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On character wealth an d game balance
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7085382" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>So your standard response is to thread crap all over the place when the topic isn't something you like.</p><p></p><p>Your subjective standards as to what play should be and what sort of play is enjoyable can be whatever you want. </p><p></p><p>But, to begin with, you are objectively wrong that this sort of stuff doesn't have an impact on play regardless of what sort of play you are talking about - even kicking down the doors, killing the monster, and taking their <em>stuff</em>. I didn't come to these conclusions because 30 odd years ago I set out to create an economic simulation that would satisfy Milton Friedman. I came to these conclusions because when I didn't pay attention to these things, I notice the issues didn't go away, they just distorted play in various ways both subtle and profound. It's not like my 12 year old or my 15 year old self had a lot of formal training in economics and I was trying to apply economics to the game just because I adored economics. This sort of thing comes up repeatedly as a practical matter. Leaving aside the simulationist aspects of it, it's part of such ubiquitous and important gamist problems as, "non-spellcaster's can't have good stuff." It's part of what's behind things like the Christmas Tree problem, and ubiquitous problems like lack of game balance and thematic problems like the mundanity of magic. In 1e, it was part of what was behind issues like, "Why can only NPCs have good stuff?" This thread began as a conversation of how economics impacted game balance for crying out loud, and as soon as a PC realizes that he can potentially leverage economics to gain advantage it becomes a problem. </p><p></p><p>It's not something that DMs inflict on players because the DM is 'insisting' on something. More often, it becomes an issue because the player starts insisting on something - like "Can I take these silver coins and make jewelry out of them, and if I do, how much is it worth?", or "Since I can't afford the thing I want right now, how much money will I earn if I invest my money in a business while we go on the next adventure?" or, "As long as we are buying a ship and sailing it to City-Over-Sea, why don't we fill the hold with trade goods and try to turn an extra profit or at least pay for the cost of the crew?" My thoughts on this grow not mainly out of my own desires and interests in the game, but 30 years DMing players that are often highly active and proactive in their propositions and interaction with the world. It's not a matter of me 'wanting' to make them an issue, so much a matter of having the issue forced upon me and realizing that the game gave me vastly too few tools to deal with those sorts of questions in a good way. The answers that I'm giving now are the result of 30 odd years of trial and error in trying to find good answers to the questions players pose.</p><p></p><p>Even something like the wages of peasants aren't something that matters just because "DMs insist on it". In fact, the wages of peasants are or were considered such an important aspect of play for a player, that they are addressed in the rules for taking character classes in 1e. They don't become important just because DMs insist on inflicting unwanted fiddly details on players. They become important the first time the player of the 10th level fighter says something like, "If I improve my serfs lot in life, can I collect more taxes from them?"</p><p></p><p>My thoughts on this aren't 'utterly superficial' because I don't demand that my players interact with the world in utterly superficial ways. Or just maybe, I'm not the one that is making the game not revolve around the PC's but in fact empowering them, rather than assuming that the PCs are just going to robotically follow a script of which dungeons are to be looted next.</p><p></p><p>Declaring that game is not intended to be an economic simulation is as ridiculous as claiming it's not intended to be a combat simulation or a simulation of exploring dangerous sub-surface ruins. Economics have always impacted play in some fashion and have always been built into the game in some fashion, from 1e's assumption that wealth was how you kept score and tracked success, to 3e's assumption of wealth by level that started this conversation. </p><p></p><p>The thing here that isn't 'making sense' is you. I could care less about the chip you have on your shoulder about this topic. It's ridiculous to make a statement like "When a PC has 50,000 gp and finds he has nothing to spend it on because the only things that valuable are magical items is that supposed to be a valid knock against the never-has-existed economic model of the game or a challenge for the DM or player to figure out something else viable to do with it? Like build a castle, a merchant empire, a small city, a small country (from a bankrupt king who wants to sell it and become an adventurer himself)...", and then not expect that to have some sort of model underneath it if it is both to empower the player to make meaningful choices and be interesting in play. Did it ever occur to you that the only things valuable being magical items is a side effect of focusing all the economic detail on magical items and not on anything else. It's not enough to hand wave all these things and problems away because there is nothing 'simple' about focusing on keeping the PC's experiences in the game world interesting, and 'keeping the PC's experiences' interesting in the context of out of system and unsystematic rulings is just other words for railroading the game according to the DM's narrative preferences. Basically, your 'answer', such as it is, to questions like, "How do I go about building my own castle, merchant empire, small city or small country, and if I build my own castle, merchant empire, or small city, what happens next?", is "Whatever the DM thinks is interesting."</p><p></p><p>If you don't get the point, just shut up. And if you are going to be all passive aggressive and insulting, don't think ending it with "YMMV" makes it all better and start feigning how you polite you were with your insinuations and thread crapping. Even if I was wrong about all these objective matters, it still wouldn't give you the right to come around and tell everyone how their subjective preferences for play should be the same as yours.