I almost got there, but the next part of Trade In Fantasy is 25-40 paragraphs short of completion. Lots of “might have beens” lie behind that failure, and any two of them would have definitely yielded a different outcome (one might not quite been enough). If I can finish it in time, I’ll post it in the Thursday “B-” slot; otherwise, look for it next week.

The first of at least three posts looking at everyday personnel in Trade. This covers everything from wagon drivers to guards to dock-hands and farmhands. Anybody who can be considered a faceless cog in the trade machine, in fact!

This Image is based on festival-3305615.jpg by Franck Barske from Pixabay and also incorporates tree 2 by bupaje via deviantart, pdgrass by the same artist and source, and Fairy Tale House by roula33, also via deviantart.

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: Chapter 3, Routine Personnel

3.1 A Choice Of Four Trade Unit Standards (actually, 8)

3.1.1 Humans as a beast of burden

3.1.1.1 Lift from STR
3.1.1.2 Average isn’t Average
3.1.1.3 4d6 keep 3 vs 3d6
3.1.1.4 Career Paths & STR

     3.1.1.4.1 Linear vs Non-Linear

3.1.1.5 Lift, at last
3.1.1.6 Encumbrance

     Sidebar: Behind The Curtain

3.1.1.7 Load & Load Capacity
3.1.1.8 Load Balance

     3.1.1.8.1 Adding a Staff to the equation
     3.1.1.8.2 Relating Load to Encumbrance (D&D)
     3.1.1.8.3 Relating Load to Encumbrance (Hero / Superhero)
     3.1.1.8.4 Relating Load to Encumbrance (Hero / Adventurer’s Club)

3.1.1.9 Load Distribution
3.1.1.10 Humanoids

     3.1.1.11.1 The Size Factor
     3.1.1.11.2 The Proportions Factor
     3.1.1.11.3 The Racial Factor
     3.1.1.11.4 The Human Advantage
     3.1.1.11.5 The Iconic Reference
     3.1.1.11.6 Elves
     3.1.1.11.7 Dwarves
     3.1.1.11.8 Halflings
     3.1.1.11.9 Orcs
     3.1.1.11.10 Ogres
     3.1.1.11.11 Bugbears
     3.1.1.11.12 Trolls
     3.1.1.11.13 Hill Giants
     3.1.1.11.14 Stone Giants
     3.1.1.11.15 Other Giants
     3.1.1.11.16 Others

Next Time (Expected, may be less or more):

3.1.1 Humans as a beast of burden (cont)

3.1.1.12 Time: 8, 12, 16, 24
3.1.1.13 Speed
3.1.1.14 Distance
3.1.1.15 Provisions: Food
3.1.1.16 Provisions; Water
3.1.1.17 Replenishment: Foraging / Hunting / Buying
3.1.1.18 The humanoid bottom line

3.1.2 Horses as a beast of burden
3.1.3 Burros as a beast of burden
3.1.4 Carts as a ‘beast of burden’
3.1.5 Choosing Your Unit
3.1.6 Ramifications

3.1.6.1 Freight Management
3.1.6.2 Base Loading Time
3.1.6.3 On The Road: Drivers, Guards, Cargo-masters, & Handlers
3.1.6.4 Base Unloading Time
3.1.6.5 Sales Prep
3.1.6.6 Sales and Customers

And, Further down the track (1-2 more posts):

3.2 Recruiter / Personnel Manager

3.2.1 Assumption #1: The best available gets hired

3.2.1.1 Any Relevant Skill
3.2.1.2 INT + WIS
3.2.1.3 Substituting CHAR

3.2.2 Assumption #2: They Hire The Best
3.2.3 The Principle Of Labor Unmanagement

3.3 The Labor Unit

3.3.1 Eight man-hour Labor Units
3.3.2 Twelve man-hour Labor Units
3.3.3 Sixteen man-hour Labor Units
3.3.4 Twenty-four man-hour Labor Units
3.3.5 Choices and Expectations

3.4 The Labor Market
3.5 Basic Pay-scales

3.5.1 Pick An Index

Which will be followed by:

3.6 Productivity

3.6.1 Premium Labor Units
3.6.2 Reminder: Profit per Trade Unit, not costs or prices

3.7 Pay-scale Variations

3.7.1 Overpaying workers / Elite Quality Workforce
3.7.2 Underpaying workers / Lower Quality Workforce
3.7.3 Slaves
3.7.4 Minor Stakeholders
3.7.5 Combinations & Complications

3.8 Technological Impact

3.8.1 Major Breakthroughs
3.8.2 Incremental Gains
3.8.3 Trade Secrets & Industrial Spies

3.9 Key Personnel & The Labor Unit
3.10 The Personnel Bottom Line

In future parts after that:

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

Sometimes, the tail wags the dog. Have you ever seen a dog who was upset change mood completely because something got their tail wagging momentarily? No? Well, it happens in humans – smile at someone and there’s a high chance that they will feel better about themselves / their day, and smile back – without realizing it. Look dour, like a miserable sourpuss, and you rain on the parades of everyone that encounters you, whether you interact with them or not.

And the same thing happens with most if not all primates. So the question has to be, how far down the animal chain does this extend? A couple of relevant movie sequences come to mind: Riggs befriending the guard dog in Lethal Weapon (2?) and Dundee and “Dopey” the water buffalo in Crocodile Dundee. If there were no plausibility to the conjecture, these scenes would not have been credible to audiences.

Of course, “some critters are just ornery”, as an NPC might be prone to warn PCs trying to befriend everything they meet.

Arguably, domestication has a lot to do with the outcome – Dundee’s water-buffalo does nothing more than get out of the way, whereas the guard dog actively bonds with Riggs.

All this is a metaphor for the content of today’s post, which started out in Chapter 2, moved into a chapter in it’s own respect (Chapter 4, leading into Mode Of Transport) before finally landing here as an insert at the beginning of Chapter 3. The content makes certain parts of the rest of the chapter easier, while presenting those parts first would have made this content easier to write – so is this the tail wagging the dog?

I actually did my best to avoid getting into this subject so early in the discussion – I wanted to erect a framework around the handling of Trade Units that would make this the obvious best solution – but have reluctantly concluded that I can’t actually put it off, despite those efforts in previous posts. That means that Chapter 3 – this chapter – will almost certainly have to be split into at least three parts.

Sometimes, the tail wags the dog, and all you can do is smile back and bark.

Chapter 3. Routine Personnel

Every organization runs on the efforts of a faceless, anonymous, workforce. These should only even get name-checked if they are to play a vital and deliberate role as an NPC in an adventure, never mind actually playing a part in the adventure.

Routine Personnel are clumped together into an abstract entity called the Labor Unit, which represents a block of man-hours for which the members have to be paid, even if you don’t use all the man-hours that they represent. The size of a Labor Unit is related to the size of a Trade Unit, which creates a problem.

You see, the actual size of a Trade Unit is something I’ve been dodging trying to define because it makes the maximum comprehension to do so when discussing modes of transport, but I find that I need to define it for this chapter to make sense to readers. That means either repeating myself several times in the course of the total text, or simply tossing numbers out without foundation – and with potential errors unchecked until much later in this series.

That last was too high a price to pay to avoid the former, so I’ve chosen repetition (that I will do my best to minimize) as the lesser of two evils.

After defining and discussing four (well, eight) standard sizes for trade units, with the ramifications, I can move on to the one critical individual to be mentioned in this chapter: the Recruiter / Personnel Manager who hires Labor Units from the available labor force on behalf of the trading organization. While this can be a PC if you really insist, it’s better for everyone if someone competent, trustworthy, and reliable is hired to do the job. Well, two-and-a-half of these, anyway.

Then I can move on to discussing the Labor Unit (and why they come in four standard sizes), pay scales, productivity, elite and substandard Labor Units, pay scales, and so on. I close out the chapter with a brief consideration of the role magic / technology might play and what the consequences might be.

That’s a lot to get through in just three posts, so we had better get busy….

3.1 A Choice Of Four Trade Unit Standards (actually, 8)

There are four main ways to define a Trade Unit (in terms of Bulk, which was defined in Chapter 2). Each of these needs to exist in two convenient forms – one for the game systems that use the Metric system, and one for those that use feet and pounds. The latter will exclusively use American units (some of them are actually different from the old British Imperial measurements, something I didn’t realize for quite a long time).

The difference between the standard sizes is something I’ll refer to as the Work Effort. It is defined as

Work Effort = Bulk × Distance / Labor Unit Standard.

where,

Bulk is as defined in Chapter Two: Volume × Weight, measured in Cargo Units;
Distance is how far the chosen Trade Unit Standard Transport can move a Cargo Unit in a certain period of time; and

“Labor Unit Standard” defines that period of time.

In other words,

Work Effort = Bulk × Speed.

The desirable goal is to select the smallest of the four options that apply to your game system, because every other mode of transport will be able to transport more trade units in the specified time, or be able to transport the same number much more quickly and efficiently.

What we want is to define the conversion rate between kg-cubic-meters or lb-cubic-feet that equals one Trade Unit or Cargo Unit.

With me so far? Good, because it’s about to get curly.

3.1.0 Principles of Comparative Modes Of Transport

There are a lot more than four modes of transport, but most of the remainder are a lot more efficient and so can be disregarded in this respect.

The four are Humans, Horses, Burros, and Carts. The first complication is that each of these is more efficient than the others under some circumstances, one of which is duration of the effort – and that’s in hours and ties directly to the scale of a default Labor Unit. But that can be obviated by changing mounts regularly along the way – if there is a network of way stations where you can keep teams of mounts on standby. And, in practice, the speed at which the mounts are driven then changes how frequently you need to change teams. Plus there’s loading and unloading time for everything except the wagon.

The second complication is that all four modes of transport require replenishment of two vital resources: food and water. If those are readily sourced along the way, that’s no problem – but if one or both need to be carried with the cargo, it diminishes the bulk of cargo that can be carried – and that changes the efficiency again.

The third complication is that it is most probably the case that neither extreme is the most accurate; the truth lies somewhere in between – but this can also differ from one mode of transport to another.

Four modes of transport, at least two duration values each (probably more), at least two replenishment options (probably more) for each of the two critical resources, and four different time intervals – at worst case, that’s 4 × 2 × 2 × 2 × 4 = 128 different values for each set of measurement units, or 256 in total.

Fortunately, restricting time to those 4 standard values means that many, if not most, of the possible values simply won’t apply. So there is hope that the actual number of choices will be limited.

For a given combination of time and speed within each type of mount, a distance value can be derived – and that distance will define which values are applicable. So you will get one set of answers for distances of (say) 60 km or 40 miles, and another for distances twice that, and so on.

All of the above is strictly theoretical at this point. Until I actually work the calculations and limitations out, I don’t know how much work it will be – but I do have an indicator, having had to produce similar calculations for both the horses and burros options for a recent Adventurer’s Club adventure. I still have those notes…

3.1.1 Humans as a beast of burden

So, how much can a human, who uses his STR for a living, carry?

It’s a far more complicated question than it seems on the surface.

Let’s start by pointing out that there are no game systems that I know of that do it all in this respect – generally because of that complication, and it’s usually not worth the fiddling around with numbers that you have to do to get an answer. But there are exceptions to almost every rule, and this circumstance is one to that particular rule of thumb.

I’d love to be able to simply give you a simple answer. But there are way too many assumptions hidden under the surface, and for non-humans you’ll need to understand the conceptual process of going from “A” to “B” so that you can tweak it. So We’ll have to dig in.

3.1.1.1 Lift from STR

The Hero System (and GURPS for that matter) defines Lift as 25 × 2^(STR/5 -2) in kg.

Well, actually, it doesn’t – that’s a compression of several different rules, but it gives the right answers – according to their system.

D&D gives a semi-linear progression in a table, indexed against STR. Well, it used to – that may have gone the way of the dodo in recent incarnations.

Pathfinder avoids the question entirely, using an abstracted Bulk system that combines weight and inconvenience (hmm, sounds familiar). It’s not the same as the one being used in this series, but it’s conceptually similar; their version is more granular, more appropriate to individual adventurers and pieces of gear.

And none of these agree with each other, though some come close.

When converting characters from D&D to Hero (or vice versa), it’s usually most effective to look up Lift and determine the corresponding lift value. That often means converting lb to kg – there are 2.2046 of the first to every one of the second, but for our purposes, 2.2 will be close enough.

The question posed is therefore dependent on the STR score that we consider equates to “uses STR for a living.”

3.1.1.2 Average isn’t Average

The first thing that can be said is that it isn’t 10, especially in systems that define 10 as “average”. That average includes everything from street sweepers to bookkeepers to beekeepers. With exercise, you get stronger, but each increase makes the next step harder. But if you’re too strong, you would tend to get recruited into a martial profession, or one that’s even harder in it’s own way, like Blacksmithing. So we need a model that allows for all that.

I figure the tipping point for a martial career is probably going to be 16 out of 20 (or 15 out of 18). That’s the score at which either professional pathway is equally likely, based on STR alone.

That doesn’t mean that characters with a STR of 10-15 can’t be soldiers, just that there are likely to be more lucrative / less risky opportunities.

We need to allow for the distribution of STR scores within a standard population.

The easiest way to do so is to look at the typical D&D stat generation methods. Point-buy is worthless to us in this case, and simple 3d6 centers itself on 10, which we have already said is not representative of the people going into these professions.

4d6 and keep the three best gives a far more interesting and useful distribution for our purposes.

3.1.1.3 4d6 keep 3 vs 3d6



It was surprisingly hard work generating the data that is graphed above, simply because most of it couldn’t be automated by the spreadsheet that I used. If you look closely, the graph even indicates a small error that I think crept into my calculations, even though I couldn’t find it in the data – the 8 value seems a little low, and perhaps the 9, a little high. But it’s close enough for our purposes.

This shows the likely distribution of STR values across the whole of the population, assuming that they have all been generated using the 4d6 keep 3 method. Some GMs will employ this distribution without thought; others may have a tiered society in which adventurers and potential adventurers use it while the plebeians don’t.

I was all set to add yet another set of standards for GMs to work from when I realized something: Even if the GM’s standard approach to NPC generation is ‘roll 3d6’, he should make an exception for the primary stat in most cases – because characters get better with practice / exercise. The character may have started out with STR 12 from 3d6 – but six months of hard work and it might easily have become 14 or 15 from the best 3 of 4d6.

And the same is true of just about any other stat you care to nominate, too. Dexterity / Reflexes can definitely be improved by training. Minds can become sharper. Wisdom will increase with the breadth of experience, and exposure to the thoughts of other deep thinkers. Con is increased by most exercise routines as well, but especially running with weights. Even Charisma – if part of the character’s profession is to be charming or attractive, learning how to take better care of yourself would lead to an obvious improvement.

The only exceptions to this rule would be absolute beginners – new apprentices and the like.

Of course, it’s the precise numeric values that will be most useful for further calculations; when all is said and done, the above is nothing more than a pretty picture.

But before I do that, let’s talk about the next factor to be taken into consideration, so that I can present the table with both being shown.

3.1.1.4 Career Paths & STR

There are lots of career opportunities open to the strong. ‘Porter’ is likely to be well down the list – it’s honest work, but poorly paid and less desirable than ‘bouncer’ or ‘thug’ – or ‘Blacksmith,’ for that matter.. That said, if STR is your biggest asset and it’s only 11 or 12, those choices are going to be less suitable for you.

Once you go above average in STR, the military / fighter branch of service is always going to appeal to some extent, and by STR 16, that would be the dominant career path for most.

So there are two percentage factors to be considered – suitability for military service / fighter and suitability for roles other than porter, which would drain off a percentage of whatever doesn’t follow the first path. Whatever’s left is our general laborer workforce, which includes things like farm hands, construction laborers, and warehouse stockers as well as porters. That’s fine, those are all equivalent jobs.

3.1.1.4.1 Linear vs Non-linear

Linear changes are simpler, but I think that many compounding influences would apply, and those would amplify disproportionately at different STR values. So, even though it’s a lot less straightforward, I think that non-linear is the way to go.

The table below lists STR, the percentage of the population likely to have it, and the appeal / capacity for these other, more desirable, careers. Multiplying the three percentages together gives a net breakdown of the relevant population by STR.

Since we want the average STR of all those within this occupation category, multiplying by any given total population count gives us the number of individuals with that STR within the occupation. So the average STR will be that number times the STR they possess divided by the total number of representatives with that STR. It simplifies things greatly if I operate on a ‘population pool’ of 100 × 100 × 100, or 1,000,000 – even though that is improbably high for any given nation / culture, by at least a factor of 6 (the percentage of individuals for whom STR is the dominant stat).

There will be some fuzziness to the result for several reasons. Some people will enter the profession even though they aren’t perfectly suited to it physically, simply because it appeals to them in some other way. Some will choose something else even though they aren’t ideally suited to it, for the same reason. And there will be a percentage of the population who have two equally-dominant stats, which would act to increase their options and therefore that factor-of-six – but it’s not worth doing the math to exclude them. (If you insist, 3d6+18-3d6 and shift the zero point on the x-axis from 3+18-3=18 will graph the plus-or-minus adjustment for you. What you care about are the percentage who get a result of exactly 18).

STR	Population (%)	Non-martial (%)	Exclude Other Choices (%)	Relative Population	x STR =
3	0.08%	100%	0%	0	0
4	0.31%	100%	5%	155	620
5	0.77%	100%	15%	1,155	5,775
6	1.62%	100%	25%	4,050	24,300
7	2.93%	99%	35%	10,152.45	71,067.15
8	4.86%	99%	40%	19,245.6	153,964.8
9	6.87%	95%	45%	29,369.25	264,323.25
10	9.41%	85%	50%	39,992.5	399,925
11	11.42%	70%	55%	43,967	483,637
12	12.89%	60%	40%	30,936	371,232
13	13.35%	50%	40%	26,700	347,100
14	12.35%	40%	40%	19,760	276,640
15	10.11%	20%	35%	7,077	106,155
16	7.25%	10%	35%	2,537.5	40,600
17	4.17%	5%	30%	625.5	10,633.5
18	1.62%	5%	30%	243	4,374
Totals:				235,965.8	2,560,346.7

2560346.7 / 235965.8 = 10.85 (color me a little surprised, I thought it would 12-13, maybe even between 13 and 14).

3.1.1.5 Lift, at last

D&D 3.x:.STR 10 = 100 lb max heavy load; STR 11 = 115 lb max heavy load; 85% of the way between these is 112.75 lb = 51.14 kg. The fine print in the rules states that a character can lift up to double their carrying capacity, so that would be 102.28 kg.

Hero System, Lift 100 kg = STR 10 (STR 11 -> 115 kg).

100 kg lift = 220 lb. Halved, 110. So STR 10 in the Hero System is between STR 10 and STR 11 (and closer to the latter) on the D&D scale.

But, I have to admit, I’m not all that happy with any of these numbers, and never have been. To see why, let’s look at the current world record for weightlifting. In theory, that should be fairly close to the defined value for “normal human”.

I’m going to ignore the weight categories of the athletes and simply go for the top. Right away, there’s a complication: Olympic weightlifting scores two different kinds of lift, the Clean & Jerk and the Snatch, then totals the two for an aggregate. That means there are six possible values to choose from:

★ Clean & Jerk record, 267 kg (589 lb);
★ Snatch record, 225 kg (496 lb);
★ Aggregate (both records are held by the same man): 492 kg (1085 lb);
★ The lower of the two;
★ The higher of the two;
★ The average of the two.

In both systems, 25 is supposedly the maximum human. The hero system gives a Lift of 800kg, which is about 63% higher than the record aggregate; the D&D scale, after doubling the Heavy Encumbrance value to get Lift, of 1600 lb, about 47.5% above the record aggregate. At least this spells out the correct choice – only the aggregate is anywhere near reasonable.

