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Old 11-28-2018, 07:30 AM   #21
Shadekeep
 
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Default Re: Communicating on Cidri

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Originally Posted by RobW View Post
Sure. But one thing that I find interesting is how some of the picayune fiscal details, if thought through, sometimes have enormous social and political implications. Similar to how cheap technology radically changes our present circumstances, but maybe even more so.
Oh I get that, and I do like to do a detailed dive in order to tease out these small changes with huge effects. Just as a tiny variant in a chaos mathematics calculation can utterly alter the final product.

My comment was meant more along the lines of "I don't really care about rule lawyering and gamer-like exploits of the system", because I am a smart enough GM to patch those as they arise (like with my backfilled justification about scribes and magic). Nor do I care for people assuming their interpretation of the rules or game world are somehow canonical. I don't mind a healthy give-and-take discussion, but otherwise I can't be bothered.

EDIT: And apologies for sounding snippy in the above. I've had a lot of demands on my pool of tolerance and patience lately.

Last edited by Shadekeep; 11-28-2018 at 08:07 AM.
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Old 11-28-2018, 09:53 AM   #22
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Default Re: Communicating on Cidri

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IQ 13 talent: Sense Emotion(2): Prerequisite: Detect Lies. Using the same procedure and roll sense the target's emotional state. On a critical success the GM should offer some additional hints. For example it's not that the target is nervous in general, but he's nervous about something that might happen or appear from a specific direction.
I think that (unbeknownst to many males) female humans tend to have this by default, in exchange for a point or two effective muscle ST and body weight. I don't think there is a minimum IQ, but rather a natural reduced effect when you have low IQ. The IQ of the target is only relevant if they both have enough awareness of their own body language and are trying to conceal it.


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Originally Posted by The Wyzard View Post
ISTR that long distance teleport has a non-negligible chance of killing the traveler. Igor might ask for a premium for that trip.
It does, which is why they didn't tell Igor about that. ;-) However there's also a chance he'll get sent somewhere else, and might eventually learn about it, and be mad at them about it.


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Overland flight is surprisingly generous, IIRC. Gargoyles who were willing to take employment as postal officers might be well compensated, and have safe passage medallions. Interference with them by those seeking gallbladders might invite the wrath of the king, since interfering with the post or messengers generally has been seen as a serious breach of the law in many times and places.
Magic carpet couriers were/are a (rare) thing in our Cidri campaigns.


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That's easy.

Once every 216 crossings you have a gate instability that requires an IQ 15 wizard with a 50 point powerstone standing by. (Given that the rental on that powerstone is $750 a week and mana doesn't exist, we must use raw wizard power here.)

Therefore you need two wizards and eight apprentices. That's $700/wk to handle one event every other hour. That's 100 crossings an hour, 800 per day, 4000 per week.

Gate fare is no more than $1. (Wizards are cheap and plentiful.)

And obviously there is some gate stability enchantment that's not listed.
How easy that is depends on how available wizards with Gate spells and powerstones (or groups of ready apprentices) are, and how ready they actually are.

And if you don't shut down your gates until a gate wizard is available and your stones/apprentices are recharged enough, then you either need a redundant team, or you risk losing the gate.

I don't know what you mean by "mana doesn't exist" or where you get your rental rates.

We tended to assume that most guild chapters did not have infinite access to wizards with Gate spells who were willing to be on call all day long, nor ST 50 powerstones, and so there was a fairly limited number of gates available and they did sometimes break down and need to send a Gate wizard to the desired destination, or more commonly, just wait until such a wizard actually had other reasons to go someplace and there was ST available there to set up the other end of the gate.

And I still tend to like/prefer that situation to assumptions that guilds will very often have set up impressive gate networks with redundancy and gate repair teams and that therefore distances will start to be often immaterial and gate use fees can be cheap.

The main loophole I tend to want to close with a house rule is the ability to set up several gates from A to B when you have one, and then make sure you always have a backup and use the backup to reestablish a redundant gate.
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Old 11-28-2018, 10:07 AM   #23
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Default Re: Communicating on Cidri

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The main loophole I tend to want to close with a house rule is the ability to set up several gates from A to B when you have one, and then make sure you always have a backup and use the backup to reestablish a redundant gate.
Simple. Just rule that paired gates that have both ends of both pairs within a mile of the other pair suffer from Hawking quantum foam feedback collapse.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/mos...e-machine.html

Or to make it easier to account for: When stepping out of a gate roll 6 dice, if all of the numbers rolled are 6s then the gate starts to collapse. Subtract one die from the dice to be rolled for all sixes for each other gate opening within a mile of the opening you just stepped out of.
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Old 11-28-2018, 11:30 AM   #24
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Default Re: Communicating on Cidri

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Simple. Just rule that paired gates that have both ends of both pairs within a mile of the other pair suffer from Hawking quantum foam feedback collapse.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/mos...e-machine.html

