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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5950643" data-attributes="member: 54877">It varies, and I don't think I have a complete handle on how it happens. Probably not anything you don't already know well, but these are the stress points that I see:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">If gold and XP are kept in sync (because of both being tied to level advancement, for example), then the in-world expectations of gold and XP start to chafe against each other. Wealth by level guidelines are one example of this, but any system that has rigid ties between personal power and wealth will exhibit the strain somewhere (I think), because of trying to measure one thing with two different scales.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The AD&D "XP for treasure" model is a very clever attempt to circumvent this problem (whether intentionally so or not), because it reverses the implicit order through the abstraction of what "XP for treasure" represents. Instead of getting treasure and buying power, the act of getting treasure gains you power (i.e. XP). In effect, the gold becomes the standard that feeds XP, but then leaves the gold in the hands of the players to spend as they please. So the "gold sinks" are all optional. The problem here is that the abstraction depends upon certain playstyles to really work. You see the chafing as soon as you move out of those playstyles.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">You can get the WoW effects, where if all gold is poured into gold sinks, gold starts to be a grind requirement instead of a reward--it's all stick and no carrot.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Related to the previous one, excessive focus on gold sinks can perversly undermine the useful story purposes of the sinks, because enforcing them becomes so punitive that they get watered down.</li> </ul>I intuitively don't have much faith in systems designed to produced behavior, which don't invoke both carrot and stick. For example, let's say that you've got a system where there are modest but real training and resourse gold cost, but also the chance to buy optional influence and land. When you back out of too many dungeons or have bad luck, you can start to feel the pinch of not having enough to sustain your "adventuring overhead." When you are successful or lucky, in constrast, you get to use the excess to explore the optional carrot stuff. Prudent characters (or players) can have fun saving some of it for later lean periods. More aggressive ones can have fun taking advantage of the boost they have now. Either way, your choices matter, and they are as cautious or reckless as you want to be.  If you change that system to all carrot, it becomes meaningless or Monte Haul. If you change that system to all stick, every time you come up short, you move into extreme grit very rapidly. A character died because you couldn't afford a healing potion, after that last bad adventure. But mainly, the DM has to exercise tight control over wealth to make such a one-sided system only sort of work. It's brittle design. <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/laugh.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":lol:" title="Laughing    :lol:" data-shortname=":lol:" /></blockquote>

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