish women for seemingly being unable to know how to cook.

      Irish women in domestic service later gained the experience with ingredients abundant in America and altered Irish cuisine to be foods for pleasure. In Ireland food was designed based on caloric intake, instead of for pleasure, such as foods in America. Traditional Irish dishes started to include more meat and fruit and allowed for Irish food to stray from the stigma of being bland.

      The last quarter of the 20th century saw the emergence of a new Irish cuisine based on traditional ingredients handled in new ways. This cuisine is based on fresh vegetables, fish (especially salmon and trout), oysters, mussels and other shellfish, traditional soda bread, the wide range of cheeses that are now being made across the country, and, of course, the potato.

      Traditional dishes, such as Irish stew, coddle, the Irish breakfast, and potato bread have enjoyed a resurgence in popularity. Chef and food writer Myrtle Allen – an early protagonist of such attitudes and methods – went on to play a crucial role in their development and promotion. Schools like the Ballymaloe Cookery School have emerged to cater for the associated increased interest in cooking.

      — Source:Irish Cuisine | Wikipedia

      WW2

      This example is another of those items that I’m not 100% sure of. I think that I either read, or heard in a documentary, about it, but cannot remember when or where.

      The story, as I remember it, is that anti-German sentiment imposed additional constraints on the British diet beyond even those deriving from the wartime restrictions. Anything that was too Germanic in sound or social association became wildly unpopular, and could even lead to social ostracization and suspicion of collaboration.

      At much the same time, a sense of solidarity with the French led to a rise in popularity of French Cuisine, though this was retarded by wartime restrictions.

      Is it true? As with the earlier example, it sounds plausible, but without a source to cite, it has to be taken with a substantial helping of salt.

Wow, around 6000 words on just the social connections with food. I may have to abbreviate my thoughts on the remainder of the article just to make deadline!

General Discussions Of Specific Subjects

Having amplified the ways in which cuisine connects with a society, it’s time to start thinking about the restrictions that need to be taken into account when crafting a dish for an in-game society, plus a few random associated thoughts..

    Environment & Local Ingredient Restrictions

    What you can grow limits what can be cooked. Obvious, right? Well, it’s not entirely true – even in the middle ages there was trade in foodstuffs. What usually had to be done was to preserve it in some way, and that hasn’t changed. In the real Middle Ages, of course, they didn’t have refrigeration, but wizards and their wand-crafting capabilities solves that problem rather neatly.

    Of course, Wizards with the appropriate skills don’t necessarily come cheap. And that means that imported ingredients will also be very expensive, so only the wealthiest can afford to break the limits posed at the start of the previous paragraph. That usually means Kings and elite specialists who can charge like wounded bulls for their services – top-tier clerics, for example.

    So, those with government or religions backing them, or really significant individuals.

    It’s also very true that nature wizards and druids can enhance crop yields with appropriate magics. These used to be (rather disparagingly) called “Hedge Wizards” in the campaigns I played in when just starting out. It’s entirely possible that a little encouragement might enable crops that otherwise would not survive to prosper. And, because you only need the services of such a wizard once a month or less under normal circumstances, this probably expands the pool of available ingredients considerably, and makes them available to the merely wealthy.

    On top of that, there should be edible plants around that never existed in reality. And, of course, there are sourcebooks absolutely full of strange wildlife that might make tasty – and different – meat for a table.

    The first rule in a Fantasy environment has to be to take these considerations into account.

    The story is vastly different in some sci-fi environments – starships tend to be able to carry frozen product from one planet to another with no difficulty whatsoever. Whether or not they can do so in bulk is more uncertain, but the fact that we can do the equivalent is a solid indicator that it’s possible. The more that can be carried at a reasonable cost, the further down the social classes of society these ingredients can permeate.

    Which is really not all that much different from the Fantasy situation, when you think about it. Just more-so.

    But the technology involved suggests that a better process would be to decide what the market penetration should be; knowing either the cost per ton or the amount that can be freighted in then gives you the other factor, then all you need do is justify that in game terms. Maybe the region of space is unstable, or blocked, forcing ships to go the long way around? Maybe there are hostile forces out there? Or, to go in the other direction, maybe there’s something about the trade route that is especially conducive or easy?

    You are likely to end up with several ‘classes’ of goods, either way. Identifying those classes and what’s in them is the desired end-product of this process.

    Of course, you can also design your game world in such a way that no-one has thought of doing this, or there is some reason why it can’t be done, or is prohibitively expensive. There will still be exotic local ingredients, but most of the potential gets locked away. But, be warned: if you take this lucrative potential industry away from NPCs, you leave yourself open to PCs deciding to be food magnates…

    Stories Of Sun and Rain

    Seasons and specific time periods demand variations in cuisine that can outlast the practices / circumstances that inspired them.

    The more primitive the society, the more dependent on natural seasons they will be. Ultimately, you can define the technical prowess of a society by the strength of their ability to break free of this dependence. Three technologies are especially significant: storage / preservative tech (or magic); glasshouses or some other sunshine / climate control; and irrigation.

    Of course, industrial-scale glasshouses are a rather more difficult proposition than smaller ones, even if the latter are scattered all over; you still won’t get bulk crops out of them. Smaller quantities or more concentrated ingredients are a different story.

    You would expect the primary protein to be a locally-sourced product, either wild or domesticated, or some combination. To this basis would be added locally-sourced vegetables and grains. But there would be exotic herbs to supplement whatever can be found naturally, and there might be a few small-scale products like mushrooms and fruit that can also be profitably produced.

    The availability of ingredients is not a year-round constant, and once again this factor can be overcome (at least to some extent) with advanced magic or technology. Bear in mind the lesson of some fruits – they actually the cold of winter to trigger fruit production. And there are some Australian plants that need the heat of bushfires on a semi-regular basis to prosper, too.

    So there are going to be seasonal variations in available ingredients to at least some extent, and that extent is a food-tech / magic issue. This in turn will dictate that certain dishes can only be produced at certain times of the year, again to a variable extent. The wealthier an individual, the later in a season they can have products that others can’t, simply because they can afford the cost of importing them from somewhere whose growing season runs just a little longer.

    The final portion of my opening statement is that even when these restrictions are overcome, the practices of serving up such dishes as used to be seasonally-restricted will tend to continue to follow those restrictions (at least for a while) due to social inertia. There might be no good reason anymore why Doltrop Soup is only consumed in late winter, but it’s a tradition that dictates that this is the best time of year for that particular dish, and those who consume it outside the ‘natural’ time of demand will be seen as pretentious, at the very least.

    On top of all that, working habits (especially in rural / agrarian areas) will also be dictated – to some extent – by the dependence on the climatic cycles. Pick somewhere reasonably analogous here on Earth, in terms of climate, and a reasonably representative time period, and see what you can find out about the agricultural year. Do farmers have to be up early to harvest? and so on.

    The second step in creating a cuisine for your society is to take the underpinnings from your first answer – the level of access to magical or technological solutions – and apply it to this secondary question.

    You Need A National Character

    Even where a cuisine isn’t directly reflective of some aspect of the national character, that character still provides a guideline, because the other cuisine elements have to fit into that picture somewhere. So you need a defined national character to reference.

    These don’t grow on trees, and can take weeks or months of study of real cultures to define and adapt – and 99% of that effort will probably be wasted, ultimately.

    Fortunately, this is a problem that I have solved in a previous article: The Poetry Of Meaning: 16 words to synopsize a national identity (5442 words).

    A related article might also be useful: A Legacy Of War: The Founding Of National Identities (1783 words, a short one!)

    You Need National Pastimes, Holidays, etc

    You’ve probably got at least some of this worked out already, but a more systematic approach will fill out the picture of the society even more – and you will need all of that detail to integrate the cuisine and the society. Again, this is a problem that has already been solved – my 4-part series Distilled Cultural Essence (1021 + 1703 + 1897 + 2149 = 6770 words) is full of detailed and specific thoughts and questions to define a culture.

    You don’t need to answer all of them – you’re unlikely to ever need that level of detail – but you should at least think briefly about each, and then cherry-pick the ones that seem the most definitive to you of this particular culture. In particular, if you’ve already thought of an answer to a specific topic, it’s fine to skip over it – though reviewing the questions posed might elicit additional details that you haven’t considered.

    Again, there’s another post that might be of value: Traditional Interpretations and Rituals Of Culture (5367 words).

    And, from WAAAY back in prehistory (Roleplaying Tips #296, to be exact), I listed 31 Questions To Define a Culture (1165 words) – and then spent several times the length of listing the questions on how to use them.

      Expressions

      How do the locals demonstrate their support of their pastimes, holidays, and festivals? Are there changes in what they wear, are there decorations of a specific type, are there particular greetings?

      Consider Christmas. Consider Halloween. Consider the local sporting team… those three sources of ideas will get you through this question quite handily.

      Rivalries

      Most sporting teams eventually acquire a rivalry, an opposing team that fans of the first team love to hate. Who are the rivals of the local team, and how do their fans express support for the team?

      Sometimes, things get even more complex – two rivals can come together to oppose an even more substantial rival.

      Consider the State Of Origin series (Australian Rugby League). There are two teams – the NSW Blues and the Queensland Maroons.

      Every week in the regular competition, teammates are expected to work together against whichever other team they are confronting. But in the middle of the season, those teams are (temporarily) broken up; the cream of those players that derive from New South Wales are selected for the Blues, the best players who derive from Queensland get selected to play for the Maroons, and the two sides then meet in a best-of-three series, before the regular season resumes. It’s quite often literally teammate against teammate.

      Or think about the State-level cricket competition, where players from the different teams get called up to play for the national team in one of the different incarnations of the sport. In modern times, that’s often all they do, play for the national team, but in times past, they would return to their state squad when not required in that capacity. Teammates become rivals become teammates again.

