More Loot XP Complexity

DFRPG Arden Vul gives XP for exploration, loot, and achievements.

Exploration is pretty easy.  I just decide when a new location is explored enough to count, and mark it down.  At the end of a session I add all the new locations explored to my script, which de-duplicates them so they don't get credit for a location in session 65 if they already visited it in session 42.  And it spits out a zero (not much exploration) or a one (decent exploration) or a two (lots of exploration).

Achievements are also pretty easy, because they're totally GM fiat.  Players sometimes lobby for them, but usually not successfully.  Also, the bar goes up over time.  What might be an achievement for a 150-point newbie isn't necessarily still an achievement for a 300-point veteran.  Act like you've been in the dungeon before, kid.  Nobody's impressed that you knocked back a giant anymore.

But loot, loot is the problem.  At some point I published the exact rules for XP for loot, so now the players have a spreadsheet.  And they try to sell exactly enough to hit breakpoints.  And sometimes they split loot unevenly so that someone can get an extra XP.  It's gross, but they have fun, so I don't try to stop them.

Anyway, the problem is that if you get XP for the value of loot, loot has to have a fixed value.  Economics has the Law of One Price.  The real world isn't always that simple; sometimes all the details that economists like to abstract away aren't actually abstracted away yet.  A Coca-Cola really costs more in rural Alaska than it does in New York; air freight to the middle of nowhere isn't free.

As an example, the Arden Vul adventure says that Rudishva Lesser Power supplies are worth 5000 gold pieces, which I converted to $5000.  That's a lot.  The thing is, nobody will actually pay anywhere near that for one, unless they have an essential device that needs Lesser Power Supplies, or know a rich guy who does.  If you want to sell one in Gosterwick, where nobody the PCs know of has any laser pistols, maybe you'll get $20 for it as a curio.  "What a finely made metal disk!  Maybe I can cut a hole in it and put it on a necklace and give it to my wife for our anniversary."  Similarly, if you sell a laser pistol with no power supply, maybe you'll get $100 for it.  "Weird looking toy crossbow.  Maybe I'll give it to my kid for solstice."  But if you sell the laser pistol and the power supply together, along with a bit of training on which end to point at the enemy and which button makes them burn, yeah, full price.  Except now you've given away the secret of laser weapons.

So, basically the dilemma is that the PCs found a bunch of valuable Lesser Power Supplies and would like to extract full value from them, without telling anyone in Gosterwick about Rudishva or laser pistols.  Which means they can only sell them to someone who already knows about Rudishva and laser pistols.  That currently means the Varumani, deep within Arden Vul.  (There was also Kerbog Khan, but they killed him.  As a general rule, dead people tend not to buy stuff, especially from their killers.)  So they plan to visit the Varumani and sell them power supplies.  But they can't do that during downtime, as only safe activities are allowed during downtime.  (If the GM allows dangerous activities during downtime, then the GM has to introduce the "Did your PC die during downtime?" table, which no player wants to roll on.)

So we have a new house rule.  Any loot you want XP for, you have to sell as soon as practical.  However, if the only decent market for it is in the dungeon, that means the next delve, rather than downtime between delves.  So loot XP for things you can't really sell in downtime gets delayed a session.

Worse, sometimes a PC plays in Session n but not in Session n+1.  If they find an item in Session n and sell it in Session n+1, and the party composition changed between those sessions, who gets what cut?  The full party members already act as a loot-sharing commune, so they can figure it out.  Mercenaries demand a full fair share, though.  And this is always rounded in the mercs' favor.  If they were on either delve, they want their full cut.