-Ben.

One way of keeping ‘Asset points’ is to make each Equipment pack = an XP cost.

But I think that keeping the money generation aspect based on the free job is also quite viable.

Peace out man!

“Making money dependent on attributes might be an invitation to min maxing… ”

Very true. We don’t want to make it an “everyone gets the same x amount of money”, and we kind of want equipment to be separate from experience. Experience to us represents what your character knows and learns, while other more physical stuff is separate.

This is the current language I am mulling over with regards to equipment.

“Characters will be given a certain amount of starting money, based on their free profession and the relevant attributes associated with it. With this starting money characters are free to purchase items ala carte from the items list in the Cyrus worlbook. A character can also purchase, at Character Creation only, equipment packages that group together common types of items and streamline outfitting a character. These equipment packages combine similar items and are given a cheaper cost.

To determine starting money:

• The character gets a base of 500 saren.
• The character gets 300 saren for each point in the two attributes that would be most relevant to their free profession, as determined by the Game Master.
• Any extra Profession/Field of Study focuses the character has purchased give 300 additional saren.
• A character who had a profession of actor might get 300 saren for each point in perception and appeal. A character with a profession of merchant might get 300 saren for each point of knowledge and appeal, etc.
”

Then listing equipment packages with costs instead of asset point totals.

Travelers – xxx saren
(The character can trade out some items with the Game Master’s approval to fit their concept/race better. Items should only be traded out for things of equal size/worth.)
• Traveler’s BackPack
• 2 General Sets of Clothing
• Bedroll
• Warm Cloak that can serve as a blanket
• Cheap Meals for 2 Weeks
• Trail Bread for 1 Week
• Bottle of Wine
• Eating Utensils and Bowl
• Clay Mug
• Soap
• 2 Water Skeen
• Flint and Tinder
• 25 Feet of Coarse Rope
• 4 Thick Candles
• 2 Torches

or

Gunslinger – xxx saren
• 1 Handheld or Long-barrel gun of choice
• 50 pieces ammunition
• Gun Care Toolset
• Basic Leather Holsters

etc., with all the other various packages listed.

The thing I like about asset points is that they are nice and abstract, but having straight saren kind of extends the fantasy shopping for guys motif that Robin Laws points out.

The reviews are incredibly helpful. We’re working hard to find that golden balance between openness in the game and stability and ease in the rules. It works well in our own playtests, because we compensate based on how we think it should work. Everytime we’ve gotten it in front of someone new, or started a playtest group outside the company, we always get a lot of good feedback. I’m happy to see it this in depth, and very grateful for the criticalness. I’m also happy when I hear gamers complaining about other systems, or when I find grammar errors in big name books, but that’s a completely different matter.

I think asset points is a great way of handling abstracted wealth and you should keep it.

If Equipment makes a big difference in the game (I’m thinking armor here), the generation of Wealth just shouldn’t be random.

Making money dependent on attributes might be an invitation to min maxing…

That being said, D&D does it and so do other systems… If you want to represent the PC’s efforts to save up money for adventuring I’d fluff up the mechanic by talking about the aspiring hero’s sacrifices to scrounge up the resources to get the armour and sword.

I’m looking forward to the game.

Thanks for chiming in John. I hope these reviews are helpful.

The most broken playtest was when the levels of skills weren’t limited by experience tier, and people tended to just min max in one direction, combat, and get insane amounts of successes on their rolls. A person purchased their basic weapon skill up to level 5, and had nothing in any other place. They plowed through enemies that the Game Masters had considered partykillers. That was when we decided to concentrate on balance issues and working with alternate means to show openness. Clarifying concepts like thematics and cinematics was a big thing that came out of that time. We wanted to ensure that the core system was still balanced and could handle rules issues, but be open for multitudes of ideas.

You are right about language and equipment acquisition being too random. We had our first review meeting for the character creation sections on friday, and we decided we needed to do something about those. We’re going to try to remove the asset points language, but still keep with the equipment package idea. Something like you get x amount of saren (coinage in cyrus) for each point in the 2 attributes that apply to your free profession, and then you can spend XXX saren to purchase this equipment package and the relevant stuff it contains. We are also going to do languages as being your knowledge rating equals the number of additional languages that you can take for free.

I’ll definitely run a game for you out at Gencon. Our big convention is origins (since it is 3 or 4 hours from where most of us live), but we are definitely going to gencon, if only socially.

Oh, there is also a quick start guide that has just what you talked about (with a solo play demo and pregens to see how it works). It is up at http://www.silvervinegames.com/index.php/Svg/QuickStartGuides, and is called the Level 0 guide. It is definitely going to go through its own editing process, but since we aren’t “out” yet, it was put up as a service when we were running demos at the last origins.

If John makes it to GenCon, I’ll try to register for a demo game.

Now that you mention it, the game’s structure does remind me of Palladium’s game a bit (if palladium had taken the point-buy route).

Being the crunch Overlord that I am, one of the playtests I’d love to hear about would be a breaking point one, where Min Maxed characters are created and try to abuse the system… That’s where issues like costs can be checked.

Your review of the system makes it sound like something from the Golden Age of role-playing design where system such as Palladium, Talislanta and Harnmaster presented a richer, more diverse alternative to the traditional (A)D&D race+class approach.

I’d be interested to see a worked example of how all these sub-systems and mechanics work in practice; good character gen can make or break a system as it’s that all-important First Impression from a player’s POV. Remember the TMNT rpg; the char gen system //made// the game.

I’m with you on the skill-points pricing; cost should be dictated by usefulness in-game (ie, obscure skills are cheap) rather than the real-world effort involved.

More, please!