A Draft of Asset System Ideas

[Dice]

Asset System

This has come up before, but with nobility being brought up increasingly as a problem, I thought it was worth potentially revisiting - that and the interest in domain games shown in the survey. So! An asset system.

Purposes of this system:
1) To make social class a lot more real and realistic. I've met TONS of gentry PCs who have confusing or even no backstories about why they're gentry.
2) To add domain games for a whole new level of social/political RP, and possibly make influence more powerful.
3) To add movement and depth to the economy.

Concept:

Players invest XP in building 'assets' through a POLCA. These assets provide weekly benefits to the player, depending on the specific qualities of the asset purchased.

Assets:

Type - What is the asset? 'Land', 'Business', 'Domain' (for nobles), could add other types. Types would mostly be useful if we want to specify different fields for different kinds of assets, like the Accounts option below solely for Domains, for example.

Salary - The weekly salary the asset provides the individual. For land or business, this represents profits that might come from products; for domain, it likely represents taxation. It starts at a base of 100 silver and can be increased by 50 silver for 5k XP. This means that an asset that pays 250 a week costs 15k xp, or the same as purchasing gentry does right now. It is certainly possible to make different assets have a greater base cost/greater cost to increase salary, if it's wished to ensure that gentry are always wealthier than nobility.

Products - The general kind of product most representative of this asset. We would have a reasonably short list of available options to start; instead of, say, specific alcohols or animals we might have 'liquor', 'livestock', etc. Players would be able to buy a number, on a scale of 1-10, for each specific asset. This represents, in a very abstract number, the level of shares they own in that asset's total production. Buying up to 10/10 for a single asset should be nigh impossible due to massive XP cost, for the sake of balance.

Now, if multiple people bought stakes in the same product that totaled up to more than 10, the value of that product would begin to decline. This could tie into the game-wide economy modifiers; if player shares in a product (let's say metals) total to 12 because one person has a rating of 5 and another has a rating of 7, suddenly the cost of metal ores and metal goods decreases throughout the city by a certain percent - and so does this person's salary, affected by a modifier on top of the base. Alternatively, if we want it to be VERY complex we could have the person's actual profit dependent on people buying metal ores and metal goods, instead of a purchased salary - this means anybody with ranks in 'metal' has a VERY strong reason to encourage people to buy armor, weapons, etc.

I recognize this is very complicated and extensive, but I think this level of detail (with shares, etc.) is what's required to give domain games the sufficient heft to be worth the coding time.

CLARIFICATION EDIT: The shares are abstract. For example, you never own actual lumps of metal, to keep this more easily handled. You just get variable pay added to your base each week to represent the metal you're selling off-screen.
Strength - It's worth noting that if we add in Products, people will want to hose each others' assets when there are share conflicts. This is where the fun conflict-creation comes in, especially if different products provide different benefits so some are highly desirable. I would see this done likely with IC-Event posts similar to our Regency bid and GL influence systems, where somebody pours in X influence to initiate a conflict between their domain and another. The domain with the higher Strength (and both sides, perhaps, could contribute influence) comes out the winner, and takes a number of shares from the other domain dependent on the margin of the victory.

What would this look like? X person has a domain with 5 shares in metals, 5 strength; Y has 7 shares, 3 strength. Y initiates a conflict with X, described in their bid as trying to blackmail a mine out of an owner beholden to X. Y drops 30 influence into the attempt, raising their strength to 6, but X drops in 20 and raises their strength to 7. X wins the contest by 1, and is able to steal 1 share from Y - not only did Y fail to make the business deal, but the owner more fully commits to X in response to their protection against Y. (Staff would provide the flavor resolution text, I imagine.) Presumably X could cash in the share then to reduce the total number and increase profit- not sure how this would work, but open to ideas.

