Conning Your Players

I always get nervous about bringing con artists into my campaigns.  I believe that they must exist in the fantasy world that I have created and even have an entire ethnicity that is well known for being tricksters (the Yugsalantis).  But the idea of conning the players always rubbed me the wrong way.

Let me explain what I mean.  I am absolutely for quest givers tricking the party.  That is a natural part of the game for me, and the players know for them as well.  Outright lying to them about their surroundings is most commonly the result of bad die rolls (Senses tasks).  Even having people they are questioning lie to them - absolutely normal.

So what don’t I like?  Well, selling them a charm from an “enchanter” and having it be a fake.  The Yugsalantis are not just con men, they have the world’s best fortune tellers.  Because of this, they are often selling trinkets to protect yourself against the evil eye (an actual spell in LEGEND QUEST) and other such things.  Some of their other common tricks are to sell tools and even weapons that are made of substandard steel and therefore far more prone to breaking.

So with me being a pretty mean spirited game master, why am I against this?  Well, mainly because I do think it is cheating.  It really isn’t though.  A warrior should have the Weaponcraft skills to tell a good weapon from a bad one, and if he doesn’t, then he deserves to be cheated.  Same with magic.  Why would you trust a witch selling “healing potions”?

But it does feel like cheating to me.  Honestly a big part of it is the logistics of it.  Say one of the PCs does buy a faked healing potion.  But then he finds or buys three more that are real.  You know his character sheet is going to read “4 healing potions” and not “one healing potion from witch and three from that dragon hoard”.  So how do you as GM remember that he has a bad one and figure out when it is to be used?  Now healing potions are probably noticeable when they work and when they don’t, but what about a strength enhancing potion?  As GM, you could probably completely hide the fact that the strength potion wasn’t working, but you will have to keep doing math in your head and remember that the strength potion was fake in the first place.  That’s a lot of work for a cheap scheme to take a few gold coins away from one of the PCs.

So instead of punishing PCs for buying dumb stuff, I go at it a different way.  When they are buying something important (a magic item), especially from someone they don’t know, they need to bring in a tester.  Think of it as taking a used car to your mechanic before you buy it.  If the enchanter says it is enchanted with vorpal sharpness, someone is going to bring in another enchanter to check it out.  Same type of thing with healing potions and the like.  This makes it more expensive to buy magic items, which is a good thing.

But the same goes the other way.  If a party hands an alchemist six potions and claims they are three fire and three frost resistance, the alchemist is going to say, OK, give me a couple of days to check them out.  He is then going to charge them for the amount of testing he needs to do, which means they get less for their loot.  But again, I’m OK with that.

With the assumption that there are these “auditors” around who can be hired to confirm what something is, I can run a game where I don’t sell fake objects to PCs.  All the NPCs may still be buying faked objects, because not being professional adventurers they do not normally bring an appraiser to the market with them to check everything out.

As per usual, I’ve just explained why role-players will like that this is part of the world / story, but what about those non-role-players?  Well the gold farmers can enjoy this added bit of lore, because it opens up possibilities for missions.  If someone is trying to sell faked magic items, they might kidnap the local auditor enchanter, or better yet, his daughter.  Now the party has to rescue the little girl before the big exchange goes down or their friend / boss / king will wind up paying big money for crap.

This is one of the main reasons I dive so deep into my game world - You never know when some idea you came up with to cover fraud among enchanters winds up giving you a great idea for an adventure.

Urban Developments turns Copper

 

Hey - We got some great news!  Our Urban Developments book has turned into a Copper Popular Pick on RPG Now.

We normally don’t do step by step type books, though maybe we should, because both Urban Developments and Grain Into Gold have been hugely popular on our sale sites.  Normally we throw the kitchen sink at you in hopes of sparking ideas and getting you thinking about your world, but both of these were really “start here move through this way” and apparently it worked as folks are voting with their dollars.

We really do want to thank all of our customers and especially our Patreon patrons who support us and the things we’re doing.  We are a small press company so any support helps drive us to get more product and content out there!

Follow up - Safe Houses

This is a follow up to Old Weapons and Safe Houses.  With the RPG Blog Carnival this month being about sequel blogs and revisiting old posts, we thought we would join in the fun!

