Stakes (3) and Mallet

This is completely, apoplecticaly intolerable. How am I supposed to put up my tent with only three stakes? Utter bullshit. I’m taking four stakes, and I don’t give a DAMN what your rules say!
I also find it a bit odd there’s a “buy three stakes, get a free mallet!” deal going on. It’s a bit like a “buy three tires, and we’ll throw in a free jack!” sale. I’m gonna need more of the one, but once I’ve got one of the other, I’m pretty much good.

It’s to make you buy twice as many sets just to be able to set the tent up. It’s based on Arnesonian Biscuit Theory - in 1971 after playing the game ’ Don’t Dunk the Bikkie!’ Dave Arneson claimed that family packets of chocolate biscuits usually contain odd numbers of biscuits in an attempt to make customers buy more so relatives/guests can have more than one each.

Clearly the Auran Stakes and Mallets Trade Association has taken some hints from modern sales of hotdogs and buns.

You almost had me there, Wills, but no American would choose biscuits when cookies are available.

Oh I’d have me some sausage gravy over biscuits instead of cookies any day… and then go take a nap in my three sided tent. :wink:

If you’re eating sausage gravy with chocolate biscuits, you are capable of anything.

This is so embarrassing. It never actually occurred to me that stakes had any usage other than staking vampires through the hearts. The reality of my existence as an armchair nerd and not a wilderness explorer is sadly revealed.
How many stakes should one actually get in a set of stakes to use them for…whatever wilderness things one uses stakes for…

If I were an adventuring troop playing ACKs, our party would never buy things individually!
7 PC have starting gold at about 735gp.
from page 129 common merchant table.
1 crate of armor 225gp
1 crate of weapons 225gp
1 crate of “tools” 200gp
This would buy 3 suits of plate armor (60gp)
3 shields 30gp)
6 swords (60gp)
3 spears (9gp)etc…
the “tools” could this be:
thieves tools (25gp)
60 torches (1gp)
10 wooden poles (10 gp)
10 backpacks (20gp)
etc…
Can you do this? I mean if a group of adventurers are serious, why wouldn’t they buy 30 stakes and 10 hammers? What would be the benefit of buying a crate of armor instead of each fighter buying the armor one at a time? Or is it assumed this starting money is what the characters bring to the table before the oft used, “you all meet for the first time at a tavern…” and so cannot pool their cash in order to buy in bulk at the start of play?
Think of the benefits of this bulk buying when new characters are made to replace killed/lost comrades. A character dies and is replaced, the adventuring company equips the new PC and the new PC gets to keep his 3d6x10gp or invests the amount into “ackquisitions inc.”

Hahahahaha, This plus the terrible “Experience points are divided between the survivors” means battle royale at the end of every adventure. The survivors keep all the xp, and get bonus gold from the new characters.

Alex, to be fair, I bought the stakes for the vampires first, the tent second. Every tent I’ve ever seen in a historical movie seems to have four stakes, one for each corner, so you probably want to sell them in 4s or dozens.