</p><p></p><p>YMMV.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7085382, member: 4937"] So your standard response is to thread crap all over the place when the topic isn't something you like. Your subjective standards as to what play should be and what sort of play is enjoyable can be whatever you want. But, to begin with, you are objectively wrong that this sort of stuff doesn't have an impact on play regardless of what sort of play you are talking about - even kicking down the doors, killing the monster, and taking their [I]stuff[/I]. I didn't come to these conclusions because 30 odd years ago I set out to create an economic simulation that would satisfy Milton Friedman. I came to these conclusions because when I didn't pay attention to these things, I notice the issues didn't go away, they just distorted play in various ways both subtle and profound. It's not like my 12 year old or my 15 year old self had a lot of formal training in economics and I was trying to apply economics to the game just because I adored economics. This sort of thing comes up repeatedly as a practical matter. Leaving aside the simulationist aspects of it, it's part of such ubiquitous and important gamist problems as, "non-spellcaster's can't have good stuff." It's part of what's behind things like the Christmas Tree problem, and ubiquitous problems like lack of game balance and thematic problems like the mundanity of magic. In 1e, it was part of what was behind issues like, "Why can only NPCs have good stuff?" This thread began as a conversation of how economics impacted game balance for crying out loud, and as soon as a PC realizes that he can potentially leverage economics to gain advantage it becomes a problem. It's not something that DMs inflict on players because the DM is 'insisting' on something. More often, it becomes an issue because the player starts insisting on something - like "Can I take these silver coins and make jewelry out of them, and if I do, how much is it worth?", or "Since I can't afford the thing I want right now, how much money will I earn if I invest my money in a business while we go on the next adventure?" or, "As long as we are buying a ship and sailing it to City-Over-Sea, why don't we fill the hold with trade goods and try to turn an extra profit or at least pay for the cost of the crew?" My thoughts on this grow not mainly out of my own desires and interests in the game, but 30 years DMing players that are often highly active and proactive in their propositions and interaction with the world. It's not a matter of me 'wanting' to make them an issue, so much a matter of having the issue forced upon me and realizing that the game gave me vastly too few tools to deal with those sorts of questions in a good way. The answers that I'm giving now are the result of 30 odd years of trial and error in trying to find good answers to the questions players pose. Even something like the wages of peasants aren't something that matters just because "DMs insist on it". In fact, the wages of peasants are or were considered such an important aspect of play for a player, that they are addressed in the rules for taking character classes in 1e. They don't become important just because DMs insist on inflicting unwanted fiddly details on players. They become important the first time the player of the 10th level fighter says something like, "If I improve my serfs lot in life, can I collect more taxes from them?" My thoughts on this aren't 'utterly superficial' because I don't demand that my players interact with the world in utterly superficial ways. Or just maybe, I'm not the one that is making the game not revolve around the PC's but in fact empowering them, rather than assuming that the PCs are just going to robotically follow a script of which dungeons are to be looted next. Declaring that game is not intended to be an economic simulation is as ridiculous as claiming it's not intended to be a combat simulation or a simulation of exploring dangerous sub-surface ruins. Economics have always impacted play in some fashion and have always been built into the game in some fashion, from 1e's assumption that wealth was how you kept score and tracked success, to 3e's assumption of wealth by level that started this conversation. The thing here that isn't 'making sense' is you. I could care less about the chip you have on your shoulder about this topic. It's ridiculous to make a statement like "When a PC has 50,000 gp and finds he has nothing to spend it on because the only things that valuable are magical items is that supposed to be a valid knock against the never-has-existed economic model of the game or a challenge for the DM or player to figure out something else viable to do with it? Like build a castle, a merchant empire, a small city, a small country (from a bankrupt king who wants to sell it and become an adventurer himself)...", and then not expect that to have some sort of model underneath it if it is both to empower the player to make meaningful choices and be interesting in play. Did it ever occur to you that the only things valuable being magical items is a side effect of focusing all the economic detail on magical items and not on anything else. It's not enough to hand wave all these things and problems away because there is nothing 'simple' about focusing on keeping the PC's experiences in the game world interesting, and 'keeping the PC's experiences' interesting in the context of out of system and unsystematic rulings is just other words for railroading the game according to the DM's narrative preferences. Basically, your 'answer', such as it is, to questions like, "How do I go about building my own castle, merchant empire, small city or small country, and if I build my own castle, merchant empire, or small city, what happens next?", is "Whatever the DM thinks is interesting." If you don't get the point, just shut up. And if you are going to be all passive aggressive and insulting, don't think ending it with "YMMV" makes it all better and start feigning how you polite you were with your insinuations and thread crapping. Even if I was wrong about all these objective matters, it still wouldn't give you the right to come around and tell everyone how their subjective preferences for play should be the same as yours. YMMV. [/QUOTE]
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