But wait one – there used to be a third lift type aggregated, until it was discontinued because it was too hard to judge objectively. If we presume it to be somewhere in between the two official numbers, we can multiply the aggregate by 3/2 to get somewhere close to a reasonable number – and since we already know those ratios to the STR 25 ratings are very close to that × 1.5 ratio, the resulting error shrinks accordingly.

So both numbers are only about 3 times what is reasonable – the effects of aggregating the three individual scores (one fictitious and assumed).

But wait – there’s also powerlifting to be considered. This produces considerably higher values: Squat approx 1015 lb, Bench approx 720 lb, and deadlift 1015 lb (461.36, 327.27, and 461.36 kg, respectively). 1600 lb (D&D Scale) is 1.576 times the squat & deadlift estimates, while 800 kg (Hero Scale) is 1.734 times those estimates. Well, that gets rid of the troubling “aggregate” notion, at least.

The fantasy factor is something that has to be accommodated in both cases. Neither are representing ‘the real world’, and I’m not saying that they should; instead, I’m using the real world as a means of gauging how reasonable are the actual limits that the game systems set.

And x 3 – roughly – is a little on the high side for my tastes.

3.1.1.6 Encumbrance

Encumbrance has been mentioned a number of times. It generally categorizes a number of negative effects from carrying a load that is greater than their Unencumbered Minimum Load. Amongst those effects, critically, is movement rate.

As a general rule in the real world, a human can carry about 20% of their body weight and walk around normally. The legal ‘safe load’ limits are usually considerably less than this, because they have to accommodate both larger and smaller individuals; while the numbers will vary from country to country, the typical maximum acceptable weight for back lifting is 41.5 lb, for front lifting 39.4 lb, and for side lifting, 25.5 lb (18.86 kg, 17.91 kg, and 11.59 kg, respectively).

The problem is, what do I compare these to? What STR score are they supposed to accommodate? If Maximum Heavy Encumbrance on the D&D scale, I have to halve these – and we’re talking a STR between 1 and 2. If Minimum Light Encumbrance, it’s 5 or 6 depending on which limit we’re using.

The amount that you can carry without encumbrance in the Hero System is half what you can lift. Because each +5 STR doubles the weight that you can lift, the STR needed to carry something unencumbered is 5 lower than the STR to lift.

In my superhero game system (based on Hero Games 3rd Ed), I use that to set a simple ratio: each point between STR to Carry and STR to Lift is +20% Encumbrance. For the Adventurer’s Club campaign, we simplified that even further to 3/4 Lift (greatly reduced movement), 1/2 Lift (reduced movement) and 1/4 (slightly impaired movement).

But if both systems triple what it’s reasonable for you to lift, they must also do so for what it’s reasonable for you to carry, and so those limits should all be measured against triple the restriction numbers – 124.5 lb (56.58 kg), 118.2 lb (53.73 kg), and 76.5 lb (34.77 kg), respectively, which then have to be halved for the D&D Scale and equates to between STR 14 and STR 15 (Minimum Light Encumbrance) or STR 6-7 (Maximum Heavy Encumbrance).

As you can see, there are no simple, straightforward answers to these simple, straightforward questions.

Time to cut the Gordian knot and simply pick a standard to use for the purposes of this system, then – well two of them, one for those whose game system uses pounds, and one for those using a game system that measures in kg.

Sidebar: Behind The Curtain
I always suspected that this would end up being the case, which is part of the reason for the lengthy exposition leading to this point. I am well aware that by choosing values that make sense to me, based on the research I have done, I am imposing those opinions on the games of other GMs, and wanted them to be fully equipped to make alternative choices if those made more sense to them.

There is also an element of introducing readers to the complexities that I propose to bury beneath the surface of the system so that they can make adjustments to the basic system appropriately should one of the assumptions vary in a particular campaign or game world.

The third and final significant reason is, of course, that there is an element of always showing my working, the readers and I exploring a subject together. It’s not about presenting the answers without first presenting the context in which those answers should be interpreted.

3.1.1.7 Load & Load Capacity

To start with, let’s unpack a couple of concepts that have been hiding beneath the surface of these issues the whole time: Load, and Load Capacity. The first has a relationship with Weight, but isn’t necessarily the same thing; and the second has a relationship with Lift, and Encumbrance, but also isn’t the same thing.

Load is theeffective weight being carried by the character.

Loads can be Balanced, Semi-balanced, or Unbalanced.

Load Capacity is the character’s capacity to carry a Load.

Weights carried can also be Distributed, Supported, or Point.

Only Point and Supported weights qualify as Loads, but Distributed and Supported weights also subtract from Load Capacity.

Don’t worry if the above is coming at you a bit quickly – it will all make sense in a few minutes.

3.1.1.8 Load Balance

★  A Balanced Load is one in which the posture of the character carrying the load is natural, enabling them to carry the load most effortlessly. Carrying baskets or pots full of produce on the head counts as a balanced load, for example, and so does carrying two smaller loads balanced on a pole over the shoulder.

★  A Semi-balanced Load is one in which there is some moment to the distribution of mass, but it falls within manageable limits. The load attempts to pull the character off-balance in the direction of the greatest concentration of weight.

★  An Unbalanced Load is one in which all the Load lies in a specific direction relative to the normal posture of the character. It could be heavier to the front (if carried in front of the character), to the back (if worn in a pack of some kind), or off to one side or the other, or some combination of these.

Two or more characters can combine to balance an unbalanced load if it is the right shape – for example, a felled tree whose branches have been trimmed would be an unbalanced load carried by one character, even if they were strong enough, but is naturally balanced or semi-balanced when carried by two or more (one at each end, extras in the middle).

★ The full weight of an Unbalanced Loads counts against the Load Capacity of a character.
  i.e. the maximum weight that can sustainably be carried by the character if Unbalanced = Unused Load Capacity.

★ Only 3/4 of the weight of a Semi-balanced Load counts against the Load Capacity of a character.
  i.e. the maximum weight that can sustainably be carried by the character if Semi-balanced is 4/3 × Unused Load Capacity.

★  Only 1/2 of the weight of a Balanced Load counts against the Load Capacity of a character.
  i.e. the maximum weight that can sustainably be carried by the character if Balanced is 2 × Unused Load Capacity.

For the sake of an example, let’s assign an unused load capacity of 30 lb. That character could carry 30 lb unbalanced, or 40 lb semi-balanced, or 60 lb balanced.

3.1.1.8.1 Adding A Staff To The Equation

Loads have to be distributed through the number of legs that the creature can place on the ground while walking, i.e. 1 less than the total number of legs that the creature has. When it comes to humans, walking involves bearing the entire weight of character plus load on one limb while lifting and moving the other one forward, so this actually makes no difference (2-1 =1) if only one character at a time is carrying the load. As soon as you introduce teams, however, this changes.

EG: Team of 2: Four legs, -1 = 3; if the two had a combined Unused Load Capacity of 60 lb, so the pair together could carry a load of 60 × 3 (number of legs on the ground) × 2 (balanced) = 360 lb. But their movement rate will be slowed to a crawl at this rate.

EG2: Team of 2: Four legs, -2 = 2; same combined Unused Load Capacity of 60 lb, so the pair together could carry a load of 60 × 2 (number of legs on the ground) × 2 (balanced) = 240 lb – with the pair able to walk almost normally (still at a slow pace, though).

A walking stick or staff used one-handed counts as 1/2 of an extra ‘leg’. A staff used 2-handed counts as a full extra leg. BUT this means that the hand(s) in question are no longer available for holding Load. Any of these options reduces movement by 25%.

The same rules apply if the weight, Load, and Load Capacity are measured in kg.

3.1.1.8.2 Relating Load to Encumbrance (D&D)

Look up the STR table for your game system and work out the maximum they can carry when fully encumbered.

Multiply this by the adjusted Load and divide by the Unused Load Capacity to get the effective weight being carried in the form of the Load. From this, you can read off the Encumbrance Level.

EG: A character has a Load of 40 lb, Balanced. Their unused Load Capacity is 30 lb. Their STR on the D&D scale is 12, so their maximum Encumbrance is 130lb:
     40 / 2 = 20;
     20 / 30 × 130 = 86.67 lb;
     86.67 lb for a character of STR 12 is just outside the “Medium Load” range. If the character can find 8 oz to lose, they will scrape into that category.

EG2: Same character, same load, using a Staff 1-handed:
     40 / 2 / 1½ = 13.33 lb;
     13.33 / 30 × 130 = 57.78 lb;
     57.78 lb for a character of STR 12 is right in the middle of the “Medium Load” range.

EG3: Same character, 60 lb load, Balanced, using a staff 2-handed:
     60 / 2 / 2 = 15 lb;
     15 / 30 × 130 = 65 lb;
     65 lb for a character of STR 12 is right in the middle of the “Medium Load” range.

EG4: Same character, same load, Semi-Balanced, using a staff 2-handed:
     60 × 3 / 4 / 2 = 22.5 lb;
     22.5 / 30 × 130 = 97.5 lb;
     97.5 lb for a character of STR 12 is solidly into the “Heavy Load” range.

EG5: Same character, 40lb load, Unbalanced (one-handed), using a staff 1-handed:
     40 / 1.5 = 26.67 lb;
     26.67 / 30 × 130 = 115.56 lb;
     115.56 lb for a character of STR 12 is quite a long way into the “Heavy Load” range. In fact, the character would be close to his limits.

3.1.1.8.3 Relating Load to Encumbrance (Hero / Superhero)

This involves a couple of extra steps, made much simpler using tables.
1. Lookup the LIFT of the character.
2. Calculate Adjusted Load / Unused Load Capacity × Lift.
3. Lookup the STR needed to Lift the result (round up if necessary).
4. Subtract the result from the character’s STR.
5. Subtract the result from 5. If the result is <0, the character is unencumbered.
6. Multiply the difference by 20% to get the encumbrance.

EG: A character has a Load of 25 kg, Balanced. Their unused Load Capacity is 50 kg. Their STR on the Hero scale is 12.
     1. Lift is 132 kg.
     2. 25 / 2 = 12.5;
      12.5 / 50 × 132 = 33 kg;
     3. STR 2 has a Lift of 33kg.
     4. 12-2=10.
     5. 5-10=-5. The character is unencumbered.

EG2: Same character, Load of 40 kg, Semi-Balanced.
     1. Lift is 132 kg.
     2. 40 × 3 / 4 = 30;
      30 / 50 × 132 = 79.2 kg;
     3. STR 8 has a Lift of 76 kg, so STR 9.
     4. 12-9=3.
     5. 5-3=-2.
     6. 2 × 20 = 40%. So the character moves at 40% normal speed.

3.1.1.8.4 Relating Load to Encumbrance (Hero / Adventurer’s Club)

This is a lot simpler.

1. Lookup the LIFT of the character.
2. Calculate Adjusted Load / Unused Load Capacity × Lift.
3. On the STR table, cross-reference STR and the result to get the encumbrance.

EG: A character has a Load of 25 kg, Balanced. Their unused Load Capacity is 50 kg. Their STR on the Hero scale is 12.
     1. Lift is 132 kg.
     2. 25 / 2 = 12.5;
      12.5 / 50 × 132 = 33 kg;
     3. 1/4 Lift =33 kg, so the character is lightly encumbered (-25% speed), but is only a hair short of being unencumbered.

EG2: Same character, Load of 40 kg, Semi-Balanced.
     1. Lift is 132 kg.
     2. 40 × 3 / 4 = 30;
        30 / 50 × 132 = 79.2 kg;
     3. this is between 66 and 99 kg, so character is moderately encumbered (-50% speed).

3.1.1.9 Load Distribution

Some weight, like armor, can be worn, which evenly distributes the weight over the entire body. This subtracts from the base Load Capacity at the rate of 1 lb for 1lb or 1 kg per kg.

Some weight can be worn across the shoulders in a backpack, shoulder bag, etc. This partially distributes the weight over the entire body. It subtracts from the base Load Capacity at the rate of 2 lb per lb or 2kg per kg. This includes most weapons in sheaths.

Some equipment weight (like shields and drawn weapons) has to be carried. This weight is Point weight and subtracts from the base Load Capacity at the rate of 5lb per lb or 5kg per kg.

Base Load Capacity is equal to the Maximum Heavy Encumbrance shown (D&D) or 1/2 the character’s Lift (Hero / Superhero) or 1/3 of that amount (Hero / Adventurer’s Club).

     1. Total the weight that is Distributed.
     2. Total the weight that is Partially Distributed. Multiply the total by 2.
     3. Total the weight that is Point Weight. Multiply the total by 5.
     4. Add all three results together.
     5. Look up the Base Load Capacity.
     6. Subtract the total from (4) from the Base Load Capacity to get the Unused Load Capacity.

EG: D&D Character, STR 15, Full Plate (50lb*), Heavy Steel Shield (15lb**), Longsword (4lb***), backpack (2lb), 22 lb in Backpack.
* And A 10′ Pole Weight (Middle Ages) is 60-85 lb.
** And A 10′ Pole Weight (Middle Ages) is 15-30 lb.
*** And A 10′ Pole Weight (Middle Ages) is 3.5-6 lb.

     1. Full Plate (50 lb)
     2. Longsword & Sheath (4+0.5 lb)+ Backpack (2 lb) + Backpack contents (22 lb) = 28.5, x2 = 57.
     3. Shield (15 lb) × 5 = 75.
     4. 50 + 57 + 75 = 182.
     5. 200 lb.
     6. 200-182 = 18 lb Unused Load Capacity.

Conclusion: The armor makes this character unsuitable to being a porter. Take it away and the results are very different:

     1. 0 lb.
     2. Backpack (2 lb) + Backpack contents (22 lb) = 24, x2 = 48.
     3. 0 lb.
     4. 48 lb.
     5. 200 lb.
     6. 200-48 = 152 lb Unused Load Capacity.

152 lb is a LOT of capacity.

This is why caravan guards are hired separately to porters; it’s the former’s job to wear the armor and protect the latter.

3.1.1.10 Humanoids

On earth, the only humanoids we have to consider are Humans. Even if we go a distance back into prehistory, there weren’t that many physical differences between us and Neanderthals, or us and Cro-Magnon. You have to go a lot further back than that to get a significant difference – except in one respect: Stature.

All humans and related species were, historically, short-asses. A few of them may have topped 5’6″ – but most would be comfortably below 5’2″. It takes an astonishingly small deviation from an adequate diet to stunt growth, but that’s not the only factor at work – evolution itself seems to be trending in the direction of 6’+ humans, through social selection of genes.

Visit any house built in the late 1800s and one of the things that will astonish is just how low the ceilings are – unless a deliberate attempt was made to make the room “spacious” of course, at considerable expense. Even if the ceilings are high enough, look at any original door frames – I have literally seen some that were no more than 4’6″ in height and about 2/3 of the normal width.

It is therefore an entirely valid choice for the GM to decide that humans in general in his game world average just an inch or two more than they do in modern reality. But, for the sheer convenience of the number, I’m going to set “average human” at exactly 5′ tall – give or take quite a bit..

The important point is that in Fantasy games there are a LOT of very different Humanoids with which to contend. And that requires the designer of a game subsystem – that’s me, in this case – to consider what impact the differences between them would have.

The fun then arrives in the form of campaign differences. I have my idea of Elves – that is almost certain to be completely different to that of the next GM over, whose ideas are also completely different to the one next to him, and so on.

There is only one solution: to lay down some general principles and show GMs how to use them to match any given interpretation they consider appropriate. So, let’s do that.

3.1.1.10.1 The Size Factor

The most obvious factor is size. But I immediately ran into a problem: the size ratings given in D&D and Pathfinder are too coarse. To make things work, I needed to introduce a couple of intermediate ‘steps’.

It should also be noted that real-world physics and biology set limits on how tall a humanoid can be with significant internal modification (and external changes to accommodate them). Pathfinder 2nd edition (the one I consulted) attempts to at least wink at these by employing a different scale to that of D&D 3.x (again, the version that I consulted).

Here is where I draw the line: this is Fantasy. If a race of 50′ tall humanoids belong in your game world, so be it. These rules will accommodate you.

There are two types of adjustment possible: An adjustment to a specific Load Balance or Load Distribution, or a general adjustment to Load Capacity. The approach that I intend to use is to reserve the specific adjustments for specific Proportion differences (in the next sub-section) and Racial differences (the sub-section after that). These will adjust the grossest consideration: raw height, the Size Factor.

When dealing with individuals, you can choose a set ‘average’ human height and apply the principles given below for an estimate of how their stature alters their carrying capacity, but for the purposes of this series, I want to deal in broad generalities.

Height (relative to average human)	Definition	Ht Factor ^2	Ht Factor ^1.5	Size Factor
Average human / 10 or less	Ht × 0.1	0.01	0.03	0.02
Average human / 5	Ht × 0.2	0.04	0.09	0.0065 = 0.07
Average human / 2	Ht × 0.5	0.25	0.35	0.3
Average human / 1.5	Ht × 2/3	0.444	0.544	0..494 = 0.5
Average human / 1.25	Ht × 0.8	0.64	0.716	0.678 = 0.7
Average human	Ht × 1	1	1	1
Average human +25%	Ht × 1.25	1.5625	1.3975	1.48 = 1.5
Average human +50%	Ht × 1.5	2.25	1.84	2.045 = 2
Average human x2	Ht × 2	4	2.83	3.415 = 3.4
Average human x4	Ht × 4	16	8	12
Average human x6	Ht × 6	36	14.7	25.35 = 25
Average human x8	Ht × 8	64	22.63	43.315 = 43
Average human x10	Ht × 10	100	31.6	65.8 = 66
Average human × 12	Ht × 12	144	41.57	92.785 = 93
Average human × 15	Ht × 15	225	58.1	141.55 = 140
Average human × X	Ht × X	X^2	X^1.5	1/2 (X^2 + X^1.5)

A couple of assumptions worth mentioning: As bodies increase in size, more of the innate STR is used holding everything together and making it work. That’s why it’s not a straight geometric increase with size.

As bodies get smaller, gravity affects everything less, so muscle efficiency should increase – but there is simply less muscle to work with, so this factor is also compromised somewhat. Compensation means additional muscle mass is required – but that’s mass that does nothing else to benefit the character, it simply compensates somewhat for size. That’s why it’s not a straight geometric reduction with reducing size.

If a particular creature is not located solidly within one of the bands, but is somewhere in between, the GM has three options: he can pick one of the bands (whichever one the creature is closest to); or he can average the two Size Factors, effectively defining an ad-hoc intermediate value; or he can actually formally calculate the Size Factor. The smaller the difference between options 2 and 3, the less important it is to be super-accurate, and the more the simpler answer is good enough.

Note that the size of a creature increases the weight of armor by the cube of the ratio. A character with Ht × 2 requires 8 × as much metal to amour them to the same extent as a human wearing the same type of armor.

Note, too, that this increase happens a LOT faster than Base Load Capacity goes up because of size. This means that armor occupies an increasingly large fraction of the being’s capacity.

It is possible to compensate – plate-mail on the lower legs, chain mail on the upper, and leather everywhere else, for example, on the assumption that few opponents will get up that high – but this ignores flying enemies, enemies with bows and other ranged weaponry, and one’s own kind, so it doesn’t seem very smart. Instead, creatures would increasingly rely on natural armor, resulting purely from the thickening of skin / hide. Wearing mail at 50′ tall is gilding the lily.

3.1.1.10.2 The Proportions Factor

The assumption being made in this section is that the basic humanoid form has proportions approximately the same as a human being would have, relative to their height. But there, again, there is a second problem: humans vary all over the shop in this respect. Never mind, let’s define those as ‘resembling race X’ in build, which excludes them from ‘typical’ human, simplifying the question enormously.