 

We have discussed adventurers having safe houses before, and this seems a must to any party participating in urban adventures.  The other alternative (and we’re not trying to set-up a paper tiger here) would be that the party is constantly walking around in their armor fully armed.

But how?  where?  Here are some of the ideas we have had:

Wilderness - Outside of town can often be the best place to lie low.  You can hide loot there, maybe to avoid taxes, maybe to avoid walking in with it on display.  You can keep extra weapons and food there in case you need to lie low for a week or two.  An old abandoned mine seems like the absolute best place.  You should be able to strongly secure the door, since the main entrance was intentionally dug.  After that, you should have room for whatever and safety.  And few kids or animals would be able to get past the secured door.  The biggest concern would likely be moisture seeping in somehow and possibly ruining what you stored there.  Plus, if it had valuable material, it wouldn’t be abandoned, so it should be really cheap.  You might even risk putting your own lock on someone else’s mine if you think they haven’t bothered to look at it in years.

An old quarry - While these are not as easy to say “there’s nothing valuable left there” they can still be cheap.  The shelter is whatever you want it to be, though honestly, rarely better than an old shack.  We wouldn’t suggest simply putting your stuff in the old shack and hoping for the best, but instead get a little clever.  Even burying it under the shack might be enough, but we like the idea of having your supernaturally strong character(s) pick up a huge boulder and hide whatever you want under that.  An old strip mine would qualify more here than under a “mine”.

In town - Picking an apartment to use as a safe house is tough.  If it is in too bad a neighborhood, then you run the risk of thieves.  If it is in too residential a neighborhood, it runs the risk of standing out and having nosy neighbors gossip about it.  If it is a good neighborhood it could be too expensive.  We think the busy neighborhoods are the best.  A smallish apartment on a busy street that mostly has stores and not homes, especially if the building has several apartments.  That way your safe house might go unnoticed as simply an unrented apartment.

In town there should be some manner of storage business.  Think about those storage spots we have in our modern world, though probably different from that.  You may not be able to stay in one (or maybe you can), but stashing away weapons and healing potions and possibly money could be a great boon to you when needed.  Business hours might turn out to be a problem, but that is a risk.  In Rhum, there are many of these places - most will store a trunk or chest for you relatively cheaply.  Think of it like a safety deposit box only bigger.

In town contacts can be incredibly important too, but someone is going to have to give them enough importance to have established them.  Family members, close friends, people you once rescued, these can all hide a couple of characters for a short time and certainly hide a trunk of stuff for them.  But remember, as great as these means of hiding out are, these same people can turn out to be hostages or victims.  That’s great mission starter stuff!

How to Find The Sounding Board

One of the easiest ways to find new blog posts for The Sounding Board (that’s this blog in case you didn’t know) was to watch RPGBloggers, where all of our stuff was posted automatically.  Well, they seem to be tied up with something.  We really hope they finish their “maintenance” soon, but we’re trying to get the word out through some of the Google+ boards.  If you find our posts through Google+, please give us a +1!

Thanks!

But hey - if you have an idea or want to help steer us in a particular direction, please email us at info@boardenterprises.com.  We listen!  and act on your advice.

Small Bites Marches On

We’ve posted another edition of Small Bites.  This one is The Chivalrous Knights of Myork aka All About Knights and Nobility.  You will hopefully remember The Mercenary Vators of Myork aka All About Men-at-Arms.  Of course, they are related, but the clear difference is that between noble knights and common men-at-arms.  If your game world doesn’t see a distinction between the noble warriors and the common soldiers, then you might want to try these out to see not only how it makes things more interesting, but how it will spark all sorts of new missions and ideas.

In case you didn’t notice it, we had also put out The Merchant Wars of Forsbury - aka All About Caravans & Cartage.  We’re serious about the “war” part of that.  These merchants don’t just move product.  They will actively battle each other if the profits seem worth it.  Of course profit and war scream for adventurers and other mercenaries to get involved.

And just so you don’t think we’re slaking off - We also published a choose your own adventure story.  It’s a little raw, but we’ll keep refining and lengthening it over time.  The folks who’ve taken the time seem to be enjoying it!

So take a look!  All of this stuff is free - gives you a chance to see of you like our style.  It’s not for everyone.  We’re a little old school and don’t spend a ton of money on fine art.  We figure, if you really want art, you can get that elsewhere; what we’re selling is content.