From: [f--oj--s] at [oreo.berkeley.edu] (Fabio Rojas) Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.dnd Subject: Economic theory and the design of role playing games Date: 24 Jan 1996 08:50:53 GMT Economic theory and the design of role playing games, an essay by Fabio Rojas This essay is an attempt to describe the relationship between some simple ideas in economics and the design of role playing games. The idea is not to make role playing games more complicated by dressing them up in some esoteric theory, but to illuminate basic issues and to clarify controversial points in their structure. This essay is intended for those who enjoy studying, modifying and designing role playing game systems. If you have ever asked your self whether the THACO system is good or whether level limits acheive their intended goal, then you are in the audience I am aiming for. If you think that such issues are silly or irrlevant, then this is not for you. The goal of this essay os to discuss some very basic economic ideas and then show their implications for role playing games. The two basic ideas are cost and incentive. It is my opinion that analyzing role playing game issues with these ideas can be very useful. A. Cost - when evaulating a power, one should ask, how much does thus cost? Costs and a budget put serious constraints on real wordl economic activity and they are a good way to put constraints on characters in role playing games. It is intuitive that PC's will have a "budget" and it is good to turn this intuition into specific sets of game mechanical rules. On a role playing level, people can only train for so many different powers and abilities. On a mechanical level, this means that there is some upper limit on how many powers people have. Another implication of this idea is that better powers should cost more. Someone who has a wizard's THACO should pay less than one who fights like a warrior. These two ideas lead to a very natural attitude: players should be allowed a wide variety of different powers as along as 1] they don't exceed some overall budget and 2] better powers actually cost more. Some game systems exhibit this, like Champions, and others, like many TSR games, do not. A new question naturally arises: should players always be allowed to max out their budget of powers? The Champions approach is "yes". Everyone is truly equal since they get to spend the same amount on their characters. Another approach is to give the players an incentive not to max out their characters. One idea is to start a "savings account". People save part of their budget and the long it is saved, the more of a return they get when it is withdrawn. Another approach I use in AD&D settings is to implement a "base" system. Each power is assigned a cost. PC's rise in level inversely to the total amount spent. Weak PC's rise in level quickly. That corresponds to not using the total budget. People who max out or spend their entire budget go up in levels slowly. This leads to the second concept: B Incentives - Game mechanical rules give incentives for and against certain actions. These are very important. In economics, for example, taxes provide incentives and certain disincentives. Rules do the same thing. If elves have many powers, then that provides an incentive for more elf characters, especially in combat intensive campaigns. As described above, a good system of costs provides a pretty good set of incentives in a role playing games. In a recent TSR supplement, it was suggested that perhaps non-weapon proficiencies be traded in for weapon proficiencies. This clearly provides an incentive for the dumping of almost all weapon proficienciesin favor of more combat bonueses. This is clearly a bad incentive. These two concepts, cost and incentive, I think can really settle arguments about various rules in game systems. I should make a very observation that costs and incentives are relative. For example, in an intensive role playing campaign with little combat, weapon proficiencies have very little value an dthus should cost very little. Here are some examples: Level limits for demi-humans in AD&D. The idea is that they balance out demi-humans. Do they actually acheive this goal? First, what is the cost of level limits for players? None. They still get the powers that make them powerful with no immediate disadvantages. Do the level limits provide a negative incentive for becoming a demi-human PC? Very little. Unless PC's rise in levels very quickly, the penalty for choosing a demi-human is very small. Kits: the question is whether a given kit balanced? First question, does the kit have some cost? For example, if the PC gets a bonus with no penalty in cost, then you should become suspect. Second, what incentive does a PC have for taking or not taking the kit? Finally, how does the new and improved PC compare to other PC's? For example, a +1 with sword and no other minuses,will cost a little bit more so it shouldn't really unbalance things. A kit will only unbalalance things if the total cost of the PC, including the kit, exceeds the total budget for PC's in the campaign world. Comparison between spells and other abilities: this raises an important issue. How should a fireball spell be compared with a weapon proficiency? Once should compare the avergae fireball with th evalue of an avergae hit with a weapon. For example, when evaluating a fireball, one should take into account that the average 5th level fireball only causes 3.5 * 5 = 17.5 points of damage. Since many PC's will make a save, this will actually be an avergae of 9 points of damage. Since the avergae mage will only cast one fireball, the effect is less than two avergae hits with a +1 short sword. The lesson is that the average affect should not determine the cost, not the extremes. Demi-humans: They are more powerful so should they be penlaized? Well if you have a way of rewarding those who do not max out their budget for powers, then it is no problem. ___ These simple ideas of cost and incentive are not merely theory, my gaming group have used these to seriously revise the class structure for AD&D so that any race can be any class or multi-class and there are no level limits. Players can also taylor make classes in a systematic way and still keep things balanced. How? We wrote up an extensive list of AD&D powers: hit dice, THACO, spells, etc. We awarded each a certain cost. We compared costs to make sure that weak powers cost less than good ones (for example, casting spells in armor is extremely expensive and very few PC's hexpensive and very few PC's have it ]. We then gave a total budget to players. The total cost of the PC is called the "base". The higher the base, the slower PC's advance in levels. Weak PC's zoom up the levels. It all balances out in a systematic manner. People can have powerful PC's - there's a penalty. People cna play weak PC's and there's a bonus for that. With the list of costs it is easy to incorporate various changes - like new kits, races, powers - and make sure it is all balanced. I hope these basic ideas will help DM's design better rules. It should also help curve munchkinism. These ideas are inherent in some very superior systems like Champions. Send all comments to [f--oj--s] at [math.berkeley.edu]