Equipment Cost (monetary) -- Input Needed

[Simon]

Hey all!

I'm currently working on fleshing out my ideas for handling equipment cost/values in v2 (I'm talking about monetary values, not point cost).

The easy part is that I'm going to allow folks to specify the value of the equipment when they are building it. This means that you will be able to create a prefab which includes the cost of each piece of equipment (we'll deal with weight, etc. later).

You'll even be able to specify the max monetary value of equipment that a character can have in the new "campaign rules" section.

So far so good.

What I'm trying to work out a good scheme for is how to handle differing monetary units. For example, a Fantasy Hero campaign may use gold pieces, while a Star Hero campaign may be using galactic credits or somesuch.

This isn't an issue if you design each set of equipment for a given campaign, but I was thinking that it may be nice to have the equipment automatically transfer from one system of measurement to the other...so that if you had a piece of equipment that was built using gold Florens in one system, you would be able to purchase it in another campaign which was using the good old American dollar and not have to worry about changing the cost.

The idea that I'm currently batting around is to have the "cost" of equipment be specified as a generic "cost unit" (CU) and then have the campaign rules specify how many CU's go into whatever monetary unit they happen to be using (frex: 1000 CU's per $, or .56734 CU's per GP).

I'd be curious for everyone's input on this....

[Talon]

Hm,

How would the Cost Unit <-> campaign money conversion be handled within HD? Obviously, it would be better if players using HD were seeing campaign monetary units, and the CU conversion was happening behind the scenes. That would require some sort of setting where the GM could say "enter 10.5 in this box" and HD would make the right calculations.

I'd also like to see variable formatting (so that you could have the costs print out as "$100", "100gp", etc. based on the campaign setting.

Perhaps some sort of "campaign settings" file which the GM could pass around?

[Simon]

Originally posted by Geoff Speare
Hm,

How would the Cost Unit <-> campaign money conversion be handled within HD? Obviously, it would be better if players using HD were seeing campaign monetary units, and the CU conversion was happening behind the scenes. That would require some sort of setting where the GM could say "enter 10.5 in this box" and HD would make the right calculations.

I'd also like to see variable formatting (so that you could have the costs print out as "$100", "100gp", etc. based on the campaign setting.

Perhaps some sort of "campaign settings" file which the GM could pass around?
That's exactly what I'm intending...

The "Campaign Rules" screen will have settings for the following:<ul>
<li>Equipment Cost Units (any string value, frex: "$" or "gp")</li>
<li>Cost Units label prefix or suffix (frex: $1000 or 100gp)</li>
<li>CU's / [Equipment Cost Unit here] (frex: CU's / $)</li>
</ul>

The campaign rules screen is the only place that you'll see this "CU" concept....when dealing with the equipment tab, you'll see whatever units the campaign rules specify. So, when building a piece of equipment, you would specify the cost in whatever units the campaign uses....likewise when purchasing a piece of equipment from a prefab -- you'll see the cost in the campaign's units

.....though I should probably mention that I'll likely use CU's as the default unit (if no other rules are specified).

[Talon]

Cool.

Will the box for monetary unit be large enough to accept "bars of gold-pressed latinum"? :)

[Simon]

Probably ;-)

[tiger]

well to make it easy you could have it work evenly

1 CR = 1 SP (FH seems to be using silver from the playtesting PDF) = 1 Dollar

This of course could cause a sword to cost as much a a rifle or something but could work never the less

[Simon]

Originally posted by tiger
well to make it easy you could have it work evenly

1 CR = 1 SP (FH seems to be using silver from the playtesting PDF) = 1 Dollar

This of course could cause a sword to cost as much a a rifle or something but could work never the less
I doubt that would work too well....the monetary systems that various campaigns use are far to disparate to treat in that manner.

What I'm attempting to do is to allow someone to (hopefully) work up one big list of equipment which they can then use across all of their campaigns with minimal editing.

In order to do this, you need to have a "conversion rate" for the costs.