      Remember how I said “often all they do, play for the national team”? Well, it’s not quite true – outside of our regular seasons there are additional competitions, both international and domestic, and – you guessed it – sometimes rivals end up as teammates and vice-versa.

      Sporting subcultures can be extremely complicated…

      Opinions

      Some opinions are so ubiquitous within a culture that they can be considered another aspect of that culture. Beyond that, there’s the question of socially-acceptable ways of expressing an opinion (if there are any) vs socially unacceptable approaches. Opinions and how they are handled by the society can definitely be definitive.

      Long ago, in the super-spy spin-off of my Superhero campaign, Team Neon Phi, an NPC member of the Secret Police entered a bar to test the loyalty of those present (in a fairly repressive culture). His technique: to posit an opinion critical of the regime and observe who spoke out in support of the opinion, and who didn’t speak out against it but remained silent. The first group were then apprehended as they left the bar by other members of the secret police, while the silent ones were placed on a suspect list for close examination. What the NPC didn’t know was that some of the ‘patrons’ were actually the PCs in disguise to conduct a mission against his country… One of the PCs suspected (rightly) that it was a trap, and vocally condemned the offending statements, but the others didn’t pick up on his signals to them, and remained mute…

      Legends Of The Game / Legends Of History

      Some players will achieve legendary status. The reasons can vary, depending on how good the local team are – anyone who exceeds the typical standard will be lauded.

      Similarly, in the broader context, there will be some people who are legends of the culture, the society; they will stand out in the History books. How are they celebrated? Statues? Annual Holidays? Songs? Stage plays? Oral traditions? Holograms?

      Legendary Encounters

      Most sporting codes will also have certain matches that had something extra that pass into folklore. These will frequently get inserted into conversations almost at random in most cultures, but sometimes a society takes this an extra mile. What are the legendary encounters, what made them memorable, and how are they celebrated?

      Seasonal Fevers

      Does anyone remember Major League, the baseball-based comedic movie? How the team of misfits went from almost being reviled by the despairing fans to household names and heroes?

      Every year, every team approaches a do-or-die moment, a point in time that cements their position in the pecking order for that year. Those on top want to show no weakness; those close to the top want to topple those on top, while making sure that they make the playoffs (or whatever the equivalent is); those almost good enough want to squeeze their way into the playoffs at the expense of someone else (‘win this or our season is over’), and those at the bottom want to avoid what we in Australia refer to as ‘The Wooden Spoon’, i.e. coming dead last.

      Fans respond to the imminent approach of these critical moments with increased fervor, reaching fever pitch when the moment itself arrives. It doesn’t matter how good or bad the team are, there will be such a moment and the fans will drink it in.

      How will behavior change? How will the moment’s imminence be expressed?

    These considerations construct a national character, refine it, and apply it, bridging the gap between the culture and the connections-to-culture of the cuisine.

    Which means that, at last, we’re ready to think about specific dishes. Well, almost – let’s segue into that with a couple more relevant questions to pose…

    Specific-Occasion Cuisine

    There are three considerations that define special occasion cuisine. They are Preparation, Socializing, and Tribal Food.

      Preparation

      Any preparation required must be either extremely simple or able to be carried out in advance. This restriction generally runs all the way through to the cooking and serving of the food.

      Socializing

      Whoever is doing the cooking / service has to be able to socialize while doing so. That happens naturally at a Barbecue, it can take a little arranging in other settings. That can be ignored if the operation is commercial retail at a sporting venue.

      Tribal Food

      Finally, the food has to have a tribal quality, something that the fans (all of whom presumably barrack for the same team) can bond over. It’s a description practically begging to be filled with ‘fast food’ or its cultural equivalent (rat on a stick?)

    When it comes to different occasions, though, the requirements can vary. Contrast the above with the Christmas Feast, for example. Nevertheless, the three considerations still apply in some measure.

    One or Many? The Ubiquitous vs Multiple Expressions

    Sometimes, one specific food is iconic to a particular social connection / event, sometimes there is a whole range of them. Sometimes, even though there is a range to choose from, only one is required to satisfy the expectations of the occasion.

    This is an important question because it defines how many dishes you have to come up with. If there’s only one, then you can afford to generate two or three and pick the one that you like best; if you have to come up with a 6-course feast, or a 12-course degustation, that’s not going to happen. You might still generate two more than you need so that you can exclude the ones that are the least satisfying, though.

    Abstract / Narrative References

    All of the above means nothing, unless and until it manifests in-game, with descriptions. You need to be able to set the scene (Special decorations? Costumes? Behaviors?), get through the opening sequence (Special Greetings? Social Faux Pas to avoid?), and match the description of the event itself with the food while allowing the PCs to interact with the scene and achieve whatever their purpose in participating is – even if that’s nothing more than “getting on with the locals”.

    The time to start planning all this is before you actually create any dishes. There is an emotional trajectory to such occasions – a buildup, a cool-down, another buildup, a climax – that you need to take the players (and their characters) through, or the whole plot sequence will fall flat. Your cuisine needs to invoke drama of the required level, not more and not less.

    But what if it’s not that big a deal? Once you have a rough outline, you can compress the heck out of it. Yes, this often means making the assumption that player agency is irrelevant until you get to the important moments, and can be assumed / glossed over (provided that you are careful to incorporate anything the players say specifically they are doing to achieve their goals), but the players will forgive that if you are clearly doing so to get them to the “important bits” more quickly.

Practical Expression

When I originally conceived this article, the path forwards was somewhat different, in that it was aimed more at re-purposing adapted reviews of a particular dish to derive narrative text, as described above. But then the Atlas Obscura article lobbed into my inbox and changed everything.
 

Food is threaded throughout all sorts of fannish practices and experiences. The officially sanctioned offerings are often the most visible – think of a theme park, where most things you put in your mouth will have an ostensible connection to a fictional world. This can vary from simple branding to full-on recreations of something characters eat or drink. Official cookbooks span this range, too – and often have mixed results.

Really trying to capture the food of a fictional world often falls to fans themselves – after all, they’re the ones who have the time, interest, and collective imagination to get canonical food from page or screen to the table. That might mean cataloging every food reference in a work, or creating themed meals to pair with a re-read or re-watch. Sometimes it’s about direct recreations: on the wildly popular Binging with Babbish YouTube channel, for example, chef Andrew Rea recreates screen-accurate versions of fictional food – say, the nachos from The Good Place, or the ratatouille from, well, Ratatouille. Fans can simply enjoy watching fictional foods come to life, or they can cook them in their own kitchens, too [Emphasis mine].

Many amusement parks, such as Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, offer themed food to appeal to fans.

…because of the free-form nature of fanfiction… that can mean actual recipes included directly in the stories. Arrow … wrote one Hunger Games fic where a now-elderly Peeta bakes a series of dishes that remind him of long-gone friends, with the prose in one column and the recipe he’s baking running alongside it.

There’s a long history of fans publishing recipes for other fans: on the communal wiki Fanlore, you can browse scans of beautiful fannish cookbooks from the pre-internet zine era. There’s Star Trek, of course, but also cookbooks for fandom cult classics like the ’60s horror soap Dark Shadows or the ’80s live-action Beauty and the Beast TV show.

…There’s a long history of fans publishing recipes for other fans: on the communal wiki Fanlore, you can browse scans of beautiful fannish cookbooks from the pre-internet zine era. There’s Star Trek, of course, but also cookbooks for fandom cult classics like the ’60s horror soap Dark Shadows or the ’80s live-action Beauty and the Beast TV show.

…a Supernatural fic … read more than a decade [earlier], where the protagonists sampled wedding cakes [included a] description of their favorite cake – a peanut butter-pumpkin one – which led [Lyndsey] on a years-long quest to find a perfectly matching recipe.

“Authors already invite readers into our heads,” says azriona, who’s written recipes into multiple fics centered on food, including a series where the characters of BBC’s Sherlock are professional chefs. “I’m just also inviting them into my kitchen.” Her experience writing that series reflects the communal and at times beautifully amateur nature of fanfiction on a whole – she says some readers assumed she had professional culinary training, but she was just testing out recipes as she wrote.

— Source: How Sharing Recipes Brings Fans Together – Elizabeth Minkel | Gastro Obscura | Atlas Obscura

 
(wow, I didn’t intend to quote from it so extensively – Kudos to the author). Now, I’d known about the fannish gravitation to food, and cosplay, and filking, and all sorts of other activities since way back in the early 80’s. Heck, I’ve even been a judge on a Pan-Galactic Gargleblaster competition (the difference between the winner and the field was astonishing).

But I had never before put that thought together with the concept of RPGs needing recipes for fictional meals. The balance of this article was going to be an intellectual exercise in changing existing recipes to simulate the culture in an abstract way; suddenly, a window opened into the possibility of practical, tested recipes that were quite unlike anything players had experienced before. What’s more, there were resources for recipes out there that I had never considered.

GMs who needed the assistance could recruit the best cook they had access to, even if they didn’t game, bringing the world to tangible life for players and learning a potentially valuable skill along the way.

But it meant that I needed to actually invest a bit more care into the gastronomic process than the original concept required – which should explain the comment from early in this post to the effect that the Atlas Obscura article left fingerprints all over the final section.

I had visions of long shards of thin toffee that had been dusted with chili powder and salt while still liquid. Or toffee-coated glace cherries infused with alcohol.

I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned my own culinary discovery here, before. Take a packet of glace cherries and place them in a bowl. Cover with a spirit-based alcohol – scotch or vodka or whatever. Add chopped whatever for flavoring and stir – then leave the bowl in the refrigerator overnight. The alcohol, carrying the added flavor, penetrates the glace cherry to its hollow center, creating a literal flavor bomb – bite into the cherry and you get a burst of the flavored alcohol. What’s more, the alcohol can survive the fruit being baked into a cake or used in some other recipe.

So, with things taking a turn toward the practical, let’s explore the process of crafting a recipe to fit the concept arrived at in the earlier parts of the article.

