Resources / Downtime

[elf23]

I was really inspired by the idea of using the same mechanism for Reputation and Wealth, and i started to think about it in terms of "resources":

Resources are things that:

• You are awarded by the Narrator.
• Can be accumulated and lost (unlike skills or ability scores).
• Can be spent to get things you want.

So i wondered if there might be any other traits that could use this resource pattern... 2 things came to mind.

Time
The Shadow suggested down time points in the thread on Narrative time, which would be gained for "in between adventures" time, and could be spent on things like Craft and earning money. I really liked that idea, but it didn't get much discussion beyond a couple of posts. Time as a resource would fit in perfectly.

Things i had in mind that you could "spend" Time on:

• Gaining a bonus to Craft checks.
• Using your professional skill to gain Wealth or Reputation. (In the RAW you can only do this upon gaining a level, but as far as i can see this is only a way of representing time having passed...)
• Regaining Conviction? (For long gaps between stories where everything "resets".) Or something like The Shadow's idea of "carousing".
• Research? (Bonus to Knowledge checks.) - Hey you could even spend Reputation in this way too, putting your reputation on the line researching some far-out subject...?
• Magic item creation / spell research / other such things that exist in various settings. (They'd have a cost both in terms of Wealth and Time.)

I'm not sure how this would tie into Taking 20 (for Craft and Knowledge say), it seems to have some overlap.

So, aside from sacks full of gold, etc, one of the basic currencies of reward the Narrator could give would be Time - which the players could then use to gain Wealth or Reputation, or perhaps Conviction. That's one of the ideas here - that a lot of the time these resources are interchangeable, or can be converted into eachother to be used for different purposes.

Conviction
I'm not sure if it would be useful to think of Conviction in this way, but it certainly fits the resource pattern i described above.

Just thought of one more...

Experience
For some kind of alternative advancement system, Experience can be spent to improve your skills, powers, buy feats, etc.

Thoughts?

[iwatt]

Things i had in mind that you could "spend" Time on:

* Gaining a bonus to Craft checks.
* Using your professional skill to gain Wealth or Reputation. (In the RAW you can only do this upon gaining a level, but as far as i can see this is only a way of representing time having passed...)
* Regaining Conviction? (For long gaps between stories where everything "resets".) Or something like The Shadow's idea of "carousing".
* Research? (Bonus to Knowledge checks.) - Hey you could even spend Reputation in this way too, putting your reputation on the line researching some far-out subject...?
* Magic item creation / spell research / other such things that exist in various settings. (They'd have a cost both in terms of Wealth and Time.)


I'm not sure how this would tie into Taking 20 (for Craft and Knowledge say), it seems to have some overlap.

Very good idea. I was wondering if somebody would pick up this idea.

Carousing: Let's say you can spend Time Points carousing (or researching, or meditating, or whatever it is that characterizes your player). This allows you to buy up extra Conviction recovery chances to use in the future.

Crafting: Spend X Time Points to gain a Craft Check.

Wealth Check: Spend Y time points to gain a Profession check.

Research: I like this idea, but I would probably go with you can buy a reroll on Knowledge check by spending a Time point.

The way I envision it, players wouldn't have to necesarily spend these points beforehand, which would allow them some narrative control.

[The Shadow]

elf23: Hey, thanks for bringing this back up! I'd almost forgotten about it.

I'm down with the Time idea, of course. It isn't quite like Wealth and Reputation, in that you don't have a fixed score that you make checks with. (Or do you? Would there be any benefit to doing things that way?)

Conviction... I'm convinced that it needs to be changed somehow, as it isn't completely satisfactory as-is. Perhaps configuring it as a Resource would be a step in the right direction.

Experience - I'd rather not go there, personally. I'm quite happy with "levelling when the Narrator says so".

Carousing: Let's say you can spend Time Points carousing (or researching, or meditating, or whatever it is that characterizes your player). This allows you to buy up extra Conviction recovery chances to use in the future.

