The Goblin Bazaar

The Goblin Bazaar is located in the first room on the second sublevel of my Five Years Left megadungeon. All manner of useful things can be found for sale there, but the prices are exorbitant, and any treasure traded to the goblins does not earn experience points for the players. None the less if they see something they want, it’s best to pounce on it, because each session I generate an entirely new inventory by rolling 3d6 and consulting the tables below:

Among all of the…

Cracked ceramic [subject]s, soiled mattresses, and jars of [animal bits]
Rotted [produce], sticky children’s toys, and sacks of [filler material]
[Fad instructional][Media], crumpled dorm room posters, and water damaged [genre] novels
Jewelry made from [Trash], board games with missing pieces, and boxes of [papercraft]
Horrid smelling [clothing], pencil nubs, and empty [food containers]
Branded [junk swag], lidless tupperware, and [holiday][junk you’re meant to throw out]

…you find…

gun (d6): combat shotgun, AK-47, Uzi, Silenced Pistol, Sniper Rifle, Spandau
spell of level 2d6 (drop lower), randomly determined from whatever spell list is at hand.
technology (d6): smart phone, wireless speaker, radar, moped, cordless drill, prosthetic limb
gear: random weapon or armor with 1 cool power (either technological or magical)
weird (d6): ritual magic, magic item with big drawback, A.I. companions, mutation juice
other tables: old curio shop table, the IOUN stones book, wondrous items from the DMG

…and also…

gun (d6): derringer, revolver, .22 rifle, hommeade pistol, hommeade rifle
spell of level 2d6 (drop higher), randomly determined from whatever spell list is at hand.
tech (d6): kitchen appliance, flashlight, camera, megaphone, laser tripwire, walkie talkies
explosives (d6): Frag grenade, flash grenade, smoke grenade, door buster, fire bomb, demolition explosive
single-use magic: something like a potion, powder, thrown glass ball, etc.
quest hook (d4): treasure map, item desired by an NPC, information broker, item to exploit a monster’s weakness

The prices are…

Items from the first table cost d6 x 5r.
Items from the second table cost 2d6 x 100r
Items from the third table cost 2d6 x 20r

(The “r” here stands for “Ration,” which is the base unit of currency in Five Years Left.)

Of primary concern when I was writing this is that the whole system had to fit on the bottom 20% of a sheet of graph paper. Any more than that and my rules reference would take up more than a single page. As such, I’ve used shorthand which is probably less clear to others than it is to me. Below are six examples which ought to clarify what results from these tables look like in practice. To cover as much of the table as possible I assumed that triples were rolled for each example (111, 222, etc.) In practice the results would usually be more diverse.

111: Among all of the cracked ceramic angels, soiled mattresses, and jars of pig’s tails, you find a clean and functional AK-47. The malnourished goblin clinging to it explains that she spent all her food money to buy it, which didn’t seem like such a bad idea at the time. Hungry as she is, the weapon is precious to her, and she will only part with it for the exact price she bought it for: 900r. You also discover a derringer beneath some greasy napkins. You only have a moment to examine it before the goblin seller snatches it away, and insists you can’t have it unless you pay 140r.

222: At first it seems that there’s nothing here but rotted cabbages, sticky children’s toys, and burlap sacks filled with sawdust. You’re about to give up when you discover the 4th level OD&D spell “Growth of Plants.” It’s written in a gilded journal, and was obviously the prized possession of some long dead wizard. The goblin who owns it has no idea what it is, but is confident that it must be worth at least 700r. Shortly thereafter you also find the 3rd level OD&D spell “Water Breathing,” carefully written out on a roll of toilet paper. You shudder to imagine what circumstance led to that particular spell being written on that particular medium. The goblin who owns it knows exactly what she has, but every time she looks at it she gags. She wants it out of her sight, and will sell it for the low low price of 180r.

333: Sifting through old jazzercise CD-ROMs, crumpled dorm room posters, and water damaged western novels, you come upon a sophisticated prosthetic leg. Someone has painted a racing stripe up its side. The goblin selling the thing rests on crutches, and laments that the leg was not as good for racing as they thought it would be. They’ll part with the thing for 600r. Meanwhile, another member of the party uncovers a cordless egg beater beneath some of those dorm room posters. The goblin selling it assures you that it is a fearsome weapon, and a total bargain at only 80r.