    Blind Culinary Creation

    To start with, there is a significant choice to be made. You can either craft variations on dishes that are well known to your personal culture – proven recipes from family and friends, manipulated until they deliver the outcome you want.

    There are a couple of Benefits to the approach – the source cuisine will generally be well known to the players, providing a cultural referent that makes the distinctiveness of the results more accessible and potentially more palatable.

    But there are some massive downsides to consider as well – the results are going to be a lot more limited and less exotic than they could be – and there is no certainty that you will be able to get where you want to go due to the restricted foundations. That can lead to a lot of time wasted on failed experimentation.

    Directed Culinary Experimentation

    So, what’s the alternative? Answer: deliberately crafting a dish to suit a particular Social Connection even if the base recipe is from outside your own cuisine.

    Upsides: can bring the exotic front and center, but can be more challenging to cook, and recipes may be less vetted than you would like. That can mean that you learn more, and maybe expand your personal world in the process, so it’s by no means all doom and gloom.

    Downsides: You’ll need to make adjustments, sometimes blindly (because it’s not always obvious from which country a recipe originates) – did you know that the Australian measure of a “teaspoon” is different to the US “teaspoon”? Google is your solution to this problem. And you might need to source exotic ingredients – or substitute best-guess equivalents. And you might need exotic cooking implements, or to again make arbitrary substitutes. Finally, it’s probably fair to expect a greater percentage of failed experiments simply because of unfamiliarity with the foundation cuisine.

    But the biggest advantage to this approach is that it opens the world to your internet browser, making it more likely that you’ll find what you need.

    Another culinary discovery of mine. Preheat a fry-pan with a little vegetable oil. Take a slice of 6-8″ diameter Devon (called bologna or baloney in the US). Lay the slice of meat into the pan – as it cooks, the sides will rise to form a natural cup shape, and the flavor deepens considerably. As soon as the cup is large enough, or the devon stops rising, break an egg into the cup. Fry until the white starts to show white, then very carefully (using a spatula and a wooden spoon) invert the cup (spilling as little egg as possible). You may need to use the spatula to lift the edge so that you can tell when the egg is done. Top with a sprinkling of dried breadcrumbs, salt, and pepper. Do two at once per person for a meal – you’ll probably want a vegetable-based side dish as well.

    The process

    Regardless of the approach selected, the process is pretty much the same.

      A Foundation

      You start by selecting a foundation recipe that shares some of the qualities that you want in the finished dish. It’s often helpful to narrow the search to the cuisine of a particular nation, based on a similarity of climate and geography between the source nation and the fictional one.

      Try to avoid the most obvious ones if you go down this route – Swiss, yes, French, No; Danish over German; Scandinavian over British; African or Central or South American instead of the USA – only if you are using the directed approach, of course.

      It can often be hard to judge what a food will taste like from the recipe alone (though I’m told that some people can do so). Food blogs and TV shows on cooking can be massively helpful through reviewing a particular cuisine; what they describe probably won’t precisely match the recipes you find online, but it at least gives you a starting point.

      Substitutions & Variations

      Next, you may need to replace one or more ingredients due to availability. But that just gets you some local interpretation of the dish – for a human culture, that might be all you need, but if you need something more exotic, you’re going to need to get more creative.

      Contemplate a meatloaf made from diced apple and slices of apricot instead of meat, for example. Or making it with a meat other than ground beef. Consider a different sauce or a marinade – a soy-sauce and honey chicken-based meatloaf (pre-cook the chicken, obviously)? Why not?

      .Making one change often demands making another, as the resulting recipe isn’t quite right. Something will often be clashing with the introduced flavor. Fried tomato doesn’t go half as well with fried eggs as I thought it would, for example, but plum sauce isn’t too bad.

      You may well need to adjust the cooking time – watch your culinary creation closely. I found the hard way that some of my own experiments cooked brilliantly on the outside but were still too raw in the middle – drop the temperature a bit and lengthen the cooking time was the obvious answer, but that didn’t quite work either. The solution was to microwave the dish for about 10 minutes and leave it to rest for 5 more before finishing it in the oven. But cooking the dish in layers and then assembling it worked even better, and gave me more control over the process.

      Exotic Flavors

      The more unusual the flavors that you are incorporating, the less likely it is that your first attempts will succeed – and the more likely it is that you will end up with something genuinely unique at the end. Making a sponge using ginger beer instead of milk? With chunks of glace ginger stirred through the cake mix? It ends up being a strange batter – not great as a cake, but chopping up the ginger bits makes for an exotic way to batter chicken or fish prior to frying them.

      It helps to have a solid understanding of the science behind the common cooking practices. There are shows that can help you with that – start with Alton Brown‘s Good Eats.

      Two questions to perpetually ask yourself are “Why do this?” and “Why not do that?”

      Why rest dough? Why rest meat? What’s the relationship between thickness of cut and how the meat cooks?

      Why not add diced fried onion and bacon to a bread roll dough? Why not add grapes and wine to a cake? Why not stuff a bell pepper (capsicum) with diced tomato and braised pork mince? Melted gummies coating fresh fruit or fruit segments? Replacing the cashews in a cashew chicken recipe with pistachios – I’m not sure that the flavors will play nice with each other. Adding chopped pistachio to the crumb for a fried fish, on the other hand…

      Delivery Vehicles

      There’s quite often an element or ingredient in the recipe that exists purely to carry the flavor of other ingredients, or that can be used for that purpose. If a recipe calls for vinegar, imagine chopping some mint or herbs and infusing the vinegar first.

      Alternately, you might find that your culinary creation needs some sort of delivery vehicle to convey a flavor through the whole dish. Milk, Yogurt, Vinegar, sauces and gravies in general, are commonly used for the purpose, but so are infused oils and pureed fruit, and jams and cream. Essentially, just about anything that’s liquid can do the job. But there some things that are rarely considered for this purpose – caramel, for example.

      So start by looking at the liquid and semi-liquid ingredients you’ve already got. If the recipe has apples, think about dicing and baking the apple to turn it into gelatinous chunks of fruit and then adding whatever the flavor is that you want to carry through the dish.

      Recipe Creation

      Quite often, it will be a case of two steps forward and one back – you substitute one ingredient, add an exotic one for flavor, change the cooking time and then the cooking process to harness a delivery vehicle, only to find that one of the ingredients isn’t playing ball and also needs to be replaced.

      Learn what ingredients frequently get paired, and why. And keep an eye out for the occasional oddball – raspberries and steak, I’m told, are such a combination if handled correctly.

      Sample Size

      Always bear in mind the purpose – you don’t want to feed your players a whole meal, you want them to just get a little sample so that they can associate the flavor with the setting. So think about how much you will need, and how it is going to be served.

      Accompaniment

      Most foods are not consumed in isolation – there’s usually a side dish, or a drink, or both, to accompany it. Don’t neglect this. DO make sure that the combination is palatable.

      Socializing The Society

      Finally, do your best to make the tasting an event. Try to source some exotic music that seems appropriate to the culture, for example. The more you can bring it to life for the players, the more real your game will seem.

Conclusion

So, wherever the PCs in your campaign are now, what’s the local ambrosia – and what’s the meal it’s supposed to be paired with?

Comments (6)

An Application of INT


What is INT, and (in practical terms), what can it be used for?

I was strolling down the street the other day and noticed a logo consisting of a name and a number of dots, and for some reason, it sparked a new way of looking at INT scores, one that emphasized a practical application of the stat which would make a measurable and definitive difference of a single point of stat gain (on the 1-25 scale used by most game systems – adjust as necessary for systems like Traveler which runs on 2-12, from memory).

Champions / Hero Games represents a particularly thorny conversion problem that I’ll tackle separately a little later in the post.

Apprehension Of Number

Let’s start simple. If you look at the image below,

then you can see at a glance that there is one spot or counter. That’s just too easy.

Second Test

So let’s make it a bit harder, and see how people do. Can you count the spots below with a glance lasting 3 seconds or less?

Who got something other than 5? No-one? That’s what I expected. Anyone who can read a d6 would have no trouble.

Third Test

Let’s get harder again. Remember, 3 seconds or less.

Most people will still have succeeded. The answer, of course, is 12. But a few people will have to have counted four across and three down – each possible with a second or so of observation – and then put those numbers together to deduce 12. That’s still doable in 3 seconds, but it’s cutting it close.

Applied INT

This method of interpreting INT posits that the number of counters, coins, or whatever – when arranged in a simple pattern – that a character can count at a glance is equal to their INT score.

If the average person is defined as INT 10, then a character with that 10 can’t count this many at a single glance – but they can grasp 4 with one, and 3 with another, and multiply those to get 12 in the rest of the three-second window.

A character with INT 12 or better has no need for that – one glance is enough.

Fourth Test

It’s my experience that most RPG GMs and players rate fairly high in the INT stakes. They might not be in the genius bracket, but they are well above average – let’s suggest that their INT scores, on the D&D/Pathfinder scale, are between 12 and 18.

How many counters are depicted in the next image?

A few people could answer with a glance, but most people will have to break this down into 5 and 4 and then multiply to get 20.

Second and Third principles

The few will have INT scores equivalent of 20 or better. The majority won’t have that, and will have to have applied a process of simplifying the problem into three steps – and those steps each take as long as a single glance. That’s the Second Principle.

Furthermore, because there are two separate perception events to be performed, characters with INTs less than 10 taking this test would not be able to get the ‘5’ with a glance, they would have to actually count them. That’s the Third Principle but it’s not complete yet.

Fifth Test

So let’s look at something a bit more challenging. Same rules – let’s see how you do with this one:

What’s going on? Well, most people won’t be able to get the number of columns or rows without counting them – and it’s complicated because there are some missing counters on two rows of the pattern. I think you’ll agree that subtracting 1 from a count, or 2, is a trivial exercise – but it adds a process. So now we have five processes – count the number of token columns across, count the number of token rows, do the multiplication, count the number of missing tokens, and subtract that count from the previous total.

