Investments Proposal
Danny said he thought 11 was too low of a break-even point, so I played around with the chart some. On the left is the old chart. In the middle is my proposal. I increased the spread on Medium and High, making them progress more as they went to the extremes. I also don't think you should be able to lose more than 100% of your investment.
One idea I had about Low Risk investing is that you could invest your money once, and roll on this chart every subsequent turn without spending any more time. It would be like buying a CD or a savings bond. You'd probably have to leave it in the investment for a certain number of turns, and at the end of the term, you'd collect the income. You could choose to roll it back into the investment. We wouldn't necessarily have to have the multiple turn requirement. If we didn't, it'd be more like a Money Market account.
We could also say that instead of rolling every turn, you just roll the first turn and your investment earns that rate for as long as you leave it in the investment. Alternatively, we could roll every turn, but it would just be to see if the rate climbed or dropped a little from the current rate. It should tend to stay pretty stable.
And, and, we could say that your principal stays in the investment, and you get to take out the appreciation every turn if you wish, rather than re-investing it.
I like the idea of a savings account. The rest I have no opinion on. I’ve learned my lesson finally. Though in the real world you can lose more than your investment. Fortunately this isn’t real world
You can’t lose more than your investment unless you’re a partner in a business. Starting a business would be a mission, not an action.
In real life puts and calls can cause you to lose alot more than you invested.
Those would be higher than high risk. They'd be extreme risk. I'd never dream of doing those in real life, let alone our game.
Oh I agree. And no place in game. As I said the first time I only said in real life you can lose money above initial investment and fortunately this is not real life. Your snap reaction to disagree with me allowed us to have all day fun conversation
I'd never consider doing Calls, Puts and Short-sells, so it didn't occur to me that you could lose more than your investment. Now that we've had this little distraction, let's get back to the topic at hand:
Looks good to me.....whatever you think.
I like the idea of multi-turn investing without having to spend mandays every turn. Would you have to declare how many turns you are going to invest up front? Or could you just leave it there and pull it out whenever you want?
For multi-turn investing, I think the return should be re-rolled every turn though rather than rolling once and getting that for every turn after. It would make action advantage cards too strong to be able to lock in an advantaged rate of return in perpetuity.
For multi-turns, I think you start with the initial roll, then move up or down from there in subsequent turns. To be clear, my original thought was that only low-risk investments could go long-term, so the fluctuations in return would not be that profound. Dubious about letting Medium and High risk to go multiple turns.
what exactly do you roll on the chart? d10 + ? and can it be at advantage?
I think it’s d10 + Barter. Advantage isn’t an option within the action. You might be able to get advantage in the Destiny game. I’d never roll on the Investments chart unless I had advantage.
What do y’all think of the revised chart? Danny? Matt?
im fine, but i'd like to point out if you get advantage and have a good barter, thats a no brainer on the high chart 75% of the time. Maybe we can say you never get advantage on high chart with that 18 being the cap.
I think if you get advantage in the Destiny game, then you get advantage. Napoleon had double advantage and didn’t roll higher than a 5. An 8 Barter would just break even with that roll.
I think Investments is the only action that doesn’t have a built-in advantage option.
If you are comparing your double advantage and only rolling a 5 to an "average" roll, you would be wrong, considering 87.3% of the time you'd roll >5.
I know it's not average, but it happens. The fact remains, that it's one of only three actions that don't have an advantage option, and you'll need to travel away from Ithius if you want to invest a decent amount, because of the market requirement. From a gameplay/rules perspective, I don't like exceptions to rules. Consistency is to be desired.
I get all that, im just suggesting that maybe when you get an advantage with an 8 barter, you are gonna get your money back 80%ish of the time.
Maybe, but you'll need to compete to get that advantage.
I mean dont get me wrong, im all in favor of high risk and getting my money back 80% of the time..I vote for that....
but we seem to be shopping at staples alot lately and buying alot of easy buttons.
I disagree.
on which point ;) in favor of high risk and getting your money back 80% of the time?
Your narrative is false. You have to have advantage to have a chance to do that, and you don't get advantage for free. You might not get it it all. I wouldn't roll on the Investments chart at all if I didn't have advantage.
im not narrating anything...just parroting
I am fine with the charts and with current rules around advantage (e.g. no advantage baseline - only possible through Destiny cards or pseudo-advantage through talents like "Lucky").
