Goods and Services in Hero Kids

Just the other day I was contacted by Josiah Fiscus who, after reading my July 8th post, A Way to Use Loot and Gold in Hero Kids was inspired by my Item and Equipment Pricing Chart to create his own chart for randomising Items and Equipment one could find in a treasure hoard.  He arranged it in an interesting way, grouping the entries by their cost as outlined in my prior blog post.  He and I discussed it back and forth and after some further tweaking by he and I, here it is as a downloadable PDF for your reference: Hero Kids - Item and Equipment list.

I'll take a moment to both thank Josiah for his generosity in allowing me to share this on my blog, and to encourage anyone who finds themselves similarly inspired to submit it as well.

Josiah's input and creative interest in my blog spurred me to make a set of companion charts for detailing what one could find at various businesses in a typical fantasy town.  Rather than attempt an exhaustive listing of every conceivable business one could encounter, I instead created a few generic examples:

• Armorer
• Bowyer & Fletcher
• Weaponsmith
• Eatery/Inn
• Livery Stables/Saddlery
• Herbalist/Alchemist/Magic Shop
• Tailor
• General Store

My charts aren't configured for randomised results, instead, they are grouped into categories, combining both the Items and Equipment pricing system outlined in my Loot and Gold post as well the default arms and armor ranking system outlined in my July 15th post Naked Hero Kids wherein I theorise on the stats of unarmed and unskilled Heroes.  Thus I have grouped the entries into the following ten categories, each with their own purchase price:

• Items - Mundane, Minor: The most basic of consumables. A meal, or a potion. Simple services are also covered by this category. 1 Gold Coin.
• Items - Mundane, Major: Consumables which last a set time instead of just an instant effect. I also included extended services here. 2 Gold Coins.
• Items - Magical, Minor: The same as Minor Mundane Items, but with a magically conferred benefit. This would cover a simple magical service too. 4 Gold Coins.
• Items - Magical, Major: The same as Major Mundane Items, but with a magically conferred benefit. This covers extended magical services too. 5 Gold Coins.
• Equipment - Simple: The "lesser" of the default equipment a Hero starts play with. Their sword, bow, or shield. 2 Gold Coins.
• Equipment - Advanced: Conceptually the same as Simple Equipment, but are more advantageous things such as a full suit of armor or a large two-handed weapon. 3 Gold Coins.
• Equipment - Mundane, Minor: Equipment with a simple or specific use, or offering only a limited usage benefit. Rope, a lamp, or a weapon with a situational benefit like the Raider's Battleaxe. 3 Gold Coins.
• Equipment - Mundane, Major: Equipment with constant beneficial abilities or uses, usually applicable to multiple situations. The Hunter's Longbow, Heavy Shield, or a Pony. 4 Gold Coins.  4 Gold Coins.
• Equipment - Magical, Minor: The same as Minor Mundane Equipment, but with a magically conferred benefit. 4 Gold Coins.
• Equipment - Magical, Major: The same as Major Mundane Equipment, but with a magically conferred benefit. 5 Gold Coins.

One could easily regroup the goods and services to represent a different type of venue, such as a Blacksmith, a Potion Shop, a Fish Market, a Fur Trader, Rug Merchant, Gem Seller, or whatever else you wanted to include in your game.  All you need to do is assign the goods and services accordingly, adding any new entries into the appropriate category.

Speaking of new entries, in populating my charts, I ended up creating almost half a hundred of Items, Equipment, and Services which were not previously detailed elsewhere.  I may compile them into a set of equipment cards in the future, complete with category and pricing info as per my previous systems.  I have included the eight example Fantasy businesses as a printable PDF for in game reference: Hero Kids - Sample Fantasy Shops.

A Way to Use Loot and Gold in Hero Kids

“If you’re running a longer adventure then you might reward the heroes with some gold or extra potions and allow them to rest and recover some health.” page 14 (v1.6) or 17 (v2,0), Hero Kids™ rules.

The above quote packs a lot of implied content into one sentence. Unfortunately, this is the extent this concept gets in the rules. Perhaps Justin plans to one day publish an expansion, or maybe he felt this was enough to say about it. However, one question remains: what do our Heroes DO with said gold rewards? There are no prices attached to anything in the game. If they want to buy a sword, shield, armor, pony, or just a meal at the local inn, what is the cost? If they try to sell any loot gained in an adventure, what’s it worth? First, let’s establish just what is meant by gold in this game.

Gold!  Gold!! GOLD!!! ...what’s it good for?