For the record, there are 9 columns, 6 rows, and 2 missing tokens, giving a total of 52 tokens.

  • There are too many tokens for anyone to count at a glance – unless they have INT 104 (the INT score is halved because counting at a glance requires two operations – putting the missing tokens back in, then taking them away once you have a total).
  • Characters with INT 18 or more might be able to tell at a glance that there are 9 columns, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Once you have more than 5 or 6 in a row, almost everyone has to count them – which means that the ‘extras’ count for more. Maybe 2 each, maybe 3 each. Simply putting them in a long row without a gap separating them into smaller groups makes a difference – instead of 9 (requiring INT 18), it’s 13 (requiring INT 26) or 17 (requiring INT 34) to count them with a glance. So we have to allow for this in our Third Principle.
  • Counting: everyone starts at 1 unless they have trained themselves not to. If you can get 5 tokens at a glance – and anyone with average INT can do so – then it’s a lot faster to start counting at 5. I probably would accept an argument that characters with INT 20+ employ this trick instinctively. So that’s a Fourth Principle.
  • Most people will count the number of rows correctly, but the lack of alignment makes it harder to do so with a glance. 6-at-a-glance usually requires INT 12, but those gaps would boost this by +1 or +2 token-equivalents each – so INT 14 or 16. That’s a Fifth Principle.
  • Centering the columns that are missing tokens will also have thrown a lot of people off. Under time pressure, many will count two half-counters missing from each side as two counters missing on each of the affected rows, and so will get the wrong answer. Adding a couple of seconds to the time available – 5 seconds instead of 3 – is enough to relieve that pressure and overcome the problem for most people. For those with INT of 6-10, you might have to add this extra twice, and for those with INT 1-5, you might have to add it four times (exponential relationship). So that’s a Sixth Principle.
  • The observant may have noticed that I’ve added a bit of shadow to the image to make the counters look more three-dimensional. That was in preparation for another image in the series that would examine how much difficulty was added by vertical stacking, but it quickly became apparent that a single glance was only enough to count a small stack, one small stack at a time. That means that a character with INT 1-5 can count or estimate one stack at a time; a character with INT 6-10 can do two (using relative heights to short-cut the second, if there’s a difference); a character with INT 15 can’t do any better; a character with INT 20 can do three stacks at once; and it would take INT 40 to do four stacks at once. But it’s not all doom and gloom – square counters placed side-by-side halve these INT increases above INT 10, so 3 columns INT 15, 4 columns INT 20, and 5 columns INT 30. 7th Principle.

It should also be pretty clear that I’ve thought very carefully about the examples that I need to demonstrate the principles!

Sixth Test

Having taken simple numbering about as far as I can – going any further wouldn’t really show anything you haven’t seen already – it’s time to move in a different direction.

In the tests so far, you will have gotten a big advantage from the structured arrangement. But Test 5 showed that this advantage is easily negated. So let’s look at that.

The image below has a number of tokens positioned randomly. At a single glance, can you tell how many of them there are?

My testing (on myself, naturally) has shown that this is right on the cusp of being too much. My single-second glances either moved up and right (missing the counter bottom right) or moved down and right (missing the counter at top right). A second glance usually filled in the missing piece of the puzzle. So Nine counters, arranged randomly, are just as hard to get right as 15 counters arranged in a pattern.

15/9 = 1 2/3.

In other words, random placement increased the INT requirement 66%, or multiplies the number of tokens that can be counted in a 3-second glance by 0.6.

But that’s a fairly inconvenient number – so let’s make it +50% INT requirement or 2/3 the number of counters at a glance.

That specific impact is my Ninth Principle,, while the general statement that ‘complications multiply the INT requirement by ‘a factor’ is the Eighth Principle.

This should come as no surprise – the 52-counter Test as good as demonstrated the general principle – but this makes it explicit.

As a confirmation, I simplified the problem:

Seventh Test

Taking one or more counters away should make it a lot easier to count them at a glance, despite the random placement (which I re-randomized for this test):

I still found myself getting “six +1” from a glance, but a single glance was enough to get the correct total. The correct answer is 7 tokens, of course.

7 = INT requirement of 14 × 1.5 = 21. That’s a little high, but I wasn’t quite getting them at a glance. 6 = INT requirement of 12 × 1.5 = 18, which is about right.

So I consider this validation of both the general principle and the specific +50% requirement.

Eighth test

The job is also made easier by the counters all being the same size. So let’s see what happens if that is no longer the case.

How many did you get at a glance? My results were “4+1 = 5”. That +1, as demonstrated in Test 7, is significant, but even more important is that this is the wrong answer. The correct answer is 6, not 5, and this time, a second glance wasn’t enough – the problem was that my brain wasn’t associating the big one as being the same as the smaller ones, I had to consciously remember to count it.

Adding it in is trivial, as noted earlier – you just have to remember to do it. That’s an extra process, so the +2 second rule comes into play with a second ‘complicating factor’, and suggests that a third complicating factor would add twice that, or another 4 seconds, to the time requirement.

Okay, so that takes care of the ‘error correction”, and means that I can turn my attention to analyzing the “4+1” part. The impact of the diversity of sizes was to make what was a “6+1” into a “4+1”.

6 / 4 = 1.5, or +50%.

There it is again. So two complications = two +50% INT requirement increases, compounding – or 4/9 the capacity to count at a glance. Again, let’s simplify the latter to 1/2.

Ninth Test (Virtual)

This test demonstrates a moving window, so that you can’t see the whole image at once – presuming the movement takes 1 second to show the whole image, you would only have the equivalent of a single glance to get a result. If it takes 3 seconds, you would have enough time for two, and putting them together, which is the minimum requirement. The slower the movement, the more time you have to deal with the situation and get an answer.

I wasn’t able to generate the series of animations that would be required to actually demonstrate this – I made do with a piece of scrap paper into which I cut a window, which I then moved at various speeds to get a sense of the impact. The image shown is illustrative only.

My estimate is that it would NOT take +4 seconds, but WOULD take +2 seconds – a total of 7 seconds, not 9. So that separates additional difficulties (Sixth principle) into two compounding effects – one based on INT and one on the number of difficulties, and inserts an additional clause to the principle: additional difficulties multiply by whatever the indicated INT-based time adjustment is to get the net increase.

Putting it all together

The principles, as they are currently arranged, are clunky and ill-defined. With a little effort, it should be possible to compact and compress them down into something more useful – so let’s do that before progressing. To start with, i divided them into General Principles and Specific Counting Principles, the latter only applying to this specific task.

    General Principles
    1. Characters can apply their INT score to tasks, which are measured in ‘Operations’ or ‘Ops’.
    2. Tasks use a defined number of Ops per Task.
    3. If a character’s Ops count is not sufficient to complete the task in two or less glances, it must be broken down into sub-tasks that are within the character’s capabilities.
    4. The number of sub-tasks dictates how long the Task takes:
      1. An at-a-glance task takes 1 second.
      2. A two-sub-task task takes 3 seconds – one for each sub-task and 1 to integrate the results.
      3. If two sub-tasks are not enough, a time penalty applies. This time penalty is equal to the product of an INT-based time multiplied by the number of additional sub-tasks.
        • INT time penalty for INT 11+ = 1 second.
        • INT time penalty for INT 6-10 = 2 seconds.
        • INT time penalty for INT 1-5 = 4 seconds.
    Perception / Counting of objects
    1. Characters can count objects at a glance in an ordered pattern for 1 Ops per item.
    2. If they have insufficient Ops to complete the task in a single glance, they have to grasp the number of columns and rows and combine the results for a 3-second glance. Each of these sub-tasks has an Ops cost of 2 pts.
    3. Characters with INT 20+ get an advantage in that they can start counting at INT/2 entries in the row/column.
    4. It takes 3 seconds to count INT/2 entries in a column or row. This is referred to as the Base Count.
    5. Gaps are considered 2 or 3 ‘entries’ in a column or row count.
    6. If items are stacked in a third dimension, characters with INT 1-5 can count / estimate 1 stack at a time; characters with INT 6-20 can count / estimate 2, characters with INT 21-40, 3, and characters with INT 40, 4.
    7. If the stacks can be placed next to each other and are of a shape suitable for comparisons of stacking to be made visually, these change to INT 1-5, 1 stack; INT 6-14, 2 stacks, INT 15-19 3 stacks, INT 20-29 4 stacks, and INT 30+, 5 stacks.
    8. Every complication to the count increases the Ops required for a task by +50%, compounding.
    9. Complications include: Random / disordered arrangement, significant size variations, windows blocking perception or other animated phenomena, three-dimensional stacking, and a column or row count that is more than the Base Count in line.
    10. An incorrect answer can be identified by spending an additional time unit (refer general principles) on verification. This also counts as a complication for the purposes outlined above.

    So far, so good. But I promised practical application, and while being able to instantly count the number of steps in front of a building a-la Sherlock Holmes, or the number of poker chips in a stack, is a neat party trick, I doubt that it will be of practical value very often.

    So, let’s talk about Mathematics.

    Maths

    Depending on the game system, it may or may not require a specific skill to utilize INT this way. If it does, the processes outlined below still apply but the character will have extra Ops to use – see “Applied Skills” later in the article.

    Let’s start with a calculation that is pretty much at-a-glance for most people of gamer caliber – in fact, anyone over INT 10:

    A Fourth Addition Element

    Adding a fourth element to the addition and for most people, it becomes a two-step operation – usually the first three at a glance and the fourth then has to get ‘read’ separately and integrated.

    That means that each element to be added in a column of numbers normally consumes 4 Ops to do at a glance. As before, if you have to break the task up into two or more separate sub-tasks, it takes additional time.

