Right, I get that, having read about it. I just decided for my games that gold of various physical sizes would be the potential currency of the wealthy and powerful. It made for tempting targets for the player characters in what is now known as grim darker lower fantasy campaigns I tended to run.
1) That is a stupid problem to solve for coins.
Because humans are still described as humans. Therefore in absence of a stated change you should be expect things to work as they would in life. People are not going to take gold to use as money and manufacture huge ass coins out of it. They are going to make coins of convenient size of a small but convenient value. This behavior is not an artifact of a specific time or culture but crops everywhere anytime something like coins are introduced.
It was worse than that.
robertsconley also looks to Harn for prices...
I haven no issue with that, it is a game. An abstract game not a simulation game. The rules on doors and torches and only monsters (not hirelings and henchmen) seeing in the dark reinforces genre, it is only an issue if you try to make the abstract game into something it isn’t.
Fenris-77 . Lest anyone think I’ve got it out for
robertsconley i don’t, I own a bunch of his products in print and pdf and backed his kickstarter. That said I’m going to be honest on what I think. Luckily I’m off to bed so you won’t have to read my nonsense the rest of the night.
That was not my point. Reread my post.
Except the point isn't to play a game but to roleplay a character. That is what made that early campaigns so compelling and still makes TTRPGs compelling. Deciding to make a fantasy setting where guns are fired using squirrel farts is unusual but given the other fantastic elements is par for the course. But saying that 10 gold coins weigh a pound is more jarring. That one big coin. It could be just another unusual decision for a setting, but it coupled with a creative decision that I feel unnecessarily jerks the players around.
If I think a creative decision is baloney I will say so. D&D has a lot of strong points, but the whole 10 coins = 1lbs is not one of them.
It all good on my end, we are debating game stuff.And that is your right
That's fine I guess. I just get annoyed by some of the settings out there which come up with extremely contrived reasons to make guns rare for no good reason.
This is something I noticed about my players (one more than the rest, but they all do it to some extent). They say they want to play a game in genre X, 'like film Y', and then they go and make these huge equipment lists, and they get into the adventure and proceed to make these careful plans, etc., and do absolutely everything to remove any chance of being surprised, having anything go wrong, etc. But... almost none of their reference material has characters that do anything like that. Movie characters, and even most book heroes travel fairly light, and outside of heist movies they don't plan a great deal. Besides, surely half the fun is in improvising with what you've got when something unexpected happens?
As I recall, later editions went to 50 coins/lb, which is still excessive. Worlds Without Number uses 100 coins to the encumbrance point (you get your Strength worth in your pack, plus half that in readied gear), and silver is the primary coin, not gold. Even so, a decent treasure rapidly becomes an issue.
The original was 240 silver pennies to the pound, both in weight and in value. Of course, different places had different weights, so even without kings trying to pay of debt using dodgy coins, one penny was often not like another.
That’s an interesting year. Looks like England was planning to stock up defenses for all the land they just got in the Treaty of London.
Believe they were made for a campaign in France in 1359/1360.That’s an interesting year. Looks like England was planning to stock up defenses for all the land they just got in the Treaty of London.
Got most of my stuff from reading through the Calendar of Close Rolls. Only have gotten through 5 of the 27 though.
I do love infravision (IR vision), but it is a far, far cry from seeing in the dark. I love sense outside our normal spectrum and then grounding them solidly in what they can or cannot do.
I always had an issue with all monsters have IR vision, unless they are friends of the PCs then they don't. Too much DM fiat to nerf the players, smells of an unbalanced game where the DM gave monsters a huge bonus but when the players figured out a way to use, perhaps they charmed a monster, the DM threw logical consistency out the window because "reasons". The reason being they lacked enough mental ability to deal with this "huge" player advantage despite controlling every other little thing about the world. Not sure how you can have "superior play" when the game world lacks such basic consistency (that is can you see in the IR or not, it's a yes or no question, not an it depends on your social relationship with a PC).
Nope, not worth fiddling with. If there isn’t ambient illumination the PCs need a torch or other light source. Tolkien’s dwarves couldn’t see in the dark so no reason any others can. Demi and semi humans get plenty of other perks so they aren’t losing much but now the darkness in the game will matter.
I worked on sensor systems for a time, not really work for me and Iike the nuances. It's not any more fiddly for me than adjudicating what players can see with our gold old visual spectrum.
I can understand that point of view but honestly I’m not going for “superior play” whatever that is, care to define the phrase? I’m looking to have a fun time with my friends and prefer to basically play the rules as written. If I don’t like the rules I’ll play a different game. My preference for most online play, the only way I get to play anymore, would be something Like Barbarians of Lemuria over OD&D on the rare occasions I run fantasy. I normally run other genres where these kinds of things don’t come up.
How I feel about 10 gp = 1lb.
I find that rule systems are not binary. Some things are easily tweaked, and others are not. For example, 10gp = 1lb is an easy tweak that doesn't change D&D into something else. Coming up with a new list of power exceptions to make D&D 4e not feel like fantasy superheroes 24/7. I will play something else instead.
Yeah I never got on that bandwagon, even in junior high could do the math to figure out how much a coin of a certain size weighed, and we just went with that. IIRC those be some big coins if 10 = 1lb.
I'm not sure what youre getting at. Many OSR games do away with night vision as well as silly encumberance rules. I dont need a new game for either ofbthose things (a new game thats going to have its own issues anyway).
I treat it basically the way I do encumbrance. I don't track until it is obviously an issue. Even then, the group and I will figure out a rough number, and the group can figure out the best mix of porters, mules, or wagons to haul things with.