444: Beneath a heap of necklaces made from tin can tabs, stacks of board games with missing pieces, and several boxes of beige business cards for something called a “Sales Associate,” the party discovers a chain mail coif which has been ensorcelled such that the wearer gains the ability to speak with fish. The goblin says all the fish he met were terribly rude, and so is willing to part with it for a mere 600r. Nearby, a maternal looking goblin wrestles a napalm explosive away from a smaller goblin, holds it up high, and desperately asks if anyone will buy it before her kid kills someone. The melodrama is probably a sales scam, because she refuses to part with it for less than 280r.

555: Shoving aside racks of mildew-smelling jorts, heaps of pencil nubs, and stacked displays of empty soup cans, you discover an carafe of glowing liquid which, if consumed, will cause the imbibing character to gain a random mutation. The goblin selling it–who has a baby’s arm growing out of his forehead–insists that all the mutations are all cool and beneficial. He wants 400r for it. Another goblin shoves the first aside, holding up a wooden box with a ceramic key inside it. It’ll open any door you want, but it’ll break when you use it. A much better bargain, and more reliable, than that gross mutation juice. Only 100r!

666: After picking your way through the branded letter openers, lidless tupperware, and hollow plastic Halloween weapons, you find a tattered pair of Boots of Elvenkind, which a goblin hates because she can’t make noise in them no matter how hard she stomps around. She wants them out of her sight for a measly 400r. As you browse about further, a goblin in a trench coat pulls you aside. They say they know things. Many things. Is there something you want to know? They probably know all about it. They’ll tell you what you want to know, for a price… Specifically for 180r.

Obviously there’s a bit of finessing involved in producing these results, which is why I generate them outside of play. In general I prefer to avoid committing myself to systems that require out-of-session prep, but this is the sort of creative work I find both enjoyable and easy. It’s just improvising details around a set of random seeds. In a pinch I could do it mid-session, but in fact I enjoy it so much that I’ve already got the next 10 weeks of Goblin Bazaars pre-generated.

And that’s it, that’s the whole system. Now I’m gonna work backwards a bit and talk about why I made the decisions I did.

What benefit is there to this sort of randomly populated item shop?

There are three major benefits. First is that we’re playing a game where the goal is to get money. The referee can tax that money by requiring the players to pay for repairs, or healing, or training, but they also gotta have some fun stuff to splurge on. This is doubly important in a megadungeon like this one, where the play is focused in a way that precludes traditional domain building. A bazaar with a random and rotating inventory offers the players some fun tools and toys to get excited about, while avoiding the dreaded opening of the flood gates typically associated with magic item shops.

Second, placing a single-session time limit on items adds an interesting pressure to the game. Does the party want to spend money to buy the mid-tier item that’s on sale this week, or do they want to hold on to their money in case there’s something better next session? Or perhaps the bazaar has a truly great item for sale which the party can’t afford. Now the players have a ticking clock which forces them to push and push to collect enough treasure to buy this great item before the session ends, and it is lost forever.

Third, I am ever the advocate for randomizing anything which can be randomized. It forces everyone–players and referee alike–to adapt. For example, a group which usually relies on brute strength will look at problems differently if they just got a really good deal on some potions of invisibility. That sort of adaptation to circumstance is a huge part of what makes this game fun for me. I want to encourage it whenever I can.

As an aside, I was halfway through writing this post when I realized it wasn’t the first time. This is an idea I’ve been iterating on for years now. It started way back with Thracle’s Emporium in Brendan’s Pahvelorn, which I adapted for my paleolithic D&D&LB campaign as the Caravan system. Later I would adapt the idea further into the Curio shops that were scattered around ORWA. This latest take on the concept, the Goblin Bazaar, feels strikingly more mature to me. I’ve used it for several sessions already, and I love it. It’s sleek, it drives play, I am sincerely proud.

Why doesn’t money spent at the bazaar earn experience points for the players?