I am operating under a couple of basic assumptions that are generally valid when it comes to artwork: that normal shoulder widths and limb thicknesses are proportional to the width of the body in general, and that limb length is proportional to height.

I am also going to assume that the more ‘superheroic’ proportions used by comic book artists (generally) are the appropriate ones for fantasy. We want the characters and the threats that they overcome to be somewhat larger than life.

Exactly what these are doesn’t really matter much except to an artist. If you look at the image of a creature, I want you to be able to visually assess “it looks about twice as wide as a normal human of the same height” or 4x or whatever. There are practical limits – more than about 4x just doesn’t look anatomically ‘right’ to us.



Images based on man-37470.png by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

So: Proportions Factor = Width multiplier ^ 0.5

★ Width Multiplier 0.3 = Proportions Factor 0.55
★ Width Multiplier 0.5 = Proportions Factor 0.71
★ Width Multiplier 0.7 = Proportions Factor 0.84
★ Width Multiplier 0.85 (Thin Human) = Proportions Factor 0.92 – (but use 1)
★ Width Multiplier 1 (Normal Human) = Proportions Factor 1
★ Width Multiplier 1.17 (Broad Human) = Proportions Factor 1.08 – (but use 1)
★ Width Multiplier 1.35 (Hulking Human) = Proportions Factor 1.16
★ Width Multiplier 1.5 = Proportions Factor 1.225
★ Width Multiplier 2 = Proportions Factor 1.41
★ Width Multiplier 2.25 = Proportions Factor 1.5
★ Width Multiplier 2.5 = Proportions Factor 1.58 (but use 1.6)
★ Width Multiplier 3 = Proportions Factor 1.73 (but use 1.75)
★ Width Multiplier 4 = Proportions Factor 2

★ Base Lift Capacity × Proportions Factor
★ Balanced Load / Proportions Factor
★ Semi-balanced Load × 1.5 / (Proportions Factor)

★ Unusual Limb Length: Multiplier × Distributed Load
     Point Loads / Multiplier

Don’t worry if this isn’t immediately clear, I’ve got lots of examples coming up.

3.1.1.10.3 The Racial Factor

Some humanoids (and other creatures) are known for being able to carry far more than they look like they should be able to handle. Others may go in the other direction, and be able to carry less. Rather than a blanket increase or decrease in capacity, these are better handled with specific adjustments to the loads that consume that capacity because it permits a more nuanced approach, and because players whose characters are affected are less likely to complain about that.

It’s important to remember that we aren’t intending to deal with individuals; instead, we want to be able to relate the cargo capacity of a generic human porter to (say) a generic Dwarven porter.

One point that I cannot emphasize enough is to Always Record Your Justifications for any racial bonus or penalty. Of course, the corollary is to always have such a justification!

There may be other racial advantages as well, relating to sureness of movement or stamina.

As a general rule of thumb:

     ★ Extreme Modifiers × 1.5 or / 1.5 (or more)

     ★ Significant Modifiers × 1.25 or / 1.25

     ★ Flavor Modifiers × 1.1 or / 1.1

     ★ Trivial Modifiers × 1.05 or / 1.05 – but I recommend you don’t bother with these.

3.1.1.10.4 The Human Advantage

One advantage that a human has over every creature in the ‘real’ world is this: If we proceed at our natural pace, given the load, we need to rest 15 minutes out of every 2 hours. If we proceed faster, given the load, we need to rest 20 minutes out of every hour. But if we slow our pace one step, we become terminators, who can keep going for hours at a time.

Every other creature we know about, including the Apes, can travel faster than we can, but then needs to stop and rest. Failure to do so leads to rapid exhaustion.

Prey animals like deer are very quick – for a little while. Like, 5 or 10 minutes. The predators that hunt them are optimized to be able to keep up – for a fraction of that time – and to attack. If they wound a prey, blood loss will soon bring the animal down, so they don’t need to be able to sustain the pace of their hunt for very much longer; patience and tracking ability gets the job done. Humans with spears are lethal to predators like lions and to herbivores like deer and horses because we don’t stop. They run away, we catch up while they are resting and attack, again and again and again, until – once again – exhaustion and blood loss bring our prey down.

That alone would make us the apex predator of the natural world. Every other advantage adds insult to injury.

In a fantasy world, other humanoids may share that advantage, or be even better at it than we are. We still have limits to our ability.

The human advantage is:

     ★ -5 movement rate (“), after adjusting for Load Encumbrance, can be sustained for 2 hours.

     ★ -10 movement rate (“), after adjusting for Load Encumbrance, can be sustained for 4 hours or CON hours, whichever is lower..

     ★ -15 movement rate (“), after adjusting for Load Encumbrance, can be sustained for 8 hours or CON hours, whichever is lower.

     ★ -20 movement rate (“), after adjusting for Load Encumbrance, can be sustained for one hour per point of CON or for 1 day, whichever is lower.

3.1.1.10.5 The Iconic Reference

Every GM should trawl through their references and select the image that best accords with their amalgamated views of what a particular creature is like. This is ‘the iconic reference’ and its the visual that the GM should return to, time and again, when composing his flavor text and other narrative.

We all have these mental images that have built up over the years. They combine elements that are distinguishing and specific from all sorts of sources – Monster Manuals and Bestiaries and Fiction and specific encounters and unique turns of phrase that resonated at the time, and so on. Your Trolls may not be quite the same as my Trolls – and my Elves may vary from one game world to another.

There are no wrong answers – only answers or the lack thereof.

It was my intention just to throw out an example or two in the following sections, but I kept thinking of something more to say about a different type of humanoid. Before I knew it, there was a very long list. I’m going to keep it as brief as I can, but I want to describe not only what factors apply to the race in question, but what my iconic reference is – where I can point to one.

3.1.1.10.6 Elves

Elves are dexterous and fleet of foot. They not only enjoy the human advantage, they get it 5″ faster than we do. Some have speculated on hollow, bird-like bones, but there’s no evidence that they are more likely to break bones, which would result form that arrangement. Instead, I think that they have multiple bones where humans have one, connected by cartilage, with ‘holes’ between the two that reduce the bone mass while preserving 99% of the strength of the bone: This enables them to move their limbs more quickly (faster reflexes) and operate with a cat-like grace.



Elves are – depending on the subspecies – either slightly taller than the average human or slightly shorter. In both cases, they are relatively thin. The price they pay for all these benefits is a small reduction in their capacity for Point Loads and unbalanced Loads in general.

Tall Elves:
★ Iconic Image: Pathfinder 2e Core Rules p38
★ Size: Human normal
★ Proportions Factor: Load Capacity × 0.85 but use × 1
★ Point Weights: +10% Load
★ Semi-balanced Loads: +10% Load
★ Unbalanced Loads including Point Weights: +10% Load, cumulative with the above.

Short Elves:
★ Size: Average Human × 0.8
★ Size Adjustment: Load Capacity × 0.7
★ Iconic Image: D&D 3.5 Monster Manual p101
★ Proportions Factor: Load Capacity × 0.85 but use × 1
★ Point Weights: +10% Load
★ Semi-balanced Loads: +5% Load
★ Unbalanced Loads including Point Weights: +5% Load, cumulative with the above.

3.1.1.10.7 Dwarves

Dwarves are heavyset beyond anything possible to humans. Despite this, they take the human advantage one step further: they do not need to slow down in order to access their vast endurance. However, not slowing down prevents them from attacking targets should that be necessary. They normally proceed at full pace for their size until about to enter melee, then slow for a single round. This isn’t generally all that noticeable when a single Dwarf is viewed, but when there’s an entire company of them, it becomes obvious; those of a poetic bent have described this action as “The Gathering Storm”. For many years, it was misinterpreted as the Dwarves giving their enemies one last intimidating view of what was about to fall on them.

★ Size: Average Human × 0.8
★ Size Adjustment: Load Capacity × 0.7
★ Iconic Image: D&D 3.5 Monster Manual p92
★ Proportions Factor: Load Capacity × 1.41
★ Balanced Loads: Load / 1.25
★ Semi-Balanced Loads: Load / 1.5
★ Racial Modifier: Load Capacity × 1.43*

* This effectively wipes out the Size Adjustment.

3.1.1.10.8 Halflings

I have great exception to the depiction of Halflings in the 3.x Player’s Handbook. They look like oversized pixies, not the iconic creatures of unbelievable stamina from which their legend derives. Like almost everyone, the dominant source of my impressions are the Lord Of The Rings trilogy and The Hobbit, and it’s my suspicion that the brief from WotC to the artist responsible for p12-13 was to distance in-game Halflings from Hobbits.

As a general rule, Halflings prefer to travel light, and lightly armored; but if one chooses to act like a pack mule, they can bear surprising loads for their size. Many a wager will have been won in taverns when the local strong man attempts to hoist a Halfling’s pack.

Halflings have a weaker version of the human advantage; they must slow to 1/2 their unencumbered speed or less, but they can maintain that pace almost indefinitely. They will need to start making FORT rolls at a cumulative -1 per hour to stay awake after CON hours forced march, though. If they are forced to a pace greater than this, they can sustain this without rest for CON / 2 hours and thereafter must make a FORT roll every hour, at a cumulative -1 per 2 hours.

★ Size: Average Human / 2
★ Size Adjustment: Load Capacity × 0.3
★ Iconic Image: Pathfinder 2e Core Rules p50, p53
★ Racial Modifier: Load Capacity × 2*
★ Distributed Loads: Load × 1.25
★ Semi-distributed Loads: Load / 2.5

* Partially compensates for the Size Adjustment

3.1.1.10.9 Orcs

Orcs are either short or taller than human norm. The former have a build not dissimilar to Elves, the latter have builds that resemble those of Dwarves. The latter have the human advantage, the former have a weakened form of it (have to slow an additional 5″). Orcs have great stamina, and count their CON as × 1.5 for purposes of Endurance and FORT checks for stamina.

Small Orcs:
★ Size: Average Human / 2
★ Size Adjustment: Load Capacity × 0.3
★ Proportions Factor: Load Capacity × 0.92 but use 1
★ Iconic Image: Pathfinder Bestiary p222
★ Racial Modifier: Load Capacity × 1
★ Distributed Loads: Load × 0.75
★ Semi-distributed Loads: Load × 0.8
★ Point Loads: Load × 0.85

Large Orcs
★ Size: Average Human × 1.25
★ Size Adjustment: Load Capacity × 1.5
★ Proportions Factor: Load Capacity × 1.41
★ Iconic Image: Never found the perfect image.
     Races Of Destiny p50 comes close even though it’s a Half-Orc.
     So does Legends & Lairs Monster’s Handbook p115.
     Perhaps the closest match of all is the illustration at Orc-Names Generator | Mythopedia (art uncredited, site © 2022 Wasai LLC, All Rights Reserved. This is assumed to include the art, which is why I’m linking to the page and not showing the image here. Reverse Image Search found no matches that could identify the artist / source but many similar images).
★ Racial Modifier: Load Capacity × 1.1
★ Distributed Loads: Load × 0.7
★ Semi-distributed Loads: Load × 0.75
★ Point Loads: Load × 0.9

3.1.1.10.10 Ogres

Okay, so now we’re getting into the bigger end of town. There are a lot of differing perceptions of Ogres that I’ve seen through the years, but none of them quite matched my mental images. Note that in my Fumanor campaign it was discovered that Drow had created/corrupted Ogre Magi, supplying them with a herb that, when consumed, made Ogres bigger, dumber, and more obedient/pliable. Once the drug is removed, assuming that the Ogre survives the withdrawal process, they lose musculature and gain intelligence. They don’t actually lose much in the way of height, but they tend to bend forward a lot more so as to keenly observe what’s on the ground before them, giving the perception that they are shorter.

★ Ogres are described as typically STR 21.
★ Size: Average Human × 2
★ Size Adjustment: Load Capacity × 3.4
★ Proportions Factor: Load Capacity × 1.225 (without herb) or × 1.41 (with herb or under different concept**)
★ Iconic Image: Another case of never quite finding the perfect representation.
     Legends & Lairs Monster’s Handbook p110 is headed in the right direction, but not quite there.
     The images on this page (Balder’s Gate 3: Should You Kill Or Recruit The Ogres | Gamerant.com, presumably excerpted from the computer game) are the closest that I can find online.
★ Racial Modifier: Load Capacity × 1.25
★ Distributed Loads: Load × 0.8
★ Semi-distributed Loads: Load × 1.2
★ Point Loads: Load × 0.8

3.1.1.10.11 Bugbears

I have a love/hate relationship with Bugbears, especially in art. Everything that I have seen has contributed to my impression of a furry / hairy beast-like humanoid with shoulders the size of basketballs, standing slightly taller than a human but far broader. You might not agree with this interpretation – that’s why I’m describing it, so that you can amend or modify what’s below to match your vision of the species.

★ Bugbears are usually described as having STR 15 but that undersells my vision of them. I use STR 19±d4.
★ Size: Average Human × 1.5
★ Size Adjustment: Load Capacity × 2
★ Proportions Factor × 2 Human Width: Load Capacity × 1.5
★ Iconic Image:
     Low-STR Ogres: D&D 3.5 Monster Manual p29
     High-STR Ogres: D&D 3.5 Monster Manual p199 (Ogre Image)
★ Racial Modifier: Load Capacity × 1.25
★ Distributed Loads: Load × 1
★ Semi-distributed Loads: Load × 1
★ Point Loads: Load × 0.75

3.1.1.10.12 Trolls

I’ve always considered Trolls to be tall, thin, and stringy. Gaunt, even. Something akin to a Corrupted Treant – I’ve even used the term “Willowy” to describe various aspects of them. Trolls have never been about their muscle (though they are no slouches in that department), it’s always about the Regeneration. (Hint: A subspecies that is vulnerable to something else instead of Fire scares the Bejeezus out of most players. Especially if Fire doubles their regeneration rate, and can even resurrect them from the dead). A key attribute of Trolls is abnormal arm length; simply bending forward enough to walk naturally permits them to use these limbs as Staves.

★ Trolls are usually described as having STR 23.
★ Size: Average Human × 2
★ Size Adjustment: Load Capacity × 3.4
★ Proportions Factor × 1.5 Human Width: Load Capacity × 1.225
★ Iconic Image: I have this image somewhere but couldn’t find it: Troll | Forgotten Realms Wiki (5e) – it’s probably in Monsters Of Faerun, which I appear to have misplaced. I note that WotC have also used it as the current official depiction.
★ Distributed Loads: Load × 1
★ Semi-distributed Loads: Load × 1.1
★ Point Loads: Load × 1.25
★ Special: If not carrying a point load, can use arms as extra legs
     balanced loads /3
     / (3 × 3/4) = × 4 / 9 semi-balanced loads

* Some sub-species may be × 1.5.

3.1.1.10.13 Hill Giants

Hill giants are pretty much the shortest of the Giants but they make up for it by being spread much wider. Their arms are often bigger than their legs. That can make them clumsy when mobile, but deadly dangerous when placed. They are also frequently depicted as the stupidest variety of Giant.

★ Trolls are usually described as having STR 25.
★ Size:
     Small: Average Human × 2
     Large: Average Human × 4
     Gargantuan: Average Human × 8
★ Size Adjustment:
     Small: Load Capacity × 3.4
     Large: Load Capacity × 12
     Gargantuan: Load Capacity × 43
★ Proportions Factor × 4 Human Width: Load Capacity × 2
★ Iconic Image: There are lots of images that could qualify, but I’ve selected three – two of them miniatures!
     Small: Limited Edition Miniature from Tabletop Empires (only 1 left?)
     Large: This Miniature, almost sold out (1 in stock) from Bones Miniatures;
     Also, this art by TheMightyQuill at Tensor Art (AI art so don’t click if you’re not down with that).
     Gargantuan: The Scion Of Grolantor image in “Dungeons & Dragons: Every Scion of Giants’ Gods, Ranked” by The Gamer
★ Distributed Loads: Load × 1
★ Semi-distributed Loads: Load × 1.1
★ Point Loads: Load × 1.25

3.1.1.10.14 Stone Giants

Stone Giants are relatively human in proportions, but they run to 12-20 ft tall, with rare specimens reaching 22 feet.

★ Stone Giants have STR 27.
★ Size: Average Human × 4
★ Size Adjustment: Load Capacity × 12
★ Proportions Factor × 1 Human Width: Load Capacity × 1
★ Iconic Image: Legends & Lairs Monster’s Handbook p106
★ Racial Modifier: Load Capacity × 1.10
★ Distributed Loads: Load × 64 due to size
★ Semi-distributed Loads: Load × 1.5
★ Point Loads: Load × 1

3.1.1.10.15 Other Giants

Giants only get bigger from there, but generally more human in proportions. Choose your iconic image, look up the STR and typical height, get the size adjustment, and think about any racial modifiers. The more unbalanced the creature naturally is, the worse will be the point load impact; the more stable they are, the better the distributed load impact will be. But don’t forget, when assigning values to those, the impact already present from the STR and size; you may even need to compensate if they seem too high.

3.1.1.10.16 Others

Using the above system, you should be able to deal with anything from Angels to Zombies. Racial modifiers that stand out of me are Angels (lower), Formians (higher) and Golems (Higher). Goblins could possibly be lower.

…and with that, I’m right out of time (besides, this is a good break point). I’ll pick this up next time with section 3.1.1.11, where I return to the setting of standard Labor Units (using humans), show how to adjust for non-human humanoids, and then tackle Horses, Burros, and Carts. Along the way I’ll also deal with the impact on efficiency of Foraging and Hunting.

Gamemasters are human, and just like everyone else, vulnerable to mental health problems. It’s entirely possible that the active participation in an immersive hobby like TTRPGs provides a measure of relief from, and insulation from, such problems, but reducing them in frequency and/or severity does not mean that they are eliminated.

Image by Hannah Williams (Shooinau) from Pixabay

My evidence for the relief factor is two-fold: personal experience (gaming helped me get through a rough patch by letting me step into a role that was not experiencing the same issues, in a game world in which every problem had a solution) and anecdotal (a friend who became so depressed after ruining his life that he took that life – after he had stopped gaming, it must be noted).

Work continues on the next installment of Trade In Fantasy, but it’s still not ready. There is light at the end of the tunnel, but that end is a long way away; hopefully the light is not that of an oncoming train!)

I always try to tell a bit of the backstory to my articles; amongst other benefits, it tells readers what to expect, or at least offers a hint or two! Today’s post started off as being about one thing, but was then infused with some related thoughts, and then another TTRPG blogger weighed in with a related article, upon which I felt that I needed to expand and expound, and with each of these inclusions the subject became broader and broader.

As a result, there may be a sense that this is three related articles in one post. I’ll do my best to transition in a cohesive manner so that it all ties together, but that’s a lower priority than actually getting the text out there.

Overview

What is it about TTRPGs that is is helpful to the mental state of GMs?

I think that there are many possible answers, and that some combination of those answers will be specific to any given individual.

• As already suggested, TTRPGs are a social activity that is fully capable of forging lasting friendships. While that means that people who are struggling with their mental health will tend to wan to drop out, peer pressure is likely to keep them playing just a little longer, which in itself can be enough for them to turn a corner.
• TTRPGs are inherently a structured and orderly activity, especially in the prep phases. If feeling overwhelmed by a chaotic existence, that can be therepeutic.
• TTRPGs are (generally) fun. Even prep, as much as GMs complain about how hard it can be, can be fun.
• Stepping outside your own life and into a life that is more positive in orientation can also mean stepping outside your personal problems, at least for a time. The mere fact that you are not obsessively fixated on those problems can be enough to shrink molehills that loomed like mountains back down to size.
• While there are some exceptions, most RPG campaigns are positive, pro-life experiences in which threats can be overcome with determined efforts. That’s an attitude that can be applied to real life, too.
• Those exceptions can permit explorations of the darker sides of the human existence while holding them at arms’ length. And that can serve in good stead when darker events manifest in real life.
• The problems faced in most RPGs eventually take a turn toward the existential purely because there’s so much scope for drama when that happens. Over time, the participants learn that most problems have more than one solution, and even the biggest problems usually have solutions. The scope of these threats can put one’s personal problems into perspective.
• Finally, and to bring the discussion full circle, Gaming exposes you to friends who can both assist and intervene if necessary. And who are used to not backing down from uncomfortable situations, making them more likely to intervene if its necessary.