I had originally thought this would give bonus points of Conviction, but extra Conviction Recovery checks is a very interesting idea! Could you use them at any time, even in the middle of a scene? Is there a limit to how many you can use at once?

Wealth Check: Spend Y time points to gain a Profession check.

Either for Wealth or for Reputation.

Research: I like this idea, but I would probably go with you can buy a reroll on Knowledge check by spending a Time point.

A reroll to be used at a later time, subject perhaps as-yet unspecified? Or do you have to get more specific?

The way I envision it, players wouldn't have to necesarily spend these points beforehand, which would allow them some narrative control.

Absolutely! That was my favorite part of the original idea; the player saves up X Downtime points and says, "OK, in my spare time over the last few adventures I've been setting up a business on the side, and now it's starting to make some money." Narrator: "Cool. Let's do a couple scenes around it, and we'll check in regarding it every so often."

Or, potentially:

Narrator: "You're doing what now? You've been travelling across the continent the whole time." "Well, maybe I've been setting up local factors to establish a merchant empire?" "A merchant barony, anyway. OK."

[iwatt]

I had originally thought this would give bonus points of Conviction, but extra Conviction Recovery checks is a very interesting idea! Could you use them at any time, even in the middle of a scene? Is there a limit to how many you can use at once?

I'd say you can use them once per encounter (scene). This of course will immediately make the scene Dramatic.

"Arthos recalled the months spent in prayer, and the faith in his god gave him the strength to withsatnd the Succubus seductive whiles."

"Johnny hadn's spent all that time shooting at target's to miss now."

"Alcohol, the cause, and solution, of all of life's problems."

Either for Wealth or for Reputation.

Aye. Forgot reputation. Basically you've spent your time trying to increase your fame.

A reroll to be used at a later time, subject perhaps as-yet unspecified? Or do you have to get more specific?

Basically, there's nothing worse for a player of a scholar to roll a 1 on his Knowledge check. This allows him to basically emulate conviction (I'd use the 1d10+10 for the reroll as well).

Absolutely! That was my favorite part of the original idea; the player saves up X Downtime points and says, "OK, in my spare time over the last few adventures I've been setting up a business on the side, and now it's starting to make some money." Narrator: "Cool. Let's do a couple scenes around it, and we'll check in regarding it every so often."

Or, potentially:

Narrator: "You're doing what now? You've been travelling across the continent the whole time." "Well, maybe I've been setting up local factors to establish a merchant empire?" "A merchant barony, anyway. OK."

Yeah, it was probably your idea that seeded this for me. O)f course Narrators still have fiat:

Right after the Narrator sunders the Archer's bow.

Player: "I spend a couple of Time points to produce a backup bow. Let's say I was working on it during the night's we were camping."

Narrator: "Do you have any idea how cumbersome carrying a backup bow is? Sure, let's stay you have a perpaerd stave and some backup bowstring, but it'll take you a couple of rounsd to unpack it and string it."

[The Shadow]

I'd say you can use them once per encounter (scene). This of course will immediately make the scene Dramatic.

Seems reasonable - and your three examples seemed very appropriate. (The third one got a good chuckle out of me!)

Though since you'd be using them in the crunch, it would be terribly disappointing to roll for the Recovery and fail! Maybe it should be bonus Conviction after all. (Or perhaps you can do both, but the latter costs at least twice as much.)

Yeah, it was probably your idea that seeded this for me. O)f course Narrators still have fiat:

Naturally. If you're stuck in the desert for a month, you're not going to be raising your Reputation.

[The Shadow]

Further thought: Is it allowed to buy the Conviction Recovery on the spot when you need it, and then use it? Or do you have to buy it and bank it up at some previous time?

[iwatt]

Though since you'd be using them in the crunch, it would be terribly disappointing to roll for the Recovery and fail! Maybe it should be bonus Conviction after all. (Or perhaps you can do both, but the latter costs at least twice as much.)

