Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

It's a finite number of treasures with conceivably infinite variation in a few of the types. You just have to do what particle physicists do and renormalize. In this case, counting each gem as "1" instead of as "an infinite spectrum of gem values" works just peachy. Events where you get very high values are highly suppressed anyway, just like the obscure physical phenomena that physicists tend to write off; if you only have a 1/11019960576 chance of getting 17 times the value, you can pretty much call that "0" in safety.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

Practically, yes. Technically, no. The bit that makes treasures potentially infinite is that the table for gem size is open-ended. If you get a jeweled item, it is possible, albeit astronomically unlikely, that you can roll an infinite number of "bigger" results, so the gem in question keeps getting bigger and bigger.

It is assumed that the GM, confronted with a long string of "bigger" results, will exercise judgment and either examine the dice for tampering and say "screw this, it's worth a lot, let's move on."

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

If reading a PDF causes you rectal pain, maybe you're not using your computer properly ?

Sorry, I had to say it ;)

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

That, or you're overanalyzing.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

That said, a gem worth more than the rest of the setting combined is a very interesting plot point.

"Hey PCs! Yoo hoo! See this treasure? Isn't it shiny? I double dog dare you to get a reasonable deal on it.

Anyone capable of paying even 1% of it's value could squash you like a bug and take it.

After you've sold it, the buyer won't want it known they've bought it (for their own security), so there will almost certainly be doubt about the truth of the sale. Certain other folks who might want it will check if you have it 'just to be sure.' Some of them will check in unpleasant ways.

Go on. Find a buyer. I'll be waiting behind my screen, smirking evilly."

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

Both are countably infinite, IIUC. If one was uncountably infinite, it would be 'bigger,' for values of bigger that require advanced mathematics to define precisely.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

OK, I was really just showing that a simple mathematical argument, without sufficently well defined criteria can be used to prove whatever you really want.
Media statistics are my favourite abuses!

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

But that is not the case for two reasons. Even though there's no upper limit no item has an infinite value, and you don't have N items, but an infinity of items.

There is no mystery here, even though it's easy to get things wrong. With a d2 instead of a d6 in "my" game the values increase too fast, so the mean value goes to infinity. (Then you get the "St. Petersburg paradox".)

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

The minimum possible value of a log-normal distribution is 1/infinity higher than zero.

The maximum value is infinity.

And yet, it's quite possible to get the mode, mean, and median of this distribution, and those values are finite.

In a statistics program called Minitab, I just generated a normal distribution centered around 4 with a sigma of 1. Taking 10^[That number] gives a log normal distribution with an expected median of 10,000. In this case, the minimum was listed as "0," which is really "so small that the computer rounds it to zero," while the maximum is over 210 million.

Hrm. I suppose this means that a truly infinite population for this disty would have a median (10,000) but no average, since in theory you can generate an infinite upper bound, but a finite lower bound. Hrm.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

This actually comes up frequently in Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. By the time you hit level 20, you'll regularly find enchanted rings and armor and such that's worth $3,000 to $16,000. By comparison, the best vendor in the unmodded game has $2,000 in his wallet to offer. If you max out your Mercantile skill, it's possible to get this up to $3,000. Still pretty annoying when you go to sell your Ring of the Iron Fist for 10-20% of its value.

This can work just fine in any game, especially DF. Just decide what the best merchant has in his wallet, and it doesn't matter if the PCs find a $16,000 gemstone. Well, not unless one of them decided to buy Jeweler-25 so he can break it down into smaller ones without ruining anything. :)

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

The expected value of a single treasure is huge, I'll tell you that. For the reason, see the Dimensional Refuge, Arena on page 38. Worth 200 million, 1/72 chance of getting it if you roll an unusual item, and 1/27 chance of rolling an unusual item. So that alone pegs the expected value above $100,000.

Of course, if you actually get that jackpot, I don't know what you'd do with it. Nobody can afford to buy it, and what do adventurers need 20,000 square yards of pocket dimension for?

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

Except that it is sadly still impossible to actually buy it as a Christmas present (without hacking someone else's account anyway).

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

Open an extradimensional bar?

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

I've been to a few of those...

Or was it a normal bar that gained dimensions after a night of drinking gallons of BBC (Bluegrass Brewing Company) beer...

The world may never know...

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

I hear it's a great place to keep henchmen.

:>

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

I made up simple a spreadsheet to make it easier to add things up.

http://members.shaw.ca/hai-etlik/tmp...Calculator.ods

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

You mean like a sufficiently pimped mail shirt?

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

Just don't forget to feed them...

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

Damn, I took advantage of the boss being away this Thursday, and printed it out on the laser printer... Now I ask, will I have to do a full reprint? or will I have to reprint only the pages with errata?

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

You'll only need to reprint pages with fixes. We generally design our layouts so that (say) making tweaks on page 16 doesn't affect layout on page 17. There are occasional layout issues -- for example, if an entire huge table were missing -- where we'd have to do more extensive rejiggering... but none of the quirks found so far has remotely reached that level of reworking.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

That's good. Now, I'll probably need to wait until the boss is away again to print them, so no hurry. Will the errata page list the changed pages? I haven't been looking at the errata pages of e23 publications...