My only feedback is that, if we allow for multi-turn investing, then any advantage should only apply to 1 turn's worth of returns within that multi-turn investment.
We probably need to work the details out on how multi turn works. do you roll each turn, and change the current value, or do you track where you are on the chart and deviate from that...
ie you roll a 12 first turn (-1 from break even), and then you roll a 14, does that return you to break even?
I would vote that you completely re-roll each turn
so if you invest 1000 and roll a 11 of .7, its not 700. next turn you roll a 13,, it stays at 700, then last turn you roll another 11, and its not at 490, and you've had enough and withdraw?
in that case, thats fine, one investment action, and you decide when you pull out.......do you get to write off your losses?
Yes that’s how I see it working. What do you mean by writing off losses? We don’t have taxes
A joke.
Whoosh
Poor delivery.
I don’t think you should be able to roll on the medium or high risk charts for long term investments. I think it should just be for low risk, something to provide a little continuing income.
I thought you wouldn't get anything out till you stop?
That’s one option. You could also just get the increase as an income, leaving the principal invested.
Btw, I think if we limited it to low risk, then we wouldn’t reroll from scratch every turn. Whatever you rolled the first turn would be set to 13 for the subsequent turn. Or is that too complicated?
You guys decide. I don’t care. I don’t have anything to invest
This makes my head spin. I am not pro the multi turn investment and maybe we should reconsider the investment action as a possible action. I don't see you investing in a long term business but more in a one off opportunity.... but even as I type this I could see you being an investor in a business, but I don't think it would be in the high risk category. I think it's the reference to a CD or savings bond that doesn't make a lot of sense in this world. This may be too much for a back water world. I originally saw this is that a merchant needs some funds to secure a cargo of goods and you could participate in the action.
I'll give it some more thought and I am definitely open to more discussion.
I guess I would like to see some examples of how this would actually play out in our world from a role play standpoint. How would you go about making an investment?
I wouldn't mind jettisoning the long-term investment idea. There are some gameplay problems with it, e.g. tracking stuff across multiple turns. That was really just an off-the-cuff idea. Imo, the focus should be on single-turn investments.
What did you think of the new chart? The old one is on the left, the proposed one is in the middle.
I will rely on you guys to give me some honest feed back on that. Rather than crunch numbers I am going to try to work on some impending game stuff. I am concerned with the groups "high numbers" and chance for advantage it makes investing not much of a risk. Remember that we expanded the possibilities of skill levels beyond 10 to ensure that you guys aren't the top of every field. We may need to expand our average skill level to someone in a specific field like this to a 7 vs a 5.5. Basically saying that people of average skill might not get to involved in this.
I would still like to discuss what this would look like if we were actually playing these investments out.
Someone with a +7 probably shouldn't ever be rolling investment rolls. Someone with a +8 shouldn't either, unless they've gotten advantage through the Destiny game.
Maybe in gameplay, your characters are speculating on the cost of commodities or other goods. They go to the mercantylers and buy grains or livestock or some other item of value, and then turn around and sell it later at a profit (or loss). Whether they profit or lose depends on timing the market well. I'm not suggesting that we get down in the weeds of tracking the markets. It would just be a single roll to see if you win or lose.
Here's my latest proposal. The max returns require an open-end, and the base for each category gets a little harder as the risk increases. There's a little overlap in the middle between risk categories.
Gordon and I talked about this and I like where this is headed but would like to have input from the rest of you
Fine by me.
What stat do you use? barter? intelligence? wisdom?
is this a 10 day action? or can you do a 25 day and get advantage? think we discussed already...but with the new tables, i think the full rules should be posted, so there are no questions.
travel usually is built into the missions/actions..i dont think Smokey wanted to micro manage it that much....rest looks great...though i dont think barter is an appropriate skill...i'd suggest intelligence (research) would be a more appropriate skill..but not worth a discussion, so i am fine with barter.
All actions tend to have a base cost in pennies and destiny to perform...does this?
You don't have to travel to do an Investment action, but if you want to invest in a larger market, then you do. There are currently no costs associated with this Action, other than the money you risk and the days you spend. Most actions don't require the expenditure of Destiny.
- It' s assumed to take place in Golotha unless there is a role play reason not to
- An appraise action (10 days) can modify the barter roll
- Go with the chart you have made