#limpa — Public Fediverse posts

#boatmode session 31!

A fun session with a lot of social scenes between the PCs; scenes with a point to them where things had to be, and got, resolved, not just “tea time in the tavern”.

Then they explored the Marshal wreck and recovered the bones from there to have them consecrated by the Hakiyah mosque in Jumlat.

Also a session full of various subsystem and minigames.

Shopping various trade goods with my #limpa system (less intricate method of purchases and acquisitions) and it’s still a little too intricate and there’s still not enough of a connection to the particular city. The biggest input is population size. I don’t know about this one.

Also one of the new PCs is a crook so we used the burglary rules from #XGE, worked fine I thought.

Thirdly the push-your-luck system for making magical ink out of gems worked really really well! That was awesome.

Some talk about post-apocalypting games on here lately, what do peeps think about Other Dust? It seems like a good complement to other post-apocalyptic games. The tag system is so good at quickly throwing charged situations together. I’ve used it for all kinds of stuff in D&D.

@lumpley and his fam tried their best to make their own post-apocalyptic game called Apocalypse World. I’ve played it a couple of times. Very inspiring in how it lays things out kind of differently. I find it easier to learn than traditional roleplaying games in many ways. Rules become relevant when you need them. “When you try to barter for goods…”, “When you visit Dremmer’s well…” That’s a great structure especially for subsystems that are more rarely used. Aviatrix used a similar structure for Rovers and its commerce system (via John Harper’s “World of Dungeons”—is he on here?) It makes me wanna rewrite #Limpa.

Talked to Aviatrix today about the commerce system in The #Traveller Book (1981) and she walked me through the commerce system in #Rovers.

It makes me wanna make some changes to #Limpa, to create more of a connection to a specific city rather than just random. I have a lot of ideas but they are still very loose.

Notable, Traveller and Rovers both only list one offer per port. “The best deal available” ostensibly. I have to decide if I like that or not, it can really simplify things.

In Rovers, there are only six basic types of goods (that you can then elaborate on as needed). The first five are essentally random but they each have planet tags associated (not necessarily related to where you actually are. If you roll a six, MC chooses one of the other five that is related. Which in practice means that while you can get anything, it’s slightly weighted to getting something locally relevant.

And then, the money you can make is derived from various tags on the merchandize and on the source and dest planets. Elegant AF and makes me wanna go back to the drawing board on Limpa.

Unrelated, I’m having second thoughts on the whole “transaction ceiling” mechanic. I might wanna make a more huge table that just gives me all the answers right away. Or cards.

Just back-of-the-enveloping… the ceiling right now is… 2d6 × pop class squared × 10 dinars. Maybe just some die expression TBD × pop class squared is a good number for number of bags. And that die expression could be specific per good, but listed, or derived from some number or quality on the good (coin type? Get more bags on copper goods than on silver?)

Added a tldr.txt for #limpa. Will typeset for DM screen later. Bored now

Less intricate method of purchases and acquisitions https://idiomdrottning.org/limpa Wow, ten pages, I need to work on making it way less verbose. Or, keep this verbose version but make a quick reference sheet to use at the table.

#texts #rpg #boatmode #blorb #2097e #limpa

@takeonrules Another #Limpa simplification that I wanna make…

In GAZ9 it’s so frustrating with the calculations because every good is listed in “loads”, and what a load is defined from “how many X a typical merchant deal with”. That can be, here are just two examples out of thirty or so possibilities:

• two tiny li’l ingots of precious metal, weighing 400 cn for the pair
• ten full barrels of preserved fish, weighing 8000 cn for the ten of them.

This means that to calculate what one barrel weight, I need to divide 8000 by ten (to get cn, which is kind of a useless measure). To calculate what one barrel costs I need to divide 150 gp (modified by the formula.) I know 150 divided by 10 sounds easy, but, it’s N percent of 150 divided by M. So I need to juggle three operands which I hate hate hate doing. I want easy math!

