Does Gold Matter?

This is something I've talked about in passing in other posts, but I wanted a more focused discussion on the topic: does gold matter? For the purposes of this discussion, gold means whatever system of currency exists within the game. I don't think there's an easy answer other than, "it depends."

Some games make it vital by linking it character growth (see: gold as XP in OD&D) or the very well-being of your character (see: recovering from conditions in Torchbearer). In those kinds of situations, each piece of treasure matters, especially gold. Of course, outside of those games, it's been my experience that once the players go adventuring they never need to worry about wealth. In fact, they often struggle to find a use for it. And yet they'll still argue about how to best split the treasure.

This, I think, is more of a genre-problem. Fantasy RPGs often encourage players to earn their gear through adventure rather than allowing players to stock up on magic items in town. It's easy to understand why. It encourages players to take risks. It makes them care a whole lot more about each unique item they own. But it also has the drawback of making gold rather worthless.

Let's look at a different game in a different genre: Shadowrun. The game's architecture is almost identical to traditional fantasy RPGs and yet it has an entirely different economy. While it's true that the best gear will be still be earned through completing missions, player's can always spend their Nuyen to upgrade their runner's kit in the meantime.

Still not any closer to answering the question, I'm going to propose a new one: what if, rather than tracking gold at all, you just assume all of the characters have what they need? If the best gear is earned through adventuring, go adventuring! If the players are trying to purchase something bigger, like land or a ship, why not just set narrative conditions that make sense? You'll have enough cash for X after Y number of missions. Of course, this suggestion may be too hand-waive-y for some people. If that's the case, I would point to any number of games that treat wealth as a skill.

Unless you're playing a game where it matters (OD&D, Torchbearer, Shadowrun), will this really have any effect? I'm not sure you'll notice a difference, except it will cut out the useless bickering about how to split seven copper three ways.

Not All Games Are Created Equal

This is not an argument for or against any kind of game, style of play, but more of a note. I'm never playing any one game for long. Part of this is a way to support the community and all of the great work it produces. Part of it is just a general need to always be moving and trying new things. Part of it is to see the different approaches to exploring the unimagined world. Either way, in trying all of these games, one thing has become abundantly clear: not all games are created equal.

I don't mean this in the sense that one game is better than another, though I have my favorites. What I mean is that each game incentivizes certain behaviors through the rules they include. D&D, for example, has rules for killing monsters, and it excels at giving opportunity for doing so extremely well. However, if you want to play a game of high political intrigue in a noble court a la Game of Thrones, D&D is going to offer far less than a game of Fate Core or The Burning Wheel.

Another way to think about this is that there is no universal game system that covers all situations. Each time your group starts a new campaign, talk about the kind of game you want to play. Talk about the kinds of conflicts you want to resolve. Then look at game systems. And remember The Golden Rule, play anything, but only GM the systems you want.

Introducing a New Game to Your Group: A 10-step Guide

1) Volunteer to GM. There's nothing worse than suggesting a game to a group and then asking someone else do the heavy lifting. If you're interested in a system buy the book/PDF, pitch it to the group, and run the game.

2) Read the rules. Take notes. Write questions that arise and cross them off as they get answered. At the end of your read through, read the relevant sections necessary to answer any remaining questions.

3) Do not make your players read the rules. This may seem counterintuitive, but it's not. Most people learned how to play at the table and requiring players to consume a tome of information is a quick way to turn the players off from the game. This bring me to my next point.

4) Read the rules. Cover to cover again, repeating the same process in step 2.

5) Make a sample character. Character creation is the first interaction most players have with the system and one of the first opportunities to establish buy-in. You want this to go as smoothly as possible. If the game you're suggesting uses multiple sub-systems, make a character that covers each major archetype. You need to be able to answer any questions players have, preferably without opening the rulebook.

6) Read the rules. Third time's a charm, right? Seriously, I can't repeat this enough. Reading the rules once or twice is probably not enough to impart the kind of mastery necessary to facilitate a game. Three complete readings is a minimum, in my opinion.

7) Use a module for the first game. Too many GMs arrogantly assume that because they have rules mastery in another system or have been GMing for X years, that they are equipped to run a new system. It doesn't work like that. While some skills will transfer (creating memorable NPCs, pacing, description), you cannot adequately prepare an adventure until you see how a game runs.

8) Provide cheat sheets for the players as well as yourself. No matter how many times you read the rules, you are going to have to reference them at some point. Cheat sheets tend to cut the fat from the book and present only the relevant information. If official cheat sheets don't exist, make them yourself.

