How to Asset

[Temi]

Assets are something which is purchased to represent where a character's offscreen income is coming from. You buy it once and then you can get money from it every week. You flesh out the details with a description that helps you solidify how to include it in RP.

City Metrics

The amount of money that you get from your assets every week varies based on the current situations in the city. This status is represented by city metrics: Lawfulness, Morale, Piety, Economics, Health, Infrastructure and Class and Race Relations. They can be viewed with city report. These are updated on a regular two-week cycle based on the influence of guildleaders, nobility and others using influence points. In addition to appealing to these power-players, others may also be able to affect change through plots.

Every asset has a metric attached to it, which can be either positive or inverted. If the metric is positive, this means that people with that asset make more money when the metric is high. If it is negative, then the asset provides more money when the metric is low. A negative metric doesn't necessarily mean that the asset is bad, just that it is in higher demand or circumstances are more favorable to it when the metric is low.

Templates

Templates define the metric and scale of an asset. They also provide the theme for the RP around the asset. The theme should be considered an inspiration, not a strict contract, but the deviations should be of approximately the same size.

One recommended option is starting with the RP idea and looking at it from a flexible viewpoint. For example, perhaps you have been a florist in your backstory. You could select gardening_job as a template, and then maybe you care for the flowers along the streets of the city. You could select death_business to provide a lot of flowers for funerals, or comforts_shop to sell flowers to cheer people up. Perhaps an entertainment_shop to provide the floral decorations for celebrations, or a lowclass_shop or highclass_shop to gear your clientele towards one or the other. There are a lot of options for this one concept, and selecting the template can help you to define more details and understand how the state of the city might affect the asset.

It's also a completely valid option to start at the list of available templates and see what inspires you. From there you can fill out more details and define an aspect of your character which should help to flesh out their RP.

The available templates are limited. Templates are flagged with allowable classes, as not all assets would make sense for all classes. There are also limitations on the metrics that will be available, so that they are somewhat evenly spread across the different metrics. Any metric which represents too large of a chunk of the current assets will not allow any new assets from its templates. If the template is listed when you are creating the asset, it's available and you can use it.

How Many Assets Can I Have?

Assets are limited based on class. Freemen can have a maximum of two assets at a time, while gentry and nobility can have a maximum of three assets.

Additionally, there is a limit to the number of levels of assets. Levels determine how extensive an asset is and how much money they can make. A level one asset is generally little involvement and responsibility - wages for a job, a benefactor who gives the character money. A level two asset will often require hands-on ownership or decision-making responsibilities, maybe some employees. A level three asset is extensive and will require a number of employees.

Freemen can have three total levels of assets. So, they can have a level one asset and a level two, or two level ones, but not two level twos. Gentry and nobility can have a total of six levels of assets. That is a level one, level two and level three, or three level twos. Additionally, no one needs to fill up all of their assets. You should always take only what makes sense for your RP.

Creating Assets

Creating an asset is pretty simple. It uses the asset create command which enters you into the asset polca. If you use ? type you will see all of the templates which are currently available. Then, use type <template> to select a template. This will automatically fill in most of the details in the polca and allow you to see more details, like the expected income. Then you can use name <descriptive name> and description to personalize them for your character.

Let's walk through it.

We'll start the polca: asset create

That gives us:

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                             Asset Purchase

Owner      : Temi
Asset Name : (null)
Description: (null)
Type       : Unset
Class      : Unknown
Income     : No template set
City Metric: Unknown
XP Cost    : 0
Resalable  : Unknown
Active     : yes
Benefits   :
   No template chosen.

Type 'purchase' to create this asset or type 'cancel' to abort.

Let's decide what template to use first. Let's look at the available options: ? type

We get a list which includes:

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art_sales            Morale
luxuries_shop        Economics
threatened_benefacto Lawfulness
book_sales           Piety

I like the sound of book_sales, so I'm going to pick that: type book_sales

This updates most of the fields for me, which I'll see the next time I hit enter:

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                             Asset Purchase

Owner      : Temi
Asset Name : (null)
Description: (null)
Type       : book_sales
Type Desc  : Commissions or intermittent payments for the sale of literature or other
written works, or occupation in arranging the same for others. 

Class      : Freeman Gentry Nobility
Income     : 50
City Metric: Piety
XP Cost    : 0
Resalable  : NO
Active     : yes
Benefits   :
   Level 1 silver - 50 silver per week unmodified

Type 'purchase' to create this asset or type 'cancel' to abort.

This is a level 1 template so it has no cost. I will make approximately 50 silver per OOC week. All I need is add my own spin. Let's set the name: name The Asset Guidebook

Now description puts me into an editor: description

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                -=======- Entering APPEND Mode -========-
                    Type @h on a new line for help
                Type @x on a new line to close the editor.
                -=======================================-
>  
Temi Jewel wrote a book on how to work with assets.  It has all sorts of useful advice on purchasing and owning assets.  She has made a deal with a scribe at the Grand Library named Francis Green.  He can copy the book and sell copies, and she gets a share of the proceeds without having to do any additional work.
> 
@f
String formatted.
> 
@x

Now let's take a final look at it:

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                             Asset Purchase

Owner      : Temi
Asset Name : The Asset Guidebook
Description: Temi Jewel wrote a book on how to work with assets.  It has all sorts of
useful advice on purchasing and owning assets.  She has made a deal with a
scribe at the Grand Library named Francis Green.  He can copy the book and
sell copies, and she gets a share of the proceeds without having to do any
additional work. 

Type       : book_sales
Type Desc  : Commissions or intermittent payments for the sale of literature or other
written works, or occupation in arranging the same for others. 

Class      : Freeman Gentry Nobility
Income     : 50
City Metric: Piety
XP Cost    : 0
Resalable  : NO
Active     : yes
Benefits   :
   Level 1 silver - 50 silver per week unmodified

Type 'purchase' to create this asset or type 'cancel' to abort.

Looks good! Now we just use purchase and it's mine:

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Asset The Asset Guidebook has been created and added to the system.

I can see it there now in asset list:

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  1) The Asset Guidebook

And that's the purchasing of an asset. All very simple!

[Niamh]

Asset costs per tier:

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Tier        RPXP Cost
1           5000
2           15000
3           25000