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

Well, I can accept some sillyness and cheesiness as GURPS rarely makes anything serious. But I feel that this product seems to have some care that other DF products lack. I think that if all of the items were silly and corny I would not have liked it. But there was enough cool things to offset the few silly parts. Anyway, I love pseudohistorical stuff because it creates an atmosphere that I like. So for what it is worth, I enjoyed this book a lot. Also, I do love the idea of horror but it isn't always necessary if the game is kept somewhat serious.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

Yes, the system that brought us such laugh riots as Madlands, Cabal, Project Sandman, Roma Arcana and WWII. Not to mention just being a system grounded primarily in realism.

On Topic (at least sort of):
All this talk of presents, any thoughts on how one might give Treasure Tables away as Christmas gift, without completely ruining the surprise or just giving money?

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

Well, I've got to say that Space is quite loaded with little jokes.

Hadn't really noticed that in anything else except DF and Action, which obviously don't take themselves very seriously.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

Good answer! Thxs.

I'm almost taking comments as these as personal, in some way . . . LOL

Hm. I can't find the post you're speaking off, and I would like to see it: tons of Rev's posts for scanning and the search function isn't working for me! Just out of curiosity.

Anyone of you remembers the title of the thread in which it was posted?

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

Not if you only do it for any Dungeon Fantasy Beastiary product, but not for any more general Fantasy Beastiary product.

The choices of quotes from external sources in various of the GURPS books often crack me up. Space is no exception to this.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

Space also repeatedly references making RPGs as one of the accomplishments of intelligent life. And I don't think that's the only example...

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

Yeah, but what is the line between the two sorts of products?

Both lines need dragons, for instance, but how is that need to be filled? Having a GURPS Fantasy Dragons and a separate GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Dragons would involve a lot of duplication.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

Space is a genre book, it is certainly possible to play serious games with it. The bibliography isn't loaded with silly books. I think that b-dog has a very different definition of "serious" and "silly" than most of us do.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

Because that kind of blurriness a number of GURPS Fantasy campaigns are actually "hybrids": GURPS Fantasy / Dungeon Fantasy.

I'm saying this even if I personally dislike a label as "hybrid" here.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

Found it here. The Heavenly Mountain Blade:

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread...205#post882205

Poorly, I'm sure, but only due to the incredibly small screen. I have most of the GURPS PDFs stored on the MicroSDHC card in my Blackberry, for emergencies, but by the time you zoom in enough to be able to read the text without squinting, you can only fit a tiny chunk of it on your screen.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

How do I calculate the price of shoes of silence? That is, a pair of shoes with mage-stealth that is always on.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

Well, right, which is exactly the sort of thing that makes this tricky. It seems natural for a fantasy bestiary to serve each kind of campaign, since they overlap so much.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

I understand. Likely the result is similar, even if the Blackberry screen is, I think, a bit smaller than the iPhone one. Now, there are several models of Blackberry . . .

Thxs for your answers. I'll check The Heavenly Mountain Blade thread.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

"Geez, this dragon hoard is huge. There must be tons of stuff here. We'll never get it all out. We'll need to hire a caravan or something, with lots of guards, and then guards to guard the guards."

"Hang on, guys, I've got something for this."

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

I can't imagine an adventuring group who WOULDN'T want 20,000 square yards worth of pocket dimension.

What are the stats on that thing, anyway?

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

Thrown them a bag of Hench Chow every now and then and change the bedding once a week.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

"Always on" isn't a legal option for the Mage-Stealth enchantment. However, it's 3 to cast and 2 to maintain, so shoes with that enchantment and a couple points of power can effectively be always on.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

It's a portable door and frame. It weighs 70 pounds. Inside, there's 20,000 square yards. If the door is destroyed, the space is cut off.
...For when you just couldn't make do with 100, or even 1000 square yards of portable closet?

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

How are the e-paper based pdf readers for GURPS books at the moment, anyway?

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

Does DF give rules for calculating the cost? GURPS Magic lists the energy cost, but gives different alternatives for pricing.

I'm not clear on how to price a pair of shoes that automatically inflict Mage-Stealth on the user when worn.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

See DF1. Using the energy costs in GURPS Magic, DF sets the prices at $1 per point of energy required up to 100, $100 per point thereafter.

That's because, as I say, that's not an option for Mage-Stealth. If you look at the spell description, there's no "always on" variant, as there is for some other spells. If there's no listing for it in Magic, there's no rule in DF. You'll have to make something up.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

According to DF8 Shoes with Power 3 and Mage Stealth come to $50,040.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

I missed that! Thanks!

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

Nope, it sets it at $20/Energy Point for items that cost 100+ energy (Items that cost 100 energy are handled inconsistently, look at Lighten and Deflect, for example)

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

Here's what I'm finding on page 30 of DF 1

"Costs assume that enchanted items up to 100 energy points are Quick and Dirty
($1/point), that more powerful artifacts are second-hand Slow and Sure items ($20/point), and that alchemical amulets are rare
($66/day, plus ingredients)."

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

There's an on-going thread about ebook-readers over in the e23 forum, where those of us interested in the subject post sporadically.

(There's something called a Que, that'll come out next year, and the specs will be published January 7th, so I'm sitting here with fingers crossed, hoping it'll be able to do what is needed.)

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables
 

Okay, so you guys (several of you) have proven that "Bane"-type weapons can be generated with the random system, and that there are rules to derive the monetary cost of "Bane"-type Enchantments on weapons (they are 1/4 the cost of a regular "vs All"-type Enchantment).

It still isn't clear to me that "Bane"-type weapons will emerge from the random system with any noticable frequency. My impression is that they roll up only extremely rarely, relative to Enchanted weapons with Bane-type restrictions.

Is my impression wrong?