9) Show players how to game the system. Every game has special rules and tricks for tipping the odds in the favor of the players. If an opportunity arises where you can do some rules teaching and affect the dramatic action happening, show them exactly how to do it. While some may frown on this kind of hand-holding, players are likely to feel helpless without it. Remember: building player agency creates player buy-in.

10) Don't be insulted if it doesn't work out. If you follow the above advice, all you can do is encourage your players to give it an honest shot. Play a few sessions, see the cycle of risk and reward from start to finish, and (hopefully) develop some rules mastery. However, no matter how much you may want to like a game system, it may just not be right for your group.

The Role of the GM or How I Learned to Stop Telling the Story and Love the Challenge Part II

The answers to these questions bring your world to life, but all of those details are wasted if you can't answer the most important question in any game: why do the players care? What is at stake if they fail? Succeed? It's not enough to threaten the city, the kingdom, or the world with a tough monster. Stacking loot for the sake of stacking loot feels incredibly purposeless. Deciding the fate of a cursed child won't have any gravity if there isn't some tangible connection that player's feel.

When players care about the in-game situation, they make decisions. They drive the narrative. The opposite is also true: players who don't care about the in-game situation still make decisions. They ignore the GMs bait and keep fishing for something else. They take off in a totally unexpected direction. Whatever their decision, they are steering the ship.


Having read entirely too many forums and blogs related to gaming, one of the biggest fears that GMs seem to have is the players choosing to go off in a direction that was unanticipated. This is the problem of having a story that you want to tell. A bad GM reacts to this situation by railroading; a good one, rolling with the punches and improvising.

A whole other style of game, the sandbox, seeks to remedy this problem by presenting several hooks and letting the players bite the juiciest one. Not only is this style of game a lot of work (you're preparing multiple plots), I don't know that it fundamentally solves the problem of the GM having a story he or she wants to tell. While it certainly engenders more player choice, I'm not sure the amount of work it requires pays is worth it.

However, as I said, these actions and decisions cannot exist in a vacuum. They have to take place somewhere, populated by the illusions of living, breathing people (or demi-people). Rather than labor over one or several stories for your players, why not step back before any characters have been made and talk about the kind of game you all want to play?

At the beginning of this post I posited that the single most important question you need to answer is why the players care. This is by far the easiest way to answer that question. Give them a say in building the setting, the major conflicts, the immediate situation at hand. Let them incorporate relationships to the people they are saving or protecting. Let them make their own purpose, and then challenge them to fulfill it.

The Role of the GM or How I Learned to Stop Telling the Story and Love the Challenge Part I

As I said in my previous post, there is a great exchange about what an RPG is, what the role of the GM is, and who controls the story over at Raven Crowking's Blog. While it seems to have turned a little ugly, this is a topic worth discussing.

Let me start by saying that I couldn't care less about the definitional aspect of this discussion. I don't need a fine delineation of what defines an RPG. Those arguments are seldom interesting and never productive (ever had the "What is Art?" discussion?). What I am interested in is what the function of the GM is and who drives the story forward. Several years ago, if you had asked me why I played these kinds of games I would have answered these questions with the same answer: the role of the GM is to tell a story and it is that person who drives the narrative. I don't believe that anymore.

My friend who rotates GM duties in our weekly DCC group and I were actually having this discussion pretty recently. He likes GMing because he likes to tell a story. He was curious why I enjoyed the role. A big part of that is simply because I've been a GM since day one of my gaming career. Immediately after finishing running my first adventure in which I, an Elven Rogue, broke into a tower to steal a precious gem for the local thieves guild, my friend handed me the Dungeon Master's Guide and Monster Manual and said, "Your turn." Now, I enjoy GMing because I enjoy challenging players.

That is the role of the GM: to challenge the players. Be it a tough monster, a dungeon littered with traps, an overgrown forest, or a moral dilemma, it is the GM's job to place obstacles in the player's path. However, these things cannot exist in a vacuum. That tough monster, was he the final baddie of the campaign or something smaller? Who set all these traps and what were they trying to hide? Why would anyone choose to go through the overgrown forest? If you choose to kill this child you are murderers, but if you let him live the great evil that he has been cursed with will awaken. What do you do?

The second part of this will go up Friday, addressing who drives the story.

Building Your Own Mythology

Every game exists in a world, however well defined. When I was younger, I took great care and spent far too much time meticulously mapping the entirety of These realms. Most of the locales were never explored beyond this initial world-building process. Now that I'm older, I have far less time and patience for this kind of work. I also don't need to know most of these details.