What is the Hero Kids™ currency? Given the intended audience and the simplicity of the system and setting, we need to strongly enforce the KISS method, so there is just one currency used by everyone and it consists of one denomination - the Gold Coin. Names of coins and details of appearance may differ over time and from place to place, but the value is unchanging. We could get into debating the value of rare gold coins from an ancient lost kingdom, but in such a scenario they technically are being treated as rare art pieces then, not simple coins. If they’re used to buy a sandwich, then they are the same as any other coin - if they instead go to a museum of the lost kingdom of Tra-La-La then they are no longer considered simple coinage.

For everyday purposes, the prices of goods are small and don’t differ between like items. Treat it like an intermediary, trial coinage system for a world just beginning to progress past the barter economy. In fact, despite this post’s topic, one shouldn’t avoid having Heroes barter for simple goods and services. The restaurant owner may offer a meal to a Kid in exchange for a simple chore like fetching water, delivering a letter, or cleaning out a dirty back room. This could even be an entry point for an adventure…

Item and Equipment Price Categories

Rather than create a price list for hundreds of purchasables one could have in the game, lets create a simple system which can quickly and easily assign a price to anything one could want to buy or sell in game. One approach is to divide all purchasables into categories with a single price per category:

Minor Mundane Items: 1 gold

Non-magical, single use objects.

Examples: Food (per portion), Gold (per coin), Herbs (per single potions-worth)

Major Mundane Items: 2 gold

Non-magical, single use objects which grant a clearly defined bonus (usually combat oriented).

Examples: Bomb.

Minor Magical Items: 4 gold

Magical, single use items whose effects do not last beyond one turn past their usage.

Examples: Healing Potion, Sandman’s Dust*, Haste Potion*

Major Magical Items: 5 gold

Magical, single use items whose effects last for “5 minutes” or the duration of a single encounter.

Examples: Potion of Strength, Potion of Invisibility, Fee-Fi-Fo-Fungus*, Four-Leaf Clover*, Shrink-A-Drink*.

Minor Mundane Equipment: 3 gold

Non-magical, multiple use objects which only function under specific conditions, for a limited duration, once per encounter, or are otherwise limited in their usage.

Examples: Trickshot Bow, Speed Bow, Unfailing Bow, Sharpshooter’s Bow, Bandit’s Bow, Deepwood Longbow, Throwing Axe, Heavy Crossbow, Throwing Dagger, Swift Sword, Thirsting Longsword, Vorpal Longsword, Lucky Longsword, Raider’s Battleaxe, Brigand’s Axe, Thundering Hammer, Strikers Spaulder, Light Shield, Everpresent Shield, Guardian’s Shield*.

Major Mundane Equipment: 4 gold

Non-magical, multiple use objects whose function can be enacted every turn, or which feature a continuous effect once equipped.

Examples: Footman’s  Pike, Defending Weapon, Club of Earth-Shattering*, Hunter’s Longbow, Siege Longbow, Binding Bow*, Boomerang Buckler, Guard’s Shield, Heavy Shield, Defender’s Shield, Wrist Bracers, Vault Pole*.

Minor Magical Equipment: 4 gold

Magical, multiple use objects which only function under specific conditions, for a limited duration, once per encounter, or are otherwise limited in their usage.

Examples: Magic Wand, Vicious Wand, Explosive Wand, Wizard’s Staff, Magi’s Staff, Lucky Charm, Vengeful Pendant, Wild Hunt Hat, Diabolic Mask.

Major Magical Equipment: 5 gold

Magical multiple use objects whose function can be enacted every turn, or which feature a continuous effect once equipped.

Examples: Faerie’s Wand, Staff of Protection, Yew Staff, Chaos Pendant, Cloak of Invisibility, Sack of Useful Items, Conjurer’s Hat*.

Notes: * Featured in the Hero Kids Compatible product Armory 1 by Travis Legge of Aegis Studios.

free one-sheet reference pdf

Prices do NOT directly relate to their intrinsic material value, construction complexity, or damage/protection potential, instead they are a rough measure of their availability, versatility, and ease of use. Equipment dealing more damage, but which can only be used under special conditions or once per encounter will cost less than a lower damage Equipment which grants its bonus with every use. Correspondingly, an Item costs less than an equivalent effect Equipment since it is expended upon a single usage. Lastly, magical Items and Equipment are intentionally higher priced, even when their effects are identical to another mundane Item or Equipment. This is done to simulate the fantasy trope that magical things are rarer, more difficult to acquire, and generally more expensive than non-magical things.