The only thing that this system doesn't take into account is varying value across genres (e.g. a sword is much more expensive -- reltively -- in a fantasy setting than in a star hero campaign). That type of thing I can't see any clean way around....I think that folks will just need to adjust the values manually at that point.

The main strength in the conversion system comes into play when using similar styles. For example: two campaigns, both Fantasy, one using gold pieces, the other using silver pieces. Both could use the same equipment lists (the tech levels are the same, prices are the same) and just set the conversion rates accordingly (more CU's per gp, fewer per sp). Everyone goes home happy.

[Barton]

How would this be handled in the export templates? Would the cost print out in $ or GP or whatever? or in CU's? I would hope that it would print out in currency units used by that character. Also I hope it can be easily surpessed for Champions superhero characters.

[Simon]

Originally posted by Barton
How would this be handled in the export templates? Would the cost print out in $ or GP or whatever? or in CU's? I would hope that it would print out in currency units used by that character. Also I hope it can be easily surpessed for Champions superhero characters.
It will be an available field for export....the export process will swap in the formatted value (e.g. "$100" or "1000 Florens", etc).

Champions characters don't get Equipment, so it's a moot point as to whether it's optional in the export.....though all that would be necessary would be to make an export template that doesn't include the cost tags.

[Barton]

Thanks for your fast response!

[JohnTaber]

Hi Dan,

I like your concept but I have a concern with the CU/$ concept. Can you turn off this feature? In other words, what is armor costs 5 real points but $100. A grenade is 30 real points but costs $10.

See what I mean? Would the CU/$ be FORCED or is it optional?

[Simon]

Originally posted by JohnTaber
Hi Dan,

I like your concept but I have a concern with the CU/$ concept. Can you turn off this feature? In other words, what is armor costs 5 real points but $100. A grenade is 30 real points but costs $10.

See what I mean? Would the CU/$ be FORCED or is it optional?
I'm not entirely sure we're understanding each other....

The CU/$ thing has nothing to do with points. It's just a way to convert from a "generic" unit of measurement for cost to the unit of measurement that your campaign is using.

As for turning it off, it's not really necessary....if you're creating the equipment list for your campaign, then you'll enter the cost in whatever units you have set for that campaign....the conversion never comes into play.

[Starwolf]

If I am uderstanding this correctly, then perhaps you can allow the GM to specify a conversion factor in the Campaign settings, thus a sword that costs 12 GP in FH might convert to 4 credits in SH if the conversion factor for FH was set yo 1 and the SH factor was set to .25 for example. Of course for this to work the master item list would have to be matched to a campaign file to establish a base line conversion factor.

Also a question... will V2 support multiple campaign settings so that I can have one file for FH and another for Champions for example?

[Simon]

Originally posted by Starwolf
If I am uderstanding this correctly, then perhaps you can allow the GM to specify a conversion factor in the Campaign settings, thus a sword that costs 12 GP in FH might convert to 4 credits in SH if the conversion factor for FH was set yo 1 and the SH factor was set to .25 for example. Of course for this to work the master item list would have to be matched to a campaign file to establish a base line conversion factor.
That's more or less what I'm saying....When you enter the value, you'll enter it in whatever units are specified in your campaign settings. The value is actually stored as generic "CU's".

When the value is displayed or calculated from that point forward, it will use whatever units are specified by the campaign.

Let's try an example and (hopefully) make things a bit clearer:

You're using a Fantasy Hero campaign rule set. In this rule set, you've got your CU conversion set to 100 CU / 1 gp.

You go ahead and make an equipment list which includes a 2H Broadsword. You set the cost on the sword to be 15gp.

The system (behind the scenes) stores the cost as 1500 CU (15*100).

Now you change over and start building a character for your Star Hero campaign. The campaign rules that you use specify the CU conversion to be 1000 CU / 1 C (galactic credit).

When you go to your equipment list and look at the 2H Broadsword, the cost will display as 1.5 C (1500 CU / 1000 CU per C).

Hopefully this makes some sense....


Also a question... will V2 support multiple campaign settings so that I can have one file for FH and another for Champions for example?
Yes. That's half the point.