Not a bad idea. Low Cha PCs will probably go for the second option more often.

Further thought: Is it allowed to buy the Conviction Recovery on the spot when you need it, and then use it? Or do you have to buy it and bank it up at some previous time?

I'd make it a free action, and useable immeadiately. The player does have to give me a good example. If I could pull off those 3 out the top of my head, they ought to as well...

[elf23]

I'm down with the Time idea, of course. It isn't quite like Wealth and Reputation, in that you don't have a fixed score that you make checks with. (Or do you? Would there be any benefit to doing things that way?)

Yeah you're right, i guess Time makes more sense as a simple pool of points which you can spend on things. Same for Conviction probably.

Experience - I'd rather not go there, personally. I'm quite happy with "levelling when the Narrator says so".

It works really nicely with a point-buy character creation / advancement system (which is what i'm using) - one XP = one build point, spend them as you earn them. But apart from that, yeah it's just a layer of unnecessary complexity (it makes me laugh now when i see all those XP -> level charts in old D&D books!).

I would probably go with you can buy a reroll on a Knowledge check by spending a Time point.

I really like the idea of using Time to get rerolls for Knowlegde checks. It acts like using Conviction to reroll, but i guess using Time directly in this way would be cheaper than using Time to buy an extra point of Conviction... Are there any other skill checks that could use Time in the same manner?

What checks would *require* a certain amount of Time? More complicated Craft checks are one. Are there others? How about "shopping around" (Taking 20 on a Wealth check)?

Uses of Time, so far:

• Buy Conviction / Conviction recovery checks.
• Reroll certain skill checks (Knowledge).
• Certain checks have a Time cost (Craft).
• Profession checks to gain Wealth or Reputation.

How about recovering from certain conditions? Diseases or injuries (depending on the "grittiness" factor of the campaign)... Obviously that's one use of Time that you'd have to pay "up front", you couldn't use it in that way to gain an instant recovery check when you got wounded in combat!

[The Shadow]

It works really nicely with a point-buy character creation / advancement system (which is what i'm using) - one XP = one build point, spend them as you earn them. But apart from that, yeah it's just a layer of unnecessary complexity (it makes me laugh now when i see all those XP -> level charts in old D&D books!).

Point-buy is a separate case, yes. (Note that my SAGA-fied system enables flexible role-less advancement *without* using point-buy, though, and retains the idea of levelling.)

I know what you mean about those old D&D charts. I look at them and think, "How did anyone ever think this was a good idea?"

What checks would *require* a certain amount of Time? More complicated Craft checks are one. Are there others? How about "shopping around" (Taking 20 on a Wealth check)?

Gather Information, perhaps?

[iwatt]

- Building an Alias

- Buying stuff (the time is not unimportant)

- Developing contacts (Diplomacy/Gather Info)

We can keep adding ideas, I reckon. I think it's about time we start pricing.

-Conviction Recovery Check: 1 Time Point
-Auto Conviction Recovery: 3 points
-Craft: Simple (1 pt), Moderate (2pt), Complex (3pt), Advanced (4pt)??
-Profession Check: 5 pts???
-Reputation Check: 5 pts???
-Reroll Skill* 1 pt
-Extended Recovery (full recover): 5 pts?

Once we've fixed the realtive pricing, I thinkw e can move on to ho much Time points to assign...

[The Shadow]

First off, I agree with the 1:3 ratio for Conviction Recovery to auto-Conviction.

I was originally thinking of one "Downtime point" as being equivalent to eight hours of work. That might be a useful rule of thumb.

Craft would come out to: Simple 0 (but requires Narrator approval and a Wealth check), Moderate 2, Complex 3, Advanced: 8

Since that progression is ugly, and getting a 'free' item out of the blue should cost *some* time, let's make that 1, 2, 4, 8. (You know, I think we're direly in need of an 'Improving Craft' thread. The rules for it do not make a great deal of sense. Why not just say it takes X% of the Wealth cost of an item to craft the same item, and tie the time to the cost? Simple, Moderate, Complex, and Advanced would be multipliers to the time and make the check harder.)

