Collateral Damage: A Deeper Look into Vehicles

I've been thinking about something I said regarding the price of some vehicles. in the previous article. 

Thus would make each point of stress is worth $12,500.

This runs into problems. For example, take a  3 bedroom 2 bathroom house with drywall interior. It can be assumed to have: 

• space for 6 occupants
• A kitchen
• 3 armor

That would be 10 stress and $125k, which works for cars, but it's been over 20 years since that conversion rate made any sense for a house. For a GTA based game I created a while back, I thought 50k was a fair price per bed, bath, or other significant features. That would put this same house at 500k, but research suggests that a house with those features is between 3-400k. So tripling it for houses, but leaving it $12,500 for vehicles is fitting.

 Applying this to actual cars is problematic unless cars aren't considered to have the 3 armor assumed by a steel frame (the material I previously mentioned is iron, but the difference is not significant) because that gives them a minimum price around 3,600 with no control stat, no occupants, etc. Consider the following: http://www.dodge.com/en/charger/

Here's what's stated

• 707 Horsepower
• 6.2L Hemi V8 Engine
• 3 Armor

The vehicle probably has +1 Control at the least. I won't bother trying to think too deeply on that one. The pictures show enough room for 3 kids in the back, in addition to 2 front seats. We'll call that 4 Occ.

Thus we have 

• 707 Horsepower
• 6.2L Hemi V8 Engine
• 3 Armor
• 4 Occ.
• +1 Control

That's 10 things, for about 28K. It would not be unfair to assume vehicles are between $2500, and $3000 per point of Stress. If a house is $50,000 per point, and a Vehicle is $2,500 we can thus assume that "Basic Amenities" multiplies price by 20. Otherwise the multiplier is closer to about 17.

Collateral Damage: Structures and Vehicles in World Engine games

So I was reflecting on how in Inverse World, vehicles have 3 stress unless otherwise noted, it takes 10 points to drop it by 1 stress, and removing all stress destroys the vehicle. Presumably they thought something was to be desired with vehicles that Dungeon World left out. I wasn't really satisfied with this static number because I felt that it fell a little flat on granularity between smaller and larger vehicles. I also saw potential to use it for buildings, but no building was gonna take 30 damage and call it a day. Thus, I decided on an expanded Stress Modifiers list

• +1 per Occupant (Occ. Includes very basic but accommodations)
• A bedroom is 2 Occ.
• A booth table or pew is 4 Occ.
• If a complex consists of multiple rooms, minimum occupancy is the number of rooms
• +1 per point of Armor
• +1 per notable feature, even if it’s decoration
• +1 per Move an occupant can do (needs 1 Occ. per move unless otherwise stated. Any staff can tend to the number of people stated, multiplied by a relevant stat)
• Armory
• Kitchen and/or Dining Hall (waitstaff serves 4 people)
• Infirmary (1 Nurse can tend to 1 room 2 Occ.)
• Lore Library
• Move like a vehicle (has additional stress of 1 per Control Stat) 
• Mystical Library/Laboratory

Material                         Armor 

Particularly thin Wood 
or particularly thick Paper      1 

Wood                             2 

Iron or Stone (wood and
drywall counts as “or stone”)    3 

Iron and Stone (structural
steel and concrete
probably counts)                 4 

Magical Protection               Varies

After some experimentation with converting Dungeon World coin to other currencies (I put a coin equal to 500 yen to get prices that neared those in the Persona series for another project I'm working on) I came to about a coin for 500 yen or 5 dollars, I assumed a 1 room cottage was 2 stress, and at 2500 coins, Thus would make each point of stress is worth $12,500.

This runs into problems. For example, take a  3 bedroom 2 bathroom house with drywall interior. It can be assumed to have: 

• space for 6 occupants
• A kitchen
• 3 armor

That would be 10 stress and $125k, which works for cars, but it's been over 20 years since that conversion rate made any sense for a house. For a GTA based game I created a while back, I thought 50k was a fair price per bed, bath, or other significant features. That would put this same house at 500k, but research suggests that a house with those features is between 3-400k.

I have further thoughts on this on: https://steelsmiter.blogspot.com/2016/09/collateral-damage-deeper-look-into.html where I basically peg "Basic Amenities" as an x20 multiplier.

For games that feature low "Harm" scores like Monster of the Week, 3 points of DW damage is 1 point of Harm. This isn't as much an attempt to convert to any particular system as much as it is a quick generalization. Feel free to make it 2-5 to better suit your game's survivability.