    Thus, INT determines how many single-digit numbers you can add up at a glance:

  • INT 1-4 = 1, and presumably the arithmetic is done on fingers and toes.
  • INT 5-8 = 2.
  • INT 9-12=3.
  • INT 13-16=4.
  • INT 17-20=5.
  • INT 21-24=6.
  • INT 25-28=7.
  • Each additional number beyond this maximum adds 1 to the time-count, plus one for the integration of results.

But there are complicating factors to consider.

Totals more than 10

If the total comes to more than 10, it takes more mental capacity to do the calculation. We’re just not as good at instinctively grasping the total.

There are multiple ways that this can be broken up. My instinctive method is to add the two largest numbers together (7+6=13) and then add the 1 and the 4 together (1+4=5), and then put the totals together (13+5=18) – but some people will do the 1+7 first. while others will instinctively notice that 6+4=10 with their first glance.

Whatever the method you use, the mechanics so far as Applied INT are concerned are the same: Each element in a total greater than 10 has an Ops requirement of +1, and each element greater than the resulting ‘at a glance’ total adds +50% to the total:

  • INT 1-5 = 1, the arithmetic is done on fingers and toes.
  • INT 6-10 = 2.
  • INT 11-15=3.
  • INT 16-20=4.
  • INT 21-25=5.
  • INT 26-30=6.
  • … and so on.

So, four numbers, total more than 10:

  • INT 1-5 = 1, plus 3 more = 5 × 1.5 × 1.5 × 1.5 = 16.875 = 17 Ops for at a glance; so +3 time units of 4 × 1.5 × 1.5 × 1.5 sec each = 13.5 sec each = (3+40.5 = 3+41) = 44 sec.
  • INT 6-10 = 2, plus 2 more = 5 × 1.5 × 1.5 = 11.25 = 11 Ops for at a glance, but 2 +1 sub=processes is enough to solve the calculation, so 2 × 1.5 × 1.5 = +9 sec each additional sub-process, giving a total of 3+18=21 seconds to solve the calculation.
  • INT 11-15=3, plus 1 more = 5 × 1.5 = 7.5 = 8 Ops for at a glance. Total time = 3 seconds.
  • INT 16-20=4, so a single glance of 1 second is still enough.
  • INT 21-25=5, so a single glance of 1 second is still enough.
  • INT 26-30=6, so a single glance of 1 second is still enough.
Upping The Ante: numbers greater than 10

In the calculation below, I’ve added a 5th element, and three of them are double digits. Obviously, the result is going to be two digits, maybe even three (depending on how big the numbers are). Each element that’s more than 1 digit counts as two elements.

So the base number of Ops per element is 5 × 1.5 × 1.5 × 1.5 (for three double-digits) × 1.5 (for a total greater than 10) = 25.3125 =25 Ops for at a glance. Only characters with INT 25 could do so, everyone else will have to break the task up.

And it now matters what sequence you do the math in. My mental process instinctively does the easiest part first (3+8=11), then the next easiest part (11+12=23), then the next easiest part (23+23=46), and then the hardest part (46+34=80). But my mental capacity is enough that the first two of those (three numbers) can get done at a glance, so it only takes me 2 additional sub-tasks at 2 seconds each, or a total of 7 seconds, to do the mental arithmetic – and most of it (the four additional seconds) is devoted to that last calculation.

  • INT 1-5 = 1, plus 4 more = +3 time units of 4 × 1.5 × 1.5 × 1.5 × 1.5 sec each = 20.25 sec each = (3+81) = 84 sec.
  • INT 6-10 = 2, plus 3 more, so 3 additional sub-tasks at 2 × 1.5 × 1.5 × 1.5 = +6.75 sec, giving a total of 3+20.25 = 23 sec.
  • INT 11-15: but adding two numbers both >10 at a glance is now possible – Ops count of 5 × 1.5 × 1.5 = 11, and the initial 3+8 is an at-a-glance 1 second calculation. Three sub-tasks thus gets this and the next two calculations done in the initial 3 second burst, leaving 2 more at 2 × 1.5 × 1.5 = 4.5 sec each, or a total of 3+9=12 seconds.
  • INT 16-20=4 so the first 4 numbers get totaled in the initial 3 seconds, +1 sub-task at 4.5 seconds as above, for a total of 7.5 seconds.
  • INT 21-25=5, so a single glance of 1 second is still enough.
  • INT 26-30=6, so a single glance of 1 second is still enough.
A more serious calculation: Subtraction

Here, every number has at least two digits, two of them have three, and there’s a negative number i.e a subtraction, buried in the middle. Unsurprisingly, the triple digits are an extra complication, and the double digit subtraction is another. What’s more, any non-trivial subtraction takes twice as long as an addition, so the subtraction counts not as a 5th element, but as a 6th element as well.

At a glance: 5 × 1.5 ^ 6 elements × 1.5 × 1.5 (triple digits) × 1.5 (result greater than 10) × 1.5 (result greater than 100) = 288.3251953125 Ops. NO-ONE is solving this at a glance unless they have some freakish ability (Lightning Calculator exists in the Hero System and GURPS, but not in several other game systems).

Fortunately, our powers-of-ten maths permits us to deal with each column separately – so this is 3 calculations:

1+3+5-4+5 = 10, keep the zero and carry the 1;
1 (carried)+3+2+8-3+3 = 14; keep the 4 and carry the 1;
1 (carried)+1+2 = 4; integrate the total to get 440.

Trying to do the math any other way is a LOT slower, as the trends from previous calculations clearly showed, and the at-a-glance made clear.

First calculation: 6 elements, all single digits, but we can save one since 1+3=4 and there’s a -4 in there – so (1+3), then (-3), then (5+5) to a result. That’s 4 sub-tasks. Some characters will be able to do this at a glance.

Second calculation: 6 elements, all single digits – but the last element is a 3 and there’s a -3 right above it, so (3-3), then (2+8=10), (10+1 carried=11), (11+3=14). Again, four sub-tasks. Same.

Third calculation: 3 elements, all single digits. Many characters will be able to do this at-a-glance.

Fourth calculation (integration of results) – include in third calculation for an additional sub-task.

  • INT 1-5 = 1. Calculation 1 is plus 3 more sub-tasks= +3 time units of 4 × 1.5 sec each = +18 sec total = (3+18) = 21 seconds. Calculation 2, same as calculation 1, = 21 seconds. Calculation 3 is 1 + 1 more at 6 seconds = 9 seconds. Total: 51 seconds.
  • INT 6-10 = 2. Calculation 1 is plus 2 more sub-tasks at 2 × 1.5 = +6 seconds for both, so 3+9 = 12 sec. Calculation 2: same as calculation 1, 12 sec. Calculation 3 is covered under the 3-seconds / 2 sub-tasks rule. Total = 27 seconds.
  • INT 11-15 = 3. Calculation 1 is +1 sub-tasks at +6 seconds = 9 seconds. Calculation 2, same as calculation 1. Calculation 3 is 3 seconds. Total = 21 seconds.
  • INT 16-20=4. Calculations 1 & 2 & 3 all take 3 seconds each, for a total of 9 seconds.
  • INT 21-25=5. All three calculations are at-a-glance, so 3 seconds total.
On Paper

Let’s calculate the time required for totaling 40 two-digit numbers.

The total might be less than four digits, but it probably isn’t – (40 × 100 =4000, -20 (max is 99, not 100) =3980; average = 1990; 999/1990 = 50.2% chance enough numbers are low enough that the total is 999 or less). However, an average of 1990, divided into 4 columns, means that each column is likely to be only 3 digits in length.

This would be a lot easier to do it on paper, and that’s not something we’ve looked at – how much faster is it?

For a comparison, we need to work the problem both ways. Fortunately, this is already broken into 4 calculations of 10.

Doing it the hard way: 4 × 9 = 36 sub-processes, plus 3 more integration steps, plus trying to remember each total. Okay, I’ll let you write those down. Or, one at a time, 39 sub-processes, no integration, but there are massive penalties for complications – all 2 digits, probably 4 digit answers. No, that’s not viable, there’s too much overhead. 36+9 it is.

I’ll bunch the calculations together even though that’s harder to read.

At a glance: 5 Ops (base) × 1.5 ^ 10 (all double-digit numbers) × 1.5 × 1.5 (triple-digit results) = 648.73 Ops. Not going to happen unless the character has a freak talent.

  • INT 1-5 = 1. Calculation 1 is plus 8 more sub-tasks= +8 time units of 4 × 1.5 × 1.5 × 1.5 sec each = +13.5 sec each = (3+108) = 111 seconds. Calculations 2, 3, and 4 are the same. Calculation 5, the integration, is 3 sub-tasks at 4 × 1.5 × 1.5 × 1.5 × 1.5 = +20.25 seconds. Total:444+20=464 seconds = 7 minutes 44 seconds. And an incredibly high chance of making a mistake. And that time is probably being generous; if I assume that there’s an additional penalty because we have ten numbers in a row, it inflates to 686 seconds, or 11 minutes 26 seconds. Working flat-out. Most people can’t concentrate that hard for that long, and a low INT character would find this especially challenging. So that’s probably another 2 complication levels, elevating the total to 1519 seconds, or 25 minutes, 19 seconds. Finally, remember that this represents 39 INT rolls – maybe at +2 because the character can take his time, but INT is not his strong suit – the odds of multiple mistakes along the way are pretty enormous. In conclusion, then this is probably beyond the abilities of such a character.
  • INT 6-10 = 2. Calculation 1 is plus 8 more sub-tasks at 2 × 1.5 × 1.5 × 1.5 sec each, × 1.5 (ten numbers in a row) × 1.5 (concentration) = +15.1875 seconds each = 121.5 seconds, +3 seconds = 124.5. Calculations 2, 3, and 4 are the same. Integration is 3 sub-tasks at 15.1875 × 1.5 × 1.5 = 34.17 seconds each. In total, 601 seconds, or 10 minutes 1 second, and again with virtually zero confidence in the answer.
  • INT 11-15 = 3. Calculation 1 is +7 more sub-tasks at +15.1875 seconds each = 106.3125 seconds, +3 = 109.3125. 2, 3, 4, are the same, so 437.25 seconds total, Integration is 3 sub-tasks at 34.17 seconds = +102.51 seconds. Grand total = 540 seconds – which is 9 minutes. If you did it enough times to get three totals that agrees, you’d be reasonably confident that it was error-free – but that could take hours.
  • INT 16-20=4. Calculation 1 is +6 sub-tasks at +15.1875 seconds each = 91.125 seconds, +3 = 94.125. Calculations 2, 3, and 4 are the same, so 376.5 seconds. Integration is still 3 sub-tasks at 34.17 seconds = 102.51 seconds. Grand Total = 479 seconds, or 7 minutes, 59 seconds – call it 8 minutes. But, for the first time, there’s a fair likelihood of getting the right answer at the end of that 8 minutes. You would probably do it again to check your work, though.
  • INT 21-25=5. Calculation 1 is +5 sub-tasks at +15.1875 seconds each = 75.9375 seconds, +3 = 78.9375. Calculations 2, 3, and 4 are the same, so 315.75 seconds. Integration is still 3 sub-tasks at 34.17 seconds = 102.51 seconds. Grand Total = 418 seconds, or 6 minutes, 58 seconds – use 7 minutes. And, for the first time, you would be confident in your answer first time around.

