Cost of living and Create Food

[mburr0003]

Originally Posted by Dalin

Based on some of the numbers in Taverns, we ended up with food being the bulk of the $150 weekly cost of living. The breakdown was something like $30 for room, $100 for board, $5 for clothing, and $15 for miscellaneous expenses. One could adjust the numbers to fit with your sense of historical/fantasy verisimilitude, of course.

That's a terrible price for food and will immediately be gamed into "I save 58$ a week by buying and eating Trail Rations".

Preserve foods should be more expensive, no less. When I've broken things down for more "economics intensive" fantasy games I had meals costing roughly 1$/meal, just to keep preserved food as the "you buy this because it will last, not because it's cheap" fare.

[Dalin]

Originally Posted by mburr0003

That's a terrible price for food and will immediately be gamed into "I save 58$ a week by buying and eating Trail Rations".

Preserve foods should be more expensive, no less. When I've broken things down for more "economics intensive" fantasy games I had meals costing roughly 1$/meal, just to keep preserved food as the "you buy this because it will last, not because it's cheap" fare.

I agree that the prices are wonky. I haven't looked back into Taverns to see why its food numbers are so high. I was going with their cheapest options and assuming some sort of bulk discount. (Not buying in bulk, but being a regular customer.)

I must be spoiled by players who don't tend to "game" the cost of living system. Most of them spend more money whenever they get the chance on better lodgings, better food, etc. (This is across many dozens of players since DFRPG was published.) I have one group that pays a standing fee to keep a locked chest at an inn in town where they keep their fancier "town clothes," backup instrument for the bard, and other items that they don't want to bring on their adventures.

[martinl]

Originally Posted by mburr0003

That's a terrible price for food and will immediately be gamed into "I save 58$ a week by buying and eating Trail Rations".

Preserve foods should be more expensive, no less.

Compared to home prepped food, yes. Compared to tavern fare? Not so sure.

In any case, one of the weird side effects of a game focused on delving is you get lots of players optimizing everything their PC does for better delving, to the extent of living in a ditch and eating hardtack and bugs between delves where they make fat stax to edge out a few more coins to buy special arrows with or whatever.

If this sort of thing is fun for most or all of your players, why not let them eat the bugs? If it's not fun and just a joyless optimization exercise, just ask them to stop.

[mburr0003]

Originally Posted by martinl

If this sort of thing is fun for most or all of your players, why not let them eat the bugs? If it's not fun and just a joyless optimization exercise, just ask them to stop.

I don't know about "fun", but it seems to me it's done because it's "optimal" and there is nothing incentivizing doing anything else.

I had all the PCs doing that in one campaign and then in the next campaign where I imposed morale penalties for not "living a little", I had some PCs who were happy to get morale bonuses for living it up, some went for maximizing $$ by scrounging and either taking a few penalties or buying (very low cost) Advantages to ignore those penalties, and some who spent just enough to avoid penalties but not enough to get benes.

[Phil Masters]

"What, fish paste sandwiches again?"

[martinl]

Originally Posted by mburr0003

I don't know about "fun", but it seems to me it's done because it's "optimal" and there is nothing incentivizing doing anything else.

I consider "having fun" to be my primary incentive when playing a game, but of course many players compulsively optimize everything in reach even if they don't enjoy doing so. (If the players are enjoying the optimization, then that's great!)

I realize there is some onus on the game designer to make fun approaches to playing the game effective as well, but GURPS and DFRPG suffer from too much flexibility. When there are 89 accessible variables someone's gonna try something weird, and balance is overall impossible.

... I imposed morale penalties for not "living a little", I had some PCs who were happy to get morale bonuses for living it up, some went for maximizing $$ by scrounging and either taking a few penalties or buying (very low cost) Advantages to ignore those penalties, and some who spent just enough to avoid penalties but not enough to get benes.

You can also do something like that, of course. It seems clear that the players just moved on to a different optimization, but one that was more palatable to you.

[mburr0003]

Originally Posted by martinl

It seems clear that the players just moved on to a different optimization, but one that was more palatable to you.

I didn't care either way. I had Players grumbling that it wasn't "realistic"* to be constantly just eating trail rations with no effect, simply to optimize money. And since 2-3 Players were doing it to scrounge every cent, the other couple of Players (who'd have not bothered otherwise) did so as well so they wouldn't be slowly, by nickel and dime, left behind ont eh monetary curve.


* Magic, elf ears, who cares, but everyone has their verisimilitude levels at which point their suspenders of disbelief stop holding things up and give way. That was theirs.

[ravenfish]

If you need an excuse to keep min-maxers from living exclusively on trail rations, you could say that said rations don't have a complete nutritional profile, so that, while they can keep body and soul together for weeks or even months, using them as a sole nutritional source will eventually lead to scurvy or other such interesting problems, which can be avoided by occasionally partaking of more wholesome fare.

Another point is that, given how heavily Dungeon Fantasy leans into the tropes of the genre, quest hooks will frequently be given out in taverns, and I imagine that the owners frown on people hanging out there without occasionally buying something.

[Carlos]

Originally Posted by corwyn

Vigil, Spells pg 56. It's a Mind Control spell, PI 4. It's not cheap but it'll do the job.

Thanks. Being a Mind Control spell, it means the Wizard can have it as well.

[Dalin]

Originally Posted by Carlos

Thanks. Being a Mind Control spell, it means the Wizard can have it as well.

Alas, by RAW, it's only for clerics. If wizards could cast it, it would have a "Wizardly" prerequisite, even if only Magery 0.