Homebrew Diary: Introducing Expedition Points

Copper Coins! started off as my attempt to make a faithful reproduction of dungeon crawling adventure gaming but with somewhat more modern and less arcane rules. One of the things I talk about a lot regarding Copper Coins! is resource management. Resource management is a large and important part of adventure gaming. In the dungeon or wilderness you typically do not have the capability or time to rebuild your resource base – usually your ability to do so is contrived out of the adventure (such as by having the adventure way too far from civilization) in order to generate challenge and tension. Adventurers need to stock up on supplies before heading out, and they need to manage them. This can be anything from “do I want to drink this Potion of Giant’s Gonads or save it for later?” to “Should I spend medical supplies recovering my health or suck it up?” to nitty gritty “should I eat today?” questions. To me, these are cool and thrilling parts of the adventure…that could use a bit of streamlining.

My attempts to generate a complicated economy for my game tended to result in failure of my overall goals. But I thought of another way to make everything work out and am working to develop these rules for the next release.

The major problem I ran into was one of representation. I wanted to have tables for all kinds of stuff – food, clothing, services, etc. Unfortunately such tables take up too much space, have generally little utility in an actual game and are just complicated to generate. All the prices and weight and the like overwhelmed not only me but people attempting to play the game as it wanted to be played. The idea that people would comb this list for items, purchase what they could, juggle the costs with the potential profit to be made from adventuring, and then track consumption of lantern oil and whatnot as they went along quickly became insane, if it did not already start out that way. I felt like I enjoyed the idea and tension of managing these resources more than I enjoyed the means by which I represented them. One day I thought “if this table only had like 3 things in it and you lost 20 of each per fight or something, this would be a lot easier to handle for everybody involved.” That’s where I came up with Expedition Points.

The idea is that adventurers need 3 resources that can measure their longevity in the wilderness. They need Sustenance points, which are food, medicine, soap, stuff for sharpening their swords, repairing their armor and clothes, supplies for keeping a camp, and so on. They need Delve points, which are for ropes, ten foot poles, ammunition, lockpicks, lantern oil, and other equipment you’re carrying on you, and that WILL get broken when an ogre smashes you with its club that’s larger than you are, or when you shove it into a trap like you’re always doing to your poor tools. Magic Points are reagents, incense, and just the general health and endurance of your caster and continued ability to cast the spells that’ll disarm the magic traps, protect you from evil undead miasma, etc. Each of these three is acquired in separate pools that represent the whole party’s resources.

As you adventure, these resources suffer Attrition, reducing the amounts you have until you start running out of food, all your poles are broken, etc. You won’t just immediately teleport back to town – you can choose to tough it out, and even try to collect stuff from your surroundings. But it won’t be easy to adventure when you’re totally out of supplies.

To even begin adventuring you must collect these resources – you can go to the Crypt of the Bohemian Lich King without them but you will suffer penalties and likely die. So yeah, get some food before going. However, the amount you require will differ based on the dungeon. The GM will set minimum requirements you need. For example, if you’re gonna trek out through the Somewhat-Discomforting Sands into the Temple Of The Temple-Making Temple Kings, you’re gonna need more Sustenance (food, medicine, tents) than if you’re going to The Marginally Distant Woods. There is a minimum amount you need, but also a maximum amount you can acquire – you won’t be able to drag a ridiculous merchant convoy with you. To find out what resources you’ll need, you’ll have to rely on research. Either hit the library, the temple, ask the locals, go rumor-hunting, etc.

You can also burn your resources for certain benefits, called Expedition Feats. For example, you could burn your delve points to set up an ambush, beginning a fight with bonus Edge and attack bonuses, but losing some longevity of exploration.

These points interact with the 3 other points you might’ve noticed on the Fighter class I previewed last time – Reputation, Wealth and Bonds. These three are the means that adventurers use to get supplies. You can spend your Reputation, reminding people that you are Rudgar the Bigoted or Eloise the Conceited or Carrot Top, gaining supplies that way. You can just use money, which is your Wealth points – we’ve ceased tracking that stuff explicitly in coins, though as far as roleplaying is concerned it still is some amount of coins. But just whatever amount is convenient to roleplay. Or you can use your Bonds, calling in favors and friends.

A GM can also just up and ignore the Expedition Point system I suppose. Just assume they always have enough for what they’re doing, and make the real danger come from traditional stuff like fighting monsters.