The in-universe fiction is that the player characters are from a destitute settlement, which only has five years of supplies left before everyone dies. Bringing fresh resources out of the dungeon and into the settlement is an act of real heroism. It gives hope to the hopeless, and extends the life of the town. That’s what I award experience points for. Spending those same resources on Goblin junk is pretty selfish in comparison.

The real life explanation is that I’ve spent several years running high level domain play in my On a Red World Alone campaign. I’m a little burned out on that sort of thing, and would like to indulge in an extended period of grotty dungeon delving. It suits my purposes well if the players’ levels advance at a snail’s pace.

Why is the first table full of useless junk!?

It may seem silly, but the junk table is one of the biggest advantages the goblin bazaar has over my earlier efforts. When using the caravans or the curio shops, I presented them to players as being filled with all manner of interesting things, then listed the few objects that were meant to be player facing. Inevitably, if the items on offer didn’t interest the group, they’d ask “So…what else is here?”

It’s a perfectly reasonable question when the referee has described a shop that is filled with a great variety of wonders. In my head all that other stuff was supposed to be useless junk. Gewgaws for eccentric rich people. But I’d said it was there, so I was stuck improvising whole inventories that felt appropriate. Again, inevitably, something I listed would spark interest among the players, and we’d all get dragged down this rabbit hole of them trying to figure out a good use for a set of 500 year old encyclopedias. I’m not exaggerating when I tell you there have been sessions where the party spent fully two hours sitting in a curio shop.

It was tedious. I may sound petty for saying so, but this has been a source of real frustration for me. In contrast, the goblin bazaar is framed as a heap of garbage where the players are lucky enough to find a couple cool things.

Why Goblins?

Because it gives me a regular excuse to perform as a malevolent toddler in front of my players.

Also, because goblins are just toddlers, I am fully justified in the bazaar being filled with junk, and everything being sold for wildly inconsistent prices.

Before I go, I ought perhaps answer “Where are those dungeon prompts that were supposed to follow the megadungeon post?” Well, if you’ve ever wondered how to ensure a project hits a stumbling block, all you’ve gotta do is tell people it will be done soon. The set of six d100 tables I mentioned in my last post are still in the works, but it’s an immense undertaking. They will be done some day.

I hope everyone is taking care of themselves and the people around them. Respect and solidarity to the brave protesters in Portland, and all across the U.S.

Edit: One of my players was incensed to discover that her favorite Goblin, “Muscles,” was not mentioned or depicted anywhere in this post. To maintain the harmony of my game table, I will accede to her demands that Muscles be included:

Spending Money: Training

I’m still interested in finding new ways for players to spend their money. Today I’d like to talk about the method I think is the most valuable, and perhaps the most controversial: training. The expenditure of money (and time) to make a character better.

Before I get into concrete rules, I feel some obligation to mention the giants whose shoulders I’m standing on. This post draws heavily on work done by Courtney Campbell for his Numenhalla and Perdition campaigns, as well as work done by John Bell for Necrocarserous. Further, I believe Courtney drew much of his inspiration from the writings of Benjamin David. I’ve taken these ideas and adapted them for LotFP, as well as adding some of my own refinements and twists to make them better suited to my own tastes. But I want to acknowledge that all the really heavy lifting was done before I got here.

There are four types of training: Skills, Weapons, Talents, and Spells. Spell training might better be titled “research,” but it uses the structure of training, and so falls under the more general term. Regardless of type, training requires that the character invest both time and money before they receive any benefit.

Training is done during down time between adventures, when a character is free to avail themselves of the resources of civilization. What Brendan S. has eloquently titled the Haven Turn. While training, the character may break to continue their adventures, but must return to the same Haven at the end of their adventure if they don’t want to lose their progress (and money!). Training otherwise takes up all of the character’s time, and they are unable to pursue any other activities, such as carousing, until it is complete.

If the players wish, they are encouraged to roll an alternate character to play while their primary character is training. This will allow that character to focus entirely on their studies, and reduce the training time by 1 month. It also creates a handy backup in the event of character death.