You'll be able to load in any rule set that you want. You can also customize the rules once you load them in, or just create your own from the "default" rules.

The rule set that a character is built with will be noted in the character file, so when you change characters, the rule sets will change as appropriate.

[Starwolf]

That is awesome, and much more than I was hoping for...

YOU DA MAN!
:D

[Herolover]

This really sounds neat and I salute you for adding it.

I would like to ask however, there is always one in a crowd isn't there, that you have some place to make the cost editable by the GM or player.

Using your example lets say that in my FH campaign the broadsword is 15GP and in my SH campaign the broadsword is 1.5C. This works out great for the basic conversion the campaign uses, however in my SH campaign swords are used far more than normal so I want to change the cost from the 1.5C to 4C.

I just want to ensure that this option is still available. Because I could see many situations where a single standard conversion would not work. Swords are much more valuable in a FH setting than a modern one for example.

[Simon]

Originally posted by Herolover
This really sounds neat and I salute you for adding it.

I would like to ask however, there is always one in a crowd isn't there, that you have some place to make the cost editable by the GM or player.

Using your example lets say that in my FH campaign the broadsword is 15GP and in my SH campaign the broadsword is 1.5C. This works out great for the basic conversion the campaign uses, however in my SH campaign swords are used far more than normal so I want to change the cost from the 1.5C to 4C.

I just want to ensure that this option is still available. Because I could see many situations where a single standard conversion would not work. Swords are much more valuable in a FH setting than a modern one for example.
It will always be an editable field when purchasing/editing equipment....this is just dealing with the default/initial value which is displayed on prefabs.

[Victor]

Will it be possible to add Categories and Modifiers to the cost of an item, as listed on the Star Hero Pricing Guide (p. 177)?

Seems like it ought to be possible to reuse some of the advantage/limitation code for that, too.

[Simon]

Originally posted by Victor
Will it be possible to add Categories and Modifiers to the cost of an item, as listed on the Star Hero Pricing Guide (p. 177)?

Seems like it ought to be possible to reuse some of the advantage/limitation code for that, too.
I'm not intending to do anything like that at this point. IMO, it would make the system FAR too complicated for practical use.

The way it stands right now, it's pretty easy: when you're building the piece of Equipment, you set the price.

If you build a prefab, your players can go through it, seeing the cost and weight for each piece of equipment that they can purchase.

Since the Star Hero pricing guide is entirely multiples of 2, 5, and 10, it shouldn't be too hard to figure out the costs in your head if you want to use that system.

[Heroman]

Definately like, since I play mostly Heroic level material. A couple thoughts:

1) Standard categories - Several of the books I have show how you can 'estimate' the cost of equipment based on active points. While a GM will likely do fine tuning, the ability to define categories of equipment and the standard cost based on active points would be great. Being able to break out equipment based on category too (Armor, Medical Supplies, Infiltration, etc) in the output could make for some slick and well displayed equipment tables.

2) Multiple coin units - Just a nicety, but being able to establish 4-5 tiers of coins (with varying conversion) would be great in the FH world where you do not have just 1 coin unit. I think it would add great flavor and really enrich the output.

3) Abbreviations - Being able to specify an abbreviation (gpl, in example) would be nice, especially if a cool xml or html table display is worked up)

4) Multiple regions - OK, now I am starting to get complex :) Everything from SH to FH have region specific coins; not everyone in a given world has gps or credits. Being able to define multiple coin definitions would be great, selectable on output . It would also be **really** cool if there was a tag in which you could override the displayed coin type so you could make 'world charts'. In example:

Lets say we define 2 coin units: Imperial Dinars (ID) and Lupine Circlets (LC). In some GUI, I define these coin systems (and maybe define 3 different coin types within each coin system). I establish the CUs for each system.
I create a sword, defining its CU as 10.
Now I create a cool HTML output in which I want to list equipment. During the Preview Character (or maybe a selection checkmark on the GUI, or however it is planned) I indicate I want to use IDs as the coin type. Happy!
Next, I make a world equipment sheet. I custom make the html output where I will have 2 pages of tables. For the first one, I override the unit type with maybe some kinda tag &lt;cu type="id"&gt; causing all displays to use the 'ID' coing type during printing (then on the second page I would use &lt;cu type='"lc"&gt;).
While involved, my intent is that I would *love* to use HD more for the design and display of my equipment. Right now, it is *very* disjoint, making me have to maintain 2 different lists (HD and a Word Doc).