Is this a perfect system? No, far from it. It makes even one gold coin potentially worth a lot, thus awarding a chest of 500 or even 50 gold coins is an enormous degree of wealth. However, this also means if you’re playing with young children, you can award them amounts they can readily conceptualize. While one could tweak this system with more categories, higher gold piece costs per category, and so on. In all likelihood once your players are ready for more complex in game economies, they will also be ready for a more advanced game all together. As nice of a game as Hero Kids™ is for younger children, it does have its limitations. In the meantime, a system such as this one can provide an introduction to the concepts of buying and selling things in game without requiring advanced understanding of mathematics or economics.

Inventory - The Junk Drawer of Hero Kids

At first glance, the Inventory and Skills section of a Hero Kids™ Hero Card contains only Items and Skills. However, there are actually four categories of “things” in the Inventory and Skills section - Items and Equipment, and Skills and Abilities. Further confusing this is when the rules refer to Skill use as an Ability Test. Despite the fluidity of system terminology though, there are very real differences between Items and Equipment, and between Skills and Abilities.

• Items: Objects which are expended once used (food, gold, bomb, a healing potion).
• Equipment: Objects which remain for multiple uses (Rope, Staff, Raider’s Axe).
• Skills: Character specific and conceptually thematic activities one learns to perform (Talking, Knowledge, Herbalism, etc.).
• Abilities: Inborn or inherent traits usually assigned to all creatures of that type, although they can be possessed by an individual alone (Such as Dwarves with Dark Vision allowing them to see in darkness or a bird with Wings granting flight).

Inventory Abilities are not to be confused with the “Bonus Ability” listed elsewhere on the Hero Card, which is usually more of a thematically specialised Skill (Such as the Knight having the Bonus Ability “Defender”).

Inventory Abilities

One opportunity presented by recognising just how the Inventory Abilities differ from Skills or other Hero-specific Abilities (The Melee/Ranged/Magic Attack, Special Action, and Bonus Abilities) is that it provides a ready made location for us to intentionally place unique abilities which aren’t associated with the primary theme of the Hero, thereby creating a secondary theme which can become an alternate grouping for these Heroes (or Monsters, for that matter).

In the Hero Cards III expansion for Hero Kids™, there are non-humans such as Dwarves, Halflings, Elves, etc. They aren’t labelled as such, but their provenance is obvious. The Knight and the Stonemaster appear to be Dwarves and they both have the Dark Vision ability. One could also envision a group of cultists to some dark god of the ocean, and regardless of the role each member has (Fighter, Cleric, Baker, Candlestick Maker, etc.) you could give them all a “Breathe Underwater” ability.

Here are some ideas for Abilities for Monsters or Heroes: Breathe Underwater, Mind Reader, Shape Changer (specify form, such as”Shape Changer: Wolf”), Venomous, and Climber. Each of these would need to be fairly simple. Climber for instance could grant the ability to move up or down vertical surfaces like trees, cliffs, or walls as easily as walking on the ground. Venomous could deal repeating damage, paralyzation, or some such effect with a bite or sting.

If we to want to give Heroes or groups of Heroes Abilities more complex than a single static competency, the Inventory Abilities section isn’t really the best spot for it as it uses a symbol to denote the Ability with no room for text. I would advocate removing the iconized Abilities from the Inventory completely and moving them to the Bonus Abilities section, but that’s just my personal opinion. Adding such things as granting all Elves an Ability like Woodland Walk (Plus one movement and no terrain penalties within forested environments only.) would be better suited to the Bonus Abilities section of a Hero Card. Racial templates for Hero Kids™ has occurred to me previously and I do have some thoughts on how I’d implement it, but I’ll leave that for a possible future post.

Corvids. Available for Hero Kids

I'm riding an Eagle like a Boss!

Sometimes an idea steps in front of you and demands attention.  A few weeks ago I was reading my Google+ stream and Justin Halliday posted an Imgur link about really ballsy corvids (the bird family for crows and ravens) doing things like pecking at dogs, and riding eagles to the ground while screaming at at them from their perch between their shoulder blades!

Let's put that into perspective a little, it's roughly equivalent to you or I running up to a 25 foot tall giant, jumping onto his back, and boxing his ears until he falls down!  That impressed me a little to say the least, and I couldn't shake the image of a group of Corvid based humanoids taking on a bunch of Lizardkin, or Minotaurs, or whatever they felt like because apparently they don't ever consider the odds to be against them in a fight!

