I ended up posting this erroneously in another area, so if you've read it already, this is the place to reply. Sorry.
I’m partly curious if 3x uses this concept or if it’s been phased completely out. Either way, though, I’m looking to get your opinions on whether I should use it or not. Since I’m just starting a brand new homebrew and haven’t had to invoke it yet, I can kill it before it becomes an issue.
According to old 2e rules, the adventures are supposed to be high profile They live a certain lifestyle that requires they flaunt themselves. Kind of like a “High Rollers” or even “Whales” in Las Vegas, they are supposed to make their wealth and success obvious.
To simulate this, the characters are required to cough up a “maintenance” expense equal to 100GP per level every month. Thus, a 5th level character (regardless of race or class) must spend 500GP every month for lifestyle “maintenance”. This provides for good rooms, good meals, horse stabling and care, basic (non-magical) equipment repair/replacement, guild dues, etc. Anything else the character spends is considered extra so bribes, tips, tithes, alms and the like are all paid for differently.
In a way this provides the characters excellent incentive to go out and do their thing; to do what it takes to get enough money to support their hedonistic ways. Characters failing to provide this monthly fee are generally considered failures as “adventurers” and players are recommended to “retire” that character out of play. This is not required, by the way, just recommended. I don’t really plan on enforcing that part. What I do like, though, is that pressure incentive to go and do.
Since I’m not running any real plots, just letting character history provide me with grist for the mill, this early pressure to take the odd jobs or do the strange work necessary to get the cash, I’m sure they’ll get involved with things that will churn things up really well. But….do you guys think this is a “good” thing. Have you ever used it or anything like it…would you consider using it if it were part of your game rules (RAW or house), and can you see any obvious flaws that I might be missing?
Take your best shots, please…no mercy…’cause I really wanna know if this is something I want to entangle myself in. I’ve never used it before, always preferring to “edit it out” for streamlining purposes, but since I’m bending back to a much older style for this setting, I’m willing to go with it if I can. Whadda ya think?
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I don't think I remember seeing it in the rules anywhere. It is in the rules of Skull and Bones.
Pirates were legendary about this kind of thing--giving a prostitute ungodly amounts of money,...buying a gigantic cask of wine, rolling it out into the street, and demanding everyone traveling past to drink with them or stand and deliver....
So I think it's authentic to make people who might probably die (esp. if Allen Stewart is dm) the next time down a dungeon hole waste all their money.
Page 130 of the DMG (3.5) has a sidebar variant for Upkeep on it.
In D&D, as in M:tG, upkeeps are more trouble than they're worth. Unless one of my players goes out of his way to buy a mansion with oodles of servants and costly art works to show off to other nobility, I tend to handwave the cost of living. If the game has a lot of downtime, I'll require X gold per month or year, including whatever luxuries each character would have in addition to the basic stuff. I myself play D&D to tell stories and adventure, not to balance a check book.
TS
I ended up posting this erroneously in another area, so if you've read it already, this is the place to reply. Sorry.
And I saw this place a little bit too late...
here is my replyStefan
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I've not required my players to deal with "upkeep", even during downtime. The basic thought behind this is that the PCs can pull in extra revenue in periods of downtime either via the Profession skill or utilization of other skills. The thought is they would be able to keep themselves fed, clothed, and sheltered but not get rich.
If, however, a player decides to purchase a house, estate, etc, then yes, I do require a monthly expenditure (servants will not stick around for free after all ... and the local nobility will not casually overlook tithes and whatnot).
As to the PCs being "required" to be high rollers, I do not hold to this at all. Some PCs would be more drawn to keeping themselves out of the public limelight.
I ended up posting this erroneously in another area, so if you've read it already, this is the place to reply. Sorry.
And I saw this place a little bit too late...
here is my replyStefan
If we are to make this thread the main one for this topic you should cut and paste your response here. Especially considering how thought provoking a response it is.
I've never really worried about upkeep type situations; if it looks like my players will be residing in an area for an extended period of time (e.g., they've now been in Hommlet (T1-4) for around 2 calendar months), I find ways for them to earn their keep without having to worry about "OK, time to re-up your room rental for another week, that'll be..." and so on.
While it may create an air of entitlement in the short term, I think it'll develop into creating some interesting role playing situations in the future.
Having said all of this, had I realised that there'd be a 1 month layoff in gaming, I'd have come up with something to lighten their purses somewhat...just to maybe motivate things.
Oh well...20 years on and still learning...
If we are to make this thread the main one for this topic you should cut and paste your response here. Especially considering how thought provoking a response it is.
