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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6853230" data-attributes="member: 4937">Yes.  They see the value of having a medium of exchange the same as anyone else.  In theory, many rural elves might not possess the currency to conduct transactions, so you'd have a lot of barter going on, but that would be a symptom of their general poverty and not a lifestyle choice.  They would certainly have nothing against being wealthy, and indeed would find it an admirable condition to be in; they just simply don't prioritize acquisition of goods for its own sake.  In my ideal RPG world, the world would emulate the medieval norm by having currency be relatively scarce whether we are talking about how elves normally live or the quasi-feudal societies of men, but in my experience as a practical matter the effort in running an RPG with a low currency schtick does not enhance the game compared to the overhead it causes in play.  Having a single universal standard of currency that is relatively common is a necessary or at least extraordinarily simplifying assumption of play.  They don't have a lot of organization.  A craft guild is simply a government backed monopoly created to carry out price collusion between people who are former rivals.  As Chaotics, they would tend to find this dishonest and distasteful on several levels.  First, that there is a sufficiently strong and active ruler capable of enforcing this monopoly and seeing it is not trespassed against is distasteful.   And second, while they might understand the self-interest that leads you to wanting that monopoly, they wouldn't think it fair that you'd be required to participate, nor that a would be buyer could not negotiate their own rate.  The fear of the collective squashing the individual is pretty strong here.  As far as government goes, remember I said that in practice they work a lot like a "government by who can be bothered to act"?  Generally speaking, most of the bureaucratic and civil functions of government are ultimately done by the temples, and most of the temples are themselves Chaotic in philosophical inclination.Forging something is generally just a matter of having a sufficiently powerful furnace and a few basic tools for shaping it - smooth metal rods, smooth metal bowls, anvils, hammers, etc.  Most of those are themselves products of smithcraft.   I haven't thought particularly hard about the economics of elven craftsmanship, but I presume it would work similarly to any traditional hand craftsmanship, of which I think the Japanese is probably the most well-preserved example given their isolation preserved medieval techniques up into the 19th century and allowed them to be then documented and preserved to some degree.  So it would be an example of just figuring out how that worked.  I would imagine you'd have a couple of families jointly working on something as complex as armor smithing.  The skill would probably get passed down from the master to whomever showed the greatest zeal and interest in it.  Of particular interest would be figuring out how to do that in a way that didn't mess up the neighborhood.Jewelry isn't really that complex.  A single person can produce jewelry, particularly because it works in soft metals.  What most jewelry is, if you are using medieval techniques, is very very slow craftsmanship, for which elves are exceptionally well suited.  For example, to polish hard stones in the modern world, you use a small fast spinning diamond covered wheel.  In the middle ages, what you did was get a 6-10' diameter mill stone made of some hard fine grained stone, hung it vertically and used either hand or water power to get it very slowly spinning.  Then you just laid underneath it or in some similar restful position and very very slowly let the stone be polished.  Took hours or days to make a facet, but as long as the stone is beautiful, that's the sort of craftsmanship I can see elves getting into.</blockquote>

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