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Community Gift Design Guidelines

Community Gifts represent anchored wealth, social standing, and institutional presence.
They turn unstable, adventuring wealth into something rooted, visible, and consequential.

Unlike most Gifts, Community Gifts are not primarily about personal capability.
They are about belonging to a place, shaping it, and being shaped by it in return.

Core Principles

Community Gifts are defined by four traits:

  • Anchored: They exist in a specific place or network.
  • Persistent: They continue to matter even when the character is absent.
  • Public: Other people know about them, and react to them.
  • Entangling: They create obligations, attention, and risk.

A Community Gift should never be “free money” or a passive bonus.
If it produces value, it should also produce pressure.

Community Gifts vs Other Gifts

Community Gifts differ from standard Gifts in important ways.

  • They often have lower XP costs.
  • They almost always require a significant coin or resource investment.
  • They rely heavily on fictional positioning and GM judgment.

XP represents learning how to operate within a community.
Coin represents the material reality of establishing roots.

Costs and Currencies

XP Costs

Community Gifts usually cost 2–3 XP.

XP reflects: - Navigating bureaucracy or tradition
- Learning local expectations
- Becoming a recognized participant

Community Gifts should almost never cost more XP than a personal Gift.

Coin and Material Costs

Coin is the primary gate for Community Gifts.

These costs should be: - Explicit
- Large enough to matter
- Difficult to recover if things go wrong

Coin costs represent: - Construction or purchase
- Bribes, taxes, or permits
- Labor, materials, or buy-ins

Daily upkeep is usually abstracted, but major losses or disruptions are not.

Spent XP (For Scale and Permanence)

Spent XP should be required only when a Community Gift becomes:

  • Politically significant
  • Culturally entrenched
  • Functionally permanent

Spent XP represents legacy, not expansion.

What Community Gifts Provide

A Community Gift may provide:

  • Stable income or resources
  • Safe lodging or storage
  • Reliable information networks
  • Social legitimacy or access
  • Political leverage
  • A place to recover, plan, or regroup

A Community Gift should change what problems are possible to solve, not solve them automatically.

What Community Gifts Do Not Provide

Community Gifts should not:

  • Replace adventuring income
  • Grant combat bonuses
  • Provide unconditional safety
  • Scale automatically with time
  • Exist without consequence

If a Community Gift removes risk, it should introduce a different kind of risk.

Growth Without Leveling

Community Gifts should rarely have levels.
Instead, they grow through:

  • Additional coin investment
  • Narrative developments
  • Relationships and reputation
  • Spent XP for legacy changes

This keeps them grounded in the fiction instead of becoming upgrade trees.

Example Community Gifts

Small Scale: Local Business

Example: Owning a tavern, workshop, or boarding house

  • XP Cost: 2
  • Coin Cost: 300–500 silver

Provides: - Modest, steady income
- A safe place to stay locally
- Access to rumors and local sentiment

Creates: - Taxes, fees, or guild attention
- Rival businesses
- Expectations from staff and locals

Medium Scale: Neighborhood Anchor

Example: A caravan office, shrine, guildhall, or estate holding

  • XP Cost: 3
  • Coin Cost: 1,000–2,000 silver

Provides: - Reliable logistics or influence
- Recognition by local authorities
- A place others seek out

Creates: - Political pressure
- Factional expectations
- Vulnerability during unrest

Large Scale: Regional Institution

Example: A major trade concern, monastery, noble holding, or cultural center

  • Spent XP Cost: 3
  • Coin Cost: 3,000+ silver

Provides: - Regional recognition
- Long-term stability
- Influence beyond a single settlement

Creates: - Enemies with resources
- Institutional inertia
- Obligations that persist across campaigns

This level of Community Gift should meaningfully alter how the world treats the character.

Community Gifts and the Road

Community Gifts do not end an adventuring career.
They change its rhythm.

Characters with Community Gifts: - Have reasons to return
- Leave things behind when they travel
- Risk losing what they’ve built

This tension is intentional.

GM Guidance

When adjudicating Community Gifts, ask:

  • Who benefits from this besides the character?
  • Who resents it?
  • Who depends on it?
  • What happens if it is threatened or taken?

If a Community Gift feels consequence-free, it needs pressure.

Summary

Community Gifts turn wealth into roots.
They trade mobility for stability, and safety for obligation.

They are not rewards for adventuring.
They are what adventuring makes possible.