Wednesday, October 4, 2023

Happy Farming Upgrade Dungeon

I've been playing Stardew Valley on my kid's Switch for the past few weeks. Let's be clear: I'm not new to SV - in fact I think I got into it when it was pretty new, but I gave it up after I put Stardew Extended on my computer and modded it up so my kid could play with anime portraits. I had beat it once before straight (i.e. no mods) and then after that I modded it up in order to see all the interesting cut scenes and secrets and such.

On the Switch, you can't mod so everything's got to be on the up-and-up. Every larger inventory bag, every house upgrade, every skill increase and heart event has to be earned. I'm used to playing this way from the C64 and many DOS games from back in the day, but earning my way through all the possible upgrades in Stardew Valley - even many of the 'late game" features made me do a lot of thinking and planning and strategizing and in some cases referring to the wikis out there!

I dreamt up an upgrade-path campaign! Start with the DnD5e Basic rules - the freebie document one. Everybody can choose to be a human or a halfling or maybe an animal person or a clockwork person/robot to start with. Go on an adventure in the dungeon and bring back some loot. THEN you can apply the GP to the village/setting, and for that you get bountiful XPs! If you're more into trad stuff (LAME!) then you can also get XP for dealing death to monsters etc. but you get a multiplier for XP spent on the village and villagers.

Want to play a druid? Upgrade the Old Witch's Hut - 200 GP (for which you receive 300 XP)

Want to play a cleric of some other domain besides Life/Healing? Pay for a little shrine, which can be upgraded to a chapel, to a temple, to a cathedral, etc...

Seems to me that it ought to have caps on level so as to encourage the development of variety and investments/purchases for the village/town/etc.. Maybe cap it at level 5 to start with, and those PCs go on to be managed and not necessarily USED at game time to explore dungeons. This'd give folks stuff to do with their PCs during downtime. This kinda meshes well with my old (unused) idea of a stable of tradeable characters usable by the whole group of players.

So your cute little piggy people are totally motivated to get into the dungeon and bring back gold coins, so that they can buy the parts to repair the water pump and improve the wells of the town, but also now they got elected pro-tempore mayor! OH NO!

Anyways, more later. I just found the games "Iron Valley" and "Cozy Village" on itch

People tell me that "The Nightmares Beneath" and "Errant" have good systems for managing this sort of thing but I havent followed up yet

Peace be upon you! 

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