Assets - Vehicles and Real Estate

Following up on the earlier article: Assets - Rewards Beyond Money and Magic, I wanted to go over a few other example scales I've drafted for our Byzantine Age game. Just keep in mind is that whatever scale and system you come up with, we're just dealing with rough metrics here, not recipes. They help me (the DM) eye-ball the distribution of rewards / spoils among party members as well as how much of a stake each character has in the game world beyond his character stats. Also, each Asset Type has its own scale, don't just assume the "relative bigness" of, say, a Rank 4 Ally translates to the same scale as a Rank 4 Contact or Vehicle. There's nothing wrong with trying it, but mileage will vary based on how combat-heavy, role-play-intensive, political you want your game to be.

Sample Scale - Vehicles

1: Mule / Ox

2: Draft Horse

3: Wagon w/ 2 Horses / Oxen

4: Skiff

5: Charger

6: Barge

7: Caravel / Longship

8: Galleon / Galleas

9: Ship of the Line

10: Airship

Alright, so maybe that scale is complete rubbish or maybe it totally works for your game. Heck, I'm not even sure I want to have Airships in my game. However, the part that matters is how this list came about. I took the "smallest" vehicle (in terms of value) I could bother quantifying and and biggest I was willing to tolerate. Then I started thinking about everything that fell in between and filled in an arbitrary number of data points sorted out. Yes, there's no entry for a row-boat, but is it hard to find an equivalent? Some broad sub-categories start to shake out: things the peasantry has access to, things merchants and knights have, and then things like military vehicles above that. Maybe you want to run a Planescape adventure or something? What does your scale look like if you have a Spelljammer at the top of the chart?

Sample Scale - Real Estate

1: Shack / Cabin

2: Cottage / Apartment

3: House / Workshop

4: Small Farm / Store / Warehouse

5: Large Farm / Mine / Dock

6: Manor

7: Tower

8: Keep

9: Small Castle

10: Castle

So here we go again. The scale is probably rubbish (I didn't even include an entry for a floating sky-fortress that shoots laser beams and roosts a flight of dragons). I started with the most modest thing I could see someone owning as personal property (rather than renting - lots of peasants are merely tenants or serfs). Then I decided a full-sized Castle was probably the largest individual holding I wanted to have on this scale. Controlling a city like say, Ravenna, isn't really covered under Real Estate as much as it would be by Station. The town around a decent castle is probably pushing it already. But this also illustrates that you'll have bleed-over and that's perfectly fine. If you own your own manor you're part of the landed class, so a reward of a manor inside the Empire itself is going to have to be go with some sort of minor Baron title at the very least. Also, instead of paying some ridiculous fee to operate a holding my players are going to be responsible with finding staff and making their holdings productive. The idea of needing to raid dragon hordes every few months just to pay for your "owning a castle" habit is a sign things have swerved horribly off-course.