Nor do I consider the above list to be exhaustive. On the contrary, it’s nothing more than a good beginning. It doesn’t mention the cathartic value of simply being able to hit something (metaphorically, of course), for example – and that alone is proof that there are more items to be added to it.

But there are a few problems that GMs might be especially vulnerable to, and I mean beyond things like deadline stress.

Decision Fatigue in GMs

Adam Savage, former host of Mythbusters, takes a lot of fan questions on his YouTube channel, and in one of these Q&A sessions, he spoke about the impact of being the sole focus of the shows in comparison to the Mythbusters experience.

The difference was that every decision had to go through him, and one day this reached the point where, when someone asked him if they should use blue or red wire for something, his mind went completely blank. Not just for a minute, but until the next morning, after it had received adequate rest.

It’s perhaps a miracle of conditioned reflexes that he was able to drive himself home that night, or perhaps a restorative nap – something he is known to take daily – was enough that he could safely operate a motor vehicle. That’s not the point.

The point is, from both himself and myself, that Decision Fatigue is a real thing, something he had never heard of prior to this event, and that I had never heard of until I listened to his recorded video.

So, what is it?

Decision Fatigue under the microscope

Decision Fatigue is a type of mental overload that can occur from time to time in some individuals and under some circumstances. There is debate as to whether or not it is restricted in effect to only those vulnerable or if it is a general limitation that applies to everyone to differing extents. Currently, the latter seems to be the more accepted theory.

It seems that humans have only a limited capacity for decision-making. Every decision that we make, no matter how trivial, subtracts something from that total. If there are multiple options, that ‘one decision’ may actually be several – first to reject alternatives and simplify the question and then to actually make the decision itself.

Some decisions are clearly more inherently stressful than others simply because of the gravity of the consequences – but that generally won’t apply to decisions in an RPG. When it does matter, though, that stress is an entirely separate issue to Decision Fatigue – unless we keep turning the question over and over in our heads, either prior to making a choice, or second-guessing ourselves after the choice has been made; those do count.

Something that Adam Savage’s video answer didn’t mention is that prior to reaching the point of being literally unable to make a choice, however trivial the question, our decisions become increasingly poor and even incoherent.

From Wikipedia | Decision Fatigue:

Decision fatigue is a phrase popularized by John Tierney, and is the tendency for peoples’ decision making to become impaired as a result of having recently taken multiple decisions.

Decision fatigue has been hypothesized to be a symptom, or a result of ego depletion. It differs from mental fatigue which describes the psycho-biological state that results from a prolonged duration of demanding cognitive tasks, such as multi-tasking or switching between various tasks.

Some psychologists and economists use the term to describe impairments in decision making resulting specifically from a long duration of having to make decisions. Others view factors such as complexity of the decisions being made, repeated acts of self regulation, physiological fatigue, and sleep deprivation as implicated in the emergence of decision fatigue.

Decision fatigue is thought to be a result of unconscious, psycho-biological processes, and is a reaction to sustained cognitive, emotional and decisional load, as opposed to a trait or deficiency.

Behavioral attributes of decision fatigue … [reflect] an unconscious method [of] …. individuals adapt[ing] their behavior to prevent further depletion.

Individuals experiencing decision fatigue are more prone to avoidant behaviors, such as procrastination; [Experiments by] Sjastad and Baumeister demonstrated that decision-fatigued individuals are less willing to engage in planning, and were more avoidant, compared to controls.

Decision fatigue may also induce passive behaviors, such as inaction and decision avoidance. Furthermore, individuals experiencing decision fatigue may display less persistence when putting effort into decision making, and thus may be prone to choosing the ‘default’ option. They may also be prone to impulsive, erratic or short-sighted behavior.

That certainly explains some of the decisions that I’ve made at the GMing table when improvisng … you know, the ones that you look back on later and wonder, “What was I thinking?”

Decision Fatigue impairs cognitive abilities and there’s evidence to suggest it may impact physiological endurance and self control – for example, reducing tolerance toward a poor-tasting soda, especially if the individual actually chose that soda because of decision fatigue. Pain and fatigue tolerance outside of the decision-making arena also suffers, amplifying and exacerbating any existing problems.

Even before the phenomenon was identified, sales techniques had emerged that attempt to take advantage of the problem, because it leaves people in a vulnerable and more suggestive state, and less able to resist the suggestion of adding ‘an extra, expensive, option’ even if it is beyond the budgetary limits placed on the purchase.

It has been shown, for example, that

…a trip to the supermarket induces more decision fatigue in the poor than in the rich, because each purchase requires more mental trade-offs. … [By] the time they reach the cash register, they have less willpower left to resist the Mars bars and Skittles. Not for nothing are these items called impulse purchases.”

— Dean Spears of Princeton University, quoted in the same source.

Other studies have shown that inherent biases are more likely to be applied unilaterally as Decision Bias sets in – so some judges become harsher and less tolerant of mitigating circumstances towards the end of their judicial day, while others become more prone to accepting claims of mitigation at face value.

Criticism of the concept

This is not universally-accepted science. In particular, the leading theory as to the cause, “Ego Depletion”, has been called into question, if that falls apart under scrutiny, it leaves the concept itself uncertain. My impression is that there is enough supportive evidence to show that something is going on, and that while Ego Depletion may not be the cause, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t one – just that ED isn’t ‘it’.

There is (surprise, surprise) also a psychological aspect to the concept that suggests that it might be a self-fulfilling prophecy – research that suggests that only those who consider their decision-making capacities to be limited are vulnerable to the problem. That research, however, then goes on to show that those who do not so believe may find it easier to make decisions late in the day, but did not measure the quality of those decisions – simply assuming that all choices were equally valid when testing only the ability to make decisions. This does split the phenomenon into two separate aspects – decision quality and decision capability – and shows that self-confidence can impact positively or negatively on the latter. So, as criticism goes, it’s rather weak.

Contradictions

There are cultural factors that are not understood.

A study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that although Western populations tend to show signs of ego depletion, similar tests in Indian populations show the opposite effect.

The Indian study participants performed better after first doing a strenuous task, while the Western participants tended to do worse after this task.

Again, researchers pointed to the idea of belief. The Indian participants tended to believe that exerting willpower was energizing, while the Western participants tended to believe that exerting willpower was draining.

— Medical News Today | Decision Fatigue

Even within the western culture, there are professional factors and pre-selections that go against the prevailing research.

…a study in Health Psychology found that nurses tended to make less efficient and more expensive clinical decisions about patient care the longer they went without a break.

— Same Source

How is Decision Fatigue different from Burnout?

Decision Fatigue is a progressive condition (if real) that becomes more impactful as the individual’s day progresses. It is least significant in whatever time-frame the individual considers “morning”. Burnout is a more stable and constant lack of capacity, not through inability, but through a lack of willpower to actually utilize the ability.

That’s not to say that there can’t be interactions between the conditions. It’s arguable that burnout makes decisions harder to reach, and that this accelerates Decision Fatigue or leaves someone vulnerable to it that is normally quite tolerant of the condition.

I should also link to one of my early articles at this point: Lassitude is not Burnout. Being unable to muster enough enthusiasm for a particular project or aspect of a project to commit your full attention to it is not burnout; it’s too specific. If you identify the cause of the lassitude, you can overcome it – or you can simply engage in some other aspect of the project under the assumption that you will complete the work, eventually, filling in the blank space; and that can be enough in and of itself to manufacture the enthusiasm needed to overcome the lassitude.

Combating Decision Fatigue

There are some techniques that can mitigate, minimize, or even prevent Decision Fatigue in the general population, and some that are especially relevant or only applicable to GMs.

1. The first is to examine your belief structure regarding human capacity for decision-making and willpower in general. Altering the cultural foundations upon which you operate may unlock greater capacities. The evidence is slim, though.
2. Making important decisions early permits them to be decided when you have the greatest capacity available.
3. Eliminating distractions can be helpful because it removes an ongoing trivial decision – to pay attention to the distraction or not.
4. Several famous figures deliberately restricted their wardrobes simply to reduce the number of trivial decisions that they had to make – Steve Jobs and Barack Obama amongst them.
5. Regular breaks can be enough to keep you from being overwhelmed. These are something that I recommend be taken every time you need an extra couple of minutes to consider your options, i.e. because the players have done something you hadn’t anticipated, or someone has pointed out a possible meaning that you hadn’t meant to imbue to events.
6. Applying the principle of planning in advance for as many decisions as possible, even the most trivial like what you are going to have for lunch, frees up capacity for other decisions, if the phenomenon is real.
7. That same principle can be applied to reduce the number of decisions that you have to make on the day – “If the PCs do [X] then I’ll do [Y],” – can take the need for many decisions off the table.
8. It’s arguable that this is the real purpose of game prep, but there is a caveat to that theory: It’s more fatiguing to follow a structure than to improvise. I presume that this is because you are always checking your decisions against the structure, at least doubling the workload. Deliberately leaving “holes” in your prep so that you can improv on the day, responding to the situation being presented by the players while limiting the harm that can arise, can take advantage of the fact. While players going off-script is inherently stressful, the fact that when it happens, mental resources get freed up to rise to the challenge keeps that stress from being insuperable.

In general, RPGs are played in a social atmosphere, everyone relaxed and having a good time, and no mood is so deathly serious as to be able to withstand the occasional quip or moment of levity.

Wellbeing Burnout

Wellbeing Burnout is a kind of burnout resulting from the stress of trying to appear well when you aren’t. It is not a clinically-recognized term at this time.

The report which claims to identify the phenomenon defines burnout as a “state of physical, mental, or social exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress”.

Burnout in general is characterized in five stages:

1. Honeymoon phase – enthusiasm and energy overcomes any stress.
2. Stress Onset phase – eventually, the enthusiasm begins to wane and the stresses of a situation begin to manifest. Some of the individual’s energy and focus has to be dedicated to overcoming those incidents of stress.
3. Chronic Stress phase – situations that previously caused stress become more stressful and difficult to manage, while situations that were previously taken in stride routinely cause stress. As a result, the stress becomes a recurring (chronic) condition. It is generally in this phase that side-effects of being stressed, like shortness of temper, begin to manifest.
4. Burnout phase – almost every aspect of whatever you are doing causes stress, and overcoming that stress leaves the victim constantly fatigued. It becomes difficult to focus or dedicate any energy or willpower to a task, and the individual is largely reduced to ‘following the numbers’ like an automaton.
5. Habitual Burnout phase – over time, people can grow accustomed to almost anything. When a significant break and treatments are no longer sufficient to ‘break’ burnout, the individual has entered the ‘habitual burnout’ phase, in which they complete tasks with all the drive and energy of a zombie, they punch in, they work, they clock out, and they generally feel like life is passing them by. Only a complete change of profession is usually enough to break the person free of habitual burnout – even changing to a related field or set of duties simply ports their existing burnout to a new circumstance.

The phrase itself always conjures (metaphoric) images of shooting stars, emerging from nowhere to shine brightly until there’s suddenly nothing left and they go perpetually dark.

So “Wellbeing Burnout” is a specific type of burnout that results from a specific cause of stress.

Cultural Factors

Clearly, cultural factors are going play a major role in susceptibility to Wellbeing Burnout. If there is no predisposition to ‘appear well’ when you aren’t, there is no resulting stress, and nothing leads to this particular form of burnout.

Micro-cultures within a particular workplace or industry can also be significant. “Corporate Culture” is sometimes referred to disparagingly, but a positive one can have great impact on the success of an organization over the long term.

The Macho Factor

A recent study reported that Australia is one of the countries whose population is most susceptible to Wellbeing Burnout. There is a generally “macho” factor within the Australian male, a sense of being able to cope with anything, turn their hand to anything that needs doing, and so on. There is some justification for the attitude, and that’s something my nation can take pride in, but many take it too far, a masculine code of conduct that forbids any appearance of weakness or vulnerability.

If that same sort of culture exists in your country, you too may be vulnerable. But it’s not the only one that can create such susceptibility.

Ladies, don’t think this lets you off the hook, either; even today, to succeed in certain roles, women have to be more macho than the men just to be taken seriously. That’s getting better all the time, but progress is never fast enough. And, in the meantime, it leaves you just as vulnerable to Wellbeing Burnout.

Japanese Workers

The legendary Japanese worker who takes an entry-level position in a corporate entity and is guaranteed employment with them for life so long as the company still exists was once reality, but no longer. With the collapse of the loyalty felt by employers to workforce, the sense of loyalty of that workforce toward the employer has also deteriorated – but the expectation is still that you will work ungodly hours (if necessary) and sacrifice yourself to the corporate well-being.

And that includes going to work, whether you are healthy or not. A “Career Man” who works obsessive hours and still gives his all to the employer. Societal factors ensure that illnesses of all kinds are chronically under-reported in Japan, and I have no doubt that the same is true of Wellbeing Burnout, which those factors should make rife.

Treatment

Direct action aimed at the overt symptoms can buy time but fails to address the real cause / problem.

Direct action aimed at whatever is making the individual feel unwell also reduces the stress from trying to appear well, a 2-for-1 benefit.

Simply knowing that you are doing what you can in that respect can be enough to relieve that stress, and that alone can make you feel less unwell.

Because that’s the dirty little secret of Wellbeing Burnout: the stress that causes it, in and of itself, can be enough to make you feel unwell! That means that it can be a slippery slope, a self-reinforcing feedback loop. All it takes is one bad day.

Or you could simply do as I do, and not try to pretend – I’ll sum up my condition that day (when asked) as succinctly as possible unless I don’t know the person at all. I do take the macho culture into account when doing so – the mere fact that ‘things are so bad that you don’t even pretend’ amplifies whatever people think I’m describing in capacity to handicap me, so I touch on things relatively lightly and let their interpretation adjust that description to whatever my actual condition is. So “my leg’s giving me a bit of trouble today” means “I’m in constant pain that is handicapping my ability to walk” when decoded by the listener, whereas “I can barely walk” means I feel like my leg is on the verge of needing to be surgically removed.

The GMing Equivalent

Now, I don’t think GMs are any more or less susceptible to Wellbeing Burnout. But there’s an equivalent that only GMs know, and that can be equally real: projecting confidence in your prep and its completeness in the course of each day’s play, from start to finish.

No-one who wasn’t looking over your shoulder the whole time knows what the game prep was really like – it might have been a doddle that took half an hour before everyone arrived, it might have been a larger, more sustained effort, but no more difficult; or it might have been one frustration after another, compounding into a nightmare suitable for a Tim Burton animation.

Even the admission, “prep for this session was harder than usual” implies that the prep was done and is complete and you are confident and ready to go. This lies in stark contrast to the ‘reading between the lines’ I described in the previous section; it minimizes the interpretation, underplays it, and can leave the GM feeling under-appreciated.

In part, this is because most GMs actually find the game prep to be enjoyable in and of itself. It’s a creative act that has a bought-and-delivered audience, after all!

I do find myself wondering how much “GM Burnout” is actually this form of “Wellbeing Burnout”. It’s not the process of actually GMing that the sufferer cannot face, it’s the effort needed to be able to do so seamlessly, to what the GM considers an acceptable quality (which is frequently a higher standard than that required by the players, let’s be honest).

Relieving the Prep Burnout Stress

First up, honesty. If your prep down certain potential pathways of game play is likely to be inadequate, tell the players that – but don’t tell them which paths you’ve prepped for and which you haven’t, you can put ideas in their heads!

Second, reducing your need for prep is a LOT more effective than trying to squeeze in some extra prep time, at least in most cases. Knowing that you can be reliant on certain resources in place of your usual prep can relieve a huge weight off your shoulders.

The ultimate extreme in that respect is to do no prep other than big-picture work and deciding what resources you are going to need, then compiling them into a ready-to-use stack.

It has to be remembered that work tends to grow to fill the available time – and then doubles, because what free time you had uncommitted gets treated as ‘available time’ for three or four or five projects all at the same time.

Prioritizing prep is priceless. Make sure that you’ve got the most important stuff done to a “good enough” standard before you invest time on the nuances and delicate touches.

I’ve done a number of articles here at Campaign Mastery pointing directly at this approach.

• Leaving Things Out: Negative Space in RPGs talks about some of the benefits of deliberately not doing certain kinds of prep, amongst other things.
• To Module Or Not?: A legacy article is all about adapting commercially-sourced adventures to fit your campaign.
• Part 7 of the Basics For Beginners series, Adventures, takes advice from many past articles and expands on it, especially in relation to game prep.
• Game Prep and the +N to Game Longevity discusses the prep process that I actually used at the time.
• Fire Fighting, Systems Analysis, and RPG Problem Solving Part 2 of 3: Prioritization offers broad advice on prioritizing problems, dismembering problems into smaller (more solvable) issues, does a deep dive into a theory of Criticality and problem interactions, and then applies the principles derived to generate two different, practical, ways of prioritizing game prep requirements.
• Part 3 of the Basics For Beginners series, Preparations, spends most of its time attempting to persuade the new GM that most prep is not only unnecessary, but potentially deleterious to a campaign. This is not the case for experienced GMs; this is advice aimed directly at the beginner and those of intermediate experience. But there’s some stuff on what prep is actually essential that might be more broadly useful.
• To Every Creator, An Optimum Budget? takes as its theme, “the neglected question of game prep is knowing when to stop.” and explores it thoroughlly.

There are sure to be more – it’s a popular subject here!

Being A Dungeon Master is NOT Stressful

The final part of today’s article stems from a blog post by Jeff Craigmile at Jeff’s Game Box, November 16, 2024,.

I’ve included the link in case you want to read the whole article, but I’ll do my best to summarize it for you because the page is VERY slow to load due to the number of ad breaks inserted into the text. It is worth it if you persevere.

Stress and the ordinary GM

Jeff was inspired to write this post following a YouTube videoblog in which (in his opinion), the poster confuses “Hard” with “Stressful”, concluding that GMing is inherently stressful – or seeming to, at least until quite late in the video blog.

The critical takeaway from the next part of Jeff’s post is that everyone is at least a little bit different, and will have a different reaction to game prep in terms of their mental health – and if you are one of those unfortunates who finds it all to be hard work, maybe it’s not something you’re cut out for. But for most GMs, while parts of the process may be stressful, most of it is the exact opposite.

Before I gave the game away, though, I would look for someone who is strong in the areas that are giving you trouble and look to co-GM with them. After a little effort working out how to hot-seat at the game table, it might prove to be the perfect answer.

There follow a couple of paragraphs that I agree with so completely that I’m going to quote them verbatim:

You have to take care of your mental, physical, and emotional health. Downtime for depression and other mental health issues is real, family. I know all too well. Social anxiety is a thing, too. No doubt these things take a toll on physical health, relationships, and finances.

I cannot stress the value of therapy or any other mental health practice that works for you. Anxiety and depression are no laughing matter. Players- if your DM/GM comes in and says they’re getting stressed out over gaming, please take them seriously and try to help. They’re not going to be much fun if they’re hiding in their bedroom instead of running/playing the game.

The final section of the blog post considers whether or not WotC could have an ulterior motive in encouraging the concept that GMing is hard. Since you can find an ulterior motive for anything if you use the right assumptions and look hard enough, it’s not surprising that he finds one, and yes, it’s possibly valid – but I don’t think it is.

