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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 3832554" data-attributes="member: 54877">I said "effort", not time.  If you have something valuable, then you have to spend money, time, something keeping it safe.  Some people would prefer to spend their effort elsewhere.As for the rest, if the only thing the players are interested in buying is direct power, and you cater to that, then yes, you will get some version of the "Christmas Tree" effect.  I think that players will have more fun if they can be weaned off of such.  Or alternately, if everyone agrees they don't want to change that, then it is not as if adding the "Christmas Tree" effect back in to my kind of design is all that difficult:  You got gold.  Instead of buying the hints to the Ghoul King's Tomb, you bought a magic sword from a merchant.  You pay the money, you get the sword--no complications.  Anything that appears to be a complication but isn't is just "color" added to pretend that the player isn't buying a magic sword outright.Such studies are necessarily spotty at this time.  However, there have been some long-term followups of lotteries in particular geographic areas where it was shown that money was certainly no impediment to screwing up a life.  I believe some slices approach 70% to 80% massive screwup.  Who knows, those particular individuals could have been on a downward spiral already?  If Bill Gates picked 10 people at random today, and gave them $5,000,000 each, would you expect 7 of them, by 2012, to have blown most of the money, estranged most friends and family, picked up addictions, etc?  I know I wouldn't, but it happens surprisingly frequently with lotteries.But my larger point is that the fables weren't only saying that money was this great problem that should be avoided.  Obviously, the desperately poor peasant comes out ahead even if all he manages during the rollercoaster ride is upgrading his cottage and gaining some livestock.  (And not many in this topic have been talking about the desperately poor climbing out of subsistence level into something slightly better, which is really a different game issue altogether.)  Acquiring great wealth suddenly is a huge change, that attracts attention.  All huge changes that attract attention are problems in the real world and a D&D world.  <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":]" title="Devious    :]" data-shortname=":]" /> I was saying that if you had a game where the players were always going to turn gold into a magic sword, you'd do better to cut out the middleman, and just let them find the magic sword.  Or if you don't want them to tell you what they want, let them find or earn a favor from a wizard that will make them the magic sword.  If wealth can be turned directly into power, then you will get the "Christmas Tree" effect, unless you highly limit wealth.  It's all color.  It's functionally no different than if they had found the sword.</blockquote>

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