Monetary Rewards per Session

Discussion on game mastering Earthdawn. May contain spoilers; caution is recommended!
Post Reply
Tattered Rags
Posts:374
Joined:Mon Nov 28, 2016 12:04 am
Monetary Rewards per Session

Post by Tattered Rags » Tue Feb 12, 2019 12:43 pm

The recent thread on economics has prompted me to finally ask this question. How much silver on average should be rewarded per adventure session? Josh Harrison has promised an article detailing this, but until that comes out, anyone have decent rules of thumb they use?

I have no sense of the value of a silver piece (which that other thread is helping with) nor how expensive it is to be an Adept!
Adventure I'm running:
Under the Stars

Adventure GM post-mortem:
Under the Stars Postmortem

ChrisDDickey
Posts:1011
Joined:Sun Nov 27, 2016 10:02 pm

Re: Monetary Rewards per Session

Post by ChrisDDickey » Tue Feb 12, 2019 1:37 pm

Most people would say that it depends upon the GM. A lot of GMs like to keep their players a bit Hungry for silver, with the occasional bonanza that lets the players feel great. On the other hand if the characters are spending 80% of their calendar days in major cities while the spellcasters do research and the party weaponsmith personally forges every characters weapons and armor, because they can't afford to hire NPCs to do any of the grunt-work for them, then maybe the GM should consider upping the rewards of adventuring as compared to downtime activities.

That having been said, if you look at page 5 of this Westmarches house rules link, you will see the table that shows what the Earthdawn Westmarches group came up with for fair LP and SP awards per session.


Personally, I feel the Silver awards in that document might be a bit generous. But they also have things like Research costs costing an absurdly high amount of money as well. So there is some wiggle room as far as high costs, high pay vs low costs and low pay. I would suggest that at most tables the GM monitor his players expenditures and use weapon and armor forging as a guild. If his players are getting their weapons and armor forged at more than 2 ranks above their circle, he ought to consider tightening up their rewards a bit. If their forgings are 2 ranks less than their circle, be a bit more generous so they can hire NPCs to do the forging quickly.
Last edited by ChrisDDickey on Tue Feb 12, 2019 5:43 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Tattered Rags
Posts:374
Joined:Mon Nov 28, 2016 12:04 am

Re: Monetary Rewards per Session

Post by Tattered Rags » Tue Feb 12, 2019 2:04 pm

Ah, that link should greatly help! Thanks!
Adventure I'm running:
Under the Stars

Adventure GM post-mortem:
Under the Stars Postmortem

Belenus
Posts:225
Joined:Fri Nov 16, 2018 5:27 pm
Location:Germany
Contact:

Re: Monetary Rewards per Session

Post by Belenus » Tue Feb 12, 2019 4:39 pm

I don't give my players as much silver as mentioned in the westmarches house rules book.
A small hint on how much you might want to give is the Circle Training Cost Table rules in the PG.
I can't find the exact sentence but somewhere was mentioned, that some adebts only teach others because they need the money for their own Advancing Discipline Circles.
So based on the adventure and the characters choices of events, I give hardly enough money so they can pay the teacher when they are close to their Advancing of Circles and buy some potions and co.
Thrifty player are able to buy a better armor, blood charm or something like that in the lower circles and possibly can afford their first thread item at circle 5.
Of course they find artifacts / unique thread items too, but not a single player ever sold one of this items :D

Dougansf
Posts:465
Joined:Mon Nov 28, 2016 4:14 am

Re: Monetary Rewards per Session

Post by Dougansf » Thu Feb 21, 2019 7:19 pm

As the one who made the West Marches award list, here's the rationale behind it.

The LP awards was based on the GM Guide table of Session awards. Comparing those to how much LP was required to get to the next Circle (assuming no LP "distractions") gave me a guideline for speed of advancement (go from Circle X to Circle Y in Z Medium sessions).

I then looked at the amount of Silver required to pay for training to the next Circle. Knowing that there would be other drains on the players resources, I make the speed of Silver advancement slightly faster than LP advancement.

In practice, this had the Novice characters very hungry for Silver as they were putting together "basic kits" to cover situations. Around Journeyman tier, they had most of the things money could buy, and were just feeding their Forge Weapon/Armor and Thread Item habits. IMO, this was a good thing, because Journeyman is where they could start playing around with Enchanting, which can get pretty expensive.

kevsurp
Posts:22
Joined:Sat Apr 06, 2019 6:29 pm

Re: Monetary Rewards per Session

Post by kevsurp » Mon Apr 08, 2019 8:39 pm

i give one legend award as money. ex circle the award is between 25-75 silver

Post Reply