Now, the easier way: 4 calculations of 10 single digits, a 2-digit carry, so 4 more calculations of 10 single digits and the carry. But there’s a trick that makes it even easier, since we’re doing this on paper.

Cross out all the zeros in the column you’re adding up. Do all the digits that add up to 10, and cross those off as you go as well. These multiple single-digit 2-item sums are all going to be at-a-glance, pretty much, and they vastly reduce the complexity of the rest of the calculation by eliminating elements.

A 7, but there are no 3s – skip.
8 & 2 make 10.
4 and 4 and 2 make another 10.

And here’s what’s left:

That’s a single addition of 7 and 5. Column total = 20+12=32, determined with just 4 sub-processes.

Repeat the trick with the tens column:

7 and 3 (carried) = 10. 8 & 2 = another 10. 5 and 5 = third ten. 6 and 4 = a fourth ten. 7 and another 3 = fifth 10 There’s even less left over.

And there’s no doubt about the accuracy because these small calculations are so simple. So the first string of 10 double digits total 572.

For characters of INT 1-5, these small calculations will take 3 seconds each, plus 14 seconds for the final integration – a total of 44 seconds.

For everyone else, 10+14=24 seconds. But take an extra 20 seconds, no need to rush.

No need to continue – the results are blindingly obvious at this point. Instead I’ll leave the other three columns for readers to practice on. (BTW: When I’m adding time – minutes or seconds – I look for total of 10s and 6’s).

  1. Doing maths on paper or a blackboard or whiteboard or whatever – doing it written down – divides the Ops requirements by 2, round down, minimum 1 – unless there is some identifiable trick that makes the math easier, in which case it’s divide by 4, round up, minimum 1. This divisor gets applied to the Ops cost per process.
Troubles Multiplied

Multiplication is all about technique. If you know how, it’s not hard at all, especially if you can do it on paper.

It doesn’t take much longer than addition, really – on paper. Multiplication has a cost of 6 ops for the first one, doubling for each additional multiplication (if you’re doing them mentally).

There are shortcuts that I use all the time. Doubling is easy, tripling is a little less so, quadrupling is doubling twice, five-fold is add multiply by ten and halve, times six is x2 x3, times seven is times 10 – the original number three times (but still the hardest calculation on this list), times eight is x2 x2 x2, times 9 is times ten minus the original number, and times ten is trivially easy.

But the calculation offered above is a little more complicated than that, because it is multiplying three numbers together.

You could go 3 × 8 = 24, and you’re left with 23 × 24 – which is 4 at-a-glance calculations, plus the first one. On paper, you can solve that as fast as you can write – 3 × 4=12, 2×4+1 carried=9, write a 0, 2×3=6, 2×2 = 4, add 490+92=582.

If I were doing it mentally, I’d employ the shortcuts and look for the most efficient route: 3 × 23 = 69, double, double, double again. It takes about twice as long as doing it on paper – for this particular calculation.

Division

Mental division can be hard. Even very hard. Making life easier is the fact that errors also shrink in proportion to the divisor, so you can approximate and generally get away with it.

There are also some shortcuts, but they are a bit trickier.

  • /2 is easy.
  • /3 can be slightly easier – add up all the digits, keep going until you have a single digit. If that’s 0, 3, 6, or 9, the original number is evenly divisible by 3; if there’s a remainder, that’s also the remainder of the original. Then see below for the ‘perfect divisibility’ technique – it’s so simple, you won’t believe it!
  • /4 is /2 /2.
  • /5 is x2 / 10.
  • /6 is /2 /3.
  • /7 is a royal pain. It’s usually faster to do /6 and /8, add, and /2. This isn’t quite accurate – it gives 49/48 of the correct answer – but I can usually live with that margin of error. You can even minimize it a bit more by always rounding down.
  • /8 is /2 /2 /2.
  • /9 is /3 /3 but that’s also a bit of a palaver. Sometimes it’s easier to average /8 and /10 and live with the error – 81/80ths of the correct answer. You can estimate the error by dividing the original number by 80 – you’re only really interested in the integer results. You can also check your results by dividing by 3 and repeating the sum-the-digits trick, but that’s usually not worth the effort, either.
  • Divide by 10 is easy.
  • Divide by 11 is messy, but you can get within 1% of the correct answer by dividing by 10 and subtracting 1/10th of the result. You will be 1% low, but rounding up will usually more than compensate.
  • Divide by 12 is /4, /3.
  • Divide by 15 is x2, /3, /10.
  • Divide by 16 is /2, /2, /2, /2.
  • Divide by 17 – I can’t remember ever having to do so. I don’t have a shortcut for this. It’s going to be about 6% less than the division by 16, for whatever that’s worth.
  • Divide by 18 is /3, /3, /2.
  • Divide by 19 – another painful calculation. No satisfactory shortcut
  • Divide by 20 is /10 / 2.

So let’s look at the problem stated above. 532 / 3, to start with: 5+3+2=10, 1+0=1, so there will be a remainder of 1, and 531 is what we should be dividing. That’s 300/3 + 231/3.

    The perfect divisibility trick

    Here’s a peculiarity: run through the multiples of 3 and note the final digit each time: 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24, 27, 30. Strip out those tens digits and you get 3, 6, 9, 2, 5, 8, 1, 4, 7, 0. Let’s arrange those: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. So the final digit of a number is diagnostic of the division by 3 – there are No repeated digits in that list!

    300 / 3 = 100; 231 / 3 = 21 / 3 + 210 / 3. so 532/3 = 177 1/3.

    177 / 3?

    1+7+7 = 15; 1+5 = 6 – so perfect divisibility by 3.
    177 – 27 = 150. So 177 / 3 = 50+9 = 59.

    59 / 2 = 29.5. But there would be a small fraction left over from the previous calculations – enough to tip the rounding to round up. Call it 30. Or 29 and a remainder – whatever’s most convenient.

Higher Maths

The same principles can reveal a character’s facility with higher maths, simply increasing

There is a progression to the higher math elements. Each step of the progression adds 1 to the cost of that operation, plus a base value of 6 Ops.

  • Algebra = +1
    • Exponent 2: Squares = -2 – this is just multiplication
    • Exponent 2: Square Roots = +1
    • Exponent n, greater than 2 = +2 per, or per part thereof.
    • Areas, simple shapes = -1
    • Areas, complex 2-dimensional shapes = +0
    • Areas, three-dimensional shapes = +2
    • Volumes: simple shapes = +1
    • Volumes, complex 3-dimensional shapes = +3
    • Each additional dimension = +1 to the above
  • Basic Calculus
    • Simple Differentiation = +2
    • Simple Integration = +3
    • Complex Differentiation (involves math below this point in the list) = +4
    • Complex Integration (same definition) = +6
    • With discontinuities: +1 to the above
  • Trigonometry
    • Basic (2-dimensional) with right-angle triangles= +2
    • Basic (2-dimensional) with non-right-angle triangles = +3
    • Complex (3-Dimensional) = +4
    • Additional dimensions over three = +5, base, plus 1 per extra dimension
  • Logarithms = +3
  • Three dimensional vector sums = +3
  • Exponentials = +4
  • Probability
    • Simple = +4
    • Factorials = +4
    • Complex, 2 independent variables = +5
    • Complex, 2 dependent variables = +6
    • Additional variables = +1
  • Harmonic Motion & Elasticity problems = +5
  • Partial Differentiation, Partial integration = +5
  • Fibonacci Numbers, Primes, etc = +6
  • Multi-variable Analysis & Simulation = +7
  • Higher Applied Math = +8, +1 per additional difficulty
  • Higher Theoretical Math = +10, +1 per additional difficulty
  • Unsolved Mathematical Problems = +12, +1 per additional difficulty

The reader will appreciate that I didn’t want to bog down in specifying a lot of exotic math types that they will never have heard of, so the last three are fairly generic and the GM gets to assign whatever he thinks appropriate, starting at the base value.

Everything prior to those I’ve had occasion to use or study. For example, at one point I became really interested in studying that rate of change of probability with increasing numbers of dice – there’s a lot of this sort of math buried in the Sixes System.

Rate of Change is differentiation, in this case of probability, with each additional dice after the first being an additional variable. So Rate of change of probability = 6+1 (algebra) +2 (simple differentiation +4 (simple probability) [+1 per additional dice] = 13; 2-dice=14; 3-dice=15; 4-dice=16, and so on. Which seems really impractical to do when you’re getting up to 10 or 15 dice!