Training provides a significant benefit to the PCs, one which cannot be regulated by funds alone. The need to spend time is an important factor. It allows training to be cheap enough to be afforded by low level characters, without the potential to be abused by wealthy, high-level characters. It is pertinent to paraphrase Gygax: You cannot use the training system if strict time records are not kept. Training works when time is a resource to be spent carefully; it doesn’t work when time can be handwaved away without consequence.

For players with excess funds, the referee may be inclined to offer accelerated training. The means by which this rapid training is accomplished should be thematic to the game world: cybernetics, magical implantation, brain matter grafting, soul mixing, etcetera. In any event it costs 3x the normal amount required. Training time is reduced to a single week covering the procedure, and recovery.

Skills Training

Skill training allows characters of any class to advance their skills beyond a 1-in-6 chance. However, increasing a skill beyond a 5-in-6 chance remains the sole purview of characters who receive skill points from their class. Training must be undertaken for a specific skill, and each rank of ability must be achieved before advancing to the next. A character with 1 in 6 Tinkering may not pay 12,000sp & spend 6 months training to leap straight to Master level ability. They must first advance to Talented, then Skilled, and so on.

Sneak Attack is not considered a skill for the purposes of training, and remains available only to Specialists.

Talented – 2 in 6 – 1,000 silver pieces & 2 Month of training.
Skilled – 3 in 6 – 5,000 silver pieces & 4 Months of training.
Expert – 4 in 6 – 10,000 silver pieces & 5 Months of training.
Master – 5 in 6 – 12,000 silver pieces & 6 Months of training.

Weapons Training

All characters have a basic proficiency with any weapon they pick up. If a player wishes to train themselves beyond proficiency and achieve true excellence, they must specialize their training to a specific weapon family.

For each level of expertise, a character receives a +1 bonus to attack rolls when using weapons from that family. In addition, each level of expertise grants an Expertise Feat which is specific to that weapon family. The Expertise Feats gained by a character training with a longsword are the same for all longsword-wielding characters.

Expertise Feats may be combined with standard attacks at no penalty. However, only one feat may be applied each round. If an expert longswordist attempts to deflect an incoming attack, they forfeit their ability to use Disarm on the following round. Feats are never passive bonuses, they must be declared during each individual combat round.

Any saving throw called for by an Expertise Feat is a save versus Paralyzation.

Skilled – 2,000 silver pieces & 3 Months of training
Expert – 6,000 silver pieces & 4 Months of training
Master – 12,000 silver pieces & 6 Months of Training

Here are some of the weapon families I am using in On a Red World Alone. This list is truncated for the sake of brevity.

Close Quarters: Additional +2 to attack rolls when fighting in cramped conditions, or melees with 4 or more combatants in close proximity.

Swift: Can make 2 attacks per round against a single target.

Hidden: +1 to determine surprise when attempting a sneak attack.

Deflect: May attempt a saving throw to negate one melee attack each round.

Disarm: On a successful hit, target must save or lose their weapon.

Vicious: Roll damage twice, take the higher result.

Sunder: On a successful hit, target must save or their armor bonus from armor is reduced by 1.

Delay: On a successful hit, target must save or take only a half action next round.

Riposte: Once per round when struck in combat you may make a saving throw to attempt an immediate counter attack.

Hold Back: Once per round when a foe attempts to close to melee range, wielder may make an attack roll against them.

Push: Target must make a saving throw or stumble backwards 10′.

Talents

You might think of talents as a kind of “Miscellaneous Training.” Unlike other forms of training which allow you to improve within a given system (Skills, Combat, Magic), talents provide a wide array of character improvements touching on all aspects of gameplay.

Talents marked with an * may be taken multiple times, and their effects stack. Each talent requires 3 months of training time, and costs 4,000 silver pieces to acquire. If a talent is taken multiple times, the training time remains the same, but the cost is multiplied by the number of times the character will have taken the talent.

Charm School*: +1 to Charisma
Endurance Training*: +1 to Constitution
Weight Training*: +1 to Strength
Gymnastics Tutoring*: +1 to Dexterity
Attend Symposia*: +1 Wisdom
Academic Study*: +1 Intelligence

Bravery: Immune to Fear effects.

