Play Report #2 | Designing for Waste

Errant includes an XP-for-Gold mechanic, but inverts it. Rather than gaining 1 XP per Coin, you instead gain XP after you've a) taken it home and b) have "wasted" it. Spending the gold in randomized sums on the likes of pretentious eatery, erecting statues in your name or declaring your piety (things those in the real world who hit a kind of lottery would do), that's how you get XP from your gold.

The game names this mechanic Conspicuous Consumption. This is a real world economic term coined by Thorstein Veblen to describe buyers flexing their economic power through the consumption of goods, i.e. buying expensive things not for the product itself, but also the social power or class mobility that flexing your wealth provides. 

So your Errants and hirelings return from the dungeon hall, but XP comes from superfluous research, vain pursuits, hobbies and interests that don't equate to 1:1 game benefits. Buying properties to turn into rentals and extracting wealth - as an example - would not be a waste, but rather an investment. Buying supplies and torches or potions would not be a waste either, as these things have concrete game mechanics.

Erecting a statue of yourself, trying to get townsfolk hooked on drinking urine (as one PC of mine is currently doing, thanks to starting with a jug of genuine wolf piss), erecting waystations for pilgrims of your faith, these are economic assertions of social status - Conspicuous Consumption - and therefore net you XP.

I'm 5 sessions into running my Dungeon23 draft using ERRANT. We've only had one/two players brave enough to engage in Conspicuous Consumption, but it's been a really fun mental shift for me. They need to go spelunking in the megadungeon for gold, but they also have to haul it back and fulfill their passions/pursuits to get XP and increase their Renown.

It's also made me realize just how fun this design space can be, creating more opportunities to 'Waste' even inside the dungeon itself. I figured this out at the table when the players engaged in faction play, striking their first real alliance with one of the dungeon's factions: The Kobolds!

Kobold by DieselShot

My playgroup are the type to see little guys and fall in love. Knowing that, I put plenty of barriers in the way to keep a level of dramatic uncertainty: there were loose traps throughout the first level of the dungeon that had been put their by kobolds, they were feeding a nest of Striders (my version of rust monsters)…yet after a positive reaction roll, the players put the effort in to strike it good with the kobolds of Clan Xymox.

Cleaning out the nest, their accompanying Kobold informed that them their leader would pay top dollar for the gemstones they found. In my campaign setting lots of species have magically asexual means of reproduction to distinguish them from humans, and kobolds want gems because they literally breath life into them to turn them into kobold eggs. More gemstones, more kobolds!

As I mentioned this I was struck with this inspiration that this was (or could be) a kind of wasting money. Getting rewards from the dungeon and giving them to the kobolds is a faction choice, rather than a monetary one, and so I awarded XP to the players. I also awarded money (because that's what I had the NPC promise) but the choice has become clear: allow players an optional sink, trading the money they would've had for no-risk XP. And the kobolds are happy!

This also kinda ties into the economic model of wasting gold-for-XP: the players are flexing their wealth for social status ("I don't need these gemstones to pay for food, give it to the little guys!") and working towards raising the level of their renown. 

So here's some design experiments to try and facilitate this:

Opportunities to Waste in Errant

• Gem Hatcheries
• Kobolds pay handsomely for the first gem haul, then afterwards are too light to pay you as such. If you "waste" the gemstones you find on them, you gain XP.
• The resulting kobold whelps treat you like a long-lost uncle/aunt/relative, even deigning to share their eternal stew of worms and moss with The Company.
• Hire a kobold porter or fighting companion and don't give them the gems, and he passes along to The Clan that you didn't help them out. This ticks a clock of four parts. Fill up the clock, and their reaction dips a category.
   
• Menagerie's Gift Shop 
• In The Menagerie - an ancient zoo turned dungeon level - lies the remains of a gift shop. This menagerie was the greatest collection of beasts in ancient times, of course there's a gift shop! On the dusty counter is a tip jar with script that changes as the eyes take it in, spelling "Tip Me" in your native language.
• Where's the random element? I think when an intrepid Errant puts a penny in the jar, a small stuffed animal appears miraculously on the empty shelves.
• Roll D4 x 200 to tip into the magic jar. The pennies (or whatever treasure) vanish, being replaced with a sufficiently sick-as-hell stuffed animal that looks like it was sewn yesterday. It takes up 2 slots from its cumbersome nature, it's sick as hell, and the PC gets that much XP. In this specific circumstance, a PC cannot go over their amount of money.
  