But each step up that chain is a partial solution to the next problem up, and don’t forget the ‘doing it on paper’ modifier, and it becomes a lot more practical. Once you’ve identified a pattern of change from one number of dice to that number +1, the whole world opens up before you, and solving the individual problems become much simpler, because you don’t have to ‘reinvent the wheel’ each time..

Quite honestly, the housing price calculator (see: The Price of Bricks and Soil (and more)) with it’s multi-variable analysis – some of them dependent, some independent, and some partially both – was a little more difficult.

Mysteries & Puzzles

Okay, so now things begin to get a bit more interesting. I mean, who really cares how long it will take a character to solve a maths problem? On the rare occasions when it’s necessary, most GMs (including me) will simply pluck a number out of the air that seems reasonable, and move on.

Hopefully, the math tricks and shortcuts will be worth reader’s time.

But now, we’re looking at a question that’s not so easily answered, and one in which the difference between what the player is capable of, and what the character can do, matters massively – with the GM expected to make up the difference, without messing with player agency, and while keeping the game-play interesting and role-playing, not roll-playing.

Let’s say that the adventure revolves around an Agatha-Christie style murder-mystery, the PCs gather clues and have to then use those clues to eliminate the suspects who are innocent in order to apprehend the guilty party.

If we knew the INT score of the player of the smartest character when it comes to solving this sort of puzzle,, we could simply let the player work at his own pace while applying a conversion factor to go from ‘real time’ to ‘game time’. We could then use that conversion factor to schedule plot developments in ‘game time’.

We have the basic tools – more than enough of them to actually test a player’s applied intelligence. ‘Total a column of ten 2-digit numbers’ would work fairly well, for example. We then calculate how long it would take their character, and we have an instant conversion rate from one to the other. Or perhaps some of the simpler mental arithmetic challenges.

It would probably be better to run a number of small tests and average the results, that’s up to you.

Solving mysteries – Ops and Sub-tasks

Analyzing each clue to determine its significance relative to the bigger picture is a sub-task requiring 1 Ops points. Integrating that clue with the state of the investigation to this point is a sub-task requiring 2 Ops points. So that’s a total of 3 Ops points and two sub-tasks per clue.

Because clues tend to be more abstract than numbers and numeric operations, the time penalties are increased × 2.5 to 5 seconds and 10 seconds, respectively, rising by 1 second for each clue after the first.

Number Of Clues

As a general rule of thumb, it takes 1 clue to eliminate 1 suspect. At least, it would if no-one lies or tries to fabricate an alibi (which is a specific kind of lie, in my book).

It takes an additional clue to prove that someone is lying and another additional clue to determine the motive for the lie, and it may well take a third additional clue to establish the truth – sometimes, that 3rd extra isn’t necessary.

On top of that, the GM is likely to throw red herrings across the party’s path, each of which needs still another clue to identify. Another way to phrase this is that some of the clues may be misleading and need another piece of information to clarify their significance. That adds another clue and another sub-task to the total, per red herring.

And, just to make matters worse, each clue is probably buried amongst a mass of other information, with the rest being irrelevant – so you often need to analyze three or more pieces of information just to determine what’s an actual clue and what isn’t. That adds one more sub-task per clue.

Furthermore, not all the clues may be available – someone (either the criminal or someone protecting someone else for whatever reason) may have actually destroyed key evidence.

Finally, mysteries that would be easy to solve if the information was arranged and delivered in logical sequence become a lot harder when the clues are delivered in a more random and realistic sequence.

I’m reminded of the episode of MASH in which BJ Hunnicutt is sent a mystery novel, The Rooster Crows At Midnight with the last page missing, and the whole camp tries to figure out whodunit.

Put all this together and you might be forgiven for thinking that no mystery can ever solved! But that’s no fun.

The Process Of Solving A Mystery

1. Crime Scene. What would be required to actually carry out the crime?

2. Initial Suspects. Rule out – provisionally – anyone who doesn’t possess the attributes necessary.

3. Interview Suspects. Analyze their statements to determine which information is relevant and which is chaff.

4. Analyze clues for verifiability. Verify everything that you can. Anything that can’t be verified is a possible lie.

5. Investigate possible lies and deceptions. Now that you have better questions, re-interview suspects.

6. Look for pieces of the puzzle that don’t fit. If all the evidence except one indicates that a person is guilty, focus on verifying that one; if you can do so, then some of the evidence against that person is a red herring. Theorize that each, in turn, is a red herring and look for a way to use the evidence, or additional evidence, to test that theory.

7. No Red Herring exists without someone attempting to construct a false narrative to cast blame on that person, and that means a lie or misdirection. Look for evidence of falsification and motives for doing so. If you find it, you can eliminate that red herring.

8. Means, Motive, Opportunity. Focus on these one at a time (and not necessarily in that order). If you get stalled on one front, turn to one of the others.

9. If evidence is missing / destroyed, treat that as a separate crime committed in furtherance of escaping justice. This is often a simpler puzzle to solve, and successfully doing so will often tell you what the missing evidence was.

10. Construct a set of theories of the crime in which each of your remaining prime suspects is the guilty party. Look for ways of testing those theories. For a theory to pass, it has to satisfy all three evidentiary legs listed in 8. Failure to pass doesn’t mean that the theory is necessarily wrong – but it does make it possible wrong. Determining the case in respect of a theory is the purpose of testing that theory.

11. One or more theories may pass, becoming your leading theories – test those looking for ways to disprove them.

12. Continue to narrow your field of prime suspects and eliminating theories. Each theory you bust may eliminate a prime suspect, each suspect that you eliminate also busts all theories based around them.

13. If you run out of theories or prime suspects, it usually means that you have eliminated someone you shouldn’t, often as a result of a flawed assumption. Double-check everything looking for both.

14. Ultimately, there will (hopefully) be one single theory (and only one) that satisfies the Means, Motive, Opportunity triangle and explains away any apparent reason why they could not have been the culprit. That is the solution.

As a Function Of Intelligence

Each of these 14 logical stages is a separate task in its own right. They do not have to be conducted concurrently, but neither do they need to be conducted in isolation. Breaking things down into their stages of investigation in this way is the equivalent of the simplification into fewer and/or simpler sub-tasks that was demonstrated in some of the math examples.

The higher the INT of the character, the more they can do simultaniously, and the faster the character can reach a conclusion. The total number of sub-tasks remains the same, but the number of them that can be processed at once makes the smarter character more efficient.

A critical quantity is the number of suspects. A high-INT character might be able to consider them all concurrently, whereas someone less-gifted might have to do so one or two at a time. Everything else is proportionate to the number of suspects, which is why heavy emphasis is placed on reducing that number as quickly as possible in the process.

There’s more that could be said – I could do a breakdown by INT, for example – but time is beginning to press, so I’ll leave it at that and move on.

Plans

Characters make plans all the time. Each step in a plan is a sub-task to achieving the overall objective. Planning a sub-task requires 4 Ops, plus 1 for each sub-task after the first in the unified whole.

The higher the INT, the more sub-tasks can be planned in advance; when you run out of available Ops points, the remaining sub-tasks become vague and non-specific.

The Unpacking Example

Unpacking after my forced relocation back in March was troublesome. Quite often, things could not be stored where they were eventually supposed to go, because I needed the empty space to unpack something else. In the meantime, the things to be unpacked had to be kept in storage. A lot of my planning for the task involved creating the space needed to accomplish the next step.

Each step in the process therefore became dependent on the successful completion of the previous step. To unpack the fiction library, I needed to have unpacked the non-fiction library. To unpack the magazines, I needed to have unpacked the fiction library. To unpack the non-fiction library, I needed to have unpacked the “to read” library. To unpack and set up my office space, I needed to have finished assembly of all the bookcases. And so on.

It was not dissimilar to solving one of those sliding-panel puzzles. There was only so much operational space to employ at a time, which limited the size of the process that could be carried out, breaking the overall task into sub-steps that would fit within the space available. Right now, the end is finally in sight.

Viewed from another perspective, to unpack something you need (1) to be able to get to where it is stored; (2) a location in which the contents will be stored when they are unpacked; (3) space to unpack and organize the contents of one or more boxes; and (4) a place to store the empty box. Put all four steps together and the contents in question go from ‘packed’ to ‘unpacked’. And the space used to store the previously ‘unpacked’ becomes empty and available for some other purpose – temporary storage space or working space or whatever.

You can get some impression of the scale of the problem by the fact that there were more than 500 boxes to be unpacked. Most of them were relatively small in size because of limitations of physical capacity. And a big complication was needing the space to assemble the furniture that would eventually be filled with the contents of those boxes. Which in turn was a function of the planned layout of the new residence.

Characters Planning

It’s exactly the same when a PC makes a plan. Or rather, when the character’s Player makes a plan. The question is, how much assistance does the GM need to provide? How much will ‘go right’ simply because the GM is able to presume that a character of that level of INT would get that planning right – and how much is he justified in having things go awry because the character’s INT could not anticipate every contingency?

To answer these questions, you need to break the main plan down into its necessary sub-steps, at least in general and vague terms. The number of Ops points available gives the maximum number of sub-steps that can be employed, but most tasks won’t need anywhere near that number.

    Zenith-3 Mission Example

    Team Zenith-3 were handed the problem of intervening to stop a bunch of domestic-US terrorists from utilizing a black market nuclear weapon that they have purchased from a Russian General. At it’s simplest, this is a fairly basic operation:

    1. Contact Agent
    2. Get Specifics of the mission
    3. Plan the mission
    4. Carry out the plan.

    In-game politics had to be taken into consideration. The PCs are not welcome in the country where all of the above had to take place.

    So they had to adopt new identities. And enter through Central America. And travel through post-Ragnarok Central America and post-Ragnarok Mexico to get to that country.

    But to enter Central America, they needed the support of Brazil, which is under the control of an enemy. So they had to go to Brazil and obtain that assistance.