Penetrating Spells: Saving throws made against your spells suffer a -1 penalty.

Spell Resistant: Gain a +2 on any saving throws made against a spell.

Tough: +3 hit points per level

Innovator*: With a weapon group you have mastery-level expertise with, gain an expertise feat that the weapon would not normally have. (If taken multiple times, must be for a different weapon group each time).

Indomitable Armor bonus from armor is improved by 1.

Deflect Missile*: Negate one ranged attack per round.

Interceptor: Redirect one enemy attack per round to hit you instead of an ally.

Precise Shot: Fire into melee without any chance of hitting allies.

Criticator: You land a critical blow on a 19 or a 20.

Deadly Strike: Critical hits deal triple damage instead of double.

Good Opener*: Once per day you may re-roll a single die used as part of a reaction roll, and take the higher option.

Spell Research

A Magic User can expend a certain amount of time and money to pour through ancient texts, experiment with peculiar creatures, and test the cosmic energies. At the end of the indicated period, the character will have earned a new Magic Word which they can use to create spells according to the normal system.

2,000 silver pieces & 1 month: The MU learns a randomly determined Magic Word.
3,500 silver pieces & 1 month: The referee randomly determines 3 Magic Words, and the MU may pick one.
7,000 silver pieces & 2 months: The MU may create their own, new Magic Word.

For the majority of you, whom I assume are not using my magic word system, this can easily be modified to allow an MU to learn new spells outright. The time required is 1/2 the desired spell’s level with a minimum of 1 month. The same costs listed above determine whether the character learns a random spell of that level, chooses between 3 random spells of that level, or gets to choose their own spell from that level.

Why Training is Valuable

Obviously one of the core benefits here is that training gives players something to spend their money on. That is, after all, the whole point of this series of posts. But there’s more to it than simply balancing the game’s economy.

When you really get down to it, the primary goal of a PC is to improve. They’re on a constant quest for more experience points, and better gear. But the amount of experience they will gain is bounded by the opportunities they encounter during a play session. When the player sits down, they don’t know whether they’ll earn enough XP to gain 3 levels, or whether they won’t earn even a single point of experience. Magic items are likewise a matter of fate. They may occasionally be something the player can strive for over a long period, but in most cases they’re something the player discovers unexpectedly.

This unpredictability is all part of the adventure, and it should stay that way! But there is value in having a stable fallback. At the end of a hard session without a tangible benefit to your name, it’s nice to know that at least you’re a step closer to learning that cool new trick with your sword. In that respect, training is a different kind of character improvement; a new layer which compliments the others. It fills a valuable niche.

Furthermore, training allows for mechanical character customization done right. It’s easy to demonize the mechanical clusterfuck that official D&D eventually became, but it wasn’t all bad. The ability to make choices about your character’s mechanical progression can be great!

The problem comes when choices start to pile on top of one another. When you’ve got to pick a feat and assign multiple skill points, rather than a feat or a single skill point. It comes when each individual choice has hundreds of possibilities, rather than a mere handful. More possibilities than even a passionate hobbyist can really consider in their mind all at once. It comes when the choices are attached to the leveling system, turning every gained level into an ever-increasing amount of paperwork.

Is allowing characters to train introducing power creep into a game? Yes, but given the cost and time required for training, that power creep is kept at a slow pace. Easy to adapt to.

Is allowing characters to train making your game more rules-heavy? Yes, but not so much as it might seem on the surface. Each layer of decision actually has very few options to it. And players who wish to spend their time and money on other things, avoiding what might be viewed as a source of confusion, are free to do so.

Training, as presented here, is far from perfect, I’ll readily grant. Weapon training in particular feels incomplete to me. Like the seed of a much better idea that hasn’t sprouted yet. But I can confirm from experience that all of these ideas are fun and functional in play–or at least, the systems I based them on are.