In RAW, you get one Conviction back every 24 hours, though of course it happens automatically; you don't have to devote any time to it. In the same spirit, let's say that putting in a hard 8 hour day of work can get you a Conviction Recovery check. So, as you said, Conviction Recovery would be 1, and auto-Conviction would be 3.

Hurt conditions fade at the rate of one per hour; Wounds get a Recovery once per hour. I'd say one Time point wipes out all Hurts and Wounds, as well as all Fatigue and anything that recovers by the minute. (Unlike other uses of time, this one can't be done retroactively - you can't say after a battle, "I spent my time in town resting up to Recover!" :) Disabled recovers once per day, so I'd say it costs 3 Time points to get a Recovery check for it. (The idea of spending the points is that you're taking the time to rest and NOT do anything else.) I'd let someone with the Medicine skill donate a Time point to a Disabled person.

EDIT: Maybe it should be 2 for Disabled instead, given that everyone sleeps whether they're Recovering or not.

EDIT: On the same principle as Conviction, guaranteed Recovery could be on a 1:3 basis, so it would take 6 points to fully Recover from Disabled. (Or 9, if you like the paragraph above the edit better.) So it would take 7 (or 10) to fully Recover from everything.

I figure it would take at least a week's work (of 8 hour days) to make any kind of significant dent in your income or reputation... that would be 7 Time points, but let's round up to 10, since a week is rather generous.

Eight hours of hitting the books should be more than enough to study up on a subject. 1 point = 1 skill reroll. (We still need to clarify just how this works, btw.)

Look good?

[elf23]

Nice work on the pricing! "A good day's work" sounds like a useful guideline for what these points represent, without needing to get too precise about things.

1, 2, 4, 8 for Craft sounds good. As does 2 for a Disabled recovery check, and 6 for guarenteed recovery.

I was thinking about the check re-roll use of Time points... We could probably say that you can use it for anything as long as you can make a convincing case to the Narrator. (Like you were saying, iwatt, about making a good case for a Conviction recovery check.) A warrior character, say, could reasonably use it to re-roll an attack after a day of combat practice, just as a scholar could re-roll Knowledge after some research time. (I really like this retro-active application thing too!)

It'd be like a much more limited form of Conviction - you have to be able to justify it (whereas you can use Conviction in any situation), and it only has one use - re-roll (whereas Conviction has many other uses).

The value of using a Time point in that way feels about right with the conversion rate of 1 for a Conviction recovery check, and 3 for a Conviction point.

But perhaps we don't want Time to encroach on the territory of Conviction that much? Personally i like the feeling of them being interconnected. (And the way you can convert Time into -> Wealth, Reputation, Conviction.)

I figure it would take at least a week's work (of 8 hour days) to make any kind of significant dent in your income or reputation... that would be 7 Time points, but let's round up to 10, since a week is rather generous.

Sounds good. Though I wonder whether the standard rules for increasing Wealth (or Reputation) in this manner may be a bit too generous now? The way you get a bonus to Wealth depending how much you succeed the check by AND a further bonus that just depends on your rank in your professional skill.

I suppose it depends on how generous the Narrator is with handing out Time points, but i can see gaining 10 Time points as being much more commonplace than gaining a level.

Another thought: Does there need to be any limit on Time points? The amount of time that passes between sessions depends a lot on the setting and the story. For example, in my last session i said to the players "ok a couple of months has passed since last time"... But i wouldn't fancy giving them 60 Time points each! Maybe for Craft, or profession checks, but certainly not for buying Conviction points or re-rolling checks.

The re-roll use of Time could easily be limited to once per scene. As could Conviction recovery.

