44. Coin - Demanding Another Way
“Supply Early, Demand Late”
In game economies, you supply early, and demand late. You give players a way to generate a lot of economic advantage, and then slowly increase the spend pressure applied to them. You give your player $200 for passing go, and they spend $15 here or there on rent as they go around the board. Then, as people get houses and hotels, that rent is $50-60 per time you land. The demand increases, but the supply stays the same. This forces players to seek out more and more avenues for income, which allows you to direct them to the modes of play that you want.
Bond St begins at ~14% of player income, but after just 1 house, it’s 75%. Two houses in, and we’re at 225%
This flow is classic for a few reasons, primarily because of how it feels so smooth and frictionless in the opening stages of place, and then introduces friction to drive the player toward desired play behaviour. In some games, this play behaviour is buying progress. In some, it’s moving to harder difficulties for bigger rewards, and in some it’s about building efficiency engines. In the case of core Monopoly, it’s about the economic arms race. I place houses because you placed houses. My Pass Go income is not longer sufficient, so I need to invest in the real estate market as an arms race (which is the whole fucking point).
By keeping supply static, but increasing demands, we move players through stages of novelty in play. Which is critical to keeping them on the interest curve. Blades doesn’t.
In Blades, a coin is a coin (p42). A standard score is 6 coin (p146). Coin paid out doesn’t increase with tier of target (explicitly) and coin costs don’t increase[1], which allows players to wade in Duskvol’s kiddie pool, tapping Tier 1 gangs for coins throughout play. Conventional Wisdom would say that we want players to reach for bigger payoffs, so we should encourage that with larger Coin costs and intakes.
[1] - Except, notably, for the Rep Up — new Tier x 8 (p44), and boss payoff — tier+1 coin (p146)
I think, maybe, some of that is implied through the fiction. 6 Coin (a standard score -p146) is “An exquisite jewel. A heavy burden of silver pieces.” If our tier 0 gang can only hold 2 or 3 stash, why do the Fog Hounds[2] pay out 6 for a “Standard Score”? The fictional reality of clearing out a junkie flophouse and rolling out with any more than scraps is a fictionally-mediated problem.
[2] “Fog Hounds (1) — A crew of rough smugglers looking for a patron” (p283)
But the things the PCs care about tend to stay at roughly the same level. Blades is a game without scale (and I wish I could link to a time I’ve said this better, because I think it’ll need to be written about at some stage). Tier 5 and Tier 0 are split, sure, but they’re not as fundamentally different as 30th Level D&D 4e (literal demi-gods) and 1st level D&D 4e (local heroes). Hell, they’re not even as mechanically different as threat 1 and threat 5 in Band of Blades (Acimovic & LeBoeuf-Little, 2019). The gap is less, the scale is less. So, while Tier 0 crews care about fixers bringing in 2 extra coin (Assassins Playbook), Tier 5 crews can also benefit from (and use as a short-term goal) that same 2 extra coin.
As we discussed, Coin tends to stay in the single digit/teen space. Gangs don’t exceed the value of one coin. The “gold piece economy” (where Player Characters are dealing in thousands of Gold, and shopkeepers are dealing in tens of silver) never takes root. The Supply never increases, and (barely) does the demand.
This isn’t a criticism, in the same way that the previous “rule-breaking” was a celebration. This is simply a discussion about motivators, limiters, and how players interest curve grows over time. Traditionally, as I said at the top, the reason we increase demand is to put players in an uncomfortable position that forces them to take novel actions, generate novel strategy, break heuristics, or return to disoriented play (delete as appropriate). Blades…doesn’t seek to push players in that way.
I suspect this roots back in a comment I’ve made again and again about Blades in the Dark: It isn’t a game built for Medium-Term or Long-Term goals. Blades isn’t a campaign in the same way Stonetop or D&D is a campaign. Blades isn’t an Adventure, it’s a Lifestyle. It’s a campaign in the way six sessions of Apocalypse World is a campaign. Blades is a responsive, reactive week-by-week dance — Get paid, make an enemy, fuck them up, get paid again, make a new enemy, fuck them up too, get paid for that. Coin isn’t a motivator, it’s a drip that limits extra actions and gives the feeling of scraping by without any of the actual disorientation or discomfort. In the same way that mechanics are the speedometer, not the speed limit (p15), Coin is the landmarks, not the destination.
Supply and Demand be damned.
Mark Experience,
Sidney Icaurs
The cover image, "All Supply No Demand" by Penningtron, is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