Spending Money 2: Armor

I want players to have the option of spending money to increase their adventuring effectiveness. The most obvious way to do that is letting them purchase more and better equipment. Something tangible. A tool with an obvious benefit. It’s the road oft-travelled, and it’s no doubt what players would like to spend their money on, so it seems like a good place to start. And in the basic rules, the only piece of equipment a character might need to buy after burning through their starting cash is plate armor. Granted, they’ll likely make that purchase before they even hit level 2, but it’s the only purchasable equipment progression that exists in the game RAW, so yeah. Lets talk about armor.

One great possibility is to expand the system backwards. Why should the best AC in the game be achievable before level 2? There’s tons of room for interesting progress before that point. A lot of people have written piecemeal armor systems that could serve to engage players for 2-3 levels before they finally get to that glorious 18 AC. The equipment players buy at the start of play could be deficient, with penalties, and a chance to break. There’s an opportunity here to make players feel just how low down and dirty they are as first level adventurers. To make them scratch and claw their way to being competently equipped before we even start talking about how the baseline equipment could be better than it is.

I say we drop the starting money altogether. Players can roll on a murderhobo equipment table and embark on their first adventure wearing an empty barrel around their body as armor, and fighting with a broken bottle tied to the end of a stick.

But for now I want to focus on how armor can continue to be something players spend money on after they’ve already reached the baseline of AC18 plate armor. The goal should be to provide players with a limited set of interesting choices. These choices should be individually achievable, but unlikely to be fully attainable by any but high level characters. A level 2 fighters should be able to look forward to upgrading her armor every 1 or 2 sessions, but it’ll be a long hard road to getting her dream armor. She shouldn’t feel as though she’s not making any progress, but she should have something to strive for.

Armor Modifications

Improvements made to an existing suit of armor. With enough money, every modification could exist on a single suit of armor. However, the more mods there are, the more complicated it is to add a new mod without futzing up the previous mods. As such, mods have a cumulative cost. The first costs 50% of the base armor’s total cost, the second costs 100%, the third costs 150%, etcetera.*

Perfectly Fitted: All plate armor needs to be fitted to its owner. But the slapdash job done by most village blacksmiths is nothing compared to what a skilled artisan can accomplish. Perfectly fitted plate armor requires 1 less encumbrance than normal.

Carrying Frame: A structure of additional supports is built into the armor, distributing weight more evenly across the body and allowing the wearer to carry 6 encumbering items for every encumbrance point, rather than the standard 5.

Ornamented: The surface of the armor is decorated with fanciful patterns that communicate something about the wearer to those who encounter them before a single word is spoken. Ornamented armor affects reaction rolls. Only one type of ornamentation can be present on a given suit of armor.

Fearsome: Your ornamentation is filled with scenes of battle. It proclaims that you are a foe to be reckoned with. Characters with a level lower than yours are impressed and your reaction improves by 1. Those who are higher level than you see your display as petulant, and your reaction decreases by 1.
Ostentatious: Your ornamentation focuses on your wealth. Gold and gems may be included in the ornamentation. Reaction improves by 1 with any characters who are part of a culture where wealth is a sign of status and power. (ie. human society, generally). Reaction is decreased by 1 with bandits, revolutionaries, or anyone from a society where strength dictates status.
Religious: You openly display your devotion to your particular religion on your armor. Reaction with adherents of said religion is improved by 2. Reaction with foes of your religion is decreased by 2. Many creatures will be unaffected.

Barbed: A series of sharp spikes across the armor, strategically placed so as not to interfere with the character’s movement or peaceful activities, but which make it very difficult for an attacker to grab hold of the character. Characters wearing barbed armor are treated as 1 hit dice higher than normal when attempting to resist an enemy grapple.

Silvered: A latticework of silver is inlaid across the armor’s surface. While worn, the armor offers a +2 to any saves made against the powers of undead creatures, such as level drain. If no save is normally allowed, then the character is instead allowed a Save v. Magic at a -2 penalty to resist the effect.

Superbly Padded: Extremely comfortable, without being oppressive. The wearer can sleep while wearing their armor for up to 3 nights in a row without taking any penalties.

Buoyant: Through mind-boggling engineering that I lack the ability to come up with, it is possible to swim while wearing this armor as though the character were wearing no armor at all.

*Does anyone better at math than I am want to take a crack at a better price structure?