Instead, I think they are trying to revisit something that’s been lost to the gaming culture over the last 10-15 years: the notion that GMing is an elite, that the GM is on another level to the players. The DMG used to say explicitly, “The GM is always right”. That’s been watered down a lot, lately; the game mechanics have been elevated to primacy in a lot of people’s minds, as have RAW (rules as written).

My Take

My take on the issue, for what it’s worth, is that, at the game table, GMing can be mentally and emotionally exhausting and great fun, all at the same time. During game prep, it can be both fun and stressful, both at the same time.

The primary cause of game prep stress is over-commitment, and trying to squeeze too much into too little time. Self-imposed deadline stress, backed up by actual deadline stress, in other words. Throw in a little frustration from time to time, and the recipe is mostly complete. Other causes of anxiety, like not being ‘good enough’ to complete the task, seem to be relatively rare.

So it has to be acknowledged that oftentimes, the harder the prep, the better the play, and vice-versa. Somewhere in there, a happy balance exists for almost every GM; they simply need to find it and adapt a style to suit its constraints.

TTRPGs are unique in this way: as the GM, you get to set your own rules, your own limits. That doesn’t mean that we don’t have limits, or never transgress against them – we do it all the time! – but mostly, out of enthusiasm. They reinvent themselves in front of our very eyes, responding to our own creative input – and that tends to perpetually restart and rejuvenate the “Honeymoon Phase”.

That, in turn, doesn’t mean that Game prep is not stressful – as I’ve demonstrated, it is – but rather that our enthusiasm and energy can carry us through those moments of stress and out the other side. And there aren’t very many activities where that’s the case.

Writing doesn’t have it – feedback takes too long. Acting for TV and movies, likewise. Acting on stage, one could argue, is closely analogous. In fact, any live performance. But in both those cases, there are outside expectations to contend with. Nothing approaches the TTRPGs capacity to define itself and redefine itself. That’s one of the many things that makes it unique as a hobby. And you, as GM, are the architect and ringmaster of that redefinition – it happens in direct response to your approach.

So if you find it stressful, it almost certainly means that you have chosen an approach that’s wrong – for you. And if you face burnout, it’s even more likely that this is true. You set the agenda, so if you need to make a change, make a change.

Wrap-up

It would be wonderful if I could end this article on that point. Alas, it can’t be done.

We all live in the real world, and the real world can impose its own stresses on a situation. We all carry our state of mental health with us, no matter what we do; the best to hope for is that we can escape its restrictions for a little while.

Real-world problems generally need real-world solutions. Do whatever you need to in pursuit of your mental health. Work on solving those problems before they compound and grow beyond your control.

If gaming offers some relief, as it did for me, many years ago, that’s great! Take any help you can get.. But don’t expect more than that; if you have real problems, you can’t entirely leave them behind; you need to seek solutions. Do what you have to, and celebrate the resulting small victories at the game table.

There are six types of skill roll modifier that I take into account when assessing any attempt by a character – PC or NPC – to carry out some task. Past articles have focused on just a few of them; this post is intended to provide an overview of the whole.

I went looking for the image of a scholar, and found… a knight!? But the picture is too gorgeous to ignore, and that’s why it’s the feature image of this article. Image by MythologyArt from Pixabay

I worked on the next post in the Trade In Fantasy series until it became clear that it was not going to be ready to publish in time, and then switched attention to a backup post, which is what you are reading right now.

I have several of these in various stages of prep for publication. This is the one that’s likely to need the least work, so it was the first choice for a backup. Also in the pipeline (a deliberate tease, i admit) are:

• “Decision Fatigue in GMs”
• “The Best: 2015 Part 1”
• “Quora Answers By Mike – Part 4” (and more to follow)
• “The Best: 2015 Part 2” (and then 2016 [2 parts], 2017 [2 parts], 2018 [2 parts], 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 – I’m of the opinion that 2023-2024 [2 parts] are currently too recent to permit objective comparison, but that might not be the case by the time get to them!).
   
• “Goals In Conflict”
• “The Sixes System Part 9: More Genres
• “A Collision of Aphorisms”
• “Fuzzy Plastic Memories IV”
• “Disease At The Speed Of Plot” (may be split into 2 parts)
   
• “The Value Of Material Things VI” (and VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XV, XVI to follow)
• “Lessons From The West Wing VI”
• “Lessons From The West Wing VII”
• “The Mists Of Fear: Orrorsh Revisited 3” (and more to follow)
   
• “An Analytic Approach to Altered History”
• “A New Mechanic: Looping Rolls”
• “An Old Aysle To Run Down 3” (and more to follow)
• “The Diversity Of Seasons: Pt 5: Winter (cont)” (and more to follow)

 
…plus various odds and ends and other unfinished series, and anything else that I think of in the meantime. (Some of these have been in the pipeline for quite some time, as regular readers will have noticed!)

You may have noticed that these have been divided into four groups. Each group is roughly comparable in terms of how much work is required to bring them to a publishable state – so the first group are fairly quick, maybe half a day to a day. These are fully outlined in bullet-note form and possibly even partially written.

The next group are longer, perhaps a day to a-day-and-a-half. They are in the same condition as the first group, but the list of bullets is longer.

The third group need 1½ – 3 days work. These exist in note form, or – in the case of “The Mists Of Fear” – need a lot of transcription.

The last group are expected to need more than 3 days of effort. They may be partially written or in note form, but research is needed, often substantial, or extensive image editing, or both.

These assessments are a direct indicator as to their suitability as a ‘fill-in’ post, given that I generally have only 3-4 days in a week to work on Campaign Mastery posts, often less.

A couple of other takeaways from the list. First, several items on the list are ongoing series, sometimes defined, sometimes indicated by a vague “and more to follow”. These will either slot into the same places as the earlier parts already listed, or drop down one category, at most. And second, I may artificially force them down the list so as not to be too repetitive.

And so, to today’s post….

A Ubiquitous Fundamental Premise

The rule mechanical specifics differ from one system to another, but the bottom line is this: Characters represent abilities and knowledge with numeric values assigned to a relevant item in a framework of game mechanics; to employ that skill, the character rolls one or more dice and needs to achieve a result dictated by the assigned numeric score and the scope of the task to be completed.

Wow, but that sounds formal, doesn’t it? Even experienced players would need to unpack it before nodding in agreement.

Let’s simplify it a bit. Every game system breaks what characters can do down into categories. Sometimes these are very narrowly defined, and there are a lot of them; sometimes they are very broad, and there are comparatively few of them. Somewhere in the middle is a happy medium, but where it lies depends on a host of factors that aren’t relevant right now.

When constructing characters, the totality of that character’s level of competence is divided amongst these categories, represented by a numeric score describing competence in that specific field of activity..

Players quickly learn that it’s very hard to be good at everything, and they will get more mileage out of specializing. With a diverse group of characters, most of the important abilities will be covered by one or the other (this invariably and inherently means that there will be a few things that no-one knows how to do, creating challenges for the group to overcome).

When the time comes, the game mechanics dictate the interaction between the assigned score, the difficulty of the task, and a die roll, to determine (at its grossest level) success or failure. Some mechanics nuance these outcomes to uncover degrees of success. Some also throw critical successes and failures into the mix, the principle being that anyone can get lucky (even in ignorance) and anyone can make a colossal mess of things (even in areas of expertise).

In my superhero system, the die is a d%, there are modifiers of up to ±150, and skill levels can be anywhere from -100 to +250. Characters add the modifier to their skill level to determine what number they need to roll, or less, to succeed. Critical failures happen on a 00 (“oh-oh!”) and critical successes on an 01 (“oh wow!”). Nuanced outcomes are standard for the system mechanics.

In the Hero system, which we use for the Pulp campaign I co-referee, there are modifiers of up to ±5, and skill levels can be anything from 6/- to 15/-. Again, characters add the modifier to their skill level to determine what they need to roll (or less) on 3d6 in order to achieve success. Sometimes box cars produce a critical failure, sometimes not, and the same can be said for snake eyes. Sometimes the results can be nuanced, usually not.

In the Sixes system, used for my Dr Who campaign, character abilities (including skill levels) determine the number of d6 that a character has to roll, and the GM assigns a target or more that the character needs to roll on those d6. There are complications to this simple picture – the GM can’t use ALL the dice that the player gets to roll in setting the target, but does need to account for some of them, and there are mechanisms for setting criticality (number of 6’s greater than 1’s needed for success), and the player may not get to count all the dice that they roll, but that’s the simple description. Sometimes these results are nuanced, usually not.

And, in D&D, the die is a d20, the DM sets a difficulty target, and the character adds his skill level of the d20 result. Natural 20s are sometimes critical successes (often defined as a success that is otherwise unwarranted by the targets), and natural 1’s are the counterbalancing fumbles. There are normally no other nuances within the official mechanics, but they are too useful to be completely ignored even if they aren’t official.

Chance, Difficulty, and Competence – the skill roll is the intersection point of all three.

But there is a fourth lobe to that Venn diagram: Modifiers, and those are the subject of this article.

The Six Modifiers

There are six classes of modifier that I routinely apply to any skill check. As a general rule, I’ll spend no more than a second or two assigning numeric values within each category, and as much as is possible, I’ll determine what the modifiers are going to be as part of my game prep / adventure write-up. Not that I hold those decisions sacrosanct; if the in-game situation is slightly (or overwhelmingly) different than expected, they will be nothing more than a guideline, and sometimes not even that!

The six categories are

1. Conditional,
2. Character/Genre,
3. Synergy,
4. Roleplaying,
5. Player, and
6. Metagame.

I’ll give an overview of each and what they represent in due course.

For simplicity and applicability, I’m going to use the Hero System and d20 system as the foundations in the main text – these are so close (d20 vs 3d6) that they are interchangeable in terms of modifiers. Other game systems will need to interpret the contents of the article “in principle” and come up with their own scales. In some sections, I’ll drop in a subtitle for clarification or example.

There are a couple of related articles, to which I’ll drop in references here and there. The first two of these are:

• The Black Meta-Art Of Setting Difficulty Targets
• “How Hard Can It Be?” – Skill Checks under the microscope.

The second of these was written way back in 2010, and its content will have been at least partially superseded by later articles.

I’ve carefully cropped this to make the focal point, the incredible skill of the artist, more dominant within the picture. Image by Peter H (Tama66) from Pixabay

Direct vs Opposed Rolls

In a direct roll, the target is defined by the task. In an opposed roll, its the total generated by another character using an appropriate skill check.

As a general rule, and for efficiency, modifiers should only be applied to one of the latter rolls – sometimes, it will be the opposing character’s check (results in a simple target), but more usually it will be the player’s roll.

Modifier Announcements

That’s so that I can recite a brief (and incomplete) list of the modifiers taken into consideration, for the purposes of informing the player that these (and other factors) have been taken into consideration. This achieves two things:

1. It tells the player that the GM is paying attention both to what they are trying to have their character achieve and the circumstances under which they are making the attempt;
2. it tells the player that in future, he can improve the odds of his character’s success by doing whatever he can to make the circumstances more favorable to such success.

However, I never enumerate exactly what value has been assigned to a particular modifier; that, in my experience, leads to nothing but arguments and bogging down. I may relax that rule in post-game discussion, but even that’s rare; I’m more likely to put it in relative terms (“the handicaps were always going to make it almost impossible to succeed”).

The Scale Of Modifiers

Anything from -5 to +5 is possible, but by far the most common result is going to be in the center of this range.

±2 is going to be at least twice as common as anything more. ±1 is going to be at least twice as common as ±2. I can’t say definitively that this holds true further out in the scale, though the principle certainly still holds true – ±2 will be more common than ±3, and so on. I also can’t state that +0 will occur twice as frequently as ±1 – it’s going to be about the same frequency, in fact, perhaps shading a little towards the “net nothing”, perhaps not.

Zenith-3 rules:

The previous iteration of rules is as described earlier. We’re currently transitioning to a minimum-zero system (basically, add 97 to whatever your old score was) but the modifiers are more or less unchanged – multiply the above values by 30. This provides a lot more scope for nuance – I can use steps of 5, 10, 15, 20, or 25. The difference between +75 and +80 might be small, but it’s still a 5% better chance of success. The consequence is that skill checks are more dramatic and outcomes are more melodramatic, which suits the genre. There are also inbuilt mechanics for ‘eventual’ success or for changing circumstances without a reroll required, as well as mechanisms affording a limited number of mulligans or hefty bonuses if the player really wants to succeed.

Sixes System:

Every +1 subtracts +0.5 to the average required, as a general rule of thumb, based on 10d6. If the character has only 5d6, that would increase to about +1; if the character has 20d6, that decreases to about 0.25 or 0.33 average. EG: the equivalent of +4 on the d20 / Hero scale with 20d6 countable by the GM would be (3.5 – 0.33) × 20 = 3.17 × 20 = 63.4 = a target of 63. With only 10 countable dice, that would be (3.5 – 0.5) × 10 = 3 × 10 = a target of 30. In both cases, the modifier is about the same, but the context of its interpretation changes.

1. Conditional Modifiers

There are four separate considerations lumped together in aggregate to determine this modifier: Circumstances, Distractions, Environment, and Tools. Although the same cause can appear in multiple categories, it normally doesn’t. For example, attempting to read a map in an intense sandstorm – the circumstances are bad, the sand is a definite distraction, and the environment is doing its best to both destroy the map and wrench it from your hands.

The benefit of lumping these four considerations together is that the only thing I care about is the net total of the modifier, permitting a more holistic approach – a general sense of the conditions is enough to generalize into a net score without taking every detail apart, while at the same time I can be as granular as I want to be.

Circumstances

Anything that makes the task easier or harder. But this is a little bit trickier than it seems at first glance – there’s the question of what standard do you use for the assessment? This is something that few game systems actually spell out for you, so it becomes necessary to pick the standard that seems most appropriate to you – just be consistent most of the time!

• Is it “easier or harder for the average person”?
• Is it “easier or harder for the average professional?”
• Is it “easier or harder for a person of the character’s skill level”?
• Is it “easier or harder for an expert”?

Those are the four standards that are most commonly applied, and which one or ones you employ is entirely up to you. There is absolutely nothing wrong with considering a character with 4 ranks in a skill to be a “professional” and applying the second standard, while a character with only 2 ranks is not, and is subject to the first standard – if that’s what seems most reasonable to you.

‘Everyman’ skills

In any system that enumerates cultural norms in this way, usually as ‘free skills’ that everyone gets to a low level, I would always apply the ‘average person’ standard.

Zenith-3 System

“Skills” in this system get grouped into four groups: Fundamental Skills, Basic Skills, Common Expert Skills, and Advanced Expert Skills. Usually, Fundamental Skill modifiers are assessed on the ‘average person’ standard, Basic Skills are assessed against the ‘person of the character’s skill’ standard, Common Expert Skills are assessed against the ‘average professional’ standard, and Advanced Expert Skills are assessed against the ‘expert’ standard – but at least one time in three, a fifth standard is employed, based on the minimum expertise that would normally be needed for attempting that specific task.

That doesn’t mean that I make it up as I go along; it means that I regard the standard against which the circumstances are to be assessed as just another parameter of that task and those circumstances. It’s a nuanced approach that won’t suit everyone.

The Sixes System

A different system with subtly different nuances, leading to a sixth standard, one that’s more conceptually rooted: “Easier or harder for this particular individual”, regardless of whether or not the game mechanics properly simulate that capability of the character. So if I’m convinced that the circumstances would make it easier for a Dalek to succeed, Daleks get a bonus. If I think that the titular character should find something easier, he gets a bonus. And vice-versa, of course.

This is far more subjective and requires that the GM be at least as familiar with the character in question as the player. But it results in better simulation of the source material, which I deem important in a media spin-off. I’d do the same thing (or, at least, something similar) in a Star Wars campaign, for example.

Distractions

Whatever the circumstances are, if the character is going to be distracted by them, the modifier should shift a point or two toward negative modifier territory.

Environment

This is normally anything not covered under circumstances. So the fact of a dust storm would be covered under that category, but desert heat might not be. And if the character is dehydrated, I’d normally put that under “distractions”.

Tools

Reasonable-quality tools make things easier – up to a point. Really good tools not only have a higher threshold, i.e. make more tasks easier, but they give a bigger bonus to boot. Really really good tools aren’t any more functional than “really good” tools but they can actually mitigate some negative circumstances, effectively giving a better modifier under adverse circumstances.

At least, that’s my usual take on the question, if I stop to analyze it.

The second prior article to bring to reader’s attention is Conditional Modifier Magic: Combating Power Creep in RPGs.

And, tangentially related to all of this is Anatomy Of A Save, which shows just how much can flash through your mind in reaching a holistic decision.

Image by Alina_G_Photo (the actual Greek name wouldn’t display properly) from Pixabay

2. Character/Genre Modifiers

This modifier suite aggregates modifiers from three different sources: Character History, Character Concept, and Genre.

Character History

If a character has been established within campaign canon as skilled in a particular area, unless there is a solid plot-related reason to dispute that established fact, I will often throw an extra +1 in that character’s direction when they attempt to use their established capabilities.

Why? Because the player is attempting to play their character, as that character has evolved in-game, and I want to encourage that sort of thing. The alternative would be to permit the character that’s supposed to be good at whatever to fail or risk failing when there is no compelling reason to do so – and that can only discourage such behavior.

Way back in the day, I played in a couple of Ian Mackinder’s Traveler campaigns. One of his house rules was that if you succeeded in a roll, that was what was expected of you, and you got nothing beyond the usual rewards for doing so; but if you failed, you could make a second attempt and if the second attempt succeeded, you might just get a partial success. But the real juice was if you got a critical failure – again, a second roll with success not only serving to mitigate the catastrophe, but earning you an instant +1 rank in the relevant skill, over and above anything that you might earn in the usual way.

Why? Because the “crew” were a diverse bunch, usually generated entirely independent of each other, and the Traveler game system often left significant skill voids with essential skills missing from the line-up. Rather than concocting an NPC who just happened to have those vital skills, he wanted PCs to step up to the mark and outside their comfort zone and define a particular role within the campaign as “theirs”.

He wanted the players to eliminate the handicaps that would hold them back from playing in the campaign, in other words by taking a risk, and having a go. He also pointed out that oftentimes, you’ll learn more from a failure than from a success. I never forgot any of the lessons contained within this one simple House Rule, especially those related to encouraging player behavior.

Character Concept

This is also usually only going to be worth +1 or +2, usually, or -1 / -2. Certain characters are envisaged as having a particular Schtikh, something they should be good at. In fact, something they should be better at than a character with a different Shtick who just happens to have dumped skill points or have high stat values in exactly the right area.

Equally, there are character concepts which should be especially hopeless in certain situations. These are defined as foreign territory to them, and they should be worse in such situations than another character who is not so defined but who happens to have the same skill score.

Sometimes, especially in the Hero System, or in the Zenith-3 game system derived from it, or in Dr Who for that matter, a character will take a deliberate flaw of being ‘bad’ at something. When that’s the case, that -1 or -2 becomes a -3, -4, or -5. Why? Because the character has earned build points that make them better somewhere else in return for this Limitation.

Genre

This is often the dominant modifier from amongst the three. The Genre of the game may imply that characters are generally good (i.e. ‘better’) in certain situations. simply to reinforce the look-and-feel of the genre. This sort of thing is rarely defined explicitly anywhere; you need your own genre knowledge to decide when it’s appropriate and when it’s too much.

There is, of course, also the downside, when a character is attempting to do something that knowingly violates genre. That should be discouraged, and earns an immediate -2 modifier or worse.