So in #Limpa, the “load” is no longer the unit this table is organized by. Instead, it’s all gonna be bags of the same weight (30 lb, or two stone in our house rules). Oh wow, just as I am typing this… I realize if I center the die expression (described in the previous post) around 30 instead of around 10, I can use the 5e PHB p157 price list (which is listed per pounds) and just multiply that with the rolled factor to get the price per bag! I’m gonna need a calculator or soroban but I would’ve needed that anyway.

Baaasically the same system as GAZ9 but presented “inverted”.

This is how GAZ9 is now: “Sharwin wants to sell 2d4 loads of preserved fish. Each load is 10 barrels, and weigh 8000 cn [a cn is ⅒ pound, so each barrel is 8000 cn → 800 pounds → 27 bags] and costs 150×M gp”. [M is centered around 1, so 1.2 for example. Except that it says 120%… in GAZ9. Suns of Gold is even worse where it says “+20%”.]

This is how I would want #Limpa to look. “A pound of fish is typically 18 copper fels. Sharwin’s selling ceiling is 4d4×100 dinars.”

As another example, the metals. “Jalgen wants to buy 2d4 loads of precious metals. Each load is 2 ingots, and weigh 400 cn (that’s 1⅓ bag in my world) and costs 600 gp.” I’d make it “A pound of precious metals is typically 15 dinars. Jalgen wants to buy precious metals for up to 4d4×500 dinars.”

GAZ9 tables have four fields (plus the index field). Name, description of one load (“10 barrels”, “2 bags”, “150 bricks” etc), weight of one load, price of one load. (How many loads each merchant sells is a separate table.)

I would need two fields plus index. Name and price per pound.

• Price per bag = multiply by the rolled number directly (no table referencing).
• Price per pound = as listed. Both the PHB and the main aQ book have prices per pound. The GAZ9 lists I’ll have to convert and just put into the #Limpa PDF.
• Weight per bag = always 30 pounds.
• Amount of loads a merchant wants to deal with: instead an amount of money they want to deal with. Die expression times 100 dinars for normal stuff and times 500 dinars for precious merch. (Die expressions are approx doubled from GAZ9.)

When I really want to flavor it up, I can describe five bags as “a barrel” or ten bags as “a crate”. Those are easy and constant numbers and I can have them listed next to the table and only use them optionally.

And if I ever stop procrastinating and get around to doing what I wanted to do for… the cancelled game… and make a script for this stuff, in that case the script would convert it over from the dinar “buying ceiling” or “selling ceiling” and instead write “Jalgen wants to buy 3 sacks of precious metals for 465 dinars”. But even then, the underlying data structure I’d have to implement is sooo much simpler.

@takeonrules One of my players misunderstood a rule on Suns of Gold and I misunderstood that in a different way and both of our misunderstandings are just gonna be the rule in #Limpa. One of MaRo’s maxims: change the rule to fit player expectations. Not always but sometimes the right thing.

My mistake was…and I knew the rule, I just brainlapsed… I wanted to get -60% and I know that you multiply by .4 but I accidentally multiplied by .6. I read -60% as 60%.

His mistake was… In Suns of Gold, you reference a 3d6+mods table but many of the common rolls match up. 8 = -20%, 7 =-30%, you see the pattern. As did my player, but, that pattern doesn’t hold true for the entire table. (GAZ9 has the same problem.)

So to fix both issues, in #Limpa base prices are gonna be shown one tenth and then just multiply by a die expression (TBD) to get the price. So we roll an eight and doshes are 4 dagps, well, they’re now on sale for 32 dinars a piece. I should also maybe make the rolls in secret (using dice cards that can later be shown) because it’s too easy to see when you are getting a great deal (low roll). Or maybe that’s fun to know, IDK.

@takeonrules The new econ engine got a name today! (Even though it’s not finished yet.) It’s gonna be called #Limpa. Less intricate method of purchases and acquisitions.