But every game has to have a world in which it exists. Over the years I've slowly cobbled together my own mythology. The same major guilds, religions, kingdoms, exist all the time, but the permutations which I've arranged them in change from campaign to campaign. There is, of course, always room for expansion. If the kind of story I tell necessitates some kind of entity that doesn't exist, the mythology changes. It grows.

Perhaps someday I'll write a lot of this stuff down to set the record straight but For now I enjoy the way the story of my world changes every time I tell it, like a folk tale or a comic book.

What Are We Gonna Do With All This Gold?

The smell of sulfur is heavy in the air and a loud, deep snore rumbles through the walls of the cavern. The Thief scouts ahead, silent as the breeze. Atop piles of gleaming coins sleeps a dragon, its onyx scales reflecting the swamp water. Several chests dot the room, each overflowing with gold, jewels, wealth unimaginable. . .

Assuming these adventurers don't become dragon chow, what would they do with all of this gold? If your games are anything like mine, you can't just roll down to the corner store and pick up a Wand of Magic Missile, a belt of Healing Potions, and that Vorpal Longsword your Warrior has been eyeing. That kind of availability disrupts the balance of the game and, more importantly, it contradicts the nature of magic—rare, feared, misunderstood, inspiring. So what value does gold have as a player reward? 

While most adventurers begin the game poor, by the time they gain their first level they have already made more money than the average fantasy day laborer makes in their entire life. Not long after they should be able to afford the top tier of craftsmanship for their gear. And after that? I don't know, but gold is by far the most common reward and all of those loot stacks the party drags back to their hideout seem pretty redundant. 

To answer my own question: material wealth as a player reward stops being rewarding once a character's basic needs are met. While all games should be trading in the currency of what we'll call "story rewards", this should be the most common payout your adventurers receive once their basic needs are met. Give them influence, power, the opportunity to accomplish their personal goals. 

Of course, this is a generalization. Some people are perfectly content to plumb the depths of an endless underground maze, slaying rooms full of monsters for no other reason than they stand between the adventurers and their next pile of gold. Even in that type of game, which I do enjoy, the loot handed out can be more interesting by tying it to the narrative. It doesn't solve the essential problem of what to do with the accumulated wealth, but it does at least make feel more purposeful, which I suppose is what any reward aspires to, story or otherwise. 

And to Whom Do We Make Out the Check?

This is a debate that cropped up in my group in the past few weeks. When we award experience, are we rewarding the player or the character? The DM took the stance that for XP goes to the character. This seems rather logical and the alternative, of rewarding players for their actions rather than the specific characters, may seem odd but bear with me for a moment.

XP is not a thing that exists in the world of the game. It is an abstract method of reward for the character completing certain tasks. While the character would explain any growth a result of some period of risk, training, or research, none of those tasks are completed unless the player wills their character to do it. To argue otherwise creates an artificial separation between the player and their character.

This may not seem like a problem, but the second you introduce a dream-based adventure or give the players alts to use for a scene the question rears its head: do we award XP for this? If we're talking about reality, that is, how things function in the real world, why should I give XP for playing out a dream based adventure or for someone else's experiences? For these questions, I have a simple answer: because gaming time is limited. If you ask the players to roll dice, they should be rewarded experience. Otherwise, those scenes should only exist as narrative pieces.

Do You Scale Difficulty to the Party?

Modern roleplaying games have a surfeit of rules for balancing encounters. It wasn't until recently that I realized these rules are near-useless. After years of planning encounters following these guidelines I can say that they are seldom accurate. Two monsters of equal challenge rarely pose the same threat. That's all beside the point, really. The question I want to ask is: as a DM, do you scale your encounters to your party level?

To some extent, everyone should be answering yes to that question. After all, we do want our players to have a fighting chance. What we don't want to do is design a world that scales with the levels of the players. Just because your party reaches level 3 doesn't mean they should suddenly encounter monsters of appropriate challenge. They need to look for them.

That's the reason I force my players deep into the wilderness if they want really tough fights: powerful monsters simply don't lurk within the bounds of civilized borders. In the few cases that they do wander within the bounds of a kingdom, it is usually to challenge that authority.

That's the long view of things. Within an adventure, however, the answer becomes a little more complex. Each adventure should, in my opinion, have several encounters below the party's level. It should have a fair number that are adequate challenges and even a couple that are very, very hard.


All of this is on mind because one of my groups is getting ready to venture deep beyond the bounds of civilization and they're going to see the difficulty of encounters spike almost immediately. I hope they have the good sense when to hold their ground and when to run.