Hedgefruit and Trifles

[Cayce]

Hello everyone!

The time has come to discuss something very important, that being the final (or close to final, if I'm overlooking something) XP accounting of Changeling magical extras.

I'm very firm on the belief that in order to make the venue a fair and equitable place, we must use XP to justify what characters have access to. Thus we need to get rid of the random hedge fruit and trifles, and even TOKENS that are floating around out there and pin them all down with XP buys. However, Hedgefruit and Trifles don't have easy XP purchase options, so let's discuss strategy!

What I'm thinking for Hedgefruit is this:

Hedgefruit will be a 1-5 dot merit and it will function similarly to contacts. That is to say, each dot of Hedgefruit would net a character access to one type of hedgefruit. So with two dots you could have one that healed, and one that acted as a poison or something. We'd just use hedgefruit from the books to make things manageable to start with. Also, dots in Hedgefruit would limit the amount a character has access to, in addition to Wyrd. So if you had 1 dot, you only had access to one. If you had three dots you could have three, and mix and match with the three strains you have access to.

Trifles...I'm not sure about Trifles. They're a lot of fun, but they're harder to quantify in my opinion. Any ideas?

[Benji]

Each dot of Hedgefruit can be deconstructed to 3 Trifles? Someone with Hedgefruit 3 could have 2 types of Hedgefruit and 3 types of Trifles or 1 Hedgefruit and 6 Trifles or however they wanted to split it?

[Cayce]

Well, ideally trifles would be their own merit. Would make book keeping much easier.

[West]

I like the idea, but would suggest a tweak:

Start it off as a ***, ****, ***** merit at 1, 2, 3 types.

1. You wont' have *everyone* spammign a 2-dot merit while youre trying to test and have your perception skewed.
2. It's easier to make something cheaper than it is to make something more expensive if you have too much fruit flying around.
3. High 'buy-in' will show you who's actually interested versus who are just looking for handouts.

[Yumyumcrow]

Question:

What about those who have the Harvest merit currently? Would they get a retcon if they had spec'd their dots to Hedge Fruit?

If not, I don't mind. Green will just switch his Harvest dots to feeding from emotions. I've done enough glimpses suggesting he trawls dive bars looking for his Sorrow fix.

[West]

I read YYC's post and wanted to do a random Firefly Chinese expletive.

I totally forgot that was part of Harvest and not just available through a 'Hedge' thread where an ST made it rain.

Which... I really like. Because it makes sense that if someone is farming in the Hedge they've got less time to go prod people for Glamour, and vice versa.

[Origins]

Could we have the Harvest Merit give a sort of discount on the Goblin Fruit XP prices? The basic Harvest is for Glamour filled Hedge Bounty. And the Hedge is really random in its behavior, but tends to follow a theme. Still, it would make sense that it would take less "effort" to find non-Glamour goblin fruit in a place where goblin fruit regularly appears as compared to the "effort" of scrounging in the Hedge.

In this case we'd just use XP to represent that effort.

Though the theme of Goblin Fruit Harvest Merit would work best with Amaranthine rather then Judas Yew Berries. As these Harvest Merit groves give benign, glamour filled fruits the theme would imply only beneficial named fruits. So if a blanket discount seems to broken, there is the option to place thematic restrictions on what fruits the Harvest Merit gives a discount on.

Oh, and if it helps I have found a list of canon goblin fruits on this site.

[Cayce]

I'm liking the idea of making Harvest (Hedgefruit) a prerequisite of the Hedgefruit merit, thus showing that yes, people who tromp around in the hedge are the ones who are going to be reaping the rewards of their effort. However, a discount is a flat N followed by an O. Hedgefruit are suuuuper good, there's no way I'd be giving people a discount for access to them.

So here's my thoughts. Harvest (Hedgefruit) is a prereq, and it'll be a 3, 4, and 5 dot merit, thus giving people that invest in it some pretty ample bang for their XP, while also discouraging people spamming it. Thoughts?

[Yumyumcrow]

Yeah that works.

Harvest merit boosts your Glamour. Hedge Fruit merit represents stuff you have left over (tradeable things) once you've fattened up your Glamour reserves.

[Origins]

To clarify, is the Hedge Fruit Merit going to be renewable or one usage kind? By renewable I am thinking of the phrasing for merits of the TFV Endowment: Advanced Armory. To quote:

"Certain Advanced Armory Merits are listed as "Renewable." The nature of modern warfare is such that a soldier chews through supplies at a high rate: ammo is fired, grenades thrown, and so on. Renewable Merits represent these expendable but vital pieces of technology, which the Task Force supplies its agents on a regular basis. Each Renewable Merit's description lists how often the top brass will supply soldiers with fresh ammo, usually once per chapter or once per story. Note that this resupply does not mean the hunter automatically receives a new Endowment; Task Force: VALKYRIE only replaces expended gear. If a sniper is normally issued two magazines of etheric rounds (represented by two dots of the Etheric Rounds Merit) but only expends one of them during the course of a session, he only receives one replacement mag at the start of the next session. Obviously, if a hunter does not begin a session in a situation where he can be resupplied, he won't receive the replacements immediately."

Renewable would mean that a changeling with the Hedge Fruit merit can restock without buying the merit again. For example, say Green has 3 Amaranthine in one scene where there is an explosion hurting his motley. Green uses all three to heal folks up. In the following scene, chronologically an hour later, Green has 0 Hedge Fruit because he didn't have the time to harvest more. However, if a scene chronologically a month later Green would've had the time to harvest more Fruit. However, if Green had only used 1 and at restocking he wanted to grab 3 poison fruits he wouldn't because he still has to use the other 2 Amaranthine...I think.

For added difficulty (for players) we can use a simple formula for how long it takes the fruit to regrow. More dots of Hedge Fruit merit = faster regrowth rate. At 3 you can restock once/month, 4 is once/week, 5 is once/day. Or as this is a homebrew merit, another homebrew merit could be used to accelerate the restock rate. A flat month to restock for all, but offer a 3 dot merit for it to be reduced to a week. Have the 3 dot merit be a prerequisite for a 5 dot merit for once a day restocking.

Or if it is going to be a spend the XP every to restock on Hedge produce you can ignore all that typing