Armor Materials

Here we come perhaps uncomfortably close to outright selling magic items. Whether you include this will depend entirely on the highness or lowness of the fantasy in your games.

Steel is an excellent metal. It’s light, it’s tough, and most importantly it’s plentiful. But if your coffers are deep enough to afford a metal that isn’t plentiful, then there are better options. These fictional metals have special properties when shaped into armor. These are completely natural physical effects, which may seem magical only due to the extreme rarity of the substance.

Only a single rare metal may be used in the construction of a set of armor. Alloys are theoretically possible, but not financially feasible.

Feathersteel: An incredibly lightweight metal. Armor made from it is treated as 1 encumbrance lower than normal. (So, perfectly fitted, feathersteel armor would be completely unencumbering.) Suit of full plate: 3,000sp.

Nightstone: Within 4″ of the surface of this metal, light is dimmed and sound is muffled. Stealth rolls are improved by 2. (Not ignoring any penalties from armor or encumbrance). Speaking requires either that the wearer shout to be heard, or remove their helmet. Suit of full plate: 4,000sp.

Cold Iron: Something about this metal, it’s completely unknown precisely what, drives creatures of the lower planes into a mad frenzy. Any polite social interaction becomes impossible. But, oddly, they also seem resistant to attack a target wearing this armor. If they must, they will do so, but the wearer’s armor class is raised by 2, due to the demon’s reticence to actually come in contact with the hated metal. Suit of full plate: 6,000sp.

Viridescent Cobalt: Something about the way light refracts off of viridescent cobalt isn’t received well by the human eye. With time and focus, the eye can adjust to get a good look at it so long as it doesn’t move. But otherwise, it’s just a green blur. Armor made from viridescent cobalt provides a +1 to armor class against humanoid foes. Suit of full plate: 12,000sp.

Azurika: A pale blue metal which is uniquely unaffected by magic. Why magic works and exists in the first place is a concept that is little understood, so why Azurika seems stubbornly resistant to it remains a mystery. But those who wear armor made of it receive a +2 bonus to saves against magical effects. Suit of full plate: 18,000sp.

Spending Money 1: I've got thirty thousand gold pieces and nothing to spend them on.

I want to have a conversation about how players can spend their money.

There never seems to be an interesting thing to spend money on. This is a pretty consistent problem in the OSR style games I’ve played. The 1gp = 1xp model is awesome, it puts the game’s focus right where it needs to be. But once that money has done its job of incrementally moving the players closer to their next level, little thought is given to what happens next. Players just amass hoards of useless wealth.

The baseline assumption of oldschool D&D is that players who have a lot of gold will spend it on a stronghold and an army of hirelings. But that’s poorly suited to a lot of games, which focus entirely on party-based adventure and eschew domain-level play. And even when domain play works within the game, that doesn’t mean it’s interesting to every player.

Most OSR games I’ve played have also implemented some variant of the carousing rules at this point, which is good. Carousing is a great option to have. But it can’t be the only option. I mean, it’s basically just a fancy way of setting all your money on fire.

When one of my characters is flush with cash, I want to spend that money on something that will make me more effective. I want a better chance of getting out of the next dungeon with my hit points above 0 because of the money I spent. Of course, the easy way to accomplish this is to have a big list of magic items with humongous price tags, à la Pathfinder. But that’s boring and dumb and I hate it.

For a long time now I’ve wanted to write a broad examination of every interesting money sink I can think of. I had kind of a false start on this idea about 18 months ago. The scope of the project was a little overwhelming, and every time I spoke with someone about it they had all these neat ideas I’d never considered before, which made the scope even larger and more overwhelming. What’s clear is that a lot of people have come up with a lot of solutions to this problem that I’ve never heard of. I want to absorb it all. I want to share my own ideas, and examine other people’s ideas.

So if you have an idea, I’d love it if you told me about it. If you wrote a blog post or you know of a blog post, I’d love to be linked to it. I myself have already written a lot on this subject. (The “curio shop” idea is a 14 page google doc all by itself.) So expect a lot of posts from me on this topic for the next week or so at least.