My favorite example is from another of Ian Mackinder’s campaigns, 7th Sea, when he once said “You want to swing from the chandelier? Make your acrobatics roll, you’re at +2. Everyone gets a +2 at swinging from the chandeliers, it’s a genre convention.” – or words to that effect. Again, careful mental note taken.

Aggregate these three together – again, something you can usually do in the blink of an eye if you know the characters, the campaign, and the genre – and subtotal with the aggregate from the first group.

3. Synergy Modifiers

There’s a paradox at the heart of every RPG system’s game mechanics in this area.

If you’ve got a lot of very precisely defined and detailed skills, it’s near certain that another skill will be related to the problem at hand. In a pinch, with a negative modifier, it might even be an acceptable substitute for the actual skill desired, which this particular character does not have.

(This has actually come up a number of times in the Dr Who campaign as well, to the point where I have been known to state “The character should have [Ability X], let’s pretend that you do and I’ll let you pay for it later.”)

So this gives rise to the principle, “the more granular the system, the more likely it is that there will be fringe overlaps between skills.”

Here’s the paradox: by definition, the fewer the skills in a game system, the more broadly-defined they have to be, and that creates fringe overlaps between skills.

No matter which extreme you look towards, every defined skill within the game system is going to have related skills that could at least contribute to solving a problem or completing a task.

Manifesting the paradox – without the primary skill

It’s quite often the case when creating an adventure that a specific skill check is called for in response to a specific trigger, or to unlock another chain of events that the character can choose to pursue.

What if the character doesn’t have the skill in question? Do you let the game bog down, even come to a complete standstill?

The answer, in my book, comes from the genre of the campaign. In some cases, the plot must move forward, one way or another – pulp and superhero are like that. In other cases, the result might be frustration until the character thinks of something they’ve overlooked and uncovers a new path forwards. And in some cases, genre is mute on the subject, leaving it to the style of the campaign that the GM wants to run.

I have even seen this principle applied selectively to help give different areas within a game world a unique and singular nature – in particular, distinguishing between Dwarven and Drow tunnels, or between an ordinary forest and one that’s been “Awakened” by Elves.

If your answer is that the world cooperates with the character being able to do something, even if they normally couldn’t, then they get a second bite at the cherry – a pre-nominated and predefined backup skill that they can apply at a -2 modifier (or -1 or -3 or whatever) in an attempt to do something ‘close enough’ to what the primary skill would have permitted them to attempt. And, often, a second backup in the form of a stat roll at -4 or -5 or whatever if they don’t have the defined ‘fringe’ skill, either.

Of course, if it’s an important plot point that the characters not be able to do something, so that they are forced to go somewhere else and negotiate for the assistance of someone to plug that gap, that’s a whole different ball of wax – but outside that, this is normally the default premise under which my campaigns operate. Even to the point where, if I have failed to nominate a particular backup skill, or the character doesn’t have it, they may suggest an alternative. And if I like the suggestion, on with the game!

Manifesting the paradox – with the primary skill

It’s a corollary of the basic principle that having a related skill as well as the primary skill makes the problem posed slightly easier to solve. What then? Do you require a character to roll against the related skill in order to access that knowledge/ability? What if there are several of them?

It’s astonishing how quickly this can bog a game down. “I have three skills that might be relevant,” says a player (referring, of course, to his character). “A at X, B at Y, and C at Z.”

Sometimes, I will rule that a particular skill is NOT tangential to the problem at hand, based on my understanding (or misunderstanding) of the subject of the skill, or of the problem / task at hand.

Rather than bog the game down, as a general rule, having a reasonable skill level in a related skill gets you a +1 on the main skill roll. Bang, done, move on. I may or may not permit these to stack – again, that’s a look-and-feel thing. You had better believe that if I do, players will notice it.

Sometimes, I may require a single roll against the best or most relevant fringe skill. If so, any synergy bonus is doubled – and that gets noticed, too.

In terms of when these particular house rules get applied, I have never really analyzed it before, but on reflection, the more it can be assumed that a character is able to function without specialist assistance, the more likely it is that a synergy bonus will be assumed / incorporated if relevant, and the more likely it is that I will permit them to stack to some extent.

In a modern-world or futuristic campaign (including Pulp), where characters are more expected to have their areas of expertise and be hit-and-miss regarding what they can do outside of that area (so that another area of expertise opens up for some other character), I am more likely to define Everyman skills instead of offering automatic synergy bonuses. But, the more granular and detailed the game system, the more likely I am to do both.

In a fantasy campaign, where characters are able to go off into the wilderness equipped with nothing but a sword and their wits and be expected to be able to get from point A to point B, there is going to be more overlap in general capabilities and less demand for Everyman skills, and so I am more likely to offer synergy bonuses and a package of Everyman skills by dominant cultural experience – so Elves might get one package, Humans from the south another, Humans from the East something else, and so on. These packages will always be a lot smaller and more limited than those of a modern / futuristic campaign world.

Stacking Synergies

On very rare occasions, I’ll let a synergy bonus stack numerically. It’s happened, I think, twice in forty-odd years as a GM. You have four synergy bonuses coming your way? That’s +4, go for it.

It’s far more usual to do one of three things: either synergy bonuses don’t stack, or additional ones have to be rolled taking up more time in-game to do so, or – most common of all – I employ a non-linear stacking protocol.

There are two that I like for the purpose. The first is harsher than the second.

Option 1: Exponents of Two, minus 1

2 ^ 1 = 2; 2 -1 = 1.
2 ^ 2 = 4; 4 -1 = 3.
2 ^ 3 = 8; 8 -1 = 7.
2 ^ 4 = 16; 16 -1 = 15.

To get a synergy bonus of +1, you need one related skill. No roll needed.

To get a synergy bonus of +2, you need three related skills. No roll needed.

To get a synergy bonus of +3 you need seven related skills. No roll needed, but good luck – very few game systems will permit this, even if they define hundreds of skills.

To get a synergy bonus of +4, you need fifteen related skills. Not going to happen.

To get a synergy bonus of +5, you would need an absurd number of related skills – I didn’t even bother to calculate it.



Source Image cropped by mike. Uncredited, via Pixabay

The alternative route to a +4 synergy bonus is to have three related skills (a +2 bonus) and to make a successful roll against one of them, difficulty the same as the main task. If you succeed, you get double the synergy bonus – so +2 becomes +4. If you fail, that skill provides NO synergy bonus, so you might not even qualify for the +2 anymore, you might be down to a +1.

Option 2: Fibonacci Sequence

#1: 0 + 1 = 1.
#2: 1 + 1 = 2.
#3: 1 + 2 = 3.
#4: 2 + 3 = 5.
#5: 3 + 5 = 8.

or, perhaps,
#1: 1 + 1 = 1; 2 – 1 = 1..
#2: 1 + 2 = 3; 3 – 1 = 2.
#3: 2 + 3 = 5; 5 – 1 = 4.
#4: 3 + 5 = 8; 8 – 1 = 7.
#5: 5 + 8 = 13; 13 – 1 = 12.

or even:
#1: 1 + 1 = 1; 2 – 1 = 1.
#2: 1 + 2 = 3; 3 – 2 = 1.
#3: 2 + 3 = 5; 5 – 3 = 2.
#4: 3 + 5 = 8; 8 – 4 = 4.
#5: 5 + 8 = 13; 13 – 5 = 8.

To get a synergy bonus of +1, you need the number of related skills after the equals sign next to the relevant #1 line. In all cases, that’s a 1.

To get a bonus of +2, you need the number of related skills after the last equals sign next to the relevant #2 line. In the third example, that’s in addition to any already allocated.. So that’s 2, 2, or – well – 2.

To get a bonus of +3, you need the number of related skills after the last equals sign next to the relevant #2 line, and you already know about the third progression. So that’s 3, 4, or 4.

To get a bonus of +4, you need – well, you know the drill. 5, 7, or 8.

To get a bonus of +5, you need 8, 12, or 16.

Note that if I’m taking a more ‘generous’ route by using a Fibonacci sequence, I normally won’t permit the double-for-a-risk-of-failure rule.

I generally torn between the first two options; the simplicity of the first is appealing, but the difficulty of achieving medium-high synergy bonuses seems a little too easy. If I can get around that by being a bit more of a stickler, that’s fine; but otherwise, the middle option is more likely to get the nod. I’ve only ever considered the third in a theoretical context; if you’re going to be that extreme. use the powers-of-two and be done with it.

4. Roleplaying Modifiers

I detest it when players “Roll-play” instead of “Roleplay”. If a player says “[My character] is going to [do X]”, the next words out of his or her mouth should not be “I have a skill of Y”.

(Time for another of those ‘related articles’ links: Two ways to play: Roleplaying and Rollplaying).

At the same time, I have to accept that not everyone at the game table is an actor, and some roles are more difficult than others, and that the abilities of the player can be completely irrelevant to the attributes of the character.

An example, four approaches

Consider a situation in which a PC is bartering with an NPC over the price of something, it doesn’t matter what, and that there is a skill within the game system called “Bartering” which is used for this specific purpose. It’s normally an opposed roll, so the NPC makes a bartering roll and the results define the target that the PC needs to get the better of the deal.

Some players can immediately launch into in-character dialogue – straight roleplay. I will normally translate what they say and how well they say it and how they maneuver the conversation and how well they express their character’s personality and so on as though it were the die roll, scoring the performance out of 20 (or whatever) with no need to roll. This inherently burns through a fair chunk of spotlight time, though, and I might not be as adept at interplay as this player, so I might not respond in kind.

The second option is to employ third-person narration. This doesn’t tell me exactly what you are saying, but it describes the approach that the character is going to use. “He probably thinks that I am an arrogant and entitled gringo, so I’ll start by playing into that persona. After a minute or two of confirming his worst opinions, though, I’ll drop my tone of voice and ask if he’s had enough of that performance to let him brag to his his friends and compliment a couple of the things he’s got on offer. I’ll make sure that he realizes that I’m not really like that, and was play-acting for his benefit, so that everyone could see he wasn’t a walkover. Then I’ll make an offer on the piece that I want that’s about 80% of the price he’s put on it and see how he reacts.”

In this case, i would happily let the character use an Acting or Bluff skill roll in place of Barter if those had higher scores. He’s trying to set up a situation in which the NPC leans pushes against a door, hard, only to find that it wasn’t locked in the first place; by the time he gets back on his feet, the deal will be done on the terms that the player considers acceptable. This approach burns a moderate amount of spotlight time but not an unreasonable amount.

Another acceptable compromise might be to make an initial in-character opening statement and then switch to third-person direction.

The fastest, but worst possible option is to announce “I have a Barter skill of X” and wait for me to tell them what they need to roll to succeed.

So, with that example as a template, let me unpack that earlier list of caveats.

Some players are less gifted at putting on a role; they have to do it through direction or through using the dice. No shame in that, and the player shouldn’t be penalized for it.

Some roles are more difficult than others. If the personality is a complicated one that’s difficult to convey, failing to do so is not a sin. If the personality is a simple one but the character is not the loquacious type, having him launch into a smooth spiel is actually inappropriate to the character. In neither case, should the player nor character be penalized.

If a player is a used-car salesman or politician or radio announcer in real life, they would naturally have advantages in the ‘acting’ department over someone whose job doesn’t involve public speaking. They should not get a character benefit for being gifted in that department because of their real life.

Players who do make the effort to embody their characters, however, should be rewarded with a roleplaying bonus, because they are contributing to the entertainment of the day’s play. Any of the approaches – full dialogue, full direction, or a compromise between the two – is enough to qualify for such a bonus.

But – and it goes along with the statement ‘not everyone’s an actor’ – there is an elephant in the room. Some people are shy, some are handicapped, and some are simply new to the game or less comfortable with their characters. The standard of expectation needed to qualify for that bonus needs to alter with the ability of the player and their capabilities.

There’s one player I know who struggles with decisions. He has a lot of difficulty making up his mind, sometimes. Present him with a limited number of options, and he’s fine; present him with something as vague as the setup for the example encounter was, and he might not be sure of what he’s going to have his character do, or how, for several minutes. Sometimes, you can give him extra time by moving on to someone else and coming back to him, sometimes you can’t because his choice will shape the options available to others.

For that individual, making an effort to come to a quick decision is just as hard as mapping out that full plan of attack would be for a more decisive person of limited roleplaying experience.

Under this heading, I’ll give a character a bonus if it seems warranted according to their roleplay relative to their natural abilities (or lack thereof) and the roleplaying challenge presented by the combination of that character in that situation. It usually won’t be a big advantage (but exceptional efforts deserve an exceptional reward) but it will be an encouragement.

On the other hand, resorting to a die roll – even to the point of announcing “I’ll Barter with him, I get 63” – that’s probably worth a penalty of -1 or -2 if the player is capable of better. That caveat is important, i think.

5. Player Modifiers

But it’s usually easier to break all of the preceding section into two separate issues: How well was the character interaction roleplayed or described? and What are the player’s abilities in this respect, and how close to their best did their efforts get?

That means awarding a bigger roleplaying bonus and then reducing it if the process of earning it was easy for the player, or maybe even increasing it further if it was hard.

As a general rule, it’s best to avoid judging the people at the game table, but sometimes there’s an elephant in the room.

This picture has been chosen to represent alchemy etc. Image by Kathrin (hollywut) from Pixabay

6. Metagame Modifiers

Ah, now we get to the biggest and probably the most controversial modifier, what’s generally referred to as “the speed of plot”.

It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes the plot demands that a character succeed or fail in a skill check. When that happens, you have two choices: let the plot collapse and improvise, or apply whatever modifier is necessary to ensure the required outcome. And, I should add, it’s not always the PCs who have to succeed or fail – sometimes the villain opposing the PCs can occupy just as critical a position.

I refer to such a modifier as a Metagame Modifier, for obvious reasons. And yes, it does smack of plot trains a bit. The question is, how can this be made fair for the characters?

In service of game balance

Let’s say that when the character makes his die roll, a modifier of -6 (or +6) is needed to achieve the plot-required outcome. Divide this by 2; the character’s next (result) rolls should be at an opposing modifier of +2 (or -2), until the books are balanced. These are also described as Metagame Modifiers.

On top of that, as GM, you go out of your way to do something nice (or nasty) for / to the character. For some inexplicable reason, henchmen overlook the character when it comes to their initial attacks – maybe their coordination isn’t all it should be (or for some reason, they all pick on the character). Or maybe the character gets an in-game reward of some kind, something they will want (even if they don’t know it at the time).

If the net is ±6 or more, then an alternative is to present the character with something that gives a permanent bonus to something they do reasonably frequently, but that isn’t going to be game-breaking. As a rule of thumb, modifier/5 and round down gives the scale of an appropriate permanent compensation. So a -10 to ensure a failure can earn a permanent +2 in something else.

Going in the other direction – a permanent penalty – is more problematic. That tends to create player resentment. A semi-permanent penalty that can be bought off may be acceptable, depending on the genre and style – in particular, the more grit, the more tolerable it will be to have a wound of some sort that is going to impair the character for a while.

Again, in compensation for putting up with that compensation, I will often treat the character a little more gently for a while, even in a gritty campaign. When assigning difficulties, I may say that I’m taking their diminished capabilities into account, when in reality, I’m hand-waving those and letting the character use everything he or she would normally have available to them. Ultimately, the game mechanics should favor the PCs ever so slightly without ever obviously doing so.

Poor design

I want to make it clear that I consider it poor adventure design to end up in this situation in the first place, but we all have lapses from time to time, and the game should not be hostage to your failures as GM, either. And, arguably, if you have made such a design error, this may be the worst possible time to try and improv an alternative route through an adventure that has just run aground.

It should also be absolutely clear that if you can map any route out of the mess that stems from letting the chips fall where they may, you are obligated to take it. When confronted with such a circumstance, I will often call a five-minute break just to give myself some additional thinking time. My players have learned to recognize that they have bested me at such times and that I am scrambling to put humpty-dumpty (the adventure) back together rather than letting everyone’s fun be ruined; this gives them ego-boosting kudos in place of the pleasure they would get from making that die roll (or failing one they should never fail). That substitutes a player victory for a character victory – which is very metagame.

When this happens, it’s useful to actually admit that they have found a weak point in your planning, confirming those kudos and making the others at the table aware of them. Let the player celebrate for those few minutes while you look for a solution to your plot problem.

I would say that at least 19 times in 20, I have found alternatives that permit the character to succeed or fail on the merits, even if the plot itself completely changes shape as a result.

An absolute rule

It must also be emphasized that you should never, ever, describe what you are doing in relation to metagame modifiers to a player. Doing so is a deliberate tweak of the players’ noses and an admission that your adventure couldn’t cope with actual play, and the resulting loss of confidence in your abilities as a GM will only worsen any damage that results.

A broader perspective

With the compensation package in place, these modifiers are not being plucked out of thin air; they can be seen as borrowing advantages or penalties from the future, and repaying that debt.

But this should never be seen as excusing poor adventure design. It’s a failure on your part as a GM and should always be acknowledged as such. Whatever short-term humiliation that you experience will help motivate you to do better in future! This is a last-ditch Hail Mary deus-ex-machina to rescue you from a mess of your own making.



Image by satchuset Raungdessuwon from Pixabay

A better alternative

This alternative approach won’t always be available to you, but when it is, it’s worth considering: at the start of the day’s play, tell the players (all of them) that you have realized that there’s at least one path through the adventure that leads to a critical die roll that the players absolutely cannot be permitted to fail (or to succeed at) or it will derail the plot train that you’ve inadvertently set in motion.

To get around this problem, on every skill check prior to that critical point, characters can – before they roll – choose to ‘stockpile’ advantage or penalty to be applied to the critical roll.

Let’s say that you need +12 to be absolutely certain that the roll will succeed – characters can choose to take -1 or -2 on a prior roll to contribute the matching +1 or +2 to the pool. Or, if it’s a roll that absolutely has to fail, they can take a bonus of +1 or +2 and contribute the matching -1 or -2 to the pool. These adjustments can be made on any roll – an attack, a skill check, whatever.

There are three big benefits to this approach.

First, it makes the compensation a group activity instead of putting the whole burden on the shoulders of one focal character.

Second, because it places the choice of ‘stockpiling’ into the hands of each player, and the amount likewise, it maintains player agency. In effect, they become co-conspirators with you in an effort to wallpaper over the plot failure.

And third, players can scale their contribution according to their confidence in success in the earlier rolls – there’s not a lot of difference between succeeding on 2 or better and succeeding on 4 or better, the odds are still overwhelming that the character will succeed.

But all this will only work if there are enough rolls required between now and then to accumulate all (or most) of the required modifier.

Furthermore, if the only reason a roll fails is because of the stockpiling, I will rule that the character succeeds anyway, but can’t make the intended contribution to the pool.

Luck Pools

It’s a short step from the above concept to the notion of players accumulating a pool of advantage modifiers without a specific purpose in mind, just as a general resource that they all have access to. Such are often called a “Luck Pool”. If it then arises that there is a roll that the adventure can’t afford to have succeed, the GM simply pays into that Luck Pool whatever is needed to achieve that end.

This is an even fairer approach because it means that players can draw as deeply as they want in rolls that really matter to them.

It actually increases player agency overall – not the outcome usually associated with a plot train.

Divine Assistance

There have been times when it’s been more than just the current adventure that’s riding on the outcome – the entire campaign might hinge on the outcome, or the very life of a pivotal character. At such times, and when all else fails, a character may invoke Divine Assistance.

This sets a process in motion in which there is a chance that some passing improbability provides a literal deus-ex-machina escape. There is a 1% chance of this taking place – characters need to roll and get an 01 (it used to be a 00). Any assistance will be of the most humiliating and excruciating form possible, so that there will be absolutely zero temptation to use any leftovers in future adventures.