    So now, the plan looks like this:

    1. Adopt new identities.
    2. Brazil.
    3. Get Local Assistance (i.e. navigate Brazilian Politics)..
    4. Central America. Insertion.
    5. Meet Guide arranged by the Brazilians.
    6. Travel through Central America.
    7. Travel through Mexico.
    8. Leave the Guide.
    9. Enter the target country.
    10. Contact Agent
    11. Get Specifics of the mission
    12. Plan the mission
    13. Carry out the plan.

    Steps 1 through 9 were a lot of work to carry out for a one-off mission, and it seemed more prudent to take advantage of that effort to establish a longer-term operation that could not only deal with the immediate, known, problem, but could also handle other problems as they arose.

    So the plan was modified to incorporate this as part of the mission.

    10. Select a region to contain ‘home base’.
    11. Search the region for a suitable dwelling to use as a ‘home base’.
    12. Purchase said dwelling.
    13. Adapt and install facilities to make it an actual home base.
    14. Contact Agent.
    15. Get Specifics of the mission
    16. Plan the mission
    17. Carry out the plan.

    Additional mission requirements were identified and inserted. Establishing the new identities and forging a working relationship with the local police forces, for example. Arranging the finances need to purchase the property and refurbish the resulting base. Settling on the parameters of the search. Obtaining vehicles to carry out the search. Establishing some operational procedures for performing missions in the target country.

    A big one was that there would not be enough time in the schedule to achieve everything. So that added a time-travel item to the list. Deciding how far back to time-travel. Avoiding paradoxes as much as possible and working around the ones that were inevitable, like being in two places at the same time.

    And so on. Few of these could be planned in advance; each one had to be planned out as it became imminent. And there were unexpected developments – in each region that they traveled through, they would have to earn the right of passage from the local ruler. Their guide would initially be, officially, an enemy – they had to keep him or her in the dark as to their true purpose (by the time they parted ways, they had cemented a loose alliance with him and come clean about their primary mission).

    Here’s the key point: most of these steps weren’t aimed at the primary mission (the terrorist plot) or even at the secondary mission (establishing a base of operations); they were necessary simply to get the PCs into a position to execute the next step.

    You can read a lot more about what actually happened and why in the series A Long Road (be warned, it’s very long – about the length of a typical paperback novel).

Analyzing The Process

This is a great example of the planning process because it demonstrates the principles of Step-wise Refinement and Iteration, explained in more detail in Top-Down Design, Domino Theory, and Iteration: The Magic Bullets of Creation.

In essence, start with a simple overall plan, factor in the complications one at a time even if you don’t know what the specifics are going to be, yet, and repeat this simple process until you’ve covered everything you can think of.

This takes a hugely-complicated plan and breaks it down while not pushing anyone’s INT capabilities too far. As each step gets encountered, it then gets broken down further into specifics.

Flawed Plans

Very few plans can be made without an error creeping in, somewhere. There will always be unexpected plot twists and surprises. It doesn’t matter if it’s a PC plan or an NPC plan.

The more of your INT that you aren’t using for a broad plan, the more you can anticipate things going wrong and preparing contingency plans.

That was the whole thesis of Making a Great Villain Part 1 of 3 – The Mastermind, in which I looked at ways that the GM could run NPCs who were far smarter than the GM himself.

Early In A Plan

When a plan is just getting underway, it’s far easier to roll with the punches and find an alternate route to achieving a goal, no matter what surprises get thrown at you. Some characters will develop resources and capabilities with no idea of what they will eventually do with them – they are simply accumulating resources that might be beneficial in achieving their overall ambitions.

The Midpoint

At some point, though, they will recognize a pathway to their goals that derives from these capacities, and the specific additional needs that they have in order for that plan to succeed. This marks a transition from Early Planning to Late Planning.

Late In A Plan

Once a pathway is seen, activities become more purposeful. Flexibility gets traded for greater certainty, and the closer the character gets to achieving their goals, the more flexibility will have been traded in this way.

Complicating factors that the Intelligent character will take into account will be misdirection and security. Most plans fail because not enough attention has been paid to one or both of these – and GMs are usually careful to preserve these blind spots to give the PCs a reasonable chance at successfully stopping the plot.

The more Intelligent the villain, the better they should be able to respond to the exposure of such flaws in their plans. There can be exceptions, when obsessions and blind spots come into play, but as a general rule of thumb, unused Ops points should permit the formulation of alternatives and contingencies at the rate of 1 per 2 available Ops points.

The simpler the plan, the more routes to victory. The more detailed the plan, the more restrictive it is.

That means that a character with INT 18 has markedly different capabilities than one with INT 16, for example.

But beyond Masterminds, who can often be characterized as simply having “enough INT”, the more important application here is for determining the capabilities of a lower-INT villain – one with INT 8 vs one with INT 9, for example.

INT 8: A 4-step plan with 2 contingencies.
INT 9: A 5-step plan with 2 contingencies – or a 3-step plan with 3 contingencies.

Applied Skills

Mathematics as a skill simply adds one Ops point capacity per skill level, and – at the GM’s discretion – reduces the Ops cost of specific tasks by 1 for every 5 skill levels. It is also entirely reasonable to restrict characters from even understanding certain mathematical tasks unless they have a total skill (INT bonus plus skill points) sufficient to that task.

The same can be applied to every other INT-based skill – in fact, to every skill, period.

Carpentry, for example, is more commonly DEX based than INT based. But why should we let that stop us?

Estimate By Eye

The golden rule of carpentry is measure twice, cut once. It’s therefore incredibly impressive when someone eyeballs a job and cuts a piece of timber accordingly – and it fits perfectly.

But let’s be honest – any fool can cut more-or-less to length, in fact, to within 3 inches or so. Furthermore, if the cut is too long, that’s easily corrected – it’s just a little wasteful of wood. It’s coming up short that’s the real problem.

So let’s assign the basic task – sawing the piece of timber – and appropriate number of Ops points. It’s fairly basic, so maybe 2, maybe 3. For every Ops point unused, the character can use them to improve his ‘by eye’ measurement for 2 Ops points each step. These are in 1/2 inch increments until the error is 1 inch, then 1/4 inch until the error is 1/2 inch, then tenths of an inch.

So,
3 Ops points = 3 inches plus or minus.
5 Ops points = 2.5 inches short or over.
7 Ops points = 2 inches short or over.
9 Ops points = 1.5 inches short or over.
11 Ops points = 1 inch short or over.
13 Ops points = 0.75 inches short or over.
15 Ops points = 0.5 inches short or over.
17 Ops points = 0.4 inches short or over.
19 Ops points = 0.3 inches short or over.
21 Ops points = 0.2 inches short or over.
23 Ops points = 0.1 inches short or over.
25 Ops points = perfect fit.

Planning ahead

Being able to visualize blueprints in your head and execute them is another impressive trick. Initially, this is only enough to create the parts list in their general shapes (5 Ops). Being able to shape them exactly as you need is the next step – either 10 Ops points and +1 per component after the first four. Knowing how they are to fit together and designing them to so is 15 Ops points +1 per component more than the first four.

An example: A drawer to fit a certain-sized cavity. First four components gets a box the right size (measured) with no top and no bottom. 5th component adds a bottom. Sixth and Seventh are a pair of rails for it to slide along, or a groove to fit an existing one if the cabinet was designed in advance. Eighth is a face-plate, with holes pre-drilled for a handle. Ninth is the handle itself, and Tenth would be the assembly.

So, 21 Ops = do it all without blueprints.
20 Ops = do all but 1 component without blueprints.
18 Ops = do all but 2 components without blueprints.

16 Ops = do 5 components without blueprints OR do all ten without blueprints but needing to add intricate details as you go.
15 Ops = 4 components without blueprints OR do nine without blueprints but needing to add intricate details as you go. One piece will have to be measured.
14 Ops = do eight without blueprints but needing to add intricate detail. Two pieces have to be measured.

10 Ops = do four pieces without blueprints (the open box) but everything else needs to be measured.
… and so on.

Hero System Conversions

The hero games system defines 10 in a stat as normal human, but permits scores less than zero, there is no minimum. So a score of 1 won’t mean the same thing. Each +5 doubles capability, which is often undefined. Each -5 halves it. The rate of change in capacity is not defined in the d20 system.

All of which makes conversion difficult, and why there are dozens of conversion regimen to choose from.

The simplest is simply to read the stats from one into the other. STR 18 in Hero = STR 18 in D&D. The most complicated, and potentially the most accurate, uses character Lifting capabilities to map conversion rates for every possible d20 stat value, then arbitrarily equates the results to all the other stats (except body, which does the same thing using hit points).

There are no right answers. So let’s use a wrong one.

HERO -> D&D HERO -> D&D HERO -> D&D HERO -> D&D

0 = 0
5 = 5
10 = 10
15 = 12.5
20 = 15
25 = 17.5
30 = 20
35 = 22.5
40 = 25
45 = 27

50= 29
55 = 31
60 = 32
65 = 33
70 = 34
75 = 35
80 = 36
85 = 37
90 = 38
95 = 39
100 = 40

110 = 41
120 = 42
130 = 43
140 = 44
150 = 45
160 = 46
170 = 47
180 = 48
190 = 49
200 = 50

thereafter,
+20 = +1

so 400 = 60
600 = 70
800 = 80
1000 = 90
1200 = 100
and so on.

I have chosen these values because the flavor that I expect this system to generate (based on the D&D scale) matches the in-game flavor that I would expect of the Hero scale equivalent indicated.

In other words, the look-and-feel is about right, and the mathematical niceties are not so important as that.

Wrap-up

And that, fortunately (because I’m out of time) is where my notes for this subject come to an end. Can the system be tweaked / refined? Yes, endlessly. But down that road, eventually, comes the hard reality of a different scale for every stat and skill, and that’s not an end worth achieving. This is a close-enough system that yields results useful in the real world from a generic basis.

And that should be good enough.

Leave a Comment