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Pen and Paper Roleplaying Games (RPGs) Discussion / In defense of meta-gaming
« on: April 24, 2015, 04:15:24 am »
My group used to play a lot of Shadowrun 2nd ed (seeing as that was the newest iteration available). In that game there were 2 resources important to character advancement, XP, which went by the name of Karma in the game, and money. Our GM was very generous with the XP, which enabled us to raise our attributes and skills to mastery, but not so much the money. Which really put a damper on things like new spells, new guns, medical treatment, etc.
Even collecting everything carried by those we defeated in battle (an age old tradition) seldom saw us get more then enough for maybe a value meal at the local fast food place.
Then our GM discovered the game Earthdawn, set in the same universe as Shadowrun, just thousands of years prior. Our GM said he wanted to play it. One of us f*ckers would have to learn the rules to run it. (his words not mine)
So our friend came up with a plan. A devious plan.
Early in the campaign he gave us a chest. A large, heavy chest. A chest that was locked and took our thief several attempts to try to unlock (magical lock, picking it could only be attempted once per rank of the skill). Finally the lock was popped, and inside were coins. Lots of coins.
Earthdawn has several forms of currency, but they are all based on the silver piece. Think of 1 silver as being $1, a gold is $10. Then you have the elemental coins, Earth and Water each being worth $100, and Air and Fire being worth $1000. Lastly you have Orichalcum, with each coin being worth $10,000. Orichalcum is worth so much for 2 reasons, 1) it is fairly rare (being made of pure elements of earth, air, fire, water and wood. and 2) is VERY open to being used in magic.
The chest was full of Orichalcum. Thousands of pieces of Orichalcum. enough to buy roughly all of Europe, and large portions of Asia and Africa as well.
The problem was that every single piece of it was demonically tainted.
The OTHER problem was that this much Orichalcum in one place pinged just about every 'Detect Magic' spell in, oh, all of Europe, most of Asia, and large portions of Africa as well. So pretty much EVERYONE in the world, most especially the demon who had tainted the coins, wanted them.
This, as you can imagine, caused a great deal of trouble for the players.
When we next played Shadowrun, getting money wasn't a problem.
Even collecting everything carried by those we defeated in battle (an age old tradition) seldom saw us get more then enough for maybe a value meal at the local fast food place.
Then our GM discovered the game Earthdawn, set in the same universe as Shadowrun, just thousands of years prior. Our GM said he wanted to play it. One of us f*ckers would have to learn the rules to run it. (his words not mine)
So our friend came up with a plan. A devious plan.
Early in the campaign he gave us a chest. A large, heavy chest. A chest that was locked and took our thief several attempts to try to unlock (magical lock, picking it could only be attempted once per rank of the skill). Finally the lock was popped, and inside were coins. Lots of coins.
Earthdawn has several forms of currency, but they are all based on the silver piece. Think of 1 silver as being $1, a gold is $10. Then you have the elemental coins, Earth and Water each being worth $100, and Air and Fire being worth $1000. Lastly you have Orichalcum, with each coin being worth $10,000. Orichalcum is worth so much for 2 reasons, 1) it is fairly rare (being made of pure elements of earth, air, fire, water and wood. and 2) is VERY open to being used in magic.
The chest was full of Orichalcum. Thousands of pieces of Orichalcum. enough to buy roughly all of Europe, and large portions of Asia and Africa as well.
The problem was that every single piece of it was demonically tainted.
The OTHER problem was that this much Orichalcum in one place pinged just about every 'Detect Magic' spell in, oh, all of Europe, most of Asia, and large portions of Africa as well. So pretty much EVERYONE in the world, most especially the demon who had tainted the coins, wanted them.
This, as you can imagine, caused a great deal of trouble for the players.
When we next played Shadowrun, getting money wasn't a problem.