For example, there’s the time that the team strongman in my superhero campaign, generally known as a ‘brick’ within the genre, found himself inadvertently in a decaying orbit above the earth, with an opposing direction of motion. The earth orbits the sun at a speed of about 67,000 mph, so the two were heading toward each other at 114,000 mph from a height of 32,500 miles – giving him about 14½ minutes to think of a solution. Except that significant atmosphere starts about 6,200 miles up, and the thermal effects of reentry start at about 40 miles up. 6200 is about 20% of 32500, so he actually only had 80% of that 14½ minutes, or 11½ minutes.

A brick is tough, and this one was a lot tougher than most, but unprotected reentry was way outside his capacity, and he knew it.

The diameter of earth is roughly 12,700 km (7900 miles), so to avoid reentry until he could be rescued, he needed to change the angle of his approach by half that plus atmosphere, or 3950+40+510 for safety margin – 4500 miles. Drawing a quick sketch of the situation:



Man, I remember something like this from my HSC – which means nothing to most of you and all too much to the rest. Final exam, three-unit mathematics, year 12 – college for those in the US (I scored 103/150, for what it’s worth).

We need to know c. To get that, we need to know a and α; to find which, we need to know b.

What we do know is that d = 4500, and that a+b also = 4500, because we have defined them that way. It follows that a+b+28000 = 32500. We also know that because angle d-e is 90 degrees (by definition of the geometry), both angles d-c (= α and e – 28000 (= β) are the same. That means that we can set up a couple of simultaneous equations with c in common – solve them, and we have our answer.

I always start trying to solve such problems by listing everything that I know from the geometry, then looking for ways to put them together that get me to the answer.

     a+b = 4500 = d. (1)

     c / (b+28000) = opposite over adjacent = tan (β). (2)

     a / c = opposite / adjacent = tan (α) = tan (β). (3)

     a / d = opposite / hypotenuse = sin (α). (4)

     c / (a + b + 28000) = sin (β) = sin (α). (5)

     d^2 = a^2 + c^2 = 4500^2 = 20,250,000. (6)

     e^2 = c^2 + (b+28000)^2. (7)

I could also do some things with cos (α) and cos (β), but I don’t think I’ll need them, even though tan (α) = sin (α) / cos (α).

So, let’s see…

     c / (a + b + 28000) = sin (β) = sin (α) (5)

seems like a good place to start, since I know that a + b + 28000 = 32500. So that becomes

     c / 32500 = sin (β) = sin (α) (8)

I also know that a+b =d, and that a^2+c^2=d^2. If I put those together:

     a^2 + c^2 = (a+b)^2 = 4500^2 = 20,250,000. (9)

Not sure that’s helpful.

How about the two sin functions? Divide one by the other and see how we go…

     (a / d) / (c / (a + b + 28000) ) = sin(α) / sin(α) = 1 (10)

…so…

     a / d = c / (a + b + 28000) = c / 32500 = a / 4500 (11)

     c = (32500 / 4500) a = 7.2222 a (12)

Hmm, do we have any other relationships between a and d, or a and c? Do we ever – the one that I just dismissed as unhelpful!

     a^2 + c^2 = 20,250,000! (9)

     c^2 = (7.2222 a)^2 (13)

…and if put those together, I get:

     a^2 + (7.2222 a)^2 = 20,250,000 (14)

     53.1605 a^2 = 20,250,000 (15)

     a^2 = 20,250,000 / 53.1605 = 380921.9251 (16)

     a = 617.1887 (17)

     c = 4457.4741 (18)

     c / 32500 = sin(α) = 0.137153 (19)

     α= β= 7.883° (20)

and the pieces have all started falling into place.

This was quite doable by the character, or so I thought. The whole point was that the character had just obtained something that I thought potentially game-unbalancing – well, created it, actually, after much effort and ignoring all GM hints that he shouldn’t be doing this. it was massive enough that if hurled fast enough, the old equal-and-opposite should launch the character to safety, at the expense of the item.

How fast? c / 11.5 is what his movement needed to be, so c / 11.5 × his weight / object weight. From memory, 2000 kg & 4,000,000 kg, respectively – so 0.01938 miles / minute = 11.6282 mph. While there were no rules for determining it, I had no problem believing that this character could throw the object much faster than that.

Backup plan – I like to always ensure that there’s more than one way out of such conundrums – the object was massive enough to serve as a heat shield – though it would be completely ruined in the process. Same answer: character survives, object does not.

Second Backup Plan – the character had created the object by undertaking a “scientific study of sorcery” in an alternate plane of existence. He could consume it for enough arcane energy to teleport himself to safety, compensating for the velocity difference, with a successful spellcasting check. Net result: character survives, object gets confiscated by fate.

So, not at all an insuperable problem.

To my surprise, the player failed to think of any of these despite numerous hints (his character was supposedly a super-scientist/inventor, so the different solutions should have fairly obvious to him). At the last possible minute, I even gave him an INT check (1 chance in about 10 million of failure) – and he flubbed it.

As his costume began to smoke from atmospheric friction, he decided to seek Divine Intervention. Fine, a 1% chance. He rolls an “00” (which is what you needed at the time). And so he was gifted a pretty pink parasol (hot fuchsia, actually), 18 inches in diameter, with purple lace decorative trim and covered in pastel roses in a style suitable for a Victorian lady, something a bit like this one: lace-embroidered-flower-sequins-fold-ultravioletproof-lolita-princess-umbrella. To be seen with it would be an instant challenge to his masculinity.

Oh, and it was virtually indestructible, a perfect heat shield.

As you can see, this example ticks all the divine intervention boxes. With it, the character survived reentry, crashing into the Andes and burying himself several miles deep – in fact, punching a hole deep into the planetary crust and creating a climatic disaster, which another character subsequently cleaned up (at a profit). Oh, and the impact destroyed the offending object on the way….

Boosting the chances of DI, Boosting the price

Depending on the circumstances, I have been known to boost the chances of DI – all the way up to 100%. I have also been known, under other circumstances, to have a Devil (or reasonable facsimile) pop up and offer a Faustian Bargain as the price of their intervention.

Time for a couple more “related article” links.

• Deus Ex Machinas And The Plot Implications Of Divinity
• A Monkey Wrench In The Deus-Ex-Machina: Limiting Divine Power, and
• Good Storytelling Technique Or Bad? – Chekhov’s Gun and RPGs.

Readers may be uncertain as to the relevance of the last one – but I would suggest that the “Better Alternative” offered above is possibly a deliberate manifestation of a Chekhov’s Gun, which makes this discussion of the literary truism relevant.

The choice of a game of Jenga as the final featured illustration is not accidental, but I’ll leave interpretation to the viewer… Image by Katharina N. (Kathas_Fotos) from Pixabay

Simulations As Die Rolls

Okay, so that’s the six modifiers. Some are small, some are potentially large, and one is defined as “as big as necessary” – but, overall, the average will usually be fairly close to a net neutrality or small modifier one way or another.

I can simulate the probable outcomes by using die rolls to represent each of the six types.

Scale mapped to a roll

I fact, there are two different die rolls that would do the job: (d6-1)-(d6-1), or (d6-1)+d6-6.

I think – let me just double-check:

First: Minimum roll: (1-1)-(6-1)= 0-5 = -5, check.
Maximum roll: (6-1)-(1-1)= 5-0=5. check.
Average roll: (3.5-1)-(3.5-1)=2.5-2.5 =0, check.

Second: Minimum roll: (1-1)+1-6 = 0+1-6 = 1-6 = -5, check.
Maximum roll: (6-1)+6-6 = 5+6-6 = 5, check.
Average roll: (3.5-1)+3.5-6 = 2.5+3.5-6 = 6-6 = 0, check.

The last one is important, because (d6-1)+d6 is something that I can chart using AnyDice, and the -7 can be accommodated just by shifting the scale.

Compounding Six such rolls

To deal with six such rolls, we’re talking about either (6d6-6)-(6d6-6), = 6d6-6d6, or 6d6-6+6d6-36 = 12d6-42.

AnyDice doesn’t show results less than one, so the first one won’t work there, but the second one with an axis shift will do just fine:



Sorry it’s so hard to read. Click on it to get a far more legible version (1668 × 619) in a new tab.

Do Skill Levels Even Matter?

If you average ±1 over six modifiers, that’s ±6. That’s pretty significant – the best magic items only give +5.

Exclude the sixth modifier since it can be of any size necessary, but only when it matters. That’s still ±5.

But if you average ±2 over those five modifiers, that’s plus-or-minus ten.<./em> ±3 gives plus-or-minus fifteen.

If the GM is unfair, any result that he wants is possible, and that’s without counting the wild card that trumps everything else. So you could be forgiven for wondering if skill levels even matter at all?

I would reply to such a question, absolutely, they do. Look, if the GM is going to cheat, he’s going to get his way, regardless of what sophistry and mechanics he wraps around things, but even then, the skill levels signpost what you expect to be able to do, and what you are likely to try and do.

And if the GM is fair, and scrupulous, then – as shown above – the most common 1/6 of results are -3 to +3 over six modifiers, and the most frequent third, -5 to +5. That’s enough to make a difference – but not enough that skill levels don’t matter.

The Bigger Picture

I thought it worth stepping back, as this article rumbles toward a conclusion, and looking for a moment at a few aspects of the bigger picture, as they apply to the considerations voiced herein..

Making It Fun

I’ve seen suggestions in texts elsewhere that it’s not the GM’s job to ensure that the game is fun, because if it wasn’t already fun, people wouldn’t be playing the game.

You’ll get vehement disagreement from me in response. I’ve played in too many games that were not fun – and they didn’t last very long. Conclusion: “Fun” is not something that should be taken for granted.

Simulationism

I’ve seen – even offered, in the past – suggestions that the role of the rules, as modified for genre, campaign, and style, is to simulate an alternate reality in which the events transpiring actually occur.

These days, I’d offer lukewarm disagreement to that proposal.

Simulationism should always be a guiding principle, but I’m perfectly happy to sacrifice it on the reality of Fun For All.

Storytelling

There have been suggestions in different forums that the GM is not responsible for the plot, and should let the desires, intentions, and wishes of the players steer the vessel.

Again, I’ll offer lukewarm-but-vigorous disagreement. There are many hands on the tiller, but the GM is the navigator. His primary function, in a storytelling capacity, is to ensure that adventures are readily accessible – and not just any adventures, but ones that the players are interested in playing.

His secondary function is to ensure the flow of continuity to the desired standard. Without continuity, nothing the PCs do will make the slightest difference in the campaign world; what happens to player agency under such conditions?

The Big Picture

The limit of Authoritarianism is that you have no players. The rules may state that the GM is always right, is the lord and master of his creation, and that is true – and misleading, because the ‘creation’ being referred to is the campaign setting, not the actions that are performed within it. At best, in the latter case, the GM has an equal share of both responsibility and power. Yes, he can pull rank if he feels it necessary – but there’s a limit to how far he can go with that.

Within the scope afforded by the players, all of these factors have one or more essential functions to perform: Consistency. Predictability, Chance and Surprises.

A Game narrative is a shared narrative. Players have dominance over their characters, while the GM provides a context of circumstances, and the context of a broader story. His goal is to tell tale that satisfies the players.

The role of skill checks in achieving these things is of a mechanical interface between the Game Setting and the narrative; the latter will bend this way and that depending on the success of those checks. There are ways that the GM can impose his will on the narrative, within reason, and if the result is justified in terms of fun at the table, and done with balance and responsibility, the players will accept that imposition of control.

The GM is the writer, director, and producer, and part of his job is keeping the stars happy. But that’s not the whole of his job – he also has to coax a coherent narrative out of them in which they can all participate equally.

One way of doing so is to be a rules nazi who forbids absolutely anything not spelt out in black and white in those rules. The players may not like it, but they can at least respect it and know where they stand. It’s better all round if he can unwind and bend a little in the interests of a more satisfying experience.

When that happens, skill rolls matter, and the GM assumes the burden of responsibility for not letting them be hostage to the roll of dice. And that’s the function of modifiers.

Defined Quality Targets – one final wrinkle

Defining a specific quality of result as “the minimum acceptable” reduces the chances of success by 1 but increases the quality of result if you do succeed by the same amount. If this adjustment is the only reason for a failure, the result is something that most would consider acceptable but that does not live up to the standards being imposed by the character, and has to be treated accordingly.

Consider an art forger. He might produce a work that is definitely in the style of a famous painter, but is clearly and recognizably not by him; this is a failure from the forger’s point of view, he needs to be able to pass the work off as genuine. Its very existence poses a risk to him; he has to destroy it, immediately.

Consider a famous artist. He might produce a work that most would consider of salable quality but it would actually harm the artist’s reputation for quality (not to mention his ego) to have it seen. It falls short of the standard he expects of himself. It might be destroyed, or given away, or used to repair a chicken coop.

This approach won’t be universally relevant. But it can simplify and clarify a huge number of otherwise intractably-vague outcomes that are inadequately described by most game systems. It’s just another variable to tuck into your toolkit until you need it. I’m betting that it won’t be very long before you have to decide whether or not to use it!

I know some readers (Hi, Johnn!) who simply zone out when the word “Alignment” is mentioned, but bear with me. There’s good reason why it’s downplayed in the newest editions, decoupled from racial profiles and game mechanics, but this is alignment as you’ve never seen it before, with a whole different purpose.

Every fractal image is the result of simple mathematical rules applied recursively, over and over again, and frequently reveal emergent properties of both order and chaos. There are some real-world applications that can’t be ignored – like the formula in which, if you enter N digits of pi, it spits the N digits of pi that follow them, or the proof that orbital predictions have a limited period of validity. All of which begs the question, is there any such thing as either of them, really, or just simplicity and complexity too great for us to fully understand? I don’t know the answer to that one…
Photo by George Cuda from Freerange Stock

This is the second of my time-out posts in between the Trade In Fantasy series, which will resume next week, if all goes according to plan.

I made the time-out logo from two images in combination: 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.

Yesterday, I happened to pull out a T-shirt with the Chaos logo, and I can never help thinking about the disparate interpretations that I have seen of wearing it. The most common thought is that I’m saying that I welcome chaos and anarchy by wearing it, but there are a small minority who get it right – a defiant challenge, “I can cope with your chaos, bring it on”, a wholly different sentiment.

Then, too, I can’t help but think about Elric of Melnibone – I’ve never read the books by Michael Moorcock, but have read others by him that I enjoyed, and have read a comic adaption of part of the Elric saga.

That saga, if my understanding is correct, is noteworthy for the fact that everyone in it is a villain, but some are worse than others. Elric, at least, has a conscience. To a certain extent, that disputes the very concept of heroes vs villains, arguing that all morality is relative. Not a philosophy that I personally hold with, but maybe that’s a lingering afterimage of being raised a catholic.

Law Vs Chaos

The other element that comes readily to mind whenever Elric gets mentioned is the primal conflict between Order and Chaos. I’ve always gotten good mileage in my RPGs by making this the focus of the campaign; subtle differences in definition permit distinctions from one campaign to another to manifest in stark and readily comprehensible manner.

Early editions of D&D defined Chaos as the primacy of luck as a disruptive influence to the rigid plans of Order. The most common version in my games paints both extremes as undesirable – the unpredictability of anarchy vs the goosestepping jackboot on the throat of the individual. Most people are more comfortable somewhere in the middle.

Good Vs Evil

This marks this axis of a typical alignment chart as significantly different from the “Good Vs Evil” axis, where there is a far broader spread of opinions. “Good” is often translated as “altruism” – putting the common welfare above personal gain, which is only acceptable if it enables greater service in the public arena.

“Evil” is the opposite – putting yourself and your personal welfare and interests ahead of those of others, even to the point of tolerating harm or inconvenience to yourself if it harms / inconveniences your enemies and rivals more.

I’ve always considered “Evil” to represent systematic self-indulgence – even if the acts in which you are indulging are examples of generosity, these are motivated not by caring about the recipients, but about feeling good about yourself.

Communities Of Extremes

Any of these can be the foundation of a sense of community, and can give rise to political structures of richness and realistic complexity.

“Good” communities provide social safety nets and focus on the worst-off in the community, imposing a minimum standard for their treatment. “Evil” communities describe the world as dog-eat-dog and view society itself as being comprised of individuals, all with desires and ambitions; unfortunately, not everyone is suited to life in such a world, and the “socialism” of “good” is soft-hearted pandering to those unfortunates. Rather than a safety net, they would prefer to subsidize channels out of the most extreme circumstances, rather than dependence on government handouts.

Viewed in this way, the very labels “Good” and “Evil” become biased propaganda favoring one alignment over the other. This axis isn’t about morality at all, contrary to those labels; it’s about what behavior is considered more socially beneficial.

“Order” and “Law” place rules as sacrosanct, demanding that individuals conform to the restrictions placed upon them by those rules. The “Chaos” that opposes this perspective is less about anarchy but about personal liberty; the rules of society are to be as minimal as possible, and often rely on the principle of “enlightened self-interest” to build coalitions that can achieve greater things than are possible to the individual through collective effort.

A potential third axis: Responsibility

A potential third axis rarely gets mentioned, even though it can be tremendously clarifying to the philosophy by which an individual lives and the decisions that he consequently makes: Responsibility vs Irresponsibility.

Were this to be implemented, it would expand the familiar 9-fold alignment system to 27, a huge increase in specificity.

Interpretation is not always quite so straightforward, though. For some combinations, you may have to leave them as “undefined” until a particular ethical standpoint, ethos, or philosophy commends itself as representative of a particular combination.

A Living Standard

But, to be fair, all alignments should be so treated. What one generation means by “Good” can be entirely different in definition or manifestation than what their elders meant by the term. Societies, and social definitions, should evolve over time or risk losing relevance.

In fact, it’s quite common for definitions to be uncodified, but nevertheless iron-clad; the common definition is one that emerges from collective behavior, and what society deems acceptable, what it deems tolerable – and what it declares to be neither. A figure who does nothing wrong, who can – from at least one reasonable perspective – be described as doing ‘good’, can nevertheless be polarizing.

Fourth Axis

If a fourth axis can be divined, the typical alignment map can be repurposed to a classification of personal philosophy. That doesn’t define that philosophy; the classification is often subjective and not strictly mechanical.

Altruism, Structure, and Responsibility – what’s missing from this picture? One thing immediately came to mind when I posed that question: Self-confidence. Ultimately, the difference between occupying a position of leadership vs being a follower, can come down to nothing more.

5th and 6th Axes?

And I think there is something to be said for mapping INT and WIS relative to the common average on an alignment chart, too.

Three Charts

Put all these together and you get a trio of “personality” charts, based on the old “alignment” system:

This is the familiar old one, but with the biased language replaced with something more neutral. The 9 resulting alignments are:
     Altruistic, Rigid-Rules
     Somewhat Altruistic, Rigid-Rules
     Self-interested, Rigid-Rules

     Altruistic, Rules with Circumstantial Exceptions
     Somewhat Altruistic, Rules with Circumstantial Exceptions
     Self-interested, Rules with Circumstantial Exceptions

     Altruistic, Independence from others
     Somewhat Altruistic, Independence from others
     Self-interested, Independence from others

Here, we have the second pair of axes that I have suggested. There are another 9 combinations:
     Extremely Self-Confident Risk-taker, Accepts Responsibility
     Somewhat Self-Confident, Accepts Responsibility
     Timid, Accepts Responsibility

     Extremely Self-Confident Risk-taker, Limits Self-Responsibility
     Somewhat Self-Confident, Limits Self-Responsibility
     Timid, Limits Self-Responsibility

     Extremely Self-Confident Risk-taker, Takes no Responsibility
     Somewhat Self-Confident, Takes no Responsibility
     Timid, Takes no Responsibility

This shows Intelligence and Wisdom mapped onto another alignment chart, with ‘average’ in the center. As usual, there are 9 combinations of traits that result:
     Wise, Intellectual
     Optimistic, Intellectual
     Naive, Intellectual

     Wise, Sometimes overrides Intellect
     Optimistic, Sometimes overrides Intellect
     Naive, Sometimes overrides Intellect

     Wise, Operates by Instinct / Emotion
     Optimistic, Operates by Instinct / Emotion
     Naive, Operates by Instinct / Emotion

Hmm, as expected, some of those seem mutually contradictory. “Wise, Sometimes overrides Intellect” for example – perhaps someone who knows it won’t work nine times in ten, but is always ready to give someone a second chance in hopes of beating the odds? Other answers are also possible – “Wise with blind spots”, for example.