• Stuffed Animals D6: 1 Ziz (griffon, 3 slots), 2 elephant with four tusks, 3 winged bull with a human face, 4 turtle, 5 bear with eight legs and eyes, 6 winged lion
  
• Tip jar may become slot machine, as that's how it works in practice...

 

Wouldn't you risk life and limb against hordes of the undead for a crack at this??

• Temporal Charity
• In the Hall of Space - an Escher-painting-esque level with past-and-future colliding in a Sefirotic point crawl - there's a band of religious pilgrims who are lost and stuck here. These are (one timeline of) some of the first pilgrims to ever set foot into the desert on a generational exodus, poor and starving. Choose to donate your treasure to them, and engage in a unique form of Conspicuous Consumption called Charity.
  
• Holy Debt: Not a literal debt, but a space-temporal transaction where the Malachim have picked up your slack to materialize extra gold for the pilgrims. Like all debt, this is held collectively by the company. For every 100 gold of Holy Debt, Devils and Sheydim deal +1 damage to you, and the Reaction Roll of Malachim also increases by +1.
  

Charity takes D6 x 400 gold away from you (this is important as most of the game tracks wealth in pennies, Charity takes a LOT). If you go beneath the current wealth you have, you acquire Holy Debt and make a save with any attribute of your choosing. If you fail, roll on the celestial changes table:

Celestial Changes D6

1 You are marked by anti-light, the mirrored antithesis of the first dawn. This changes your feet to resemble those of a rooster-like bird. While your new feet are visible, all who see you consider you one of The Sheydim.

2 Your skin now attracts coins, regardless of denomination or material. Being in the presence of multiple slots worth of coins may require a Skill save to avoid D4 bludgeoning damage as they fly towards you (higher damage for higher denominations...). Vagabonds may be attracted to the fact they can find D6 pennies on you at any given time.

3 Wracked with visions of desiccated skeletons in a desert of gold coins. Every time you rest in the dungeon, there's a 1-in-6 chance you encounter a Greater Echo (sic. wraith).
While you're so haunted, you no longer need to eat or drink.

4 A lone wing sprouts from where your shoulder blades would be. It is feathery and speckled with eyes. You are respected amongst the faithful, and a target amongst those in league with The Sheydim (devils, fae and the shadows all).

5 The word for 'truth' is now written on your forehead in blood. If you suffer damage to the head, are caught in torrential downpour or bathe regularly, the first letter fades. This turns it from 'truth' to 'death' and you are Consigned to the Reaper.

6 A crown of light now permanently shines on your brow. All magic - harmful and helpful - now slides off of you like water off a duck's back. Zealots and the devout will either think you a prophet or a challenger in the divine realm.

I'll probably allow some form of Downtime penance to clear away the Holy Debt (1000gp's worth at a time). As for celestial changes, I'd let a PC try and "cleanse" themselves by doing something suitably holy/unholy and badass, like spend a night resting in The Cathedral of Asmodai, or killing a golem or angel and bathing in its innards, or eating the right mushroom in the Mushroom Forest...

Considerations

 There's more complexity to designing for wasting gold the more I go. Conspicuous Consumption is very purposefully left as a step of Downtime, not something one does when firmly in danger in the dungeon. Yet, what if players could essentially empty out their pockets for gold right away, with different consequences?

These opportunities should be:

• Fun and evocative of the surrounding area, not just included on a whim.
• Either need to have some fun form of debt accrued as a sufficient risk, or be physically remote enough within the dungeon that adventuring to it is risky.
• Even if the players use it frequently...that's kind of the point, right?
  Giving players fun, noncombat goals to engage with in the dungeon? 
• Tied in to faction play. The kobolds were obvious, but I'm also brainstorming how my megadungeon's cult faction may have some opportunity for wasting loot/money that could net PCs XP (if they decide they wanna get on the good side of Asmodai's Cult...)