[Badass City] how do you design price lists?
dindenver:
Marshall,
I just had a thought, what if the cost was directly tied tot eh mechanical benefit provided. So, if it gives you a +2 (or two dice, or however your system works) it costs 20 BAPs...
Just a thought. But it might take some of the arbitrariness out of the pricing...
Marshall Burns:
Dave,
It's not a bad concept, but it's unfortunately inappropriate to this particular game. The way items work, they're statted out with "tags." For an example, a sledgehammer is (hard sturdy heavy), a knife is (sharp small), a machine gun is (ranged heavy fast), and a fire extinguisher is (cold hard pressurized). The way this works is, if you can work one or more of an item's tags into a task (in a manner that doesn't prompt another player to call bullshit), you get +1 (per item, not per tag). So an item is an item in terms of raw Effectiveness; the difference is how it can be used, which is something influenced by innumerable variables that crop up (and working those variables to your advantage is a large part of the strategy). Furthermore, damage is damage, no matter where it comes from -- getting punched, shot, stabbed, blown up with dynamite, hit by a train -- it's all the same. (Just imagine it as drawn by Frank Miller; see, now it makes sense, right?) So there's not even any quantitative difference between weapons.
Chris,
Given the boasting system, and the way that items are handled, I don't actually think it'll be possible to have non-mechanically significant items. I do, however, want to present different quality levels of different things, even though they're mechanically equivalent, because it gives players status that they can lord over each other (it's a very trash-talky, punch-each-other-in-the-face-then-laugh kind of game). The fact that it's also boast-fodder is a bonus, really...
...so, Jack, yeah, I do want these to be awards for the players.
-Marshall
dindenver:
So...
It looks like the cost should be linked to the number of tags...
JackTheOwner:
So you have two types of items on your list: Useful objects with bonuses, and things like houses etc.
As dindenver said, first items could be priced based on their tags, but the real problem is with others. But maybe not - do houses also have tags?
Marshall Burns:
Thing is, sheer number of tags doesn't necessarily indicate general amount of usefulness. It's all contingent on so many volatile factors of environment and positioning, it's hard to say what's more useful than what. Aside from that, we'd end up with some rather -- ah, what's the word here; I keep thinking "asymmetrical" but that's not what I'm trynig to say -- values if we value by number of tags. The way it works is, there's a list of tags (all adjectives) in the rules, and if you can use one of them to describe an item (without prompting someone to call bullshit), then it goes on the item.
So, yeah, houses and things have tags too. A mansion, frex, is at the very least "(fancy big sturdy)."
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