Spheres - This is the weakest part of the proposal because I haven't entirely thought it through, but I think it could add a lot if people like it and want to expand it. We've talked before about having specific spheres of influence which opened up more commands for you to use with influence. For example, a 'Financial' sphere might have levels with each level opening access to commands that let you spend influence to, for example, spy on other people's bank accounts. A level in the 'Legal' sphere might let you use a limited form of the verify command. I think it might fit well with the new Roles system if, perhaps, some of the various guild commands were placed in these Spheres and the Spheres automatically given for roles - for example, the Grand Magnate/Magnate automatically get the top-level Sphere for Financial, which allows them to blacklist someone, but somebody who had poured unfathomable XP into getting the top-level Sphere for Financial access through a domain might ALSO be able to blacklist. (Obviously some commands, like execution and whatnot, would have to stay guild/role-only)
This is all very much first-draft thinking.

Accounts - Another hypothetical idea, this one specifically for noble domains. We talked before about giving nobles a pool of money that they can use to hire folks but not use for their own selves. Maybe you buy a number of accounts that equal 100/weekly pays you can give to OTHERS, not yourself. So a noble's domain asset comes automatically with 3 'accounts', for example, and the noble assigns those accounts to servants - letting nobles hire folks without paying from their own pocket. Again, first-draft thinking.

But these are only some of the many delightful things we could do with assets! There are so many more possible fields/aspects that could unlock all sorts of things.

TL;DR - By using assets, we can create domain games that actually any player could use, from freeman to gentry. We can define the advantages players should possess, make the economy more dynamic, foster conflict, make the class system more realistic/sensible, and give influence a whole new slate of uses.

Thoughts? Ideas? Rotten tomatoes?

[Tremere]

I really like this idea. I think it's a solid base and helps provide something more interesting for nobles while also benefiting other people. It's a really cool concept and it's got my backing!

[Tremere]

So after some talk with Dice and some consideration of my own I would like to propose adding in another use of influence to this system.

Have a way to use influence to affect the products (not just the spheres). this could be done like the ic-events for guild leaders and regent, but these affect the price of specific goods to represent efforts to increase or decrease demand for specific goods.

For example: In the above proposal it discussed the price of ores going down slightly if people bought in more product units of ore than the base line. One could use the system with IP to increase the price through an IC-Event that generates increased demand. Such could be done with the announcement of people praising the quality of such and such arms and armor. Or even an IC event about worries of increased bandit activity so why not arm yourself now! And this would raise the price. conversely someone who wanted to crash the market for certain goods could do an event to lower the demand and thus cause the prices to go down.

This would add a lot more for those gentry with all of their influence to really play a market game with each other and it would also affect the nobles in that they could target each others spheres of influence if they were working against each other.

[Onyxsoulle]

I like this idea, but would like to see social class taking an affect like it does now as well.

I.E.- the 50s for 5k xp.

Noble: 50s for 5k xp.
Gentry: 50s for 2500 xp.
Freeman: 50s for 10k xp.

It seems a bit mean, but this is how purchase wealth essentially works in game.

[Dice]

I had figured your class would be determined by your asset, for freeman/gentry; gentry = anyone with an asset of 250s a week or more. That said, that provides for a lot of class mobility, so it might be that staff would have to handle it as they do now. I.e., to become gentry, you need to app and explain how/why your PC did it.

It's an issue that definitely needs considering, how to keep freemen with tons of XP from buying huge assets without the bank accounts to justify it. Perhaps you need a certain amount in the bank to buy an asset even if you do so with XP? Perhaps the cost is XP AND silver for existing PCs? I dunno!

[Kinaed]

I like a lot of the comments and ideas in this system, but do want to prepare people for the fact that the staff have been, in parallel, working on an asset based system similar to this. I'm not sure how much like these ideas it will ultimately look like because there are a lot of considerations to take into account. Thanks for the post, though, I'll definitely be reviewing this as part of asset design.

[WarScribe]

Always nice to hear the staff is one or two steps ahead of the playerbase!