Why isnt Wealth a Knight option?

[JMason]

I am NOT a fan of tracking things like points traded for wealth or buying off disads on the character sheet, or whatever. I'd rather know that a 200 point character has 200 points of capabilities rather than has 150 and bought success 50 times.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by JMason

I am NOT a fan of tracking things like points traded for wealth or buying off disads on the character sheet, or whatever. I'd rather know that a 200 point character has 200 points of capabilities rather than has 150 and bought success 50 times.

You don't have to add up everything on the character sheet if you don't want. Nothing prevents whatever you write in a "Point Total" blank from being something than the sum of everything written down elsewhere.

Indeed if a character has unspent points and you want it to be a measure of current capabilities it will presumably be that already - you don't want it to include unspent points, since they don't measure anything about ability, and the player will be recording them somewhere, since he doesn't want them to disappear.

If that sort of thing is meaningful to you, you can perfectly well run two totals - e.g. Points Spent and Current Value - if you like

[Kromm]

From the perspective of how the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game is designed, only persistent traits – attributes, secondary characteristics, advantages, disadvantages, quirks, skills, and spells – have their costs logged on character sheets and contribute to character point totals. Points spent for cash, to buy off disadvantages, etc. simply evaporate. On the other hand, traits added or removed by accidents, wishes, and so on are persistent and modify point totals. After a few adventures, a party of PCs will most likely end up at a range of point totals.

My advice to new GMs worried about tracking points is to do the following:

1. Keep all the character sheets. Distribute them at the start of each game session and collect them at the end.
2. Make all edits to character sheets (add earned points, move points from earned to whatever they're spent on, etc.). The players are free to spend points, but it's the GM who revises the records.

In 38 years of gaming, I've never not done things like this. Needless to say, it started to prevent player fudging and cheating back when we were all school kids, but nowadays it's just a way to avoid losing information.

[JMason]

Originally Posted by malloyd

You don't have to add up everything on the character sheet if you don't want. Nothing prevents whatever you write in a "Point Total" blank from being something than the sum of everything written down elsewhere.

Indeed if a character has unspent points and you want it to be a measure of current capabilities it will presumably be that already - you don't want it to include unspent points, since they don't measure anything about ability, and the player will be recording them somewhere, since he doesn't want them to disappear.

If that sort of thing is meaningful to you, you can perfectly well run two totals - e.g. Points Spent and Current Value - if you like

I'm not talking about unspent points. I'm just saying that I don't see the point in keeping track of "lost" character points that were spent on things other than standard character traits. It clutters up the character sheet and when I've had players do it in the past, I've had to clean up the character sheets.

To me there is no value in having "Points traded for $" on the character sheet. If wondering why Bob and Bill have two different point totals is an issue, then I'd have to start adding "Didn't show up for game" traits to "give" points to balance things out. That doesn't actually convey any information about the Character which is what the character sheet is there for. Lots of extraneous information is just noise.

[sir_pudding]

If you get your limb cut off (which happens to someone in like every campaign I have ever run) then your point total just drops. If you earn four points and Megan earns five, but you spend those four on a skill and she saves her five, then you will increase in value and she won't. If she shows up next game but you had to work late, and earns three points to your zero, then spends 15 points to get Combat Reflexes, then neither your points nor your unspent points are going to match. Keeping track of what you spent on non-permanent things seems like really pointless bookkeeping.

It is still slightly frustrating to me that GCA makes this extremely messy by incorrectly tracking points spent on cash as part of your total, but just expects those other points to vanish.

[LoneWolf23k]

The way I see it, the wealthy, landed knights aren't the ones going out and adventuring for fame and fortune. They're too busy managing their holdings.

The adventuring, dungeon-crawling knights? They're the fourth or fifth sons, the guys who aren't likely to inherit anything good, so they've set off to find their own fortunes. Or they're the ones starting from peasants who became some guy's squire, and just graduated into knighthood afterwards.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by LoneWolf23k

The way I see it, the wealthy, landed knights aren't the ones going out and adventuring for fame and fortune. They're too busy managing their holdings.

The adventuring, dungeon-crawling knights? They're the fourth or fifth sons, the guys who aren't likely to inherit anything good, so they've set off to find their own fortunes. Or they're the ones starting from peasants who became some guy's squire, and just graduated into knighthood afterwards.

Or are just militiamen or bravos or whatever, the template has nothing to do with formal institutions of chivalry.

[PK]

<MOD>

Originally Posted by Armin

Different groups undoubtedly have different needs. [...] But there's no need to derail this thread for this digression, I think.

That pretty much sums it up, I think.

The official way is (and always has been) that points spent on transitory things like money or buying success are lost, not tracked -- but any group who'd rather track them is absolutely free to do so. We won't even scowl. :)

So let's put an end to this "do you track it?" digression and return to the focus of knights, Wealth vs. trading points for cash, and obtaining equipment in general.

</MOD>