Today I released on DriveThruRPG.com "Corvids: A Racial Supplement".  It's five different types of Corvids, eight items and equipment with a Corvid slant, a Raven pet, and four scenario ideas to use as a jumping off point for introducing Corvids to your Hero Kids game.  I tried to design the Corvids so they could be used as either Monsters or Heroes.  Let me know how I did.

Corvids: A Racial Supplement

I made sure one of the Corvids was included in the product preview. The Corvid Piercer is a spearman who will jab at his opponents and then spin the spear around and strike them with the butt end of the spear for good measure.  Like all Corvids, he doesn't get intimidated, instead he gets even more aggressive if he's outnumbered.

Like most people who've just tossed their creative efforts out into the wild, I'd love to get feedback on what you think of this little item. Even if you don't want to part with your $2.99 and only use the preview Corvid Piercer I'd like to hear from you (although if you do that you're missing out on the other equally distinctive Corvids, plus some pretty neat gear too).  If there's enough demand, I'll make more types of Corvids and even an adventure or two about them instead of just quick scenarios.

Frogling Warrior

Now that the Corvids have stopped incessantly cawing at my mind, I can get back to working on my OTHER project, "Return to Frogling Marsh" a full adventure involving the Froglings from the official Hero Kids adventure Wizard's Tower.  It's meant to take place after the Heroes have completed Wizard's Tower, but doesn't actually rely on anything from that adventure so it can be run as a standalone too.  I've made a bunch more types of Froglings, some monsters, treasure, and a cool Frogling stilt village in the deeper parts of the marsh, the maps are tiling so you can rearrange them to make different villages.

I hesitate to make timing predictions as something always happens to delay me, but I hope to have this ready for release in about a month.  I'll be posting preview material over the next few weeks as I work at teaching myself to post more frequently on this blog! :-)

My review of Yuletide Journey for Hero Kids and free stuff for you

A couple of days ago Connor, Mommy, and I played the Hero Kids adventure, "Yuletide Journey". Overall, it went well, although there were a couple of bumps along the way. One big omission was in the NPC Elven characters.  There is an encounter where the Heroes compete against three Elven "Fledglings": an archer with a bow, a fighter with a sword, and a Magic user with a large spellbook.  The group are quickly joined by a child Elf of unspecified abilities and equipement. However, the adventure only includes a card and standee for an Elven Arher with a bow and an Elven Druid with a Staff.

Now technically none of the encounters actually needed full stats or standees for the three Elven competitors, but this is a game for young children - EVERY scene is an opportunity to place and play with miniatures on the table, needed or not! :-)  Luckily, I had previously purchased all the Hero Kids expansions, and had an Elven character with two wooden swords. Another Human Hero Kid stood in place of the unspecified child Elf.  It worked, but wasn't ideal - ESPECIALLY later in the adventure when the Elven child tags along and the party gets attacked by wolves.  The lack of any stats for this NPC were handwaved by simply using the stand-in Hero's stats for the combat encounter, but ideally I wouldn't need to compensate for an unfortunate defeciency.

On the plus side, the encounters with Odin and Sleipnir were highly engaging and greatly enjoyed by both mother and child, with no one under the age of 40 noticing the lack of stats or standees for either of them.  Eh, what are you gonna do?  Kids aren't consistent!  While, there is room for improvement in this adventure, I would still recommend it as a fun holiday-themed adventure.  If you're running it though, give it a full read through and be prepared to wing it and fill in the blanks occasionally.

My next adventure will actually by a non-Hero Kids one for a different, kid-friendly roleplaying game.  Full disclosure: the author graciously comped me a copy, although I didn't promise a biased review either.  I am looking forward to it, as the theme of the game is different and I'm curious to how Connor reacts to a different set of rules.  I'll post a play report once we've run through it.

Free non-combat equipment cards.

One thing I have been thinking about in Hero Kids is equipment. I've bought the official Equipment Cards expansion and the third party Armory 1 from Aegis Studios both sets of equipment are really good and add a lot to the game.  I've used them several times as extra rewards in the published adventures I've run, as well as in a couple of ad-hoc adventures I've made up.  I have a bunch of ideas on the the distinctions between Items, Equipment, and Inventory items (note the lower case "item"), but I'm saving those ideas for a future post where I'll also talk about a way of making use of those bags of gold some Heroes carry around.  In the meantime, I've made some equipment cards a Hero Kid can use outside of combat.  Download them for free here: Non-Combat Equipment Cards. Hopefully, inventive GMs will be able to use them to come up with encounters where they can assist with various Ability Tests.