This is a thread for me to compile & answer questions about White Sandbox carousing (spending gold to earn XP) rules.
Basic protocols:
- When you decide to carouse, you roll a variable-sized dice to see how much you spend, and a second d20 that helps me adjucate the results.
- In Belltower you can spend 1d6 x 100. In Hruhrudingfallor, it's 1d8 x 150. If you don't have enough gold to cover your expenditures, you earn XP only for what you do actually spend, and must borrow money to cover the rest or face the consequences.
- If the first dice is equal to or less than your level, you're home free - the d20 is used for general randomization. If you roll higher than your level, the second dice is a saving throw (often vs. poison or spell) to avoid having something bad happen, which may have in-game consequences or reduce the XP earned.
General concepts:
- Things that directly benefit your PC are not counted as carousing. For example, taking a chariot ride to Hruhrudingfallor gives you the direct benefit of not facing dozens of wilderness encounter checks as you travel overland.
- Carousing can indirectly aid your PC's fictional status. Investing in real estate gives you a place to stay and establishes you as a respectable land-owning member of society. Conducting drinking contests makes new friends and establishes you as a lusty adventurer of great largess and fortitude.
- A good guide to whether something is carousing is: could you continue to throw limitless sums into it and still get more of the same benefit? Buying a keg of holy water isn't carousing because it has a discrete limit; at some point you have what you need. Buying ornaments for a church is carousing because you could go on making the temple more ornate indefinitely.
- Carousing scenes will ideally involve multiple PCs, and to help organize carousing activities into groups we'll discuss plans in the scheduling thread to try to see how they might fit together.
- General "these are things I want to do in town" plans should also be discussed in the scheduling thread. Note that the primary point of carousing is to spend gold to get XP. If you just want to get a specific thing done, carousing is a risky and sometimes nonsensical way to do it.