It feels like there should be a "life span" to Time points (kind of a weird concept!). Like you can only save them up for a certain period before they're no use to you. That sounds like it could be complicated though...

Any thoughts on that?

[iwatt]

There's got to be a cap on Time Points. If not the PCs will become to cool. We could simply use 2 times the current Conviction Pool size for time points, and uncap Conviction. Given that there is no auto recovery, and players have to buy up their recovery checks with Time Points, it'll work well enough.

Wealth checks: I use 10+current Wealth as the DC. The RAW uses DC=current Wealth.

I'd remove the auto Wealth gain for ranks (needlessly inherited from Modern IMO).

Also, take a look at my streamlined Wealth rules BTW: http://iwattgaming.pbworks.com/Equipment

I like the rerolling description you gave, since conviction rerrolling is mostly used for Plot Armor in my games (Toughness, saves), and I want more conviction used for coolness (reroll attacks, checks, whatever).

[The Shadow]

You know... I've been saying for a while that the re-rolling aspect of Conviction is too good, and people hoard it too much as Plot Armor, just as you're saying, iwatt. And I've been thinking that maybe we need a whole new mechanism for rerolling, so that Conviction can be reserved for coolness, but haven't found anything satisfactory.

Have we just found it? Should time-based re-rolls *replace* Conviction re-rolls? Of course, that would probably mean that the other Time options would tend to get ignored too...

[elf23]

Have we just found it? Should time-based re-rolls *replace* Conviction re-rolls? Of course, that would probably mean that the other Time options would tend to get ignored too...

That would be a *really* nice trade off, i think - having to choose whether to save your Time points for re-rolls, whether to convert them to Conviction, or whether to spend them on things like Craft or gaining Wealth or Reputation. I don't think the other uses of Time would be ignored, they're equally useful in their different ways.

The only potential problem i can see with exclusively using Time for re-rolls is that it would probably make Heroes more vulnerable. Sure a scholar could reroll Knowledge checks, and a warrior could re-roll attacks, but how many characters could realistically say they'd been practicing their Toughness or Will saves? A few perhaps, but not most. And those are pretty fundamental uses for re-rolls, for characters of all types... It'd be really penalising non-warriors to basically not allow them to re-roll Toughness saves.

Maybe... Time could allow re-rolls for checks and attacks (where justifiable), Conviction allows re-rolls for saving throws (without justification)? That has a kind of sensible symmetry to it...

There's got to be a cap on Time Points. If not the PCs will become to cool. We could simply use 2 times the current Conviction Pool size for time points, and uncap Conviction. Given that there is no auto recovery, and players have to buy up their recovery checks with Time Points, it'll work well enough.

Yep, nice. I'd been thinking about somehow uncapping Conviction... This is really starting to make sense!

Conviction recovery: Could it work like a Wealth check, rather than a simple Difficulty 10 Recovery check? What i mean is that the Difficulty of the check is based on your current Conviction score. That would place a natural limit on Conviction without the need for a level-based cap. The more you have the harder it is to increase. When you've got very little it's easy to get it back.

Regarding the limit on Time points: A simple limit on the amount of Time points a Hero can earn or "store" makes sense. I guess it's one thing having 2 months of free time, but it's another thing to be able to use it all productively. (Sounds like Wis may come into play here, to determine how much Time a Hero can save up...?)

Also, there's a difference between spending and saving Time... We want Heroes to (sometimes) be able to *spend* big chunks of Time to earn Wealth or Reputation, to make Craft checks, and to recover from persistent conditions like injuries or diseases. But we don't want them to be able to *save* big chunks of Time to gain millions of re-rolls.

Hm, actually that's sounding like there are three levels going on:

• "Banked" or accumulated Time which can be saved up and used for long-term projects like Craft or profession checks.
• Fluid Time which can be retroactively applied and used for re-rolls and Conviction recovery.
• Conviction which can be used for save re-rolls and all sorts of other cool stuff.

Maybe that's getting too complicated though...