[Simon]

Originally posted by Heroman
Definately like, since I play mostly Heroic level material. A couple thoughts:

1) Standard categories - Several of the books I have show how you can 'estimate' the cost of equipment based on active points. While a GM will likely do fine tuning, the ability to define categories of equipment and the standard cost based on active points would be great. Being able to break out equipment based on category too (Armor, Medical Supplies, Infiltration, etc) in the output could make for some slick and well displayed equipment tables.

2) Multiple coin units - Just a nicety, but being able to establish 4-5 tiers of coins (with varying conversion) would be great in the FH world where you do not have just 1 coin unit. I think it would add great flavor and really enrich the output.

3) Abbreviations - Being able to specify an abbreviation (gpl, in example) would be nice, especially if a cool xml or html table display is worked up)

4) Multiple regions - OK, now I am starting to get complex :) Everything from SH to FH have region specific coins; not everyone in a given world has gps or credits. Being able to define multiple coin definitions would be great, selectable on output . It would also be **really** cool if there was a tag in which you could override the displayed coin type so you could make 'world charts'. In example:

Lets say we define 2 coin units: Imperial Dinars (ID) and Lupine Circlets (LC). In some GUI, I define these coin systems (and maybe define 3 different coin types within each coin system). I establish the CUs for each system.
I create a sword, defining its CU as 10.
Now I create a cool HTML output in which I want to list equipment. During the Preview Character (or maybe a selection checkmark on the GUI, or however it is planned) I indicate I want to use IDs as the coin type. Happy!
Next, I make a world equipment sheet. I custom make the html output where I will have 2 pages of tables. For the first one, I override the unit type with maybe some kinda tag &lt;cu type="id"&gt; causing all displays to use the 'ID' coing type during printing (then on the second page I would use &lt;cu type='"lc"&gt;).
While involved, my intent is that I would *love* to use HD more for the design and display of my equipment. Right now, it is *very* disjoint, making me have to maintain 2 different lists (HD and a Word Doc).
1) I won't be automatically assigning costs to items...that's going to be up to whomever is designing them. As for the categories for sorting, the basics (defense, melee weapon, ranged weapon, general) will be handled via export template tags.

2) I'm only going to be doing 1 coin unit per campaign rule set. If you have multiple coin units, it's easy enough to convert. Most "real" systems have a single notation (such as $1.25) to denote a cost...that's what you'd enter into the campaign settings.

3) Already done.

4) You'll need to handle that through the campaign settings. A given campaign setting/rule-set would denote a particular region. This is part of the reason why I'm doing this whole "cost conversion" thing: whe you're defining a new region, you can setup a conversion of the equipment cost to the local (regional) tender....the prices will all be adjusted accordingly.

[Heroman]

Actually, I was wondering, ever think of just making a Campaign Designer for this type of material? I guess it would be more of an export layout/fab selector type thing. It could allow HD to focus on the creation and offload campaign specific stuff onto a separate app. HD is nice for making characters, but is a wee bit limited in other respects. This could be a new product ($$ wohoo!) but do cool stuff like:

1) Coin selection - Have everything in HD in CU (maybe 1 additional unit for completeness). Allow multiple coin units, multiple regions, etc, all in this CD.

2) Prefab selection - Thinking larger scale, where it would be nice to leverage other people's prefab work, it would be nice to pick and select from a ser of prefabs for material you allow in your campaign. You could load up several prefabs and select which items you actually want included, thus not having to rework prefabs or make duplicates.

