I had an interesting thing come up in my game last night which hadn’t appeared before so I thought I’d get some opinions on how you think this should be run.
Basically in my new campaign I have a lot of craftsman and artisan type players and the story, or at least the start of our story, involves a lot of buying and selling of services. Therefore we rolled a fair few resource tests in our first session. Now resources with an NPC make perfect sense. Player finds an NPC they want to buy from, they roll their resource test and if they succeed they get what they want and if they fail they probably don’t and they get taxed.
However I was little bit unsure what to do when it was one player purchasing some service from another player which occurred yesterday. One player was ordering the construction of a clock for his estate from another player, a clockworking artisan. They did a versus haggling test which was fun and easy to work out but when it came to rolling resources I wasn’t sure what to do.
A versus test didn’t make sense because then one player has to fail and another succeed which doesn’t make sense here. In effect both players want the buying player to succeed so he can make the purchase and the selling player can make the sale. However, if the buying player rolls against a fixed ob the selling player gets nothing out of this i.e. the buyer gets to mark a test for advancement but the seller doesn’t. In the end I just let the selling player mark the test too because…I felt they deserved something from engaging in this business.
It’s just come to me now that perhaps it would make sense for the seller to “help” the buyer in this instance. The buyer wishes to purchase the clock and the seller wishes to obtain custom from the buyer so that could loosely be seen as helping That way both players get to mark an advancement completely within the rules. However, I’m not sure how a failure would work in this instance because then both players get taxed and I don’t see how, thematically, the seller is getting taxed here.
Anyway sorry if this is a bit rambling. Any advice on how to run player v player resource encounters would be very helpful
I’d probably set the price in a number of cash dice. The buyer can generate cash from their Resources using the Generating Cash rules on page 374. The seller gets the cash dice.
Or you might go with a simple hack of the solution you settled on: The seller earns a test for advancement equal to one-half the buyer’s Ob, rounded down.
I personally would not allow the seller to help the buyer in this situation.
I can think of a few situations where it would make sense in the fiction to allow the seller to help – essentially, the seller is voluntarily reducing the price, but by doing so they run the risk of overburdening themselves (they still have to pay for labor and materials, for example). But the seller’s help should mean that they get fewer cash dice in the end, if you’re using that method.
They haggled and arrived at a price…cool. There’s no conflict regarding the sale now.
Now the buyer has to come up with the money and the seller has to make the clock, no? The buyer gets advancements from what he does to get the money, if anything. The seller gets advancements from what he does to get the clock made.
I would do it like the game of chance type but with different skills.
You guys agree on a price and roll haggling. The winner got the deal the loser test resources and the test counts for both players. If you fail the test the other player gets cash dice equal to tax.
Simple way is if ur the seller and u lose, you gave him a discount and loss profit or something. If ur the buyer and u lose … U got taken in lol.
The seller can reduce the price by lowering the Ob. If you allow help, you create a double-dipping situation where the seller potentially gets a test for advancement from the help and gets cash or another test for advancement for Resources.