Or to make it easier to account for: When stepping out of a gate roll 6 dice, if all of the numbers rolled are 6s then the gate starts to collapse. Subtract one die from the dice to be rolled for all sixes for each other gate opening within a mile of the opening you just stepped out of.
Naturally there are many ways to house rule a reason redundant gates aren't practical. That should probably be in the House Rules thread, so I'll continue this thread there...
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Old 11-28-2018, 06:09 PM   #25
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Default Re: Communicating on Cidri

Going on a tangent again, but the main issue I have with rule exploits is that they would not function or scale in reality, or indeed in game reality. The structure of the game world is what is it, in part because there is something keeping those exploits from functioning. Otherwise smarter people would have discovered them earlier and the game world would be a different place. If wishes were truly easy to get, the world would already function on a wish-based paradigm. If all the other exploits discussed here and in other threads truly worked, they'd already be the standard in the world. They aren't, so the logical conclusion is that they don't work like (impersonal) you think they do.

The game world of Cidri is an inefficient place where most people have scant options and must take the most basic and simplistic course of action, regardless of what options lie in the hands of the few and powerful. If there was some simple way of making things otherwise, it would have already happened. Either that or some shadowy cabal has a vested interest in keeping the world the way it is. Which could make for an interesting campaign setting.
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Old 11-28-2018, 06:23 PM   #26
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Default Re: Communicating on Cidri

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The game world of Cidri is an inefficient place where most people have scant options and must take the most basic and simplistic course of action, regardless of what options lie in the hands of the few and powerful. If there was some simple way of making things otherwise, it would have already happened. Either that or some shadowy cabal has a vested interest in keeping the world the way it is. Which could make for an interesting campaign setting.
Page 173: "Even villages may acquire temporary Gates after harvest, if there is a city in urgent need of their products. Once the
urgency is over, these Gates are not usually worth maintaining, but there will always be a few around."

And there is a very powerful group with a high priority need for free flows of commerce that's willing to buy off the local greedy rulers in order to keep the trade flowing. They're called the Wizard's Guild. (Get them drunk enough and they'll admit that their number one priority is that the spice must flow.) These are the guys who ensure that long distance travel on Cidri is quicker, cheaper and safer than on 21st Century Earth.
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Old 11-28-2018, 06:43 PM   #27
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Default Re: Communicating on Cidri

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The game world of Cidri is an inefficient place where most people have scant options and must take the most basic and simplistic course of action, regardless of what options lie in the hands of the few and powerful.
Most of us who are beginning to campaign again after many, many years are not rich nobles or powerful wizards. My communication goals are often in getting a message to a friend or acquaintance who is one or two villages away. My character may not be literate so he needs to find a scribe who can write the letter for him, and then find a merchant or other traveller going that way to carry it. The cost would probably be a few silvers. The delivery time could be a few days or weeks. Good old fashion snail mail.
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Old 11-28-2018, 07:02 PM   #28
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Default Re: Communicating on Cidri

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And there is a very powerful group with a high priority need for free flows of commerce that's willing to buy off the local greedy rulers in order to keep the trade flowing. They're called the Wizard's Guild. (Get them drunk enough and they'll admit that their number one priority is that the spice must flow.) These are the guys who ensure that long distance travel on Cidri is quicker, cheaper and safer than on 21st Century Earth.
But why would the Wizard's Guild care about trade? And TBH, I'm not convinced that gates are reliable enough to be the primary conduit for trade.
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Old 11-28-2018, 07:16 PM   #29
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Default Re: Communicating on Cidri

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But why would the Wizard's Guild care about trade? And TBH, I'm not convinced that gates are reliable enough to be the primary conduit for trade.
As a great and terrible wizard once said "Only I can live forever." If you keep more than a few dragons chained up under your city they'll start calling you "the mother of dragons".

Wizards need only time and ingredients. Trade gives them both of those.
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Old 11-29-2018, 06:51 AM   #30
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Default Re: Communicating on Cidri

One further clarification to my earlier comments. When I say that exploits don't scale, I mean that what works for an individual does not necessarily work for a society as a whole. For example, a person might survive on Cidri as a thief, but if everyone was a thief then civilisation would collapse and most people would probably soon be starving or dead. Exploits are the same. An individual character might be able to get away with a loophole (player characters are special people in RPGs anyway), but that doesn't mean it scales up to the level of a civilisation.

I think if one wants to allow exploits and rule lawyering that's fine for them. But they should apply it across the board. NPCs should have tons of cheap wishes to call on just as players do. They should also be able to use the exploits just as much as players. And then see how enjoyable the game is.

Finding fun consequences in the way rules are structured is cool, and can lead to some interesting game ideas. When it turns into trainspotting-style assburger's syndrome it just misses the point of the game.
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