3) multi-character sheets. Not limited by HD, you could have features such as character summary sheets where you select 6 people's sheets (PCs or maybe NPCs) to make nice tables and summary outputs.

4) Organization - You could organize equipment (maybe even spells, mind powers, etc) for display

There are probably a bunch of other things you could add to this higher level application, focused on the GM's needs. It's focuses would be display and organization instead of design.

[Simon]

Originally posted by Heroman
Actually, I was wondering, ever think of just making a Campaign Designer for this type of material? I guess it would be more of an export layout/fab selector type thing. It could allow HD to focus on the creation and offload campaign specific stuff onto a separate app. HD is nice for making characters, but is a wee bit limited in other respects. This could be a new product ($$ wohoo!) but do cool stuff like:

1) Coin selection - Have everything in HD in CU (maybe 1 additional unit for completeness). Allow multiple coin units, multiple regions, etc, all in this CD.

2) Prefab selection - Thinking larger scale, where it would be nice to leverage other people's prefab work, it would be nice to pick and select from a ser of prefabs for material you allow in your campaign. You could load up several prefabs and select which items you actually want included, thus not having to rework prefabs or make duplicates.

3) multi-character sheets. Not limited by HD, you could have features such as character summary sheets where you select 6 people's sheets (PCs or maybe NPCs) to make nice tables and summary outputs.

4) Organization - You could organize equipment (maybe even spells, mind powers, etc) for display

There are probably a bunch of other things you could add to this higher level application, focused on the GM's needs. It's focuses would be display and organization instead of design.
Most of that is going into v2

[RPMiller]

With all this discussion of monetary units I'm assuming there is going to be a place for the actual amount of money a character has?

As a character buys stuff it would deduct from this allotment. Maybe tie it into the Money Perk/Disad? Just some ideas.

[Simon]

Originally posted by Durnin
With all this discussion of monetary units I'm assuming there is going to be a place for the actual amount of money a character has?

As a character buys stuff it would deduct from this allotment. Maybe tie it into the Money Perk/Disad? Just some ideas.
Seeing as you're part of the testing team: load up v2 and go to Campaign Rules -> View/Edit Campaign Rules

The entry under "Max Total Value in Equipment" (on the Point Limits tab) is the one that serves that purpose, allowing the GM to specify how much "money" a character has to spend and what to do if they run over (ignore, warn, do not allow)

[RPMiller]

Originally posted by dsimon
Seeing as you're part of the testing team: load up v2 and go to Campaign Rules -> View/Edit Campaign Rules

The entry under "Max Total Value in Equipment" (on the Point Limits tab) is the one that serves that purpose, allowing the GM to specify how much "money" a character has to spend and what to do if they run over (ignore, warn, do not allow) Ah! Very good. I hadn't drawn that conclusion previously. I'll take another look at it when I get home. Thanks Dan!

Is there going to be a tag to export this information on the character sheet?
Is there a place in the HD character where this information could be changed. In other words, keep a running total of money?

I see it's value in the Campaign Rules, but once the game begins those values are going to change. Or are you going only for the initial character creation aspects?

[Simon]

Originally posted by Durnin
Ah! Very good. I hadn't drawn that conclusion previously. I'll take another look at it when I get home. Thanks Dan!

Is there going to be a tag to export this information on the character sheet?
Is there a place in the HD character where this information could be changed. In other words, keep a running total of money?

I see it's value in the Campaign Rules, but once the game begins those values are going to change. Or are you going only for the initial character creation aspects?
There will certainly be tags for export (both totals and on individual pieces of equipment).

As the character gains money, the campaign rules can be edited to keep track of the total available funds. Essentially, each character in the campaign would be operating with their own set of rules....each of them almost identical except for a few settings (like the available money).

I'm going to be altering the "Package Character Files" functionality to include the rules file being used by the character (if not the default), so it will be easy to distribute character files along with all the referenced files that they need.

[Talon]

Since a character's money total during the game is not a campaign rule, it seems like it would be useful to add a "money" box on the background tab rather than having to update campaign rules (which could be overridden when the GM sends out modifications or something).