Game Scale - Down the Rabbit Hole - Part 1

As mentioned last time, I am prototyping a science fiction game. 

Before I get to the fun of developing characters and equipment, I like to think about scales. Usually, the first scale I like to work with is "How big is it?" I have always hated the D&D weight and encumbrance scale but in certain ways it makes sense. 

A gold coin is heavy, this is sort of appealing from a DM's point of view. "How big?" is connected to "How much money?". It's not perfect but it does make sense. 

Since I am doing Sci-Fi, I want to leverage SI units. So meters and kilograms are usually what the players encounter. I don't have to come up with my own units. Made-up units nearly always sound silly. How much damage can the words like "Parsec" or "Cubits" do?

Don't answer that.  

The rabbit is out of the
hole.

In thinking about this, I wanted to go down the economic rabbit hole first. It was surprisingly, easy but also comes with its own problems: 

1. Cost doesn't equate to size or weight. 
2. What do I call space money? 
3. Space money sucks as a name. 
4. Will I use creeping capitals: "Space Money" vs. "space money"? 
5. What color is it?  

I decided to name the unit of money "Credits". It is a classic and doesn't suck like "Space Money". Credits are used to buy average, daily stuff. A loaf of bread, a bullet, a comb are all right around one credit each. 

Players won't want any of that, they want lasers, robots, aircars, fighters, and spaceships. One of the wacky things with letting characters have all of these things is that the scale rapidly gets into the millions or even billions of Space mone... er, credits. I hate math that gets out of control.  

The first issue I need to address is that credits are "shiney". It's sort of a color. (There is a whole different rabbit hole about most cultures not wanting to call the sky "blue", but "bright" or "shiny", like bronze. Feel free to climb into that rabbit hole on your own time. Here is a link to get you started.) 

Next, we need a scale to prevent players from yanking their hair out jumping from "How do I buy lunch?" to "How do I buy a spaceship?". 

SI units to the rescue. Will just use credits, kilo credits, mega credits (starting to sound silly..._ giga credits (somehow less silly), and so on:

• Credits (Cr) = Base unit
• Kilo Credits (kCr) = 1,000 Cr
• Mega Credits (MCr) = 1,000,000 Cr (1 million)
• Giga Credits (GCr) = 1,000,000,000 Cr (1 billion)
• Tera Credits (TCr) = 1,000,000,000,000 Cr (1 trillion)
• Peta Credits (PCr) = 1,000,000,000,000,000 Cr (1 quadrillion)

I haven't used AI chats to create content, but I decided to be lazy today and leverage it. ChatGPT did the chart above so I didn't have to do math. Even better, I didn't even sanity-check it. I have no one to blame but my lazy ass self. 

Anyway, I asked GTP Chat to compare that scale to a couple of different real things. A 60,000,000 credit vehicle is best measured in mega credits: 60 mcr. A space shuttle is 1.7 gcr. A motorcycle is 12 kcr. 

This chart gives a base of credits and 5 different scaling factors. That isn't much more difficult than D&D's copper, electrum, silver, gold, and platinum conversions. That will allow me to use 6 different colored tokens to scale things. Yes, I am ignoring that I need 1000 of one colored token to get to the next step in the scale. 

The nice bit about this scale is it is based on reality. The GDP of planet Earth is around 0.1 pcr. We aren't at most science fiction levels of technology so we don't produce a whole peta credit worth of stuff in a year. 

There is a time component to asking how long it takes to build a spaceship without starving everyone on the planet. You can build the Deathstar, but it takes a couple of years or more. This is why they aren't left sitting on a used spaceship lot but the Serenity is available at your local used spaceship lot. 

This time component is nice and I want to reuse this concept in my next post about combat scale. This is another headache for sci-fi: "What happens when a spaceship snipes individuals on the ground?" This will be my next post. 

The bad part is I thought I would be talking "game scale" like distances and weights, and this doesn't do it. A million-dollar diamond ring and a million-dollar airplane are wildly different sizes. An acre of desert could be less than an acre of farmland. A bag of feathers and a bag of lead are wildly different to lift. Nothing matches or scales nicely. I'll have to work on that bit. 

Anyway, thank you for climbing into this rabbit hole with me. I plan on having a whole series of posts as I develop this game. 

Prototyping and Fun

Back in 2021, I reviewed Atlas Game's The White Box Set. This is the handiest game set I've ever owned. The primary part is a 100+ book of essays that every game producer needs to read. It is loaded with a lot of research, details, and facts. I love it for that alone. 

The bits and bobs are perfect for role-playing and board games, even if you are not a content producer. They are so useful, I have five sets. 

Each box comes with:

3 counter sheets with 71 pre-printed and 49 blank counters,

150 small wooden cubes in 6 colors,

36 wooden meeples in 6 colors, 

6 large cubes in 6 colors, 

12 1d6 dice, again in 6 colors, 

110 bingo disks in 8 colors, 

Several clear bags for storage, 

102 page book of essays. 

These little bits and bobs are perfect for resource management in RPGS, replacing lost pieces from board games like dice, highlighting areas on maps without marking them up, etc. You have so many options. 

It's extremely useful. 

But now I have 5 copies of the same book. Well, 4 of those will be going up on my Ko-Fi store. I'll let you know when I have that done. I am on-call this week making a bad time for monitoring orders. 

If you must have this book now, I suggest the Atlas Game store as it's on clearance for $22.00 for the whole set. 

If you need it faster than physical shipping would allow, I suggest DriveThru RPG. Driverthu has two different products: a PDF and an Audiobook. 

Each of these products are LESS than the 10 bucks I plan to sell used copies on Ko-Fi. I want to see what sort of costs are associated with selling physical goods on Ko-Fi. Esty is a non-starter due to the terms and fees. The $10 dollar price point is to make the math easy. These books will be clearly marked with a warning that you are helping me with an order and there are better options out there.