And then there’s “Wise, Operates by Instinct / Emotion”. I guess that could describe someone with a very high emotional quotient (EQ), who instinctively grasps what another person or being is feeling because of their circumstances, and does something with that knowledge (just what is determined by the other traits – it could be anything from “takes advantage of them” to “does what they can to help” – even if it seems to fly in the face of ‘common sense’).

Bent Borders

It was all the way back in 1981 that discussions with my gaming mentor of the time led me to create a variation on the standard alignment chart. The difference looks very pretty:

…but there’s a lot of very deep thought in back of it.

The design gives equality to the extremists of every perspective, for one thing. ‘Traditional’ thought at the time was that the polar extremes tended to pull at a character in the middle, who was torn between those extremes; Neutrality with respect to either axis was an ‘unnatural state’ that required constant maintenance, or it was all too easy to shift to one side of the debate and centrally, becoming a weak adherent to that perspective:

I disagreed with that interpretation, which seemed designed to foster control over a PC through alignment deviations, feeling that a centrist or moderate perspective was an equally-viable choice; it meant that on some issues, the character would support one extreme perspective over the other, but as a general rule, they would seek to moderate those extremes seeking practical solutions that neither extreme would endorse, but both could accept.

(I used to do a lot with decisions and actions and vector analysis of the resulting alignment drift. In my campaign of the time, it generally didn’t matter how far you drifted with a single act, being on the active lookout for a balancing opportunity was enough to keep your alignment ‘in flux’, i.e. no penalties. A temporary position could even be more extreme / more intense than your usual level. Obviously, there were thresholds, but as a rule, it was a lot more forgiving).

Anyway, back to the alignment diagram: It also gives equal area at the neutrality interface, for obvious reasons. The more neutral you are, the less variation you can expect to see – a character that was very weakly Lawful Good was not much different from one who was very weakly Chaotic Evil. To be sure, they would find themselves on opposite sides of many issues, but without a lot of intensity.

The illustration above shows this; one character may be a ‘white hat’ and the other a ‘black hat’, but they will agree with each other more often than not, or be able to reach a compromise.

That, by the way, is why all the alignment charts above tend to ‘fade to gray’ toward the center – there’s a hint or bias but nothing more than that.

The third consequence is a little harder to explain. Take a look at the middle position of one of the more extreme philosophies. There’s a lot of scope to move along that ‘axis’ from near-total neutrality to extreme perspective, but there’s comparatively little room for deviation away to the sides of the core philosophy. You actually get a little more latitude at the extremes:

Here’s a closeup of the Lawful Evil “Axis” and four characters – A, B, C, and D – positioned exactly on it. If they each commit the exact same act, producing the exact same alignment ‘shift’ (however temporary under my rules), C and D are absolutely fine, B is right on the edge, and A is clearly in the danger zone for an alignment breach.

C & D have no need to worry; their extremism gives them more latitude. B should be looking for a Lawful Evil act to perform to keep themselves out of the danger zone; what he can’t afford is a shift towards neutrality. Getting himself out of trouble will shift him to a more extreme position, closer to C’s starting position, but he can afford to wait a little while for the ‘right’ opportunity to come along. A doesn’t have that luxury – he has to either do something Chaotic Evil, something Neutral Evil, or something extremely Lawful Evil. The first two do not need to be so extreme, even a moderate act will pull A back into his alignment.

Of course, these days, the whole concept of ‘alignment infractions’ is history, and its a change that I agree with. But this is still relevant, because it describes the tolerance amongst like-minded individuals for ‘deviant acts’.

The final consequence is another of those slightly-tricky ones, again relating to extremist positions and perspectives. The diagram above overlays both maps (using hatching so that you can see both at the same time) and circles the parts where alignments actually change categorization as a result of the difference in boundary shape. I’ve highlighted the Lawful Good – Lawful Neutral examples as typical.

If you had a character whose alignment mapped to a position within one of those two highlighted zones, the traditional ‘map’ would list you as Lawful Good, while the revised one lists you as Lawful Neutral. Or this might be the Responsibility/Self-confidence chart, or the INT/WIS chart; that doesn’t matter.

This is a consequence of self-reinforcing trends within society; despite the position taken initially on the subject, it would be foolish to think that society at large, and the cultural approval within it, has no impact on behavior. If you incline even a little toward Lawful Good, there will be social pressure to shift in that direction, especially at the fringes. You need an active Lawful Neutral sub-culture to escape this effect – but one of the things already posited was that there would be such subcultures.

This diagram also shows another change, one that I have elected not to preserve – the intrusion into true neutrality of a bias in a given direction (highlighted with a red arrow). Philosophically, I felt that True Neutral could not happen any way other than deliberate choice, except as a temporary alignment. Even a slight bias one way or the other would grow, unless actively resisted.

Using “Ex-alignment” as a characterization resource

Okay, now we’re getting to the nub of it. As stated earlier, any given personal philosophy or set of personality traits can be located on the three ‘maps’; that’s old hat. What’s potentially a lot more useful is going in the other direction – defining the traits exhibited by a character using the maps and merging them to compound a set of opinions and philosophies that the character considers ‘right’.

Start by picking the axes that are most important for the character to have a position on, for plot reasons. There will usually be two or three that are most definitive of the role that the character is to occupy. You can then consider the remaining axes or axis, one at a time, to decide how it relates to the character.

That, in itself, is a useful tool for fleshing out important NPCs – but it gets even better. Consider the diagram below:

If we accept that the extreme positions – 1 and 7 – are only achievable through deliberate choice, and that left to their own devices, people will evolve one of the other positions, then there are four ways of using this system and the diagram above caters for all four.

Method 1: 4 Axes x 2, d4 & d12

1. Roll d4 and use the yellow numbers to find the corresponding axis.
2. Roll d12 and use the red numbers to find where on the axis the character’s personality is located. 1’s and 12’s get special handling, below.
3. On a 1 or a 12, roll the d12 a second time. On a result of 1-4, the character is true neutral, otherwise they are as was originally shown – an extremist of a different kind.
4. Repeat for the second set of axes.
5. Note where the character falls on the INT/WIS map, if known, or repeat the rolling process if not.
6. Interpret the results.

Disadvantage: aside from the 1/12 special cases, these are a flat roll. You can alter that situation using Method 2, below.

Method 2: 4 Axes x 2, d4, d6 & d8

1. Roll d4 and use the yellow numbers to find the corresponding axis.
2. Roll d6+d8-1 and use the red numbers to find where on the axis the character’s personality is located. Results of 1’s and 12’s get special handling, below. A result of 6 on the d6 also gets special handling.
3. On a result of 6 on the d6, reroll it.
4. On a 1 or a 12, roll the d12 a second time. On a result of 1-4, the character is true neutral, otherwise they are as was originally shown – an extremist of a different kind.
5. Repeat for the second set of axes.
6. Note where the character falls on the INT/WIS map, if known, or repeat the rolling process if not.
7. Interpret the results.

Disadvantage: a lot more fiddly than method 1, but it does at least generate a bell curve. Unfortunately, the peak of that bell curve is right in the middle, i.e. Neutral. NOT recommended, included for completeness.

Method 3: 8 Axes x 2, d8

1. Roll d8 and use the blue numbers to find the corresponding axis.
2. Roll d8 and use the green numbers to find where on the axis the character’s personality is located. Reroll 8’s.
3. Repeat for the second set of axes.
4. Note where the character falls on the INT/WIS map, if known, or repeat the rolling process if not.
5. Interpret the results.

Disadvantage: It’s another flat roll.

Method 4 (Recommended): 8 Axes x 2, d8, 2d4

1. Roll d8 and use the blue numbers to find the corresponding axis.
2. Roll 2d4-1 and use the green numbers to find where on the axis the character’s personality is located.
3. Repeat for the second set of axes.
4. Note where the character falls on the INT/WIS map, if known, or repeat the rolling process if not.
5. Interpret the results.

Disadvantage: Hmm – bell curve, check. Peak of curve is mid-intensity, check. Therefore extremes are more rare, check. Easy to use, check. You can see why this is the recommended approach.

Don’t misunderstand – a directed choice is always going to be preferable, and there may well be factors that lead you in a given direction on other axes.

For example, any character who has actively joined a military will find themselves shifting toward a Lawful position – it’s called “discipline”. Other traits may be undesirable, and prone to influence as a consequence; other axes will dictate how the character operates, and whether or not that then leads to a code-of-conduct transgression and an ‘attitude adjustment’. Or perhaps it doesn’t, and the character is finding that they don’t fully fit the military mold, after all.

The results are just a starting point, but they aren’t a fully-random starting point, even when using the die roll technique. Everything has to be put into context of the character’s circumstances, including things like profession, rank, and so on.

Speaking of which…

The Curse Of Noble Birth

Nobility, as in the birthright / social status, not the laudable attribute that they are supposed to possess, (or the lack thereof) can complicate everything.

Characters of Noble Birth are subject to a wholly different set of expectations and a far less stringent set of restrictions. It’s far easier for them to move into the “selfish” / “self-indulgent” parts of the map than it is for a serf.

This is a critical part of the context that was mentioned earlier.

Nobles in fantasy gaming tend to be a mixture of the medieval, the post-medieval constitutional monarchies, and the constructs and ideals of fairy tales and myths & legends, such as Robin Hood. There’s very little consistency and even less realism involved – in most cases, there will always be exceptions 9especially in games run by anyone with a professional relationship to History).

All of which is fine – your games are your own to run as you see fit – but it does mean that you need to take the resulting freedoms and restrictions into account when generating characters of any given social class when that matters. If you haven’t figured out what the social structure is going to be like, this can leave you well and truly up the proverbial creek without a paddle.

So, if social standing is going to matter in your game, think it through carefully before generating NPC#1.

Genres outside of Fantasy

One of the really cool things about this process is that it is completely systemless, applicable to any genre or rules-set. Traveler, superheroes & villains, Call Of Cthulhu, Pulp, D&D / Pathfinder, Time Travel – you name it, this system works.

Let’s end with a few examples

I’ll be using the recommended technique, for all of these.

Example #1

This is a semi-directed example – a personality trait that came to mind while writing the article that sounded so good that it had to be included. “Gives liberally to charity and thinks that makes them virtuous despite their arrogance, greed, domineering, and ambition.”

A common variation is people who think that an hour of repentance on Sundays gives them free license the rest of the week. The hippocracy involved gets my goat, regularly.

This is the sort of characterization that works well for an office worker, manager, business owner, or politician.

• Axis One: Altruism: There is clearly some level of altruism involved, but the rest of the characterization makes it clear that this altruism is a self-indulgence aimed at easing a conscience. That puts the character close to but not at the narcissistic extreme – maybe intensity 5 or 6.
• Axis Two: Independence: Could go either way, so roll:
  1. The d8, but we only have a choice of 2: Rule of Law or Independence. I get a 7, so Independence it is.
  2. The 2d4-1, I get a 3, so mildly independent, obeys most laws and rules but expects others to do as they do and get away with anything not explicitly forbidden.
  3. Combining this with the earlier result places the character right on the independent fringe of the self-interested camp, straddling what used to be “Chaotic Evil” and “Neutral Evil”, and intensity 6, so just short of fanatical.
• Axis Three: Responsibility: My first instinct was to place the character in the ‘indulgence’ sector, but I’m not so sure of that on second thoughts; much of the ‘indulgence’ is removed from consideration by the first map result.
• Axis Four: Self-confidence: The arrogance mentioned and described puts the character somewhere in the self-confidence zone, and pretty intensely at that. Let’s see what the dice tell us:
  1. d8, but some results will be considered invalid: however, I roll a 6 which is the “Indulgent Self-confidence” vector, down and left of center.
  2. 2d4-1; also a six. So not a fanatic, but very strong in both self-confidence and self-indulgence. That fits.
• Axis Five & Axis Six: Intellect & Wisdom – these are not stated, though the types of role contemplated for the NPC professionally tend to push the first one higher, possibly even at the expense of the second. I’ll take that on-board, and roll:
  1. d8: I roll a 2, which puts us out into the “Intellectual but with Poor Judgment” category.
  2. 2d4-1: I roll 4, which doesn’t quite seem intellectual enough. So I’ll add one to the Intellect and subtract 1 from the Wisdom, shifting the character to a more extreme position in the designated personality zone.
• Resulting Profile: The image below depicts these three personality maps and the impact of the various manipulations described above. The character is an arrogant and domineering disciplinarian who is both greedy and ambitious, but gets away with it with public displays of altruism and virtue. They are the worst kind of holier-than-thou, putting those of better moral fiber down if they don’t match their public examples of virtue. The character treats laws as rules to be broken if you can get away with it, but is careful to respect those laws that could land them in hot water. They will look to blame others for any failures and pass the buck as much as possible. The character is smart enough to succeed in most professions, but is perpetually being undone by poor judgment, especially underestimating others. Full of petty officiousness, this is someone the PCs will grow to love to hate as they penetrate the public mask and see what they are really like, and that won’t be easy to get rid of.

Example #2: Completely Random Character

The PCs see someone working on the docks and approach them to ask for directions. The GM tossed this individual into the scene because it didn’t seem right for the docks to be completely empty, but has no idea what they might be like.

• Axes 1 and 2: Roll d8, result 3. Roll 2d4-1, result 4. Mildly self-indulgent, neither altruistic not self-centered.
• Axes 3 and 4: Roll d8, result 8. Roll 2d4-1, result 6. Highly self-confident, highly responsible.
• Axes 5 and 6: Roll d8, result 4. Roll 2d4-1, result 1. Fairly average intellectually, and slightly prone to errors of judgment.
• Resulting Profile: A quick question will be answered to the best of the character’s knowledge, but anything more and they will expect some sort of compensation for their time. May hint at being willing to serve as guide or escort for a fee. Will deliver to the best of their ability on any agreements or promises, no matter what obstacles will stand in their way. Probably a little overconfident in his abilities. I don’t get the sense of any great enthusiasm, more ‘weary traveler through life’.

Example #3: A Villain

I’ll round this out with an example of trying for an interesting set of character traits to make a villain more memorable. The GM knows virtually nothing else, just that his adventure plan needs the PCs to have a side-quest of minor importance to delay them for a little while.

• Axes 1 and 2: Roll d8, result 2. Roll 2d4-1, result 5. The character breaks laws if it’s in his interest and he thinks he can get away with it. His motives for action are more altruistic than not, at least from his point of view.
• Axes 3 and 4: Roll d8, result 4. Roll 2d4-1, result 4. The character is cautious but not timid, and only gives in to self-indulgence occasionally, even though this goes against his nature.
• Axes 5 and 6: Roll d8, result 8. Roll 2d4-1, result 7. The character is both wise and intellectually-gifted, both at the most extreme level. He has reason to be arrogant but isn’t.
• Resulting Profile: The character is reacting to a situation in which extremes on both sides are harmful to the public in general. He thinks – probably correctly – that he could do a better job of running things, but right now that’s not an option. He will move cautiously but not neglect any real opportunities. The character is a schemer and plotter, and manipulative as hell.
• Further Context: the “current” situation needs better definition. My first thought is that there’s a band of ruthless bandits out there and the local authorities have used them as an excuse to impose harsh discipline on the townspeople.
• The Villain’s plan: Whenever you get a hint that someone is a plotter and schemer, you need to come up with a plan for them to achieve their goals, and probably a backup plan if something goes wrong. So, let’s start with the main plan: the Villain considers the bandits to be illiterate oafs, possibly correctly. He has sent a messenger out to be captured, with both cash (to attract the bandit’s interest) and manufactured evidence that the local sherrif has secretly been supporting the bandits so that he gets to put the town under his iron thumb. He needs a third party to uncover this ‘evidence’ and bring about the downfall of the sherrif, creating a power vacuum into which he can then step. He has taken his time with the manufacture of this evidence, and it is flawless. It contains an insinuation that the bandits are holding onto it for blackmail purposes, and that they demanded something they could use for that purpose before they accepted his offer of ‘a little banditry on the side’.
• Backup Plan: Should the documents be found to be forgeries, he has also manufactured evidence that they have contact with a ‘forger’, who is the chief supporter of the corrupt and weak mayor of the town, who lacks the self-discipline or confidence to oppose the sherrif. Without this backing, the mayor will easily fall victim to the sherrif, enabling the villain to persuade the PCs to take down the sherrif for his act of insurrection. He notes that this is most likely to occur should he be underestimating the bandits.
• Backup Plan #2: All this could come unstuck if, in fact, the Sherrif really is in cahoots with the bandits, because the Sherrif will realize that the ‘evidence’ is both a forgery and proof that someone is moving against him. The secondary evidence that the mayor’s chief supporter is also a forger will put the two authorities in the local government at each other’s throats, and he can then persuade the PCs to intervene to get rid of both of them for him.

This looks like the following character map:

Resources

This wouldn’t be Campaign Mastery if I created a tool and then didn’t give it to readers!

To conclude, I want to point out again how quickly the example characters came together, and how they can fit just about any genre. The office manager – cyberpunk? Modern-day superhero? Call of Cthulhu? And, of course, Sci-Fi and Fantasy.

The dock worker would be equally at home in a starport as on the banks of the Thames or the Mersey, or on a pier in ancient Greece, or anything in between.

The villain, at first glance, is more fantasy / medieval than anything else, but that’s because I was thinking in that direction when I wrote them up; it wouldn’t take much tinkering to get him and his plans fit for the far future, or the modern day. Crime, criminals, and those who pursue them are not going to go out of style anytime soon.

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:

3. Routine Personnel
4. Mode Of Transport
5. Land Transport
6. Waterborne Transport
7. Spoilage
8. Key Personnel
9. The Journey
10. Arrival
11. Journey’s End
12. 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!

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:

3. Routine Personnel
4. Mode Of Transport
5. Land Transport
6. Waterborne Transport
7. Spoilage
8. Key Personnel
9. The Journey
10. Arrival
11. Journey’s End
12. 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



Image by Wolfgang Schropfer from Pixabay

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:



Click the image to download a zip file with (blank) tables in A4 & Letter sizes, ready for use, in .ods, .xls, and .pdf formats.

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!

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.

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.

Image by Willgard Krause 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.

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:

2. Trade Units
3. Routine Personnel
4. Mode Of Transport
5. Land Transport
6. Waterborne Transport
7. Spoilage
8. Key Personnel
9. The Journey
10. Arrival
11. Journey’s End
12. 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.

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.

Click to download Buy Low, Sell High (LT and A4 sizes) in PDF format

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

Castle Image by Enrique Meseguer (darksouls1) from Pixabay

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…

What non-magical songs should a bard know? There’s more to it than you might think.

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

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.

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:
 

• Basics For Beginners (and the over-experienced) Pt 3: Preparations
• Fire Fighting, Systems Analysis, and RPG Problem Solving Part 2 of 3: Prioritization
• and, To Every Creator, An Optimum Budget?

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

• the series Swell And Lull – Emotional Pacing In RPGs (2 parts)
• and the sequel series, Further Thoughts On Pacing (4 parts).

You can also get a slightly divergent take on the subject from

• The Yu-Gi-Oh Lesson: New Inspirations In Pacing and Style

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?