43. Coin - Slaying the Hoarding Dragons
“I mean the thought that goes, “But I might need it later,” the niggling little doubt that prevents you from using all your most powerful insurance policies in case there’s some kind of no-claims bonus at the end of it all. So we have scenarios where you’re sitting on a nuclear stockpile to shame North Korea and are throwing peas at a giant robot crab on the off-chance that there might be a bigger giant robot crab just around the corner.”
Let’s imagine there are two types of currency (there’s so, so many more). In type one, we have a “refreshing” currency. Usually defined by a small maximum amount, it refreshes up to that maximum on a schedule that, while not player mediated, is predictable (or, more importantly, reliable).
In type two, we have a “hoarding” currency. No maximum stacks (or a very large maximum), but players gain resources in a slow (and most importantly, unpredictable) way. They can be used whenever the player wishes (as per Refreshing Currency), but who knows when they’ll get it back.
The second is what causes the Giant Crab problem above, and it’s based on the twin elements of a non-refreshing “Hoarding” currency: No maximum to motivate spend, and unpredictable income to cause this particular FOMO. For example, Estus Flasks. Dark Souls moving to Estus Flasks rather than a traditional healing potion methodology is an important shift. If healing items didn’t refresh, players wouldn’t spend them. It would change the failure-condition for Dark Souls to “taking even one hit before you get to a boss” and would wash the flow of gameplay right out. It’s a subset of the giant crab problem solved by trying a new refresh curve for resources.
The traditional healing potion method is rife with problems that go against the desired gameplay of a dungeon crawler[1]. And it’s often applicable to other resources. Like Coins.
[1] - I’m not familiar with Arnold K of Goblin Punch (would love to be, we just travel in different circles). Arnold’s approach to praying and Lunch both follow this kind of Refreshing formula (in contrast to the Hoarding formula of healing potions). I do wonder if Arnold would look at changing their approach to shrines given that FP could approach the Giant Crab Problem. Making Shrines predictable may be about using them like Bonfires in Dark Souls - They’re diegetically common and important to both setting and geography. Would be worth considering. Of course, maybe FP just doesn’t suffer that problem, I haven’t seen it in play!
Traditional Gold spending in Role Playing Games comes down to inflating a character-construct, usually through a purchase of weapons or armour in the Dungeons and Dragons. Eventually, players are lugging so much gold between places that they begin to talk about building strongholds and employing hirelings. The point is not that this isn’t an enjoyable mode of play (squillions of Kickstarter dollars tend to suggest a desirable play experience), but that it’s a shift in mode of play. A shift that, I think it’s safe to assume, Harper doesn’t want in Blades in the Dark.
Traditional methods for keeping players in “the grind” tend to be about generating debts. Pay off the mob boss, pay working costs, buy new ammunition, rebuy the gear you used last time which broke, stock up on 10ft poles. This is fine except that it explicitly frames a contest between player and rule structures[2], which players gravitate toward rejecting (at best endogenously, at worst exogenously). By shifting the focus of coin to 4 Coin that the player can have lying around, the excess must be spent or put into stash (p42).
[2] - Antagonism between systems and players almost never end well. This was the motivating force behind the 2003/4 focus on framing, inspired by World of Warcraft’s rested XP system. It is almost always better to frame the system and the player working together, which Blades does.
So we can find players spending. On tier-ups, on downtimes, on rolls. It’s a genius shift of resource recovery. One that we can all learn from as we install resource systems into our games.
Mark Experience,
Sidney Icarus
The Header Image, "Detail - St. George Slaying The Dragon" by A.Davey, is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