You are right, so here it is: (although I would not have thought of it as that thought provoking.)
I think this rule about upkeep owes its existence to the old 1gp = 1xp equation. If you need thousands of gp to reach a decent level, what do you do with all that money? In the older editions, buying and selling of magic items was not part of the game, and standard equipment? All you could ever need was covered with, say, 5000 gp or so. So, some way was needed to part the PC and his money, thus this upkeep rule was invented. (I guess)
And, honestly, if an adventuring party spent 500 gp per head and month, they will pretty much own a village within half a year or so. To me, it seems as a rather heavy-handed approach to steal the treasure from the PCs.
I would recommend not giving out so much gp treasure, so you don´t have to siphon it away again.
Upkeep is surely something to be considered, and IIRC, the LIving Greyhawk Campaign has some rules (mainly costs) on it. But to make it dependant on the level does not make sense to me - especially if you consider a paladin or a monk. A Paladin isn´t even allowed to keep more money than absolutely necessary, and according to 1e PH, a good meal costs 1 gp. So even a truly high-end lifestyle would cost perhaps 100 gp per month or so, regardless of level. I see the idea behind that - if a hero suddenly plays Scrooge, that´s not very heroic and will lead to more than a few raised eyebrows, but to enforce it the way you wrote seems wrong to me.
Oh, and: I seem to remember some article in dragon about parting PCs and their money - try searching the dragondex for treasure or money.
Stefan
As has been aid before, 3.x does indeed have this rule (or a version thereof) as a "variant" in the DMG, meaning that it's not core rules, but thrown out there for your consideration and possible inclusion in a game if you like it. I suppose all rules are like that, but by specifically labelling it a varient, they reinforce the notion that it doesn't have to be used.
And it isn't. I can't think of one time I've brought it up or heard of anyone else bringing it up. Now, that's not to say that I don't like the idea. It's just one more thing to keep track of, and invariably gets forgotten.
You know what would be great? A DM calendar tool. You could plug in days for plot events to occur (the war in the neighboring kingdom starts on this day), as well as minor player-centric notes (Garthath the Bloody's birthday is on Tuesday; he will be 25), along with weather generation rolls. It could also show item creation (you'll be making that item through the 15th), and take care of monthly "upkeep" costs (plug in the level of upkeep and it just generates the sum).
"The Adventurer's Blackberry." If it's not out there, someone needs to make it.
Oh, and as an afterthought, the upkeep amount is divided into categories from subsitance farming levels to great extravagance (that's not the real names, I just can't remember them). There's no recommended guidelines about when the party is likely to fall into each category, that's left to DM's discretion. However, I think the highest it goes is 200gp per month, and that's for the whole party.
They did have something like that in the 1e. oriental adventures; daily/weekly/monthly/annual random events tables.
Anything from war to hurricane to "a beautiful noble lady is visiting the local daimyo; samurai from all over the province appear to try and woo her."
I'm not talking about another table to roll on, but rather software that will keep track of it for you. That would be great!
A DM calendar tool… "The Adventurer's Blackberry."
I don’t know if anything like that exists yet, but your idea prompted me to think that it might be do-able using Windows Scheduler, or whatever it's called. This would require using real world standard calendars in one's game world instead of an alternate calendar system, but lots of things could be plotted in ahead of time and kept as a minimized window on the desktop as you play, along with whatever else you’ve got going. I think I’ll tinker with this idea see what I can come up with.
Come to think of it, to detail a non-standard calendar, just use Excel and spread-sheet the design. That way you get what you want in a format you can use...hmmm....more work...lol
Ok, a little work and extra thought have yielded some of the following results.
Windows Task Scheduler and other related software are not at all friendly to this activity without hashing your system. Avoid this idea.
In Word, the Calendar template is usable, but limits you strictly to real-world calendaring. Not friendly to modification, unless you can read Korean or some such.
On-line calendar alternatives are little better than the Word template that already exists. Again, real-world stuff only, so no real improvement despite “spiffier” looks.
My best suggestion at this point is use either Excel and plot out the Row/Column sizes to fit your needs, or use Word and create Tables that would work effectively the same as the Excel cells. Either way, you can set the number of days per week, weeks per month, months per year all to your taste, name the months as you wish, place markers to indicate full-moon and no-moon cycles, the beginnings of solstices and equinoxes, and any other information however important or trivial you choose.
As usual, since someone else hasn’t produced a professionally constructed one, it requires the DM to do more manual labor, but that’s been our lot for a long time anyway, so what’s new…?
Hope this helps on that issue...
You know what would be great? A DM calendar tool.
Hmm...*plots plans plots*